Big Breasts and Wide Hips (53 page)

“If you're worried about your cart, you can come along with us. Our porter company has enough food for one more man. Once the battle's over, you can take your cart with you.”

“But, sir, I just escaped from there,” Wang Chao said tearfully.

“Are you going to make me take out my pistol and put a bullet in you?” the enraged political instructor demanded. “We're not afraid to spill blood and make sacrifices for the revolution. I can't believe you're making such a fuss over a little cart.”

“Aunt,” Wang Chao said pathetically. “You're my witness.”

Mother nodded.

Wang Jin and his son gleefully walked off with Wang Chao's rubber-tired cart, as the one-armed man nodded politely to Mother, before turning and running off to catch up with his men.

Wang Chao sat down on his quilt, a pained look on his face, mumbling to himself. “Talk about bad luck! Why does everything happen to me? Who did I offend?” Tears slid down his fat cheeks.

We finally made it to the foot of the mountain, where the gravel road spoked off into ten or more narrow paths that wound their way up the mountainside. That evening, the refugees gathered in groups where all sorts of dialects were spoken, to pass on conflicting reports. We suffered through the night huddled amid the underbrush at the foot of the mountain. Dull explosions, like peals of thunder, sounded both to the north and the south, as artillery shells tore through the darkness in sweeping arcs. The air turned cold and damp as the night deepened, and bitter winds snaked out of mountain crevasses, violently shaking the leaves and branches of our shelter and setting fallen leaves rustling. Foxes in their dens cried mournfully. Sick children moaned like unhappy cats; the coughs from old folks sounded like gongs being struck. It was a terrible night, and when dawn broke, we would find dozens of frozen corpses lining the mountain hollows — children, old folks, even young men and women. Our family owed its survival to the unusual low trees, with their golden leaves, that protected us. They were the only trees whose leaves had not fallen. We lay together on the thick, dry grass beneath the trees, huddled under the one quilt we'd brought. My goat lay up against my back and shielded me from the wind. The hours after midnight were the worst. The rumble of artillery fire to the south only increased the stillness of the night; people's moans cut deeply into our hearts and made us tremble. A melody much like the familiar “cat's meow,” our local drama, sounded in our ears. It was a woman's sobs. Amid the overwhelming silence, the sounds sliced into the rocks, cold and damp, and dark clouds stuck to the icy quilt that covered us. Then the rain came, freezing rain; raindrops fell on our quilt, they fell on the rustling yellow leaves, they fell on the mountainside, they fell on the refugees' heads, and they fell on the thick coats of baying wolves. Most of the raindrops turned to ice before they hit the ground, where they formed a hard crust.

I was reminded of that night years before when Elder Fan Three had led us away from sure death, his torch held high, flames the red of a roan colt dancing in the air. That night I'd been immersed in a warm sea of milk, holding on to a full breast with both hands and feeling myself fly up to Paradise. But now the frightful apparition began, like a golden ray of light splitting the darkness, or like the beam of light from Babbitt's film projector; thousands of icy droplets danced in the light, like beetles, as a woman with long, flowing hair appeared, a cape like sunset draped over her shoulders, its embedded pearls glittering and casting shimmers of light, some long and some short. Her face kept changing: first Laidi; then the Bird Fairy; then the single-breasted woman, Old Jin; and then suddenly the American woman …

“Jintong!” Mother was calling me. She brought me out of my hallucinations. In the darkness, she and First Sister were massaging my arms and legs to bring me back before I fell into the abyss of death.

The sound of someone crying emerged from the underbrush in the hazy sunlight of early morning. People faced with the stiffened corpses of loved ones gave vent to their grief with loud wails. But thanks to the yellow leaves on the trees above us and the tattered quilt that covered us, all seven of our hearts were still beating. Mother handed each of us one of the pills Pandi had given her. I said I didn't want mine, so Mother shoved it into the mouth of my goat. After chewing up the pill, the goat turned its attention to the leaves of the underbrush; they, like the branches from which they hung, were covered by a filmy layer of ice, which also hung from boulders on the mountainside. There was no wind, but a freezing rain continued to fall, making a loud tattoo on the branches. The surface of the mountain glistened like a mirror.

