Red Sorghum

spanking her until her buttocks were swollen and puffy: a battered wife, kneaded dough. From then on, she put her heart and soul into domesticity. First she had a little girl, then a little boy, who was now eight. Regaining his senses, Pocky went looking for the boy, and found him, stuffed in the water vat, head down, feet up, his body as rigid as a pole.
    Pocky Cheng tied a rope to the top of the door frame, made a noose in the end, then stood on a stool, stuck his head through the noose, and kicked the stool out from under himself. A teenage boy happening on him reached up with his knife and cut the rope in two. Pocky Cheng crashed to the ground.
    ‘Uncle Pocky!’ the boy fumed. ‘Haven’t the Japanese killed enough of us? Why do their job for them? You can’t get revenge unless you’re alive!’
    Pocky Cheng complained tearfully to the boy, ‘Chunsheng, your auntie, Little Orchid, Little Pillar, they’re all dead. My whole family’s gone!’
    Chunsheng walked into the yard, knife in hand, and when he returned his face was as white as a sheet and his eyes were red. ‘Uncle,’ he said as he helped Pocky Cheng to his feet, ‘let’s join the Jiao-Gao regiment! They’re at the village of Two Counties recruiting soldiers and buying horses right now.’
    ‘But my house, my belongings?’ Pocky Cheng said.
    ‘You crazy old man! You just tried to hang yourself. Who’d have got your house and belongings then? Let’s go!’
    It was especially cold in the early spring of 1940. All the villages in Northeast Gaomi Township lay in ruins. Those who had survived were like marmots in burrows. The powerful Jiao-Gao Regiment was beset by the miseries of hunger and cold. From commander to common foot-soldier, the gaunt, thin men all shivered in their unlined jackets. After making camp in a tiny village not far from Saltwater Gap, they lay atop the battered wall when the sun came out, to pick lice off their bodies and soak up the midday heat. All day long they conserved their energy; then, at night, they nearly froze in the cold. They were afraid that if they weren’t killed by the Japs the weather would do them in.
    Pocky Cheng was their most fearless fighter, a lionhearted man who had earned the complete trust of the commander, Little Foot Jiang. Hand grenades were his weapons of choice. In battle he would rush to the front line, close his eyes, and hurl one grenade after another at the enemy. Even if they were only six or seven yards away, he refused to take cover; yet, strange as it sounds, with shrapnel flying around him like locusts, he was never hit.
    Commander Jiang called a meeting of officers to grapple with the problems of cold and hunger. Pocky Cheng rashly burst in on them, a stern look on his face. ‘What do you think we should do, Old Cheng?’ Little Foot Jiang asked him.
    Pocky Cheng held his tongue.
    A bookish squad leader volunteered, ‘Holing up here in Northeast Gaomi Township is the same as waiting to die. We should go to the cotton factories in Southern Jiao County to get some clothes. And since there’s plenty of yams there, food won’t be a problem, either.’
    Commander Jiang took a mimeographed newspaper from his shirt and said, ‘According to news reports, the situation in Southern Jiao is grimmer than here. The rail brigade was wiped out by the Japanese. By comparison, Northeast Gaomi Township is ideal for guerrilla activity. The land is broad, thevillages are few and far between, and the Japanese and their puppet troops are weaker here. Since most of last year’s sorghum crop hasn’t been harvested, we have more places to hide. All we have to do is solve the problems of food and clothing. The chance to attack the enemy will come as long as we stick it out.’
    A gaunt-faced officer said, ‘Where are we going to find any cloth? Or cotton wadding? Or food? Except for sorghum that’s sprouting buds, we’ve got nothing to eat. And that alone could wind up killing us! I say we pretend to surrender to the puppet-regiment commander, Zhang Zhuxi. That way, we could get our hands on some lined clothes and stock up on ammo, then pull out.’
    The bookish squad leader jumped angrily to his feet. ‘You want us to become a bunch of traitors?’
    The officer defended himself: ‘Who asked you to become a traitor? I said
pretend
to surrender! Back in the Three Kingdoms period, that’s what Jiang Wei did, and so did Huang Gai!’
    ‘We’re resistance fighters. We don’t bow our heads when