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ONE Red Sorghum 1
ONE Red Sorghum
1
THE NINTH DAY of the eighth lunar month, 1939. My father, a bandit’s offspring who had passedhis fifteenth birthday, was joining the forces of Commander Yu Zhan’ao, a man destined tobecome a legendary hero, to ambush a Japanese convoy on the Jiao-Ping highway. Grandma, apadded jacket over her shoulders, saw them to the edge of the village. ‘Stop here,’ CommanderYu ordered her. She stopped.
‘Douguan, mind your foster-dad,’ she told my father. The sight of her large frame and thewarm fragrance of her lined jacket chilled him. He shivered. His stomach growled.
Commander Yu patted him on the head and said, ‘Let’s go, foster-son.’
Heaven and earth were in turmoil, the view was blurred. By then the soldiers’ muffledfootsteps had moved far down the road. Father could still hear them, but a curtain of blue mistobscured the men themselves. Gripping tightly to Commander Yu’s coat, he nearly flew downthe path on churning legs. Grandma receded like a distant shore as the approaching sea of mistgrew more tempestuous; holding on to Commander Yu was like clinging to the railing of a boat.
That was how Father rushed towards the uncarved granite marker that would rise above hisgrave in the bright-red sorghum fields of his hometown. A bare-assed little boy once led a whitebilly goat up to the weed-covered grave, and as it grazed in unhurried contentment, the boypissed furiously on the grave and sang out: ‘The sorghum is red - the Japanese are coming -compatriots, get ready - fire your rifles and cannons -’
Someone said that the little goatherd was me, but I don’t know. I had learned to love NortheastGaomi Township with all my heart, and to hate it with unbridled fury. I didn’t realise until I’dgrown up that Northeast Gaomi Township is easily the most beautiful and most repulsive, mostunusual and most common, most sacred and most corrupt, most heroic and most bastardly,hardest-drinking and hardest-loving place in the world. The people of my father’s generation wholived there ate sorghum out of preference, planting as much of it as they could. In late autumn,during the eighth lunar month, vast stretches of red sorghum shimmered like a sea of blood. Talland dense, it reeked of glory; cold and graceful, it promised enchantment; passionate and loving,it was tumultuous.
The autumn winds are cold and bleak, the sun’s rays intense. White clouds, full and round,float in the tile-blue sky, casting full round purple shadows onto the sorghum fields below. Overdecades that seem but a moment in time, lines of scarlet figures shuttled among the sorghumstalks to weave a vast human tapestry. They killed, they looted, and they defended their countryin a valiant, stirring ballet that makes us unfilial descendants who now occupy the land pale bycomparison. Surrounded by progress, I feel a nagging sense of our species’ regression.
After leaving the village, the troops marched down a narrow dirt path, the tramping of their feetmerging with the rustling of weeds. The heavy mist was strangely animated, kaleidoscopic. Tinydroplets of water pooled into large drops on Father’s face, clumps of hair stuck to his forehead.
He was used to the delicate peppermint aroma and the slightly sweet yet pungent odour of ripesorghum wafting over from the sides of the path - nothing new there. But as they marchedthrough the heavy mist, his nose detected a new, sickly-sweet odour, neither yellow nor red,blending with the smells of peppermint and sorghum to call up memories hidden deep in his soul.
Six days later, the fifteenth day of the eighth month, the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Abright round moon climbed slowly in the sky above the solemn, silent sorghum fields, bathing thetassels in its light until they shimmered like mercury. Among the chiselled flecks of moonlightFather caught a whiff of the same sickly odour, far stronger than anything you might smell today.
Commander Yu was leading him by the hand through the sorghum, where three hundred fellowvillagers, heads pillowed on their arms, were strewn across the ground, their fresh blood turningthe black earth into a sticky muck that made walking slow and difficult. The smell took theirbreath away. A pack of corpse-eating dogs sat in the field staring at Father and Commander Yuwith glinting eyes. Commander Yu drew his pistol and fired - a pair of eyes was extinguished.
Another shot, another pair of eyes gone. The howling dogs scattered, then sat on their haunchesonce they were out of range, setting up a deafening chorus of angry barks as they gazed greedily,longingly at the corpses. The odour grew stronger.
‘Jap dogs!’ Commander Yu screamed. ‘Jap sons of bitches!’ He emptied his pistol, scatteringthe dogs without a trace. ‘Let’s go, son,’ he said. The two of them, one old and one young,threaded their way through the sorghum field, guided by the moon’s rays. The odour saturatingthe field drenched Father’s soul and would be his constant companion during the cruel monthsand years ahead.
Sorghum stems and leaves sizzled fiercely in the mist. The Black Water River, which flowedslowly through the swampy lowland, sang in the spreading mist, now loud, now soft, now far,now near. As they caught up with the troops, Father heard the tramping of feet and some coarsebreathing fore and aft. The butt of a rifle noisily bumped someone else’s. A foot crushed whatsounded like a human bone. The man in front of Father coughed loudly. It was a familiar cough,calling to mind large ears that turned red with excitement. Large transparent ears covered withtiny blood vessels were the trademark of Wang Wenyi, a small man whose enlarged head wastucked down between his shoulders.
Father strained and squinted until his gaze bored through the mist: there was Wang Wenyi’shead, jerking with each cough. Father thought back to when Wang was whipped on the paradeground, and how pitiful he had looked. He had just joined up with Commander Yu. Adjutant Renordered the recruits: Right face! Wang Wenyi stomped down joyfully, but where he intended to‘face’ was anyone’s guess. Adjutant Ren smacked him across the backside with his whip, forcinga yelp from between his parted lips. Ouch, mother of my children! The expression on his facecould have been a cry, or could have been a laugh. Some kids sprawled atop the wall hootedgleefully.
Now Commander Yu kicked Wang Wenyi in the backside.
‘Who said you could cough?’
