Freedom Swimmer

by Wai Chim

  His smile was so bright and welcoming, I couldn’t help giving him a small nod.

  Tian raised his cup of watered-down tea. ‘To friendship,’ he said and the eight of us clinked our mugs together.

  Chapter 4

  MING

  After our bountiful dinner, I went down to the shore. I dunked my head under the water to clear it but couldn’t shake my thoughts of the new arrivals.

  Li especially stood out to me. He didn’t speak like the other boys. He was thoughtful and considered, and his eyes had light in their depths, like sparkling fish.

  When I returned to the dorm, Wang and Cho had retired to their room along with Ah-Jun and Kamshui. But I was surprised to find Tian poring over the little red book that he had found on Feng’s bed. Feng was sprawled out beside him, Li on the opposite side.

  ‘Politics is war without bloodshed and war is politics with bloodshed,’ Feng recited, eyes closed. ‘Also political work is the life-blood of all economic work.’ Tian was frowning, tongue poking out the corner of his mouth, as his finger trailed along the page. Li reached over and gently tugged Tian’s hand down two lines so that he was in the right spot.

  ‘What he means is that we are always engaged in a war of ideas and must stay wary so we won’t be misled by false ideals,’ Feng continued, his eyes snapping open as I perched on the side of the bed next to Li. ‘The only way to stay the true course is to study Mao’s teachings and to recite his work daily. I’ve memorised the whole Red Book but I still recite passages every day so I can be certain I am thinking with the Communist mind and that my thoughts and actions are in the best interests of the Party.’

  ‘Wah, I can’t imagine knowing a whole book,’ Tian murmured, staring down at the neat rows of characters that packed the page. ‘It would take me a whole week just to read a page.’

  ‘Nonsense, it’s easy,’ Li showed Tian some of the basic radicals and structures for the characters in the lines.

  ‘Women … hold up … level … sky.’ Tian read, halting and squinting after each character. Li nodded encouragement. I peeked over Tian’s shoulder.

  ‘Half the sky,’ I couldn’t help correcting. ‘See, that’s half because the dots are over the two lines. Level is like this.’ And I used my finger to draw the character that looked to me like a scowling face peering over a fence. That was how I remembered it.

  ‘You’re a good scholar,’ Li said, his face brightening. ‘Have you ever thought about going to senior school or university?’

  I blushed and shook my head. ‘Nah, after the first four years, I stayed home to help my family in the fields. I learned to read mostly from newspapers, when I could find them. I started collecting interesting articles; I still have some.’

  Li’s face brightened with interest. I fetched the bundle of pages that I kept under the bed, Li following behind.

  ‘These are some of the most important pieces in history,’ he said as he riffled through my collection. ‘The political thoughts of some of the most notable figureheads of modern Communism.’

  I pointed to an image under one of the headlines. ‘I liked this one from the student protesting with the Big-Character poster at Beijing University.’ The poster read ‘Annihilate All the Monsters and Demons Completely, Thoroughly, and Entirely’.

  ‘That was the start of the Big-Character Poster movement,’ Li observed.

  ‘Here’s the one Chairman Mao wrote himself.’ I pointed to another image. ‘“Bombard the Capitalist Headquarters: My First Big-Character Poster.”’

  ‘All of the university students were putting posters up, denouncing reactionaries and calling the country to arms. To be a good Red Guard you had to read and erect these posters as part of the revolution,’ Li explained.

  I was suddenly curious. ‘How do you know? Did you go to university?’

  ‘No, Feng and I were recruited to the Red Guards out of senior school.’ He nodded to Feng. ‘Do you remember the head of foreign studies? What a rightist snob.’

  Feng grimaced. ‘He got what was coming to him. Marching in the streets with a dunce cap, begging for forgiveness. At least he saw the error of his ways.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Unlike that professor of English. Stubborn, American intellectual. He called us anarchists.’

  My mouth was dry. ‘What happened to him?’

  Feng grinned horribly. ‘Got what was coming to him too.’ His low voice sent a chill through me. ‘He wasted his last stubborn breath condemning the revolution. What a pig.’ And he made a slitting motion across his throat.

  The hair on my arms stood on end. Tian’s face was frozen, his thoughts unreadable.

  Li cleared his throat. ‘Come now, Feng. Don’t be like that, these are our brothers.’ He tilted his head to me. ‘He was run out of the school. Along with the rest of the administration. There was no place for their line of thinking there,’ he said solemnly.

  My shoulders sagged and I felt the rush of blood returning to my cheeks. I sighed audibly and Li laughed, clapping me on the shoulder.

  ‘I was just messing with you boys,’ Feng said with a smirk, punching Tian on the arm. ‘You village boys will believe anything.’

  But Tian’s brow was knitted. ‘I don’t have much education and I can’t read,’ he said evenly. ‘But if there’s one thing that life has taught me it’s how to spot someone who will lose their life and someone who has taken one.’

  Li stiffened beside me and Feng’s smile dropped. He stood up and balled his fists by his side.

  ‘Just what do you know about it, country boy?’ Feng hissed. ‘The Red Guards are here to ensure the adherence to Mao’s doctrines. If that means a few bourgeois sympathisers take their deserving punishment, then so be it. Like Chairman Mao himself says, politics is war.’

  Tian stepped forwards, his chin high. ‘You city boys think you know everything. Do you really know what it’s like to be surrounded by death? When your life is so insignificant that when you die, your body is eaten by your own family?’

  The two boys were standing nose to nose, glaring fiercely.

  ‘Let’s settle down, comrades,’ Li said.

  But before anyone could say anything more, there was a loud scraping of boots followed by pounding on the door.

  ‘Lights out, comrades.’ It was Commander Hongbing, on a nightly patrol all the way from Long-chi where he was stationed. I guessed he was taking his responsibility for his squad beyond their work in the fields.

  I snuffed the kerosene lamp in the corner and the room plunged into darkness. I thought the Commander would come in to check on us, but there was only silence, and then footsteps headed away from the dorm.

  No-one said a word as we all fumbled in darkness. I felt a little sheepish about how quickly I had rushed to obey, but also relieved. That conversation was getting nasty.

  I climbed into my bed and sank in to the covers, exhaustion taking over. The sagging boards creaked above me as Tian climbed into bed, without bidding me good night.

  I lay in the darkness, taking in the new ‘silence’. The other boys had settled into their own bunk, Feng on top and Li across from me. It was impossible to ignore the extra breathing in the room, the whispered sighs and soft murmurs, only an arm’s length away from my bunk.

  I heard scratching and shifting overhead and then something fluttered into my bunk and landed on my stomach. I picked up the scrap of paper, carefully folded in half and half again. It was written in Tian’s looping, halted scrawl in the same style as the Big Character Posters we had been looking at.

  Down with Mao’s murderers.

  I shuddered and crinkled the paper into the tiniest ball I could manage, then swallowed it for good measure. What was Tian playing with? Just thinking those words could get us into insurmountable trouble, never mind writing them. I thought I heard Tian cackling above me and I resisted the urge to push my foot through the wooden planks and kick him for his foolishness. But there was another voice inside my head that I couldn’t shake.

  Just who w
ere these Red Guards and what had they brought to our village?

  We rose early the next morning, as usual. A chill had settled over the village with the morning mist. Last night’s feast was a distant memory and we were back to eating our cold steam buns in silence.

  While we trudged out to the fields, the city boys were ushered away by Commander Hongbing to tend to their own plot of land. Tian snuck away on smoke breaks throughout the day to spy on them. The boys had been put to work on a bare patch of land, harvesting sweet potatoes. The Cadre had a few of the elderly farmers showing the boys how to use spades to dig for the roots of the crop. It was a bit early for harvesting but I guessed the Cadre felt these new arrivals weren’t ready to thrash millet plants.

  Tian made frequent reports while we worked – he must have gone through half a pack of cigarettes that day.

  ‘They were worse than children,’ Tian laughed. ‘Dirt flying everywhere, complaining about their backs hurting after a few minutes. They won’t last a week.’

