Red Sorghum

by Mo Yan

  As she picked up the scissors and cut a perfect square out of the red paper, a sense of unease struck her like a bolt of lightning. Although she was seated on the kang, her heart had flown out the window and was soaring above the red sorghum like a dove on the wing. . . . Since childhood she had lived a cloistered life, cut off from the outside world. As she neared maturity, she had obeyed the orders of her parents, and been rushed to the home of her husband. In the two weeks that followed, everything had been turned topsy-turvy: water plants swirling in the wind, duckweeds bathing in the rain, lotus leaves scattered on the pond, a pair of frolicking red mandarin ducks. During those two weeks, her heart had been dipped in honey, immersed in ice, scalded in boiling water, steeped in sorghum wine.

  Grandma was hoping for something, without knowing what it was. She picked up the scissors again, but what to cut? Her fantasies and dreams were shattered by one chaotic image after another, and as her thoughts grew more confused, the mournful yet lovely song of the katydids drifted up from the early-autumn wildwoods and sorghum fields. A bold and novel idea leaped into her mind: a katydid has freed itself from its gilded cage, where it perches to rub its wings and sing.

  After cutting out the uncaged katydid, Grandma fashioned a plum-blossomed deer. The deer, its head high and chest thrown out, has a plum tree growing from its back as it wanders in search of a happy life, free of care and worries, devoid of constraints.

  Only Grandma would have had the audacity to place a plum tree on the back of a deer. Whenever I see one of Grandma’s cutouts, my admiration for her surges anew. If she could have become a writer, she would have put many of her literary peers to shame. She was endowed with the golden lips and jade teeth of genius. She said a katydid perched on top of its cage, and that’s what it did; she said a plum tree grew from the back of a deer, and that’s where it grew.

  Grandma, compared with you, I am like a shrivelled insect that has gone hungry for three long years.

  As she was cutting the paper, the main gate suddenly creaked open, and a strangely familiar voice called out in the yard: ‘Mistress, are you hiring?’

  The scissors dropped from Grandma’s hand onto the kang.

  7

  THE FIRST THING Father saw after Granddad shook him awake was a long, coiling dragon coming straight for them as though on wings. Bold howls rose from beneath upraised torches. Father wondered how this wriggling line of torches could have so deeply moved a man like Granddad, who could kill without batting an eye. He was weeping openly. ‘Douguan,’ he mumbled between sobs, ‘my son . . . our fellow villagers are coming. . . .’

  Several hundred villagers – men and women, boys and girls – crowded round. Those not holding torches were armed with hoes, rakes, and clubs. Father’s best friends squeezed up to the front, holding torches made of sorghum stalks that were tipped with cotton wadding dipped in bean oil.

  ‘Commander Yu, you won the battle!’

  ‘Commander Yu, we have slaughtered cattle, pigs, and sheep for a feast for you and your men.’

  Granddad fell to his knees in front of the solemn, sacred torches, which lit up the meandering river and the vast, mighty sorghum. ‘Fellow villagers,’ he said in a trembling voice, ‘I, Yu Zhan’ao, should be condemned for all time for being duped by Pocky Leng’s treachery. My men . . . all lost in the fight!’

  The torches closed in around him, smoke rose in the air, flames flickered uneasily, and drops of burning oil sizzled as they fell to the ground like red thread. Red cinders in a floral pattern covered the dike. A fox in the sorghum field howled. Fish, attracted by the light, schooled just below the surface. The people were speechless. Amid the crackling of flames, a thunderous sound came rolling towards them from some distant spot in the field.

  An old man, his face dark, his beard white, one eye much larger than the other, handed his torch to the man beside him, bent down, and slipped his arms under my granddad’s. ‘Get up, Commander Yu, get up, get up.’

  ‘Get up, Commander Yu,’ the villagers echoed, ‘get up, get up.’

  Granddad rose slowly to his feet, as the heat from the old man’s hands warmed the muscles of his arms. ‘Fellow villagers,’ he said, ‘let’s take a look around.’

