Little Aunt Crane

by Geling Yan

  When Dahai came back he was a ‘little red devil’. A suit of army clothes speckled with grime, a mouth full of new words, he always had a definitive statement for every occasion. His voice had become quite beautiful, and he had grown a full five centimetres taller. Xiaohuan was so happy that she kept shedding tears, saying over and over again: that damned little pig demon, how could he have turned himself into such a talented young man for free, living without money or grain coupons?

  That night Duohe wanted to speak to her two sons in their own language again. Erhai responded with a sentence or two, but Dahai just turned his back, and very soon he was asleep. From then on Dahai never spoke their secret language again.

  For several weeks there had been no letters from Girlie. Generally, she would write once a week with a few bits of good news. If there was no good news, she would send a few caring words: Mummy, don’t smoke too much, I’ve heard that smoking is bad for you; Auntie, don’t tire yourself out with the housework, the more you do around the house the more there is to do; Daddy, don’t spend all your time brooding, go fishing with this or that uncle when you have the time; Dahai, don’t be too shy, go and try out for the youth basketball team.

  Now writing to their elder sister was the thing the two brothers were most happy to do. One after the other, they asked her why had she not written home for such a long time. The letter came at last, slipped between the pages of the Quotations of Chairman Mao. Usually when Girlie sent home two or three yuan in notes, she would slip them into the plastic cover of the Quotations of Chairman Mao, with the Great Leader watching over them so they would be quite safe. She asked if her mother could buy a few feet of homespun cloth, the kind the peasants made themselves, and make her a shirt. This request of Girlie’s was highly eccentric, but Xiaohuan did as she was asked. More time passed, and she asked them to make her a pair of shoes, saying specifically that she did not want her mother or aunt to make the kind that the city people wore – she wanted them to be made out of true, authentic homespun cloth. Girlie was becoming increasingly peculiar, no one in the family could guess what she meant by it, apart from Dahai: he knew wearing shoes made by peasants showed that she hadn’t forgotten the army’s great strategy for the countryside and how its people would rise up against the cities. Although Dahai came across as painfully shy outside the home, with the family everything he said was well reasoned and argued, and he could sometimes reduce even Erhai to silence.

  Girlie seemed to be getting stranger all the time: she asked her father, who had some experience of farm work, how wheat was planted, how to hoe, how to harvest, and when in the old Chinese solar calendar millet and sorghum were sown. After replying to each of these questions, he discussed it with Xiaohuan. ‘Tell me, isn’t there something a bit off about this business with Girlie?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Isn’t she going to be flying planes? Has she become one of those soldiers who does farm work?’

  ‘Just so long as it doesn’t get in the way of her being a Five-Good Soldier.’ When Xiaohuan had received the metal ‘Five-Good Soldier’ merit badge which Girlie had sent, she showed it to all sixteen families in the building. Once everyone had looked it over, she brought it to Duohe. Duohe listened in silence to Xiaohuan talking of how she was such an outstanding meritorious worker, looking on wordlessly, huge-eyed, as Xiaohuan took the badge away. The next day, Xiaohuan found the badge pinned to Duohe’s pillow.

  ‘This proves that my sister’s ideology is red, that she has a sound work ethic, and she hasn’t forgotten that the peasants are the poorest class in our nation!’ This was how Dahai explained it.

  Erhai seemed to have a rather more suspicious mind. He read his sister’s letters repeatedly, trying to find the answer to the riddle.

  This was an era when the answers to many riddles were rooted up. One day a crowd of Red Guards came charging up for one of the neighbours, and they exposed his secret: he was a covert agent for Taiwan, who listened to a Taiwanese radio station every day. A woman in the building opposite had also been exposed: before she became the wife of a working-class man, she had been married to a company commander in the Kuomintang. In Dahai and Erhai’s school there was a teacher who had seemed perfectly decent, but a short investigation by the Red Guards revealed him to be a rightist who had avoided classification in the Anti-Rightist Campaign.

  There were more than a hundred blocks of dependants’ quarters, all appallingly broken-down and shabby, but the daily reposting of large posters gave them a certain unity. Any block of flats that had produced several undesirable persons would get a simple makeover: banners would be hung from the front and back balconies, floating and dangling down, their slogans blocking the breeze and keeping out the sun.

