The Nine-Eyed Wolf

[Mahjong]

Some background: I composed this poem (wanna-be sonnet) from the first four lines of a Chinese short story that I have translated.  The story is set among a logging brigade in a remote mountain forest of central China, probably in the 1950's (just to give you a sense of the setting).  The story's four opening lines are straightforward prose but have a different cadence from the rest of the story, reading like a bit of local lore with only some allegorical significance to the story.  I was somehow inspired to break out these four lines, flesh them out, and put them into verse.  If I am satisfied with the final product, I will use this verse as an epigrammatic opening to the short story (with the author's approval).  I would really love it if someone could scan the poem for me, commenting on the meter.  Is it close enough so that, with appropriate changes, it can be salvaged as iambic pentameter?  Where are the variations?  The mistakes?  What lines need work and how and why?  I am ready to revise.  Thank you!



In Copper Drum Canyon one man all before bow,
A renowned hunter named So-and-so Tsao. 
Nine-Eyed Wolf’s his sobriquet since so they say,
A prayer nary a prey has from him to get away. 
Eyes laid on Tsao no quarry is ever known to flee, 
Perplexed and adept in animalese, Tsao occasioned an inquiry.
Apprise me prey upon espying me, why not run away? 
To Tsao a vindication did the prey forthwith relay:  
“Distressed and last-ditch off and running were I to split,
I’d be bagged just the same and kick the bucket.
Much sooner I’d stay put and on the spot decease,
In my swift demise so salve a measure of peace. 
Your sights at me train freely, a bull’s eye I guarantee,
My corpse whole, sound is my soul King Yama for to see.”

[Achebe]

Hello mahjong - almost every line is inverted in an attempt to make it rhyme. It ends up making the entire poem unreadable.
The only poetic device I can spot is rhyme, which has the above problem.
The lines are of irregular meter - not a deal breaker in itself, but the irregularities themselves appear to be the result of carelessness rather than art.

[CRNDLSM]

Some background: I composed this poem (wanna-be sonnet) from the first four lines of a Chinese short story that I have translated.  The story is set among a logging brigade in a remote mountain forest of central China, probably in the 1950's (just to give you a sense of the setting).  The story's four opening lines are straightforward prose but have a different cadence from the rest of the story, reading like a bit of local lore with only some allegorical significance to the story.  I was somehow inspired to break out these four lines, flesh them out, and put them into verse.  If I am satisfied with the final product, I will use this verse as an epigrammatic opening to the short story (with the author's approval).  I would really love it if someone could scan the poem for me, commenting on the meter.  Is it close enough so that, with appropriate changes, it can be salvaged as iambic pentameter?  Where are the variations?  The mistakes?  What lines need work and how and why?  I am ready to revise.  Thank you!



In Copper Drum Canyon one man all before bow,
A renowned hunter named So-and-so Tsao. 
Nine-Eyed Wolf’s his sobriquet since so they say,
A prayer nary a prey has from him to get away. 
Eyes laid on Tsao no quarry is ever known to flee, 
Perplexed and adept in animalese, Tsao occasioned an inquiry.
Apprise me prey upon espying me, why not run away? 
To Tsao a vindication did the prey forthwith relay:  
“Distressed and last-ditch off and running were I to split,
I’d be bagged just the same and kick the bucket.
Much sooner I’d stay put and on the spot decease,
In my swift demise so salve a measure of peace. 
Your sights at me train freely, a bull’s eye I guarantee,
My corpse whole, sound is my soul King Yama for to see.”

I want to know if I'm on the right track, by highlighting the words I think your natural accents are landing on,  that's the easiest way to re arrange words to fit a meter, I think.

[Mahjong]

Achebe: Thanks for the feedback. I agree with your overall assessment. I needed to hear it. This has been a challenge, not least because I can't change names, e.g., Copper Drum Canyon, Tsao, Nine-Eyed Wolf, (King) Yama. Neither can I change the flow and meaning of the story. That said, just so we're on the same page: This is legend that should read with a ring that is light, quaint, playful, surreal; hence, my (shameless) indulgence in rhyming and stilted inversion. I've attempted an initial revision, one that I know still needs work. I've removed some of the inversions and hopefully tempered some of the end-rhyming. I'm shooting for playful, not profound, and not unreadable. Feel free to offer specific suggestions for change, if you have any.
CRNDLSM: I will work on using highlighting to reflect my reading of stressed syllables and then post.
Thank you both!

