Big Breasts and Wide Hips (39 page)

A shrill noise sliced through the air from somewhere beyond the crowd; it sounded a bit like a little whelp crying for the nipple, but even more like the cries of gulls circling boats on the river, which we'd heard many years earlier. Mr. Qin the Second's laughter stopped abruptly; the look of mirthful pride on his face vanished. We all turned to see where that strange noise had come from. It had, we discovered, come from Third Sister, Lingdi. But little of what made her “Third Sister” remained; when she uttered the strange, shrill noise that sent chills up our spines, she'd transformed almost completely into the Bird Fairy: her nose had hooked into a beak, her eyes had turned yellow, her neck had retreated into her torso, her hair had changed into feathers, and her arms were now wings, which she flapped up and down as she climbed the increasingly steep hillside, shrieking as if alone in the world and heading straight for the precipice. Sima Ting reached out to stop her, but failed, coming away with only a torn piece of cloth. By the time we snapped out of our bewilderment, she was already soaring through the air below the precipice — I prefer the word
soaring
to
plunging.
A thin green mist rose from the grass below.

Second Sister was the first to cry. The sound was disturbing. It was perfectly natural for the Bird Fairy to fly off a precipice, so what was she crying about? But then, First Sister, whom I'd always considered sneaky and cynical, began to cry. Inexplicably, even Eighth Sister, who couldn't see a thing, joined in. Her cries sounded a bit as if she were talking in her sleep and were filled with the passion of someone seeking permission to vent her emotions. One day, long after the event, Eighth Sister confided in me that the crunch of Third Sister hitting the ground sounded to her like the shattering of glass.

The excited crowd was stupefied, faces frosted, eyes glazed. Second Sister signaled a soldier to bring over a mule, which she mounted by grabbing the animal's short neck and swinging up onto its back. She dug her heels into the mule's belly, sending it into an uneasy trot. Sima Liang ran after the mule, but was stopped by a soldier before he'd taken more than a couple of steps. The soldier swept him up in his arms and sat him on the horse his father, Sima Ku, had just ridden up on.

Like a routed army, we headed down Reclining Ox Mountain. What were Babbitt and Niandi doing under the white cloud at that moment? As I rode my mule down the mountain path, I racked my brain trying to conjure up an image of Niandi and Babbitt inside the parachute. What I think I saw was: He was kneeling beside her, holding a stalk of bristlegrass in his hand and brushing the velvety tassel against her breasts, just as I had done not long before. She was lying on her back, her eyes closed, whimpering contentedly, like a dog when you rub its belly. See there, its legs rise into the air, its tail swishes back and forth on the ground. She's doing whatever it takes to please Babbitt! Not long before, she had nearly turned my backside raw because I'd tickled her with a stalk of grass. That thought angered me, and yet there was more to it than just anger. An erotic feeling was there as well, like flames licking at my heart. “Bitch!” I cursed, sticking my hands inside, as if to choke her. Laidi twisted around. “What's wrong with you?” she asked. “Babbitt,” I muttered, “Babbitt, the American demon Babbitt has covered up Sixth Sister.”

By the time we'd made our slow, winding way down the mountain, Sima Ku and Babbitt had freed themselves from their cords and were standing there, heads bowed, the ground in front of them covered by lush green grass; Third Sister lay heavily in the muddy ground, face-up. Splashes of mud and clods of uprooted grass dotted the area around her. The avian expression had left her face without a trace. Her eyes were open slightly; a sense of tranquillity had settled onto her still smiling face. Cold glints of light emerging from her eyes pierced my chest and went straight to my heart. Her face was ashen, her lips appeared covered with chalk. Threads of blood had seeped from her nostrils, her ears, and the corners of her eyes, and several alarmed red ants were darting across her face.