  The torchbearers fell in behind Granddad and Father, the flames lighting up the blurry riverbed and the sorghum fields all the way up to the battleground near the bridge. The burned-out trucks cast eerie shadows. Corpses strewn across the battlefield gave off an overpowering stench of blood, which merged with the smell of scorched metal, of the sorghum that served as a vast backdrop, and of the river, so far from its source.

  Women began to wail as drops of burning oil fell from the torches onto the people’s hands and feet. The men’s faces looked like steel fresh from the furnace. The white stone bridge had turned scarlet.

  The old man with the dark face and white beard shouted, ‘What are you crying for? This was a great victory! There are four hundred million of us Chinese. If we take on the Japs, one on one, how do you think their little country will fare? If one hundred million of us fought them to the death, they’d be wiped out, but there’d still be three hundred million of us. That makes us the victors, doesn’t it? Commander Yu , this was a crushing victory!’

  ‘Old uncle, you’re just saying that to make me feel good.’

  ‘No, Commander Yu, it really was a great victory. Give the order; tell us what to do. China may have nothing else, but it’s got plenty of people.’

  Granddad straightened up. ‘You people, gather up the bodies of our fallen comrades!’

  The villagers spread out and gathered up the bodies from the sorghum fields on both sides of the highway, then laid them out on the dike on the western edge of the bridge, heads facing south, feet north. Pulling Father along behind him, Granddad walked down the column of bodies, counting them. Wang Wenyi, Wang’s wife, Fang Six, Fang Seven, Bugler Liu, Consumptive Four . . . one face after another. Tears ran down Granddad’s deeply lined face like rivers of molten steel in the light of the torches.

  ‘What about Mute?’ Granddad asked. ‘Douguan, did you see Uncle Mute?’

  The image of Mute’s razor-sharp sabre knife slicing off the Jap’s head, and of the head sailing, screaming, through the air, flashed into Father’s mind. ‘On the truck,’ he said.

  The torches encircled one of the trucks. Three men climbed onto it as Granddad ran up. They lifted Mute’s body over the railing and onto Granddad’s back. One man held Mute’s head, another his legs, and they staggered up the dike with their load, to lay it on the easternmost edge of the grisly column. Mute, bent at the waist, was still gripping his blood-spattered sabre knife. His lifeless eyes were staring, his mouth open, as though frozen on a scream.

  Granddad knelt and pressed down on Mute’s knees and chest; Father heard the dead man’s spine groan and crack as his body straightened out. Granddad tried to wrench the sword free, but the death grip thwarted his attempts. He brought the arm down so that the sword lay alongside Mute’s leg. One of the women knelt and rubbed Mute’s eyes. ‘Brother,’ she said, ‘close your eyes, close them now. Commander Yu will avenge your death. . . .’

  ‘Dad, Mom’s still in the field. . . .’ Father began to weep.

  With a wave of his hand, Granddad said, ‘You go. . . . Take some people with you and carry her back. . . .’

  Father darted into the sorghum field, followed by several villagers with torches, whose burning oil brushed the dense stalks. The aggrieved dry leaves crackled and burned when they were splattered, and as the fires spread, the stalks bowed their heavy heads and wept hoarsely.

  Father parted the sorghum to reveal the body of Grandma, lying on her back and facing the remote, inimitable sky above Northeast Gaomi Township, filled with the spirits of countless stars. Even in death her face was as lovely as jade, her parted lips revealing a line of clean teeth inlaid with pearls of sorghum seeds, placed there by the emerald beaks of white doves.

  ‘Carry her back,’ Granddad said.
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  A group of young women lifted her up. With torches casting a wide net of light along the route, the sorghum field turned into a fairyland, and each member of the procession was surrounded by an eerie halo of light.

  One woman carried Grandma’s body onto the dike and laid it at the westernmost end of the corpses.

  The old man with the white beard asked, ‘Commander Yu, where will we find enough coffins for them all?’

  Granddad thought for a moment. ‘We won’t carry them back,’ he said finally, ‘and we don’t need coffins. For now, we’ll bury them in the sorghum field. Once I’ve rallied our forces, I’ll come back and give them a proper send-off.’

  The old man sent a group back to weave additional torches, since they would be burying the dead through the night. ‘While you’re at it,’ Granddad added, ‘bring some draught animals so we can tow that truck back with us, and chop down enough sorghum stalks to cover the bodies and line the bottoms of the graves before filling them in with dirt.’