In Copper Drum Canyon there’s a man all admire,
A celebrated hunter named So-and-so Tsao.
He’s called Nine-Eyed Wolf because up to now,
No prey has ever survived his deadly musket’s fire.
Upon laying eyes on Tsao, his prey eschew flight or scurry,
Perplexed and adept in animalese, he occasioned an inquiry:
Apprise me prey upon espying me, why not run away?
But the prey only irked Tsao by making a solemn entreaty:
“Frenzied and last-ditch off and running were I to split,
I’d be bagged just the same and kick the bucket.
I’d sooner stay put and on the spot decease,
In my swift demise so salve a measure of peace.
Train your musket on me freely, a bull’s eye I guarantee,
My corpse whole, sound is my soul for Yama to see.”

[Sparkydashforth]

Hi Mahjong, I appreciated the effort you have made here. Translating and re-inventing from a foreign language
especially an oriental tongue, is hard enough, making a poem work is sometimes impossible.



In Copper Drum Canyon there’s a man all admire,
A celebrated hunter named So-and-so Tsao. .................the poem starts well, but it could be stronger.
He’s called Nine-Eyed Wolf because up to now,
No prey has ever survived his deadly musket’s fire....................Perhaps a note of explanation along with the poem might have dispensed
with these narrative lines.

Upon laying eyes on Tsao, his prey eschew flight or scurry, ...........this syntax in this sentence is tortured and clumsy.

Perplexed and adept in animalese, he occasioned an inquiry: ............hard to read because of the forced inversions.
Apprise me prey upon espying me, why not run away? .........."espying" is a cringe worthy word.
But the prey only irked Tsao by making a solemn entreaty:
“Frenzied and last-ditch off and running were I to split,
I’d be bagged just the same and kick the bucket.
I’d sooner stay put and on the spot decease,
In my swift demise so salve a measure of peace.
Train your musket on me freely, a bull’s eye I guarantee,
My corpse whole, sound is my soul for Yama to see.”................The lines pretty much all suffer from the weaknesses
mentioned previously.


As an exercise, try writing this out again in plain prose. Note the clarity, and then
find the core images of the work....Attempt tp write outwards from that core, and you
might find the poetry there.  Yes, it's a story-poem but it does not have to be so time sequenced.

Good luck!

[Mahjong]

Thanks, Sparky.

I will keep grinding. Possibly I will try to cast this material in some 'freer' verse, outside the sonnet form. Busy this afternoon, but I did spend some time reading up on inversion in poetry this morning--and not just Shakespeare, for whom inversion was a central devise for rhyming and other effects (e.g., https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-a...tail/43707). All the comments above seem immediately to balk at inversion as bad. Clearly this is not the case, as there are entire poems composed of it. It must be that my execution of it is bad. I am trying to break this material out by casting it in a form that is strikingly dissimilar to the straightforward prose of the short story. Again, I'll keep at it. Thanks again!

[Achebe]

Thanks, Sparky.

I will keep grinding.  Possibly I will try to cast this material in some 'freer' verse, outside the sonnet form.  Busy this afternoon, but I did spend some time reading up on inversion in poetry this morning--and not just Shakespeare, for whom inversion was a central devise for rhyming and other effects (e.g., https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-a...tail/43707).  All the comments above seem immediately to balk at inversion as bad.  Clearly this is not the case, as there are entire poems composed of it.  It must be that my execution of it is bad.  I am trying to break this material out by casting it in a form that is strikingly dissimilar to the straightforward prose of the short story.  Again, I'll keep at it.  Thanks again!

