by Yunte Huang
She could make out the shapes of the bearers’ statuesque legs poking out from under loose black satin trousers and their big, fleshy feet encased in straw sandals. They raised clouds of dust as they tramped along. Impatiently trying to conjure up an image of their firm, muscular chests, Grandma raised the toe of her shoe and leaned forward. She could see the polished purple scholar-tree poles and the bearers’ broad shoulders beneath them. Barriers of sorghum stalks lining the path stood erect and solid in unbroken rows, tightly packed, together sizing one another up with the yet unopened clay-green eyes of grain ears, one indistinguishable from the next, as far as she could see, like a vast river. The path was so narrow in places it was barely passable, causing the wormy, sappy leaves to brush noisily against the sedan chair.
The men’s bodies emitted the sour smell of sweat. Infatuated by the masculine odor, Grandma breathed in deeply—this ancestor of mine must have been nearly bursting with passion. As the bearers carried their load down the path, their feet left a series of V imprints known as “tramples” in the dirt, for which satisfied clients usually rewarded them, and which fortified the bearers’ pride of profession. It was unseemly to “trample” with an uneven cadence or to grip the poles, and the best bearers kept their hands on their hips the whole time, rocking the sedan chair in perfect rhythm with the musicians’ haunting tunes, which reminded everyone within earshot of the hidden suffering in whatever pleasures lay ahead.
When the sedan chair reached the plains, the bearers began to get a little sloppy, both to make up time and to torment their passenger. Some brides were bounced around so violently they vomited from motion sickness, soiling their clothing and slippers; the retching sounds from inside the carriage pleased the bearers as though they were giving vent to their own miseries. The sacrifices these strong young men made to carry their cargo into bridal chambers must have embittered them, which was why it seemed so natural to torment the brides.
One of the four men bearing Grandma’s sedan chair that day would eventually become my granddad—it was Commander Yu Zhan’ao. At the time he was a beefy twenty-year-old, a pallbearer and sedan bearer at the peak of his trade. The young men of his generation were as sturdy as Northeast Gaomi sorghum, which is more than can be said about us weaklings who succeeded them. It was a custom back then for sedan bearers to tease the bride while trundling her along: like distillery workers, who drink the wine they make, since it is their due, these men torment all who ride in their sedan chairs—even the wife of the Lord of Heaven if she should be a passenger.
Sorghum leaves scraped the sedan chair mercilessly when, all of a sudden, the deadening monotony of the trip was broken by the plaintive sounds of weeping—remarkably like the musicians’ tunes—coming from deep in the field. As Grandma listened to the music, trying to picture the instruments in the musicians’ hands, she raised the curtain with her foot until she could see the sweat-soaked waist of one of the bearers. Her gaze was caught by her own red embroidered slippers, with their tapered slimness and cheerless beauty, ringed by halos of incoming sunlight until they looked like lotus blossoms, or, even more, like tiny goldfish that had settled to the bottom of a bowl. Two teardrops as transparently pink as immature grains of sorghum wetted Grandma’s eyelashes and slipped down her cheeks to the corners of her mouth.
As she was gripped by sadness, the image of a learned and refined husband, handsome in his high-topped hat and wide sash, like a player on the stage, blurred and finally vanished, replaced by the horrifying picture of Shan Bianlang’s face, his leprous mouth covered with rotting tumors. Her heart turned to ice. Were these tapered golden lotuses, a face as fresh as peaches and apricots, gentility of a thousand kinds, and ten thousand varieties of elegance all reserved for the pleasure of a leper? Better to die and be done with it.
The disconsolate weeping in the sorghum field was dotted with words, like knots in a piece of wood: A blue sky yo—a sapphire sky yo—a painted sky yo—a mighty cudgel yo—dear elder brother yo—death has claimed you—you have brought down little sister’s sky yo—
I must tell you that the weeping of women from Northeast Gaomi Township makes beautiful music. During 1912, the first year of the Republic, professional mourners known as “wailers” came from Qufu, the home of Confucius, to study local weeping techniques. Meeting up with a woman lamenting the death of her husband seemed to Grandma to be a stroke of bad luck on her wedding day, and she grew even more dejected.
