Red Sorghum

by Mo Yan

  This was the most intense battle fought by the Jiao-Gao regiment since its formation, and it ended with the most brilliant and complete victory anywhere in the Binhai region, for which a special committee bestowed a commendation upon the entire regiment. The dog soldiers were caught up in wild joy, until two occurrences caused them great distress: First, the store of weapons and ammunition that fell into their hands after the battle was allocated to the Binhai Independent Battalion. Commander Jiang knew that the special committee’s decision was the right one, but his soldiers grumbled with resentment, and when battalion soldiers came to collect the weapons, looks of shame covered their faces. Second, Pocky Cheng, who had so distinguished himself in the battle at Ma Family Hamlet, was found hanging from a tree at the head of the village. All the evidence pointed to suicide. From the back he looked like a dog, but from the front a man.

  9

  THERE WERE NO more screams from Second Grandma after Grandma washed her body with hot water. A gentle smile graced her scarred and battered face the day long, but blood kept flowing down below. Granddad called in every doctor in the area, and all sorts of medicinal potions were tried.

  The last doctor was someone Uncle Arhat brought over from the town of Pingdu, a man in his eighties with a silvery beard, a broad fleshy forehead, and long curved fingernails. A comb made from a bull’s horn, a silver ear pick, and a bone toothpick hung from the buttons of his mandarin robe. Granddad watched him lay a long finger on Second Grandma’s pulse, and when he was finished he crossed her left hand over her right and said, ‘Make preparations for the funeral!’

  Granddad and Grandma felt miserable, but they saw the old doctor out and did as he said. She stayed up to make a set of burial clothes, while he sent Uncle Arhat to the carpentry shop for a coffin.

  The next day, with the help of neighbour women, Grandma dressed Second Grandma in the newly made clothes. No resentment showed on Second Grandma’s face as she lay stiffly on the kang in a red silk jacket, blue satin pants, a green silk shirt, and red satin embroidered slippers, a gentle smile on her face, her chest rising and falling, frailly yet tenaciously.

  At noon Father spotted a cat as black as ink pacing the ridge of the roof and letting out blood-curdling screeches. He hurled a broken piece of brick at the cat, which sprang out of the way, landed on one of the roof tiles, and pranced off.

  When it was time to light the lamps, the distillery hands walked up with the coffin and laid it down in the yard. Grandma lit a soybean-oil light with three wicks, because it was a special moment. Everyone stood around waiting anxiously for Second Grandma to breathe her last. Father hid behind the door staring at her ears, which in the lamplight looked like amber, and were just as transparent, evoking a sense of mystery that danced in brilliant colour in his heart. At that moment he knew that the black cat was stepping on a roof tile again, that its black eyes were flashing, and that it was rending the darkness with obscene screeches. His scalp burned, his hair seemed to stand up like porcupine quills.

  Suddenly Second Grandma’s eyes snapped open; and although her gaze was fixed, her lids fluttered, her cheeks twitched, and her thick lips quivered – once, twice, three times – followed by a screech more hideous than that of a cat in heat. Father noticed that the golden light from the soybean-oil lamp had turned as green as onion leaves, and in that flickering green light, the look on Second Grandma’s face was no longer human.

  ‘Little sister,’ Grandma said, ‘little sister, what’s wrong?’

  A stream of epithets poured from Second Grandma’s mouth: ‘Son of a whore, I’ll never forgive you! You can kill my body, but you can’t kill my spirit! I’ll skin you alive and rip the tendons right out of your body!’

  It wasn’t Second Grandma’s voice, Father was sure of that, but the voice of someone well over fifty.

  Grandma shrank from the force of Second Grandma’s curses.

  Second Grandma’s eyelids fluttered as rapidly as lightning; one minute she was screaming, the next cursing, the sound shaking the rafters and filling the room. Her breath was glacial. Father saw that from the neck down her body was as stiff as a board, and he wondered where she found the strength to scream.

