Red Sorghum

by Mo Yan

  Grandmother reached out for the rope and strained to pull it back up. ‘Harmony, my darling baby, my precious son . . .’

  Then Mother saw Grandfather grab Grandmother’s hand, which had a death grip on the rope. Grandfather shoved her hard, and Mother saw her fall sideways. The rope snapped taut, and Little Uncle flew into Mother’s arms.

  ‘You fucking woman!’ Grandfather screamed. ‘Do you want them up here so they can die with the rest of us? Get over to the wall, and be quick about it! No one’ll get out alive if the Japs enter the village!’

  ‘Beauty – Harmony – Beauty – Harmony –’ But Grandmother’s shouts seemed so far away. Another mortar shell exploded; earth fell on them. They didn’t hear Grandmother’s voice any more after the explosion. Above them only a single ray of light and the old windlass.

  Little Uncle was still crying as Mother untied the rope from around his waist. ‘Good little Harmony,’ she said to comfort him. ‘Don’t cry, baby brother. The Japs’ll come if you keep crying. If they hear a kid crying they’ll come with their red eyes and green fingernails. . . .’

  That stopped him. He looked up at her with his tiny, round black eyes, and threw his pudgy little arms around her neck. More and more mortar explosions lit up the sky, joined now by machine-gun and rifle fire. Pop pop pop, a pause, then pop pop pop. Mother looked skyward, listening carefully for movement around the well. She heard the distant shouts of Ruolu the Elder and the screams of the villagers. The well was cold and damp. A chunk of the side fell off, exposing pale earth and the roots of a tree. The bricks were covered with a layer of dark-green moss. Little Uncle stirred in her arms and began to sob again. ‘Sis,’ he said, ‘I want my mama, I want to go back up. . . .’

  ‘Harmony, good Little Brother . . . Mom went with Dad to fight the Japs. They’ll come get us as soon as they’ve driven them off. . . .’ Mother, who was trying to comfort her baby brother, started to sob, too. They hugged each other tightly as their sobs and tears merged.

  Dawn was breaking, as Mother could tell from the pale light above her. Somehow they’d got through the long night. An eerie, frightening silence hung over the well. She looked up and saw a ray of red light illuminate the walls far above her. The sun was up. She listened carefully, but the village seemed as still as the well, although every once in a while she thought she heard what sounded like a peal of thunder rolling across the sky. She wondered if her parents would come to take them out of the well on this new day, back to the world of light and air, a world where there were no banded snakes or skinny toads. The events of the previous day seemed so far away that she felt as though she’d spent half her lifetime at the bottom of the well. Dad, she was thinking, Mom. If you don’t come, Brother and I surely will die down here. She resented her parents for casting their own children into the well and simply vanishing, not caring whether they were dead or alive. The next time she saw them, she’d make a huge scene to release the bellyfull of grievances she’d already stored up. How could she have known that, as she was being carried away by these hateful thoughts, her mother – my maternal grandmother – had been blown to pieces by a Japanese mortar shell, and her father – my maternal grandfather – had exposed himself to enemy gunfire on the wall, only to have half of his head blown away by a bullet that seemed to have eyes?

  Mother prayed silently: Dad! Mom! Come back, hurry! I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, and Brother’s sick. You’ll kill your own children if you don’t come fast!

  She heard the faint sounds of a gong from the village wall, or maybe it was from somewhere else, then a distant shout: ‘Is there anybody here – is there anybody left – the Japs are gone – Commander Yu’s here –’

  Mother picked Little Uncle up in her arms and got to her feet. ‘Here!’ she shouted hoarsely. ‘Here we are – we’re down in the well – save us, hurry –’ She reached up and began to shake the rope hanging from the windlass, keeping at it for nearly an hour. Gradually her arms grew slack, and her brother fell to the ground with a weak groan. Then silence. She leaned against the wall and slid slowly down, until she was sitting on the cold broken bricks, drained and totally dejected.

  Little Uncle climbed into her lap and said calmly, ‘Sis . . . I want my mama. . . .’

