Spider Eaters: A Memoir

by R Yang

  Old Sul said that Zhou had a fever. The fever did not go away for three days. In those three days, I could not think of anything else but Zhou's illness. I wondered how serious it was and whether he had gotten the right medicine. (Over the years Chen had taught me a great deal about medicine, Western as well as traditional. When the kids in our village got sick, their parents sometimes took them to see me instead of the barefoot doctor. I gave them advice, as well as medicine, which included shots of antibiotics. Looking back on it, I think we were really lucky that nothing went wrong. What if someone had died from those shots? But on the other hand, someone might have died of the illnesses too. Who knows?)

  When Zhou was sick, I wanted to see him and give him some medicine. But I did not dare go to his dormitory room, which he shared with nine other men. I was afraid of rumors. Rumors, at that time, were flying all over the sky like the snow that had just begun to fall.

  By 1972, the leaders in the Great Northern Wilderness finally realized that the best way to make the educated youths take roots was to allow them to fall in love, get married, and have children. For after that, it would be almost impossible for them to return to the cities. So overnight the red light changed into a green one. After the leaders gave tacit consent, some educated youths quietly paired up. Others were resisting the change.

  By this time, most of us were already in our early or mid-twenties. The biological clocks in us were ticking. Convention added pressure on us. "When a man grows up, he ought to take a wife. When a maiden is of age, she should marry." At Cold Spring rumors mushroomed three times a day, providing tasty, juicy topics for gossip. The parties con cerned invariably denied that they were in love. Some were just shy. Others were telling the truth. Nobody knew which was which.

  So just as I was sitting there thinking of Zhou and hoping that I would run into him at the dining hall during the next meal, my three friends Fang, Liya, and Song showed up. When they told me to confess if I had fallen in love with someone, I was very embarrassed. Then I found out that they were talking about Wen and me. Obviously somebody had created another rumor.

  Secretly I heaved a sigh of relief and said, "No way! We were friends, but definitely not that kind of friends!"

  I tried my best to explain that Wen and I were just schoolmates who had borrowed books from each other. Sometimes we also talked, but the topics were never personal. No matter what I said, my friends continued to look at me in a very weird way.

  If I could not even convince my bosom friends, how could I convince others in the village? Here people believed that a good marriage was between a couple whose families were well matched in social and economic status. To many of them, Wen and I were just like that. Our parents were all professors. We were both from ror ... But I believed that such a well-matched couple would bore each other to death. When they looked at each other, it was as if they were looking at themselves in a mirror. The idea was not mine, though. I got it from a Russian novel.

  If I were to have a boyfriend, I'd much prefer him to be very different from me. But of course I don't want to have a boyfriend, because I don't want to jump into the trap: get married and have kids, settle down here, and be a slave for the rest of my life ... Therefore the "if" does not mean anything.

  Despite the decision, that evening I was at Old Sui's home. After I chatted with him and his wife, Jiang, for a long time and had their four kids crawl all over me, I finally screwed up enough courage to ask Jiang if she could please bring some medicine to Zhou for me. Hearing this, she narrowed her eyes and looked at me with a small smile, as if she were trying to figure out something. I was thoroughly embarrassed. At last she said something.

  "All right. Xiang has asked me to send him medicine too. I might as well take yours. The two of you are both very good to your shifu. Aren't you?"

  So I gave her the medicine and fled. That night, I kept wondering whose medicine Zhou was going to take. When he recovered, the an swer seemed clear. He deliberately avoided me. He was talking with Xiang. The two of them looked very happy together.

  By this time the ground was frozen. All six tractors stayed put in the village. Days were short. No more night shifts. In the garage all crew members worked together on repairs and maintenances. I took this opportunity to learn from Li about the tractor. While I did this, somehow I was acutely aware of Zhou's presence. I did not look at him. Yet I saw him. I did not listen to him. Yet all I heard was his voice. Then the idea dawned on me: maybe I should somehow let him know that the gossip about Wen and me was groundless. In a fortnight the idea became irresistible. So I told Zhou.