Inversion was always unnatural but 400 years ago it wasn't cliched. It was bad, but it was fresh. 
Try and write a screenplay where the humour consists largely of puns and see where you go:

[Mahjong]

I've learned loads from this session.  The archived thread on inversion (thank you, Lizziep) impressed upon me the very real possibility that, among this community, the presence of inversion, in and of itself, might blow critical fuses.  My aim here is precisely to accomplish a good deal of what Pigpen critics of inversion decry.  The text of the story is 'natural prose'; my aim here is to be deliberately unnatural.  I'd like this to read light and playful and stylistically and spatio-temporally distinct from the story, of which this 'sonnet' will serve as an epigram.

In this context, I don't see 'espying' as a 'cringe word'.  It rolls off my tongue 'all too soothly', more smoothly than does 'spying me', and that's the only reason it's there.  My sense is that the 'critics of inversion' would also be automatic critics of anything 'all too smoothly', since anti-'all too smoothly' is de rigor of the day.  I agree entirely!  But this is why, in this context, the more smoothly flowing 'espying me' works.  This epigram is intended to invoke an idiom that is NOT 'de rigor of the day'.

None of what I have said above is meant to suggest that I do not believe that this sonnet cannot be improved.  I would be all too eager to incorporate 'specific' suggestions for improvement, as long as they are not premised on a poetry that is not something fundamentally other than what this is intended to be.

In any case, this is where I am thus far (and, yes, I have made some changes based on the comments received--thank you!):

In Copper Drum Canyon, one man all before bow,
A celebrated hunter named So-and-so Tsao. 
Nine-Eyed Wolf’s his sobriquet, since to this day,
A prayer nary a prey has from him to get away. 
Eyes laid on Tsao, no quarry is ever known to flee; 
Perplexed and adept in animalese, Tsao occasioned an inquiry.
Apprise me prey upon espying me, why not run away? 
To Tsao a vindication did the prey forthwith relay:  
“Distressed and last-ditch off and running were I to split,
I’d be bagged just the same and, alas, kick the bucket.
Much sooner I’d stay put and on the spot decease,
In my swift demise, so salve a measure of peace. 
Your sights at me train freely, a bull’s eye I guarantee,
My corpse whole, sound is my soul for Yama to see.”  
***

I was going to upload my raw translation of the short story, in case someone was bored and might like to give it a read (it's very short).  But I could not find a way to upload an attachment.  So I have pasted below the full text, which is raw and unedited.  I welcome any and all comments.  But, WARNING, below is not poetry; it's at best prose poetry ;-).



The Walleyed Wolf
 
Chen Yingsong
 
In Copper Drum Canyon, one man all before bow,
A celebrated hunter named So-and-so Tsao. 
Nine-Eyed Wolf’s his sobriquet, since so they say,
A prayer nary a prey has from him to get away. 
Eyes laid on Tsao, no quarry is ever known to flee; 
Perplexed and adept in animalese, Tsao occasioned an inquiry.
Apprise me prey upon espying me, why not run away? 
To Tsao a vindication did the prey forthwith relay:  
“Distressed and last-ditch off and running were I to split,
I’d be bagged just the same and, alas, kick the bucket.
Much sooner I’d stay put and on the spot decease,
In my swift demise, so salve a measure of peace. 
Your sights at me train freely, a bull’s eye I guarantee,
My corpse whole, sound is my soul for Yama to see.” 
 
Then and there, the Nine-Eyed Wolf shot the prey right in the eye. 

 
            But when the logging brigade gossiped behind Li Shanshun’s back, they called him the ‘Walleyed Wolf’, particularly the women.
 
            Li Shanshun was mainly quiet and unassuming, if at times a bit indecent.  He was walleyed—normally, you saw predominantly the whites of his eyes and a little black; if he became excited, you saw only the whites.  He had no special skill or ability, though sexually he was well endowed and hyperfunctional.  If he ate radishes, he remained erect all night.  During the night, we watched him with his outsized stiffy get up and go to pee; he was short on shame, and also proud of his prodigious gigi.
 
            Li Shanshun wasn’t married.  His wife had run out on him.  Every year he returned home twice.  All loggers went home twice a year.  At home, Li Shanshun would spend three days and nights going at it in bed with his wife, and then rest for three days and three nights (mostly sleep), and then go at it again, and so on.  His wife thoroughly depleted, an inert pile of bones, Li Shanshun would return to the logging brigade.  Eventually, his wife could no longer endure his routine and divorced him.
 
