My mother often said, as long as a person is happy at work, then poverty is nothing to be ashamed of. Jiazhen took off her cheongsam and put on the same coarse cloth clothes that I had been wearing. All day she smiled, even though she was so tired that she could barely catch her breath.
Fengxia was a good kid. When we’d moved from our brick house to this thatched hut she stayed as happy as always, and when we had to eat coarse grain she never once went outside to spit it out. When her little brother came home she was even happier. From then on she didn’t
keep me company in the field—all she wanted to do was hold her baby brother. Poor Youqing—his sister had the opportunity to have four or five good years, but he only stayed in town for six months. Then he came to suffer with me. I feel it’s my son I’ve let down the most.
Life went on like this for a year before my mother got sick. In the beginning she was just dizzy—Mom said everything was fuzzy and blurry when she looked at us. I really didn’t think anything of it. I thought, She’s getting old, of course her vision isn’t as clear as it used to be. Then one day, while Mom was making a fire, her head suddenly fell to one side, resting against the wall as if she was asleep. When Jiazhen and I returned from the field she was still leaning like that. Jiazhen called out to her, but Mom didn’t answer. When Jiazhen reached out her hand to shake her, Mom slid down the wall. Jiazhen cried out to me in fear. When I rushed into the
kitchen, Mom woke up and stared at us for a while. We tried talking to her, but she didn’t answer. Then after a while she smelled something burning and realized that the rice was burnt. It was only then that she finally opened her mouth and said, “Heavens, how could I have fallen asleep?”
In a panic, Mom started to get up but fell right back down. I rushed to carry her to her bed. Over and over again, Mom
kept saying that she had fallen asleep, as if she was afraid that we wouldn’t believe her. Jiazhen pulled me aside and said, “Go into town and get a doctor.”
Getting a doctor takes money, so I stood there without moving. From beneath her mattress, Jiazhen handed me two silver coins wrapped in a handkerchief. Seeing those silver coins made my heart ache—that money was what Jiazhen had brought back from town; all she had left were those two coins. But mother’s health made me worry more, so I took those two silver yuan. Jiazhen carefully refolded the handkerchief and put it back under the mattress. She then handed me a set of clean clothes to change into. I said to Jiazhen, “I’m going.”
Jiazhen didn’t say anything, but saw me to the door. I walked a few steps and turned to see her again. She was fixing her hair as she nodded to me. This was the first time I had left Jiazhen since she had returned home. My clothes were ragged yet clean, and I headed toward the city wearing the new straw sandals that my mother had woven for me. Fengxia sat on the ground near the door, holding Youqing. Noticing how clean and tidy my clothes were, she asked, “Dad, aren’t you going down to the field to work?”
I walked fast, and within half an hour I arrived in town—it had been over a year since I’d been there. As I entered the town I felt a
kind of emptiness inside. I was afraid I’d bump into an old acquaintance. Who
knew what they would say seeing me wearing these raggedy clothes? I was most afraid of seeing my father-in-law. I didn’t dare walk down the street the rice shop was on—I preferred to take a detour through some side alleys to avoid running into him. There was only a handful of doctors in town, and I
knew every one of them. I also knew which doctors were straightlaced and which made their money by questionable means. I thought for a while and figured it was probably best to get Dr. Lin, who had set up shop next to the silk store. This old man was a friend of my father-in-law’s. To save Jiazhen a little face he would probably give me a discount.
As I passed the estate of the county magistrate, I saw a child in silk tiptoeing to the door, trying to grab hold of the copper door-knocker. The child was about the same age as Fengxia, and I suspected he was the magistrate’s son. I walked up to him and said, “I’ll help you
knock.”
The child nodded happily, and I grabbed hold of the knocker, banging it a couple of times. Someone inside responded, “Come in.”
It was then that the small child said, “Let’s run!”
