Some of the peasants were there because they had heard there would be some sort of theatrical performance and they wanted to see the “sights.” They knew that some members of the work teams could perform. But they had never been to any of our meetings and were quite mystified by the speeches and strange goings on. The suspicion grew into a certainty that the land reform team was trying to lure them into something complicated, shady, and mutinous. What could illiterate peasants do without well-educated, brainy masters to supervise? And a young girl too among them! And all this rigmarole about beans and bowls. They wanted no part of it. “Stay and vote! The voting is just going to start!” the activists shouted. Some of them began to push people into line but this only created more confusion. The waverers sidled to the gate and disappeared despite all efforts to get them to stay and vote. Thinking to ease the misgivings of part of the crowd, the young people stepped aside to let the old people of the village mount the voting platform first.
The first in line was Old Tian with the wispy goat’s beard. He was dressed in the traditional style with no concession to modern fashion. Baggy black trousers, bare brown feet like roots thrust into enormous, ungainly cloth slippers, long jacket belted at the waist with a sash of white homespun into which he had thrust his pipe, and a fresh-washed towel which turbaned his grizzled head. He was determined to show the youngsters and his wavering neighbors how men did things in the new society. But in a flurry of excitement he threw all his seven beans into the first bowl he came to, which happened to be that of his crony Gao, the village sage.
“One bean for one bowl!” the district cadre shouted for him and for the others.
The old man gaped. Someone took six beans out of the first bowl and returned them to him. He put the remaining six beans into the next six bowls. Then he turned to face the others on the platform, slapped his thighs, and threw his empty hand out as if to say, “Sorry, I have no more beans left. It’s not my fault if I can’t elect all the candidates!”
To speed up the voting, the district cadre got two lines of voters to form right and left of the stage and drop their beans in the bowls as they passed along the two sides of the table behind the candidates’ backs. But it became clear that all the voters were following the first old man’s example and were not choosing candidates but simply putting their beans in the first seven bowls they came to. To get a bean or two in at least some of their friends’ bowls, some people started switching sides if their favorite candidates sat on the other side of the platform, without breaking the basic pattern of putting their beans in the bowls in order as they came to them. This meant that they voted for some candidates they liked and some they did not particularly favor. But at least they made some choice.
To my dismay I saw that Xiu-ying, sitting in the middle seat, was getting no votes. No matter which end they began on, the voters had run out of beans before they reached her.
Just as I was wondering what to do, a young peasant in our reading class moved up to vote. The contrast between him and the previous voters was sharp. This young man was tall. His newly shaven head shone. He was relaxed and with a certain swagger as if to say, “I can do it.” Smiling, he strode straight to Xiu-ying’s bowl and dropped a bean in it so that it tinkled. It was the breakthrough. Several people who were carefully watching the voting clapped and shouted, “Bravo!” Encouraged, Xiu-ying’s mother led a few of her friends to vote for her daughter. Two of them stealthily put two or three beans in Xiu-ying’s bowl. When they were caught, they giggled merrily. Xiu-ying sat strained in her seat not knowing what was going on, aware only that her fate was being settled there behind her back.
Several other young men and women followed the tall voter’s example. Even a few older people began to follow suit, voting more in accordance with their real wishes. But a number of people still hung back, their beans clenched in their fists. Something had to be done. The quick-witted young district cadre had the answer. He halted the proceedings and advised all voters to protect the secrecy of their ballot by putting their hands into every bowl in turn but only releasing beans in the bowls of their chosen candidates. In this way no one would know how they had voted. One of the first to vote in this new way was the virgin widow, whom I escorted to the platform. Now the voting proceeded with a swing.
When the bean ballots were counted, Xiu-ying; Shen; Tu; Gao, the village sage; Little Tian, the future deputy chairman of the Poor Peasants’ Association; Little Gao, the young militia leader; and the village well-digger Wong Ching-lun were declared elected. We had registered three hundred and twenty voters who were over eighteen years of age and eligible to vote. One hundred and ninety-two votes had been cast.
One by one the seven newly elected cadres gave their short acceptance speeches. Shen spoke first. A veteran cadre, well known to everyone and trusted despite a certain proclivity for “playing politics,” he said all that was appropriate to the occasion. After the other five, finally it was Xiu-ying’s turn as the youngest cadre. She came to the center of the platform, where stage fright transfixed her. I motioned to her little brother, who like the other children, sat on the front of the stage as he would at a theatrical performance, swinging his legs. He scrambled up and nudged her. Startled, she opened her eyes wide, childishly bewildered to see before her a sea of faces, a blur of heads and eyes.
“Speech!” someone shouted half jokingly. “Don’t be shy!”
Others cried, “Come on, say something. Pour on the sauce!”
She opened her mouth and rubbed her hands together like a singer.
“Quiet!” a stentorian voice tried to shout down the chatter of the crowd.
Xiu-ying turned pale. She moved her lips but no sound came forth. Then her lips stopped moving. All of a sudden someone began to clap, an embarrassed, isolated clap. Then a few more joined in. Scattered, it sounded weak. Then more and more joined in until it burst into a thunder of applause and cheers.