  Not knowing what to do, Granddad told Father to summon Uncle Arhat from the eastern compound. Even there you could hear the terrifying screams.

  Uncle Arhat walked into the room, glanced at Second Grandma, and quickly led Granddad outside by the sleeve. Father followed them. ‘Manager Yu,’ he said softly, ‘she’s already dead. She must be possessed.’

  ‘He’d barely got the words out when he heard her curse him loudly from inside: ‘Arhat Liu, you son of a whore! No easy death for you! Skin you alive, rip the tendons out of your body, cut off your prick. . . .’

  ‘Wash her with river water to exorcise the demon,’ Uncle Arhat said after a thoughtful pause.

  Second Grandma’s curses kept coming.

  When Uncle Arhat walked inside with a jug of filthy river water, he confronted waves of laughter. ‘Arhat, Arhat, pour it, pour the water, your auntie’s thirsty now!’

  Father watched one of the hired hands force a funnel into Second Grandma’s mouth, and another pour the water, which eddied momentarily, then disappeared so fast it was impossible to believe it was actually emptying into her stomach.

  Second Grandma quietened down. Her belly was as flat as ever, but her chest heaved, as though she were gasping for air.

  Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Okay,’ Uncle Arhat said, ‘she’s old now!’

  Once more Father sensed the patter of paws on the overhead tiles, as though the black cat were on the prowl again.

  Second Grandma’s rigid face parted in a bewitching smile. She screamed once or twice before a stream or turbid water gushed from her mouth. The fountain rose straight up, at least two feet in the air, then came straight down, fanning out as the drops splashed like chrysanthemum petals on her newly made funeral clothes.

  Second Grandma’s fountain trick sent the hired hands running from the room in fright. ‘Run,’ she shouted, ‘run, run, you can’t get away, the monk can run but the temple will never get away!’

  Uncle Arhat looked imploringly at Granddad, who returned the look, as Second Grandma’s curses grew more spirited again. Now they were accompanied by spasms in her arms and legs. ‘Jap dogs,’ she cursed, ‘Chinese dogs, in thirty years they’ll be everywhere. Yu Zhan’ao, you can’t get away. Like a toad that eats a blister beetle, the worst is yet to come for you!’

  Her body arched like a bow, as though she wanted to sit up.

  ‘Oh no!’ Uncle Arhat gasped. ‘A sitting corpse! Quick, give me a flintstone.’

  Grandma tossed him the flintstone.

  Somehow Granddad found the courage to pin Second Grandma down so Uncle Arhat could press the flint down over her heart. It didn’t work.

  Uncle Arhat began to back out of the room. ‘Uncle,’ Granddad said, ‘you can’t leave now!’

  ‘Mistress,’ Uncle Arhat said to Grandma, ‘bring me a spade, quick!’

  Once Second Grandma’s chest was pressed down by the spade her body grew still. She was left in the room to suffer alone, as Grandma, Granddad, Uncle Arhat, and Father went into the yard.

  ‘Yu Zhan’ao,’ Second Grandma shouted from inside, ‘I want to eat a yellow-legged rooster!’

  ‘Take my gun and shoot one!’ Granddad said.

  ‘No,’ Uncle Arhat said. ‘Not now. She’s already dead!’

  ‘Quick, uncle,’ Grandma said, ‘think of something!’

  ‘Zhan’ao,’ he said, ‘I’ll go get the Taoist at Cypress Orchid Market!’

  In the early hours of dawn, Second Grandma’s shouts nearly ruptured the window paper. ‘Arhat,’ she fulminated, ‘you and I are enemies who cannot live under the same sky!’

  As Uncle Arhat walked into the yard with the Taoist, her curses turned to long sighs.

  The seventy-year-old Taoist wore a black cassock with strange markings on the
front and back. A peach-wood sword was slung over his back, and he carried a bundle in his hands.

  Granddad went out to greet him and recognised him immediately as Mountain Li, the Taoist who had exorcised Second Grandma’s weasel spirit years before. He was skinnier than ever.

