Red Sorghum

by Mo Yan

  In order to free Second Grandma from her demon, Granddad rode his mule to the market at Cypress Orchid to fetch the Taoist exorcist Mountain Li, who lit incense and burned candles, then drew strange symbols on a piece of paper with a brush dipped in red ink, after which he mixed some dog blood with the incense ashes, pinched Second Grandma’s nose shut, and poured the concoction into her mouth. The stuff streamed down her throat and she cried, she tried to scream, she flailed her arms and legs, as the soulful essence oozed out through her pores.

  Her condition began to improve after that, and some time later the weasel came to steal a chicken. While it was locked in a desperate struggle with a large yellow-legged, fiery-red rooster, one of its eyes was pecked out by its feathered adversary. It was writhing in agony in the snow when Second Grandma ran into the yard, stark-naked yet oblivious to the cold, holding the white wooden bolt in her hands and bringing it down with all her might on the weasel’s shameless, pointed snout. Having got her revenge, finally, she stood absently in the snow for quite a while, the bloody wooden bolt still in her hands. Then she bent over and beat her mentor, the weasel, to a pulp. Her madness spent, she turned and went back inside, carrying a residue of hatred with her.

  As Second Grandma stared at the dried weasel blood on the white wooden bolt, she was suddenly gripped by a dormant and profoundly disturbing terror; she knew that her eyeballs were rolling wildly, and she heard a terrifying shriek erupt from her throat.

  The flimsy door rocked only slightly before it came crashing open, and a golden-hued Japanese soldier, bayonet-tipped rifle in his hands, leaped nimbly into the room. In that shrieking split second, his ratlike features and crafty expression were transformed into the black-mouthed weasel that had died at her hands. His pointy chin, his black moustache above a pointy mouth, and his sly look were the spitting image of the weasel. From a hidden recess of Second Grandma’s memory, her derangement resurfaced, stronger and more violent than before. Little Auntie, her ears still ringing from Second Grandma’s shriek, was scared witless by the sight of her mother’s mouth distorted with hate on her ash-smeared face. Straining with all her might, she broke free of Second Grandma’s vicelike grip and jumped up onto the windowsill, where she stared at the six Japanese soldiers – the first and the last that she would ever see.

  Light glinted off the bayonets as the Japanese soldiers walked up to Second Grandma’s kang and stood shoulder to shoulder. To Little Auntie their weasely faces were like sorghum cakes right out of the pan: brown with dark-red edges, warm and beautiful, lovely and inviting. Though she was only slightly frightened by their bayonets, her mother’s face terrified her.

  The Japanese soldiers grinned, baring their teeth, some even, some bright. Second Grandma, torn between derangement and terror, stared at the soldiers’ ominous grins. She shrieked as she wrapped her arms tightly around her belly and pressed up against the wall. One of the soldiers, who must have been about five feet four and somewhere between thirty-five and forty years old, edged up to the kang, removed his cap, and scratched his balding scalp. In pidgin Chinese he said, ‘You, pretty girl, no be scared. . . .’ He leaned his rifle against the edge of the kang, then crawled up clumsily, like a fat, squirming maggot. Second Grandma wished she could crawl into the cracks of the wall.

  The tears running down her cheeks formed ruts in the ashes on her face. The Japanese soldier’s thick lips parted as he reached out with a coarse, fleshy finger and touched her face, making her skin crawl, as though a slimy toad had wriggled into the crotch of her pants. She shrieked louder than ever, and the soldier grabbed her legs, pulling her towards him, banging her head loudly against the wall. She lay there flat on her back with her belly sticking up like a little mound. The soldier rubbed it with his hand, then, his eyes nearly bursting with anger, drove his fist down into it, hard. Then, pinning her legs with his knees, he reached down and undid his belt. By then she had begun to fight back; struggling to a sitting position, she sank her teeth into his garlic-shoot nose.

