Red Sorghum

could never forget.’
    ‘Okay,’ Granddad said. ‘Start digging!’
    The Iron Society soldiers raised their tools, but were reluctant to start. So Granddad took a pickaxe from one of them, aimed at the mound, which arched up like a woman’s breast, and swung with all his might, to bury the tool in the soil with aheavy thud. He then pulled it towards him, scooping out a chunk of the black earth.
    Father’s heart knotted up as the pickaxe split the grave mound, and at that instant he experienced fear and loathing for Granddad’s ruthlessness.
    ‘Dig it up,’ Granddad said feebly.
    Forming a ring around Grandma’s grave, the soldiers began to chop and dig, levelling the mound in no time. Father’s thoughts returned to the night of the ninth day of the eighth lunar month, 1939, when they had buried Grandma. Fires raging on the bridge and torches ringing her body had illuminated her dead face, nearly bringing it back to life, before it was swallowed up by the black earth. Now the likeness was being dug up again, and Father grew tense as the layers were pared away, until he thought he saw Grandma’s smile as she kissed death through the earth separating them.
    The Iron Society soldiers stopped digging when the final layer of soil covering the sorghum was removed and cast pleading looks at Granddad and Father, who saw their noses twitch as the overpowering stench of decay rose from the grave. To Father, who breathed in greedily, it was the odour of the milk he’d suckled at Grandma’s breast.
    ‘Clear it away!’ Granddad ordered, his black eyes devoid of pity. ‘Clear it away!’
    Reluctantly they bent down and began pulling the sorghum out of the grave. Transparent drops of water oozed from the naked stalks, turned by decay into the glossy red of moist jade.
    Deeper and deeper they went, the stench growing stronger. But to Father it was the rich aroma of sorghum wine, intoxicating, dizzying. He wanted to see Grandma as soon as possible, but the prospect also frightened him. The sorghum covering grew ever thinner, yet he felt the distance between him and Grandma increase. The final layer of stalks suddenly rustled loudly, wrenching shouts of alarm from some of the soldiers and striking others dumb with fear. Their faces were ashen, and only Granddad’s insistence gave them the courage to peek down into the grave.
    Father watched as four brown field voles scrambled up the sides of the unearthed grave, while a fifth one, pure white,squatted on a supremely beautiful sorghum stalk in the middle of the grave. Everyone stared at the brown voles as they scampered away; meanwhile, the white one perched haughtily without stirring, staring back with its tiny, jet-black eyes. Father picked up a clod of earth and hurled it into the grave. The vole sprang two feet into the air, fell back, and scurried madly around the edges. With loathing swelling their insides, the soldiers rained clods of earth down on the white vole until it lay smashed in the middle of the grave.
    According to Father, Grandma emerged from the resplendent, aromatic grave as lovely as a flower, as in a fairy tale. But the faces of the Iron Society soldiers contorted whenever they described in gory detail the hideous shape of her corpse and the suffocating stench issuing from the grave. Father called them liars. His senses were particularly keen at the time, he recalled, and as the last few stalks were removed, Grandma’s sweet, beautiful smile made the area crackle as though swept by a raging fire. His only regret was how fleeting the moment had been. For, when Grandma’s body was lifted out of the grave, her lustrous beauty and delicate fragrance turned into a mist and floated gently away, leaving behind only a white skeleton.
    After lifting the body out of the grave, the soldiers ran down to the bank of the Black Water River and vomited dark-green bile into the dark-green water. Granddad spread out a piece of white cloth and told Father to help him lift Grandma’s skeleton onto it. Infected by the sound of vomiting in the river, Father felt a spasm in his neck, and hacking sounds erupted from his throat. He hated the thought of touching the pale-white bones.
    ‘Douguan,’ Granddad said, ‘you don’t think your own mom’s bones are too dirty to touch, do you? Not you!’
    Moved by the rare tragic look on Granddad’s face, Father bent down and tentatively reached out to touch Grandma’s pale leg bone, which was so icy it froze his guts.