Fanshen

by Hinton, William ; Magdoff, Fred;

  Ch’ou-har took another half step forward, raised his fist and made ready to strike. A score of men in the back of the Church rose to their feet. They began to move forward as if by command. Across the floor other men stood. Every person in the crowd strained to see the action in the center. An ominous silence pervaded the whole vast space as a thousand eyes concentrated on Ch’ou-har’s long hands. Wen-te, crouched and ready to spring, stared up at them also. If Ch’ou-har hit out, as he certainly intended to do, Wen-te would die in the next few minutes, for such was the feeling of hatred for him and his father that no power on earth could stop those peasants once Ch-ou-har galvanized them into action. The members of the work team stood as if hypnotized.

  It was one of those moments when time stands still and every word and gesture is reduced to slow motion. A catastrophe was spontaneously being generated. I felt it, and the members of the work team felt it too. But no one moved.

  “Tell me, who are the dogs? Who are the dogs?” said Ch’ou-har in a hoarse whisper.

  At this Wen-te sprang erect.

  “I never said that. I never called anyone a dog!”

  His face was chalk white.

  With a quick jerking movement Ch’ou-har reached out both hands toward Wen-te’s throat.

  A cry rang out.

  “Make him stand back!”

  It was Ch’i Yun. She ran forward and flung her arms down between the two men. Some one else—was it Hsieh Hung?—pulled Ch’ou-har back a foot or two. Then Little Li and Chang-ch’uer pushed him on into the crowd. He stood there looking helplessly at his cheated hands. They were still moving as if to throttle the wind in a human throat. He raised his eyes to meet Comrade Hou’s and his eyes asked, “Why? Why have you stopped me?”

  Those men in the crowd who had stepped forward drew back a little.

  With a shudder Ch’ou-har recovered control of himself. His arms dropped to his sides. He began to speak and suddenly felt the weight of his years crushing him. All his joints began to loosen, the muscles of his careworn face sagged, and the words came stumbling from his toothless mouth.

  “I risk my life to accuse this man,” he said. “If I should be murdered in some nameless place I only want to warn you beforehand. I put myself under your protection. All my life I have never beaten others or …”

  He could say no more. Slowly he went back to his seat.

  Even before Ch’ou-har sat down, Hsien-e rose to her feet. As she walked to the center of the hall Wen-te looked at her with disbelief. It was as if he were observing a spirit risen from the dead.

  Hsien-e told her story very bravely; Hei-hsiao made his accusations just as he had promised; and many other peasants, following the lead of these two young people, spoke out without equivocation. But Wen-te did not bow his head. Quite the opposite- As the meeting progressed and he realized that he was not going to be beaten, he regained his composure and finally his arrogance. He ended up not only rejecting all the criticisms made against him but also turning the charges against those who had made them. When Shen Ch’uan-te asked him who beat Little Ch’uer, Wen-te said that Shen ought to know the answer himself. When Hu Hsueh-chen asked him if he had beaten his wife, Wen-te answered proudly, “Yes, I beat her. I beat her once because she stayed out so late that we got no supper. I beat her a second time because she flirted with another man in the cornfield. Of course, for a man to beat his wife is wrong, but I had good reason.”

  This last reply was more than Little Li could stand. He climbed up on the table where everybody could see him and denounced Wen-te bitterly, passionately, as a man who could not possibly continue to be a Communist.

  But the object of his scorn did not even seem to hear him.

  ***********

  When the work team members got back to the District Office they found Hung-er waiting for them. The suspended militia captain had a hang-dog look on his face. All the defiance was drained out of him. He asked for a copy of the opinions that had been spoken against him, saying that he wanted to study them and answer each one in detail at the next meeting.

  Hung-er had reached that critical point in his own education where defiance gave way to despair. It was a point at which most people had to arrive before they could begin the painful process of reform. The task before the work team was to bring Wen-te to this same threshold, to break down his defenses, and to make him see himself as others saw him. Only then could the difficult process of remolding his outlook begin.

