by Mo Yan
“Fuck your sisters, you little Nips. You may have crossed Marco Polo Bridge, but you’ll never cross Fiery Dragon Bridge!”
Then he laughed:
“Ah ha ha ha, ah ha ha ha, ah ha ha ha …”
Sima Ku’s laughter seemed endless. On the opposite bank, a line of yellow caps popped up over the top of the dike, followed by the heads of horses and the yellow uniforms of their riders. Dozens of horse soldiers were now perched atop the dike, and though they were still hundreds of meters away, Laidi saw that the horses looked exactly like Third Master Fan’s stud horse. The Japs! The Japs are here! The Japs have come …
Avoiding the stone bridge, which was engulfed in blue flames, the Japanese soldiers eased their horses down the dike sideways, dozens of them bumping clumsily into each other all the way down to the riverbed. She could hear the men’s grunts and shouts and the horses’ snorts as they entered the river. The water quickly swallowed up the horses’ legs, until their bellies rested on the surface. The riders sat their mounts comfortably, sitting straight, heads high, their faces white in the bright sunlight, which blurred their features. With their heads up, the horses appeared to be galloping, which in fact was impossible. The water, like thick syrup, had a sticky, sweet smell. Struggling to move ahead, the massive horses raised blue ripples on the surface; to Laidi, they looked like little tongues of fire singeing the animals’ hides, which was why they were holding their large heads so high, and why they kept moving forward, their tails floating behind them. The Japanese riders, holding the reins with both hands, bobbed up and down, their legs in a rigid inverted V. She watched a chestnut-colored horse stop in the middle of the river, lift its tail, and release a string of droppings. Its anxious rider dug his heels into the horse’s flanks to get it going again. But the horse, refusing to move, shook its head and chewed noisily on the bit.
“Attack, comrades!” came a yell from the bushes to her left, followed by a muted sound like tearing silk. Then the rattle of gunfire — crisp and dull, thick and thin. A black object, trailing white smoke, hit the water with a loud thunk and sent a pillar of water into the air. The Japanese soldier on the chestnut horse was thrown forward at a bizarre angle, then sprang back, his arms flailing wildly in the air. Fresh black blood gushing from his chest soaked the head of his horse and stained the water. The horse reared, exposing its muddy forelegs and its broad, shiny chest. By the time its front hooves crashed through the surface of the water again, the Japanese soldier was draped face-up across the animal’s rump. A second Japanese soldier, this one on a black mount, flew headfirst into the river. Another, riding a blue horse, was thrown forward out of his saddle, but wrapped his arms around the animal’s neck and hung there, capless, a trickle of blood dripping from his ear into the river.
Chaos reigned on the river, where riderless horses whinnied and spun around to struggle back to the far bank. All the other Japanese soldiers lay forward in their saddles, clamping down with their legs as they aimed their shiny rifles at the bushes and opened fire. Dozens of snorting horses made their way to the shoals the best they could. With beads of water dripping from their bellies and mud covering their purple hooves, they dragged long glistening threads all the way out to the middle of the river.
A sorrel with a white forehead, a pale-faced Japanese soldier on its back, jumped and leaped toward the dike, its hooves thudding clumsily and noisily into the shoals. The squinting, tight-lipped soldier on its back smacked its rump with his left hand and brandished a silvery sword in his right, as he charged the bushes. Laidi saw beads of sweat on the tip of his nose and the thick lashes of his mount, and she could hear the air forced out through the horse’s nostrils; she could also smell the sour stench of horse sweat. All of a sudden, red smoke emerged from the sorrel’s forehead, and all four of its churning legs stiffened. Its hide was creased with more wrinkles than she could count, its legs turned to rubber, and before its rider knew what was happening, both he and the horse fell crashing into the bushes.
