Red Sorghum

and the white wooden bolt was spotted with dark-red stains – the blood of a black-mouthed weasel. Second Grandma remembered how she’d beaten the animal with the wooden bolt and listened to its screeches as its head cracked open like a peanut shell; it rolled on the ground for a moment, its bushy tail swishing back and forth across the powdery snow, before going into convulsions and heaving one final shudder. How she had despised that potent weasel!
    On an autumn day in 1931, just as night was falling, she went out to the sorghum field to dig up some bitter greens, and there, at the head of a weed-covered grave mound bathed in the blood-red rays of the setting sun, sat the weasel, its coat golden, its mouth as black as ink. She spotted it while she wassquatting down relieving herself. It rested on its haunches, slowly twitching its paws at her, and she reacted as though she’d been struck by lightning: a powerful spasm shot up her back, like a leaping snake. She fell forward, screaming like a madwoman. By the time she’d come to her senses, the field was dark, and bright stars leaped through the black sky, restlessly, mysteriously. She felt her way out of the sorghum field, found the dirt path, and walked back to the village. The fanciful image of the weasel, its golden coat emitting a lustrous sheen like whiskers of grain, appeared and disappeared in front of her eyes, over and over, vivid and real. It was all she could do to contain the screams ready to rip from her throat; some did in fact get loose – she heard them. But they weren’t human screams, and she was shocked and frightened by their sound.
    Second Grandma’s deranged state lasted a long time, leading her fellow villagers to conclude that she’d been possessed by the weasel. She was convinced that it had absolute control over her in some deep, dark place. Whatever it ordered her to do, she did: cry, laugh, speak in tongues, perform strange acts. Whenever the lightning bolt hit her in the middle of her back, it was as though she’d been split in two, and was struggling in a dark-red quagmire filled with the seductiveness of lust and death, sinking beneath the surface, then floating back to the top, only to sink once again. Spotting a rope with which she could pull herself out of the quagmire of lust, she grabbed it with both hands, but it too became part of the quagmire of desire, and she sank helplessly beneath the surface again. Always, the image of the potent, black-mouthed weasel swayed before her eyes, grinning hideously and whisking her vigorously with its tail; each time its tail brushed against her skin, a shout of uncontrollable excitement burst from her mouth. Finally, the exhausted weasel walked off, and Second Grandma crumpled to the ground, spittle drooling from the corners of her mouth, her body lathered in sweat, her face the colour of gold foil.
    In order to free Second Grandma from her demon, Granddad rode his mule to the market at Cypress Orchid to fetch the Taoist exorcist Mountain Li, who lit incense and burnedcandles, then drew strange symbols on a piece of paper with a brush dipped in red ink, after which he mixed some dog blood with the incense ashes, pinched Second Grandma’s nose shut, and poured the concoction into her mouth. The stuff streamed down her throat and she cried, she tried to scream, she flailed her arms and legs, as the soulful essence oozed out through her pores.
    Her condition began to improve after that, and some time later the weasel came to steal a chicken. While it was locked in a desperate struggle with a large yellow-legged, fiery-red rooster, one of its eyes was pecked out by its feathered adversary. It was writhing in agony in the snow when Second Grandma ran into the yard, stark-naked yet oblivious to the cold, holding the white wooden bolt in her hands and bringing it down with all her might on the weasel’s shameless, pointed snout. Having got her revenge, finally, she stood absently in the snow for quite a while, the bloody wooden bolt still in her hands. Then she bent over and beat her mentor, the weasel, to a pulp. Her madness spent, she turned and went back inside, carrying a residue of hatred with her.
    As Second Grandma stared at the dried weasel blood on the white wooden bolt, she was suddenly gripped by a dormant and profoundly disturbing terror; she knew that her eyeballs were rolling wildly, and she heard a terrifying shriek erupt from her throat.
    The flimsy door rocked only