The Remote Country of Women

by Hua Bai

Bai Hua.book Page 268 Friday, October 26, 2001 2:56 PM

  said to me in an anxious voice, ‘Brother, our window can slide open. Please don’t nail it shut. You can make it look bolted, but please leave it movable.’ I glanced at her suspiciously: ‘Why? Do you want to escape? Why do you assume

  that I have the nerves of a leopard?!’ I simply dared not do as she asked. She said, ‘Brother, we don’t intend to run away.

  The window is for you.’ For me? Why for me? She made

  eyes at me. ‘Leave a door for yourself.’ Her words struck the secret place in my heart. Although I knew my chances were slim, perhaps only one in ten thousand, my desire was still aroused. If I had never had the nerves of a leopard before, now her words gave them to me. Just then, the guard

  returned and asked me to repair the window when the door was done. I said yes, I could do that. After fixing the door, I made a special gadget for the window. Although it was

  obvious to the three females, the guard, who was smoking outside the cell, saw nothing. I don’t know what egged me on. I was ready to take the risk. Even if there was only the slimmest chance, I’d squeeze in.” If it were me, I would have hoped for the one-in-ten-thousand chance, too.

  “Fortunately, my chance came on the third night. The

  guard supervising me said, ‘You’ve been doing a good job.

  Tonight I’ll let you repair the doors of the storerooms by yourself, and you’ll be free when the work is done. I’ll be waiting for you in the guard room. Come to me at twelve so I can take you back. As he spoke, my heart throbbed aloud.

  I was afraid he might hear it. He gave me two keys and left without a care. I enjoyed the freedom of moving around

  without being watched. Just think – what luck. If not for the two storeroom doors, or, if the two storerooms weren’t empty, the guard would not have given me the keys. It was nearly eleven o’clock when I finished the doors. The small cell containing the three females, being a makeshift little cell, was hidden in the shade of oleanders. I stole into that shade as if my soul were seized by a ghost.” We four listeners seemed more tense than he was at that moment. Our

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  heads bent over his face like four unshaded light bulbs in an operating room.

  “Then – what happened then is obvious. They were dev-

  ils, out-and-out vixens. When I was through with the eldest and the second, the clock struck twelve and I got up to go.

  But the youngest held me by my leg: “Don’t go. It’s my

  turn. If you go, I’ll scream!” In a palm-sized cell, it would be easy for her to grab his leg. Before them, he had had nothing for so long; she was scorched with the flames of his desire. Even a stone would be burned red. Once, twice, but not the third time, as she was expecting.

  “Even if you keep me here, what good am I? I’m too

  scared to get it up.” And next? What happened next?

  “Next, the guard caught me in the cell. Next, I became

  what you see here. They beat my lower parts, and my face they forced me to slap myself.” After hearing his tale, we lay motionless for a long time. I felt stifled, instead of having a vicarious release after hearing about a scandalous romance. I couldn’t make out whether it was a tale about human beings or about beasts, a tale of the past, one from a distant land, or one from my side. I pitied him and the three females. I felt disgusted by him as well as by them. I also admired all of them for the chance they took and for their courage. I didn’t know, if I had a chance like that with three vixens, whether I would dare to do it. Could my story also develop like his?

  Suppose a guard, or the warden, or any gentleman of high rank who supports severe punishment for those miscreants, after a long imprisonment like ours, chanced on an opportunity like number 98 had, would they dare to do it? Would their story develop in the same way?

  The following day, a pole ten meters long stood in the

  yard when the prisoners separated into two large crowds by sex, southeast and northwest. Beneath the long pole stood the warden and the guards. Five minutes passed, but no one issued a command. Then the warden, knowing the power of

  silence, inserted his right hand in his coat between the sec-2 6 9

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  ond button and the third, unwittingly imitating Napoleon and Hitler. Even if he were aware of their mannerisms, so what? Here, before the mass of prisoners, only he had the right to speak; the others could not utter a sound. Here, he was Napoleon, he was Hitler.

