Red Sorghum

Granddad tried to lift the skeleton by the shoulder blades, but it disintegrated and landed in a heap on the ground. A pair of red ants crawled in the sockets that had once been home to Grandma’s limpid eyes, their antennae vibrating. Father threw down Grandma’s leg bone, turned tail, and ran, filling the air with howls of grief.

4
    AT NOON, THE funeral master announced loudly, ‘Begin the procession,’ and mourners swept into the fields like a human tide, followed by the Yu family bier, moving slowly towards them like a floating iceberg. Large open tents in which sumptuous road offerings were displayed had been placed on both sides of the road every couple of hundred yards. Cavalry troops led by Five Troubles formed a guard on either side of the road, galloping round and round.
    A fat monk in a yellow robe, his left shoulder and arm exposed, led the procession with a halberd from which chimes hung, twinkling as it spun around his body, sometimes flying up in the air towards the onlookers. At least half the onlookers recognised him as the pauper monk from the Tianqi Temple who never burned incense and never chanted the Buddha’s name, preferring to drink great bowlfuls of wine and boldly partake of meat and fish. He kept a skinny yet uncommonly fertile little woman, who presented him with a whole brood of little monks. He opened a passage through the crowds by flinging his halberd at their heads, his face beaming.
    An Iron Society soldier followed, holding a long pole with a spirit-calling banner woven from thirty-two white strips of paper, one for each of Grandma’s years; it fluttered and snapped, though there wasn’t a breath of wind. Then came the banner of honour, held ten feet in the air by a strapping young Iron Society soldier, its white silk ornamented with large black letters:
    Casket of the Woman Dai, 32-Year-Old Wife of Yu Zhan’ao, Guerrilla Commander of Northeast Gaomi Township, Republic of China.
    Behind the banner of honour came the lesser canopy, in which Grandma’s spirit tablet lay, and behind that, the great canopy encasing her coffin. Sixty-four Iron Society soldiers marched in perfect cadence to the mournful strains of the funeral music. Father, white mourning hood over his head andshoulders, a willow grief-stick in his hand, was being carried by two Iron Society soldiers. His desolate wails were the standard dry variety – his eyes were dry, and blank. Thunder with no rain. This sort of dry wailing was more moving than tearful shrieks, and many of the onlookers were deeply touched by his performance.
    Granddad and Black Eye walked shoulder to shoulder behind my father, their solemn expressions belying the conflicts raging inside them.
    At least twenty armed Iron Society soldiers surrounded Granddad and Black Eye, their bayonets glinting deep blue under the sun’s rays. They in turn were followed by a dozen musicians from Northeast Gaomi Township playing beautiful music, and some men on stilts. Two lion figures brought up the rear, waving their tails and swinging their heads to the antics of a big-headed child who tumbled over the roadway.
    The procession snaked along for at least two li, the going made difficult by the crowds of people jamming the narrow roadway and the need to stop at each roadside tent to pay respects to the spirits; when the coffin was halted, incense was burned, and the funeral master, bronze wine vessel in hand, performed an age-old ritual, all of which combined to keep the procession at a snail’s pace.
    Three li outside the village, the procession stopped to pay respects to the spirits. As always, the funeral master performed the ritual sombrely and conscientiously. All of a sudden a shot rang out at the head of the procession, and the Iron Society soldier holding the banner of honour slipped slowly to the ground, his bamboo pole crashing down on the onlookers by the side of the road. The gunfire caused the crowd to scurry like ants, screaming and wailing like a raging river that has breached its dikes.
    As the sound of the rifle shot died out, a dozen or so shiny black grenades came arching out of the crowds on either side of the road and landed at the feet of the Iron Society soldiers, spewing puffs of white smoke.
    ‘Villagers, on your bellies!’ someone shouted.
    But they were packed so tightly they could barely move, and as the grenades exploded, powerful golden blasts rippedthrough the sky. At least a dozen soldiers were killed or wounded,