Second Sister limped over as fast as she could, fell to her knees beside Third Sister's body, and shrieked, “Third Sister, Third Sister, Third Sister …” She reached under her neck, as if to help her up. But the neck was as soft and pliable as a rubber band, and she merely stretched it out. The head lay in the crook of Second Sister's arm, like a dead goose. Second Sister quickly laid Third Sister's head back down on the ground and picked up her hand. It too was as soft and pliable as rubber. Second Sister cried and cried. “Third Sister, oh, Third Sister, why have you left us …”

First Sister neither cried nor shouted. She merely knelt beside Third Sister and looked up at the people standing around them. Her eyes were unfocused, her gaze narrow, shallow, diffuse. I heard her sigh and watched as she reached back and plucked a velvety pompon, a stately, gentle purple flower with which she wiped off the blood that had seeped out of Third Sister's nostrils, then her eyes, and finally her ears. Once she'd cleaned up the blood, she brought the purple flower up to her nose and sniffed it, every inch of it, and as she did so, I saw a strange smile spread across her face and a light in her eyes that belonged to a person in a certain realm of intoxication. I had the vague feeling that the Bird Fairy's transcendent, otherworldly spirit was being transferred to the body of Laidi by way of that purple velvety pompon of a flower.

Sixth Sister, who concerned me the most, elbowed her way through the crowd of onlookers and walked slowly up to Third Sister's body. She neither knelt nor cried. She just stood quietly, fidgeting with the tip of her braid, her head bowed, blushing one minute, ashen-faced the next, like a misbehaving little girl. But she already had the carriage and figure of a young woman; her hair was black and glossy, her buttocks rose up behind her, almost as if a bushy red tail were hidden there. She was wearing a white silk hand-me-down cheongsam from Second Sister, Zhaodi. With high slits on the sides, her long legs showed through. She was barefoot, and there were red scratches on her calves from the sharp-edged leaves of couch grass. The back of her cheongsam was soiled by crushed grass and wildflowers — spots of red here and there amid bright green stains … my thoughts leaped across and squirmed beneath the white cloud that had so gently covered her and Babbitt, bristlegrass … bushy tail… my eyes were like bloodsucking leeches, fastened to her chest. Niandi's high arching breasts, nipples like cherries, were magnified by the silk of her cheongsam. My mouth filled with sour saliva. From that moment on, whenever I saw a pair of beautiful breasts, my mouth would fill with saliva; I yearned to hold them, suck on them, I yearned to kneel before all the lovely breasts of the world, offer myself as their most faithful son … there where they jutted out, the white silk was marked by a stain, like dog slobber, and my heart ached, as if I'd been an eyewitness to the tableau of Babbitt biting my sixth sister's nipples. The blue-eyed whelp had gazed up at her chin, while she had stroked the golden hair of his head with the same hands that had so viciously attacked my backside, and all I'd done was gently tickle her, while he had actually bit her. This wicked pain deadened my reaction to Third Sister's death. But then, Second Sister's weeping unsettled me, while Eighth Sister's crying was the sound of nature, which called to mind the cherished memory of Third Sister's magnificence and her lofty actions that could make trees bend and leaves fall, that could cause the earth to tremble and the heavens to quake, and could incite ghosts to cry and demons to wail.

Babbitt took several steps forward, bringing into focus his reddened lips, so tender and soft, and his red face, which was overlain with white fuzz. He had white lashes, a big nose, and a long neck. Everything about him disgusted me. He spread out his arms. “What a shame,” he remarked, “a terrible shame. Who could have imagined it…” All this he said in a peculiar foreign language that none of us understood, followed by some remarks in Chinese, which we did understand: “She was delusional, thinking she was a bird …”

The bystanders began talking among themselves, most likely about the relationship between the Bird Fairy and Birdman Han, possibly bringing Speechless Sun into the conversation, maybe even the two children. But I wasn't interested, and could not have heard what they were saying anyway, since there was a buzzing in my ear, coming from a hornets' nest on the cliff. Beneath the nest, a raccoon sat on its haunches in front of a marmot, a round, fleshy animal with tiny eyes set close together. Guo Fuzi, the village sorcerer, who was adept at planchette writing and catching ghosts, also had tiny, shifty eyes set close on either side of the bridge of his nose, and had earned the nickname “Marmot.” He stepped out from the crowd and said, “Elder uncle, she's dead, and no amount of crying will bring her back to life. It's a hot day, so take her home, give her a funeral, and put her to rest in the ground.” I didn't know what apron strings he relied upon to call Sima Ku “elder uncle,” nor did I know who might be able to tell me. But Sima Ku nodded and wrung his hands. “Shit,” he said, “what a terrible turn of events!”

