Red Sorghum

Zhan’ao became a hired hand in the family distillery. With his strength and clever hands, he was an ideal worker, and Uncle Arhat sang his praises to Grandma. At the end of the first month, he summoned him and said, ‘The mistress likes the way you work, so we’ll keep you on.’ He handed him a cloth bundle. ‘She wants you to have these.’
    He undid the bundle. Inside was a pair of new cloth shoes. ‘Foreman,’ he said, ‘please tell the mistress that Yu Zhan’ao thanks her for the gift.’
    ‘You can go,’ said Uncle Arhat. ‘I expect you to work hard.’
    ‘I will,’ Yu Zhan’ao promised.
    Another two weeks passed, and Yu Zhan’ao was finding it harder and harder to control himself. The mistress came to the eastern compound every day to look around, but directed her questions only to Uncle Arhat, paying hardly any attention to the sweaty hired hands. That did not sit well with Yu Zhan’ao.
    Back when the distillery was run by Shan Tingxiu and hisson, the workers’ meals were prepared and sent over by café owners in the village. But after Grandma took charge, she hired a middle-aged woman whom everyone called ‘the woman Liu’, and a teenaged girl named Passion. They lived in the western compound, where they were responsible for all the cooking. Then Grandma increased the number of dogs in the compound from two to five. Now that the western compound was home to three women and five dogs, it became a lively little world of its own. At night the slightest disturbance set off the dogs, and any intruder not bitten to death would surely have the wits frightened out of him.
    By the time Yu Zhan’ao had been working the distillery cooker for eight weeks, it was the ninth lunar month, and the sorghum in the fields was good and ripe. Grandma told Uncle Arhat to hire some temporary labourers to clean the yard and open-air bins in preparation for the harvest. They were clear, sunny days with a deep sky. Grandma, dressed in white silk and wearing red satin slippers, carried a willow switch around the yard, with her dogs running on her heels, drawing strange looks from the villagers, although none dared so much as fart in her presence. Yu Zhan’ao approached her several times, but she stayed aloof and wouldn’t bestow a word on him.
    One night Yu Zhan’ao drank a little more than usual, and wound up getting slightly drunk. He tossed and turned on the communal kang, but couldn’t fall asleep, as moonlight streamed in through the window in the eastern wall. Two hired hands sat beneath a bean-oil lantern mending their clothes.
    Then Old Du took out his stringed instrument and began playing sad tunes, striking resonant chords in the hearts of the listeners. Something was bound to happen. One of the men mending his clothes was so moved by Old Du’s melancholy tunes that his throat began to itch. ‘It’s no fun being alone,’ he sang hoarsely, ‘no fun at all. Tattered clothes never get sewn. . . .’
    ‘Why not get the mistress to sew them for you?’
    ‘The mistress? I wonder who will feast on that tender swan.’
    ‘The old master and his son thought it would be them, and they wound up dead.’
    ‘I hear she had an affair with Spotted Neck while she was still living at home.’
    ‘Are you saying Spotted Neck murdered them?’
    ‘Not so loud. “Words spoken on the road are heard by snakes in the grass!”’
    Yu Zhan’ao lay on the kang sneering.
    ‘What’re you smirking for, Little Yu?’ one of them asked.
    Emboldened by the wine, he blurted out, ‘I murdered them!’
    ‘You’re drunk!’
    ‘Drunk? I tell you, I murdered them!’ He sat up, reached into the bag hanging on the wall, and pulled out his short sword. When he slid it out of the scabbard, it caught the moon’s rays and shone like a silverfish. ‘I’ll tell you guys,’ he said with a thick tongue, ‘our mistress . . . I slept with her. . . . Sorghum fields . . . Came at night and set a fire . . . stabbed one . . . stabbed the other. . . .’
    One of his listeners quietly blew out the lantern, throwing the room into a murky darkness in which the moonlit sword shone even more brightly.
    ‘Go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep! We have to be up early tomorrow to make wine!’
    Yu Zhan’ao was still mumbling. ‘You . . . damn you . . . pretend you don’t know me after you hitch up your pants . . . work me like an ox or a horse. . . . Don’t think you can get away with it. . . .