  “Number 809998!” Only in the gravest circumstances

  was a full number called. “Stand forward!” Even knowing it had nothing to do with me, I still shuddered, and my legs nearly buckled.

  Dragging his wounded legs, number 98 walked out from

  the ranks behind me and struggled over to the warden.

  “Don’t face me – face the crowd!” Number 98 tried to

  make a perfect right turn in military style but couldn’t because his wobbly left leg failed to serve as the center of a circle. He nearly fell in spite of his efforts. “Tell the assembled prisoners about your, your – ” He could not find a suitable term. Finally he spit out a word: “Romance!”

  Number 98 stuttered and murmured and found it ex-

  tremely hard to get the words out. The warden stepped over and gave him a loud slap on his left, unswollen cheek. “Why can’t you say what you’ve done?” Number 98 started five

  times. But each beginning was cut off by the warden. “That won’t do. Details, more details!” Many men of power have a hobby of listening to two wild ducks in a snare confessing in minute detail how they have secretly mated with each other.

  Number 98, although stammering, churned literary and

  biological elements together and demonstrated his inter-

  course with the three women with the thoroughness of a

  slow-motion picture. The yard was dead still. The male

  prisoners tightly zipped their lips, motionless but attentive.

  The reaction of the guards was just the opposite. Their

  mouths gaped wide; their chins protruded half an inch forward; and their hands stretched like duck wings. Why did two groups of people behave so differently? Because I

  haven’t done research in this area, I cannot explain. Looking at the female prisoners in the distance, I saw their faces were 2 7 0

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  uniformly ashen with eyes like black beans, resembling the sparrows drawn in ink and water by famous Chinese masters. I could not distinguish old from young, beautiful from ugly, although I was dying to make out who was the eldest, the second, and the youngest, as described by number 98.

  When number 98 had finished, the warden said, “Here is

  the answer to the riddle Comrade Kang Sheng could not

  solve! I have guessed it today!” With his eyes bulging and his face purple, the warden was the picture of indignation.

  Like a general, he drew his hand from between the second and the third button and raised it to the sky.

  “String him up!”

  The guards knew their profession to perfection, and in

  the wink of an eye number 98 was strung from the pole top.

  His feet dangled seven meters from the ground. Number

  98 did not even groan; like an old patient in the constant care of a skilled nurse, he could no longer feel the pain of injections.

  Were women’s hearts softer or their emotions richer?

  They lowered their heads almost simultaneously, except for three of them, who raised their pale faces and stared with six black beans. Were these the eldest, the middle, and the

  youngest?

  Number 98 seemed to be looking down at those three

  uplifted faces.

  Late that night, everyone was sleeping soundly. Even

  number 98,
who had bravely survived the torture of hang-

  ing and beating, was no longer moaning; perhaps he was

  lost in deep sleep or a coma. I was wide-eyed, enjoying

  being the only one awake in a world of dead sleep. I longed to hear some sound in the stillness of prison death. But aside from the monotonous snoring of the prisoners, I heard nothing, not even a mosquito buzzing – strange, summer wasn’t over yet. Could the mosquitoes have already lost interest in buzzing their wings? Being satiated, they could not fly anymore. Their unrestricted sucking of the prisoners’ blood 2 7 1