The Japanese cavalry unit headed south along the riverbank all the way up to where Laidi and her sisters had left their shoes. There they reined in their horses and cut through the bushes up to the dike. Laidi kept looking, but they were gone. She then turned to look down at the dead sorrel, its head bloody, its big, lifeless blue eyes staring sadly into the deep blue sky. The Japanese rider lay facedown in the mud, pinned beneath the horse, his head cocked at an awkward angle, one bloodless hand stretched out to the riverbank, as if fishing for something. The horses’ hooves had chewed up the smooth, sundrenched mud of the shoals. The body of a white horse lay on its side in the river, rolling slowly in the shifting water, until it flipped over and its legs, tipped by hooves the size of clay jugs, rose terrifyingly into the air. A moment later, the water churned and the legs slipped back into the water to wait for the next opportunity to point to the sky. The chestnut horse that had made such an impression on Laidi was already far downriver, dragging its dead rider with it, and she wondered if it might be off looking for its mate, imagining it to be the long-separated wife of Third Master Fan’s stud horse.
Fires were continued to burn on the bridge, the now yellow flames sending thick white smoke out of the piles of straw. The green bridge flooring arched high in the air as it groaned and gasped and moaned. In her mind, the burning bridge was transformed into a giant snake writhing in agony, trying desperately to fly up into the sky with both its head and tail nailed down. The poor bridge, she thought sadly. And that poor German bicycle, the only modern machine in Gaomi, was now nothing but charred, twisted metal. Her nose was assailed by the smells of gunpowder, rubber, blood, and mud that turned the heated air sticky and thick, and her breast was suffused with a foul miasma that seemed about to explode. Worse yet, a layer of grease had formed on the roasted bushes in front of them, and a wave of sparking heat rushed toward her, igniting crackling fires in the bushes. Scooping Qiudi up in her arms, she screamed for her sisters to leave the bushes. Then, standing on the dike, she counted until they were all there with her, grimy-faced and barefoot, their eyes staring blankly, their earlobes roasted red. They scampered down the dike and ran toward an abandoned patch of ground that everyone said was once the foundation and crumbled walls of a Muslim woman’s house that had since been reclaimed by wild hemp and cocklebur. As she ran into the tangle of undergrowth, her legs felt as if they were made of dough, and the nettles pricked her feet painfully. Her sisters, crying and complaining, stumbled along behind her. So they all sat down amid the hemp and wrapped their arms around each other, the younger girls burying their faces in Laidi’s clothing; only she kept her head up, gazing fearfully at the fire raging over the dike.
The men in green uniforms she’d seen before trouble arrived came running out of the sea of flames, shrieking like demons. Their clothes were on fire. She heard the now familiar voice shout, “Roll on the ground!” He was the first to hit the ground and roll down the dike, like a fireball. A dozen or more fireballs followed him. The flames were extinguished, but green smoke rose from the men’s clothes and hair. Their uniforms, which only moments earlier had been the same eye-catching green as the shrubbery in which they were hiding, were now little more than black rags that clung to their bodies.
One of the men, not heeding the order to roll on the ground, screamed in agony as he ran like the wind, carrying the flames with him all the way up to the wild hemp where the girls were hiding, heading straight for a big puddle of filthy water; it was covered by a profusion of wild grasses and water plants, with thick red stems and fat, tender leaves the color of goose down, and pink, cottony flower buds. The flaming man threw himself into the puddle, sending water splashing in all directions and a host of baby frogs leaping out of their hiding places. White egg-laying butterflies fluttered into the air and disappeared into the sunlight as if consumed by the heat. Now that the flames had sputtered out, the man lay there, black as coal, gobs of mud stuck to his head and face, a tiny worm wriggling on his cheek. She could not see
his nose or his eyes, only his mouth, which spread open to release tortured screams: “Mother, dear Mother, I’m going to die …” A golden loach accompanied the screams out of his mouth. His pitiful writhing stirred up mud that had accumulated over the years and sent an awful stench into the air.
His comrades lay on the ground, moaning and cursing, their rifles and clubs scattered about — except for the thin man with the dark face, who still held his pistol. “Comrades,” he said, “let’s get out of here. The Japanese will be back!”
