The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China (32 page)

Her face turned blank when she saw me enter the hut. She offered no explanation for why she was there, nor did I seek one. After a few moments she quietly disappeared.

“Don't fight with your baby brother. Now you have only him with you in this world,” admonished the old woman.

“My Mama can give me many, many more baby brothers,” the small girl went on merrily.

I didn't need to see any more. I walked away swiftly, but her laughter still rang in my ears.

“Ling-ling, you cannot show personal sympathy or regret over this matter. You have to think, speak, and act as one of a team, not as an individual,” I nagged myself, but my nose smarted and tears welled up in my eyes. I viciously kicked a stone out of my way.

I threw up my head in an effort to regain my composure
and in looking up I caught sight of Sun's wife half hidden by the bushes ahead of me. I turned to take another path, but she cut across the corner to intercept me. She came up running and slightly out of breath.

“Wait a minute.”

At that moment I simply did not feel up to another tussle with her problems. After the birth of the baby, another girl, her husband had hardly improved his attitude to her or to the work team. He had had to find money to pay for the midwife, was now deeper in debt, and had another female mouth to feed. He wandered around with a perpetually hurt expression on his face as if he had been cheated.

His wife caught her breath. “Are you angry with us?” she asked timidly.

“Not angry,” I replied, “only disappointed. After all we've tried to do for you, you and your husband haven't raised a finger to help us with the land reform work.”

“I want to do something now, for the Xia orphans. Their mother was always very kind to me. It's the least I can do to help the children. Can you help me?”

“I don't see how I can.”

“You can.”

She spoke with unexpected finality. I peered hard into her face, seeking some clue to her meaning. Her brownish hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes seemed lighter in the sunlight and gave her face a strange cast. Xia's wife might have told her that I was the last cadre to talk with Xia before he died, that I had precipitated his suicide. I looked at her warily. At the slightest insinuation I was ready to repulse her. But she said only, “You're so kind.”

Again her words took me by complete surprise. Perhaps she thought she had already gone too far in her subtle game of blackmail. Maybe she could help me now. I tried to sound her out on what part she might think I had played in Xia's suicide. “Did Xia's wife notice anything odd about him the night he died?” I asked.

“She dreamed that he called out to her. She sort of woke up but then brushed the whole thing away as a dream. When she learned of his death the next morning she remembered that dream and then realized that perhaps in
reality she had heard him call out.” Tears came to her eyes. “Those poor children,” she exclaimed. “How can that old woman look after them? She can barely totter on her own feet.”

“How can you help them?” The words slipped out before I could stop them. I cursed myself silently for showing too much interest in the matter. Perhaps it would confirm her suspicion that I had a guilty conscience. Also, it was not too polite, showing I doubted whether she, who could hardly look after herself, could take on an extra responsibility.

“I have heard that Xia's children will be allowed to move back to their own house.”

“They will take up only one room in the house.”

“There are greedy people.” She frowned. “They say they have big families and should have that house.”

“It's a nice, solid house. But it can house only a small family besides the orphans and the old woman.”

“My family is small, just the three of us. The midwife told me that I would have no more children. I don't want to leave my little girl all alone in the world when Sun and I pass on, and one of Xia's children is a boy. I would like the three children to grow up together as one family.”

“So you are interested in that house too,” I said, not without some irony.

The gossips of the village were already speculating about who would finally get the neat house that Xia had so painstakingly improved. I pointed to the group of peasants who could be seen completing the survey of the landholdings. “You will have to discuss it with them.”

The distant earth, damp with the melted snow, looked rich and almost black. The peasants in their black jackets and trousers blended in easily.

“I also heard that Xia's orphans will get back part of their father's land. It's good land.” She spoke in a quiet voice, looking not at me but at the fields before us and the activity going on there. “Sun and I will plant wheat on it for them. After the harvest I will make pian-er gruel of white flour and they will carry it to offer at the graves of their parents.”

“You really wish to adopt the two orphans?” All sarcasm in my voice was gone.

“Yes.”

“Will Sun agree? That means one more girl in the family.”

“We'll have a son, and the four of us will have four times as much land as Sun has now.” There was a flash of the same, sudden fierceness in her eyes that she had revealed during her childbirth. “He had better agree.”

Then the two children would no longer be orphans of a stubborn rich peasant but adopted children of a poor peasant family. I breathed a sigh of relief, my guilt subsiding.

“You will plant more wheat. The whole of the plain will be a splendid sea of golden wheat!”

“I don't care how it looks. It will feel good here.” And Sun's wife patted her flat stomach and smiled. “Will you put in a good word for me?”

“I hope that everything will end well,” I answered her in a roundabout way.

We parted and walked in opposite directions. She went to join the peasants in the field. I walked straight to Wang Sha's office. Before I made the proposal in Mrs. Sun's favor, I wanted to know what he thought about it.

Wang Sha was seated at the table, tapping with his pencil on the boards, deep in thought.

Without lifting his eyes to look at me, he said, “Cheng and I are going to Ma Li's village.”

“Oh, good. Can you pass a message on to Liao for me?” At that he looked up, but immediately dropped his head again.

“Tell him, when he has time, to come here and see the boys dancing and correct their movements. When the work here is done, they and the girls are going to put on their first concert as part of the celebrations.” With a giggle, I added, “Tell him that Chu Hua will be here to supervise the girls. Then he'll be sure to come.”