  From then on, Zhou and I became inseparable. That is, our hearts were inseparable. In reality, we hardly had any opportunity to be together. By day, in front of so many eyes, all we could do was to exchange a few quick glances. We did not dare talk, even less touch hands. In the evenings, we had no place to go. In the dormitories there was no privacy. The dining hall was out of the question. Other places such as our tractor or the garage had no fire. When the temperature dropped to thirty, forty degrees below zero, we were freezing in each other's arms in less than twenty minutes. Then we had to run back to the dormitories to embrace the fire walls.

  When I was back in the dorm, my thoughts were still with Zhou. So I knitted woolen socks for him. I would have knitted a woolen sweater for him, but I did not have enough money to buy the yarn. Before that, my hands had never touched a needle. Nor did I know how to use a sewing machine. All these skills I learned from Jiang, at Old Sui's home. Jiang watched me with a knowing smile when I mended Zhou's clothes for him. Her smile always made me blush. But I was grateful to her anyway.

  As for Zhou, he made a sickle for me. For the handle he used Huangyang wood, which was both lightweight and sturdy. It was the best material available in this region. With tools that he borrowed from the carpenter he cut the wood, shaped it, designed the length, the curve, and the grip size especially for me. The blade was made by a renowned blacksmith who lived more than twenty miles away. It took Zhou a whole day to get there and come back.

  Later when I used this sickle to cut soybeans in the snow, it made a world of difference from the ones I had used before. Perhaps only people who've cut soybeans for eight or nine consecutive hours, and know the pain this endlessly repeated motion causes in backs and arms, could understand why I was so touched and why I treasured this gift of his so much.

  So this was how Zhou and I expressed our love for each other. Woolen socks and a sickle. No roses. No serenades. Yet I had no complaints, for we were much luckier than young people from real peasant families in this region. According to the local custom that was abolished in the fifties but came back in the early seventies, a man's family must give betrothal gifts to the parents of his future wife. Usually this would amount to some two thousand yuan, a very large sum at the time. This practice drove a young man in a nearby village crazy.

  I heard the story from Huar, who had been released from the cow shed in the fall. This man was in love with a woman in his village. But because his family was poor, he was unable to raise the sum her family had demanded. So they gave him a period of time, to make the money or borrow it. He tried, but when the time was up he was still short. Thus her family married her to someone else who could pay. This broke his heart. Subsequently he lost his mind. When I heard this story I felt so sad, because by then I was in love with Zhou. I knew how the young man might have felt and wondered about the young woman as well.

  Compared with such a tragedy, Zhou and I were fortunate. Yet our relationship had problems almost from the start. The first problem was his father's history. If it was too hard to talk about earlier, we must face it now. In the seventies, one's family background was of such importance that often it alone decided the person's fate.

  Zhou told me that his father had been an officer in the Nationalist army before 1949. He was originally trained as a radio technician in a civilian school. Shortly after he graduated, the Japanese came. So he joined the army because
he hated the invaders and wanted to drive them out of China. Hearing this, I felt that his father did pretty much the same thing my father did. Only my father joined the Communist army and his father the Nationalist one.

  During the war, Zhou said, his father and the radio communication crew he led were stationed in Guizhou and Yunnan in southwest China. There he fell in love with a young woman who was of a different race. She was a Bai. Not a Han. Nevertheless they got married. She left her hometown and went with her husband to many places in China. Because of the ongoing wars, everything was hard. But she made their home comfortable through her diligence, frugality, and love. One year after they were married, they had a son. The child died at the age of five from a wound after a firecracker exploded in his hand. His death nearly broke his mother's heart, and it was then that Zhou came into this world.

  Later I learned from Zhou that his father had a chance to join the Communist army in 1949. By then radio technicians were badly needed. So his father was offered a position comparable to his old one, but he turned it down. When I heard this, I was appalled. I responded instinctively.

