In the Lap of the Gods

by Li Miao Lovett

  Fang unfolded the brittle parchment. He had read the letter many times in the past six weeks. He understood now.The revelations had cleansed and absolved him, removing the sting of her rejection.

  Dear Fang Shuping,

  You must think me cruel to act so coldly toward you all this time while you’ve been trying to help us. It is true that I have tried to forget the past—our past—but you must understand the deeper reasons why I have resisted you.

  What you do not know is that I carried your child when you were sent away. It seems so long ago, but I am never far from those memories. When I could hide the pregnancy no longer, when the bandages and cloths I wrapped around my belly could not contain its sinful secret, I had to confront my father. I was betrothed to another man, as you know. My father’s fury was beyond words; I could see the animal impulse to hurt me in his eyes, and I would have preferred a beating, or exile to some forgotten place, to his quiet, measured words. He had too much to lose if this marriage did not proceed. And an illegitimate child would bring scorn to our family, and demote him as a leader among thousands in the commune. I asked to be sent away, but my mother could not bear the thought. Perhaps she was right; I was bold and headstrong, but I could be taken advantage of in my condition. And how could a pregnant woman on her own explain why she has had to fend for herself?

  I thought many times of running away, but in the end, I agreed to have the child removed from my womb, although I nearly died at the hands of the barefoot doctor. And yes, I suppose I saved my own life by taking away the one we had created. But in the years ahead, I chose to make the best of things. My husband was a decent man, and I learned to love him.You must not begrudge me my desire for dignity, and I’ve realized I cannot deny you the right to know the truth.

  Perhaps this is why I am dismayed that my daughter left her child, when she didn’t have the same pressures that bore down on me. Perhaps it is the vengeance of the gods, to bring the curse of an illegitimate girl upon her. My wish to reclaim the child may simply be a desire to redeem the past.

  But I must be practical as well. I am still healthy and able to work, but who knows what the future brings, especially when we are forced to move to our new home, where the soil is barren and the springs run dry? When the girl is of age, she could provide some hope for our family, and find work in the cities as my nephew has done.

  Again, I thank you for what you have done on Longshan’s behalf. I do not want to give you false hopes, and only appeal to the forces of the human heart beyond our own troubled wishes.

  Sincerely,

  Sulin

  The letter revived his fervent hopes, despite Sulin’s stated intentions. Two days after he spoke to Liu, Fang wondered if he should sweeten the pot, or threaten him with the force of authority. But the night before his imposed deadline, Fang received a phone call from Sulin.

  Her voice had an edge of anxiety, like a pipa slightly out of tune. “Fang Shuping, I hate to trouble you, and heaven knows I have asked enough of you, but I fear for my brother.”

  “What is it? Is he in prison again?”

  “No, but his council has plans to bring out a mass of villagers to protest the dam. And this is no small affair. Many people are upset over the terms we have been offered. And since no money has come in, it confirms suspicions that we’ll be wrung over by scoundrels who stuff their own wallets. Those are my brother’s words.”

  “So what are they planning to do?”

  “Well, the council has been spreading the word to the thirty villages in this area. In a week, everyone will gather at the construction site and stand in resistance. My brother thinks that they’ll get thousands of villagers to protest. And people certainly seem angry enough.”

  “Is your brother leading the troops?”

  “Yes.”There was a pause at the other end. “And that’s what I’m afraid of. He’s been detained and jailed twice already. He’s one of the leaders, and the authorities will be watching him. What if the crowd turns into a mob, and violence breaks out? There’s no telling what could happen.”

  “What would you like me to do?” Fang asked.

  “I’d like you to talk to Longshan.” Sulin sighed. “He won’t listen to his wife, or to my haranguing. Tells me that business is best left to the men. He’s so pigheaded that he’ll put himself in harm’s way if he gets out there. And the crowd can’t protect him.”

