by Geling Yan
The PLA tied up the spies and traitors, took them away and shot them. People who could speak Japanese slunk around like thieves. The PLA also set up a series of tents, where they recruited the sons of the village for the people’s own army, as well as students and the working class.
In the future you would be able to go to Anshan to refine coke, or smelt iron or steel, and earn enough money in a month for forty-five kilos of white flour. Many young people put their names down. Anshan had been liberated and was under military control; the people who went were called the First Batch of Workers of the New China, elder brothers to the rest.
A PLA cadre saw Duohe beating cotton quilts with a wooden stick. He asked her what she was doing. Duohe looked at him, her eyes bright and visibly full of confusion. The cadre also asked her name. From the other side of the quilt, Erhai’s mother hastily replied on her behalf. She’s called Duohe. Which character for Duo? Which for He? Erhai’s mother said, beaming, Comrade, all that stuff is far, far too difficult for me! I might as well be blind when it comes to writing. Erhai came out from the kitchen with a pot of freshly brewed tea, and told the PLA cadre that Duo was the character that meant ‘many’, and He was the character for ‘crane’, like the bird. The cadre said that this was a very literary name, especially for a working-class household. He beckoned to Duohe, and asked her to come and sit with them. Duohe looked at the cadre, then at Erhai, and bowed.
This bow was done in a way that the PLA found absolutely bewildering. There were people in the village who had bowed to them too, but it was completely different from this.
Another PLA cadre called Political Instructor Dai said: ‘How old is this young girl?’
Erhai’s mother said: ‘Nineteen … She can’t speak.’
Political Instructor Dai turned his head to look at Erhai, who was digging mud from the uppers of his shoes, and nudged him: ‘Little sister-in-law?’ They were friendly with Xiaohuan, so they knew that Xiaohuan and Erhai were a couple.
‘Yes, his sister-in-law!’ Erhai’s mother said.
Duohe walked to the other side of the quilt. At that moment everybody stopped their conversation, and the ‘crack-crack’ of her beating echoed back from the brick walls and floor of the yard.
‘During the Japanese puppet government, did the children here go to school?’ Political Instructor Dai asked Erhai’s mother.
‘Yes.’
Erhai’s mother knew what he was getting at, and pointing behind the quilt she said, ‘Duohe’s a deaf mute!’ She smiled as she spoke. If they chose to take her words as a joke, that was fine by her.
The PLA regarded Stationmaster Zhang’s family as the most dependable of the masses. They explained to Stationmaster Zhang that he was to ‘take a leading role’. So they used his family as a starting point for finding out about the situation in the neighbouring villages, whose family had had dealings with bandits, which families tried to exert undue influence, which families had been influential during the puppet government. Stationmaster Zhang muttered to Erhai and his mother: But how is this different from old women’s gossip? He thought that good relations with other people was the one thing they could never do without. In this village, getting on the wrong side of one person meant alienating a whole string of them, generation after generation. For this reason Stationmaster Zhang would often hide away outside when the PLA visited and tell his family to say no more than they had to.
The PLA had come that day to introduce to the Zhang family the great matter of ‘Land Reform’. They told the Zhangs that land reform had already begun in many villages in North-east China. But when Xiaohuan came back from the village, she said, ‘If you don’t gossip like old women, other people are quite happy to. Political Instructor Dai’s visit was actually to check on the business with Duohe. People in the village have been making reports to the PLA on people who bought Japanese women.’
Stationmaster Zhang’s face fell, and he sat at the dinner table without saying a word. Once the meal was more or less over, his eyes swept over every face at the table.
‘Don’t tell anyone who gave birth to Girlie,’ he said. ‘Not even if they beat you to death.’
‘I gave birth to her,’ said Xiaohuan, smiling cheekily. ‘Isn’t that right, Girlie? Let’s get you fitted with a little gold tooth, then who’d dare to say that we’re not two peas in a pod?’
‘Give it a rest, Xiaohuan,’ Erhai berated her loudly.
‘We weren’t the only family to buy Japanese girls,’ Erhai’s mother said. ‘There are people in all the villages round here who bought them. If we get into trouble, won’t everyone else get into trouble too?’
