THE FIRST THING Father saw after Granddad shook him awake was a long, coiling dragon comingstraight for them as though on wings. Bold howls rose from beneath upraised torches. Fatherwondered how this wriggling1 line of torches could have so deeply moved a man like Granddad,who could kill without batting an eye. He was weeping openly. ‘Douguan,’ he mumbled2 betweensobs, ‘my son?.?.?. our fellow villagers are coming.?.?.?.’
Several hundred villagers – men and women, boys and girls – crowded round. Those notholding torches were armed with hoes, rakes, and clubs. Father’s best friends squeezed up to thefront, holding torches made of sorghum3 stalks that were tipped with cotton wadding dipped inbean oil.
‘Commander Yu, you won the battle!’
‘Commander Yu, we have slaughtered4 cattle, pigs, and sheep for a feast for you and yourmen.’
Granddad fell to his knees in front of the solemn, sacred torches, which lit up the meanderingriver and the vast, mighty5 sorghum. ‘Fellow villagers,’ he said in a trembling voice, ‘I, YuZhan’ao, should be condemned6 for all time for being duped by Pocky Leng’s treachery. Mymen?.?.?. all lost in the fight!’
The torches closed in around him, smoke rose in the air, flames flickered7 uneasily, and dropsof burning oil sizzled as they fell to the ground like red thread. Red cinders8 in a floral patterncovered the dike9. A fox in the sorghum field howled. Fish, attracted by the light, schooled justbelow the surface. The people were speechless. Amid the crackling of flames, a thunderoussound came rolling towards them from some distant spot in the field.
An old man, his face dark, his beard white, one eye much larger than the other, handed historch to the man beside him, bent10 down, and slipped his arms under my granddad’s. ‘Get up,Commander Yu, get up, get up.’
‘Get up, Commander Yu,’ the villagers echoed, ‘get up, get up.’
Granddad rose slowly to his feet, as the heat from the old man’s hands warmed the muscles ofhis arms. ‘Fellow villagers,’ he said, ‘let’s take a look around.’
The torchbearers fell in behind Granddad and Father, the flames lighting11 up the blurry12 riverbedand the sorghum fields all the way up to the battleground near the bridge. The burned-out truckscast eerie13 shadows. Corpses14 strewn across the battlefield gave off an overpowering stench ofblood, which merged15 with the smell of scorched16 metal, of the sorghum that served as a vastbackdrop, and of the river, so far from its source.
Women began to wail17 as drops of burning oil fell from the torches onto the people’s hands andfeet. The men’s faces looked like steel fresh from the furnace. The white stone bridge had turnedscarlet.
The old man with the dark face and white beard shouted, ‘What are you crying for? This was agreat victory! There are four hundred million of us Chinese. If we take on the Japs, one on one,how do you think their little country will fare? If one hundred million of us fought them to thedeath, they’d be wiped out, but there’d still be three hundred million of us. That makes us thevictors, doesn’t it? Commander Yu , this was a crushing victory!’
‘Old uncle, you’re just saying that to make me feel good.’
‘No, Commander Yu, it really was a great victory. Give the order; tell us what to do. Chinamay have nothing else, but it’s got plenty of people.’
Granddad straightened up. ‘You people, gather up the bodies of our fallen comrades!’
The villagers spread out and gathered up the bodies from the sorghum fields on both sides ofthe highway, then laid them out on the dike on the western edge of the bridge, heads facingsouth, feet north. Pulling Father along behind him, Granddad walked down the column of bodies,counting them. Wang Wenyi, Wang’s wife, Fang18 Six, Fang Seven, Bugler19 Liu, ConsumptiveFour?.?.?. one face after another. Tears ran down Granddad’s deeply lined face like rivers ofmolten steel in the light of the torches.
‘What about Mute?’ Granddad asked. ‘Douguan, did you see Uncle Mute?’
The image of Mute’s razor-sharp sabre knife slicing off the Jap’s head, and of the head sailing,screaming, through the air, flashed into Father’s mind. ‘On the truck,’ he said.
The torches encircled one of the trucks. Three men climbed onto it as Granddad ran up. Theylifted Mute’s body over the railing and onto Granddad’s back. One man held Mute’s head,another his legs, and they staggered up the dike with their load, to lay it on the easternmost edgeof the grisly column. Mute, bent at the waist, was still gripping his blood-spattered sabre knife.
His lifeless eyes were staring, his mouth open, as though frozen on a scream.
Granddad knelt and pressed down on Mute’s knees and chest; Father heard the dead man’sspine groan20 and crack as his body straightened out. Granddad tried to wrench21 the sword free, butthe death grip thwarted22 his attempts. He brought the arm down so that the sword lay alongsideMute’s leg. One of the women knelt and rubbed Mute’s eyes. ‘Brother,’ she said, ‘close youreyes, close them now. Commander Yu will avenge23 your death.?.?.?.’