  A powerful sadness overcame Mother as she wrapped her arms around Little Uncle. ‘Harmony,’ she said, ‘Mom and Dad don’t want us any more. You and I are going to die here in this well. . . .’

  He was burning up with fever, and hugging him was like holding a charcoal brazier. ‘Sis, I’m thirsty. . . .’

  Mother’s gaze fell on a puddle of filthy green water in a corner of the well. A scrawny toad sat in the middle of the pool, its back covered with ugly bean-sized warts, the yellowish skin beneath its mouth popping in and out, its bulging eyes glaring at her. She shuddered, her skin crawled, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Her mouth was parched, too, but she’d rather have died of thirst than drink that nasty toad-water.

  Since the previous morning, not a minute had passed when Mother wasn’t in the grip of terror and panic: terror caused by the sounds of gunfire in and around the village, panic over her baby brother’s struggle to survive. At fifteen, she was still a frail child, and it was a strain to have to carry her pudgy little brother all the time, especially when he was constantly squirming and making the pitiful sounds of a dying kitten. She spanked him once, and the little bastard responded by sinking his teeth into her.

  Now that he was feverish, Little Uncle drifted in and out of consciousness and lay limp in the arms of my mother, who sat on a piece of broken brick until her buttocks were painfully sore, then totally numb. The gunfire, dense one minute and scattered the next, never completely stopped. Sunlight crept slowly over the western wall, then the eastern wall, as darkness spread inside. Mother knew she’d spent a whole day in the well, and that any time now her parents would be coming back. She stroked her baby brother’s scalding face; his breath burned her fingers. She laid her hand over his rapidly beating heart and could hear a wheeze in his chest. At that moment it occurred to her that he might very well die, and she shuddered. But she forced the thought out of her mind. Any minute now, she thought, to keep her spirits up, any minute now. It’s getting dark outside, and even the swallows have gone home to roost, which means that Mom and Dad will be here soon.

  The light on the walls turned dark yellow, then deep red. A cricket hidden in one of the cracks began to chirp; mosquitoes warmed up their engines and took off into the air. Just then Mother heard the sound of a mortar barrage from somewhere near the village wall, and what sounded like human and animal screams from the northern end of the village. This was followed by blasts from a machine gun in the southern end. When the gunfire ended, sounds of shouting men and galloping horses swept into the village like a tidal wave. Utter chaos. Pounding of hooves and tramping boots around the opening of the well. Gulugulu – loud Japanese voices. Little Uncle began to whimper, but Mother clapped her hand over his mouth and held her breath. His face twisted violently under her hand, and she could feel the thumping of her own heart.

  As the sun’s rays died out, Mother looked up at the red sky. Fires crackled all around, sending hot ashes over the opening of the well; mixed with the sound of licking flames were the cries of children, the screams of women, and the bleating of goats, or maybe it was the tearful lowing of cows. Even from the bottom of the well, she could smell the stench of burning.

  She had no idea how long she’d shuddered over the fires raging above her, since she’d lost all sense of time, but she could tell from the tiny slice of darkening sky that the fires were dying out. At first she heard an occasional burst of gunfire and the sound of a roof collapsing. But after a while there was nothing but silence, plus a few dim stars that appeared in the circle of sky above.

  Mother fell asleep, and awoke chilled. By now her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and when she looked up at the pale-blue sky and the gentle rays of the morning sun reflected off the walls, she felt giddy
. Her clothes were soggy from the dampness; the cold air touched her bones. She hugged her little brother tightly. Even though his fever seemed to have abated during the night, he was still much hotter than she. So Mother soaked up Little Uncle’s warmth, while he was cooled by her; during their time together at the bottom of the well, they achieved true life-sustaining symbiosis. Mother, who did not know that her parents were dead, expected to see their faces and to hear their familiar voices at any time; had she known, she might not have survived those days and nights in the well.

  When I look back upon my family’s history, I find that the lives of all the key members have at some point been linked inextricably with some sort of dark, dank cave or hole, beginning with Mother. Granddad later outdid all the others, setting a record among civilised people of his generation for living in a cave. Finally, Father would produce an epilogue that, in political terms, would be anything but glorious, but when viewed from the human angle must be considered splendid. When the time came, he would wave his sole remaining arm towards the red clouds of dawn and come running on the wind to Mother, Elder Brother, Elder Sister, and me.