  With his sword the Taoist cut the paper out of the window so he could look into the room. As he withdrew his head, the blood drained from his face. Bowing to Granddad, he said, ‘Manager Yu, I’m afraid my power is inadequate to deal with this evil.’

  Filled with terror, Granddad pleaded, ‘Mountain, you can’t leave. You must drive it away. You will be amply rewarded.’

  He blinked his demonic eyes and said, ‘All right, the Taoist will take a drink of courage and bang his head against the golden bell!’

  To this day the legend of how Mountain Li exorcised Second Grandma’s demon still makes the rounds in our village.

  In the legend Mountain Li, his hair a wild jumble, performs a dance of exorcism in the yard, chanting as he twirls his sword in the air, while Second Grandma lies on the kang tossing and turning, screaming and cursing.

  Finally, the Taoist tells Grandma to bring him a wooden bowl, which he fills half full with clear water. He takes a potion out of his bundle and dumps it into the water, then stirs it rapidly with the tip of his wooden sword, chanting all the while. The water gets redder and redder, until it is the colour of blood. With a greasy, sweaty face, he jumps into the air, falls to the ground, and begins foaming at the mouth. Then he loses consciousness.

  When the Taoist came to, Second Grandma breathed her last. The stench of her decomposing body and rotted blood floated out through the open window. When her body was put in its coffin, all the mourners held goatskin chamois soaked in sorghum wine over their noses.

  Some people say that when she was placed in the coffin she was still cursing and kicking the lid.

  10

  FOR TEN YEARS I had been away from my village. Now I stood before Second Grandma’s grave, affecting the hypocritical display of affection I had learned from high society, with a body immersed so long in the filth of urban life that a foul stench oozed from my pores. I had paid my respects at many gravesites before coming to that of the woman whose short but magnificent life constitutes a page in the most heroic and most bastardly history of my hometown. Her eerie, supernatural death had awakened in the souls of Northeast Gaomi Township a mysterious emotion that germinated, grew, and became strong, flowing slowly through the memories of village elders like a sweet scarlet syrup that fortified us and made us capable of facing the world of the future.

  On each of my previous visits to the village, the power of that mysterious emotion was revealed in the drunken eyes of those old-timers. Comparisons are always risky, but when I approach them logically, I discover to my horror that in my ten years away from the village I have seen eyes like that only in the fragile heads of pet rabbits, turned red by boundless desire. There are, it appears, two separate human races, each evolving in accordance with its own value system. What frightens me is that my eyes, too, have taken on that crafty look, and that I have begun to utter only the words that others have spoken, themselves repeating the words of still others. Have I no voice of my own?

  Second Grandma leaps from her grave holding a golden-hued mirror, the deep lines of a mocking grin tilting the corners of her full lips. ‘You’re no grandson of mine. Look at yourself!’

  Her clothes flutter, and everything is the same as when she was put in her coffin, yet she is younger and lovelier than I had imagined; the messages carried by her voice prove that she is infinitely more thoughtful and profound than I. Her thoughts are liberal, dignified, and richly resilient, yet serene and firm, whereas mine float tentatively in the air like the transparent membrane of a reed flute.

  I look at my reflection in Second Grandma’s brass mirror. As I’d feared, the clever look of a pet rabbit shines in my eyes; words that belong to others, not to me, emerge from my mouth, just as the words emerging from Second Grandma’s mouth on her deathbed belonged to others, not to her. My body is covered with the seals of approval of famous people.

  I am scared to death.

  ‘Grandson!’ she says magnanimously. ‘Come home! You’re lost if you don’t. I know you don’t want to, I know you’re scared of all the flies, of the clouds of mosquitoes, of snakes slithering across the damp sorghum soil. You revere heroes and loathe bastards, but who among us is not the “most heroic and most bastardly”? As you stand before me now, I can smell the pet-rabbit odour you brought with you from the city. Quick, jump into the Black Water River and soak there for three days and nights – I only hope that when the catfish in the river drink the stench that washes off your body they won’t grow rabbit ears!’

