Red Azalea

by Anchee Min

  I always brought an extra steamed bread with me. I gave it to Yan when she came to the field. It took her three bites to finish a hand-sized steamed bread. One day she came back soaking wet, mud pasted on her clothes. She said that she had fallen into a canal with her tractor. Yan was screaming happily. She said she was too excited to speak. She said, Magic has happened—Little Green is coming back to her senses. Yan shouted, A long, long life to Chairman Mao. She asked us to shout with her. We did. When the soldiers encircled her for more information, she said that she had left Little Green in the hospital for more observation. She said that Little Green had sung a phrase of “My Motherland” this morning. Yan broke two poles that day in carrying one-hundred-pound hods of manure to the field.

  That evening Yan conducted as we sang opera at the study meeting. Yan’s fever affected the company. No one paid attention to Lu, who was standing in the corner shaking her head. Everybody sang “Nothing in the World Can Put Off a Communist”—an aria from The Red Lantern. After that, Yan for the first time offered to perform on her erhu for everybody. She was admired and worshiped.

  I sat back enjoying Yan’s happiness. In her happiness I experienced again her heartrending pain for Little Green. I suggested that we sing “My Motherland” to keep Little Green blessed. Yan played a note on her erhu. But she broke a string because she struck it too hard. She apologized to the crowd. Instead of adding a new string on the erhu, she placed it aside and sang. The sound was the same—her voice was exactly like her erhu. We could not help laughing. Yan did not mind. She sang in a high pitch:

  This is my great country.

  It is the place where I was born and raised.

  It is a beautiful land where

  The sun shines everywhere,

  The spring breezes everywhere.

  Yan’s happiness did not last. Not a week. When Little Green got back, she looked the same, like a vegetable. The acupuncture worked for a moment and then the nerves reverted to idleness. Yan refused to give up. She kept sending Little Green back to the hospital. One day the tractor broke down; she carried Little Green on her back and walked two hours to the hospital. The next day Yan did not wake up on time. She was too tired. I offered to take Little Green to the hospital. Yan insisted on going there herself. We ended up going together. We took turns in carrying Little Green. Little Green slept like a dead pig on our backs. She looked hopeless. Yan said she still had her last bet, the bet on the snakes. I did not say I didn’t believe in that for a second. She had so much hope in her voice. She was insane.

  I hitched a ride on a tractor to Company Thirty-two to meet with Leopard Lee. Yan sent me there as our company’s representative to “exchange revolutionary experiences” with his company. I was as excited when called for the mission as if I were going to meet my own lover. The letter, folded carefully, was in my inner pocket. I buttoned the pocket up in case my jumping on the tractor might shake it out. I checked every now and then to see whether it was still there. I had rewritten the letter the night before. Yan drowned in reading it. She was up at dawn. She told me that I had made her another person. True, I thought. She had become much softer. She was nice to everyone, including Lu. The soldiers were flattered, and Lu puzzled.

  Yan gave a holiday to the company when it was not raining. She herself went to cut heaps of reeds the whole day. When she saw me, she smiled shyly as if I were Leopard Lee. To my own surprise, I spent more time thinking of her. I could not help it. I watched her eating dinner. She ate absentmindedly, shoveling food into her mouth. She would stare into distant fields or watch a bug chewing the heart of a cotton flower. She told the cafeteria to add more sugar to the dishes. She wore red, bright red underwear at night. She smiled at the mirror when she thought no one was around. She told me to buy her a bottle of vinegar when I went to the shop. She sat with Lu before bedtime to clean the chemical dye off her toenails. She sometimes sang operas with me and Lu. She sang like her erhu, her voice made stringlike sounds. The roommates said they could not tell the difference. She yelled, What’s wrong with that? The roommates went to hide in their mosquito nets, covering their mouths with their hands and laughing hard.