‘Dad, Mom’s still in the field.?.?.?.’ Father began to weep.
With a wave of his hand, Granddad said, ‘You go.?.?.?. Take some people with you and carryher back.?.?.?.’
Father darted24 into the sorghum field, followed by several villagers with torches, whose burningoil brushed the dense25 stalks. The aggrieved26 dry leaves crackled and burned when they weresplattered, and as the fires spread, the stalks bowed their heavy heads and wept hoarsely27.
Father parted the sorghum to reveal the body of Grandma, lying on her back and facing theremote, inimitable sky above Northeast Gaomi Township, filled with the spirits of countless28 stars.
Even in death her face was as lovely as jade29, her parted lips revealing a line of clean teeth inlaidwith pearls of sorghum seeds, placed there by the emerald beaks30 of white doves.
‘Carry her back,’ Granddad said.
A group of young women lifted her up. With torches casting a wide net of light along theroute, the sorghum field turned into a fairyland, and each member of the procession wassurrounded by an eerie halo of light.
One woman carried Grandma’s body onto the dike and laid it at the westernmost end of thecorpses.
The old man with the white beard asked, ‘Commander Yu, where will we find enough coffinsfor them all?’
Granddad thought for a moment. ‘We won’t carry them back,’ he said finally, ‘and we don’tneed coffins31. For now, we’ll bury them in the sorghum field. Once I’ve rallied our forces, I’llcome back and give them a proper send-off.’
The old man sent a group back to weave additional torches, since they would be burying thedead through the night. ‘While you’re at it,’ Granddad added, ‘bring some draught32 animals so wecan tow that truck back with us, and chop down enough sorghum stalks to cover the bodies andline the bottoms of the graves before filling them in with dirt.’
Grandma was the last to be interred33. Once again her body was enshrouded in sorghum. AsFather watched the final stalk hide her face, his heart cried out in pain, never to be whole againthroughout his long life. Granddad tossed in the first spadeful of dirt. The loose clods of blackearth thudded against the layer of sorghum like an exploding grenade shattering the surroundingstillness with its lethal34 shrapnel. Father’s heart wept blood.
Grandma’s grave mound35 was the fifty-first in the field. ‘Fellow villagers,’ the old man said, ‘onyour knees!’
The village elders fell to their knees before the line of graves, the fields around them vibratingwith the sound of weeping. The torches were beginning to die out. Just then a star fell from thesouthern sky, its brilliance36 not fading from view until it had passed below the tips of sorghum.
It was nearly dawn when the old torches were replaced by new ones. A milky37 gleam graduallypenetrated the fog over the river. The dozen or so draught animals grazed noisily on the sorghumstalks and chewed the fallen ears of grain.
Granddad ordered the people to remove the linked rakes from the road and push the first truckacross the highway and into the ditch on the eastern shoulder. When it was done, he picked up ashotgun, aimed at the gas tank, and fired, filling it with holes through which the gasoline spurtedout. Then, taking a torch, he stepped back, aimed carefully, and flung it. A towering white flameshot into the air, igniting the frame and quickly turning the truck into a pile of twisted metal.
The villagers put their shoulders to the undamaged truck loaded with rice, pushing it across thebridge and onto the highway, then tipped the burned-out hulk of the third truck into the river. Thegas tank of the fourth truck, which had retreated to the road south of the bridge, was also blastedby the shotgun and set afire, sending more flames shooting up into the heavens. All that remainedon the bridge were piles of cinders. Flames rose into the sky to the north and south of the river,punctuated by the occasional crack of an exploding shell. The Jap corpses, burned to an oilycrisp, added the stench of roasted flesh to the acrid38 smell in the air. The people’s throats itched,their stomachs churned.
‘What’ll we do with their bodies, Commander Yu?’ the old man asked.
‘If we bury them, they’ll stink39 up our soil! If we burn them, they’ll foul40 our air! Dump theminto the river and let them float back home.’
Thirty or more corpses were dragged up onto the bridge, including the old Jap, who had beenstripped of his general’s uniform by the Leng Detachment soldiers.
‘You women look away,’ Granddad announced.
He took out his short sword, split open the crotches of the Jap soldiers’ pants, and sliced offtheir genitalia. Then he ordered a couple of the coarser men to stuff the things into the mouths oftheir owners. Finally, working in pairs, the men picked up the Japanese soldiers – basicallydecent men, perhaps, maybe handsome at one time, virtually all in the prime of their youth – and,one two three, heaved them over the side. ‘Jap dogs,’ they shouted, ‘go back home!’ TheJapanese soldiers flew through the air, carrying the family jewels in their mouths, and landed inthe river with a splash, a whole school of them caught up in the eastward41 flow.
The faint rays of dawn found the villagers too exhausted42 to move. The fires along the bankswere dying out beneath the still-dark sky. Granddad told the villagers to hitch43 the animals up tothe front bumper44 of the undamaged rice truck.