            Li Shanshun channeled his sexual energy into hard work.  Once his motor fired up, he was like a dog in heat, liable to lick its master’s bollocks.  The brigade chief assigned him the job of building a bath shed—this was arduous labor, especially undertaken alone.  From scratch, he had to gather all the materials and work by himself.  This never dampened his spirits or slowed him down; he assiduously attacked the task.  He chose to locate the shower shed on the very edge of the towering northern precipice.  A single wall separated his bunk in the men’s barracks from the shower shed.  At the outset, cutting down bamboo stalks and tree branches and hauling them to the cliff’s edge gave everyone a fright.  Later, lowering a scaffold on steel wires while standing on the brink, his pant legs ballooning in the wind whipping up the sheer precipice, Li Shanshun alarmed everyone; just watching him, they perspired.  But Li Shanshun was nothing less than pleased with himself.  The mountain top wind is always powerful, nowhere more so than on the northern precipice; showering in the bath shed there would be like spelunking in a glacier ice cave.  The situation was genuinely hazardous.  To build that bath shed, Li Shanshun had to suspend a scaffold, in a manner akin to hanging a cliff house over the ocean--indeed, the bath shed was exactly like a cliff house hanging over the ocean.  The brigade chief was bewildered.  We watched him climb the cliff, his ceramic canteen bowl clinking and clattering at his waist, to question Li Shanshun’s decision to build the bath shed on the precarious northern precipice.  At least this was what we assumed to be the chief’s objective; he had a sullen disposition and was at all times taciturn.  A cadre from up north, he had gunshot wounds to his lung and testicles, and was given waspishly to pointing out things not to his liking.  We thought he should be up there interrogating Li Shanshun.  But soon the wind carried down to us Li Shanshun’s voice.  We could make out the gist of what he was saying:
           
            “Isn’t the southern area designated for an activities center?  Here’s fine, here’s good.”  Standing atop the cliff, both men gesticulated wildly while the wind battered them.  In the end, Li Shanshun prevailed.  The brigade chief seemed unwilling to intermeddle too forcefully in the matter.  Following his victory, Li Shanshun became even more gung ho, hazarding feats by turns more breathtaking; at one point, he was dangling so precipitously off the cliff that he could pass for a flying squirrel.
 
            This entire ordeal of Li Shanshun tempting the fates with his life, who knew that it was no more than a scheme to enable him to peep at the women workers while they were showering?  Naturally, the woman worker of greatest interest to him was Jiang Hongying.
 
            On the women’s shower days (even-numbered days of the month), Li Shanshun poked a hole in the asphalt felt and peeked inside the shower shed.  The so-called “wall” was nothing more than a sheet of asphalt felt.  One day while showering, Jiang Hongying sensed that someone was watching her, and felt a biting draft blanketing her back.  Covering her bare chest with her arms, she turned around and peered at the asphalt felt wall.  She spotted a pair of blank white eyes, chillingly empty like those of a ghost.
 
            Jiang Hongying was most uncommon as loggers go.  Her face was orange-red, the color of chanterelles and bright as the sun.  In the argot of both the men and women, she was “eye candy.”  She was well developed, her buttocks not overly large, her breasts bountiful.  She exuded a pure and lush and untouched beauty.  Her father being a rightest, politically incorrect, she wasn’t permitted to join the propaganda team.  There wasn’t a member of the propaganda team, however, whose talents could measure up to hers.  Compared to Jiang Hongying, all the female loggers in Shennongjia were, as they say, ‘twisted melons and shriveled dates’—not a one was in her league.
           
            Jiang Hongying burst from the shower shed without wiping herself dry; she was shivering all over.  The brigade chief rushed after her.  Catching up, he anxiously asked her if the water was either too hot or too cold and cautioned her about catching cold.  But Jiang Hongying was too terrorized to talk.  The chief looked as if he were staring at an evil spirit.  He followed up with detailed questions, trying to get to the heart of the matter.  He thought to inquire about a possible problem with her biology, since he ‘had his eye on her’.  But he checked himself, remaining set nonetheless on abducting her upon being reassigned to Yantai, his hometown in Shandong Province. 
 