  When I saw Leopard Lee, I was surprised by Yan’s choice. He was a male version of Yan: with big and intense eyes, knifelike eyebrows and bristly oily hair. He was not as tall and strong as I had imagined. He reminded me of a monkey, with long arms, quick in actions. I could tell by the way he was admired by his soldiers that he was a successful leader. They all called him Leopard. He responded to them affectionately. He joked with them and told them not to damage the sprouts when hoeing. He looked awkward after I had announced that I was from Company Seven. He looked at me from the corner of his eye.

  I said, I have a letter for you. It’s from … He flushed before I spelled out Yan’s name. He smiled unnaturally and looked around. His hands trembled slightly when he took the letter I held out. He put the letter in his pocket, looked around again and then guided me through the fields to his office. His company seemed more established than ours. He had more barracks. The soldiers were older—the males were thinner and the females were fatter. They all wore straw hats. They were having their work break. The flies hovered over the smell of manure. The soldiers were lying by the field path like potatoes; hats covered their faces. The earth was as hot as a stove.

  While pouring me a cup of water, Leopard called in his assistant, a short woman. He told the woman to begin as he walked out of the room. The short woman introduced herself as Old Wong. She began to lecture me on how the Cultural Revolution was progressing in this company. She kept pausing to look at me. She reminded me that I wasn’t taking any notes. She rolled her eyes to show her dissatisfaction. I didn’t pay much attention to her. I anxiously waited for Leopard to come back. I tried hard not to look out the window. Finally, Leopard came back. With no particular expression on his face, he asked if we were done. Oh, yes, I said, hoping he would get rid of Old Wong. But he showed no such intention. He asked if there was anything else I would like to know. I didn’t understand why he had to ask this question: he knew exactly what I wanted. I sat there staring at him. Leopard played with a rubber band. He was nervous. The rubber band broke and it bounced off Old Wong’s face. She screamed, hands on her cheeks. He said, Sorry, and took a cigarette from the drawer. He lit it up and began flicking it before there were any ashes. Old Wong asked if she should call up a tractor to send me back. Leopard nodded. I couldn’t believe he was doing this, but I didn’t know what to do.

  I got on the tractor. The tractor driver started the engine. I looked at Leopard. I found him to be not good-looking at all. He looked away. He was too afraid of being caught. He was a coward. I began to dislike him, for Yan was facing the same risk and was not afraid, and he, as a man, had no guts.

  That night, in the mosquito net, Yan asked me how the visit went. I was afraid that I would wound her if I told her the truth. I said, Oh, he looked very excited. Yan asked whether he would write back. I nodded and answered with a yes in a sure tone. Yan was satisfied. She asked me to write another letter for her.

  I delivered four letters to Leopard in two months. He never wrote back. I became hostile when I visited him. I wished that I could whip him the way I would whip a cow in order to make him fall for Yan. A couple of times it seemed that he wanted to talk to me, but he always managed to switch the button off right before the current got connected. I thought about why he acted withdrawn. He knew Yan well enough to know that she cared about nothing but to be with him. She would not be able to hide her feelings. They would be caught like Little Green and her bookish lover. They would lose their positions in the Party. If they declared their love, the farm headquarters would give them a certain day to get married and then assign them a little room in the barracks as their permanent home. The legends would end, and the chance to go back to Shanghai would be forever lost. They would be titled as local peasants the moment they settled down. Would this be what Leopard wanted for his life? I suddenly doub
ted it.

  I felt sorry for Yan, for she was so lovesick. Every night I listened to her murmuring and comforted her by making up stories about the miracles of love. I spent all my sugar coupons on her because she was a sugar addict. She ate up corncobs just because they were sweet. In order to keep sharing the bed with her, I continued to make excuses about the cold weather. I told her not to wash the mosquito net because the dirt made it less transparent. When the light was on, we could see everything in the room but no one was able to see us.