‘Who says there’ll be trouble? But supposing something does happen, what then? With any government, there’s bound to be things it likes, and other things it doesn’t like at all. Getting ourselves a Jap woman to have children, while Erhai still has a wife of his own, how’s that going to look?’ Stationmaster Zhang said.
Duohe knew the words that were passing back and forth were about her, and that everyone’s deadly serious expression was because of her too. Over the past two years she had come to understand a fair bit of Chinese, but with disputes of this kind, fast and serious, she could only catch half of what was going on.
‘Then what were you playing at in the first place?’ Xiaohuan said. ‘So now it wasn’t your idea to go and buy a Jap woman? Since she was brought home, has there been any peace in our family? Better to put her in a sack and take her to the mountain. Leave Girlie behind for me.’
‘Xiaohuan, let’s not talk nonsense, eh?’ Erhai’s mother said, all smiles.
Xiaohuan glared at her mother-in-law.
‘Looks to me like we’d do best to get out of the way and be done with it,’ Stationmaster Zhang said.
Everybody’s chopsticks froze, and they looked at him. What was this ‘get out of the way’?
Stationmaster Zhang passed his hand over his face, kneading the long, thin creases that covered it with his palm, to show that he was clearing his mind and gathering his energy. He would always rearrange his features in this way when he was about to come out with something important.
‘You move away. Move to Anshan. I know someone on the railway, he can help you get settled there. If Erhai puts his name down for the steel-smelting plant or the coke plant, they’ll be sure to take him. Erhai went to middle school for two years!’
‘Won’t that be breaking up the family?’ Erhai’s mother said.
‘I’ve worked on the railway for all these years, I can get you a seat on the train to see them any time I like for free. First let’s see which way the wind blows – if the people who bought a Japanese woman are all fine, Erhai and the rest of them can move back again.’
‘I’m not going,’ Xiaohuan said. And as she spoke she shifted to the edge of the kang where they had been eating and shuffled her feet into her shoes. ‘What would I do with myself at Anshan? Is my family there? Or Manzi, or Shuzhen?’ Manzi and Shuzhen were her girlfriends, companions in idle gossip. ‘There’s no way I’m going. Did you hear that, Erhai? Will there be Shopkeeper Wang to give Girlie free sweeties to eat in Anshan? Is there a theatre there where they’ll let me watch for free?’ From the door of the room, she gazed down at the whole family, as if from a great height.
Erhai’s mother looked at her. Xiaohuan knew that her mother-in-law’s eyes were cursing her: All she cares about is eating her fill without having to lift a finger for herself!
‘Erhai, did you hear me?’ Xiaohuan said.
Erhai smoked his pipe.
‘Let’s be clear, you go tomorrow if you like, but you’re going by yourself, hear me?’
Erhai suddenly bellowed: ‘I heard! You’re not going!’
The entire family gaped at him. He jumped off the kang, walked over to the washstand in his bare feet, picked up a half-full basin of water and hurled the contents out at Xiaohuan. Xiaohuan’s feet leapt high in the air, yet she held her peace, and did not utter a word. Erhai would only get stu
bborn once or twice a year, and when the fit came upon him, Xiaohuan would not put up a fight with the odds so obviously against her. In due course when the time came for her to settle accounts with him, it would always be in compound interest.
Xiaohuan walked away, but outside the door she heard Girlie crying, and came back again, picked her up and walked cautiously past Erhai.
‘Disgraceful!’ Erhai’s mother said. She was not just talking about Xiaohuan.
At this moment Duohe soundlessly got down from the kang, put the leftover rice and dishes on a wooden tray, and walked to the door, where Erhai squatted smoking. She halted there, and bowed; Erhai let her pass, and she went out of the door, her bottom leading the way. At this moment, if an outsider had been present, they would have immediately spotted that there was something wrong with this woman’s movements. But the Zhang family were completely used to such actions from Duohe, they could not find anything eccentric in it.