  The public meeting, successful though it had been in overcoming the people’s fears, had not yet conquered the suspended police captain. The only effective method for putting further pressure on him was to mobilize the people of Long Bow more thoroughly. Up to that point, of the scores who had suffered at the hands of the father-and-son pair, only 20 or 30 had spoken out. This was not enough. With a man as proud and determined as Wen-te, only a united community could prevail. By calling a mass meeting from which Wen-te and Yu-lai were barred, the work team encouraged several dozen others to find their voices. When on the evening of June 9th, Wen-te again appeared before the gate, the sheet of paper recording the charges against him was five feet long.

  The most damaging of these charges had to do with the “agent’s caps” that he and his father had fastened on all who opposed their will. As these were presented, one after the other, Wen-te did not have time to regain his composure.

  Old Tui-chin, the bachelor peasant from the northern group, interrogated him like a district attorney before a court of law.

  “How old was your wife when you married her?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “How then did you get a license at the District Office?”

  “I ordered her to say that she was 16.”

  “You demanded the immediate return of all the money and grain your father paid for her?”

  “No, I didn’t do that, but I did force her to say she was 16.”

  “How?”

  Wen-te hesitated.

  “He threatened her parents. That’s what she says. What do you say?” cried Old Lady Wang.

  Wen-te said, “I don’t know what to say. I am afraid. I have forgotten what happened.” His composure was draining fast.

  “We won’t beat you. Why should your heart jump?” asked Yuan-lung.

  “You are so brave at doing things, why be so afraid to talk about them?” asked Hu Hsueh-chen derisively, her lips curled in a sneer.

  “I forget everything. Please, you criticize me,” muttered Wen-te.

  “The opinions of the masses pile up like a mountain,” said Old Tui-chin. “He says he has forgotten, but how can he forget the affairs of his own family? We have tried our best to win him from the wrong path, but he doesn’t understand at all, so we ought to kick him out of the Party and send him to the County Court for further action.”

  “Wen-te, what do you think of those suggestions?” asked Little Li.

  “I agree,” said Wen-te. “I think it is right. I have nothing to say.”

  Then Hsien-e spoke up. Both Tui-chin and Little Li had ignored the most important point.

  “Do you grant me a divorce right away?”

  “I’ll never agree to that to the last day of my life,” said Wen-te. The very idea seemed to send him into a sort of frenzy. He threw himself down and began to hit his head against the floor so hard that the sound of his skull knocking brick could be heard throughout the Church.

  “Never!” he cried with each blow. “Never, never!”

  “Why not? Tell me the reason why not,” demanded Hsien-e.

  “Though I beat you before, still I can correct that. I’ll never do it again. I can correct that,” said Wen-te from the floor. He had stopped beating his head, but he did not get up.

  “How can I believe you?” asked Hsien-e. “What if you beat me to death?”

  “If I do that, then I should be punished with death,” replied Wen-te.

  “But even if you paid for her life with yours, that would be no bargain for her,” sai
d Old Lady Wang.

  “Let the girl state why she wants a divorce,” demanded Yuan-lung.

  “No, let Wen-te state why he wants to keep her,” said T’ai-shan’s mother.

  But Wen-te could give no reason. He only made the statement, “I’ll take an oath before the people. If you return home, I will never beat you.”

  “That’s enough,” said Cheng-k’uan, who, as head of the Provisional Peasants’ Association, had chaired the whole meeting. “I think we should decide what to do with him. He forced an under-aged girl to marry him; he oppressed and beat many people for trifling reasons; he falsely called many people reactionary agents. I say send him to the People’s Court. Is that right or not?”

  “Right, right,” shouted the crowd. “That’s the best thing that could happen.”

  This time, after the meeting was over, Wen-te sought out the cadres in the District Office as Hung-er had a few days before. He was on the verge of tears.

  “I prepared thoroughly for two whole days, but as soon as I stood up I got completely confused. I want to be honest. I want to speak it all out, but I can’t. I am afraid the masses will jump on me in the street and then turn around and say that I attacked them. What shall I do.”

