Xiu-ying persuaded the old woman next door to overcome her fear of Sun and help his wife. Now she tottered in and began to feel the stricken woman’s belly.
“The baby’s feet will come out first,” the old neighbor gasped. She barely finished her sentence. “That’s bad. I can’t handle that.”
“Go and get a midwife,” I said in a hoarse voice.
“Who will pay her?”
We were not allowed either to lend or borrow money from the peasants. We wished to give no grounds for rumors that we bought over peasants or were bribed by them.
“Sun will,” I answered peremptorily. I turned to Xiu-ying. “You go to my room and fetch the first-aid box, the one with the red cross on it, and bring it back here. I will go and hunt for Sun.”
“All right,” she answered dully.
“Let’s go then.”
But as we turned to take our separate paths, she stopped and faltered out in a low voice, “I don’t know anything about—erh—” She twirled her tongue to skip the word “childbirth.” According to local tradition it might bring shame on her if she, an unmarried girl, mentioned the fact of childbirth. Childbirth was associated with sex and sex was associated with shame, especially for an unmarried girl. Tradition was weighing Xiu-ying down, it seemed.
“Why don’t you let me go to look for Sun?” she asked.
“That could be even worse,” I cried. “Who knows where you might find him?” If things were hard for me, they were doubly so for her. “I know some narrow-minded people are criticizing you for not behaving as a young girl should.”
“Not just some people are saying bad things about me. There are many, especially after the—you know—after Landlord Wu’s daughter—” she stammered on in a gloomy voice. “I think I’ve already lost quite a lot of po—po—”
“Potential votes,” I helped her finish the sentence. “But do you think it is right to bow to their pressure?”
I was not sure of the answer to my own question. She was a candidate now and near to being elected. Should she reflect the opinions of her constituents? Was that compromising? Or should she defy them? What was practical common sense? In this case, what was common sense and what was selling out one’s principles for votes? If she compromised now, what guarantee was there that she wouldn’t make peace with the conservatives once she was installed in a place of power?
“Didn’t you say we must win the election?” she asked.
“Yes, I did,” I replied a little sheepishly.
“I’ll tell my mother to come here and bring the first-aid kit.”
By this time I knew more about Sun, and I was sure I would find him with his cronies in the wineshop. As I hurried on my way I brooded on how to deal with him. I felt so angry I could hardly speak. I would grip him by the collar and drag him to his wife, shouting, “You can’t get away with murder!”
I must have looked like an avenging virago as I went into the market center. Dealers at their stalls looking out for customers didn’t even try to attract my attention as I raged past. Several peddlers were clustered on the roadway in front of the wineshop. In my haste, I almost knocked over a tray filled with needles and thread. Right next to the wineshop a man with a charlatan’s face was selling an ointment. His jacket open, his chest bare, his belly bulging over his tight-drawn belt, he was demonstrating the efficacy of his “medicine.” Keeping up a stream of patter, he took a stone from the square of cotton cloth on which he displayed his wares, and struck himself in the chest. Immediately the skin at that spot turned blue and seemed to swell. With a flourish he then applied a dab of his ointment to the wound, which began to lose its discoloration. To show how effective the cure was, he jumped up and down like a child, waving his arms. He was a special kind of cheat—“a sharp beggar”—well known in cities but still a rarity out here in the Northwest. These men used cheap tricks and scare tactics to shock credulous onlookers into wasting a few coppers to buy worthless concoctions. Another mountebank’s tray had an even stranger assortment of goods on display—teeth, both real and false. The latter were made of a deathly looking white porcelain. Their owner styled himself a “dentist.” He grinned ingratiatingly and constantly, baring his own array of dirty, decayed dentures. They said he was a body snatcher and dug up corpses in the middle of the night to steal their teeth. A blind man sat against the wall of the wineshop itself. He was singing, accompanying himself on the hu-chin violin. His two blind eyes had the texture and color of the stomach of a dead fish. They looked all the more disgusting because there was dirt in their corners. He blinked now and then at the sky as he sang a song about the violent death of an adulteress, and the hu-chin whined away. Another man, poorly but rather neatly dressed, held a small teapot at his shoulder, and as the blind man finished his song, he put the spout of the teapot to his lips and fed him in an intimate way.
The wineshop was the center of town gossip and it hummed with chatter. Behind the brown-stained wooden counter its portly owner sat on a high-backed chair higher than the stools around the rickety tables. His half-closed eyes almost buried in the fat of his face, he reminded me of an obese frog sitting on a lotus leaf. On the wall were faded strips of red and green paper, pasted up at random. They exhorted us to “pay in cash. Friends and relatives no exception” and promised “Honest salesmanship to everyone, children and the elderly included.” With an eye to pleasing the new society, the proprietor had even pasted up a slip: “Long live the People’s Government!” Scratched on the wall beside it were graffiti, erotic drawings, and pornographic doggerel.
The only waitress was none other than the Broken Shoe. She had taken this new job to show she was now a reformed woman. She walked in what she evidently imagined was a fetching style, wagging her bottom as she wove her way with a mincing step between the tables.
As I looked about for Sun in this dimly lit den, I felt as if I had fallen into a cesspool. It turned my stomach. Next to the counter, nearest the proprietor, sat a local “capitalist.” He owned a tiny photo shop equipped with a large and impressive box camera and two painted backdrops, one showing the famed West Lake at Hangzhou and the other a Model T Ford in front of the Forbidden City in Peking. He was held in high esteem by frequenters of the wineshop. They thought him farsighted. As long as six years ago, he had sold most of his land and invested his money in various commercial enterprises including this photo shop. It was a shrewd move. Under the laws of the new government, a man, whether a former landlord or not, whose income mainly came from an industrial or commercial enterprise, was rated a “national capitalist” and as such, if he obeyed the laws, was considered to be a member of the national democratic united front and one of the “people.” This new capitalist had memorized the text of the land reform and carefully read all the proclamations of the new government. He never missed an opportunity to tell people, “I am a citizen with full civil rights. Do you see our national flag with the five stars in its upper left-hand corner? One of those stars symbolizes us patriotic national capitalists. Our representatives stood on Tian An Men on the national birthday with all the leaders of the country.”
Because of his forethought, he was indeed a certified “national capitalist,” a positive contributor to China’s economic and social advance, while his old crony Chi was labeled a reactionary feudal landlord, an obstacle in the way of historic advance at a time when the prime target of the revolution was feudalism and its main prop, feudal landlordism.
There were several other drinkers with blurry, bloodshot eyes. But finally I spotted Sun slumped over a table in the farthest corner of the room. He seemed to be dozing, nodding his head over his tiny wine cup and pitcher of spirits.
“Sun!” I called sharply.
He started and looked up at me, glassy-eyed, as if having some difficulty bringing me into focus. I was amazed to see such pain and misery in his eyes. Suddenly moved, I could not upbraid him.
“Sun, let us go. Your wife is going to give birth to your baby,” I said in a low tone. Ev
ery eye in the den was fixed on us.
He sighed heavily, his face drawn and contorted. “I spent all I had to buy that woman. I sold my goat. Yes, I sold my goat. I looked after that goat as if it were my own mother. But what did I get? A useless creature. She cannot give me a son.”
The Broken Shoe had casually strolled over to hear what we were saying. Before I had a chance to reply, she advised in a knowing tone, picking her teeth the whole time, “Make her keep on trying. She is young. She is fertile. After another ten babies there must be a son for you.”
“I don’t think there will ever be a son. You know, that part of her body has no hair.”
Sun must have been utterly distracted with grief to reveal such a secret. I gasped.
“Good Heavens!” The Broken Shoe raised her meticulously plucked eyebrows in astonishment and delivered her verdict: “It’s clear that she was born under an evil star. Nothing can be done about it.”
