Mo Yan - Red Sorghum

Father saw how Granddad was looking at Grandma, darkly malevolent, like a bird of prey about to pounce. Her back hunched suddenly as she bent over the bed of the wagon and began thumping the comforter, her face covered with tears and snot: ‘Little sister… dear little sister… Xiangguan… my baby…’

Granddad’s anger softened in the face of Grandma’s anguish. Uncle Arhat walked up beside her and said softly, ‘Mistress, don’t cry. Let’s take them inside.’

Grandma picked up Little Auntie Xiangguan’s body and carried it into the house. Granddad followed her with Second Grandma.

Father stayed on the street to watch Uncle Arhat lead the mule out from between the shafts of the wagon, its sides rubbed raw by the narrow shafts. Then he untied the other one from behind the wagon. They shook themselves violently, filling the sky with fine dust clouds, before Uncle Arhat led them into the eastern compound. Father fell in behind him. ‘Go home, Douguan,’ Uncle Arhat said, ‘go on home.’

Grandma was sitting on the floor stoking a fire in the stove, on which a half-filled pot of water stood. As soon as Father slipped into the room, he spotted Second Grandma lying on the kang, eyes open, cheeks twitching ceaselessly. He also saw Little Auntie Xiangguan lying across the top of the kang, a red bundle covering her hideous countenance. Once again he thought back to that night when he had accompanied Grandma to Dead Baby Hollow to weigh the dead infant. The braying of the mules in the eastern compound sounded incredibly like the owl’s screeching. Soon, Xiangguan would be lying in Dead Baby Hollow to feed the wild dogs. He had never dreamed that the dead could look so hideous, yet he could barely resist removing the red bundle to stare at Xiangguan’s repulsive face.

Grandma walked into the room with a brass basin full of hot water and placed it beside the kang. ‘Go outside!’ she said, giving Father a shove.

Reluctantly, resentfully, he went into the outer room and heard the door shut behind him. Unable to control his curiosity, he stuck his eye up against a crack in the door to see what was happening inside. Granddad and Grandma were kneeling beside the kang undressing Second Grandma. When they flung her clothes to the floor, her soaked pants landed with a loud thud. The nauseating stink of blood assailed Father’s nostrils. Second Grandma flailed her arms weakly as ghastly sounds emerged from her mouth.

‘Hold her arms down,’ Grandma pleaded. Both Grandma’s and Granddad’s faces were blurred in the rising steam from the brass basin.

Grandma took a steaming sheepskin towel and wrung it dry, the excess water dripping loudly into the basin. The towel was so hot it scalded her hands, even when she flipped it from one to the other. After shaking it open, she placed it on Second Grandma’s soiled face. Poor Second Grandma twisted her neck, and screams of terror, owl-like screeches, filtered up through the towel. When Grandma removed the towel, it was filthy. She swished it in the basin, then wrung it dry, and slowly wiped down Second Grandma’s body.

Less and less steam rose from the brass basin, while beads of condensed steam dotted Grandma’s face. ‘Dump the dirty water,’ she said to Granddad, ‘and bring me some clean water.’

Father ran out into the yard to watch Granddad. His back was bent as he staggered over to the low wall of the privy to dump the water on the other side. Father ran back and put his eye up to the crack in the door again. By now Second Grandma’s body was glowing like polished sandalwood. Her protests were low and laboured, no more than agonised moans. Grandma had Granddad lift her up so she could remove the kang mat. Then she took a clean one and spread it over the kang. After Granddad laid Second Grandma back down, Grandma put a big wad of cotton between her legs and covered her with a sheet. ‘Little sister,’ she said softly, ‘sleep, go to sleep, Zhan’ao and I will stay with you.’

Second Grandma closed her eyes peacefully.

Granddad went out to dump some more water.

While Grandma was washing Little Auntie Xiangguan’s body, Father slipped rashly into the room and stood in front of the kang. Grandma saw him but didn’t chase him away. As she wiped the dried blood from Little Auntie’s body, pearl-like strands of tears fell from her eyes. When she was finished, she leaned her head against the bedroom wall and didn’t move for a long time, as though she, too, were dead.

At sunset Granddad wrapped Little Auntie’s body in a blanket and held it in his arms. Father followed him to the door. ‘Go on back, Douguan. Stay with Mom and Second Mom.’

Uncle Arhat stopped Granddad at the southern-compound gate. ‘Manager Yu,’ he said, ‘you go back, too. I’ll take care of it.’

Granddad returned to the doorway, where he held Father’s hand and watched Uncle Arhat walk out of the village.

ON THE TWENTY-THIRD day of the twelfth month in 1973, Eighteen Stabs Geng celebrated his eightieth birthday. Waking at the crack of dawn, he overheard the weak, sickly voice of an old neighbour woman — ‘Yongqi…’ — and the gravelly voice of a man — ‘Feeling better, Ma?’ The old woman replied, ‘No, I’m dizzier when I wake up than when I go to bed….’

Eighteen Stabs Geng strained to sit up by resting his hands on the icy mat. He, too, felt dizzy this morning. A cold wind whistled outside, driving snow flurries against the murky paper on the window. He threw his moth-eaten dog pelt over his shoulder, reached out for his dragon-head cane leaning against the wall behind the door, and stumbled out the door. The yard was covered by a thick blanket of snow, and as he gazed at the crumbling earth wall all he could see was a sea of silvery white, dotted here and there with sorghum husks.

The snowfall showed no sign of letting up. He turned back, a sense of the survivor’s good fortune in his heart, but when he raised the lids of the rice and flour vats with the head of his cane, both were empty. Last night’s eyes hadn’t tricked him. His stomach had not been visited by food for two days now, and his useless old intestines twitched and twisted. It was time to swallow his pride and ask for some grain. Although his belly was empty and he was shivering from the cold, he knew that getting grain out of the hardhearted branch secretary was not going to be easy. He decided to boil some water to warm his belly before going out for a showdown with that bastard. He raised the lid of the water vat. No water, just chunks of ice.

It dawned on him that he hadn’t lit the stove for three days, and that it had been ten days since his last visit to the well. He went into the yard and scooped up twenty or thirty gourdfuls of snow, which he dumped into his cracked, unscrubbed pot. Then he looked around for some firewood, but there was none. So he went into the bedroom, tore a handful of straw from the mat covering the kang, and hacked up some woven sorghum cushions and a block of straw with his cleaver. He knelt down and started a fire with his flintstone. Matches that used to sell for two fen a box now required a ration coupon, which he didn’t have, and he couldn’t afford matches that didn’t require a coupon. He was a penniless old bastard.

Tongues of red flame began to lick out of the black hole in the stove, so he pressed up close to warm his freezing belly. The chill melted away, but his back was as cold as ever. After quickly stuffing more straw into the stove, he turned his back to the fire. The chill melted from his back, but ice re-formed on his belly. A body cold on one side and warm on the other only increased his misery, so he concentrated on feeding straw into the stove to get some water boiling. With a bellyful of hot water, he could stand up to that little bastard, and if he couldn’t squeeze any grain out of him, at least he’d take him away from his toasty stove for a while.