  Grandma was the last to be interred. Once again her body was enshrouded in sorghum. As Father watched the final stalk hide her face, his heart cried out in pain, never to be whole again throughout his long life. Granddad tossed in the first spadeful of dirt. The loose clods of black earth thudded against the layer of sorghum like an exploding grenade shattering the surrounding stillness with its lethal shrapnel. Father’s heart wept blood.

  Grandma’s grave mound was the fifty-first in the field. ‘Fellow villagers,’ the old man said, ‘on your knees!’

  The village elders fell to their knees before the line of graves, the fields around them vibrating with the sound of weeping. The torches were beginning to die out. Just then a star fell from the southern sky, its brilliance not fading from view until it had passed below the tips of sorghum.

  It was nearly dawn when the old torches were replaced by new ones. A milky gleam gradually penetrated the fog over the river. The dozen or so draught animals grazed noisily on the sorghum stalks and chewed the fallen ears of grain.

  Granddad ordered the people to remove the linked rakes from the road and push the first truck across the highway and into the ditch on the eastern shoulder. When it was done, he picked up a shotgun, aimed at the gas tank, and fired, filling it with holes through which the gasoline spurted out. Then, taking a torch, he stepped back, aimed carefully, and flung it. A towering white flame shot into the air, igniting the frame and quickly turning the truck into a pile of twisted metal.

  The villagers put their shoulders to the undamaged truck loaded with rice, pushing it across the bridge and onto the highway, then tipped the burned-out hulk of the third truck into the river. The gas tank of the fourth truck, which had retreated to the road south of the bridge, was also blasted by the shotgun and set afire, sending more flames shooting up into the heavens. All that remained on the bridge were piles of cinders. Flames rose into the sky to the north and south of the river, punctuated by the occasional crack of an exploding shell. The Jap corpses, burned to an oily crisp, added the stench of roasted flesh to the acrid smell in the air. The people’s throats itched, their stomachs churned.

  ‘What’ll we do with their bodies, Commander Yu?’ the old man asked.

  ‘If we bury them, they’ll stink up our soil! If we burn them, they’ll foul our air! Dump them into the river and let them float back home.’

  Thirty or more corpses were dragged up onto the bridge, including the old Jap, who had been stripped of his general’s uniform by the Leng Detachment soldiers.

  ‘You women look away,’ Granddad announced.

  He took out his short sword, split open the crotches of the Jap soldiers’ pants, and sliced off their genitalia. Then he ordered a couple of the coarser men to stuff the things into the mouths of their owners. Finally, working in pairs, the men picked up the Japanese soldiers – basically decent men, perhaps, maybe handsome at one time, virtually all in the prime of their youth – and, one two three, heaved them over the side. ‘Jap dogs,’ they shouted, ‘go back home!’ The Japanese soldiers flew through the air, carrying the family jewels in their mouths, and landed in the river with a splash, a whole school of them caught up in the eastward flow.

  The faint rays of dawn found the villagers too exhausted to move. The fires along the banks were dying out beneath the still-dark sky. Granddad told the villagers to hitch the animals up to the front bumper of the undamaged rice truck.

  The animals strained, the ropes were yanked taut, and the axles groaned as the truck crawled forward like a clumsy beetle. The front wheels kept veering from side to side, so Granddad halted the animals, opened the door, and slid into the cab to try his hand at steering. The ropes snapped taut as the animals strained forward again, and Granddad wrestled with the steering wheel until he began to get the hang of it. Now the truck was heading straight, the terrified villagers fell in behind it. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, Granddad felt around the dashboard with the other. He snapped on a switch, sending two rays of light shooting out the front.

  ‘It opened its eyes!’ someone shouted from behind him.

  The headlights lit up the road ahead as well as the hairs on the animals’ backs. Feeling very good about things, Granddad pushed and turned and twisted and pulled every button and switch and lever and knob he could find. A shrill noise rang out, and the horn began to blare. So you haven’t lost your voice! Granddad was thinking. Deciding to have a little fun, he turned the ignition switch; a rumbling emerged from its belly as the truck shot forward crazily, knocking down mules and oxen, and bumping horses and donkeys out of the way, scaring Granddad so badly he was drenched with sweat, front and back. Having climbed onto the tiger’s back, he didn’t know how to get down.