Just then one of the bearers spoke up: “You there, little bride in the chair, say something! The long journey has bored us to tears.”
Grandma quickly snatched up her red veil and covered her face, gently drawing her foot back from beneath the curtain and returning the carriage to darkness.
“Sing us a song while we bear you along!”
The musicians, as though snapping out of a trance, struck up their instruments. A trumpet blared from behind the chair:
“Too-tah-too-tah-”
“Poo-pah-poo-pah-” One of the bearers up front imitated the trumpet sound, evoking coarse, raucous laughter all around.
Grandma was drenched with sweat. Back home, as she was being lifted into the sedan chair, Great-Grandma had exhorted her not to get drawn into any banter with the bearers. Sedan bearers and musicians were low-class rowdies capable of anything, no matter how depraved.
They began rocking the chair so violently that poor Grandma couldn’t keep her seat without holding on tight.
“No answer? Okay, rock! If we can’t shake any words loose, we can at least shake the piss out of her!”
The sedan chair was like a dinghy tossed about by the waves, and Grandma held on to the wooden seat for dear life. The two eggs she’d eaten for breakfast churned in her stomach; the flies buzzed around her ears; her throat tightened, as the taste of eggs surged up into her mouth. She bit her lip. Don’t throw up, don’t let yourself throw up! she commanded herself. You mustn’t let yourself throw up, Fenglian. They say throwing up in the bridal chair means a lifetime of bad luck. . . .
The bearers’ banter turned coarse. One of them reviled my great-granddad for being a money-grabber, another said something about a pretty flower stuck into a pile of cow shit, a third called Shan Bianlang a scruffy leper who oozed pus and excreted yellow fluids. He said the stench of rotten flesh drifted beyond the Shan compound, which swarmed with horseflies. . . .
“Little bride, if you let Shan Bianlang touch you, your skin will rot away!”
As the horns and woodwinds blared and tooted, the taste of eggs grew stronger, forcing Grandma to bite down hard on her lip. But to no avail. She opened her mouth and spewed a stream of filth, soiling the curtain, toward which the five flies dashed as though shot from a gun.
“Puke-ah, puke-ah. Keep rocking!” one of the bearers roared. “Keep rocking. Sooner or later she’ll have to say something.”
“Elder brothers . . . spare me . . .” Grandma pleaded desperately between agonizing retches. Then she burst into tears. She felt humiliated; she could sense the perils of her future, knowing she’d spend the rest of her life drowning in a sea of bitterness. Oh, Father, oh, Mother. I have been destroyed by a miserly father and a heartless mother!
Grandma’s piteous wails made the sorghum quake. The bearers stopped rocking the chair and calmed the raging sea. The musicians lowered the instruments from their rousing lips, so that only Grandma’s sobs could be heard, alone with the mournful strains of a single woodwind, whose weeping sounds were more enchanting than any woman’s. Grandma stopped crying at the sound of the woodwind, as though commanded from on high. Her face, suddenly old and desiccated, was pearled with tears: she heard the sound of death in the gentle melancholy of the tune, and smelled its breath; she could see the angel of death, with lips as scarlet as sorghum and a smiling face the color of golden corn.
The bearers fell silent and their footsteps grew heavy. The sacrificial choking sounds from inside the chair and the woodwind accompaniment had made them restless and uneasy,
had set their souls adrift. No longer did it seem like a wedding procession as they negotiated the dirt road; it was more like a funeral procession. My grandfather, the bearer directly in front of Grandma’s foot, felt a strange premonition blazing inside him and illuminating the path his life would take. The sounds of Grandma’s weeping had awakened seeds of affection that had lain dormant deep in his heart.
It was time to rest, so the bearers lowered the sedan chair to the ground. Grandma, having cried herself into a daze, didn’t realize that one of her tiny feet was peeking out from beneath the curtain; the sight of that incomparably delicate, lovely thing nearly drove the souls out of the bearers’ bodies. Yu Zhan’ao walked up, leaned over, and gently—very gently—held Grandma’s foot in his hand, as though it were a fledgling whose feathers weren’t yet dry, then eased it back inside the carriage. She was so moved by the gentleness of the deed she could barely keep from throwing back the curtain to see what sort of man this bearer was, with his large, warm, youthful hand.