Xiu-ying came down from the stage and threw herself into my arms.
“Did I forget and leave anything out in my speech?” She held her breath waiting for my answer.
“No. You said everything. It was a wonderful speech.” I was overwhelmed by emotion, throwing my arms around her shoulders, weeping and laughing at the same time.
18
Three Deaths
The last time I saw Xia was in the township office when he came at our insistence to a meeting to settle his precise status—rich peasant or landlord. He was a changed man since Tu had led the ill-advised raid on his farm. He was edgy, sullen, and morose. I noticed a touch of grey in his hair. I knew we had not handled his case as well as we might have. Tu had been primarily responsible, but none of us could evade our share of responsibility. I wanted to do what I could to make up for that.
“Don’t think we are just picking on you,” I told him in a friendly tone. “Several other people are being called to such meetings. Some of them are barbers, peddlers, part-time craftsmen, part-time farmers. They want land, but no one is sure whether they’re entitled to a share or not. Some are well-to-do peasants like yourself but have problems to settle. Please don’t take this as a personal affront. It’s one of many things we have to talk about and settle in the land reform.”
He was not listening to me. He simply feared the next blow to fall and did not know what direction it would come from.
“We have discussed your case. We have determined that you are a rich peasant, not a landlord. We will confiscate all the land belonging to a landlord. But you only have to give up part of the land that you are renting out to others—only part, not all. I have been told to ask you which part of that land you want to give away.”
I tried to assuage his fears, but it did no good. He wouldn’t respond. He seemed, in fact, to grow more nervous, as if I were only putting him off guard so we could deal him a fresh blow.
In the flickering light, our shadows grew tall then shortened suddenly. I felt an irritation rising, and waited until I had regained my calm before
I turned to face him.
“Xia, we have done you a wrong and we want to make up for it,” I said, trying to meet him more than halfway. “If you don’t want to give away the land you rent to others, then choose some other patch. That piece west of the pond is poor—would you prefer to give that up?”
His body began to sway slightly from side to side, as it became more and more difficult to suppress the tension mounting inside him.
“That piece of land was passed down to me by my grandfather. He refused to sell it even when he was very ill and had no money to get a doctor. He said, ‘Keep the land and let me die.’ ” Xia’s voice was thick with emotion. “And he died.”
I was about to shrug, but the doomed look on his face stopped me. “Xia, you don’t have to give an answer right now. Go home and think things over.” I stood up and, making an attempt to end our conversation on a light note, added brightly, “Come around when you have made up your mind.”
He didn’t come back. Three days later he committed suicide by hanging himself. He had always been known as a plodder rather than a man of action, but he showed unexpected determination when ending his own life. When found, his right hand was still grasping the clothes rack nailed to the wall. If he had changed his mind, even at the last moment, he could have swung his foot back to the stool placed against the wall and saved himself. In that last fleeting instant, he had put his hand on the rack. He wanted to go back to his wife and children. But then his humiliation and despair became too great to overcome.
Wang Sha was deeply troubled, but I was shocked to find that it was not Xia’s death itself that troubled him; it was rather the effect of that death on others. “It’s bad,” he exclaimed. “We must stop such things from happening or they will panic people and rouse them against us. Landlord Bai’s old mother has already made one suicide attempt. Thank goodness it failed. We mustn’t have another.”
He had hardly got the words out when Malvolio Cheng rushed in with fresh and disturbing news.
“The young activists are moving Xia’s family out of their comfortable house as a warning to others not to follow Xia’s example.”
“The man is dead. Can’t we leave his children alone?” I cried in protest.
“We mustn’t let the landlords and rich peasants think they can browbeat us into making concessions by turning themselves into martyrs. We mustn’t overreact, but Xia must still be held responsible for what he has done.” Wang Sha spoke with a harshness that I hadn’t known was in him. As Wang Sha, the official, saw it, committing suicide was an unforgivable sin, an indictment against the new society. I was repulsed by his seeming callousness. “You must have seen many such tragic cases in the last twenty years and now you’ve gotten used to them,” I said.
“I’ve gotten used to making a decision when I have to,” he replied impatiently. He looked me over coldly: “If you think I’m hardhearted, tell me what you’d do if you were in my position.”
I tightened my lips.
“We mustn’t waste time. We must at least see to it that Xia’s family is not put into too dilapidated a hut. And make sure that the young activists don’t needlessly harass other landlords and especially rich peasants if they behave themselves.”
But we were too late. The young activists had already moved the mother and children into an almost roofless hovel. We decided not to say anything more about this for the moment, and after a few days we would suggest that Xia’s family be moved into a better home. But two days later the invalid widow died of nervous shock. We allowed an old woman who had helped the Xias keep house to stay with the two orphans. I was told to keep an eye on her and the hut they now lived in, so that nothing more unpleasant would happen. We didn’t want anyone to use the occasion of the funeral as a sort of demonstration.
The hut was in a neglected corner of the village. Three sides of it were crumbling. The fourth side had already partly collapsed and was patched with a rough screen of twigs, stalks, and mud. A tangle of shrubs and weeds had overgrown the small courtyard.