  “No, they can’t, Sulin. That little brother of yours was always a stubborn one. A rare family trait, wouldn’t you say?” Fang chuckled, and then his tone was serious again. “I’ll come right away, try to talk some sense into him. If the chickens keep squawking, only the foxes will come. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I once lost a friend to a mob of Red Guards.”

  “I know you understand how serious this is,” said Sulin. “And I’m sorry to trouble you like this. There is only one thing, though. I will have to postpone my visit to Wushan.”

  “That’s too bad.” Fang was actually relieved; he had been reluctant to bring up the matter of her grandchild, as Liu still remained an obstacle to his plans.

  “My granddaughter—is she well? Is she in good hands?”

  “Yes, this fellow’s done a decent job. She’s a toddler now, on the skinny side, but she’s got good teeth. Really strong teeth.” There was a sour note in Fang’s voice, which Sulin did not seem to pick up.

  “I wish things were otherwise, but I think there’s going to be trouble. Maybe now is not the time to bring my granddaughter home. And maybe I’m just an old woman bargaining with the gods for another chance at youth.”

  “There are other ways to reclaim that, you know.” Fang knew that he was crossing an unspoken line, but he could not resist.

  “Fang, please. Don’t start again. I’ll let my brother know you’re coming. And my sister-in-law will be delighted to have you stay.”

  The unexpected turn of events worked in Fang’s favor. He was given another opportunity to get closer to Sulin. And while she insisted on sticking to her widow’s code of honor, her resistance seemed to be melting. Each encounter dredged another layer of subterranean passions, and now Fang could barely contain himself. He hustled about from room to room, packing a small suitcase. He would bring a bolt of silk cloth for Sulin, for her small sewing enterprise at home. At the outdoor market, he would pick up some candied fruits for the spring festival, sweet tangerines to grace the Chu’s ancestral altar, and a long branch of peach blossoms. He wished he had a photograph of the grandchild for Sulin to see. Just as well that he didn’t; it was one more reminder that his powers to cajole, to wheel and deal, were no match for her woman’s touch.

  Early the next morning, Fang set out for Lanping village with his suitcase and armload of gifts beside him. For hours he pondered how he would convince Longshan to stay out of the fracas. There was futility in trying to fight the government, he would say. It was like building a dike with deep mud walls against a sunken field.When the floods came, nothing could stop the fierce current from swallowing the land and crops, driving people and animals from their homes.

  No, he would tell Longshan, the great modern economy was that tide, and China had been held back and deprived for so long that all she wanted to do was slake this thirst. And the peasants stood as tiny twigs in the face of the tidal wave. If you did not follow the current, you would go down in the water, and the river of progress would simply flow along unimpeded, drowning out those stray voices.

  He was a jaded man, he knew, but the contorted truths of the Cultural Revolution had sobered him as a young man.

  CHU LONGSHAN WAS DELIGHTED TO SEE HIS FRIEND, BUT he knew why his sister had arranged the visit. “Ol’ Fang, you are welcome to stay as long as you like, but the situation is getting heated up, and I can’t back down now. Our council members have gone back to their villages. On the twenty-fifth day of this month, everyone will gather at the dam construction site to protest.”

  “That is very noble, my friend,” Fang replied, “but I think your sist
er’s fears are well founded. You think the authorities will just let thousands of people sit around under the sun, thumbing their noses at the project? They’ll bring in the police, and where there’s police, there will be violence.”

  “I’m not afraid,” said Longshan quietly.

  Fang launched a steady stream of persuasive arguments, which he did not dispute. Longshan had great regard for his friend, at times envied him for his business smarts. But this was not the China that Longshan had grown up in; this new China heaped prosperity on people like Fang, but denied even the most basic means of subsistence to peasants like himself. And Longshan had seen too much during his time in prison to be tethered by fear.