  The twins felt that life in this Great Era was more fast-paced and dramatic than life at home, and they were often so busy that they were never to be seen from dawn to dusk. This was especially true of Dahai, who was the leader of a Red Guard brigade, and now dressed in a worn army uniform he had swapped with dependants of the army depot for a set of his father’s old work overalls. To the three members of the older generation back home he was full of impatience: ‘What do you know about it?’

  In July a vicious drought came, the kind you meet with just once in a hundred years. People moved their bed frames, or carried up straw mats, and slept on the roof of the building. In the middle of the night Zhang Jian was awoken by the muffled sounds of a struggle. Fights broke out between boys every night. He was just about to go back to sleep, when he realised that this time the combatants were his sons. Although Dahai was tall, Erhai’s stubborn temper generally made up for his inferior strength, and allowed him to turn defeat into victory. Most importantly, he was not afraid of pain: bite down hard on his skin and it was no different from biting his shirt. When Dahai could not win a fight he often used his teeth, which were currently deep in his brother’s shoulder, yet this did not hamper Erhai from delivering blows with his fists and feet. The most remarkable thing was that the two of them were fighting in almost total silence, in deadly earnest.

  Zhang Jian pulled the brothers apart. Dahai’s nose and mouth were a bloody mess, and he took off his vest to block his nostrils, but Erhai didn’t even bother to rub the bite on his shoulder. Their father waved his hand, signalling his sons to go downstairs with him. Dahai didn’t move; Erhai took two paces, then saw that his brother remained where he was, and he stood still too. He was not prepared to leave on his own with his father, for then he would be the one telling tales, or giving his own, biased version of events. Zhang Jian understood his younger son, and did not force him, for fear of waking the neighbours. He gave a ferocious gesture: go back to sleep for now, I’ll deal with you later, in my own good time.

  The following morning, Zhang Jian was eating breakfast, preparing to set off for work, when the boys came downstairs, sleeping mats under their arms. Dahai was walking in front, Erhai behind, six or seven paces separating them. You could see at a glance that they had not worked off their bad feeling.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ he said.

  With immense reluctance, the boys stood still. Two bare chests, four fierce and intransigent eyes, a pair of living statues of rebel heroes. The Great Age had drawn this family in.

  ‘Stand up straight.’

  They did not move.

  ‘Don’t you know how to stand?’ Zhang Jian roared.

  Xiaohuan came out from the kitchen, to see what trouble the father and his two sons had brought on themselves. Duohe was still asleep on the rooftop. She was bringing home too many pieces of steel for carving each night and, having worked herself to exhaustion, she could not get up in the morning. Before coming down from the rooftop, Xiaohuan had tucked in Duohe’s mosquito net for her again, to keep out the flies when they started to move about in the morning air.

  The two boys puffed out their ribcages.

  ‘Why were you fighting?’ Zhang Jian began his interrogation, munching a crisp pickled cucumber.
/>   Their father’s words might just as well have been spoken to the wall, there was not the slightest response.

  Xiaohuan shoved her oar in. Wiping the bloodstains from Dahai’s face, she said: ‘Have you had differences with your brother over your revolutionary standpoint?’ These days Xiaohuan’s banter was full of words taken from those big black-and-white posters. ‘Why don’t you debate the matter first, for God’s sake? We could listen, then we’d be progressive too.’ She was laughing and joking as usual, but Dahai thrust out his hand and knocked the facecloth away.

  Zhang Jian’s hand lashed out in turn to box Dahai’s ears.

  ‘Outside you may be the rebel chief of staff, but try any of that back home and see what you get!’

  In his fury Dahai puffed out his ribcage even further, causing a deep and terrible valley to form underneath his ribs.

  ‘Erhai, you tell me, why were you fighting?’

  Erhai also resolutely played dumb.

  Zhang Jian sneered at the two boys in front of him, trying to ape revolutionary martyrs. ‘I already know.’