As I approached it, the winter wind whirled clouds of snow around it, and the forlorn hut seemed to shiver with the cold and loneliness. I entered the single dark room.
“Your Mama made these two dresses herself for you before she died,” the old woman was saying to the little girl as she fished out two tiny dresses from a bundle.
“Give them to me,” the small girl cried happily as she snatched at them. “I want them both.”
“Poor children. They’ll be marked forever as the offspring of a bad rich peasant. They won’t stand a chance.” It was the wife of Sun, who had gotten a daughter instead of a son. She had been friendly with Xia’s wife, who had given her small presents of food and old clothing. “They must have committed some terrible crime in their previous lives and so merciful Heaven is punishing them now,” she added philosophically.
Her face turned blank when she saw me enter the hut. She offered no explanation for why she was there, nor did I seek one. After a few moments she quietly disappeared.
“Don’t fight with your baby brother. Now you have only him with you in this world,” admonished the old woman.
“My Mama can give me many, many more baby brothers,” the small girl went on merrily.
I didn’t need to see any more. I walked away swiftly, but her laughter still rang in my ears.
“Ling-ling, you cannot show personal sympathy or regret over this matter. You have to think, speak, and act as one of a team, not as an individual,” I nagged myself, but my nose smarted and tears welled up in my eyes. I viciously kicked a stone out of my way.
I threw up my head in an effort to regain my composure and in looking up I caught sight of Sun’s wife half hidden by the bushes ahead of me. I turned to take another path, but she cut across the corner to intercept me. She came up running and slightly out of breath.
“Wait a minute.”
At that moment I simply did not feel up to another tussle with her problems. After the birth of the baby, another girl, her husband had hardly improved his attitude to her or to the work team. He had had to find money to pay for the midwife, was now deeper in debt, and had another female mouth to feed. He wandered around with a perpetually hurt expression on his face as if he had been cheated.
His wife caught her breath. “Are you angry with us?” she asked timidly.
“Not angry,” I replied, “only disappointed. After all we’ve tried to do for you, you and your husband haven’t raised a finger to help us with the land reform work.”
“I want to do something now, for the Xia orphans. Their mother was always very kind to me. It’s the least I can do to help the children. Can you help me?”
“I don’t see how I can.”
“You can.”
She spoke with unexpected finality. I peered hard into her face, seeking some clue to her meaning. Her brownish hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes seemed lighter in the sunlight and gave her face a strange cast. Xia’s wife might have told her that I was the last cadre to talk with Xia before he died, that I had precipitated his suicide. I looked at her warily. At the slightest insinuation I was ready to repulse her. But she said only, “You’re so kind.”
Again her words took me by complete surprise. Perhaps she thought she had already gone too far in her subtle game of blackmail. Maybe she could help me now. I tried to sound her out on what part she might think I had played in Xia’s suicide. “Did Xia’s wife notice anything odd about him the night he died?” I asked.
“She dreamed that he called out to her. She sort of woke up but then brushed the whole thing away as a dream. When she learned of his death the next morning she remembered that dream and then realized that perhaps in reality she had heard him call out.” Tears came to her eyes. “Those poor children,” she exclaimed. “How can that old woman look after them? She can barely totter on her own feet.”
“How can you help them?” The words slipped out before I could stop them. I cursed myself silently for showing too much intere
st in the matter. Perhaps it would confirm her suspicion that I had a guilty conscience. Also, it was not too polite, showing I doubted whether she, who could hardly look after herself, could take on an extra responsibility.
“I have heard that Xia’s children will be allowed to move back to their own house.”
“They will take up only one room in the house.”
“There are greedy people.” She frowned. “They say they have big families and should have that house.”
“It’s a nice, solid house. But it can house only a small family besides the orphans and the old woman.”
“My family is small, just the three of us. The midwife told me that I would have no more children. I don’t want to leave my little girl all alone in the world when Sun and I pass on, and one of Xia’s children is a boy. I would like the three children to grow up together as one family.”
“So you are interested in that house too,” I said, not without some irony.
The gossips of the village were already speculating about who would finally get the neat house that Xia had so painstakingly improved. I pointed to the group of peasants who could be seen completing the survey of the landholdings. “You will have to discuss it with them.”
The distant earth, damp with the melted snow, looked rich and almost black. The peasants in their black jackets and trousers blended in easily.
“I also heard that Xia’s orphans will get back part of their father’s land. It’s good land.” She spoke in a quiet voice, looking not at me but at the fields before us and the activity going on there. “Sun and I will plant wheat on it for them. After the harvest I will make pian-er gruel of white flour and they will carry it to offer at the graves of their parents.”
“You really wish to adopt the two orphans?” All sarcasm in my voice was gone.
“Yes.”
“Will Sun agree? That means one more girl in the family.”
“We’ll have a son, and the four of us will have four times as much land as Sun has now.” There was a flash of the same, sudden fierceness in her eyes that she had revealed during her childbirth. “He had better agree.”
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