  "Your father is really a big reactionary!"

  Zhou turned pale. Gazing at me, he opened his mouth to say something but no word came out. Then he shut his mouth and turned his head away. After a very long and awkward silence, he explained the situation to me: if his father accepted the offer, he would have to fight against the remaining Nationalist troops in the south. He did not feel he could do it. As a result, he lost everything: his career, social status, money, friends ...

  "Otherwise he would have been a revolutionary cadre too." After a while, Zhou said this with a sigh. Did he feel his father had made a mistake? Did he hate him for that? I did! Partly because of the education I had received in the past twenty-one years, I thought all Nationalists were villains and criminals. There was nothing wrong in killing them. But more important to me was what he did to Zhou. It was all his fault that Zhou's life was so hard ever since he was born. Everything was messed up.

  But was it really his fault? Years later I came to change my opinion about Zhou's father. He turned down the offer because he had loyalty and feelings. Thus he would rather give up his rank and career than turn around and kill people who had been his comrades yesterday. Or maybe he did not know that by turning the offer down he would lose his career once and for all? He thought, as a good technician he could find jobs elsewhere. He was wrong. In the field of radio communication, after 1949 who dared hire someone like him who had serious historical problems? What if he wanted to use the radio to contact Taiwan and do espionage? So in the fifties, he went as far as Inner Mongolia trying to find a professional job. Failing that, eventually he returned to Beijing, his hometown, and became a worker who made a living by "selling his physical strength."

  Aside from his father, our future was another topic on which we could not reach any agreement. In my opinion, it was simple. The best solution for us was to commit suicide together. Cut our wrists, take poison, walk out of the village in a blizzard ... Any way he preferred would be fine for me. I did not suggest this on the spur of the moment. I had thought the whole thing through.

  Right now, Zhou and I are both young and healthy. Our love is pure and passionate. It has nothing to do with money or any other worldly concerns. It is beautiful. Almost perfect. From here, it could only go downhill. Especially in a world like this, which is filled with injustice, cruelty, deceit, and mistrust. In such a world, after thirty or forty years of hard labor and misery, what are we going to get in the end? We still have to die. Only by then perhaps our love has died a long time ago.

  When Zhou heard my argument, he thought about it for a while. Then he shook his head and said: "No, I can't do this. If I die, my mother cannot live. I can't break her heart and kill her like that."

  Hearing this, I was a little disappointed. But I couldn't blame him. My idea was definitely out of the ordinary. I knew it. And unlike me, Zhou was a normal, sensible person. Perhaps that was why when my three female friends heard my confession, they spoke almost simultaneously.

  "You two are not the same type of person at all!"

  "You have nothing in common!"

  "This is a big mistake!"

  I know Zhou and I are different. I love him because he is different! While I grew up in comfort and privileges, he was born in poverty, grew up in discrimination. Life has been so unfair to him! Unlike me who is guilty, he has done nothing wrong. Simply because he was born from the wrong parents, despite all the good qualities he has and all the efforts he has made, he has been left out and looked down on. No opportunities. No future. Not even much sympathy from others. Is he angry? I am!

  So maybe I loved Zhou because I imagined there was a rebel in him, despite the problems I had with his father's history. Yet when I tried to find that rebel, I did not see a trace of it. All Zhou wanted after we became lovers was to marry and settle down. I knew I'd like to marry him, but settling down in the Great Northern Wilderness was probably the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I tried to explain this to Zhou. He could not understand.

  "Look at the poor and lower-middle peasants here. If they can live like this, why can't we? Everybody is a human being. With two eyes and one nose. Didn't you hear the local people say a person can enjoy all kinds of comforts as well as endure all kinds of hardships?"

  Seeing that he hadn't convinced me, he tried a different approach. Quoting Chairman Mao and the newspaper editorials, he told me taking roots in the countryside was the right thing for an educated youth to do. That really irritated me! Gazing at him intently, I could not tell if he was sincere or merely using such propaganda to hook me. In one case he would be a simpleton-just a shun min (submissive subject)and in the other a hypocrite.