  The twins were not wise in the ways of the world, and both glanced at him. This time Zhang Jian could pretty much confirm his guess. There had been a difference in the expressions in the boys’ eyes: Erhai’s was pure curiosity, whereas Dahai’s was guilty and terrified. When neither of them would speak, nine times out of ten Dahai was the one who was in trouble. When Dahai got in trouble, Erhai seldom told on him. It was different the other way round; Dahai would tell his parents all about Erhai’s various misdeeds at school. And Erhai’s misdeeds really were so numerous that they needed Dahai to keep track of them all.

  So what kind of trouble had Dahai got himself into in the dead of night? Zhang Jian was very fond of Duohe’s pickled cucumbers, and he crunched on while he turned over the facts of the case in his mind.

  ‘Erhai, if you don’t say, you won’t be going anywhere today.’

  Erhai considered this for a moment, his eyes full of confusion: the Great Age was waiting for him outside, and he was going to be imprisoned for Dahai’s sake.

  ‘You ask my brother.’

  ‘He doesn’t have the face to say,’ said Zhang Jian.

  The two of them stared at their father, the great detective. Dahai’s face went pale, then red, and then from red back to white again. The old scar on his forehead was bone white.

  ‘Tell, Erhai! Your dad’ll back you up!’ Xiaohuan took away the boys’ breakfasts.

  Dahai’s spirit was already broken; he had pulled in his ribcage and his eyes were fixed on the elastic ties on his wooden slippers.

  ‘Dad, make my brother say it himself.’

  ‘Then you won’t be getting anything to eat. My food isn’t for people who harbour Bad Elements,’ Xiaohuan said, smiling away.

  ‘Fine, I won’t eat then,’ Erhai glanced briefly at the steaming hot bread.

  Zhang Jian could not continue to waste his breath on the pair of them, and he got up to put on his work clothes and shoes. He waved his hand at his sons. ‘Get lost, both of you!’

  But Erhai did not move. ‘Dad …’

  Zhang Jian raised his eyes from his shoelaces.

  ‘Don’t let Auntie sleep on the roof.’

  Zhang Jian could hear that the noise of Dahai brushing his teeth in the toilet had stopped.

  ‘Why?’ he asked his son. The answer to the riddle was about to be revealed.

  ‘There are … hooligans on the roof,’ Erhai said.

  ‘Hooligans? Was Dahai being one too?’ Xiaohuan put the rice bowl down on the table.

  Zhang Jian’s heart suddenly started to pound, as if some ugly secret of his own was being exposed, a little at a time.

  Erhai wrinkled his nose, furious that Xiaohuan was forcing him to talk about such awful things, his two cheeks so red they were nearly purple.

  ‘He’d lifted up Auntie’s mosquito net! And he was lifting up Auntie’s clothes.’

  A fit of nausea hit Zhang Jian. He had eaten too many pickled cucumbers, and now he was going to pay for it, the sour cucumbers and that repulsive scene came rolling up together, and caught in his throat. He dashed into the kitchen, grasped the concrete edges of the sink with both hands, and threw up. This revolting image, with its accompanying pungent and unpleasant smell, poured over him in waves – a boy, transformed by the light of the moon into a skinny black shadow, a black shadow that prowled to the side of a plank bed, and pulled aside the mosquito net to see a white, soft female body, whose shirt had become rolled up in her sleep … and the black shadow, feeling that it had not rolled up far enough, quietly stretched out a hand, and gradually lifted up that shirt that was almost rotted away with age, to reveal two soft, white, rounded objects … and it did not stop there, that young boy was reaching out towards those white, soft things …

  No amount of vomiting could cleanse him of this vile vision, which was eroding his stomach from within. He had somehow ended up with both elbows propped on the sides of the sink, his head drooping low between his raised shoulders, and he was breathing in deep, heaving gulps. The repulsive image had already taken up residence deep within his guts, and he could feel it gradually eating them away to form a revolting scar. This was followed by a spasm of heart-piercing pain.

  He wanted to grab hold of that unworthy creature, and tell him that those two objects were the first mouthful of food he ever took.

  He exchanged heartsick looks with Xiaohuan, shivering, but not with cold.