  Dinner was a quiet affair. Tian and I cooked as per usual for the four of us but the city boys didn’t even have the strength to light the stove. Feng was leaning against the wall, his eyes half shut, barely able to lift his mantou to his mouth. The day of labour had clearly taken its toll.

  ‘Won’t last a week,’ Tian whispered to me while we ate.

  As night fell and the stars came out, I headed for the beach. The air was nippy; autumn had officially arrived, but the sea water was warming up. The waves bubbled and gurgled like happy children. I plunged in, forcing my eyes open against the sting of the salt water. It was too dark to see much, but I could still pick out the vibrations of aquatic life, the flick of a tail, the wave of a green tendril. In the sea, I was never alone.

  But then I realised I actually wasn’t alone. I surfaced quickly, peering towards the shore. A gangly figure stood on the rocky beach, trousers rolled up to his knees, a grimy towel slung over his shoulder.

  Li.

  My whole body tensed, annoyed by the intrusion.

  ‘Good evening, comrade,’ he called. ‘Nice night for a swim!’

  I said nothing. Li stepped closer, the water coming up to his ankles while I stayed where I was.

  ‘There’s no way to take a bath, so I figured a dip in the ocean would be just as refreshing.’

  I just shrugged. Villagers rarely bathed. What was the point if you were just going to get even dirtier the next day?

  Li plunged his hands into the water. ‘Salt water. I would have thought you’d prefer the fresh water of the river. That’s close by isn’t it?’

  A shiver snaked up my spine, thinking of Ma and the other villagers who’d been left there. I shook my head to clear the image. ‘I don’t go there. No-one really does,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I heard.’ He wiggled his toes in the sand. ‘Tian said I might find you here.’

  ‘Oh.’ I stood up, letting the water run off. I was a bit irritated that Tian would divulge my pastimes to this virtual stranger. The cool night air hit my skin but I resisted the urge to plunge back into the comforting warmth of the sea.

  Li paused, looking unsure. Slowly, he stripped off his trousers and his shirt, folding them painstakingly. He didn’t glance in my direction, just squared his jaw and clenched his fists before shuffling into the foam.

  I leaned back, settling into a lazy dead man’s float, and watched him out of the corner of my eye. Li grimaced when the surf hit his calves, and I could see he was trying to see how to plunge his whole body in. A deliciously evil thought crossed my mind, but I shook my head. I didn’t know this boy well enough to play a prank like dunking him in, not without Tian to back me up. So I just watched as, inch by inch, Li submerged himself.

  My ears pricked up as a dull roar approached behind me. I didn’t need to look to sense the wave gathering up momentum and speed. Li saw it, his eyes fixed above my head, his mouth open. At the right moment, I sucked in a deep breath and threw myself backwards, flipping into the swell as it curled and tumbled over me.

  The churn of the water was muffled even as it rumbled past my ears, loud and quiet at once. I stayed submerged for a bit, letting the crashing subside completely. Then I shot up, breaking the surface nose first, shaking my head to clear the water from my eyes.

  When I could see again, I burst out laughing.

  Li was sitting on his bottom, limbs splayed, naked as the day he was born. Water was streaming down his face as he coughed and spluttered. My giggles just got louder as he tried to stand, his legs immediately giving way so he landed on his hands and knees.

  ‘What – what …’ his words were lost in a fit of coughing.

  I spied something grey bobbing in the water and quickly snagged it. His underwear. I waved it over my head like a flag, whooping and hollering.

  ‘It’s the flag of our comrades. We march under its banner to glory.’

  Li’s face broke into a wide grin.

  ‘Very funny, village boy. Hand them over will you? I haven’t gotten my sea legs yet.’

  I thrashed towards the shore and lobbed the wet drawers toward him. Li got up and put them on. They’d taken quite a beating and billowed around his small frame, like a lady’s skirt. I snorted, spraying salt water.

  Li smiled. ‘I guess we city boys have a few things to learn.’

  Li and I sat on the beach as he smoked a cigarette that had stayed dry in the pocket of the shirt he had stowed on a rock.