  He is not a hypocrite. No, I don't think so. But is it possible that he is so naive that he let himself be brainwashed by such propaganda? Maybe he is just more realistic? In his mind, if the leaders have declared that they will never let us go back, then we ought to think about how to settle down here. Why trouble ourselves with something impossible?

  Anyway it seems that my friends are right. He and I are indeed different. I am a rebel at heart. He is not. He is a shun min. Obey the authority. Kowtow to power. Believe the lies wholeheartedly. Submit himself to maltreatment. Be patient and cheerful under oppression and exploitation. Dignity? Maybe he can live without it. I can't! Without dignity or any possibility to assert my free will, I'd rather die!

  But this was rather unfair to Zhou. I had such thoughts because what he said upset me. I could understand that for him perhaps life in the Great Northern Wilderness was not so bad, since his childhood in Beijing was even more difficult. Now at least he could support himself as well as send ten yuan each month back to Beijing to help his family. He was quite happy with what he got. But I was not.

  Come to think of it, perhaps in China there have always been two types of people. The majority obey the authority under normal circumstances, because survival is the most important thing for them. Only a small group of people, often those who are privileged, can afford to raise questions, challenge and defy authority. My father used to belong to this group. I belong to this group too, maybe? I can't help it that I am who I am, even though I know such an attitude can only get me into more trouble.

  "In Rome, do as the Romans do." Why couldn't I live as peasants did and as Zhou hoped to? I was not lazy. I could eat bitter-endure hardship. But when I looked at Old Sul, Jiang, and their four kids, the word Yes died in my throat. If Zhou and I settle down, we will be just like them. Jiang is my example. Zhou will be another Old Sui in fourteen years. The thought made me shudder.

  In fact, I was awfully grateful for Old Sui and Jiang, who were so kind to us. Seeing that Zhou and I had no place to go, they invited us to dinner almost every other night that winter so that afterwards we could stay and chat. Of course, in that situation, nobody had privacy. Zhou and Old Sui would sit on one end of the kang, Jiang and I on the ot
her. The kids crawled back and forth, up and down. But at least we could watch each other, while being watched by Old Sui and Jiang.

  Did we remind them of what they used to be fourteen years before? At that time, I heard, Jiang was one of the prettiest and liveliest young women in this village. Several young men were in love with her. But in the end she married Old Sui. No betrothal gifts and matchmakers. It was her decision as well as his. So they were equal, at least by then. Both were state employees. Both were young, industrious, and frugal.

  Then there was the famine and Jiang lost her iron rice bowl. She became a "stinking dependent." Old Sui still had the privilege to fall asleep at work. He did so, I concluded later, not because he was lazy or shameless. With four kids and little money, he had so much to do at home: carry water from the well, cut firewood, make hay, stack up stalks, grow vegetables in a garden plot, feed their own pigs, remove the manure from the sty and the ash from the kang, pick up soybeans, and dig potatoes from the fields already harvested, keep the storage shacks in good repair ...

  Bogged down and worn out by the work, sometimes Old Sui vented his frustration on Jiang, calling her names or accusing her of loving someone else. This Zhou and I saw with our own eyes. Others said he also beat his wife. We didn't see that. But the worst was yet to come. Next spring, Old Sui was diagnosed as having cancer. The subsequent treatment at Mishan City some one hundred miles away was long and painful. Despite free health service, the travel alone made the family run into debt.

  While Old Sui was in the hospital fighting for his life, Zhou and I tried our best to help Jiang, who was terribly worried and overwhelmed by the work. Now she had to take care of the four kids by herself. Meanwhile she continued to work in the fields, for that was the only way she got paid. In fact, she herself was sick too. She had rheumatoid arthritis, gynecological diseases, and a severe back problem. But since "dependents" had no health insurance, she could not afford to take sick leave, see a doctor, or buy medicine.