  The Japanese soldier let out a strange scream and released her belt. Grabbing his bleeding nose, he glared at Second Grandma, as though seeing her in a new light. His buddies roared with laughter as he pulled a grimy handkerchief out of his pocket and held it against his nose. He stood up, his expression swiftly transformed from that of a poet passionately declaiming his undying love into the savage look of a jackal, which suited him better. He picked up his rifle and held the glinting tip of his bayonet against Second Grandma’s belly. The final shriek burst from her mouth as she squeezed her eyes shut.

  Little Auntie, still perched on the windowsill, read no malicious intent in the cold soldier’s fleshy round face; in fact, she even tried to grab the curious light reflected off his bald head, and was disgusted with Second Grandma for shrieking like a wild animal. But when she noticed the sudden change in his expression and saw him aim his bayonet at her mother’s belly, fear and an overpowering sense of love flooded her heart. She jumped down from the windowsill and rushed up to Second Grandma.

  The rat-faced, shrunken-cheeked Japanese soldier who’d been the first into the room said something to his fat comrade, then jumped up onto the kang and dragged him back down to the floor, mocking him with laughter. Still holding on to the rifle, he reached out his other bony yellow hand and grabbed Little Auntie by the hair, tearing her violently from Second Grandma’s grasp, as if he were yanking a carrot out of the hard ground. He flung her against the window, then back onto the kang. Little Auntie forced back the sobs in her throat as the colour drained from her face. The form and spirit of that part of Second Grandma controlled by the loathsome fanciful image of the weasel was suddenly released, and she flung herself like a she-wolf at the Japanese soldier, who deftly met the charge by kicking her in the belly. Although the force was absorbed by the bundle of clothes, the kick sent her reeling up against the thin connecting wall of the bedroom.

  The sobs Little Auntie had been holding back suddenly burst forth, loud and resounding. Second Grandma’s head quickly cleared, and the gaunt Japanese soldier standing in front of her was no longer linked to the phantasm of the weasel. His face was thin, the bridge of his nose high, sharp, and hooked, his eyes black and shiny; he looked like an articulate man of wide experience and considerable learning, someone well read and clever. Second Grandma knelt on the kang and pleaded in a sobbing voice: ‘Mister . . . honourable Commander . . . spare us . . . please spare us. . . . Don’t you have wives and daughters at home . . . sisters . . . ?’

  The ratty pouches on the soldier’s cheeks twitched a couple of times beneath his black eyes. Although he couldn’t have understood Second Grandma’s tearful pleas, he seemed to know what they meant, for she saw his shoulders slump briefly in the din of Little Auntie’s wails. When Second Grandma glanced furtively at the other five Japanese soldiers, their expressions were all different; but she saw an oily-green, watery softness rolling gently beneath the hard crust of malevolence on their faces. Trying hard to maintain their malicious mockery, they stared at the skinny soldier standing on the kang. He quickly looked away; Second Grandma just as quickly sought out his eyes. Gnashing his teeth as though trying to control some deep emotion, he stuck the tip of his glinting bayonet against Little Auntie’s open mouth.

  ‘You, drop your pants! You, drop your pants!’ He spoke Chinese as though his tongue were petrified.

  At that moment Second Grandma began to crumple under the spell of the weasel again; she saw the Japanese soldier standing on her kang as a gentle, bookish man one instant and the spitting image of the black-mouthed weasel the next. She was racked by loud, spasmodic sobs. The tip of the bayonet was nearly buried in Little Auntie’s mouth. A rush of concern for her young and a total disregard for her own well-being snapped her back to her senses. She quickly took off her pants, her underpants, and her shirt, then lay back and said resolutely, ‘Come on, come on and do it! But don’t touch my child! Don’t you touch my child!’

  The Japanese soldier on the ka
ng withdrew his bayonet and dropped his weary arms. Second Grandma lay there, her naked body the burnt, aromatic colour of fried sorghum. A radiant, almost magical ray of sunlight shone between her legs, as though illuminating an ancient, beautiful myth or legend, a fairy grotto, the kindly yet majestic eye of God. As the Japanese gazed at the path through which all mankind must pass, at the same organ possessed by their own loved ones, their eyes glazed over and their faces hardened, like six clay statues. Second Grandma waited for them, her mind a grey void.