Wang Sha didn't even smile. He heaved a sigh, opened a matchbox, and started building up something with the matches.

“I've just had a brainstorm,” I went on. “They can compose
a dance drama for the children to perform.” Still getting no response from him, I continued undaunted. “I can add my bit to it—you know, not the dance, but the story line.”

The matches fell apart and, as if his mind wasn't aware of what his hands were doing, he patiently put them together again.

I rattled on. “I want to pick your brains before I talk to Liao and Chu Hua. It may be only a little thing, but why not try out some new ideas in dancing? Why not …”

Looking blankly across his pagoda of matches at me, Wang Sha knocked one match out and the whole stick structure collapsed.

“Now, look at what you've done!” I exclaimed.

“Ling-ling,” he finally got out, “Liao has been murdered.”

“What?” My arms dropped to my sides. I said in a hushed voice, “No, I can't believe it.”

“Did you hear me?” And he repeated his words.

I was appalled. “So finally they've really hit back at us.”

“Cheng and I are going to his village to help the cadres and activists there investigate. You must stay here and keep things going until we return.”

“How long will you be away?”

“A day or two.”

“Let me go with you. I don't want to be left alone here. What's happening to this place? Hatred, hatred everywhere. Where will it end?”

Wang Sha ignored my agonized questions. “While we prepare to go, you write out a short report asking permission for Ma Li to be transferred here. She must leave that place as soon as possible. The county leadership can send some other cadre there. Send the report by messenger to the county town.” He turned away hastily.

“Take me with you,” I cried again.

He stopped for a moment at the door. But he left the office without looking back. His head was bowed so low that his chin rested on his chest.

19
  

By twilight the next day neither Wang Sha nor Cheng had returned. I paced uneasily up and down the narrow space of the township office, which was now our headquarters. I could neither sit nor stand still. I felt as if the ground beneath me might open at any moment and swallow me up. Liao—naive, agile, loving Liao—dead! I kept looking through the door and down the road in the hope that Wang Sha would suddenly appear and allay my fears and worries.

At the end of the village road not far from the office was a dried-up pond. Along its eastern bank a footpath ran obliquely up and down a mound. Returning to the village of an evening after work, the peasants, shouldering their mattocks, took this shortcut. When they reached the top of the slope, for a moment they were outlined against the sky. As they continued down on the near side to enter the road, their legs, bodies, and heads gradually disappeared into the shadow, so that for a time the mattocks were seen as though moving by themselves. Anyone entering the village from this side would normally take this footpath. To be sure of meeting Wang Sha or Cheng at the earliest possible moment, I walked to the top of the mound and scanned the path beyond. It was empty. I waited, undecided.

At the turn of the path into the cart track, the figure of a
man in cadre's uniform suddenly appeared in the dusk. Wishing, hoping that it was Wang Sha, I ran forward. The figure stopped. I recognized Cheng. Wary because of the recent bloody events, he looked around, ready to put up a fight.

“It's me,” I cried out. “It's Ling-ling.”

“You gave me a fright,” said Cheng.

“Where is Wang Sha?”

“He went to the district center to consult with the deputy Party secretary of the county.”

“Did you see Liao? His body? Did you bury him?”

Cheng blinked his eyes and shook his head in an embarrassed way as if he wished I wouldn't continue.

“Did you see him?” I persisted.

He opened his mouth as if to reply, but he only put out his tongue and licked his dry upper lip. He locked his mouth shut, his lower lip curled over his upper like a child about to cry.

“What on earth is the matter?”

“Don't ask me.” He threw his arms out. “His head—was—as—his head had been twisted round, as if somebody wanted to wrench it off. It was horrible.” He told me that Wang Sha would not soon return. He was himself directing the investigation of Liao's murder.

Cheng's distraught look stopped my further questions. We spoke no more about the murder as we walked back to the village. As he left me he took an envelope out of his pocket.

“I met the mailman on the way and he gave me this letter for you. It's from Hong Kong, sent on to you by someone in Shanghai. It's got your aunt's name on it, but the return address is the old Shanghai one.”

The letter was full of Hong Kong gossip and the difficulties of furnishing the new house to her satisfaction. She ended, “Look after yourself. Eat well and keep yourself warm. Don't get your feet wet. And keep out of trouble.”

I returned home exhausted after a full day's work in the fields and the neighboring hamlets. Seeing how tired I
was, Da Niang told me to lie down and take a rest. She would watch out for Wang Sha, she said, and would call me as soon as she saw him.

I lay on the kang with my back propped against my pillow and a folded quilt. Looking out through the doors into a corner of the courtyard, I could see Da Niang's son squatted there against the wall, his head lowered between his knees. Da Niang had trained him to do certain things. If a neighbor's hen made the mistake of trespassing on Da Niang's terrain, he would throw stones at its tail. It was believed that if a hen's bottom were hurt, it would stop laying eggs. But his twisted mind had composed variations on this theme. When a goat strayed into the yard, he cut off its tail and enjoyed the bloodletting. If there was no war on between Da Niang and these trespassers, he would pounce on a mouse and beat it to death with a stick. It was a horrible sight. I was afraid that one day he might try his gimmick out on people, and I never felt safe when he was around. Fortunately he was seldom home. Even at night he would loaf around, and he would fall asleep wherever he happened to be.

I wondered why he loitered in the yard now. He raised his head. His eyes were dull, and saliva trickled out of the corner of his mouth. His two big hands clenched and unclenched as if strangling something.