I pulled at Sun’s sleeve to get him to leave, but he ignored me. By this time several men around us had gotten into the conversation.
“If you want to know whether a woman can make a son or not before you marry her, you must listen to her shitting. If the sound is resonant, her womb is fertile,” a drunkard put in. He spoke matter-of-factly, entirely without lasciviousness. The cigarette between his lips bobbed up and down as he spoke, punctuating his words of wisdom. “Isn’t that so?” He turned to the photographer deferentially.
Women were the photographer’s favorite subject. He believed he was a lady-killer and he acted the role. He inhaled and puffed out smoke in a debonair way, waiting to join the discussion.
“Not only that. You also have to see how her hips sway,” the photographer responded in the same businesslike manner.
“Your wife has come to us with complaints against you,” I interrupted him loudly so as to make sure that he understood what I implied: His position was not as secure as he thought it was. “Wives who have been wronged can bring their husbands to court and obtain a divorce if they wish. In that case it will be her right to share half of the family’s joint property. If brutal treatment is proved against the husband, he may be sent to jail.”
At first the photographer had scowled, but then he switched tactics and was all smiles. He knew I was speaking the truth. He half rose from his stool as if bowing to me. “Yes, yes. I’ll gladly accept any criticism. Which of us doesn’t make a mistake sometimes. We should be glad to be told about them. Still, I should point out that I’m a law-abiding citizen, a citizen with full civil rights. I bought my concubine before the new Republic was established. I didn’t do anything against the law.”
Sun seemed to be oblivious of our arguing. He wailed on, following his own train of thought. “I am a man without a son. What will become of me when I get old? Who will look after me? I am honest, decent, and hardworking. Why does Heaven punish me so?” he whimpered.
“Sun, we have said that every pregnant woman should come to register her unborn child, because it too will get its share of land in the land reform. Why didn’t you come to our meetings?”
“She is carrying a girl. How can I be so shameless as to ask a portion of land for her?” A teardrop collected at the corner of each eye and slowly trickled down his cheeks.
“Sun, talk sense. You have no one to blame but yourself. You won’t join the literacy class. You cannot read, so you don’t know what is in the land reform law. But we keep on inviting you and your wife to our meetings. We can explain it to you item by item. You don’t want to come. You won’t let your wife come or even talk to us. So now you’re making a fool of yourself.”
I had more than Sun as an interested audience.
“The land reform policy states plainly that girls have equal rights with boys. Every girl will get her own portion of land—and listen carefully—in her own name. Your baby is being born at this very moment. I don’t know if it is a boy or a girl, but whatever it is, it and its mother will be given the best land in the village. Since you are in the same family, naturally your portion of land will be in the same area and as good as theirs. But remember this, you will share their honor, not they, yours.”
“Are you sure?” The Broken Shoe surveyed me with a swift, flashing glance.
“Yes.”
She wrinkled her nose, trying to puzzle out whether she should believe that I spoke with authority.
“There is Old Cheng. He probably knows more about the whole arrangement. Why don’t you go ask him?” The photographer now spoke to Sun in the assertive tone of a sophisticated man giving himself face. By his stress on the“him,” he insinuated that my woman’s words did not carry too much weight. Then, to placate me, he turned to me and spoke in an obsequious, barely audible voice: “Sun is feudal-minded and he prefers to deal with a man. I know that Old Cheng must agree with you. I’ll tell Sun to go to Old Cheng to let him find out himself that a woman’s word is as good as a man’s.”
Another drunkard was not aware of the photographer’s secret truce with me. Rising to his feet he addressed the whole room in an offensively rude manner: “Please allow me to walk out. The air in here has become a little sour,” he sniggered.
Sun’s bigotry had been reinforced by their goading; that and a few drinks on an empty stomach had befuddled his brains more than usual.
