Red Azalea

by Anchee Min

  I was feeling better as I waited for the bus to go back to Shanghai. Yan was seeing Leopard. I knew she had always thought of him. I felt a little bit relieved. I wished she had been in love with Leopard, yet immediately I thought myself nasty because I knew she was not in love with him. She was miserable. I remembered how gay, open and forgiving she could be. I knew how she behaved when she was in love.

  The sky darkened and no bus came. My stomach began to shrink inside. I had not eaten a thing since morning. I went to a roadside stand and sat down by it. I heard the crickets singing. I thought of how I lied to Soviet Wong and hoped nothing went wrong. I could cover my lie if I made it back to the studio dormitory tomorrow morning before dawn. I knew a secret path behind the sheds that led to the room.

  I sat breathing the dark air. The countryside had a quietness that seemed sacred. I looked into the night. I heard the whistle of a steam engine from far in the distance. The darkness smelled wet. I then saw a light dot. At first I thought it was a lightning bug. But it was moving closer, and then I found the light did not go off as a lightning bug would. It was a flashlight. Someone was walking in the dark. I stared at the dot of light. It came toward the bus station. I sensed something. I kept staring for a few minutes. I saw the figure of the light holder. A familiar figure. A horn blew; the bus was arriving. The light dot began to jump up and down. I heard her breath. It was Yan.

  The bus entered the station. She was steps away. I waited until our hands touched. We did not have time to say anything to each other. She had walked miles. She took out a wrapped bag from her inner pocket and passed it to me. The bag smelled of cookies. She was gasping hard. The bus took off.

  When I got to my parents’ house, they told me that Soviet Wong and Sound of Rain had just left. They came to check up on me. They came to find me. Did you tell them where I had gone? I asked my mother. I did not know where you were and I told them so, she said. They said your mother was lying, said my father. They said harboring a wrongdoer was a crime. Father turned to Mother. You stubborn woman, you shouldn’t have argued with them! I must argue because they were being unreasonable, said Mother. What did they say? I asked Mother. Mother looked at me and said angrily, They said you had been a bourgeois individualist, they said you always acted alone, you had no sense of groupism, you’re selfish so you should be eliminated. Yes, that’s what they were trying to say. They said they had come for my opinion, for the parents’ opinion of their child. They came to nail you down. They came to accuse, to lock the dunce cap on your head.

  My father waved at my mother. He sighed and sighed. Where have you been? To the farm, I said. What’s the matter with you? Didn’t you sense that they were after you? Why can’t you know your place and behave yourself? Can’t you see we’ve had enough trouble in the family? He pointed at the porch and raised three fingers, meaning Coral, his third child. She was on the porch and was mad at me. I asked what happened. Before my mother said anything, my father dragged me to the kitchen and shut the door. He told me that Coral was assigned to Red Fire Farm because I had left it. My father’s voice was hoarse. It is very unfair to Coral, he said. But she was assigned and she had to go. My father said that he and Mother wished they could go for Coral, to save their child.

  I was frustrated. I said to my father, What do you want me to do? To change places with her? it would be a lie if I told you that I would do that. I was at Red Fire Farm. I served my term. I made it by myself. If she had guts, she should … I stopped, realizing that I talked selfishly. It was timing and politics that decided my fate. It did not have much to do with any personal effort. I knew nothing of acting but I was made an actress.

  I don’t want to hear your reasons, said my father. It doesn’t help Coral any if either of us wins the argument. I just want you to be aware of the fact, and the fact is that you’re no longer a peasant and the family needed to have a peasant to fulfill the government’s quota, and Coral, your little sister, is assigned to fill that hole.

  I said, What can I do? How can I help? Accept your lot and stay in your place, said Father. Your mother and I can’t afford to have more losses. If you get kicked out of the studio, we will have two peasants at Red Fire Farm.

  I wished I could have said it out loud, that I was not doing well at the film studio, but I could not let them down. I said, You just saw how my teachers dislike me. How can I stop them? My parents went silent. They were hurt.

  I should have gone downstairs to personally see them off, my father murmured. Soviet Wong and Sound of Rain must be upset about my impoliteness. You are an idiot if you think that would have made any difference, said Mother. They did not deserve to be treated as my guests. Not in my house. One should at least pay attention to its master when hitting a dog. I will never put on a smiling face when someone comes to spit on my daughter’s face. Hold back your bad temper now, yelled Father. Don’t you have to put up with enough bad treatment by behaving this way at work? I don’t regret it a bit, yelled back my mother. Live honorably or die—that’s my principle and I want my children to behave according to it.

  But see what you have caused them? When they behave according to your principle, this idealistic nonsense, see what happens to them? They get crushed by society! Mother said I can’t believe it, you, the man I am married to, the father of my four children, disgrace my principles.