One of the refugees, leading a donkey with a woman's corpse draped over its back, was trying to make his way up one of the mountain paths. But the going was so treacherous that the donkey slipped on the ice, and every time it got to its feet, it hit the ground again. The man wanted to help, but he invariably fell down too. It did not take long for their plight to result in the corpse slipping off the animal's back and into a ditch. Just then a golden-pelted wildcat emerged from one of the mountain hollows carrying a child in its mouth as it bounded awkwardly from one boulder to another, struggling to keep its balance as it moved. A woman whose hair was in disarray was chasing the wildcat, shrieking and wailing as she ran, but she too kept losing her footing on the icy rocks. Unfazed, every time she fell, she scrambled to her feet and continued the chase, for which she paid a heavy price: chin split open, teeth knocked out, a gash on the back of her head, broken fingernails, a sprained ankle, a dislocated shoulder, and traumatized internal organs. And still she kept going, until the wildcat slowed down enough for her to grab it by the tail.

Danger lurked for everyone: if they tried to move, they fell; if they didn't try, they froze to death. And since freezing to death was not an option, they kept falling, and soon lost sight of their evacuation goal. The mountaintop monastery had by then turned white and gave off a frigid glare. So did the trees halfway up the mountain. At that height, the freezing rain turned to snow. Lacking the nerve to climb to the top, the people merely kept moving at the foot of the mountain. We looked up and spotted the body of Wang Chao the barber hanging from a rubber tree; he had looped his belt over a low-hanging branch, the weight of his body nearly breaking it off from the trunk. The toes of his shoes were touching the ground, his pants were down around his knees, and his padded jacket was tied around his waist to salvage his image, even in death. One look at that purple face and protruding tongue, and I turned away in disgust. But too late to keep the image of his dead face from appearing often in my dreams from that day on. No one gave him a second thought, although several simple-looking people were fighting over his quilt and the dog pelt that covered it. In the midst of their grappling, a tall young man suddenly screamed in pain; a ratty little man beside him had bitten off a chunk of one of his protruding ears. The fellow spat the earlobe into his hand, looked it over, and handed it back to it owner, before picking up the heavy quilt and dog pelt. To keep from falling, he took little hops over to the side of an old man, who promptly whacked him on the head with a forked stick used to keep a cart from rolling away. The little fellow hit the ground like a sack of rice. The old man picked up the quilt, backed up against a tree, holding on to his prize with one hand and brandishing his forked stick with the other. Some foolhardy young devils entertained thoughts of taking the quilt away from the old man, but a mere tap of his forked stick sent them tumbling to the ground. The old man was wearing a long robe cinched at the waist with a length of coarse cloth from which hung his pipe and tobacco pouch. His long white beard was dotted with icy globules. “Come on if you're willing to die!” he shouted shrilly as his face seemed to lengthen and green lights shot from his eyes. His would-be attackers fled in panic. Mother reached a decision: Turn back!

Picking up the handles of the cart, she wobbled off in a southwestern direction. The ice-covered axle creaked and groaned. But we set an example for others, who, without a word, fell in behind us — some even passed us in their hurry to get back to their homes.

Shards of ice crackled and exploded beneath the wheels, but were quickly replaced by the freezing rain that continued to fall. Before long, ice the size of buckshot pierced our earlobes and stung our faces. The vast countryside set up a loud cacophony. We headed back much the same way as we'd come: Mother pushing the cart from behind, while First Sister pulled from the front. First Sister's shoes split open in the back, exposing her chapped, frozen heels, and forced her to walk as if she were performing a rice-sprout dance. Every time Mother tipped the cart over, First Sister went down with it. The rope was pulled so taut that she fell head over heels more than once, until she cried out with every step she took. Zaohua and I were crying too, but not Mother. Her eyes had a blue cast as she bit down on her lip for strength. She moved cautiously, but with courage and steely determination. Her tiny feet were like two little spades that dug solidly into the ground. Eighth Sister followed silently behind, holding on to Mother's clothes with a hand that looked like a rotten, water-soaked eggplant.