  Bai Hua.book Page 272 Friday, October 26, 2001 2:56 PM

  made them sluggish. They must have been digesting our

  blood slowly on the wall. Yes, there was some noise. What was it? Gentle steps, approaching from the north end of the long corridor. The walker was attempting to make his steps inaudible; I tried to stretch the sensitivity of my ears to their limit. I could hear clearly now. The steps, moving from north to south, grew clearer and clearer. Something was fishy: a guard on duty had no need to tiptoe. Walking into the prison was like entering a pigsty; no one would take this amount of care so as not to disturb the sweet

  dreams of pigs. More often they deliberately let their hobnailed leather boots play an unscrupulous march. Was this man a guard? If not, he must be a prisoner. Could he possibly be a prisoner? At this moment, I started worrying about him. He must have walked out of his cell at midnight to

  run away. What a fool! How dare he take such a chance after the lesson that had just been displayed on a pole top? He had to pass at least ten iron doors to get out of the secure area. The footfalls stopped at the iron bars of our cell. I fully mobilized my eyes and ears. In the dim light coming from the gray, narrow sky, I saw a dark shadow, that of a familiar, clumsy, fat man – the warden. My worry was replaced by

  curiosity. What had he come here for? Why was he behav-

  ing so abnormally? Had he stolen in here to detect number 98, or to eavesdrop on our comments? It seemed unlikely

  because he had never before cared about our attitudes

  toward anything. Our attitudes – good, bad, or rebellious –

  seemed to have nothing to do with him. Bars beyond iron

  bars, iron door after iron door, the moment a criminal

  stepped into the prison, he was the unshakable authority of their fate. He had nothing to worry about. But it was he. It was absolutely impossible for me to mistake the shadow of this tyrant.

  He came stealthily to our iron bars. What was he going

  to do? He took out something I couldn’t see clearly. Grasping the things in his hand, he threw them accurately onto 2 7 2

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  number 96’s bed sheet – one, two – that’s all. The shadow vanished; the steps faded away. When I sat up to see the two things thrown in, they had already disappeared. In fact, I was not a loner at all; number 96 had not been sleeping, either. He hid the two things under his sheet quick as lightning. Oh, now I saw them: two extra-large tubes of White Jade toothpaste.

  I gaze at her window. In the past it was pasted over with black paper; now a cloth curtain with tiny blue flowers hangs there.

  Yunqian was not coming any more. She was not allowed to

  come, and was unwilling, anyway! My carefree spiritual

  world, achieved after complete despair, helplessness, and insult, had been destroyed by her surprising visit. Although I always felt tired, I was often sleepless. People say one suffers insomnia in old age. Had I grown old? With only a fau-cet and no mirror or wash basin, it was impossible for me to check. The chorus of chirping insects at night told me

  unmistakably that summer had passed. Autumn crept over

  the prison wall and through the layers of iron doors and bars and started pulling at my thin blanket. I no longer wished for the night sounds. Although apart from the inmates’

  snoring a variety of insects also sang, a satiety of listening had dulled my ears and thrust me into empty, heavy stillness. Even if I could have heard Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique, I doubt that it would have thrilled as it had at each listening in the cocoon. Then I had enjoyed the small world of the cocoon, love, fuzzy expectations, and two persons’ freedom.

  Although every cell of the body was still agitated, in a situation where I hoped stubbornly in spite of the impossibility of hope, Tchaikovsky’s music was powerless to rescue my

  soul.

  Suddenly, I jumped up in the empty stillness. Something

  sounded like gunfire in the distance. What was it? After ten years of the Cultural Revolution, were people still fighting 2 7 3

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  with guns? No, It didn’t sound like firing, for it was too dense to make out individual shots. Was it a storm? All my cell mates sat up. No, it was no storm. If it were, our bed sheets would be wet with raindrops, as the iron bars could block out only men, not the rain and wind. The world sank in the booming sound dense as a steel wall and impossible to penetrate. I had never heard such a sound in my life

  before. We – the ones shut behind the iron bars – felt both excited and confused on hearing such overwhelmingly

  strange sounds. No one could figure out what was happen-

  ing and why it was happening at the darkest moment and in the most sorrowful space. Men and animals in utter despair might be excited by this abnormal phenomenon and subconsciously wish for it to signal change. I believe all the prisoners were wide awake, with staring eyes and gaping

  mouths, like cattle shut in a field watching in panic the invasion of a raging fire. Our number 95, that fifteen-year-old renegade – no, he was no longer fifteen; two years had passed behind bars – tugged at my sleeve and said, “It’s like fireworks.”