  Mother was freezing on the outside but burning up inside. She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since the previous morning. A searing thirst had tormented her since the night before, when the village was engulfed in flames; then, in the middle of the night, an overwhelming hunger reached its peak. As dawn was about to break, her guts seemed to twist into knots, until all she could feel was the gnawing pain in her belly. But now the mere thought of food nauseated her; it was the thirst she found unbearable. Her lungs felt dry and chapped, each breath producing the rustling sound of withered sorghum leaves.

  Once again Little Uncle said meekly through blistered lips, ‘Sis . . . I’m thirsty. . . .’ Mother didn’t have the heart to look into his small, wizened face, and there were no words to console him. The promises she’d made throughout the day and night had come to nothing. No sound, not even the bark of a dog, emerged from the village. That was when it occurred to her that her parents might be dead or might have been captured by the Japs. Her eyes stung, but she had no more tears to shed – the wretched state of her baby brother had forced her to grow up.

  Momentarily forgetting her suffering, she laid him down on the brick floor and stood up to survey the walls around her. They were damp, of course, and the luxuriant appearance of moss briefly gave her new hope; but it offered no relief for their thirst, and it wasn’t edible. She squatted down and picked up a brick, then another. They were very heavy, as though water was stored up inside them. A red centipede crawled out of the hollow where the bricks had been, and Mother jumped away, not daring to pick up any more. Nor did she dare sit down, for something horrible had occurred the morning before that made her realise she was now a woman.

  Years later, Mother told my wife that her first menstrual period had come while she was down in that dark, dank well, and when my wife told me, the two of us felt enormous compassion for the fifteen-year-old girl who would later give birth to me.

  Mother had no choice but to pin her final scrap of hope on that puddle of filthy water in which the toad was soaking, no matter how much its hideous features frightened or disgusted her. Nothing had changed from the day before: the toad hadn’t moved, its sombre eyes still glaring at her with hostility, its warty skin still making her skin crawl. Her new-found courage quickly evaporated. Poison darts emanating from the toad’s eyes prickled her all over. She averted her eyes, but that didn’t blot out the terrifying image of the toad.

  Mother turned to look at her dying brother, and as she did so, her eye caught a tiny clump of milky-white mushrooms growing beneath two bricks. Her heart racing with excitement, she slid the bricks away and picked some of the mushrooms. Her innards twisted into knots as she gazed at the food in her hand. She shoved a mushroom into her mouth and swallowed it whole. It tasted so good that her hunger pangs returned in a flash. She put another in her mouth. Little Uncle moaned softly, but Mother consoled herself with the thought that she should try them first, in case they were toadstools. That’s right, isn’t it? Of course it is. She put one into Little Uncle’s mouth, but his jaws didn’t move; he just looked at her through tiny slits. ‘Harmony, eat it. I found it for you. Eat it.’ She held up another and waved it under his nose. His jaws twitched, as though he were chewing, so she fed him another one. But he coughed and spat them both out. By then his lips were so chapped they bled. He lay on the brick floor, close to death.

  Mother swallowed a dozen or so little mushrooms, and her intestines, which had gone into hibernation, suddenly came to life, writhing painfully and making a huge racket. She was sweating more than she had at any time since being lowered into the well; it would be the last time. Sweat drenched her clothes; her armpits and the backs of her knees were wet and sticky. The chilled air seemed to penetrate the marrow of her bones, and she slumped unaware to the floor and lay beside her baby brother. At noon on her second day in the well, Mother fell into a swoon.

  When she woke up, dusk was falling. She saw reddish-purple rays of light on the eastern wall as the sun sank in the west. The ancient windlass was bathed in the sunset, giving her the contradictory sensations of seeing remote antiquity and the approach of doomsday at the same time. The ringing in her ears, which hardly ever stopped, was now joined by the sound of footsteps out there, but she couldn’t tell if it was real or an illusion. She no longer had the strength to cry out, and was so thirsty her chest seemed to be baking in a fire. Even the act of breathing brought excruciating pain. Little Uncle was already beyond suffering, beyond joy; he lay on the brick floor, a pile of withered yellow skin. When Mother looked down into his glazed eyes, everything turned dark in front of her: the black shroud of death was settling over the dry well.