  “The masses are kind,” said Ch’i Yun. “They wouldn’t do anything of the kind. Only a twisted brain like yours would think of such a thing.”

  Yu-lai, who had followed Wen-te in, shook his head in disgust at his son. “I coached him for several days, but this son-of-a-bitch is so stupid he forgot everything when he got before the people.”

  “But it has nothing to do with coaching,” said Little Li, throwing up his hands. “He need only speak out his behavior. According to him he is not skillful at self-criticism. But the question arises, how come he is so skillful at oppressing people? If he insists on defying the people he will only punish himself.”

  “My style and my attitude were too bad in the past,” admitted Wen-te. “But I beat the landlords bravely.”

  “Are they the only ones you beat?”

  “Well, no, I beat others too.”

  “Yes, you beat your wife and your father-in-law, who is like a second father to you. Can you call him a landlord?”

  “No,” said Wen-te, mournfully.

  Since the meeting had voted to send Wen-te to the People’s Court, and neither Little Li nor Ch’i Yun showed the least inclination to sympathize with Wen-te, Yu-lai thought his son was already under arrest. He assumed that the youth would immediately be led off to Lucheng to await trial. Not wanting to be caught unprepared, Yu-lai asked if he should go home and find a quilt for the prisoner to take along with him to jail. He was surprised when Little Li dismissed both of them and told them to go home.

  The worried father and distraught son had no sooner stepped outside the door than Yu-lai returned alone. He took Little Li aside and, in a low tone, engaged him in a very serious conversation. It turned out that what concerned him most was the divorce. Both he and Wen-te considered a divorce to be out of the question. “In the last few days, whenever the subject came up, we both stopped thinking. For us it is too awful to think about,” said Yu-lai, pulling nervously at Little Li’s tunic.

  Little Li listened attentively but promised nothing.

  Yu-lai, uneasy but by no means repentant, departed once again.

  ***********

  The next day, June 10th, brought Yu-lai before the gate. If ever a man strode the political stage with a tiger’s head only to depart like a snake’s tail, Yu-lai was that man. His final performance, his “day in court,” proved to be less than an anti-climax; it was a farce. In facing down Wen-te, the son, the people had lost their fear of Yu-lai, the father, and Yu-lai in turn, when confronted by a united community, lost all his bluster. His threats and boasts evaporated like a puddle on a sun-scorched field. What remained was an evasive man with watery eyes whose every tactical twist and turn was anticipated by his accusers.

  The people responded with contempt, locked the gate, and told him he would have to wait for the People’s Congress.

  That afternoon, when the gate adjourned for the third time, Wen-te and Yu-lai came together to the work team. This time Wen-te wept in earnest. Clearly, he no longer knew what to do or which way to turn. His father, as stubborn in defeat as he had been in victory, still hoped that clever words and demagogy could pull them both through the crisis. He cursed his son for a stupid ass as he had done before. But it was obvious to the latter that wit and maneuver had outlived their usefulness. Only sincerity counted now. Both men must face up to their past. What made Wen-te weep was his fear that it was already too late. Would he not be punished anyway? Was not the divorce a foregone conclusion? Could any words or acts on his part head off catastrophe now?

  As Wen-te wept and Yu-lai cursed, Secretary Liu, a subregional leader whom none of us had met before, walked in. He had come to check on progress in Long Bow’s land reform just as Secretary Wang had done several weeks earlier. When he saw Wen-te in tears he asked him, with great kindness, to sit down and tell his side of the story.

  “I know I am doomed,” sobbed Wen-te. “If I go to the People’s Court, I will be shot. And if I am kicked out of the Party, it. will be as bad as if I were shot. Whether I confess or not, there is no way out for me. So I had better be silent and await my fate.”

  Gently but firmly Secretary Liu disagreed. “You can still decide your own fate,” he said. “It is up to you.”

