Big Breasts and Wide Hips (63 page)

Escorted by a squad of militiamen, Inspector Yang walked into the room, his prosthetic leg crackling. He had sagging jowls and rolls of fat under his armpits that made his arms stick out from his body, like a yoke hanging down from his neck. He sat behind the table and leisurely began preparations for the interrogation. First he took a Mauser that glistened blue from his back pocket, cocked it, and laid it on the table. Then he told one of the militiamen to hand him a bullhorn, which he laid beside the pistol. Next came a tobacco pouch and a pipe, which he laid beside the bullhorn. Finally, he bent down, removed his prosthetic leg — shoe, sock, and all — and placed it on a corner of the table. The leg was a terrifying pink under the gleaming white lamplight, but was marred by a series of black scars on the calf. The shoe and the sock were both badly worn. The thing rested on the table like one of Inspector Yang's loyal bodyguards.

Other district officials sat somberly on either side of Inspector Yang, pens poised over notebooks. Militiamen stood their rifles against the wall, rolled up their sleeves, and picked up whips and clubs. Like yamen guards, they lined up in rows across from each other, breathing heavily

Lu Shengli, who had surrendered voluntarily, was grasping Mother's leg and weeping. Teardrops hung on the tips of Eighth Sister's long eyelashes, even though she was smiling. She was bewitching even under the most trying circumstances, and I began to feel guilty about keeping her from Mother's breasts when we were young. Mother was staring at the lamps, expressionless.

Inspector Yang filled his pipe and struck a match against the rough surface of the table. It lit with a pop. His lips smacked noisily as he drew on the pipe to get the tobacco burning. Then he tossed the match away and covered the bowl with his thumb before sucking deeply and noisily and expelling the white smoke through his nostrils. He removed the burnt ashes by knocking the pipe bowl against the leg of his stool. After laying the pipe on the table, he picked up the bullhorn, placed it up to his mouth, so that the open end faced the masses outside the window. “Shangguan Lu, Shangguan Laidi, Shangguan Jintong, Sima Liang, Sha Zaohua,” he announced in a gravelly voice, “do you know why we've brought you here?”

We all turned to look at Mother, who was still staring at the lamp.

Her face was so puffy the skin was nearly translucent. Her lips twitched a time or two, but she said nothing. She merely shook her head.

Inspector Yang said, “Shaking your head is no way to answer my question. Based upon revelations by the masses and a full investigation by the authorities, we have gathered a mass of evidence. Over a long period of time, the Shangguan family, under the leadership of Shangguan Lu, concealed the whereabouts of Northeast Gaomi Township's number one counterrevolutionary, a man whose blood debts are incalculable, the public enemy Sima Ku. In addition, during one recent night, a member of the family vandalized the class education exhibition hall and filled the church blackboard with reactionary slogans. For these crimes alone, your entire family can be shot. But in line with current policy, we're prepared to give you a chance, a last chance, to save your lives. We want you to reveal the hiding place of the evil bandit, Sima Ku, so that this feral wolf can be brought to justice without delay. Second, we want you confess to vandalizing the class education exhibition hall and writing reactionary slogans, even though we already know who the guilty party is. We expect complete honesty, and for that you can expect leniency. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

We reacted with silence.

Inspector Yang snatched up his pistol and banged it against the table, without so much as lowering the bullhorn, which was still pointed at the window. “Shangguan Lu,” he bellowed, “did you hear what

I said?”

In a steady voice, Mother said, “This is a frame-up.” “A frame-up,” the rest of us echoed her.

“A frame-up, you say? We are not in the business of framing innocent people, nor in the business of letting guilty ones off the hook. String them all up.”