I’ve always believed that marriages are made in heaven and that people fated to be together are connected by an invisible thread. The act of grasping Grandma’s foot triggered a powerful drive in Yu Zhan’ao to forge a new life for himself, and constituted the turning point in his life—and the turning point in hers as well.
The sedan chair set out again as a trumpet blast rent the air, then drifted off into obscurity. The wind had risen—a northeaster—and clouds were gathering in the sky, blotting out the sun and throwing the carriage into darkness. Grandma could hear the shh-shh of rustling sorghum, one wave close upon another, carrying the sound off into the distance. Thunder rumbled off to the northeast. The bearers quickened their pace. She wondered how much farther it was to the Shan household; like a trussed lamb being led to slaughter, she grew calmer with each step. At home she had hidden a pair of scissors in her bodice, perhaps to use on Shan Bianlang, perhaps to use on herself.
The holdup of Grandma’s sedan chair by a highwayman at Toad Hollow occupies an important place in the saga of my family. Toad Hollow is a large marshy stretch in the vast flatland where the soil is especially fertile, the water especially plentiful, and the sorghum especially dense. A blood-red bolt of lightning streaked across the northeastern sky, and screaming fragments of apricot-yellow sunlight tore through the dense clouds above the dirt road, when Grandma’s sedan chair reached that point. The panting bearers were drenched with sweat as they entered Toad Hollow, over which the air hung heavily. Sorghum plants lining the road shone like ebony, dense and impenetrable; weeds and wildflowers grew in such profusion they seemed to block the road. Everywhere you looked, narrow stems of cornflowers were bosomed by clumps of rank weeds, their purple, blue, pink, and white flowers waving proudly. From deep in the sorghum came the melancholy croaks of toads, the dreary chirps of grasshoppers, and the plaintive howls of foxes. Grandma, still seated in the carriage, felt a sudden breath of cold air that raised tiny goose bumps on her skin. She didn’t know what was happening, even when she heard the shout up ahead:
“Nobody passes without paying a toll!’’
Grandma gasped. What was she feeling? Sadness? Joy? My God, she thought, it’s a man who eats fistcakes!
Northeast Gaomi Township was aswarm with bandits who operated in the sorghum fields like fish in water, forming gangs to rob, pillage, and kidnap, yet balancing their evil deeds with charitable ones. If they were hungry, they snatched two people, keeping one and sending the other into the village to demand flatbreads with eggs and green onions rolled inside. Since they stuffed the rolled flatbreads into their mouths with both fists, they were called “fistcakes.”
“Nobody passes without paying a toll!’’ the man bellowed. The bearers stopped in their tracks and stared dumbstruck at the highwayman of medium height who stood in the road, his legs akimbo. He had smeared his face black and was wearing a conical rain hat woven of sorghum stalks and a broad-shouldered rain cape open in front to reveal a black buttoned jacket and a wide leather belt, in which a protruding object was tucked, bundled in red satin. His hand rested on it.
The thought flashed through Grandma’s mind that there was nothing to be afraid of: if death couldn’t frighten her, nothing could. She raised the curtain to get a glimpse of the man who ate fistcakes.
“Hand over the toll, or I’ll pop you all!” He patted the red bundle.
The musicians reached into their belts, took out the strings of copper coins Great-Granddad had given them, and tossed these at the man’s feet. The bearers lowered the sedan chair to the ground, took out their copper coins, and did the same.
As he dragged the strings of coins into a pile with his foot, his eyes were fixed on Grandma.
“Get behind the sedan chair, all of you. I’ll pop if you don’t!” He thumped the object tucked into his belt.
The bearers moved slowly behind the sedan chair. Yu Zhan’ao, bringing up the rear, spun around and glared. A change came over the highwayman’s face, and he gripped the object at his belt tightly. “Eyes straight ahead if you want to keep breathing!”
With his hand resting on his belt, he shuffled up to the sedan chair, reached out, and pinched Grandma’s foot. A smile creased her face, and the man pulled his hand away as though it had been scalded.
“Climb down and come with me!” he ordered her.
Grandma sat without moving, the smile frozen on her face.
