Free Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel by Mo Yan Page A

legs gave out. “Comrades, let’s get out of here!” he bellowed, kicking the man nearest him.
    The man crawled forward and struggled into a kneeling position. “Commander,” he cried out pitifully, “my eyes, I can’t see anything …”
    Now she knew that the dark-faced man was called Commander. “Comrades,” he said anxiously, “the Japs are coming. We must be ready for them …”
    Off to the east, she saw twenty or more Japanese horse soldiers in two columns on the top of the dike, riding down like a tide in tight formation in spite of the flames around them, the horses trotting across the ridge, heads thrust out, one close on the heels of the other. When they reached Chen Family Lane, the lead horse turned and negotiated the slope, the others quickly falling in behind it. They skirted a broad expanse of open land (the land, which served as a grain-drying ground for the Sima family, was flat and smooth, covered by golden sand), then picked up speed, galloping in a straight line. All the Japanese horsemen brandished long, narrow swords that glinted in the sun as they bore down on the enemy like the wind, their war whoops shattering the silence.
    The commander raised his pistol and fired at the onrushing cavalry troops, a single puff of white smoke emerging from the mouth of the barrel. Then he threw down the pistol and limped as fast he could toward where Laidi and her sisters were hiding. A speeding apricot-colored horse brushed past him, its rider leaning over in the saddle as he slashed the air with his sword. The commander hit the ground in time to keep his head from being struck by the sword, but not quickly enough to avoid having a chunk of his right shoulder sliced off; it sailed through the air and landed nearby. Laidi saw the palm-sized piece of flesh twitch like a skinned frog. With a scream of pain, the commander rolled on the ground, then crawled up against a large cocklebur and lay there without moving. The Japanese soldier spun his mount around and headed straight for a big man who was standing up holding a sword. With fear written on his face, the man swung his sword weakly, as if aiming for the horse’s head, but he was knocked to the ground by the animal’s hooves, and before he knew it, the rider leaned over and split his head open with his sword, splattering the Japanese soldier’s pants with his brains. In no time at all, a dozen or more men who had escaped from the burning bushes lay on the ground in eternal rest. The Japanese riders, still in the grip of frenzied excitement, trampled the bodies beneath their horses’ hooves.
    Just then, another cavalry unit, followed by a huge contingent of khaki-clad foot soldiers, emerged from the pine grove west of the village and joined up with the first unit; the reinforced cavalry forces then turned and headed toward the village along the north-south highway. The helmeted foot soldiers, rifles in hand, fell in behind their mounted comrades and stormed the village like locusts.
    On the dike the fires had died out; thick black smoke rose into the sky. Laidi could see only blackness where the dike was, while the ruined bushes gave off a pleasant charred odor. Swarms of flies, seemingly dropping out of the sky, fell upon the battered corpses and the puddles of blood near them, and on the scarred branches and leaves of the shrubs, and on the commander’s body. The flies seemed to blot out everything within sight.
    Her eyes felt dull and heavy, her lids sticky, in the presence of a world of strange sights she’d never seen before: there were the severed legs of horses, horses with knives stuck in their heads, naked men with huge members hanging between their legs, human heads rolling around on the ground clucking like mother hens, and little fish with skinny legs hopping on hemp plants in front of her. But what frightened her most was the commander, whom she thought was long dead; climbing slowly to his knees, he crawled over to the chunk of flesh from