Red Sorghum

thunder, a flash of lightning, rain falling like dense flax . . . turning her confused heart to flax, dense rain pouring in at an angle, then straight up, then straight down. . . .
    Grandma thought back to the highwayman at Toad Hollow, and to the valiant actions of the young sedan bearer. He was their leader, the main dog of the pack. He couldn’t be more than twenty-four – not a wrinkle on his rugged face. She recalled how close his face had been for a while, and how his lips, hard as mussel shells, had covered hers. Her blood had frozen for an instant, before gushing forth to dilate every blood vessel in her body. Her feet had cramped, her abdominal muscles had jerked madly. Their call to revolt had been aided by the vibrant sorghum – the powder on the stalks, so fine it was barely visible, spreading in the air above her and the sedan bearer. . . .
    Grandma hoped that by concentrating on the youthful passion of that moment she could hold on to it, but it kept slipping away, here one moment, then gone. And yet the leper’s face, like a long-buried rotten grape, kept reappearing, along with the ten hooked claws that were his fingers. Then there was the old man, with his tiny queue and the ring of brass keys at his belt. Grandma sat quietly, but even though she was dozens of li away from the spot, the rich taste of sorghum wineand the sour taste of sorghum mash seemed to roll around on her tongue. She recalled how the two male ‘serving girls’ reeked like drunken geese fished out of a wine vat, the smell of alcohol seeping from every pore in their bodies. . . . He had cut a swath through the sorghum, leaving the blade of his razor-sharp sword wet with little horseshoes of inky green, sticky residue from the decapitated plants, their lifeblood. She remembered what he had said: ‘Come back in three days, no matter what!’ Daggers of light had shot from his long, slitted eyes.
    Grandma had a premonition that her life was about to change in extraordinary ways.
    In some significant aspects, heroes are born, not made. Heroic qualities flow through a person’s veins like an undercurrent, ready to be translated into action. During her first sixteen years, Grandma’s days had been devoted to embroidery, needlework, paper cutouts, foot binding, the endless glossing of her hair, and all other manner of domestic things in the company of neighbour girls. What, then, was the source of her ability and courage to deal with the events she encountered in her adult years? How was she able to temper herself to the point where even in the face of danger she could conquer her fears and force herself to act heroically? I’m not sure I know.
    Grandma wept for a long time without feeling much true grief; as she cried, she relived the joys and pleasures of her past, even the suffering and sorrow. The sounds of crying seemed to be a distant musical accompaniment to the beautiful and hideous images appearing and reappearing in her mind. Finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, so what was there to fear from taking chances with your life?
    ‘Time to leave, Little Nine,’ Great-Granddad said, calling her by her childhood name.
    Leave! Leave! Leave!
    Grandma asked for a basin of water to wash her face. Then she applied some powder and rouge. As she looked in the mirror, she loosened her hairnet, releasing long, flowing hair that quickly covered her back with its satiny sheen, all the waydown to the curve of her legs. When she pulled it across her shoulder with her left hand, it spilled over her breast, where she combed it out with a pear-wood comb. Grandma had uncommonly thick, shiny, black hair that lightened a bit at the tips. Once it was combed out smooth, she twisted it into large ebony blossoms, which she secured with four silver combs. Then she trimmed her fringe so that it fell just short of her eyebrows. After rewrapping her feet, she put on a pair of white cotton stockings, tied her trouser cuffs tightly, and slipped on a pair of embroidered slippers that accentuated her bound feet.
    It was Grandma’s tiny feet that had caught the attention of Shan Tingxiu, and it was her tiny feet that had aroused the passions of the sedan bearer Yu Zhan’ao. She was very proud of them. Even a pock-faced witch is assured of marriage if she has tiny bound feet, but no one wants a girl with large unbound feet, even if she has the face of an immortal. Grandma, with her bound