  The Party Secretary then told Wen-te about many cadres whom he personally knew who had done worse deeds than Long Bow’s police officer but who had determined to face them honestly, had turned over a new leaf, and had then been accepted once again as leaders by the people. “As for your marriage, if the girl insists on leaving you, she has that right. We can’t do much about that. But, if you reform, in a year or so you can certainly find another wife,” said Liu.

  The tears gradually dried on Wen-te’s cheeks as he listened. He promised Secretary Liu that he would speak with a different attitude before the next gate and went home calm and thoughtful.

  As soon as he had gone, Secretary Liu called the members of the work team together and warned them, as they had so often been warned before, against “leftism” in the treatment of cadres. “In a number of places Party members have been so oppressed they have committed suicide,” he said. “This is a great loss to the Party and to the people. We have to show everyone a way out. It is not enough to cure the disease. We must save the patient. And besides, many of these men, especially the younger ones who are in the deepest kind of trouble, are often the most brilliant, fearless, and creative sons of the people. Reformed, they are a most valuable asset. They often prove to be stronger and wiser than those who have not made mistakes.”

  A long discussion followed. The cadres decided that Wen-te could be re-educated, but that his father’s attitude stood in his way. If only the young man could be separated from his father for awhile, he might well straighten out his own life and even win back his wife. But where could he go and what could he do away from home?

  Secretary Liu suggested a solution. A school had been established by the Communist Party for just such cadres as Wen-te. It had already opened its doors in Changchih and was taking in students from all over the Taihang Mountain area who could not pass the gate in their home communities. Removed from the temptations and tensions of their native environment, given plenty of time to think and study, encouraged by sympathetic teachers who tried to widen mental horizons, and aided by association with other men whose problems were similar to their own, many hard-core delinquents had found it possible to assess themselves objectively and to choose a new path.

  Secretary Liu suggested that both Wen-te and Hung-er be sent to this school and that all other decisions affecting their lives—what punishment they should receive, whether or not a divorce should be granted—should await the outcome of the education they received there.

  Liu’s suggestion challenged the work team’s whole approa
ch to the problem of the bad cadres. Belatedly, Ch’i Yun and Hsieh Hung realized that in their anxiety to arouse the people and overcome the awe in which Yu-lai and his son were held, they had ignored the possibility of reforming the men. They had attempted to crush the people’s new oppressors, not remake them. In working thus they had distorted the essence of the “Purification Movement,” and had followed in the wake of those impetuous poor peasants who demanded only revenge for past injuries and who had no vision of the potential of leaders who had temporarily gone astray.

  Now, for the first time, Ch’i Yun and Hsieh were asked to look at Wen-te in the light of his future worth. As soon as they did, they both became enthusiastic about helping him. An important factor in making this shift possible was, of course, the fact that the battle had already been won. Wen-te had met his match in the aroused peasants of Long Bow. The myth of the man of iron whose revenge must be forever feared was difficult to maintain in the face of this badly frightened young penitent—distraught, weeping, and begging for help.

  Team Leader Hou, who had all along opposed crushing the spirit of the men, who had all along wanted to give them a fair chance and who had been attacked by the rest of the team as one who had leaned over backwards to aid them, did not say, “I told you so.” He simply used whatever time he had available to talk with Wen-te and prepare him for the problems he would meet at the training school.

  Little Li alone remained unconvinced that such bad cadres should be treated so leniently. Even if they reformed, he thought, they should be severely punished for their past crimes. At the very least, Wen-te should be expelled from the Party. If such men as he could remain Communists, what was the campaign all about?

  ***********

  The final result of the second gate, organized and manned by the Peasants’ Association, was to pass all four of the Party members who had failed earlier and to approve five of the seven non-Party cadres who had come up for criticism for the first time. Only Yu-lai, Wen-te, and Hung-er remained beyond the pale. Further action on these cases could only be taken by the People’s Congress, a governing body which had yet to be elected. In the meantime, application was made to the higher authorities to enroll Wen-te and Hung-er in the special school for rejected cadres.