Red Sorghum

feet
and
lovely face, was one of the true beauties of her time. Throughout our long history, the delicate, pointed tips of women’s feet have been viewed as genital organs, in a way, from which men have derived a sort of aesthetic pleasure that sets their sexual juices flowing.
    Now that she was ready, Grandma left the house, clicking her feet. A blanket had been thrown over the back of the family’s little donkey, in whose glistening eyes Grandma noticed a spark of human understanding. She swung her leg over the donkey’s back and straddled it, unlike most women. Great-Grandma had tried to get her to ride sidesaddle, but Grandma dug in her heels and the donkey started off down the road, its rider sitting proudly on its back, head up and eyes straight ahead.
    Once she was on her way, Grandma didn’t look back, and although Great-Granddad was holding the reins at first, when they were out of the village she took them from him and guided the donkey herself, leaving him to trot along behind her.
    Another thunderstorm had struck during the three days. Grandma noticed a section of sorghum the size of a millstone where the leaves were singed and shrivelled, a spot of emaciated whiteness amid the surrounding green. Assuming thatlightning was the culprit, she was reminded of the previous year, when lightning had struck and killed her friend Beauty, a girl of seventeen, literally frying her hair and burning her clothes to cinders. A design had been scorched into her back, which some people said was the script of heavenly tadpoles.
    Rumours spread that greed had killed Beauty, who had caused the death of an abandoned baby. The details were lurid. On her way to market one day, she heard a bawling baby by the roadside. When she unwrapped the swaddling clothes she found a pink, newborn baby boy and a note that said: ‘Father was eighteen, mother seventeen, the moon was directly overhead, the three stars were in the western sky, when our son, Road Joy, was born. Father had already married Second Sister Zhang, a girl with unbound feet from West Village. Mother will marry Scar Eye from East Village. It breaks our hearts to abandon our newborn son. Snot runs down his father’s chin, tears stream down his mother’s cheeks, but we stifle our sobs so no one will hear us. Road Joy, Road Joy, our joy on the road, whoever finds you will be your parents. We have wrapped you in a yard of silk, and have left twenty silver dollars. We beg a kindhearted passerby to store up karma by saving our son’s precious life.’
    People said that Beauty took the silk and the silver dollars, but abandoned the infant in the sorghum field, for which heaven punished her by sending down a bolt of lightning. Grandma refused to believe the rumours about her best friend, but as she pondered the tragic mysteries of life her heart was gripped by desolation and melancholy.
    The rain-soaked road was still wet and pitted by pelting raindrops; soft mud, with a light oily sheen, filled the holes. Once again the donkey left its hoofprints in the mud. Katydids hid in the grass and on the sorghum leaves, vibrating their long silken beards and sawing their transparent wings to produce a cheerless sound. The long summer was about to end, and the sombre smell of autumn was in the air. Swarms of locusts, sensing the change of season, dragged their seed-filled bellies out of the sorghum fields onto the road, where they bored their hindquarters into the hard surface to lay their eggs.
    Great-Granddad snapped off a sorghum stalk and smackedthe rump of the weary donkey, which tucked its tail between its legs and shot forward a few paces before resuming its unhurried pace. Great-Granddad must have been feeling very pleased with himself as he walked behind the donkey, for he began singing snatches of popular local opera, making up the words as he went along. ‘Wu Dalang drank poison, how bad he felt. . . . His seven lengths of intestines and the eight lobes of his lungs lurched and trembled. . . . The ugly man took a beautiful wife, bringing calamity to his door. . . . Ah – ye – ye . . . Big Wu’s belly is killing him . . . waiting for Second Brother to complete his mission . . . to return home and avenge his murder. . . .’
    Grandma’s heart thumped wildly as she listened to Great-Granddad’s crazy song. The image of that scowling young man, sword in hand, appeared in a flash. Who was he? What was he up to? It dawned on her that, even though