After that, Erhai and Xiaohuan vanished from Anping village. Erhai’s mother had one explanation in the village one day, another the next: ‘Our Erhai’s gone to his uncle’s, he runs a factory.’ ‘Erhai has found a job in the city – from now on the government will be feeding him.’
There were a great number of the PLA stationed in the village, all of them southerners. This was a time when forces from the north and south were crossing each other’s paths and getting mixed up. Many of the young men in the village had joined the PLA, and were pushing their way southwards. When Erhai left Anping village, he was part of a popular trend.
A year passed, and Stationmaster Zhang received a letter from Erhai, saying that the old couple had got their wish at last, they had a grandson. Stationmaster Zhang got his cronies on the train to take them a little quilt stuffed with new cotton, and an urgent message: No matter what, they had to take the child to a photographer’s and get his photo taken. Erhai’s mother was itching to see her grandson.
The day after Chairman Mao ascended the Tiananmen Gate in Beijing and announced the founding of the New China, another letter came. Erhai’s mother saw a little photograph enclosed, and two trails of tears and one track of drool came flowing down. A strong, vigorous, fat little boy, hair all sticking up to heaven. Stationmaster Zhang said that he looked like Duohe, to which his wife said huffily, ‘Such a tiny person, how can you tell?’ Stationmaster Zhang sighed. He could see that she was trying to fool herself: she would rather die than admit to the half of her grandson’s flesh and blood that was Japanese. She tucked the little photograph into her clothes, and went tottering on her bound feet into the village, where she told them that this grandson had almost cost Xiaohuan her life, he was so big! He could suckle for an hour at a time, Xiaohuan had been sucked empty! As she spoke, she smiled so hard that her eyes vanished into narrow slits. Only those close female friends who had gossiped with Xiaohuan said in private: ‘Who believes that? Xiaohuan’s parts were completely ruined, how could she give birth to a child?’
People asked Erhai’s mother whether her son was earning a lot. He was a Grade One Worker in the coke plant, Erhai’s mother told everyone, and a Grade One Worker eats and gets stuff for free, and lives in a house that belongs to the nation. So the people said: Erhai’s really lucky. And it seemed that Erhai’s mother was equally lucky, taking the words that she had made up herself to be real.
When the villages in the neighbourhood of Anping village were setting up Mutual Aid Teams, Stationmaster Zhang received another letter from Erhai. By now, Stationmaster Zhang was no longer in charge of the station, and his post had been taken over by a younger man. Now Stationmaster Zhang was Sweeper Zhang. Every day he swept his way back and forth with a broom across the waiting room the size of six card tables, and swept the empty space at the door of the station until dust filled the skies and the earth. The day he received Erhai’s letter he swept more desperately than ever. Erhai’s mother was going to cry herself into her grave. The baby had fallen ill and died the previous month. What was Erhai thinking, not getting round to writing about something so important for over a month?
Sure enough, Erhai’s mother did almost cry herself to death. She brought out a pile of little hats and tiny shoes that she had sewn, and wept over each one in turn. She cried over Erhai’s bitter fate, her and her husband’s bitter fate, Xiaohuan’s bitter fate, and she cried over those bloody Japs, death was too good for them, coming over to China to burn and kill, to chase her daughter-in-law and destroy her eldest grandson. She cried and cried, and finally got round to Dahai, her eldest son. Dahai had no conscience, dying like that after running away from home at fifteen, taking himself off to be a bandit or a pirate who knows where.
Erhai’s mother made no more trips to the village after that.
One morning in the summer of the following year, a motorbike came down the broad earth track through the middle of the wheat field, with a man who looked like a government cadre riding in the sidecar. The motorbike drove up to the gate of the Zhang house, trailing a cloud of dust, and asked if this was Comrade Zhang Zhili’s home.
Erhai’s mother was sitting in the shade of a tree unravelling cotton-yarn gloves, but on hearing this she got to her feet. These years she had got a good bit shorter, and her legs had bowed into a pair of symmetrical teapot handles. As she shuffled her feet towards the door, the government cadre standing outside the gate could see a flock of baby chicks from between her two legs.