            Jiang Hongying eventually recounted the shower-shed incident.  Her radiant Yantai-apple face glowing before him, the brigade chief immediately began to formulate a strategy to avenge her.  Calm and composed, he prepared a thick iron wire and gave it to Jiang Hongying.
 
            Not a word about this incident was uttered to the brigade.
 
            On the next women’s shower day, Jiang Hongying trekked up to the shower shed with everybody watching her.
 
            Jiang Hongying was trembling, as one would expect, but upon stabbing that thick iron wire into the peephole in the asphalt felt wall, she was unable to withdraw it; instead, her trembling turned into vigorous grinding, and the harder she ground the more dauntless she grew.
 
            A horrible shriek plummeted from the men’s cliff-top barracks; it was blood-curdling and reverberated as if falling in a fathomless abyss.  At that moment, the entire brigade was outside—working, snacking, playing cards, shooting the breeze; everyone witnessed Li Shanshun rush from the barracks with a hand over his eye and blood spurting forth from between his fingers.  No one knew what was happening.  The brigade chief hurriedly approached Li Shanshun and announced that it was time to hold a “son of a bitch study session.”
 
            The chief grabbed Li Shanshun, who was now staggering with his badly bleeding eye, and ushered him wrathfully into an office overgrown with white toadstool and pseudoginseng.  His wounded lung expanding and contracting, the chief spoke in a remote and rustic eastern Shandong dialect:  “You son-of-a-bitch—you know what, today we’re conducting a ‘son-of-a-bitch study session’.  I want to detain here and now every S.O.B., one by one capture all of you.  Today, I’m your daddy, your S.O.B. chief.  I command you to commence writing your self-criticism….”
 
            In the study session there were two other men, both of whom had pilfered kelp from the canteen.  They were huddled in a corner, breathing heavily and afraid to come out.  Wrapped around their necks were long, wide, and translucent strips of kelp; each of their heads looked like that of Prince Sihanouk poking through a floral hoop.
 
            Spilling out from between Li Shanshun’s fingers was blood and some other liquid that looked like black ink; it was as if in his hand he had crushed two bottles of ink, one red and one black.  He said, “Brigade chief, let me go see….
 
            “Go see?”
 
            “Go down the mountain, to the hospital.”
 
            “You don’t want to write your self-criticism?” The brigade chief asked rhetorically, breathing heavily.  “This is a son-of-a-bitch study session.”
 
            “I can’t see…” Li Shanshun responded, perfectly calmly, with his hand at once pressing on his eye and propping up his head.
 
            “You’re fine.  You still have another eye, another walleye, an eye that’s as rapacious as a wolf’s, as savage as a cur’s—draw a turtle head, below it sketch a wolf’s tail, and at the bottom sign your name.”
 
            His face deep purple with bottled up indignation, the brigade chief paced back and forth at the front of the room while feeling about at his waist, where hung only his ceramic canteen bowl.  He was groping for a handgun, but wasn’t carrying one.  He then feverishly searched for something in a drawer, promptly pulling out a fountain pen and, in the same motion, flinging it down furiously on the table, as if it belonged to someone else.  He then bellowed at Li Shanshun, whose entire body by now was glistening with blood: “Get writing!  Write!  Write!”
 
            Li Shanshun just sat there, placidly, waiting for the brigade chief to come around—to change his position.
 
            “My eye….”
 
            As Li Shanshun muttered this line, something fell from between his fingers, that thing was his soft and badly damaged eyeball!  At this, Jiang Hongying became dumbstruck by a feeling of wretchedness.
 
            The brigade chief was stunned, as if gripped by an icy shiver.  In his frozen state he confirmed to himself the identity of the fallen object.  His swollen lips began moving before he knew what to say.  He ended up yelling, “Pick it up!”
 
            Li Shanshun instinctively wanted to pick up his eyeball.  His eyeball had fallen out and onto the ground; it belonged to him, it was a part of his body.  Before going for his eyeball, he trained his good eye on the brigade chief, who he feared had lost his senses and might lunge to step on his eyeball, crushing it into the mud.  Still spying the chief, he dared not rashly motion to grab for his fallen eyeball.  Conversely, he affected an indifferent disposition, down playing the gravity and urgency of the situation, as if to say: So my eyeball’s fallen out, so be it, no big deal.
 
