They started to mumble a song:

Everyone has a mouth The ways of the right are many. Everyone has two ears. The ways of the right last through the years. Open your eyes today, see clearly tomorrow, Dear brothers, young and old, start to smile. Today we meet, tomorrow we part, Although separated by mountains and rivers, we are all under the same heaven…

The more wretchedly poor the woman, the more qualified she was to be the eye-opening person on an occasion like this. No one could explain why it had to be like this.

After the eyes had been opened, both sides immediately returned to calling each other brother; no one, under any circumstances, could ever bring up this phase of enmity again. In other words, all the whys and wherefores, all the enmity (or lack thereof) had been completely washed away by a bowl of water run off from the eaves.

In our present, new era, of course, the phrase "open eyes" has taken on more and more new implications. The Ox-head will discuss the here-and-nows of the national situation, the Asian Games to be held in China or family planning, for example, as a preamble to opening eyes. Both parties concerned have to give the Oxhead a red envelope (of money), not like it was in the past, when a pig's snout was enough as a thank-you gift. Both parties also have to pay "worry costs" to those who've watched the conflict unfold firsthand: heavy costs meant providing a meal, light costs meant a packet of cigarettes. Some of the young men who'd hung out with Kuiyuan had had their heads together in continual discussion over the last few days, waiting for this to happen. It was as if they were wanting to do something, but couldn't say what they wanted to do, so in the end they did nothing. They were like moths drawn to the light, always heading for where the action was, their faces masks of concern for everything, expressing a desire to put the world to rights, but when they arrived someplace, they'd have a directionless drink of tea, a directionless smoke and assemble in directionless twos and threes, casting frequent, knowing glances or smiles at each other. Someone might suddenly get up and yell "Let's go!," which might have led an outsider to believe something was about to happen. But nothing would in fact happen: the gang of them would go and have a look at a small shop, change the tree they were sitting under, resume their waiting in groups of twos and threes, scrap among themselves over the odd cigarette-nothing more.

And that was how they worried about Maqiao for several days until finally receiving their reward: Yanwu sent someone off to buy a few cigarettes and some packs of cold drinks to keep their mouths happy; and that took care of them.

They'd originally planned to go take a look at Kuiyuan's house, but when they got there they bumped into someone called Huangbao, who blocked the road and gave them an earful. Not knowing much about him, they exchanged knowing glances and raised their eyebrows at each other until someone gave another shout of "Let's go!"-they all roared with laughter, then left.

*Standing the Body

: Kuiyuan had been adopted by the Hu family, but as he hadn't yet pressed names he didn't count as having formally entered the clan, so he was buried in Maqiao. A little big brother of his, one Fangying, who'd been married off in faraway Pingjiang County near the Luo River, hurried back when she heard the news, to weep before her little brother's coffin. She hadn't been present at the eye-opening, and would under no circumstances accept a single cent from Yanwu's family. Not only this, she even said she wouldn't let Kuiyuan go under the ground and kept guard in front of the grave, wouldn't let anyone touch it with a hoe. She asked a few people to help her put the coffin vertically upright, propping it up at the sides with a few pieces of rock.

This was called "standing the body." Standing the body was a way of voicing a grievance, a way of attracting the attention of ordinary people and of officials. The stones heaped around the coffin signified that the grievance was as vast as the mountains themselves. The upright position of the coffin, then, signified the resolution that while the grievance hadn't been fully voiced, the dead wouldn't lie still, that they were sworn not to enter the ground. Deaf to what she heard from others, Fangying had decided in her own mind that her brother had died unjustly, that he'd been persecuted to his end by Yanwu's henchmen.

She even broadcast throughout the village that she'd give 10,000 yuan as a reward to whomsoever helped her rehabilitate Kuiyuan and redress the injustice. If they didn't want the money and wanted her instead, that was fine also: she'd be a contract wife for a year, wouldn't charge anything for her labor, for doing the housework and producing children during that year. All she wanted was her body back in one piece after a year.

*Uh

: Back in the days of the Cultural Revolution, the commune ordered each stockade to dig air-raid shelters, also called war-preparation caves. The Soviet Union, apparently, was going to fight down from the north, America was going to fight up from the south, and Taiwan was going to fight over from the east, so all the war-preparation caves had to be dug before the full moon was up. It was also said a very, very large bomb indeed had already been launched from the Soviet Union and in another day or two it'd fall on us here-if our planes couldn't bring it down, that is. The team leader had no choice but to organize three revolving shifts to work on the job day and night, to keep a step ahead of the World War. Generally speaking, two men and one woman were allocated to each shift, the men to take care of digging and carrying the earth, the woman, weaker than the other two, to take care of the topsoil. And so it was that Fangying, grasping a hoe with a sawed-off handle hoe, accompanied Fucha and me into the cave.

The war-preparation cave was very small, so narrow it only permitted two people to pass by at one time. The farther in we dug, the dimmer the rays of light became, and very soon we needed the light of an oil lamp. To save oil, we lit only a tiny lamp which illuminated a small, dusky circle around where the pickaxe fell, leaving everywhere else shrouded in boundless darkness. You could only figure out your surroundings by sounds and smells: whether your partner had returned from carrying earth, whether he'd put down his bamboo hat to wait, whether he'd brought some tea or something to eat, for example. Of course, in a tiny space like this, you very easily picked up the smell of other people's bodies, distinct from the smell of lamp smoke: the smell of a woman's sweat, her hair, her saliva, for example-and some rather less specific male smells besides.

After digging for a few hours, you started to shake and sway. Several times I felt my own face bumping accidentally into another face that streamed with sweat, or brushed by a few long strands of twisted hair. As I gently moved my numbed legs while coming back out of the digging position, whenever my concentration slipped I might collide with a leg somewhere behind me in the darkness, or with a bosom-I could sense its soft fullness, and how it dodged away in panic.

Fortunately, it was very hard to get a good look at the other person's face. The flickering dusky light illuminated the mud wall your nose was rammed up against, illuminated the eternal, inescapable fate that lay before you, illuminated the dense accumulations of pickaxe marks that swarmed at you everywhere, reflecting back in places a few rays of yellow light.