  ‘Erhai, do you like your auntie?’ Zhang Jian asked. He cursed himself inwardly: what kind of damn stupid talk was this, what had it to do with the matter in hand?

  Erhai did not speak.

  ‘Auntie is closest to you two. She didn’t even want to get married for your sakes.’ In his heart he was bawling: where the hell do you think you’re going with all this talk? What do you want the children to know? To know that there’s a monstrous secret right next to them?

  At work, the sound of gongs and drums could be heard from time to time, on top of the ear-shaking, deafening sounds of metal striking metal. When a furnace was tapped, the metal somehow became ‘Anti-Revisionist Steel’ or ‘Anti-Imperialist Steel’ or ‘Loyalty Steel’, and then people would beat gongs and drums, play musical instruments and sing, announcing the good news to Chairman Mao. There was enough good news to announce for one or two hours, and those were hours when you did not have to do any work. In all this noise and bustle, Zhang Jian still tried to hear the discussion that was going on in his own heart: was he going to beat Dahai to within an inch of his life for his vile behaviour? Then how grieved would Duohe be? If she had been able to make public her status as a mother, this ugly thing might never have happened.

  People had got hold of some red silk from somewhere, and big silk pompoms were hanging all over the place, with another four red embroidered balls dangling from the crane. Zhang Jian was deeply grieved for Duohe: all her life she had lived as a mother and yet not a mother, a wife and not a wife. The coloured silk fluttered up and fell down, the loudspeaker was singing ‘Steering the Seas Depends on the Helmsman’. A crowd of people who did not look like workers entered the workshop. Zhang Jian saw from the crane that the person at the head seemed to be Xiao Peng. And sure enough, it was.

  Xiao Peng was chief of staff of one of the rebel factions in the factory. Today he was going to send a telegram of congratulation to the Party Central and Chairman Mao, to inform them that they had exceeded their quota of ‘Loyalty Steel’ by such-and-such a figure. Every worker had to listen to the text of Xiao Peng’s telegram.

  Zhang Jian was watching him; he had a real man’s air about him now. For the first time he longed to speak to him about Duohe. If he still loved Duohe, then he should take her away with him. For better or worse, this ill-fated woman could be a wife for a while, and perhaps she could still be a mother. He had known Xiao Peng for many years, and thought he had a decent moral character.

  Xiao Peng shook hands with the workers. He
really had become a chief of staff. He was dressed in a set of newish summer canvas work clothes, the blue kind, rather tight at the waist, with a passing resemblance to an army uniform. In the height of summer the factory floor was like a blast furnace, but Xiao Peng was still wearing a helmet, not a hair out of place. He commended them all for their hard work, saying that the workers were the most dependable class of the Revolution. He said that he had nothing decent to give them as a token of his appreciation, but he would show willing anyway. Then he walked to the side, and dragged over a mobile ice-lolly box. He went up to every worker, and handed out two milk ice lollies apiece.

  The heartfelt words that Zhang Jian had wanted to share with him were all gone, not a sentence left. He had thought that, like him, Xiao Peng hated that Party secretary who brought sour plum juice. Zhang Jian was standing right at the back, so it would have been relatively easy to sneak away, but just as he had taken two steps, Xiao Peng said: ‘Zhang Jian, you have worked hard! In a while let’s have a chat!’

  He had gone from longing to talk to dreading it, with only a box of ice lollies in between. Nor did he know whether this counted as buying people’s hearts, or whether buying off people’s hearts justified his feeling of revulsion, but at that moment all he wanted to do was stay out of the way until it was all over. Out of sight out of mind, it was cleaner that way. Xiao Peng’s eyes had homed in on him, but he persisted in avoiding him. He went into the toilet, where he squatted drily for half an hour. When he came out, the others told him that they had eaten his share of the ice lollies, and expressed gratitude to the commander-in-chief on his behalf.

  The factory ceased production for several months, because too many new people were coming into power at the iron and steel company, and all the factories had been thrown into confusion. Zhang Jian and a friend in the building opposite took up pigeon fancying. That day he and Erhai went out to release some pigeons, taking the dog with them, when they saw a young fellow in an air force uniform looking around in all directions.