We fought and we cried, but all that did was delay the inevitable. They tied our hands behind us and strung us up from the rafters of Sima Ku's house. Mother hung from the southernmost end, followed by Shangguan Laidi, Sima Liang, and me at the other hand. Sha Zaohua was behind me. My arms hurt, but that was bearable; the pain in my shoulder joints, on the other hand, was excruciating. Our heads slumped forward, our necks stretched out as far as they would go. It was impossible to keep our legs straight, impossible not to straighten out our insteps, and impossible to keep our toes from pointing straight down to the floor. I couldn't stop whimpering, but Sima Liang didn't make a sound. Shangguan Laidi was moaning, but Sha Zaohua kept silent. The weight of Mother's body stretched the rope as taut as a wire; she was the first to start sweating and the one who sweated the most. Nearly colorless steam rose from her scraggly hair. Shengli and Yunii held on to her legs and swung back and forth, so the militiamen pulled them away like a pair of baby chicks. They rushed back and were pulled away again. “Inspector Yang,” the men said, “want us to string these two up too?” “No!” Inspector Yang said firmly. “We do things by the book.”

Without meaning to, Shengli pulled off one of Mother's shoes. Her sweat ran all the way down to the tip of her big toe, and from there fell like rain to the floor.

“Ready to talk?” Inspector Yang asked us. “Come clean, and I'll take you down at once.”

Straining to lift her head and catch her breath, Mother said rasply, “Let the kids down … I'm the one you want…”

“We'll make them talk!” he announced to the window. “Beat them, and I mean hard!”

The militiamen picked up their whips and clubs and, with terrifying shouts, began to beat us systematically. I shrieked in pain, and so did First Sister and Mother. Sha Zaohua reacted with stony silence, and had probably passed out. As for Inspector Yang and the district officials, they pounded the table and shouted insults the whole time. Several of the militiamen dragged Sima Ting over to the slaughter rack, where they began beating him on his buttocks with a metal club, each stroke followed by a cry of agony. “Second Brother, you son of a bitch, get over here and confess to your crimes! You can't beat me like this, not after all I've done …” The militiaman swung his club over and over, without a word, as if pounding a piece of rotten meat. One of the officials smacked a leather water bag with his whip, while a second militiaman beat a burlap bag with his whip. Shouts and loud cracks, some real and others not, filled the room with a jumble of noises; the whips and clubs danced in the bright light of the gas lamps.

After about the time it takes for a class to end, they untied the rope fixed to the window lattice, and Mother crumpled to the floor. Then they untied another, and First Sister crumpled to the floor. The rest of us followed. A militiaman carried over a bucket of water and flung cold water on our faces with a ladle, bringing us around immediately. Every joint in my body was numb.

“Tonight has just been a warning!” Inspector Yang bellowed. “I want you to think good and hard. Are you going to talk or aren't you? If you talk, your previous crimes will be forgiven. If you don't, then the worst is yet to come.” He picked up his prosthetic limb, put away his pipe, and holstered his pistol, then ordered the militiamen to guard us well before turning and hobbling out the door in the company of his bodyguards, creaking with each step.

The militiamen bolted the door and hunkered down by the wall to smoke, their rifles cradled in their arms. We huddled up next to Mother, whimpering and unable to say a word. She stroked our heads with her puffy hand. Sima Ting was moaning from the pain.

“Hey,” one of the militiamen said, “tell him what he wants to know. Inspector Yang can make a stone statue confess. How many days do you think your flesh-and-blood bodies can hold out? You'll be lucky to make it past tomorrow.”

One of the others said, “If Sima Ku is the man they say he is, he should give himself up. These days he can hide in the green curtain of crops. But come winter, he'll be out in the open.”

“That son-in-law of yours is one strange tiger. Late last month, a squad of police had him surrounded in a patch of reeds at White Horse Lake, but he got away and managed to kill seven or eight pursuers with one burst of his machine gun. Even the squad leader was wounded in the leg.”

The militiamen seemed to be hinting at something, I wasn't sure what. But they had let slip news about Sima Ku: after showing himself at the brick kiln, he had disappeared like a pebble in the ocean. We'd wanted him to fly high and far, but he'd stayed close to Northeast Gaomi, raising chaos and bringing us nothing but trouble. White Horse Lake was just south of Two County Hamlet, no more than three or four miles from Dalan.

