“I don’t think I can do anything.”
“So that is how you have lived?” She sighed faintly, thinking. “But you must be able to sew a little . . . use a needle? I remember you as a bright girl, who would probably have been able to stitch on a button. Can you remember doing that?” I nodded. “Well, I’ll remind you how to sew on buttons, and you can do that.”
She grabbed a piece of cloth, a button, a needle and thread, and slowly looped a long piece of cotton through the needle and placed the button on the cloth. Then she started to loop the thread through the eyes of the button and back into the cloth.
“Occasionally, you must loop the thread through the knot at the back,” she turned the cloth over to show me the stitched knot on the cloth, “to give it strength. And to give it more strength, you can wind the thread around underneath the button, then tie that off, and finally tie off the thread at the back of the cloth. Here . . . now you try.”
She gave me the cloth and button to look at and I pulled it a little between my fingers and thumbs; it looked tidy and strong.
“Practice a few times, then Ah Sui here,” she walked over to a tubby little lady three tables behind me on the opposite side of the room, “will start to give you trousers,” she held a pair up, “and you will sew on the buttons.
“Now, I must get back to my planning and some sewing. The group leader will return at six o’clock and, as you will see, we must be ready for his inspection.”
She came over to me once more, bringing more cloth and some buttons.
“Do some practicing,” she ordered me, though in a kind voice, then turned and went to the back of the room to continue whatever it was she had been doing when I slipped through the door.
I struggled with the buttons, lancing my fingers and thumbs several times, but by the fourth attempt my work started to follow Madam Zhang’s example, which lay teasingly in front of me. Hers was so exact and tidy . . . but by the time I ran out of buttons mine did at least have the same strength. I straightened up and within a few seconds she was standing behind me again. I felt like I was back at school and let myself slip willingly into being the child again. I felt happy just having someone concern themselves about me.
She picked up my practice attempts and looked at them closely.
“Well, it’s pretty ugly, isn’t it, my dear?” I felt my head droop in shame, as if I had failed her. “But it is functional and that is what is important. It was good that you never made your own wedding dress.” She looked at me and smiled. “I remember it well . . . you sat and watched me for hours.” She left me briefly and I looked around to see her gathering together twenty or more pairs of trousers. She stacked them on the table in front of me.
“Get some buttons and thread from the storeroom through the door behind us. Do as many of these as you can, but you must do more than thirty by the end of the day . . . that means you have just four hours.” She gave me a wide smile and a wink. “Then, if you want to carry on tomorrow, you will have to do ninety every day. Today you can take it slowly.”
The other women all chuckled to themselves.
The room was airy and smelt slightly of flowers or grass; it had a high ceiling and long windows to either side, which stretched down to half the height of the room. The white metal window frames pivoted at the center so they could be pushed open, leaving a space at both ends. I stood up and walked to the end of the room. There was a gap of about ten feet between the edges of the desks to either side, and at the last desk on the left I could see Madam Zhang studying schedules and patterns. Like her, each seamstress wore black trousers and a white shirt, but some had colored scarves, too, and Ah Sui wore a hat with embroidery on it. Each sat in front of a sewing machine, which, when all were working together, made tremendous whirring and clattering.
The door at the end of the room led to a darkish corridor barely big enough for a man to enter. After twenty feet or so there was another door. I pushed this open to find a large area with twelve rows of shelves, all stacked with cotton trousers, bolts of material, and hundreds of boxes of buttons. The storeroom was poorly lit, with bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling, so it was quite dark. I walked up the aisle immediately in front of me and through the shelves, between the clothes and boxes, I could see the racks stretching away to either side, all filled with finished clothes. It seemed endless. At the end of the aisle, I found the wall had two large doors that must open outward to allow work to be dispatched and materials to be delivered. I looked at the huge hinges to either side of the doors, and the bolts locking them in place; they were clean and well-oiled. Although everything here seemed basic, it was at least neat and in good order. I turned to find the buttons and return to the sewing room, realizing that I had just lost another twenty minutes.
As I passed Madam Zhang on my way back, she called out to me: “Feng, you don’t have time to watch the flowers grow here.” She was talking very seriously. “If you are going to stay, you must work quickly. If not you should leave.” She beckoned me to come closer and I walked over to where she was sitting behind her table and sewing machine. In a whisper she told me, “This is not Shanghai—and China is no longer the same these days. You must work hard in order to live. I don’t know what happened to you but this is a new China and a new time . . . for better or for worse, there is no turning back for any of us. Now . . . go to work.”
I nodded and went back to the worktable. I sewed on as many buttons as I could for more than three hours. My fingers bled and my muscles ached and cramped hard and tight, so that I had to stop occasionally and flex my hands to relax them.
Madam Zhang and Ah Sui came to my table. It was twenty minutes to six.
“Well, how many have you done?” Madam Zhang asked.
We counted the pile and it was twenty-six.
“That is good,” she commented, then grabbed my hands and examined the needle marks and the redness of them. “Can you do the remaining five?”
“Five?” I said, alarmed.