  Second Grandma returns swiftly to her grave. The sorghum stands straight and silent; the sun’s rays are wet and scorching hot; there is no wind. The grave is covered with weeds whose fragrance fills my nostrils. It is as though nothing has happened. Off in the distance I hear the high-pitched songs of peasants tilling their fields.

  The sorghum around the grave is a variety brought in from Hainan Island; the lush green sorghum now covering the rich black soil of Northeast Gaomi Township is all hybrid. The sorghum that looked like a sea of blood, whose praises I have sung over and over, has been drowned in a raging flood of revolution and no longer exists, replaced by short-stalked, thick-stemmed, broad-leafed plants covered by a white powder and topped by beards as long as dogs’ tails. High yield, with a bitter, astringent taste, it is the source of rampant constipation. With the exception of cadres above the rank of branch secretary, all the villagers’ faces are the colour of rusty iron.

  How I loathe hybrid sorghum.

  Hybrid sorghum never seems to ripen. Its grey-green eyes seem never to be fully opened. I stand in front of Second Grandma’s grave and look out at those ugly bastards that occupy the domain of the red sorghum. They assume the name of sorghum, but are bereft of tall, straight stalks; they assume the name of sorghum, but are devoid of the dazzling sorghum colour. Lacking the soul and bearing of sorghum, they pollute the pure air of Northeast Gaomi Township with their dark, gloomy, ambiguous faces.

  Being surrounded by hybrid sorghum instils in me a powerful sense of loss.

  As I stand amid the dense hybrid sorghum, I think of surpassingly beautiful scenes that will never again appear: in the deep autumn of the eighth month, under a high, magnificently clear sky, the land is covered by sorghum that forms a glittering sea of blood. If the autumn rains are heavy, the fields turn into a swampy sea, the red tips of sorghum rising above the muddy yellow water, appealing stubbornly to the blue sky above. When the sun comes out, the surface of the sea shimmers, and heaven and earth are painted with extraordinarily rich, extraordinarily majestic colours.

  That is the epitome of mankind and the beauty for which I yearn, for which I shall always yearn.

  Surrounded by hybrid sorghum, whose snakelike leaves entwine themselves around my body, whose pervasive green poisons my thoughts, I am in shackles from which I cannot break free; I gasp and groan, and because I cannot free myself from my suffering I sink to the depths of despair.

  Then a desolate sound comes from the heart of the land. It is both familiar and strange, like my granddad’s voice, yet also like my father’s voice, and like Uncle Arhat’s voice, and like the resonant singing voices of Grandma, Second Grandma, and Third Grandma, the woman Liu. The ghosts of my family are sending me a message to point the way out of this labyrinth:

  You pitiable, frail, suspicious, stubbornly biased child, whose soul has been spellbound by poisonous wine, go down to the Black Water River and soak in its waters for three days and three nights – remember, not a day more or a day less – to cleanse yourself, body and soul. Then you can return to your real world. Besides the yang of White Horse Mountain and the yin of the Black Water River, there is also a stalk of pure-red sorghum which you must sacrifice everything, if necessary, to find. When you have
found it, wield it high as you re-enter a world of dense brambles and wild predators. It is your talisman, as well as our family’s glorious totem and a symbol of the heroic spirit of Northeast Gaomi Township!

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781448151172

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Arrow Books in 2003

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Mo Yan 1992

  English translation copyright © Howard Goldblatt 1992

  Translator’s note: At the request of the author, this translation is based upon the Taipei Hong-fan Book Co. 1988 Chinese edition, which restores many cuts made in the mainland Chinese edition, published in 1987 by the Liberation Army Publishing House in Beijing. Some deletions have been made, with the author’s approval, and minor inconsistencies particularly in dates and ages, have been corrected.

  Thanks to Joseph S. M. Lau, Haili Kong, Chu Chiyu and Sandra Dijkstra for responding to my occasional cry for help. The translation was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, whose support is gratefully acknowledged.

  Mo Yan has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental