Little Aunt Crane

by Geling Yan

  Xiao Peng drove in the direction of open country. The tarmac road gradually narrowed. Half an hour went past, and it became a country road, laid with stones. He told her that the parks were all closed, forcing him to treat the open country as a park. He then asked her whether she often visited parks. She shook her head again, gave another smile. How many times had she been? Twice. Who had she gone with? With Zhang Jian.

  He did not say any more. At that moment the car entered a wood. It seemed to be a tree nursery, whose saplings had not been transplanted in time. There were more dead ones than living, but some had grown into big, tall, almost mature trees.

  ‘Nobody’s bought any saplings to plant for the last two years. Look, they’re all spoiled.’ He stopped the car and they got out.

  He took a military canteen from the boot, and slung it on his back, walking straight ahead down the road between the saplings. Duohe followed him, wanting to walk alongside, but the road was very narrow and she found herself squeezed off the road and into the nursery below.

  ‘Tell me, look at these saplings, some of them just died, but some carried on living, and even grew into trees, why is that? It must be the survival of the fittest, the ones that survived were all strong, able to snatch the little bit of nourishment in the soil for themselves,’ Xiao Peng said.

  Duohe’s mouth was silently reciting words that she had not quite made out. Xiao Peng continued; from the theory of evolution he moved on to materialism, and in what way he himself was a materialist. Duohe was finding it increasingly hard going. He suddenly noticed her lips, secretly working away. She had always had this habit. He had been twenty the first time he noticed it, and he did not know whether he liked this habit, but he had always been captivated by it. Deep inside the nursery it suddenly hit him: he had never liked her, but he was captivated by her. Being captivated was more terrible still.

  That day the factory had been holding a competition on the baseball court. The factory team versus the Red Guards. He had happened to be passing, and wanted to watch for a while. Just as he had entered the seating area the second half began, the players from both sides came onto the court, and Dahai, who was playing centre on the Red Guards’ team, caught sight of him, somehow missed a step and slipped, scraping off a strip of skin from the outside of his thigh and calf. In an instant half the leg was covered in red. Xiao Peng did not even stay to watch the game, but walked into the players’ changing room, where he found a member of the team bandaging Dahai, in a very careless and sloppy fashion. Xiao Peng walked up, took his place, stripped off the bandage and retied it.

  ‘Uncle Xiao Peng, I know why you’ve stopped coming to my house. It’s because of my auntie, right?’

  ‘Your auntie?’ He was deliberately being obtuse.

  ‘Because you know about the skeleton in her cupboard.’

  ‘What skeleton would that be?’

  ‘Why are you asking? It’s not like you don’t know.’

  ‘How would I know?’ He smiled guiltily at this youth.

  Dahai lapsed into silence. Xiao Peng felt that this silence was deeply murky and obscure. He had no choice but to pick up the thread of the conversation, saying: ‘Just what secret background does she have?’

  Dahai did not reply directly, but his words were like a prophecy. ‘That’s the thing about this Great Cultural Revolution, it’s going to expose everyone’s dirty secrets. Nobody should think of hiding in a corner.’

  How many cruel, morally complex things did the Director of the Revolutionary Committee of a steel factory have to deal with? But at this moment he could not come up with any ideas.

  ‘Uncle Xiao Peng, I’m willing to work with you.’

  ‘You’re a schoolboy.’

  ‘The Revolution makes no distinction between old and young.’

  ‘What do you plan on doing for me?’

  ‘Do you need someone to cut stencils for your duplicator? I can do that.’

  ‘If you want to come to the newspaper agency, you’d be welcome there.’

  ‘Can I have a bed there?’

  ‘You’re not planning on going home?’

  ‘That home’s just foul, a complete mess. The Neighbourhood Committee has even written to our original home town back in the North-east to investigate – before long no one need think of concealing anything.’

  Xiao Peng’s hands slowed in their bandaging. Several days later, Dahai’s words still made him feel ashamed. Even a teenage boy could understand that the greatness of the Revolution was its intolerance of personal considerations of any kind. And yet he had become captivated by a daughter of the enemy, infatuated by that warped delicacy. Of course he had always been on the lookout for a chance to sample it. His opportunity had arrived, and she had finally presented herself at his table, body and soul. Well then, tuck in, you’ve waited for years, only unwilling to take a step past Zhang Jian, who was standing in your way. Now she clearly had made that step herself, or else Zhang Jian was no longer blocking his path. Even with the tastiest delicacy, there will be moments when your stomach rebels against it. In Zhang Jian’s hands this tasty morsel had probably changed into an autumn aubergine, its stomach pregnant with seeds, rind as chewy as rubber.

  Xiao Peng and Duohe sat down on a mound of earth in the nursery. Xiao Peng poured out cherry wine from his flask into the cap, passed it to Duohe, raised his canteen and clinked it briefly against the cap. The thrushes were singing, and the setting sun cast thread-like shadows from the skinny saplings, living and dead, sketching a beautiful pattern on the grass speckled with wild flowers. If it hadn’t been for that speech of Dahai’s, Director Peng would have been able to enjoy the tasty dish that was Duohe.

  In one pocket of Director Peng’s overalls was a greased-paper packet, containing sweet and sour garlic cloves; in the other pocket was a packet of peanuts. Dye had been added to the cherry wine, turning it a deep red, like watercolour paint, and very soon Duohe’s two silently reciting lips were a deep cherry red. Xiao Peng drank a mouthful of wine, and hurriedly wiped his lips with the back of his hand; if his lips were stained too, it would cause Duohe’s attention to wander. Once again he started to enquire about the situation in Shironami and the other Japanese villages.

  ‘When you were little, did your father do farm work at home?’

  She said that her father had enlisted in the army not long after she was born. He had come home several times on his way to new postings, and that was why she had a younger brother and sister.

  ‘What rank was your father?’

  She replied that she thought he was a sergeant.

  Xiao Peng’s heart sank. If Duohe’s father had been a colonel or a major, his opportunities to kill people with his own hands might have been somewhat fewer. But sergeants killed all the time; all the most bloodthirsty scenes in films had sergeants in them, didn’t they?

  ‘Were all the men in the village forced to be soldiers?’

  She said that they had not been forced. If there was a man in any family who was unwilling to be a soldier, the women of that family would not be able to look their female neighbours in the face. All the men of the village were brave, and they had never produced degenerates who were greedy for life and feared death.

  There were many gaps in Duohe’s speech, and she spoke slowly, but she was doing much better than the first time he saw her, and he could understand 80 per cent of what she said on her first attempt.

  The wine was wafting around in Xiao Peng’s stomach, floating like a soft silk ribbon, twisting in coils and then rising, slowly curling into a soft, supple whirlpool in his head. That was such a fine feeling. He looked at Duohe, and he could see the cherry-red whirlpool in her eyes too.

  A daughter of the enemy.

  Look at the way the Japanese sergeants had massacred the Chinese common people in films. Xiao Peng’s parents and grandparents could have been among those hundreds and thousands of ordinary folk, they had just been more fortunate than those who were slain.

  Duohe’s
cherry-red lips should taste kisses. They were so soft, so sweet, they were like kissing itself, and all that kissing implied.

  He lowered his head, and planted a kiss on those two lips. Lips that had fermented into wine. That silk ribbon in Xiao Peng’s brain coiled into an ever more powerful whirlpool.

  A hand reached into Xiao Peng’s clothes, and a cool palm was laid on the place between his shoulder and his neck. Xiao Peng thought better if it were a knife: kill him, then he would have no choice. If she could not kill him, he could retaliate and seize the knife, and he would still be left with no choice.

  Like a soft knife, Duohe’s hand felt its way up and down Xiao Peng’s neck. Was this a hint? That she wanted him to undo his clothes? Xiao Peng’s heart was full of fervent hopes, and he thought, to hell with it! He rolled her over, beneath his body.

  Dahai, or Zhang Tie as he was now known – named for the iron made in the town of his birth – fled to the factory headquarters for shelter, and from that day he cut himself off from his family. Not long after, the cadres in the Neighbourhood Committee received the reply from the North-east confirming Duohe’s identity as a Jap devil. This female devil had been concealed in the Zhang household for more than twenty years: what had she been doing? Zhang Jian and Xiaohuan were not stupid enough to say that Duohe had spent the last twenty years giving birth to children and raising them. For the sake of the children’s future this was not the kind of thing they could reveal. They would say that when the Zhang family bought her all those years ago, it was out of pity, and as a source of labour, to make coal bricks, carry water, sweep the station. Just that? So why take her south with them, and conceal her status as a Jap devil from everyone? Why had they smuggled her over a distance of several thousand kilometres in order to hide her forever, to conceal a Japanese in this city whose iron and steel industry was used for national defence, and all just in order to have her wash and iron clothes, scrub the floor, and go to the factory to earn a bit of extra money? The majority of the steel produced in this factory was put to important uses, such mighty uses that no one dared to ask what they were. So this female Jap devil had been infiltrating the factory for several years: how much intelligence had she got her hands on? And how much damage had she caused the nation?

  At the moment when Xiao Peng’s passion was at its height, Duohe rolled out the way. She had grass clippings in her hair, and her eyes were wide open and staring. It seemed that this had not been the feeling when he kissed her. The feeling had turned into something else as he acted on it, and in doing so had become lost before he realised it.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Xiao Peng asked.

  Duohe stared at him, like this was just what she wanted to ask him: ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  He shifted closer to her. Soon the darkness would be complete. The mosquitoes were buzzing. All these flowers and plants and grasses would soon be covered in shadow. The whirlpool in his head lost its focus, leaving him listless. Once the whirling stopped, he would no longer have the courage to take his pleasure from this daughter of the enemy.

  Duohe got up and took a step back. By an odd coincidence, the light was the same as it had been that day on the roof of the building, so that all she could see was his face. It was still the same face from the roof, but she sensed that the face was all that was left. She retreated another step.

  Xiao Peng thought regretfully that if he had not gone to watch Dahai’s basketball match that evening, if he had not gone to the changing room to bandage him and heard him say those words, it would have been so much better. Dahai would have said those words to him eventually, but how much better if he could have said them at some later date. Xiao Peng could not see her as an enemy and enjoy her at the same time: that was animal behaviour.

  On the road they did not speak. He took her as far as the junction next to the Zhang family’s building, and watched her walk away in the light of the street lamps, all alone. Her footsteps were always so childish, clumsy and absurd, almost like she had had polio as a child. She could not even walk gracefully, so how could she be capable of any wickedness? Xiao Peng’s heart bled.

  But by the time he had returned to the factory headquarters, Xiao Peng’s heart had completely healed. He went looking for Dahai who was still cutting stencils in the offices of their small newspaper, and made him talk about the atmosphere in the home when he was growing up, and the relations between his father and mother and aunt. Dahai said that his parents had mentioned one thing when they were fighting: that Auntie had once been dumped by his father, abandoned by the side of the river, and had wandered all over the place and suffered great hardship for over a month before she came back home. At that time he and his brother were not yet weaned.

  This black night became a ball of contradictions that he had no easy way to resolve. Xiao Peng did not know whether he wanted to eliminate the daughter of the enemy, or whether he wanted to eliminate Zhang Jian in order to uphold justice. Not just for Duohe’s sake, but for Xiao Shi’s too.

  He sat in the deep autumn night of 1968, his head, light under the influence of the cherry wine, clutched in his hands. Oh, Xiao Shi. That monkey who had entered the factory with him, and who had brought him so much laughter; Xiao Shi, who was prepared to set at naught his own sense of shame in order to amuse him. Xiao Shi’s elder sister had seen him off as far as the station, and had left him in the care of Zhang Jian and Xiaohuan, her eyes swimming with tears as though she were handing over an orphan. The result was that Zhang Jian had cut off the last single sprout of the Shi family line, root and branch. Zhang Jian had driven a crane for so many years without ever letting anything slip from its hook, and yet the load just happened to fall in the moment when Xiao Shi was walking past?

  Xiao Peng just wished that he could have been there, so he could have pushed Xiao Shi out of the way.

  Just as Xiao Shi had dragged him from the railway track.

  Xiao Peng saw in his mind over and over how Xiao Shi had jumped onto the iron rails and pulled him back, as he went charging off blindly in the wrong direction. With that helping hand, Xiao Shi had rescued a new leader of the steelworks – Director Peng.

  Xiao Peng considered Xiao Shi’s attitude: Xiao Shi had known perfectly well that Xiao Peng was competing with him over Duohe, but he still gave him a hand up. And he himself? For Duohe’s sake, how many times had he cursed him, in public and in secret?

  The result was that he fell victim to Zhang Jian’s plan. Was this not obviously a sinister plot? And it just had to happen at the time when he was returning to his home town.

  This was a case of murder. This murderer Zhang Jian had evaded the net of the law, going to work and taking his wages, coming off work and messing about with his pigeons; outside the home he was a member of the working class, but behind closed doors he was two women’s man.

  Xiao Peng fell asleep at three o’clock. In the morning someone came in with hot water, and saw Xiao Peng on the sofa, dozing sweetly, and did not dare to call him. He was awakened by the arrival of the first batch of documents at nine. He stared at a big pile of documents from the centre, the province, the city and the factory, and said to himself: ‘Xiao Shi, my brother, I’ve wronged you.’

  He asked the army representative to come to his office, closed the door tightly, and told him about the death of a worker called Shi Huicai, and the history of a crane driver named Zhang Jian.

  From his crane, Zhang Jian saw the army representative go up to the director of the workshop, several policemen walking behind him. It was the way the workshop director involuntarily turned round that put Zhang Jian on his guard. They had said just a few words to the director, and the director had swivelled as if on a spring to look behind him. He had looked across at the crane.

  The workshop director walked over, and beckoned to Zhang Jian. Then something suddenly occurred to him, and he retreated, flustered, to one side.

  That was enough. Enough for him to judge what was coming. He stopped the crane, and let out a breat
h. The roof of the workshop was just above his head, and all the people and objects down below were tiny. He had never looked at the way the rails curved together, and turned out in their own separate ways, but in this instant he saw it all clearly. Perhaps this was the last time he would see these rails from this position: the roof of the workshop, the people down below. The workshop director was afraid that he would be up to his old tricks again, and squash him into a second Xiao Shi.

  Zhang Jian came down and walked up to the security officers, looked at the army representative who had always treated him well, and said to himself: I’m innocent, I can explain everything, and once I have, it will all be over and done with. But it was precisely because he held such hopes of explaining clearly that he was consumed with fear.

  They took him to the changing rooms and told him to clear out his locker, then hand over the key. Two workers had sneaked into the changing rooms for a nap, but as soon as they saw what was happening, they slipped out, pulling the peaks of their caps down low. Zhang Jian took out a pair of wooden slippers, a soap box, a comb and a change of clean clothes. If they took him directly into custody without letting him go home first, these things would be very useful. He thought: They can’t shut me up for too long, I’ll explain it all, from start to finish. I’ll start from the day Duohe was sold into the family. We’re an ordinary family from the common people, and my father was an old worker, he only wanted to save a starving girl’s life. Don’t try to tell me that you shouldn’t save Japanese, that he should have let her leave and starve to death. The Zhang family was not the only good-hearted family in the surrounding villages, many people had saved those starving little Japanese girls and taken them back home! You can go to Anping village and investigate! As Zhang Jian was handing over his key to the workshop manager, he realised that his hand was shaking. The greater his hope the more full of dread he became. By the time he had finished cleaning out his locker, his hands seemed useless to him. Then a pair of iron handcuffs appeared and cuffed them together.