As if they hadn’t heard him, the charred soldiers stayed where they were on the ground. A couple of them climbed shakily to their feet and took a few wobbly steps before their legs gave out. “Comrades, let’s get out of here!” he bellowed, kicking the man nearest him.
The man crawled forward and struggled into a kneeling position. “Commander,” he cried out pitifully, “my eyes, I can’t see anything …”
Now she knew that the dark-faced man was called Commander. “Comrades,” he said anxiously, “the Japs are coming. We must be ready for them …”
Off to the east, she saw twenty or more Japanese horse soldiers in two columns on the top of the dike, riding down like a tide in tight formation in spite of the flames around them, the horses trotting across the ridge, heads thrust out, one close on the heels of the other. When they reached Chen Family Lane, the lead horse turned and negotiated the slope, the others quickly falling in behind it. They skirted a broad expanse of open land (the land, which served as a grain-drying ground for the Sima family, was flat and smooth, covered by golden sand), then picked up speed, galloping in a straight line. All the Japanese horsemen brandished long, narrow swords that glinted in the sun as they bore down on the enemy like the wind, their war whoops shattering the silence.
The commander raised his pistol and fired at the onrushing cavalry troops, a single puff of white smoke emerging from the mouth of the barrel. Then he threw down the pistol and limped as fast he could toward where Laidi and her sisters were hiding. A speeding apricot-colored horse brushed past him, its rider leaning over in the saddle as he slashed the air with his sword. The commander hit the ground in time to keep his head from being struck by the sword, but not quickly enough to avoid having a chunk of his right shoulder sliced off; it sailed through the air and landed nearby. Laidi saw the palm-sized piece of flesh twitch like a skinned frog. With a scream of pain, the commander rolled on the ground, then crawled up against a large cocklebur and lay there without moving. The Japanese soldier spun his mount around and headed straight for a big man who was standing up holding a sword. With fear written on his face, the man swung his sword weakly, as if aiming for the horse’s head, but he was knocked to the ground by the animal’s hooves, and before he knew it, the rider leaned over and split his head open with his sword, splattering the Japanese soldier’s pants with his brains. In no time at all, a dozen or more men who had escaped from the burning bushes lay on the ground in eternal rest. The Japanese riders, still in the grip of frenzied excitement, trampled the bodies beneath their horses’ hooves.
Just then, another cavalry unit, followed by a huge contingent of khaki-clad foot soldiers, emerged from the pine grove west of the village and joined up with the first unit; the reinforced cavalry forces then turned and headed toward the village along the north-south highway. The helmeted foot soldiers, rifles in hand, fell in behind their mounted comrades and stormed the village like locusts.
On the dike the fires had died out; thick black smoke rose into the sky. Laidi could see only blackness where the dike was, while the ruined bushes gave off a pleasant charred odor. Swarms of flies, seemingly dropping out of the sky, fell upon the battered corpses and the puddles of blood near them, and on the scarred branches and leaves of the shrubs, and on the commander’s body. The flies seemed to blot out everything within sight.
Her eyes felt dull and heavy, her lids sticky, in the presence of a world of strange sights she’d never seen before: there were the severed legs of horses, horses with knives stuck in their heads, naked men with huge members hanging between their legs, human heads rolling around on the ground clucking like mother hens, and little fish with skinny legs hopping on hemp plants in front of her. But what frightened her most was the commander, whom she thought was long dead; climbing slowly to his knees, he crawled over to the chunk of flesh from his shoulder, flattened it out, and stuck it onto the spot where it had been cut off. But it immediately hopped back off and burrowed into a patch of weeds. So he snatched it up and smashed it on the ground, over and over, until it was dead. Then he plucked a tattered piece of cloth from his body and wrapped the flesh in it.