  His friend attempted a last-ditch argument. “Listen, Ol’ Chang, I just don’t want to see you killed. When I was twenty-three, I lost a good friend in a terrible skirmish. A fight that didn’t need to happen. We were only college students, Chiu Wanlong and I, caught up in the insanity of the times. He was mistaken for a rival Red Guard, and they shot him. In one fleeting moment, his life was snuffed out.” Fang’s voice was strained, and he stared intently at Longshan. “I don’t want that to happen to you. Nobody does. Your wife needs you, and your sister is worried sick about you.”

  “I know what it’s like to lose someone close to you,” said Longshan, extending his hand toward his friend. “A fast death is painful, but slow dying hurts a lot, too. My father was an important man when you knew him. Now I know you have every reason to hate him, but he was a fair leader, and he did what was best for the collective. About a year after you’d left, the rabble-rousers began to persecute him, caught up in the fever of the Cultural Revolution. In truth, they were jealous. They rounded up the discontented folk, and the dimwitted ones, and they staged struggle sessions against my father. They called him a traitor, a bourgeoisie in peasant clothing, a criminal, and every filthy name you could image. None of it was true. We saw him come home every night, beaten and bruised. At first, he would not allow himself to be demoralized.”

  “Didn’t anyone stick up for him?”

  “Yes, some were willing to speak up for my father. But the crooks wanted to unseat him, so they locked him up for three months, and when he returned, he was a different man. I no longer knew this father. He was wild-eyed and emaciated. He began seeing visions of dead ancestors, and he would hit my mother, calling her a vengeful ghost. He had been such a man of principle that he must have felt utterly defeated by his tormentors. He died two years later of a stroke, but I’ve always thought it was grief that killed him. Grief over a corrupted revolution.”

  “And you want to vindicate your father?”

  “No, what’s done is done,” said Longshan. “You make my intentions more noble than they are. What we’re talking about here is survival, Fang. Sixty thousand people forced off the land. Hard-working peasants who won’t be able to feed their wives and children. These are the people showing up next week.” Longshan threw up his hands. “We’ve tried everything. We have no other choice.”

  ON A STROLL THE NEXT MORNING, FANG TOLD SULIN THAT HE WAS unable to dissuade Longshan from his plans.

  “Then I will join him,” she declared.

  “What? And put your life at risk?” asked Fang. He stopped at the edge of the field, feeling the sharp spikelets of wheat poking against his shin.

  “He’s my brother. Longshan stood by me when the rest of the family seemed ready to disown me.” Sulin pursed her lips, and turned her face toward the sun.

  Fang impulsively grabbed her hand, and Sulin did not resist. “Then I will be there as well.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to make it up to you, for the times I did not ... could not stand up for you.”

  “The past is the past,” said Sulin.

  The old broker traced the well-etched lines on her palm, and he imagined reaching into the past with a brush that could blot out the cruelty of abrupt endings, aborted lives and hopes. “And it lives on,” Fang replied. “It lives on whether we like it or not.”

  30

  ON THE TWENTY-FIFTH DAY OF THE FIRST MONTH, THE VAST floodplain of the Songdu River overflowed with the peasants of Longmen County. From the mountains, they trudged from sunrise until noon, across woodlands and fields, crossing gullies and dried creek beds, until they reached the gathering spot. From high above it appeared as one mass migration, but the human creatures were slow and meandering, yet surefooted. Hawks soared beneath the clouds, circling around the luminous peaks, their prey obscured or frightened away by the moving specks that blighted the land like an invasion of locusts. Here and there the blade of a hoe or a sickle gleamed, but for the most part, the peasants were unarmed.

  Like slow-trickling water the people moved across the rich soil of the floodplains, and then they defied the natural flow of water and moved uphill toward a canyon to the east of the river. Here the ravages of time and human tinkering left their mark in ravines and gullies chiseled with a woodcarver’s precision, in the deep gashes left by tumbled rock, in the bald patches where wooded stumps remained amidst the pine and cypress.

  At the base of the canyon, the forward movement stopped. Sporadic shouts reverberated in the alcove of the canyon. A man seated high above the steel jaws of an earthmover choked his engine to a halt. “What’s going on?” he yelled to a few peasants down below.