  The second night at the bottom of the well seemed to fly by; Mother passed it in a semiwakeful state. Several times she dreamed she’d sprouted wings and was circling ever upward towards the opening of the well. But the shaft seemed endless, and no matter how far she flew she never drew any closer to the opening. She tried flapping her wings faster, but the elongation of the shaft kept pace with her. Once during the night she awoke briefly to feel her brother’s cold body beside her. Unable to bear the thought that he was dead, she tried to convince herself that she must be hot and feverish. A curved ray of moonlight fell on the puddle of greenish water, illuminating the toad like a precious gem bobbing in a sea of emeralds. At that moment Mother imagined that she and the sacred amphibian had reached an understanding: it would give up as much of its water as she needed, for which she would fling it out of the well, like a stone, if that was what it wanted. Tomorrow, she thought, if I hear footsteps tomorrow, I’ll hurl pieces of brick out of the well, even if it’s Japanese soldiers or Chinese puppet troops passing by. She needed to let people know there was somebody down there.

  When dawn broke again, Mother had learned everything there was to know about the bottom of the well. Taking advantage of her early-morning energy level, she scraped off a layer of green moss and stuffed it into her mouth. It didn’t taste bad, maybe a little pungent. The problem was her throat, which was so dry it wouldn’t function properly, and the chewed moss came right back up when she tried to swallow it. Her gaze returned to the puddle of water and the toad, which maintained its venomous glare. Finding it more than she could bear, she turned her head and cried angry, fearful tears.

  At around noon, she was certain she heard footsteps and human voices. Overjoyed, she rose unsteadily to her feet and shouted at the top of her lungs; but no sound emerged. Though she grabbed a piece of brick, she was able to lift it no higher than her waist before it slipped out of her hand and fell to the ground. Her last gasp. Hearing the footsteps and voices disappear in the distance, she sat crestfallen beside the body of her brother, and as she looked into his face she acknowledged the fact that he was dead. She laid her hand on his cold face, revulsion welling up in her chest. Death had separated them. The glare in his sightless
eyes belonged to a different world.

  She spent that night in a state of absolute terror, for she believed she had seen a snake as thick as the handle of a sickle. It was black with little yellow spots down the centre of its back. Its head was flat, like a spatula, its neck ringed by a yellow band. The cold, gloomy atmosphere of the well originated in this snake’s body. Several times she thought she could feel it wrapping itself around her, its flicking tongue aiming red darts at her and exhaling blasts of cold air.

  Eventually, she did in fact spot the clumsy, slow-moving snake in a hole in the wall above the toad, only its hideous head sticking out. Covering her eyes with her hands, she backed up as far as she could. Gone were all thoughts of trying to drink the dirty water, now guarded by a venomous snake above and a toad below.

  4

  FATHER, WANG GUANG (male, fifteen, short and skinny, dark face), Dezhi (male, fourteen, tall and skinny, yellow complexion, rheumy eyes), Guo Yang (male, over forty, crippled, walked on crutches), Blind Eye (real name and age unknown, never without his battered three-string zither), the woman Liu (over forty, big and tall, ulcerated legs) – the six survivors of the massacre – stared blankly at Granddad, all except Blind Eye, of course. They were standing on the village wall, the early-morning sun reflecting off their faces. Both sides of the wall were strewn with the bodies of courageous defenders and frenzied attackers. The muddy water of the ditch beyond the wall soaked the bloated corpses of several eviscerated Japanese warhorses. Everywhere there were shattered walls and ruined dikes, and white smoke curling into the sky. The sorghum fields beyond the village were trampled and destroyed. Incineration and blood were the pervasive smells of the morning; red and black the colours; grief and solemnity the moods.

  Granddad’s eyes were bloodshot, his hair seemed to have turned completely white, his back was hunched, and his large, swollen hands rested uneasily on his knees.