At noon the next day, Pandi rode up from the county seat. Filled with anger, she was intent on making the district officials pay for what they'd done. But she had calmed down by the time she walked out of the office of the district chief, who came with her to see us. Not having seen her for six months, we didn't know what she was doing at county headquarters. She'd lost a lot of weight, but the dried milk stains on her blouse showed that she was nursing. We glared at her. “Pandi,” Mother asked, “what have we done wrong?” Pandi looked at the district chief, who was staring out the window. As her eyes filled up with tears, she said, “Mother … be patient… trust the government… the government would never hurt the innocent…”

At the same time that Pandi was trying awkwardly to console us, out in the Scholar Ding family graveyard in the dense pine grove beyond White Horse Lake, Cui Fengxian, a widow from Sandy Mouth Village, was rhythmically pounding the tombstone over the grave of Scholar Ding, with its carved commendation for his heroic deeds. The crisp sounds merged with the
du-du-du
of a woodpecker at work on a tree. The fanlike white tail feathers of a gray magpie slipped through the sky above the trees. After pounding on the marker for a while, Cui Fengxian sat before the altar to wait. Her face was powdered, her clothes neat and clean; a covered bamboo basket hung from her arm, all of which gave her the appearance of a newly married young woman on a trip to her parents' home. Sima Ku stepped out from behind the grave marker, causing her to jump back in fright. “You damned ghost!” she cursed. “You scared me half to death.” “Since when is a fox spirit like you afraid of ghosts?” “So that's how it is,” she said, “still as sharp-tongued as ever.” “What do you mean, that's how it is? Everything is wonderful, never better.” He added, “Those local turtle-spawn bastards think they'll capture me, do they? Ha ha, dream on!” He patted the automatic rifle draped across his chest, the chrome-plated German Mauser in his belt, and the Browning pistol in its holster. “My mother-in-law wants me to leave Northeast Gaomi. Why would I want to do that? This is my home, the place where my ancestors are buried. Fm intimate with every blade of grass, every tree and mountain and river. This is where I get my enjoyment, and it also has a flaming fox spirit like you, so, I ask you, why would I want to run away?” Off in the reedy marshes a startled flock of wild ducks took to the air, and Cui Fengxian reached out and clapped her hand over Sima Ku's mouth. He wrenched her hand away and said, “Nothing to worry about. I've taught the Eighth Route Army a lesson over there. Those ducks were frightened off by vultures.” Cui dragged him farther back into the graveyard, where she said, “I've got important news for you.”

They threaded their way through a thicket of brambles on their way into a large vault. “Aiya!” Cui Fengxian yelped as a bramble pricked her finger. Sima Ku slipped his machine gun over his head and lit a lantern, then reached back and grabbed her hand. “Did it break the skin?” he asked. “Let me see.” “It's fine,” she replied as she tried to pull her hand back. But he'd already stuck the finger in his mouth and was sucking hard. She moaned. “You're a damned vampire.” Sima Ku spat her finger out, covered her mouth with his, and grabbed hold of her breasts with his large, coarse hands. She writhed passionately and let her basket fall to the ground, sending brown eggs rolling around on the brick floor. Sima Ku picked her up and laid her on top of the broad crypt cover …

Sima Ku lay naked atop the crypt cover, his eyes half closed as he licked the tips of his dirty yellow mustache, which hadn't been trimmed for a long time. Cui Fengxian was massaging the large knuckles of his hand with her soft fingers. All of a sudden, she laid her burning face against his bony chest, which had the smell of a wild animal, and began to bite him. “You're a demon,” she said, a note of hopelessness in her voice. “You never come to me when things are going well, but as soon as you're in trouble, you come and wrap your tentacles around me … I know that any woman who gets tangled up with you is in for a bad time. But I can't control myself. You wag your tail, and I run after you like some bitch … tell me, you demon, what evil power do you have that makes women follow you, even when they know you're leading them into a pit of fire, one they'll jump into with their eyes wide open?”

Sima Ku smiled even though her comment had saddened him. He took her hand and pressed it against his chest, where she could feel the strength of his heartbeat. “You have to believe in this, my heart, my true heart. I give my heart to women.”

Cui Fengxian shook her head. “You only have one heart. How can you give it to different women at the same time?”

“However many I give it to, it's still genuine. And also this,” he said with a lecherous laugh as he moved her hand down his body. Cui Fengxian wrenched her hand free and pinched him on the lips. “What am I going to do with a monster like you? Even when you're chased to the point where you have to sleep in your grave, you've still got time to play your silly games!”