‘Is that my Dahai come back?’ Erhai’s mother was standing about three metres from the gate, motionless. Zhang Zhili was Dahai’s official name, the man accompanying the government official replied.
The government cadre walked up, saying that he was from the county Civil Administration Bureau. He had come to deliver Zhang Zhili’s Revolutionary Martyr’s Certificate.
Erhai’s mother’s brain was slow these days. When confronted with this cadre from the government all she could do was pucker her toothless mouth into a smile.
‘Comrade Zhang Zhili died a glorious martyr’s death on the Korean battlefield. This is his Revolutionary Martyr’s Certificate.’ The government official placed a brown paper envelope into Erhai’s mother’s claw-like hands. ‘His spouse has taken the pension fund. His two children are still young.’
By now Erhai’s mother had finally struggled her way into understanding. Dahai was dead, killed in Korea; his parents got the ‘glorious’, his widow and children got a sum of money. She did not feel able to have a proper cry, she could not let herself go in front of a strange government cadre with his southern accent – when she cried she liked to slap her thighs and howl. Besides, Dahai had run away when he was fifteen years old, and she had already wept over him. She had done with her crying at the time, and by now she had ceased to cherish any hope of seeing him alive.
The comrade cadre from the county Civil Administration Bureau said that from that day on the Zhang family were Glorious Dependants of a Revolutionary Martyr. Every month they would receive a sum of money from the government, at New Year there would also be pork and lard, in the eighth month they would be issued with moon cakes, and on National Day in October they would receive rice. The other dependants of revolutionary martyrs in the county would all enjoy the same treatment.
‘Comrade Cadre, how many children did our Dahai have?’
‘Oh, I don’t really know. I seem to remember there were two. Your daughter-in-law is a volunteer in the army, in the military hospital.’
‘Ah.’ Erhai’s mother stared intently at the comrade cadre, to see whether his next words would be ‘Your daughter-in-law invites you to her home to see your grandsons!’ But the comrade cadre’s lips remained firmly closed.
As Erhai’s mother was taking her leave at the main gate, Sweeper Zhang came back. She introduced the comrade cadre, and the two men shook hands formally, the comrade cadre addressing Erhai’s father respectfully as ‘Old Comrade’.
‘You tell my daughter-in-law to come home and see us!’ Sweeper Zhang said, shedding tears. ‘Or if she’s bus
y we can just as well go to see her and the grandchildren.’
‘I can take care of the kiddies for her!’ Erhai’s mother said.
The cadre promised to pass on the message.
It was only once the sound of the motorbike was far away that the old couple thought to open the brown paper envelope. Inside was a little book with a red cover, embossed with gold characters. When they opened it, apart from the photograph on the Revolutionary Martyr’s Certificate, there was another picture with a woman in army uniform. A row of characters were embossed on the photograph: ‘Souvenir of Marriage’.
The Revolutionary Martyr’s Certificate also said that Dahai was Chief of Staff of his regiment.
Erhai’s mother started visiting the village again. Her son the revolutionary martyr had been a chief of staff, and nobody of such high rank had ever been seen in Anping village. On the day they went off to Jiamusi to see their daughter-in-law and grandchildren, Erhai’s mother bought up half the village, from mountain delicacies to leather goods, puffed-rice candy, slow-cooked wild-rabbit legs and tobacco leaves.
By the time Zhang Erhai received the letter from his parents, sent before they set off for Jiamusi, he had not been Zhang Erhai for some time. He was now Grade Two Worker Comrade Zhang Jian. Zhang Jian was the name he had filled in when registering at the coke plant. As he picked up the steel-nibbed pen on the recruiting table, he had suddenly felt a compulsion to remove with one sweep of the pen the middle ‘Liang’ character of his formal name. In three years, Zhang Jian had risen meteorically from apprentice to Grade Two Worker. There were not many middle-school graduates like him among the workers, so in group newspaper readings or political study, the section chief would always say: Zhang Jian, you take the lead. At the beginning he thought that the section chief was picking on him, but gradually he started to show promise; in any case, once he had a few dozen words off by heart, it was always those same few words when you took the lead.