We were in a hurry to get home, and by noontime we'd reached the broad, poplar-lined gravel road. Although the sun hadn't broken through the clouds, the sky was bright and the road seemed paved with glazed tiles. Snowflakes gradually replaced the hailstones, turning the road, the trees, and the surrounding fields white. We saw many corpses along the way, human and animal, and an occasional sparrow or magpie or wild hen. But no dead crows. Their black feathers were nearly blue against the white backdrop, and glossy. They feasted on the dead, making quite a racket.

Then our luck improved. First, next to a dead horse we found half a sack of chopped straw mixed with broad beans and bran. That filled my goat's belly, and what was left was used to cover the feet of Big and Little Mute to protect them against the wind and snow. Once the goat had eaten its fill, it licked snow for the moisture. I knew what it meant when it nodded in my direction. After we were back on the road, Zaohua said she smelled roasted wheat in the air. Mother told her to follow the smell to its source. In a little hut overlooking a cemetery, we discovered the body of a dead soldier; lying beside him were two sacks filled with roasted wheat. We'd grown used to seeing dead people, and were no longer afraid. We spent the night in that hut.

First, Mother and First Sister dragged the dead young soldier outside. He'd killed himself by holding his rifle against his chest and putting the muzzle into his mouth, and then, after removing his worn sock, pulling the trigger with his toe. The bullet had blown off the top of his head; rats had eaten his ears and nose and had gnawed his fingers down to the bone, until they looked like willow twigs. Hordes of rats glared red-eyed as Mother and First Sister dragged him outside. Even though she was exhausted, Mother wanted to give thanks for the food, so she knelt on the frozen ground and, using the soldier's bayonet, dug a shallow hole to bury his head. A little dugout like that meant next to nothing to a bunch of rats who survived by digging holes, but it brought comfort to Mother.

The hut was barely big enough to accommodate our little family and its goat. We blocked the door with our cart, with Mother sitting closest to the door, armed with the soldier's brain-spattered rifle. As night fell, clusters of people tried to squeeze into our little hut; there were plenty of thieves and no-accounts among them, but Mother frightened them all away with her rifle. One man with a big mouth and malevolent eyes challenged her: “You know how to shoot that?” he said as he tried to force his way in. Mother poked at him with the rifle. She didn't know how to shoot it. So Laidi took it away from her, pulled back the bolt, ejecting a spent cartridge, then pushed the bolt forward, sending a bullet into the chamber. Then she aimed the rifle above the man's head and pulled the trigger. A column of smoke rose to the ceiling. Watching the way Laidi handled the weapon made me think of her glorious history as she followed Sha Yueliang from battlefield to battlefield. The big-mouthed man crawled away like a whipped dog. Mother looked at Laidi with gratitude in her eyes, before getting up and moving inside so the new guard could take her place.

That night I slept like a baby, not waking up until red sunbeams had lit up the snowy white world. I wanted to get down on my knees and beg Mother to let us stay in this ghostly little hut, stay here next to this towering cemetery, stay in this snow-covered pine grove. “Let's not leave this happy spot, this lucky spot.” But she picked up the handles of her cart and led us back on the road. The rifle lay alongside Shengli, under our tattered quilt.

There was half a foot of snow on the road; it crunched beneath our feet and the wheels of our cart. No longer falling as often, we were able to make pretty good time. The glare of the sun was blinding, making us look especially dark by contrast, no matter what we were wearing. Mother w
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as bolder than usual that day, maybe because of the presence of the rifle in the basket and Laidi's ability to use it. She turned into a bit of a tyrant at around noon, when a retreating soldier, a straggler from the south, the sling around his arm giving the illusion that he was wounded, decided he'd search our cart. Mother slapped him so hard his gray cap flew off. He took off running without even stopping to retrieve his cap, which Mother picked up and clapped onto the head of my goat. The goat wore its new cap proudly; the cold, hungry refugees around us parted their lips and, with what energy they had left, managed an array of laughter that actually sounded worse than weeping and wailing.

Early the next day, after my morning meal of goat's milk, my spirits soared; my thoughts were lively and my perceptions keen. As I looked around, I discovered the county government's printing machine and the document-filled metal cases lying abandoned by the side of the road. Where were the porters? No way of knowing. And the mule company? Gone too.