            “Pick it up and put it back where it belongs.”  Commanded the brigade chief.
 
            Li Shanshan took this line as reassurance that the brigade chief hadn’t completely lost his sense of reason—even though, at that moment, he watched the chief rip open his own shirt collar to relieve his burning lungs.  Li Shanshun bent over and picked up his damaged eyeball.  Using his sleeve, he brushed off the mud with extreme care, as if to avoid causing the eyeball pain.  Moving the eyeball to his lips, he gave it a couple gentle puffs and then slowly pressed it back into its socket.
 
            Li Shanshun all the while never uttered a sound, as if he had just put on a pair of eyeglasses.  He didn’t want anyone to see his impairment, his broken eye.  Keeping his hand pressed on his ‘wont to fall out’ eye, he again said: “Brigade chief, let me go to the hospital.”
 
            “Not a chance!  How can you think of going to the hospital?  You son-of-a-bitch!  You deserve your punishment.  Your ‘son-of-a-bitch study session’ has only just begun.”  Sweat poured from the brigade chief’s face.  His pronouncements weren’t only for Li Shanshun to take in; they were also for the rowdy crowd assembled outside to hear.
 
            Suddenly, Li Shanshun seemed to break down and began shaking; like a leopard cat, he snarled and groaned and his hairs stood up straight.
 
            Li Shanshun’s show of torment produced an awkward silence.  Were that quiescence to continue it would have disadvantaged the brigade chief, casting him as excessively merciless and cruel.  From the outset, from the moment Li Shanshun emerged covering his eye, all looked upon him with enmity, as morally corrupt, a scoundrel.  If the chief had ordered everyone to mince his manhood, or to dismember him, they would’ve swarmed him and followed through.  But Li Shanshun’s current demeanor moved them; indeed, shocked and appalled them.  His affectation of resilience and nonchalance, as though nothing at all was the matter, and eventual quivering collapse elicited a spontaneous sense of compassion, particularly among the women workers, the ones who had resented him the most.  Now, some began whispering that Li Shanshun should be taken quickly to the hospital.  The chief was stymied, unsure of his next move.  A retired soldier nicknamed “The Governor” came to his aid, leaping forward and hollering:
 
            “Tie up Li Shanshun!”
 
            This rallying cry merely magnified Li Shanshun’s miserable predicament, moving him out of the frying pan and into the fire.  His seared face grew more deeply purple by the minute.  Blood continued to pour from his injured eye socket, like the mouth of a mountain spring.  His good eye became by degrees whiter, as if at any moment he might keel over.  Just then, the anguished mob wavering, Jiang Hongying pushed her way free from the crowd and took off running up the mountain, looking like a flushed rabbit.  There was an evening glow; mist and clouds blanketed the forest. 
 
Disarray followed in the wake of Jiang Hongying’s running off.  Everyone moved away from the office entrance.  Several folks pursued Jiang Hongying, fearing an unexpected accident.  Later, as it turned out, Li Shanshun was taken down the mountain to the hospital.  Jiang Hongying was retrieved and consoled.
 
            That night sitting around the campfire, everyone talked about the incident, while the brigade chief concerned himself with making arrangements for rebuilding the bath shed.  Someone brought up Li Shanshun’s prodigious endowment.  Others took this as a cue for repartee, with one person exaggerating the length of Li Shanshun’s gigi as longer than a cucumber.  Gesticulating, someone else affirmed this assertion, claiming to have measured it as requiring three hands to clutch completely.  Another waxed political, propounding to the chief that this “thing” was the root of the ruin behind the bourgeois ideology of pleasure.  The chief retorted, “It’s up to the individual to control that ‘thing’.  Li Shanshun’s from a farming family; I checked his file.”
 