  “That’s right.” He had reminded me and all the other

  prisoners. It was the sound of fireworks. But today was not Chinese New Year, and it had been years since the Chinese had ceased using firecrackers. The Chinese had lost their traditional festivals. Children did not know even what the gift money given on New Year’s Day was for, what the

  wrapped rice on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month was, or what New Years’ cakes were. On December 26, every

  Chinese was allotted half a jin of noodles and two ounces of meat to prepare a feast. The prison was no exception, although those within the high walls were deprived of the two ounces of meat.

  Indeed, it was firecrackers. But what were they for? What did they signify? We behind the iron bars had no right to know of the changes outside because the sun, moon, and

  stars no longer belonged to us, and we had even forgotten 2 7 4

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  that the earth was round and revolving all the time. Were we happy or sad? The thick, heavy, tireless firecrackers boomed through the whole night and did not die down

  until dawn. Nobody blew the whistle for getting up, no one served us porridge, and no one hurried us to the yard to break stones. A shaft of sunshine met us, squeezing in from the crack between the high walls every morning, and ten

  pale hands stretched into that warm (perhaps warmed only by our hopeful feelings) lovely sunshine. In the bright sunshine our hands looked especially pale, like rotten Chinese cabbage from a cellar.

  Suddenly – after the fireworks, everything occurred sud-

  denly – the warden appeared in the corridor, assuming an image we had never seen before. He was all naive, childish smiles, red face, red, thick neck, unbuttoned collar, capless, his bald scalp encircled by flying gray hair, his leather belt loose like the jade belt of an ancient Chinese judge, his feet dragging not a pair of heavy, metal-tipped boots but slippers, one foot stockinged, the other bare. From a distance, we could smell the alcohol. Drunk – the warden was drunk.

  His drunkenness made me shudder because I was not accus-

  tomed to see him as a drunkar
d. My eyes and every nerve

  refused to see him as anything other than a dignified general inserting his right hand between the second and the third buttons of his coat or ejecting willful shouts as he suddenly withdrew that hand: “String him up! Beat him with double clubs!” Now his legs were like those of a panda, the left one barely moving forward with an inward bent; the right one followed in the same manner. His hands, swaying from side to side, resembled the pendulums of a peddler’s drum.

  A guard tried to support him but was shoved away. The

  drunkard behaved like a toddler who refused any adult’s

  help in order to show off. Was he the warden? Was he our warden? Was he still our warden? How could our warden behave like this? He blended neither with the background scene of the prison nor with us as supporting actors. What 2 7 5

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  about his lines? What would he say in this dramatic scene?

  He began, “At last – at last, one snake and three turtles have been thrown off our backs.” Counting on his fingers, he

  betrayed four distinguished VIPs: “Wang Hongwen, a

  rebel; Zhang Chunqiao, the damned military adviser and

  partisan backbone; Yao Wenyuan, a small hack scribbler;

  and Jiang Qing. That damned woman bothers me most.

  Arresting that evil woman is of vital importance. Vital

  importance, do you understand? She is different from the others.” He wagged his tongue at us petrified prisoners and chuckled oddly. “Rebellion! Rebellion! They have tortured nearly all the founding generals of the nation to death.

  Smashing the institutions of police, prosecutor, and court!

  What’s the outcome? Do they win the final victory, or do we?

  Not them. Instead of smashing us, they will be punished by the police, prosecutor, and court. Ha!” He flailed his arms, as if catching flies. Then he tightened his fist and threw the imaginary flies one by one into his mouth, where he ground them up with his teeth. After spitting them to the ground, he stamped on them with his feet as in a ritual dance. His superb performance finally revived us petrified prisoners, and the heavy, gloomy atmosphere gradually relaxed. But

  suddenly – again suddenly – the warden’s mood changed,