8
An uproar in the yard startled Shangguan Lu awake. She was crestfallen when she saw that her belly was as swollen as ever, even now that half the kang was stained with her blood. The fresh dirt her mother-in-law had spread over the kang had turned into sticky, blood-soaked mud, and what had been only a vague feeling suddenly turned crystal-clear. She watched as a bat with pink wing membranes flew down from the rafters, and a purple face materialized on the black wall across from her; it was the face of a dead baby boy. A gut-wrenching, heartrending pain became a dull ache. Then her curiosity was piqued by the sight of a tiny foot with bright toenails poking out from between her legs. It’s all over, she thought, my life is all over. The thought of death brought feelings of deep sadness, and she saw herself being placed in a cheap coffin, with her mother-in-law looking on with an angry frown and her husband standing nearby, gloomy but silent. The only ones wailing were her seven daughters, who stood in a circle around the coffin …
Her mother-in-law’s stentorian voice overwhelmed the girl’s wails. She opened her eyes, and the hallucination vanished. The window was suffused with daylight; the heavy fragrance of locust blossoms gusted in. A bee banged into the paper window covering. “Fan Three, don’t worry about washing your hands,” she heard her mother-in-law say. “That precious daughter-in-law of mine still hasn’t had her baby. The best she can do is one leg. Can you come help out?”
“Elder sister-in-law, don’t be foolish. Just think what you’re saying. I’m a horse doctor, I can’t deliver a human baby.”
“People and animals aren’t that different.”
“That’s nonsense, elder sister-in-law. Now get me some water so I can wash up. I say forget the expense and go get Aunty Sun.”
Her mother-in-law’s voice exploded like a clap of thunder: “Stop pretending you don’t know I can’t stand that old witch! Last year she stole one of my little hens.”
“That’s up to you,” Fan Three said. “It’s your daughter-in-law who’s in labor, after all, not my wife. All right, I’ll do it, but don’t forget the liquor and the pig’s head, because I’ll be saving two lives for your family!”
Her mother-in-law changed her tone of voice from anger to melancholy: “Fan Three, show some kindness. Besides, with all that fighting out there, if you went out and ran into Japanese …”
“That’s enough!” Fan said. “In all the years we’ve been friends and neighbors, this is the first time I’ve done anything like this. But let’s get something straight first. People and animals may not be that different, but a human life matters more …”
The clatter of footsteps, mixed with the sound of someone blowing his nose, came toward her. Don’t tell me that my father-in-law and husband and that slick character Fan Three are coming in while I’m lying here naked. The thought of it angered and shamed her. Puffy white clouds floated before her eyes. When she strained to sit up and find something to cover her nakedness, the pool of blood she lay in made that impossible. The intermittent rumble of explosions from the edge of the village came on the air, punctuated by a mysterious yet somehow familiar clamor, like the magnified noise made by a horde of tiny crawling critters, or the gnashing of countless teeth … I’ve heard that sound before, but what is it? She thought and she thought. Then a flash of recognition quickly transformed itself into a bright light that brough
t into focus the plague of locusts she’d witnessed a decade or more earlier. The red swarms had blocked out the sun; it was a raging flood of insects that stripped every tree bare, even the bark of willows. The sickening gnawing sound ate its way into the marrow of her bones. The locusts have returned! she thought to her horror, as she sank into the mire of despair. “Heavenly Master, just let me die, I can’t take it anymore … God in Heaven, Blessed Virgin! Send down your grace and bounty to save my soul…” she prayed hopefully even in the throes of despair, sending prayers both to China’s supreme deity and to the paramount god of the West. When she had finished, her mental anguish and physical agonies had lessened a bit, and she thought back to that late spring day when she and the redheaded, blue-eyed Pastor Malory had lain in the grass, and he had told her that China’s Heavenly Master and the West’s God were one and the same, like the two sides of your hand, or just as the lianhua and hehua are both lotus flowers. Or, she thought bashfully, like a cock and a dick are the same thing. He stood amid the locust trees, as spring was giving way to summer, that thing of his standing up proudly … the surrounding trees in full bloom with white flowers, and red flowers, and yellow flowers, a rainbow of colors dancing in the air, their rich fragrance thoroughly intoxicating her. She felt herself rise in the air, like a cloud, like a feather. With gratitude filling her breast, she gazed at the somber and sacred, friendly and kindly smile on Pastor Malory’s face, and her eyes filled with tears.