Marmot stood behind my second sister, his tiny eyes shifting back and forth. “Elder aunt,” he said, “she's dead, and it's the living who count. If you keep crying like that, now that you're with child, a real tragedy could result. Besides, was our aunty here a real person? When all is said and done, she wasn't, she was a fairy among birds that had been sent down to the land of mortals as punishment for pecking at the Western Mother's immortality peaches. Now that her allotted time is up, naturally she has returned to the fairyland where she belongs. You saw with your own eyes how she looked as she floated down from the precipice, as if drunk, as if falling asleep amid heaven and earth, floating so gently. If she were human, she could not have fallen with such ease and grace …” As Marmot spoke of heaven and earth, he tried to pull Second Sister to her feet. “Third Sister,” she kept saying, “such a terrible death …”

“All right,” Sima Ku said, with an impatient wave of his hand, “that's enough. Stop crying. For someone like her, life was a punishment. Death has brought her immortality.”

“It's your fault,” Second Sister complained. “You and your flyboy experiment!”

“I flew, didn't I?” Sima Ku said. “You women don't understand such momentous events. Staff Officer Ma, have some men carry her back home, then buy a coffin and take care of the funeral arrangements. Adjutant Liu, take the parachutes back up the mountain. Adviser Babbitt and I are going to fly again.”

Marmot pulled Second Sister to her feet and said to the crowd, “Come, you people, lend a hand.”

First Sister was still kneeling on the ground, sniffing her flower, the one stained with Third Sister's blood. Marmot said to her, “Elder aunt, there's no need to be so sad. She has returned to her fairyland, and that should make everyone happy …”

The words were barely out of his mouth when First Sister looked up, smiled mysteriously, and stared at Marmot. He muttered something, but did not have the nerve to say more. He hastily mixed with the crowd.

Laidi held up her purple floral pompon and got to her feet, a smile on her face. She stepped over the Bird Fairy's corpse, stared at Babbitt, and shifted her body under her loose black robe. Her movements were jumpy, like someone with a full bladder. She took a few mincing steps, threw away her floral pompon, and flung herself at Babbitt, wrapping her arms around his neck and flattening her body against his. “Lust,” she muttered, as if feverish, “suffering …”

Babbitt had to struggle to break free of her grip. With sweat coating his face, he said, mixing foreign words with local, “Please, don't… it's not you I love …”

Like a red-eyed dog, First Sister spewed every vile comment she knew, then flung herself at Babbitt again. He awkwardly avoided the assault — once, twice, three times — eventually screening himself behind Sixth Sister. Unhappy at being his protection, she began spinning, like a dog trying to shake off a bell tied to its tail. First Sister spun right along with her, while Babbitt, bent at the waist, fought to keep Sixth Sister between him and the attacker. They spun so much it made me dizzy, and a kaleidoscope of images whirled in front of my eyes: arching hips, chests on the attack, the glossy backs of heads, sweaty faces, clumsy legs … My head swam, my heart was a tangle of emotions. First Sister's screams, Sixth Sister's shouts, Babbitt's heavy breathing, and the onlookers' ambiguous looks. Oily smiles decorated the soldiers' faces as their lips parted and their chins quivered. The goats, their full udders nearly touching the ground, headed home in a lazy column, my goat leading the way. The shiny coats of the horses and mules. Birds shrieked as they circled above, which must have meant that their eggs or hatchlings were hidden in the nearby grass. That poor, w
^r
retched grass. Flower stems broken by careless feet. A season of debauchery. Second Sister finally managed to grab a handful of First Sister's black robe. First Sister reached out to Babbitt with both hands. The filthy language pouring from her mouth made people blush. Her robe ripped at the seams, laying bare her shoulder and part of her back. Second Sister jumped up and slapped First Sister, who stopped struggling immediately; foamy drool had gathered at the corners of her mouth, her eyes were glazed. Second Sister slapped her over and over, harder and harder. Dark trickles of blood snaked out of her nostrils and her head slumped against her chest like a drooping sunflower, just before she fell headfirst to the ground.

Exhausted, Second Sister sat down in the grass, gasping for air. Her gasps soon turned to sobs. She pounded her own knees with her fists, as if setting up a rhythm for her sobs.

Sima Ku could not hide the look of excitement on his face. His eyes were fixed on First Sister's exposed back. Coarse, heavy breathing. He kept rubbing his trousers with his hands, as if they were stained by something that would never rub off.