Red Sorghum

snarled, ‘They never showed up. Commander Yu isn’t going to let them get away with it!’ He ran off, leaving Grandma sighing as she watched the slight silhouette of his back. Sun Five was standing at a tilt in the spacious compound, staring stiffly at Grandma and gesticulating wildly, a stream of slobber running down his chin.
    Ignoring Sun Five, Grandma walked up to a long-faced girl leaning against the wall, who smiled weakly, then fell to her knees, wrapped her arms tightly around Grandma’s waist, and began to cry hysterically. ‘Lingzi,’ Grandma consoled her, touching her face, ‘be a good girl. Don’t be afraid.’
    The prettiest girl in the village, Lingzi was seventeen at the time. When Commander Yu was recruiting troops, he assembled fifty or so men, one of whom was a gaunt young man with a pale face and long black hair, dressed in black except for a pair of white shoes. Lingzi was rumoured to be in love with him. He spoke with a beautiful Beijing dialect, and never smiled; his brow was forever creased in a frown, with three vertical furrows above his nose. Everyone called him Adjutant Ren. Lingzi felt that beneath Adjutant Ren’s cold, hard exterior raged a fire, and it put her on edge.
    Yu Zhan’ao’s troops drilled each morning on the square where we bought our sorghum. As soon as Liu Sishan, Commander Yu’s bugler, sounded reveille, Lingzi dashed out of the house and ran to the parade ground to lie on the wall and await the arrival of Adjutant Ren, his wide leather belt and Browning pistol.
    Adjutant Ren strode up to the troops, his chest thrown out proudly, and called them to attention. Two columns of soldiers clicked their heels snappily.
    Adjutant Ren commanded, ‘Atten-hut! Legs straight, stomachs in, chests out, eyes forward, like panthers about to pounce.
    ‘What the hell kind of way is that to stand?’ He kicked Wang Wenyi. ‘Your legs are spread like a mule taking a piss. I’d beat some discipline into you if I could.’
    Lingzi liked seeing Adjutant Ren beat up on people and liked the way he chewed them out. His autocratic demeanour thoroughly intoxicated her. His favourite leisure activity was strolling around the parade ground with his hands clasped behind his back. Lingzi would hide behind the wall and drink in the sight.
    ‘What’s your name?’ Adjutant Ren asked.
    ‘Lingzi.’
    ‘Who were you watching from back there?’
    ‘You.’
    ‘Do you know how to read?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Want to join the army?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I see.’
    Regretting her response, Lingzi told my father that the next time Adjutant Ren asked her if she wanted to join the army she’d say yes. But he never asked her again.
    Lingzi and my father were sprawled atop the wall watching Adjutant Ren teach the men revolutionary songs. Father was so short at the time that he had to stand on a pile of rocks to see what was happening on the other side of the wall, while Lingzi rested her pretty chin on the wall and stared at Adjutant Ren, drenched in morning sunlight, as he taught them a song: ‘The sorghum is red, the sorghum is red, the Japs are coming, the Japs are coming. The nation is lost, our families scattered. Rise up, countrymen, take up arms to drive out the Japs and protect your homes. . . .’
    The men, with tin ears and stiff tongues, never did learn how to sing it right, but the kids on the other side of the wall soon had it down pat. My father never forgot this song as long as he lived.
    Lingzi screwed up her courage one day and went to find Adjutant Ren, but accidentally stumbled into the room of the quartermaster, Big Tooth Yu, a hard-drinking, insatiably lecherous forty-year-old uncle of Commander Yu. He was pretty drunk that day, and when Lingzi burst into his room, it was like a moth drawn to a fire, or a lamb entering a tiger’s den.
    Adjutant Ren ordered two soldiers to tie up the man who had deflowered the girl Lingzi. At the time, Commander Yu was staying at our house, and when Adjutant Ren came to make his report, he was asleep on Grandma’s kang. She had already washed up and brushed her hair, and was about to fry some willowfish to go with the wine when the fuming Adjutant Ren burst into the room, frightening the wits out of her.
    ‘Where’s the commander?’ Adjutant Ren asked her.
    ‘He’s on the kang, asleep.’
    ‘Wake him up.’
    Grandma woke Commander Yu, who walked out of the bedroom, stretched, yawned, and asked. ‘What is it?’
    ‘Commander, if a Japanese