  I sometimes wonder if Second Grandma might have avoided being ravaged if it had only been one Japanese soldier facing her splendid naked body that day. I doubt it, for a sole virile beast in human form, freed of the need to act like a performing monkey, might have been even more frenzied, shedding his handsomely embroidered uniform and pouncing on her like a wild animal. Under normal circumstances, it is the power of morality that keeps the beast in us hidden beneath a pretty exterior. A stable, peaceful society is the training ground for humanity, just as caged animals, removed from the violent unpredictability of the wild, are influenced by the behaviour of their captors in time. Do you agree? Yes? No? Well, say it, yes or no? If I weren’t a man myself, and if I were holding the sword of vengeance in my hand, I’d slaughter every last man on earth! If there had been just one Japanese soldier facing Second Grandma’s naked body that day, maybe he would have thought of his mother or his wife, and left quietly. What do you think?

  The six soldiers didn’t budge. They were gazing upon Second Grandma’s naked body as though it were a sacrificial offering. None was willing to leave; none dared to. She lay outstretched like a huge dogfish baking under a blazing sun. Little Auntie’s voice was hoarse from all her crying, the sound growing weaker, the intervals longer. The once animated soldiers had been subdued by Second Grandma’s offering up of her body, her stretching out on the kang like a loving mother in front of her sons, each of whom was thinking about the path he had travelled.

  I believe that if Second Grandma had been able to hold out just a bit longer she might have achieved victory. Second Grandma, why, after lying there like that, did you have to get up and start putting your clothes back on? You had barely managed to stick one leg into your pants when the Japanese soldiers began to get restless. The one you’d bitten on the nose threw down his rifle and climbed onto the kang, and as you looked at him in disgust, your derangement took over. Then the skinny Jap who had found the way to subdue you jumped up and kicked his fat buddy away, swinging his fists and growling at his buddies in a language you didn’t understand. Then, before you knew it, he was on top of you, gasping like a rooster and breathing foul air into your face.

  The black-mouthed weasel flashed before your eyes, and once again you shrieked madly. But you only stimulated the madness of the Japanese soldiers; your shrieks were met by a concert of shrieks from them.

  It was the balding, middle-aged soldier who dragged the skinny one off you. Then he pressed his savage face up to yours, and you closed your eyes in revulsion. You thought you could feel your three-month-old foetus writhing in your belly, and could hear the desperate screeches of Little Auntie, like a rusty knife being drawn across a whetstone. The balding Jap chewed on your face with his daggerlike teeth, as though he wanted to pay you back for biting his nose. Your face was covered with tears, fresh blood, and his thick, sticky slobber. Hot red blood suddenly gushed from your mouth, and a vile stench filled your nostrils. The squirming foetus in your belly produced waves of liver-rending, lung-filling pain; every muscle, every nerve in your body tensed and knotted up, like so many bowstrings. The foetus seemed to be burrowing into some deep recess of your body to hide from a shame that could never be washed away. Anger festered in your heart, and when the Japanese soldier’s greasy cheeks brushed up against your lips you made a feeble attempt to bite his face. His skin was tough and rubbery and had a sour taste.

  The last one to mount Second Grandma was a short young soldier. Only shame showed on his face, and his lovely eyes were filled with the panic of a hunted rabbit. His body smelled like artemisia; the silvery glint of his teeth shone between trembling, fleshy red lips. Second Grandma felt a rush of pity for him, as she recognised his tortured look of self-loathing and shame under a thin layer of beaded sweat. He rubbed against her body at first, but then stopped and didn’t dare move any more. She felt his belt buckle press up against her belly and his body quake.

  The soldiers around the kang roared with laughter and shouted derisively at this impotent young soldier. Having got his second wind, the skinny one jumped up onto the kang, jerked the young soldier away roughly, and flaunted his own abilities without a trace of shame or embarrassment, making a grand display. Second Grandma felt dead below the neck. Something yellow spun around in her brain, yellow and elliptical.