  Despite her lovesickness, in front of the ranks Yan was tough as a rock. She took the company to a labor competition with our neighboring Red Star Farm. We were to dig a canal. Yan’s performance was admired by thousands. At night she was softer than fermented bread. I enjoyed seeing her flush when she read my letters. I asked her to imagine herself being a lover, insisting she tell me the details that I would use the next time I wrote. She would grin and say, Do you know how the local peasants buy persimmons? They pick the softest. This is what you are doing to me. I said I had to know the details, or how was I supposed to depict it. She said, Where’s your imagination? I replied that one could not imagine anything one had no sense of. She pressed her forefinger to my lips and told me to be quiet. She whispered that she had the sensations but could not put what she felt into words. She was too embarrassed about it. She grabbed my hand and pressed it to her chest. She asked me to feel her heart.

  I wished I was the blood in that chamber. In the hammering of her heartbeat, the rising and falling of her chest, I saw a city of chaos. A mythical force drew me toward her. I felt the blazing of a fire rise inside me. Yan was wearing a thin shirt with a bra under it. The shirt was the color of roots. The bra was plain white. Her bright red underwear added fuel to the fire. As she lazily stretched her body, my heart raged.

  Closing her eyes, she moved my hands to her cheeks. Slowly opening her eyes, she stared at me. Lips slightly parted. I could not bear it, the way she looked at me, like water penetrating rocks. Passion overflowed in her eyes.

  I made an effort to look away, staring at the ceiling of the net. I heard Lu’s cough. She was sitting three feet away at the table, concentrating on Mao. She turned a page.

  Under the blankets, Yan’s arms were around my neck. She held me closer. Her breasts pressed against my shoulder. She turned me toward her. She untied one of her braids, then moved my hands up to untie the other. I smoothed her loosened hair with my fingers.

  I heard Lu brushing her teeth. She spit outside, then closed the door and turned off the light. The bed frame shook as she climbed in. I waited for her snoring. Yan began to whisper in my ear, reciting some of the phrases I had used in the letters. She was a rice shoot in a summer of drought.

  I continued to drop Leopard letters every two weeks. He said, Thanks for the letters, and nothing more. I went back to Yan empty-handed. One night when I was writing another letter, Yan lay next to me in tears. She said that she knew all I had been telling her about Leopard was lies. She said, Your hands are too small to cover the sky. You made me into a fool. She said it quietly. A pitiful fool, she added. I tore the letter up in guilt. I said I did that because I didn’t know what else to do. I said I was sorry for trying to gloss things over. She said, You don’t have to apologize. I said he might just be afraid, and he might need more time. She shook her head and smiled sadly. She said she wasn’t pretty enough for him, wasn’t intelligent enough, wasn’t feminine enough. She was a cheap fool. She was stupid and that was that. She picked up a mirror and turned it toward herself. After a long time staring into it, she said she saw an old, weather-beaten face. She said she was twenty-five, she had nothing but the useless Party position titles. That was what she deserved because one gains what one plants. She deserved the decoration.

  I could not bear her sadness. It haunted me when she said that she had nothing except the Party titles. She had me. I went up to her and took the mirror away from her face. I was unable to say anything. I wanted to say: You are very very beautiful. I adore everything in you. If I were a man, I would die for your love.

  By four o’clock I was able to dismiss my platoon. We were repairing a bridge. My policy—when the assignment was completed, they were allowed to take the rest of the day off. The soldiers liked me. In many cases, those who finished the work would stay to help the others, in response to my call “to carry forward the Communist collaborative spirit.” Lu didn’t like my policy; she called it “capitalist contract bullshit.” She asked me to change it and I had no choice but to acquiesce. But when she wasn’t inspecting, I did things my way.

  When the work was done, I walked across the bridge. Along the canal side there was a huge slogan painted on canvas and mounted on thick bamboo sticks which said, “Do not fear death or hard work.” We had created the canal ourselves during my first winter at the farm nearly a year ago. I felt proud every time I walked by it.

  This particular day, as I passed by the bridge I heard a local boatman calling me from his boat. He told me to come quickly; he had discovered a drowned body. I ran down to the boat. It was a female body. The boatman slowly flipped her over like an egg roll on a skillet. Before me was Little Green. I lost my breath. Her face was puffed. Her whole head had swelled like a pumpkin. There were traces of cuts on her arms and legs. The boatman said, It looks like she had a fit. You see these cuts? She struggled, but got tangled in the weeds. I stood motionless.