It still didn’t hit me what had happened. The child managed to stay out of sight by
keeping close to the wall before slipping away. As soon as the door opened a man dressed in servant’s clothes appeared. Taking one look at the clothes I was wearing, he just pushed me away without saying a word. I never expected he would do that, and with that one shove I lost my balance and fell down the steps. I picked myself up, and while initially I just wanted to forget it and be on my way, the servant followed me down the stairs to kick me, adding, “You dare come begging without taking a good look at what
kind of place this is!”
All at once my temper flared, and I cursed him. “I’d rather gnaw at the rotten bones in your ancestors’ graves than beg from you!”
He jumped on me and began hitting me. I took a blow to the head, but not without
kicking him. There we were wrestling in the middle of the street. This guy was sly, and seeing that he couldn’t beat me he tried
kicking me in the groin. Me, I kicked him in the butt a few times. Neither one of us really
knew how to fight, so we just wrestled around for a while until a voice from behind yelled, “What a pathetic sight! Two animals grappling about—it’s pathetic as all hell!”
We stopped fighting and turned around to see a brigade of Nationalist troops in yellow uniforms standing behind us. There were about ten cannons the size of doors being pulled by horses. The man who had just yelled had a pistol on his belt; he was an official. The servant really
knew how to kiss up. As soon as he saw the official he immediately nodded and bowed. “Senior officer, greetings senior officer.”
The official waved his hands at us, saying, “Two stupid mules that don’t even
know how to fight. Come on and pull this cannon for me.”
As soon as I heard this, the hair on my head stood on end—he was going to conscript us. The servant was also nervous. He walked forward and said, “Senior officer, I’m from the house of the county magistrate.”
The official said, “The son of the county magistrate should be even more willing to serve his country.”
“No, no.” The servant was so scared he began to stutter. “I’m not the magistrate’s son. Beat me to death and I still wouldn’t dare claim to be his son. Platoon leader, I’m the county magistrate’s servant.”
“Fuck you!” the official cursed. “I’m the company commander!”
“Yes, yes, company commander, I’m the county magistrate’s servant.”
No matter what the servant said it was not only no use, but it started to annoy the company commander. The commander stretched out his hand and gave him a wicked slap across the face. “Stop with the fucking bullshit and go pull the cannon!” he ordered. He looked at me: “You, too!”
I had no choice, so I grabbed hold of one of the horses’ reins and went with them. I thought, when the time comes I’ll find an opportunity to escape. The servant was still up front pleading with the commander. After walking a ways, the commander surprisingly granted his wish.
“Okay, okay, you can leave,” he said. “Little bastard’s annoying the hell out of me!”
The servant was so happy, I thought he was going to kneel down and
kowtow to the commander. But he didn’t kneel, he just kept wringing his hands as he stood before the commander. The company commander said, “What the hell are you waiting for? Get the hell out of here!”
The servant said, “Yes, yes, I’m just leaving.”
As the servant finished he turned around and left. The commander took his pistol from his holster, and, straightening his arm and closing one eye, took aim at the servant. The servant had taken over ten steps when he turned around to take a look. What he saw shocked him, and he stood there without moving. Like a sparrow in the night he let the commander take his aim. It was then that the commander said to him, “Get going! Walk!”
The servant thumped to the ground. kneeling, he called out through his tears, “Company commander, company commander, commander.”
The commander fired a shot at him. It didn’t hit him, but a ricocheting rock cut his hand. His hand started to bleed. The commander waved his gun at the servant saying, “Stand up, stand up.”
He stood up, and the company commander said, “Get out of here, go!”
He cried repentantly, stammering as he spoke, “Commander, I’ll pull the cannon.”
The commander extended his arm again and for a second time took aim, saying, “You’d better start running!”
And then, as if the servant suddenly understood, he turned around and began to run like hell. Just as the commander fired off a second shot, the servant ran into an alley. Looking at his gun, the commander cursed, “Fuck, I closed the wrong eye.”
The company commander turned around and, seeing me standing behind him, approached me with his gun held out. He pressed the barrel of the pistol against my chest and said, “You can leave, too.”
My legs began to tremble uncontrollably. I figured even if he closed both eyes this time, he’d still send me to heaven with a single bullet. I pleaded, “I’ll pull the cannon, I’ll pull the cannon.”
