Mo Yan - Red Sorghum

‘Put your gun away!’ Granddad shouted in a steely voice. ‘I’m not finished with you yet, Blackie, so don’t get smart with me!’

Black Eye’s face was bathed in sweat. He grumbled, picked up his pistol, stuck it in his leather belt, and sat down.

The mule-riding physician, who had watched the episode with a disdainful smile, suddenly started laughing so hard he could barely stand, so hard that hot tears streamed down his cheeks. His behaviour made everyone squirm uncomfortably.

‘What’s so funny?’ Black Eye asked. ‘I’ll fuck your mother! I asked you, what’s so funny?’

The laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and the physician said dryly, ‘Fuck away, if that’s what you want. My mother’s been dead and buried in the black earth for ten years, and she’s all yours!’

Black Eye was speechless. The moles around his eye turned the colour of fresh leaves. Leaping to his feet, he slapped the physician seven or eight times, sending trickles of blood out of his nostrils and down the bristly black hairs. The physician licked his lips greedily, his shiny white teeth stained with blood.

‘How’d you get here?’ Granddad asked him.

‘My mule!’ the physician replied, stretching his neck as though he were swallowing a mouthful of blood. ‘What have you done with my mule?’

‘I guarantee you he’s a Japanese spy!’ Black Eye said. ‘Bring me a whip. I’ll teach the son of a bitch something!’

‘My mule! Give me back my mule! I want my mule….’ There was panic in the physician’s voice. He tried to run out of the tent, but was stopped by the guards. One of them punched him in the temple. His head slumped forward, as though his neck had snapped like a sorghum stalk. He crumpled to the ground.

‘Search him!’ Granddad ordered.

The Iron Society soldiers searched him thoroughly, but all they found was a couple of marbles, one bright green, the other bright red, each with a little cat’s-eye bubble in the centre. Granddad held them up to the candlelight to reflect the brilliant rays. They were beautiful. With a perplexed shake of his head, he set them on the table. Father reached out and snatched them away.

‘Give one to Fulai,’ Granddad told him.

Reluctantly, Father held them out to Fulai, who was standing beside Black Eye. ‘Which one do you want?’

‘The red one.’

‘No,’ Father said. ‘You can have the green one.’

‘I want the red one.’

‘The green one; take it or leave it.’ Fulai grudgingly took the green one out of Father’s hand.

As the physician’s neck gradually straightened, the ominous light in his eyes was as strong as ever. His bloodstained, wispy beard bristled.

‘Talk! Are you a Japanese spy or not?’ Granddad asked him.

Like a stubborn child, the physician picked up where he’d left off: ‘My mule, my mule! I won’t say a word until you bring me my mule.’

Granddad laughed mischievously, then said, ‘Bring it over. Let’s see what he’s trying to sell.’

The scrawny mule was led to the tent, where the dazzling candlelight, the shiny coffin, and the dark, forbidding paper figures so frightened it that it balked at the entrance and refused to take another step. The physician covered its eyes with his hands and led the animal inside. Its skinny legs shook, and a rat-tat-tat of loud farts was released towards Grandma’s bier.

The physician threw his arms around the mule’s neck and patted its bony forehead. ‘Scared, fellow?’ he asked tenderly. ‘Don’t be. I’m telling you, don’t be scared. Not even if they lop off your head and leave a scar as big as a bowl! Even if it’s the size of a basin, in twenty years you’ll come back as a real hero!’

‘Okay, talk! Who sent you? What are you here for?’ Granddad asked him.

‘My dad’s ghost sent me here to sell my potion.’ He took his saddlebags off the mule’s back, removed a packet of patent medicine, and began to chant, ‘A dash of croton beans, two of bezoar, three of blister beetle, four of musk, seven onion whites, seven dates, seven grains of paper, seven slices of ginger.’

Everyone’s mouth dropped in astonishment as they looked at the expression on the physician’s face. The mule, having grown used to its surroundings, began pawing the ground casually with its pale, cracked hooves.

‘What kind of potion?’ Black Eye asked.

‘Fast-action abortion medicine,’ the physician said with a cunning smile. ‘Even if you’re made of bronze, iron, or steel, one packet of this medicine, taken in three portions, will drive the baby right out of you. Money-back guarantee.’

‘You goddamned immoral bastard!’ Black Eye lashed out.

‘There’s more, there’s more!’ He reached into his saddlebags and held up another packet as he chanted, ‘A dog’s penis has the emperor, a goat’s penis has the minister. Some rice wine and crown-prince ginseng, the bark of eucommia, some chain fern and ursine seal, the tips of March bamboo shoots as a base.’

‘What’s it good for?’ Black Eye asked.

‘Impotence. Whether you’re as wispy as a silkworm’s thread or as soft as fluffed cotton, one packet, taken in three portions, and you’ll have a rod of steel that’ll get you through the night. Money-back guarantee.’

Black Eye rubbed his shiny forehead with his hand and smiled lewdly. ‘You’re a goddamn wild man engaged in inhuman business!’ he said, and asked to see the potion.

The physician handed Black Eye something that looked like a withered branch. He held it under his nose and sniffed it. ‘You call this a goddamn dog’s penis?’

‘The genuine article, the penis of a black dog!’

‘Old Yu, take a look and tell me if this isn’t the dried root of an ordinary tree.’ Black Eye handed it to Granddad, who held it up to a candle and examined it through squinting eyes.

The physician suddenly began to quake, and his bristly chin twitched noticeably. Father stopped playing with his marble, his heart racing as he watched the physician shrink in front of his eyes.

Suddenly the physician thrust his left hand into his saddlebags and caught everyone by surprise by spraying a packet of medicine in Granddad’s face. Something in his left hand flashed — a green-tinted dagger. Everyone stood stupefied as the physician, agile as a black cat, stabbed at Granddad’s throat. But Granddad had leaped to his feet and instinctively covered his neck with his arm, which took a long gash from the physician’s dagger. Granddad kicked over the table, whipped out his pistol, and got off three quick shots. But since his eyes were stinging from the medicine powder, his shots went wild, one hitting the tent, another slamming into the heavily varnished coffin, and ricocheting out of the tent opening, the third shattering the mule’s right foreleg. It brayed pitifully as a stream of white and red liquid spurted from its smashed kneecap. Tormented by pain, the mule crashed into the paper snow pines and snow willows, which rustled loudly as they crumpled and fell to the ground. The candles around the coffin were sent flying, their glowing wicks and hot wax quickly igniting the paper and straw and immersing Grandma’s momentarily gloomy spirit table in a burst of radiance. The tinder-dry sides of the tent curled towards the tongues of flame, as Iron Society soldiers came to life and converged on the tent.

Amid the growing conflagration, the physician, whose skin shone like ancient bronze, rushed Granddad again with his dagger. Black Eye, the trace of a gloating smile on his lips, stood off to the side but didn’t fire his pistol. Father whipped out his Luger, cocked it, and fired a single round, striking the physician squarely in his right shoulder. His arm sagged, and the dagger dropped harmlessly onto the table. Father cocked his pistol again and a fresh bullet entered the chamber. Granddad shouted, ‘Hold your fire!’