“What a world,” he wailed. “Women are rising against men; servants against masters; children against parents; sons against their ancestors. The temples of the ancestors are used indecently,” he blabbered on, sniveling and banging his forehead against the table.
“They are used for people to study and work in,” I protested.
“Pah, I don’t buy that kind of garbage. When men and women mix together like that—” He spat on the ground. “It dirties my mouth to say it. Worst of all, now monks and nuns want to get paired up!”
“Those monks and nuns were put in the monasteries when they were children. They didn’t know what they were doing. Now they want to be happy like other men and women.”
“They were happy until you people came and put ideas into their heads. You have turned things upside down. The Heavens will be angry. We’ll see blood flow yet. We’ll come to grief. Oh, what misery!”
I was astounded by Sun’s besotted rage. I looked hard at his drunken, tear-streaked face and felt a twinge inside. What was I rushing into? If the political climate changed, wouldn’t he and his kind gladly hand me over to his masters?
The wineshop keeper could see that I was thinking over Sun’s wild words and he looked around uncomfortably. It was not wise to make an enemy of a land reform work team cadre at such a time and rave about shedding blood to boot. Although he had been told to do so, he had not yet removed from his wall the half-legible, half-torn strip of paper left over from the old warlord days. It said, “Don’t talk politics!”
“Sun, don’t talk nonsense,” he remonstrated in an affectedly reproachful tone. “These comrades are really kind to come here and help us.”
“If they really want to be kind they should leave us in peace.” Sun stopped short. He was not so drunk that he couldn’t see the wineshop keeper’s upraised hand and the warning in his eyes. The photographer had even half risen to his feet and leaned towards the hapless Sun.
I couldn’t stand their presence any longer.
I turned away swiftly and stormed out of that cesspool. The photographer raised his wine cup in my direction, motioning Sun to follow me out. The habitués of the wineshop compared notes in hushed voices. The “frog” behind the counter busied himself with his bottles and wine cups and grumbled to himself. Just as we got beyond earshot I could hear him shouting at the Broken Shoe.
17
The Election
The day before the voting, Xiu-ying’s mother was as busy as anyone working for her daughter’s election. But while most of the Longxiang peasants shrewdly suspected that influence and money were still the best allies of a candidate, Xiu-ying’s mother had her own ideas. She was certain that o
nly a good, full meal would give her daughter the courage and stamina she needed to carry the day.
“Only a man with a full stomach can make himself heard,” was the way she put it. The peasants of Longxiang ate two meals a day. The election would be held at noon after the first meal. The logic was obvious.
Xiu-ying’s mother had raised a hen and, no matter how sparse the meal, always shared her bowl of millet gruel with it. In return, it occasionally laid an egg, though without good feed this was usually no bigger than a dove’s. Most of the eggs were sold; a very few were kept for a special dish on important occasions such as the Spring Festival at the Lunar New Year. Now she decided to kill the hen to make a special meal for her daughter. Her husband vehemently disapproved of this sacrifice, but tyrant though he was, he knew the limits of his power.
“A girl going to be an official! The world is turned upside down,” he grumbled.
Xiu-ying’s mother had once thought as he did, but now she said to me, “It breaks my heart to think that Xiu-ying might be doomed as I am. She’s as good as anyone. Perhaps this really is a way out.”
Her face was a study in split-second metamorphoses: A pathetic look passed from it to be succeeded by the gloom of despair, and then all dissolved in a look of hope and happiness. This first attempt by her to defeat fate, however naive, elated me and made me more eager than ever to see Xiu-ying elected.
It was not for financial reasons only that Xiu-ying’s father wanted to keep the hen. I believe he was a bit awed as well as astonished at the thought of his daughter becoming an official. In all his experience, in all history as he knew it, no woman had ever become an official. He was appalled by the idea and grasped at anything that might prevent it from becoming reality. To keep the hen alive might do the trick. Like his wife, he believed a man who had enough to eat could not fail, and perhaps the same held true for women.
The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China Page 21