With my right hand I grabbed the reins; with my left I firmly grasped the two silver coins in my pocket that Jiazhen had given me. As we left the city I saw some thatched huts in the fields that looked like mine. I lowered my head and began to cry.
I went north with this cannon battalion, and the more we walked the farther away we got. A month later we arrived in Anhui province. The first couple of days all I wanted to do was run away, and at the time I was not the only one with desertion in mind. Every couple days, one or two familiar faces would be missing from the battalion. I wondered if they really had run away, so I asked a veteran soldier called Old Quan.
“Nobody gets away,” explained Old Quan.
Old Quan asked me if I heard those shots fired at night while we were asleep, and I said I’d heard them. He told me, “Those are your deserters. Even the lucky ones who aren’t shot end up being caught by other units.”
As Old Quan spoke, my heart froze. Old Quan told me he was conscripted during the War of Resistance. When his troop set out for Jiangxi he deserted, but within a few days he was conscripted again by the troop going to Fujian. By then he had been in the army six years and had yet to fight the Japanese. All he’d fought were communist guerrilla detachments. During his period of conscription, Old Quan had run away seven times, and each time another unit had captured him. The last time he tried to escape he had made it within a hundred
li
of his home, and then he ran into this cannon battalion. Old Quan said he didn’t want to run away anymore.
“I’m sick of running,” he said.
After we crossed the Yangtze River we wore cotton-padded jackets. And as soon as we passed the Yangtze, my dream of deserting also died. The farther I got from home, the less courage I had to attempt escape. In our company we had about a dozen fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boys. Among these soldiers was a
kid named Chunsheng, from Jiangsu province. He would always ask me if there was really fighting to the north, and I’d say there was, but actually I didn’t
know. I thought, if you’re a soldier then fighting should be inevitable. I was closest with Chunsheng. He would always be next to me, pulling my arm, asking, “Do you think we’ll be
killed?”
“I don’t know,” I’d reply.
As he asked me this my heart would feel wave after wave of pain. After we crossed the Yangtze, we began to hear the sound of cannons and guns. In the beginning it would echo from far away, but after walking two more days the gunfire grew louder and louder. It was then that we arrived at a small village. There weren’t any animals in that village, let alone people—there wasn’t a living being anywhere in sight. The company commander ordered us to set up the cannons, and I
knew that this time we were really going into battle. Someone walked over and asked the commander, “Commander, where are we?”
The commander said, “You’re asking me? Well, how the fuck am I supposed to
know? Who the fuck am I supposed to ask?”
The company commander didn’t know where we were, and the peasants had all run away. I looked around in all directions. Other than some bare trees and a few thatched huts, there was nothing. Two days later there were more and more common soldiers in yellow uniforms. They came unit by unit from all directions, and some of the battalions set up camp right beside us. After another two days we still had yet to fire a single cannon when our company commander told us, “We’ve been surrounded.”
We weren’t the only company to be surrounded—there were somewhere around a hundred thousand Nationalist troops that were surrounded within a twenty
li
square area. Everyone in sight was wearing these yellow uniforms; it looked like a temple fair. Old Quan was really something. He sat on a dirt mound outside a tunnel, smoking and watching the yellow-skinned common soldiers go back and forth. From time to time he’d say hello to one of them—he really
knew a lot of people. Old Quan had been all over, having drifted through seven different units. He laughed, told dirty jokes to some old friends and exchanged gossip on some other soldiers. It seemed as if everyone they asked about was either dead or someone had just seen them within the last few days. Old Quan told Chunsheng and me that back in the day all those guys had tried to run away with him. Just as Old Quan was speaking, someone called over in our direction, “Old Quan, you’re still not dead?”
Old Quan bumped into another old friend. Quan laughed. “You little bastard, when did they catch you?”
Before that guy could reply, someone else called Old Quan, who turned his head to look and jumped up to yell, “Hey, where’s Old Liang?”
The guy laughed and yelled back, “Dead.”