“Yes, you will need to do at least one more than the minimum, as the leaders like to see enthusiasm and devotion to the cause.”
“What is the cause?” I asked, a bit too abruptly.
She looked back at me, hard-eyed.
“The cause,” she emphasized these two words, “for you is getting something to eat, which you will only do by sewing buttons onto trousers. The cause for them is building a new China. They are sweeping into the cities and want to change everything there . . . and they don’t want to do it naked. They are proud of their shiny enamel badges, basic clothing, and red scarves, so we are proud of them, too. Isn’t that right, Ah Sui?”
“Oh, yes,” Ah Sui answered, giggling as she did so, “we’re old but we believe, too.” Then she smiled at me. “I’ll do two, you do two,” she pushed two more in front of me, “and Lao Ding, behind, you will do two.”
At six o’clock the machines stopped and through the windows we heard footsteps approaching, then the doors opened and five students entered. Immediately everyone stood up and remained very still.
They were all dressed like the youths crowding the station in Shanghai and those on the train, all wearing clothes made in this room. Two of the five were young girls, with their hair in braids and a few spots on their cheeks and chin; they could not have been older than seventeen. Of the three young men, one was clearly older, in his early twenties, short, with closely cropped hair and a round face under his glasses. He was thick-set with large forearms and a wide waist. His expression was friendly but his manner was official.
“Comrade Zhang, please can you give me the productivity figures for today’s work?” he asked flatly.
“We made one hundred and twenty-four trousers. Four more than the quota. Fifty-two shirts. Seven more than the quota. And we cut and finished three hundred scarves,” Madam Zhang replied, just as flatly.
“Excellent work on the production of trousers and shirts but there must be more enthusiasm for scarves,” he said, very forcef
ully, and the skin of his scalp undulated as he continued to instruct us: “Scarves are essential, they are a unifying symbol of the movement.”
Ah Sui smiled and clapped, and Madam Zhang stared hard at her.
“Exactly! That is the spirit.” Then the spokesman looked up at the roof and shouted, “Clap and sing to the glory of the nation and Chairman Mao. Let productivity rise!”
The four others repeated this feverishly, and then the leader said, “However, Comrade Sui, please remove your hat and scarf. We should maintain our diligence at all times: red scarves only are permitted, and a hat with a star at its center is better. Comrade Zhang, can you introduce the new comrade in your team?”
“Yes, this is Comrade Sang.”
I looked up, trying to avoid eye contact.
“Do you have any documents, Comrade Sang?”
“No, they’re lost.” I looked more directly at him, though he was some twenty feet away.
He and his team had remained standing in the empty space between the door and the rows of tables, but now he came to the other side of my worktable to inspect me more closely. He smelled strongly and his breath was very acidic. I noticed that his hands, too, were soft, so, like me, he had not worked hard before.
“Well, if you intend to remain here, then we will get you some new ones. Everything must be documented and accounted for in the People’s Republic. Chairman Mao will not accept anything less,” he finished and studied me closely. “How old are you?”
“I am thirty-nine,” I answered quickly. I was not afraid of him but this situation was very strange to me and I was glad that I had found shelter with Madam Zhang and her team. He wrote something on his clipboard.
“What is your full name?” he asked.
“Qin Feng,” I answered, making up the first name I could. “I am from Wuhan.”
He wrote this down then looked up and nodded at me and at Madam Zhang; I felt relieved when he left the room with the other cadres.
The seamstresses all sat down. After a few minutes of silence Madam Zhang scolded Ah Sui.
“Sui, you know you should not play up to him like that. You’ll get us all into trouble.”
“I know, but it’s so silly! I’m glad I will be dead before these foolish children lead us to ruin,” Ah Sui whispered, and then winked at me. Her face was fat and round, and when she smiled she looked like a handmade doll.
“Time to close,” Madam Zhang ordered.
The women spent an hour tidying up and taking inventory and I helped where I could. Everything was carried back into the storeroom so that the main workroom was left empty except for the worktables on which the covered sewing machines still rested. As we finished clearing the room, Madam Zhang sat down at her own table and continued checking through various schedules and lists. The other women gathered around her and Ah Sui locked the door leading to the passageway and storeroom.
Madam Zhang stood up; she held some small tickets in her hands.
“Here are your coupons for rice, meat, and other things.” She started handing them out.
Ah Sui interrupted, looking at me.
“I’ll give you one of mine . . . I had a few from before so you can have one, otherwise you cannot buy anything.” She gave me a coupon.
The other women looked at each other. They were old, mostly in their sixties, and their faces were chapped and marked with little scars and blotches. Each of them gave me a coupon, which I was told would be enough to tide me over for a few days. If they had known my life, I doubt they would have been as generous. I feared what would happen when I eventually told Madam Zhang. I had no influence here and must rely on coupons and kindness.
“Thank you very much, I never expected such generosity. Actually, I’m not sure what I expected. Can’t we use money here?” I asked, rather hesitantly.