  Someone brought the news to Yan. She came running down from the bridge like a mad horse, with her hair standing back on its roots. Her face was blue and red as if it had been beaten. She wouldn’t listen when the boatman told her that it was useless to attempt mouth-to-mouth lifesaving. She’s been dead for hours, the boatman said. Yan kept pumping and pumping at Little Green’s chest. Heavy sweat ran down her hair in tiny streams. Her shirt soon was soaked. She didn’t stop until she completely exhausted herself.

  The Red Fire Farm headquarters held a special memorial service for Little Green. She was honored as an Outstanding Comrade and was admitted posthumously into the Youth League of the Communist Party. Little Green’s grandmother attended the service. She was beautiful like her granddaughter. She had an opera singer’s elegance. She hugged Little Green. She had no tears in her eyes; her face was paler than the dead. Lu, representing the farm’s Party committee, issued her a check for 500 yuan as a condolence. Little Green’s grandmother took the check and stared at it.

  Yan left suddenly. She did not come back for dinner. I went to look for her, searching everywhere before I finally found her sitting under the bridge. The jar which she used to collect the snakes was beside her. A few days ago she told me in great delight that she had just reached the perfect number—one hundred snakes—and was expecting Little Green to come back to her senses magically.

  I stepped closer to Yan and saw that she was pulling each snake’s head off its neck. The dark brown blood of the snakes spattered all over her face and uniform. When all the snakes were torn, she took up the jar and smashed it.

  I went up to her. She crouched at my knees. I held her as she began to cry.

  After Little Green’s death Yan was no longer the Party secretary and commander that I knew. She changed me along with her. We discussed the reasons why we were losing sight of the “brilliant future” the Party had drawn. We asked ourselves why we were getting poorer and poorer when we had been working so hard on the land. Our monthly salary of 24 yuan barely covered food, kerosene and toilet paper. I had never been able to buy any new clothes for myself. Were we going to spend the rest of our lives this way? The irony was bitter: the Red Fire Farm was a model Communist collective, the wave of the future. It was one of ten farms in the East China Sea region. All of these farms—Red Star, Red Spark, May Fourth, May Seventh, Vanguard, East Sea, Long March, Sea Wind, Sea Harvest and our farm—with a total of over 200,000 city youth sent to work and live in the area, didn’t even grow enough food to feed themselves. The farms had been getting food supplements from the govern
ment every year. And the government had made it clear to the headquarters that we would not get any help next year. We asked ourselves what it really meant when we shouted, “Sweating hard, growing more crops to support the world’s revolution.”

  Yan lost interest in conducting political study meetings. She became vulnerable, weak and sad. We had fights. She said she wanted to quit her position. She said she was no longer the right person for the job. Lu fit it much better. I said I did not like seeing her become decadent. Dispiritedness would not save us. She said quitting was her way. I asked, What would happen after you quit and Lu took power? Would we be sleeping together? She said, I didn’t know you liked my power better than you liked me. I said, It’s not the power you have in hand, it is our lives. You can’t make it better but you can make it worse. She said her life was a waste, it was a jail here. I said, Where could we go? How could we escape? There were nets above and snares below. We run, we die. Mao and the Party had set our fate. We must drag on.

  Yan left for seven days’ intensive political training at the farm headquarters. I slept alone. And I became upset. I was afraid of losing her when she and Leopard met again. It was a strange feeling, a feeling of continuous distraction. I dreamt of Yan at night. I looked forward to the sunset when the day announced its end. She became my lover in her absence. At sunset a new feeling was born, for her. Its color crossed out my heart’s darkness.

  I wrote to my parents in Shanghai. I told them about the Party secretary, Commander Yan. I said we were very good friends. She was a fair boss. She was like a big tree with crowded branches and lush foliage, and I enjoyed the cool air sitting under her. This was as far as I could go in explaining myself. I told my mother the farm was fine and I was fine. I mentioned that some of my roommates’ parents had made visits although the farm was not worth the trip.