Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

message, an exciting yet fearful temptation the likes of a purple water lily floating on a pond in the moonlight. She struggled to resist the temptation, standing up so she could go inside; but her feet felt as if they’d taken root and her hands moved toward the bird as if they had a mind of their own. A flick of Birdman’s wrist sent the tiny bird into the air; it perched on Laidi’s head. She felt its delicate claws dig into her scalp and its chirps bore into her head. Gazing into the kindly, anxious, fatherly, and beautiful eyes of Birdman Han, she was swallowed up by a powerful sense of being wronged. He nodded to her, turned, and headed back to his rooms. The tiny bird flew off her head to follow him inside.
    Standing there dazed, she heard Mother call from the
kang.
But rather than turn around, she burst into tears and, with no sense of shame, ran into the side room, where Birdman Han awaited her with open arms. Her tears wetted his chest. He let her pound him with her fists, even stroking her arms and the ridge down her back while she was hitting him. Meanwhile, the tiny bird perched on the altar table in front of the drawing, where it chirped excitedly. Little stars like drops of blood seemed to emerge from its tiny beak.
    Laidi calmly removed her clothes and pointed to the scars from the mute’s abuse. “Look at that, Birdman Han,” she complained, “just look at that. He killed my sister, and now he’s trying to do the same to me. And he’ll make it. He’s worn me out.” Bursting into tears again, she threw herself down onto his bed.
    This was Birdman Han’s first real look at a woman’s body. Surprise showed on his face as he thought about women, the supernatural objects his dismal experience had kept from him all his life, and it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He was moved to tears by her long legs, her rounded hips, her breasts, which were flattened against the bedding, her slender waist, and the fair, glossy, jadelike skin all over her body — fairer even than her face, in spite of the scars. After being suppressed for fifteen torturous years, while he avoided falling into the hands of his captors again, his youthful desires ignited slowly. Growing weak at the knees, he knelt alongside Laidi and covered the soles of her feet with hot, tremulous kisses.
    Laidi felt blue sparks sizzle up from her feet and quickly cover her body. Her skin grew taut as a drum, and then went slack. She rolled over, spread her legs, arched her body, and wrapped her arms around Birdman Han’s neck. Her experienced mouth drew the virginal Birdman to her. She broke off her passionate kiss to say breathlessly, “I want that mute bastard, that demonic stump of a man to die, I want him to rot, I want birds to peck out his eyes!”
    In order to block out their cries of passion, Mother slammed shut the door and began beating a badly worn pot out in the yard. At the time, schoolchildren were searching up and down the lanes for all sorts of used metal objects to take to the smelting ovens — pots, spatulas, cleavers, door latches, thimbles, even nose rings from oxen. But our family, enjoying the prestige of the martial hero Speechless Sun and the legendary Birdman Han, was spared from having to give up our utensils. Mother waited impatiently for Birdman and Laidi to finish their lovemaking. Owing to her feelings of sympathy and remorse over the abuse Laidi had received at the hands of the mute, and to feelings of sympathy over the agonies Birdman Han had suffered in a foreign land, as well as her gratitude for the delicious birds he had supplied fifteen years before, not to mention the cherished memory of and respect for Lingdi, she assumed the role of protector in the illicit relationship between the two lovers without even being aware of it. Although she anticipated the tragic consequences that were bound to follow, she was determined to do what she could to guard their secret and, at the very least, delay the inevitable. But the inescapable truth was that once a man like Birdman Han was exposed to the passions and affections of a woman, no power on earth could restrain him. He was a man who had survived fifteen years in the woods, like a wild animal; he was a man who had existed on the swings between life and death every day for fifteen years, and in his eyes a stump of a man like the mute had no more value than a wooden stake. For Laidi, a woman who had known Sha Yueliang, Sima Ku, and Speechless