  “The government’s gotta pay us, or we’re not letting this dam project go any further.”

  The driver chuckled to himself. “Hey, I don’t make the rules. Get outta my way, or I’ll call my boss.”

  Like underground rhizomes, the discontent of the peasants had spread, at first through a few daring souls from a few villages. Then the news had radiated out, and the fervor grew to embrace fifteen thousand men and women from various communities along the Songdu. And now, the ire of the bosses would be ignited by their dissent. The workers alerted supervisors who alerted company bosses and party cadres and committee chairs. Soon, a convoy of vehicles appeared in the distance, ramming through rough dirt roads until they, too, gathered at the edge of the canyon.

  The armed officers of the Public Security Bureau flanked the men in dark navy suits whose starched collars were stained with sweat.Their questions were demands. “Who are your leaders here?”The rabble of peasants parted to make way for half a dozen men who stepped forward, Longshan among them.

  “And what do you think you’re doing, disturbing the peace?” an official said.

  “We are protesting peacefully, gentlemen,” a council member replied. “We will stay here until the government fulfills its promise.” The ragtag leaders waved their papers, stained with dirt and disintegrating slowly in the sun.

  “You are disrupting order.You’re keeping these workers from their jobs.” The official tipped his cigarette at the team of construction workers, comprised of a few skilled drivers and a crew of leather-skinned men with shovels, now surrounded by the throng of peasants.

  “We have no intention of causing trouble,” Longshan said, “but we’ll have no work ourselves if we move without getting our resettlement funds. The government can’t abandon its poorest citizens.”

  “That’s not my responsibility,” the official replied. “I’ve got a job to do, which is to make sure the work goes on.” He turned around and gave a signal, and the navy-suited men went back to their vehicles. “All right, you have two hours to clear out of here.”

  He scanned the massive gathering. A ragtag collection of peasants in faded cotton, blurring into the specks of people in the distance. Here and there, a small group had erected a tarp for the elderly to keep out of the sun. But the great fabric of gathered humanity was seamless, fifteen thousand strong, stretching from mountain ridge to valley floor, on the eastern shore of the Songdu.

  “Two hours,” the official repeated. He turned on his heels and left with his small entourage.

  But the cops from the Public Security Bureau remained, and waited. The leaders talked among themselves, shaking their heads a
s they spat in heated debate. Two of the men proposed that they disband the protest. “We have too much to lose. Look, these cops are armed, and they got their sights on us.”

  But Longshan and the others did not want to back down. “We have everything to lose if we give up now.” Longshan leaned in toward the huddled men. “Look, I’ve told some people from the Hong Kong press about this. They should be here in a couple of hours.”

  With each passing hour, the mood of the crowd changed. The presence of the officials created a buzz of speculation, and in each nexus of gathered villages, the peasants whispered to their neighbors.

  “Will they hurt us?”

  “They can’t arrest us. Look how many there are of us.”

  And when the worried remarks and rumors had run their course, the leaders made their way across the thicket of protestors to rally them in chants.

  “Pay our fair share, or we won’t go!”

  “PAY OUR FAIR SHARE OR WE WON’T GO.”

  “If you feed us lies you starve our children!”

  “IF YOU FEED US LIESYOU STARVE OUR CHILDREN.”

  In each cluster of villages, the chants radiated out like spokes from a magnetic hub. And unified voices from each of these groups rippled toward the others, like interlocking wheels. Together, the crowd chanted, one massive piece of machinery in which no visible center was found, only inter-moving parts, intertwined voices.

  The forklift operator and the driver of the earthmover watched with languid interest. The workers who shoveled gravel sat and hugged their knees, their sweat from the morning’s labor long dried. The elderly began to tire, and they leaned against their grown sons and daughters under the tarps.

  As the sun began to slip behind the mountains, the chanting subsided, and another round of ruminations erupted. “Those cops aren’t gone yet. I hear there may be trouble.”