            Someone reprised the bawdy topic, stating that Li Shanshun had practiced a kind of gongfu that entailed hanging heavy objects from his “thing.”  Someone else chimed in, asserting that Li Shanshun had said himself that when he was three years old he hung from his “thing” a five jin steel weight, and that at seventeen he could remain firm for two hours with a fifteen jin weight affixed to it.  His father, so Li Shanshun had boasted, could hang forty jin, and even at seventy years old could hang twenty or thirty jin without bending—this was a truly iron woody.
 
            The atmosphere was lively.  The men and women both howled with laughter.  No one had noticed that, like the flip of a switch, the brigade chief’s facial expression changed, and he began breathing heavily, his lungs swelling and expelling.  They only saw him suddenly jump to his feet and begin castigating them: “Gossiping about a gigi is tasteless.  Go to bed, now.  Tomorrow we cut down trees.”
 
            In the same instant, everyone remembered that the brigade chief had only a single testicle—lampooning Li Shanshun amounted to mocking the brigade chief’s flaw!  Aware of this, all now trembled with fear and trepidation.
 
            But the faux pas passed without repercussion.  The brigade chief went back to business as usual, to being his bossy and melancholy self.
 
            A week and a half or so later, on a resplendently sunny day in the forest, the brigade, cutting away as usual, cried out in concert as before, “Shunshan has arrived.”  As before, the thick fragrance of resin from freshly felled trees wafted throughout the forest—this pungent aroma intoxicated and tumbled the new arrivals, deemed “tree drunk.”  Freshly cut and sweat-smelling sawdust flew in all directions.  Li Shanshun had returned, now with a black and sunken eye socket.  No one imagined he would come back, but he did.  He carried on as though nothing had ever happened.  With a tobacco pouch, a ceramic canteen bowl, and a sickle (for cutting shrubs and weeds) clipped to his waist, he went off as usual to cut down trees, calling out to his two apprentices to hurry along.
 
            Not long thereafter, word spread that the brigade chief and Jiang Hongying were getting married.
 
            That evening, they passed around candy and everyone ate and drank in celebration.  On the wedding night, following the custom, the bedroom listeners eavesdropped on the newlyweds; the nuptial bed was raucous all night, as if being moved around or torn apart.  In his wedding speech earlier that day, the brigade chief said, “Jiang Hongying comes from a family with a bad class background.  No matter.  After we’re married, we’ll help each other and become a pair of ‘reds’.  We'll struggle to liberate her from incorrect ideologies and then to liberate all of humanity.”  A bedroom listener later remarked, “Need a nuptial bed quake so seismically in order to liberate one person?”
 
            The next morning, the brigade chief’s eyes were bone dry, not a trace of sleep in them.  On Jiang Hongying’s face was what looked like a teeth-mark scar.  Neither of them appeared the least bit refreshed.  Everyone was astonished.
 
            After half a year, the brigade chief was reassigned, but was unable take Jiang Hongying along with him.  The brigade eventually heard the backstory, namely that the chief was impotent.  The quaking nuptial bed was a sham, a simulation staged for the bedroom listeners to hear.  Jiang Hongying’s blood resulted from the frustrated brigade chief’s resentment—he used his hand to scratch her face and draw blood.  A short time later, Jiang Hongying married the Walleyed Wolf Li Shanshun.
 
            Was this redemption?  Yes and no.  Doubtless was that while picking mushrooms one day, Li Shanshun violated Jiang Hongying.  At first, she resisted--kicking, clawing, and biting; in the end, she acquiesced.  Jiang Hongying’s father was a doctor at the Propaganda Bureau Hospital; he gave Li Shanshun an artificial eye.  It looked like a dog’s eye, with distinct black and white colors, but a vast improvement over his original preponderantly white eye—all in all, it was quite decent.  Everyday, Li Shanshun applied a glossy layer of lard around his eye socket to make his eye appear animated; looking carefully, however, one could see that his artificial eye never moved.
 
            Every morning, Li Shanshun gleefully carried Jiang Hongying’s chamber pot to the edge of the cliff and dumped it.  He then prepared a basin of freshwater for her morning toilette.  Li Shanshun was illiterate, but he learned to read the newspaper.  Jiang Hongying bore for him three strong and spirited sons; they lived together happily.

Translated by me, Mahjong :-)