Mo Yan - Red Sorghum

Pocky Leng’s troops came pouring out from behind the dike, like spring bamboo after a rain, rifles at the ready. A hundred yards away, the Jiao-Gao soldiers, clearheaded once again, opened fire on the charging troops, the submachine guns they’d got from Five Troubles’ mounted troops crackling loudly. The Leng soldiers tucked in their heads like a herd of turtles.

Granddad pulled the corpses off Father and dragged him free.

‘Were you hit?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Father said after checking his arms and legs.

‘Let’s get out of here, men!’ Granddad shouted.

Twenty or more blood-spattered Iron Society soldiers stood up by leaning on their rifles and staggered off towards the north. The Jiao-Gao soldiers didn’t fire at them. And although the Leng detachment fired a few shots, their bullets went straight up in the air.

A shot rang out behind Granddad, and his neck felt as though someone had punched him; all the heat in his body quickly flowed to that spot. He reached up and pulled back a palm covered with blood. When he spun around he spotted Black Eye, whose guts had spilled out onto the ground, his large black eyes blinking heavily — once, twice, three times. Two golden tears hung in the corners of his eyes. Granddad smiled at him, and nodded slightly, then turned and led Father slowly away.

Another shot rang out behind them.

Granddad heaved a long sigh. Father turned and saw a little black hole in Black Eye’s temple.

As night fell, the Leng detachment surrounded the Jiao-Gao and Iron Society soldiers, who had waged a desperate fight from the midst of Grandma’s funeral procession. Their ammunition exhausted, the two detachments were huddled together, clenching their teeth and staring with bloodshot eyes at the relentlessly advancing Leng detachment, recently fortified by a squad from the Seventh Army. The setting sun lit up the evening clouds and dyed the groaning black earth. Scattered across it were countless sons and daughters of Northeast Gaomi who had grown to adulthood on bright-red sorghum, and whose blood now formed streams that converged into a river. Scavenger birds were drawn to the spot by the smell of blood. Most were circling above the horses — like greedy children, they wanted the biggest pieces first.

Grandma’s coffin was pitted with pale bullet holes, having served as cover during the gunfight. The roasted chickens, ducks, pigs, and sheep from the roadside shrines had provided sustenance to the Jiao-Gao soldiers, several of whom now launched a bayonet charge but were mowed down by Leng bullets.

‘Hands up! Surrender!’ the heavily armed Leng troops yelled.

Granddad looked over at Little Foot Jiang, who returned his gaze. Neither said a word as they raised their hands.

The white-gloved commander of the Leng detachment strode out from his bodyguard and said with a sneer, ‘Commander Yu, Commander Jiang. Enemies and lovers are destined to meet. Now what do you have to say?’

‘I’m ashamed!’ Granddad said sadly.

‘I’m going to report you for the monstrous crime of disrupting the war against Japan on the Eastern Jiao battlefront!’ Commander Jiang said.

Pocky Leng lashed him with his whip. ‘Your bones may be soft, but your mouth is plenty hard! Take them into the village!’ he ordered with a wave of the hand.

The Leng detachment bivouacked in our village that night, after putting their Jiao-Gao and Iron Society prisoners in a shed, where they were guarded by a dozen soldiers armed with submachine guns. The moans of the wounded and the weeping of young soldiers who longed for their mothers, wives, and lovers didn’t let up all night long.

Like an injured bird, Father snuggled up in Granddad’s arms, where he could hear the beating of Granddad’s heart, fast one moment, slow the next, like the music of tinkling bells. He fell into a sound sleep, and dreamed of a woman who resembled both Grandma and Beauty. She stroked his injured pecker with hot fingers, sending bolts of lightning up his backbone. He woke with a start, feeling a sense of loss. The plaintive wails of the wounded floated over from the fields. He didn’t dare tell Granddad of his dream. As he sat up slowly, he could see the Milky Way through a hole in the shed roof. Suddenly it hit him: I’m almost sixteen!

At daybreak, the Leng detachment pulled down several tents, from which they removed thick ropes. After tying up their prisoners in groups of five, they dragged them over to the willow trees beside the inlet where the Iron Society had tethered its horses the night before. Little Foot Jiang, Granddad, and Father were tied to the tree nearest the bank. Big Tooth Yu’s grave mound lay beneath a solitary tree alongside the inlet. The white water lilies had risen with the water level, their new leaves floating on the surface. Cracks appeared in the dense layer of duckweed to reveal ribbons of green water disturbed by swimming frogs. On the other side of the bare village wall, Father saw yesterday’s scars on today’s fields; the massacred fragments of the funeral procession lay on the road like a gigantic python. Several Leng-detachment soldiers were chopping up the bodies of dead horses, the stench of dark-red blood permeating the chilly air.

Hearing a sigh from Little Foot Jiang, Father spun his head around and watched as the two commanders exchanged looks of misery, four listless eyes beneath lids heavy with exhaustion. The wound on Granddad’s shoulder had begun to fester, and the putrid smell drew red horseflies that had been feasting on the decaying corpses of donkeys and men; the bandage on Little Foot Jiang’s foot had unravelled and was hanging around his ankle like a strip of sausage casing. Trickles of black blood oozed from the spot where Granddad had shot him.

It seemed to Father that both Granddad and Little Foot Jiang were trying to say something, but not a word was spoken. He sighed and turned to gaze out over the broad black plain, shrouded in a milky-white mist.

More than eighty soldiers from the Jiao-Gao regiment and the Iron Society were tied to trees. One of Granddad’s men was sobbing, and the Jiao-Gao soldier next to him nudged him with his shoulder: ‘Don’t cry, Brother-in-Law. Sooner or later we’ll get our revenge against Zhang Zhuxi!’

The old Iron Society soldier wiped his filthy face on his filthy clothes. ‘I’m not crying over your sister! She’s dead, and all the tears in the world won’t bring her back. I’m crying for us. You and I are kin from neighbouring villages who saw each other every time we looked up, so how did things turn out like this? I’m crying for your nephew, my son, Silver Ingot. He was only eighteen when he followed me into the Iron Society so he could avenge your sister. But before he tasted revenge your men killed him. He was on his knees, but you bayoneted him anyway! You mean, cold-blooded bastards! Don’t you have sons of your own?’

The old Iron Society soldier’s tears were burned dry by flames of anger. He roared at the ragged Jiao-Gao soldiers, ‘Swine! You should have been out there fighting the Japanese. Or their yellow puppets! Why did you turn your weapons on the Iron Society! You lousy traitors! You foreign lackeys…’

‘Don’t go too far, Brother-in-Law,’ the Jiao-Gao soldier cautioned.

‘Who are you calling Brother-in-Law? Did you remember you had a brother-in-law when you were throwing your damned grenades at your own nephew?’

‘All you see is one side, old man!’ yelled one of the Jiao-Gao officers. ‘If your Iron Society hadn’t kidnapped Little Foot Jiang and demanded a ransom of a hundred rifles, we’d have had no reason to fight you. We needed the weapons to attack the Japanese, to give us a chance on the battlefield, to propel us into the vanguard of the resistance!’