  ‘So you can’t swim?’ I asked, eyeing the offered cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. It had ‘Big Front Door’ printed on the end, one of the good brands that even Tian couldn’t get. I never smoked, not even when Tian insisted, and I handed it back without putting it to my mouth.

  ‘I’d never seen the ocean before,’ Li confessed, puffing little clouds towards the stars.

  ‘I can teach you,’ I offered, surprising myself. I was usually shy and uncomfortable, even around the villagers, but Li put me at ease.

  ‘That would be … much appreciated, comrade.’ He frowned. ‘But I’m not sure I’m quite ready for another lesson from the sea.’

  I gestured towards the sheltered pool. ‘That’s where my father used to teach me. There are no waves there.’

  ‘Like a swimming pool?’ Li must have read the blank look on my face because he shook his head and sighed. ‘Never mind. Things sure are different here. It’s taking some getting used to.’

  I nodded. ‘What’s the city like?’

  Li shrugged. ‘Crowded. Busy. Lots of people. None of this,’ he gestured to the landscape. ‘Everyone lives all cramped and crowded in dormitories. And the other students are all up in your business, even when you go to the toilet.’

  ‘Sounds a bit like the village,’ I said. Li snorted in response and I smiled.

  ‘Did you … did you have a girlfriend?’ I was surprised by my bold question but I was curious about life outside of Dingzai. Especially if it could change my standing with Fei.

  Li shook his head. ‘Nothing like that. I was too busy with studies and Red Guard duties. What about you?’

  It was my turn to shake my head, staring down at my feet, embarrassed that I had brought it up. But Li pressed on, like he could read my mind. ‘But you have someone in mind?’

  I shrugged. ‘I … know a girl. But her family doesn’t approve of me.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ Li said, gazing out at the sea. ‘It’s a shame really. Society makes us draw these lines between ourselves when in the end we are all made of flesh and bone.’

  ‘This is true. Although my father used to say, “it doesn’t matter where they’re from, all desperate men are the same”.’ I watched Li’s smoke curl upwards and out before disappearing completely, leaving only its sharp scent. I felt lightheaded but alive.

  ‘Well, in that case, I hope we’ll always be different, brother.’ Li clapped my shoulder and flashed one of his infectious smiles.

  I hope so too, I thought.

  Cha
pter 5

  MING

  Even after a week in the fields, it was still a sight to see the city boys hunched over their tools, moving even slower than the old men who were training them. At first they whinged every night, but by the end of that first week, most of them were collapsing into bed too exhausted to even complain.

  Li, Kamshui and Ah-Jun grumbled constantly, rubbing their backs and massaging their feet. But Feng endured the labour surprisingly well. He was still slow, and his grip on his tools was no stronger than a child’s, but there was an iron determination in him. With every strike of his pick, it was like he was reaffirming his purpose. He took to chanting Maoisms while he toiled, grunting out the words between gritted teeth.

  Hongbing often visited the dormitory to commend Feng for his effort, and even the Cadre stopped by once to begrudgingly offer his praise. Feng acknowledged the praise with a salute and a nod.

  ‘Once all struggle is grasped, miracles are possible,’ he declared, as if he’d been called on in class. The squad leader had walked away pleased, but the Cadre just shook his head and mumbled something under his breath.

  In the weeks after the boys arrived, the village was abuzz with the approach of the Mid-Autumn Festival. National holidays offered us a rare day’s break from the field. Most of the villagers went to Long-chi, where market stalls and shops would be decorated with paper lanterns. Banners of fine calligraphy featured poems and slogans encouraging a bountiful autumn harvest. People used to take homemade sweets or their own small harvests and sell them on the streets, but now they were afraid of being punished for being ‘capitalists’.

  Tian and I rose early and rushed through our morning meal, wanting to beat the crowds into town.

  There was another reason I was so eager to go. It was the only opportunity I had to see Fei.

  Almost a year after her Aunt Shu had marched her out of our hut, I had finally seen her. I had been wandering through town, waiting for Tian to return from a ‘secret business’ when I heard a familiar voice.