  The dumbstruck villagers watched the truck knock the animals down and drag them along. It travelled a few dozen yards before careening into a ditch west of the road and coming to a shuddering halt, the raised wheels on one side spinning like windmills. Granddad smashed the glass and climbed out, his hands and face smeared with blood.

  He stood looking at the demonic creature, a grim smile on his face.

  After the villagers had unloaded the rice from the back of the remaining truck, Granddad blasted holes in the gas tank and once again ignited the gasoline with a torch. The flames licked the heavens.

  8

  FOURTEEN YEARS EARLIER, Yu Zhan’ao, a bedroll over his back, and dressed in clean, freshly starched white pants and jacket, stood in the yard of our home and shouted: ‘Mistress, are you hiring?’

  With a hundred thoughts running through her mind, Grandma’s natural instincts deserted her. Her scissors dropped to the kang, and she fell backward onto the brand-new purple comforter.

  His nostrils filled with the odour of fresh whitewash and a delicate feminine fragrance, Yu Zhan’ao’s courage mounted. He barged into the room.

  ‘Mistress, are you hiring?’

  Grandma lay face up and blurry-eyed on the comforter.

  Yu Zhan’ao threw down his bedroll and slowly approached the kang. At that moment his heart was like a warm pond in which toads frolicked while swifts skimmed the surface. When his dark chin was only about the thickness of a piece of paper from Grandma’s face, she slapped him on his dark, shiny scalp, then sat up quickly, picked up her scissors, and screamed, ‘Who are you? What do you think you’re doing? How dare you barge into a strange woman’s room!’

  Startled, he backed up and said, ‘You . . . you really don’t know me?’

  ‘How dare you talk like that! I lived a cloistered life at home until my wedding day, less than two weeks ago. How would I know you?’

  ‘Okay, if that’s the way you want it,’ he said with a smile. ‘I hear you’re shorthanded at the distillery, and I need work to put food in my belly!’

  ‘All right, as long as you don’t mind hard work. What’s your name? How old are you?’

  ‘My name’s Yu Zhan’ao. I’m twenty-four.’

  ‘Take your bedroll outside,’ she said. />
  Yu Zhan’ao obediently walked outside and waited under a blazing sun. Traces of burned leaves remained in the yard, and he relived the memory of what had happened there recently. He waited for about half an hour, growing more restless by the minute, and was barely able to keep from rushing inside and settling accounts with the woman.

  After murdering Shan Tingxiu and his son, he had not run away, but had hidden in the field near the inlet to watch the excitement. Even now he sighed in wonder over Grandma’s amazing performance. She might be young, but she had teeth in her belly and could scheme with the best of them. A woman to be reckoned with, certainly no economy lantern. Maybe she was treating him like this today just in case there were prying eyes and ears. He waited a bit longer, but still she didn’t come out. The yard was silent except for a calling magpie perched on the ridge of the roof. In the grip of anger, he was rushing towards the house, prepared to make a scene, when he heard Grandma’s voice through the window. ‘Report to the eastern compound.’

  Realising his mistake in not following the proper etiquette, Yu Zhan’ao let go of his anger and walked over to the eastern compound, where he saw rows of wine vats, piles of sorghum, and a crew of hired hands working inside the steamy distillery. He strode into the tent and asked a worker standing on a high stool feeding sorghum into a bucket above the millstone, ‘Hey, who’s in charge here?’

  The man looked at him out of the corner of his eye. When he had fed all the sorghum into the bucket, he jumped down off the stool and backed away from the millstone, holding a sieve in one hand and the stool in the other. Then he gave a shout, and the mule, wearing a black blindfold, began turning the millstone. Its hooves had worn a groove in the ground around the stone. A dull grinding sound emerged as crushed grain poured like raindrops from the space between the stones into a wooden pan below. ‘The foreman’s in the shop,’ the man said, pursing his lips and pointing with his chin to the buildings west of the main gate.