  Afterwards, way off in the distance, she heard Little Auntie let out a blood-curdling scream. Struggling to open her eyes, she could not believe what she saw. The young soldier with the lovely eyes stood on the kang and lifted Little Auntie on the point of his bayonet, swung her in a couple of arcs, then flung her away. Like a huge bird flapping its wings, she sailed slowly through the air and landed on the floor next to the kang. Her little red jacket fell open in the sunlight and began to spread out like a piece of soft, smooth red silk, gradually filling the room with undulating waves.

  During her flight, Little Auntie’s arms froze in the air and her hair stood up like porcupine quills. The young Japanese soldier, rifle in hand, wept clear blue tears.

  Second Grandma screamed for all she was worth and strained to sit up. But her body was dead by then. A wave of yellow flashed before her eyes, followed by a green light. Finally, she was swallowed up by an inky-black tide.

  Swing your sabres at the heads of Japs!

  The sorghum is red, the Japs come from the east.

  Trampling our soil and disgracing my second grandma.

  Patriotic brethren everywhere, the day of resistance is now!

  5

  GRANDDAD ARRIVED IN Saltwater Gap the following morning. He had set out before dawn on one of our two black mules, and arrived just as the sun was climbing above the mountains. Dejection accompanied him on his trip, because of an argument he’d had with Grandma as he was leaving. He ignored the kaleidoscope of gorgeous light on the black Gaomi soil as the sun rose above the mountains, and the crows as they soared into the sky on green wings. The mule, whipped mercilessly by the twisted end of the hempen reins, turned to glare at the man on its back, convinced that it was already moving about as fast as it could go. Puddles of water from the autumn rains stood in the deep ruts left by passing wagons. Granddad, his face livid, passively absorbed the bumps and jolts of the mule beneath him. Field voles hunting for breakfast scurried to safety.

  Granddad was toasting the ageing Uncle Arhat in the distillery reception hall when he heard rifle and artillery fire from the northwest, and his heart nearly stopped. He rushed outside and looked up and down the street, but when he saw that things seemed normal he went back inside to continue drinking with Uncle Arhat, who was still the distillery foreman. In 1929, the year Granddad was reported murdered and Grandma ran off, the hired hands rolled up their bedding and set out to find work; but Uncle Arhat stayed behind, like a loyal watchdog, to guard the family property, convinced that the dark night was nearly over and that a new dawn would soon be breaking. He maintained his vigil until Granddad cheated death, escaped from prison, and was reconciled with Grandma. With Father in her arms, she followed him from Saltwater Gap back home, where they knocked at the cheerless front gate and roused Uncle Arhat, who, like a living ghost, rushed out of the shed where he’d set up housekeeping. The moment he spotted his master and mistress, he threw himself to the ground, hot tears streaking his leathery old face. He was such a decent, devoted man that Granddad and Grandma treated him like their own father, giving him a free hand in all distillery-related matters, including expenses, no matter how high they ran; they never once questione
d him.

  The sun was high in the southeast sky when more bursts of rifle fire erupted, and Granddad knew it was coming from somewhere near Saltwater Gap, perhaps from the village itself. Anxious and impatient, he went to get the mule to set out right away, but Uncle Arhat urged him to wait. Uncle Arhat made sense, but Granddad was too restless to stay put, walking in and out of the building as he waited for news from the hired hand Uncle Arhat had sent to investigate. Just before noon, the breathless man returned, sweaty-faced and mud-spattered, to report that the Japanese had surrounded Saltwater Gap at daybreak and that it was impossible to know what was going on there. He’d hidden in a clump of reeds some three li away, where he’d heard demonic cries and wolfish howls and seen thick columns of smoke rising from the village. After the man left, Granddad poured some wine, tipped back his head, and drained the cup, then ran to get his pistol, which he had hidden in a hole in the double-layer wall.