“Climb down, I said!”
She rose from the seat, stepped grandly onto the pole, and alit in a tuft of cornflowers. Her gaze traveled from the man to the bearers and musicians.
“Into the sorghum field!” the highwayman said, his hand still resting on the red-bundled object at his belt.
Grandma stood confidently; lightning crackled in the clouds overhead and shattered her radiant smile into a million shifting shards. The highwayman began pushing her into the sorghum field, his hand never leaving the object at his belt. She stared at Yu Zhan’ao with a feverish look in her eyes.
Yu Zhan’ao approached the highwayman, his thin lips curled resolutely, up at one end and down at the other.
“Hold it right there!’’ the highwayman commanded feebly. “I’ll shoot if you take another step!”
Yu Zhan’ao walked calmly up to the man, who began backing up. Green flames seemed to shoot from his eyes, and crystalline beads of sweat scurried down his terrified face. When Yu Zhan’ao had drawn to within three paces of him, a shameful sound burst from his mouth, and he turned and ran. Yu Zhan’ao was on his tail in a flash, kicking him expertly in the rear. He sailed through the air over the cornflowers, thrashing his arms and legs like an innocent babe, until he landed in the sorghum field.
“Spare me, gentlemen! I’ve got an eighty-year-old mother at home, and this is the only way I can make a living.” The highwayman skillfully pleaded his case to Yu Zhan’ao, who grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, dragged him back to the sedan chair, threw him roughly to the ground, and kicked him in his noisy mouth. The man shrieked in pain; blood trickled from his nose.
Yu Zhan’ao reached down, took the thing from the man’s belt, and shook off the red cloth covering, to reveal the gnarled knot of a tree. The men all gasped in amazement.
The bandit crawled to his knees, knocking his head on the ground and pleading for his life. “Every highwayman says he’s got an eighty-year-old mother at home,” Yu Zhan’ao said as he stepped aside and glanced at his comrades, like the leader of a pack sizing up the other dogs.
With a flurry of shouts, the bearers and musicians fell upon the highwayman, fists and feet flying. The initial onslaught was met by screams and shrill cries, which soon died out. Grandma stood beside the road listening to the dull cacophony of fists and feet on flesh; she glanced at Yu Zhan’ao, then looked up at the lightning-streaked sky, the radiant, golden, noble smile still frozen on her face.
One of the musicians raised his trumpet and brought it down hard on the highwayman’s skull, burying the curved edge so deeply he ha
d to strain to free it. The highwayman’s stomach gurgled and his body, racked by spasms, grew deathly still; he lay spread-eagled on the ground, a mixture of white and yellow liquid seeping slowly out of the fissure in his skull.
“Is he dead?” asked the musician, who was examining the bent mouth of his trumpet.
“He’s gone, the poor bastard. He didn’t put up much of a fight!”
The gloomy faces of the bearers and musicians revealed their anxieties.
Yu Zhan’ao looked wordlessly first at the dead, then at the living. With a handful of leaves from a sorghum stalk, he cleaned up Grandma’s mess in the carriage, then held up the tree knot, wrapped it in the piece of red cloth, and tossed the bundle as far as he could; the gnarled knot broke free in flight and separated from the piece of cloth, which fluttered to the ground in the field like a big red butterfly.
Yu Zhan’ao lifted Grandma into the sedan chair. “It’s starting to rain,” he said, “so let’s get going.”
Grandma ripped the curtain from the front of the carriage and stuffed it behind the seat. As she breathed the free air she studied Yu Zhan’ao’s broad shoulders and narrow waist. He was so near she could have touched the pale, taut skin of his shaved head with her toe.
The winds were picking up, bending the sorghum stalks in ever deeper waves, those on the roadside stretching out to bow their respects to Grandma. The bearers streaked down the road, yet the sedan chair was as steady as a skiff skimming across whitecaps. Frogs and toads croaked in loud welcome to the oncoming summer rainstorm. The low curtain of heaven stared darkly at the silvery faces of sorghum, over which streaks of blood-red lightning crackled, releasing earsplitting explosions of thunder. With growing excitement, Grandma stared fearlessly at the green waves raised by the black winds.