The animals strained, the ropes were yanked taut45, and the axles groaned46 as the truck crawledforward like a clumsy beetle47. The front wheels kept veering48 from side to side, so Granddad haltedthe animals, opened the door, and slid into the cab to try his hand at steering49. The ropes snappedtaut as the animals strained forward again, and Granddad wrestled50 with the steering wheel untilhe began to get the hang of it. Now the truck was heading straight, the terrified villagers fell inbehind it. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, Granddad felt around the dashboard with theother. He snapped on a switch, sending two rays of light shooting out the front.
‘It opened its eyes!’ someone shouted from behind him.
The headlights lit up the road ahead as well as the hairs on the animals’ backs. Feeling verygood about things, Granddad pushed and turned and twisted and pulled every button and switchand lever and knob he could find. A shrill51 noise rang out, and the horn began to blare. So youhaven’t lost your voice! Granddad was thinking. Deciding to have a little fun, he turned theignition switch; a rumbling52 emerged from its belly53 as the truck shot forward crazily, knockingdown mules54 and oxen, and bumping horses and donkeys out of the way, scaring Granddad sobadly he was drenched55 with sweat, front and back. Having climbed onto the tiger’s back, hedidn’t know how to get down.
The dumbstruck villagers watched the truck knock the animals down and drag them along. Ittravelled a few dozen yards before careening into a ditch west of the road and coming to ashuddering halt, the raised wheels on one side spinning like windmills. Granddad smashed theglass and climbed out, his hands and face smeared56 with blood.
He stood looking at the demonic creature, a grim smile on his face.
After the villagers had unloaded the rice from the back of the remaining truck, Granddadblasted holes in the gas tank and once again ignited the gasoline with a torch. The flames lickedthe heavens.
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收听单词发音
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1
wriggling
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| v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的现在分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等）；蠕蠕 | |
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2
mumbled
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sorghum
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| n.高粱属的植物，高粱糖浆，甜得发腻的东西 | |
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4
slaughtered
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| v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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7
flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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cinders
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| n.煤渣( cinder的名词复数 )；炭渣；煤渣路；煤渣跑道 | |
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dike
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| n.堤，沟；v.开沟排水 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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blurry
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| adj.模糊的；污脏的，污斑的 | |
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13
eerie
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| adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的 | |
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corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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15
merged
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| （使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
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16
scorched
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| 烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦 | |
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17
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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fang
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| n.尖牙，犬牙 | |
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bugler
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| 喇叭手； 号兵； 吹鼓手； 司号员 | |
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groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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21
wrench
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| v.猛拧；挣脱；使扭伤；n.扳手；痛苦，难受 | |
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22
thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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23
avenge
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| v.为...复仇，为...报仇 | |
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24
darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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aggrieved
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| adj.愤愤不平的，受委屈的；悲痛的；（在合法权利方面）受侵害的v.令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式)；令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式和过去分词) | |
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hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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29
jade
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| n.玉石；碧玉；翡翠 | |
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30
beaks
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| n.鸟嘴( beak的名词复数 )；鹰钩嘴；尖鼻子；掌权者 | |
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31
coffins
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| n.棺材( coffin的名词复数 )；使某人早亡[死，完蛋，垮台等]之物 | |
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32
draught
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| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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interred
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| v.埋，葬( inter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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lethal
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| adj.致死的；毁灭性的 | |
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35
mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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36
brilliance
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| n.光辉，辉煌，壮丽，（卓越的）才华，才智 | |
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37
milky
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| adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的 | |
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acrid
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| adj.辛辣的，尖刻的，刻薄的 | |
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39
stink
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| vi.发出恶臭；糟透，招人厌恶；n.恶臭 | |
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40
foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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41
eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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42
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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43
hitch
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| v.免费搭(车旅行)；系住；急提；n.故障；急拉 | |
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44
bumper
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| n.(汽车上的)保险杠；adj.特大的，丰盛的 | |
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45
taut
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| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
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46
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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47
beetle
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| n.甲虫，近视眼的人 | |
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48
veering
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| n.改变的；犹豫的；顺时针方向转向；特指使船尾转向上风来改变航向v.（尤指交通工具）改变方向或路线( veer的现在分词 )；（指谈话内容、人的行为或观点）突然改变；（指风） （在北半球按顺时针方向、在南半球按逆时针方向）逐渐转向；风向顺时针转 | |
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49
steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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50
wrestled
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| v.（与某人）搏斗( wrestle的过去式和过去分词 )；扭成一团；扭打；（与…）摔跤 | |
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51
shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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52
rumbling
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| n. 隆隆声, 辘辘声 adj. 隆隆响的 动词rumble的现在分词 | |
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53
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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54
mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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55
drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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56
smeared
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| 弄脏； 玷污； 涂抹； 擦上 | |
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