“There is no money in this production commune anymore, at least not for this. If you meet your production targets everything is good and you have what you need,” Ah Sui replied. “Soon the whole country will be like this. That is what they want anyway. I expect Madam Zhang can explain to you.” She looked at the forewoman. “See you tomorrow.”
They all turned and left, and Madam Zhang and I stood watching them go.
“They’re very nice,” I remarked in a small voice.
“Yes, they are, and many of them very skilled in traditional arts but these talents will soon be lost.” She turned back to her chair, leaving me standing alone looking at the open doorway leading out into the dimly lit street. I could hear dogs barking and people shouting. Once seated, Madam Zhang resumed her work and I went to her table and sat down on the end of it to watch her.
My feet hung down. I swung them like a child; like I had with Bi, from the riverbank. I breathed a little deeper.
“You can live with me for now, but if you’re going to remain here then you’ll need to get the correct papers as without them you aren’t entitled to any food coupons. More important, though, you need to practice your sewing techniques,” she said, without looking up from her work.
“Thank you, I’d like to stay. I came here to see you,” I admitted shyly, still watching my feet as I swung them.
“Well, I don’t know why you did. This life’s lonely, and after my husband I lost my son so I’m glad of the company, whether you stay a year or a day.”
So he was gone.
“Did Bi marry?” I asked, almost embarrassed, staring hard at my feet.
She looked up at me and raised one eyebrow.
“I remember how close you two were,” she said, without answering me.
She was an old woman now, but she remained as calm and self-assured as she had been many years ago, and I as upset and anxious as before, though I was now at the end of my journey and not the beginning.
“I’m sorry, but I have not seen Bi in many years and long ago became used to the idea that he was gone.” She looked at me more sympathetically as she continued to speak. I felt very sad to hear this and it must have been obvious. “My child,” she stated candidly, “this country has always been a violent and angry land. Sooner or later, we will suffer.”
She smiled at me but it was plain that it cost her some effort.
“I loved Bi very much. He was a good boy.” She seemed to look inside herself then as if remembering the brightness in him she had loved so much, that same quality that she believed must have drawn me here. “Did you hope to meet him again?”
“I thought of it, but I . . .” I could not say any more and returned to studying my feet.
“Well, he went to war against the Japanese, then against those greedy Nationalists. Someone once brought news that he was fighting them in Fujian after the war and the Japanese had been defeated . . . then nothing. It has been nearly six years and I’m afraid he’s gone.” Her face was hard and set; she was well practiced at preventing herself from crying. “But isn’t it the same for all of us?” She laughed and shook her head in self-reproach. “Such misery we Chinese can put ourselves through. How many families have lost someone, or caused someone to be lost? How many do you think?” Her voice drifted into silence.
The mask had slipped for a second. She was all things angry, sorrowful, broken then . . . and, like all the rest of the poor, hardworking and exhausted.
“I don’t know,” I answered her, thinking only of my own guilt.
“Everyone. All of us. All of us collectively. You can ask anyone and they will tell you a terrible story.” She paused and her expression softened a little; she blinked and rubbed her eyebrows as if to wipe away the tiredness and bad memories. “We are going to stay behind an hour or so tonight, as you are going to practice those buttons again, and I will teach you some basic straight-line stitching on the sewing machine. Go sit by Ah Sui’s machine.”
I went over to the machine and sat down.
“Uncover it,” she instructed rather impatiently.
As I did this and folded the cover away to a small shelf under the table, which was where the
spare needles were kept, Madam Zhang continued her writing for another few minutes during which I had time to think of Bi. I had shared my first and only loving kiss with him, and there would be no continuation of it in my lifetime. It was one small beautiful moment that I would never allow to be swallowed into China’s bloody future; it would remain as a glimpse of brightness in my life, a wonderful chance moment, forever unspoiled. We had touched and held each other once, and although I had known it was impossible all along, a small part of me had hoped to find him here, alone and waiting for me. He would have remained young and lovely, I knew. And as I watched his mother, writing calmly and carefully in her book, I looked around me and wished I had run away with him to live here and become a fisherman’s wife, the daughter-in-law of a seamstress.
Madam Zhang finished her work and came over to sit next to me.
“Now look at me—” I turned toward her—“and show me your hands?”
I held them out and turned them so she could see their palms and backs. She grabbed them and felt the muscles and bones.
“You have very weak hands but nice long fingers.”
“They are like my grandfather’s fingers. My son has them, too,” I said proudly, which surprised me.
“We’ll talk about your son some other day.”
She put my hands down and for the next half an hour showed me how to use the pedal to maintain the speed of the needle, and how to change and thread the needle. Then, as before, she made me practice by repeating the procedures. After fifteen or so attempts I got it correct and felt so proud. I sat looking at the machine, smiling to myself.
“Well done, but what are you smiling for? You haven’t actually made anything yet,” Madam Zhang said, rather amused.
“I know, but at least I learned something. I can do something. I thought I wouldn’t survive.” I felt my heart beat wildly, my breath shorten. It felt as though I would cry again.
All the Flowers in Shanghai Page 26