  My father beat his chest, kicked his feet, swore that he did not mean that.

  Coral did not speak to me. She was packing for the Red Fire Farm. It hurt me to see her leaving for the hardship I had gone through. I did not know how she would ever make out. I did not know what to say to her. Guilt filled me. I gave my salary to Mother and asked her to buy Coral some necessities. Mother told me that Coral had said that she did not want anything from me. I knew I could never pay the price for her sufferings.

  I did not come home the day Coral was supposed to leave for the farm.

  I expected Soviet Wong to question me. But she did not. She had conversations with everyone else in the room but me. I thought she would openly criticize me, but she did not. She talked to my classmates about Red Azalea, about the exciting energy the movie was about to generate. She gave out parts of the script, but did not tell me when and what to play. I was left out. No one was in charge of me. I was not told what was wrong with me. All of a sudden, I had nothing to do. I was assigned to watch everyone else rehearsing. I heard loud voices reciting the lines. I heard Cheering Spear reciting lines in her sleep. My pain felt like water penetrating into sand, soundless, into the core of my being. I did not seem to exist anymore.

  Bee OhYang had been warned because she was playing too much table tennis with a male student. It was reported that they were flirting with each other as they hit the ball. Bee OhYang cried and denied that there was anything going on between her and the man. Soviet Wong had spoken with them separately. She called all of us to a meeting. She stated that she had discovered that the couple had not gone too far. She advised us. She said, A healthy mind is the most important thing in life. As I listened, I watched her face. Every nerve on it expressed righteousness. Her skin was very white. Her handkerchief smelled of Tiger Balm. She told us a story, a story she had witnessed. It was about how a former young actress corrupted and destroyed her own future by having an affair with an older man. Soviet Wong pointed out that the actress had read too much Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre had destroyed her.

  I immediately wanted to read the book Jane Eyre, although this was the first time I had ever heard of it. According to Soviet Wong, the couple was caught on Chow Family Pond Road. While they were hiding in the bushes late one evening, the woman was recognized by a passing comrade. As the saying goes, There is no such thing as a windproof wall. Their deed was brought out into the night. It was useless when the woman confessed that she regretted what she had done. Soviet Wong had heard her say it at a mass rally. But it was too late. She was considered a criminal for the rest of her life. She now worked as a restroom cleaner in the studio.

 
; Soviet Wong said, I sincerely hope you do not follow her catastrophic road. She rested her sight on me and nodded lightly. I wanted to avoid her stare but forced myself to face her. My mind was picturing how the young actress was touched by the older man in the bushes. I now knew who Soviet Wong was talking about. I knew the young actress. She was a rare beauty with a pair of flowery eyes. The whole studio called her a prostitute. Anyone could joke about her. The male workers made dirty jokes about how they had had her. She became the joke. Strangely, I did not see a sad expression on her face. She had the face of a rogue. She did not care anymore. She joked back with the workers. She told the wives who had scorned her that she had slept with their men. She told the workers that she had slept with their bosses. She became a real whore.

  Sunday morning I went back home to spend the day with my parents. Our yard was a mess. The Wu Lee Hardware Workshop was assigned a new ambitious leader who, on his first day on the job, declared he would expand his shop into our yard to make a shed for bicycles. He had his workers cut out all the greens and erect the frames of a shed. We protested, fighting for the yard, shouting the whole day. But he had more men than we did. Those were desperate men, the new employees. We lost. The cement was poured over the grass. My parents said to the leader: You can’t do this to us. We have been putting up with your machine noise and chemical smell for years; you can’t have an inch and then take a foot. You can’t take away our only yard, our green. My parents almost begged. The leader was unmoved. He said, I am doing this to open positions for the unemployed, people who desperately need rice in their bowls. You think I want them? The hopeless, the society-walkers? Where is your conscience? Don’t you have any feelings for the proletarians?

  The day at home was depressing. Blooming was in boarding school, Coral at Red Fire Farm. Space Conqueror was sent by his middle school to a tractor factory to learn to be a worker. Father leaned on the table all day working on his project, a pop-up book, Fly to the Moon. He made maps of Mars and the moon. My mother said he should be a member of the solar system instead of this family. I watched Father painting the black hole. He was patient, glasses hanging on his nose tip. He said, Let me tell you what makes the moon shine—would you like to hear it? I said, So what whether the moon shines or not.

  After lunch Mother sat down with the book Dream of the Red Chamber. She called me, recommended the book to me. She thought I was now mature enough to read it. She said that it was all right to read it because Mao had said that the book did not have to be read as an ancient back-garden love story; it could be studied as educational material. The book revealed a vivid picture of China’s feudalistic society, the ugly nature of the oppressor class. This was Mao’s newest instruction. Mao recommended everyone read it from his perspective. I said to Mother, Maybe some other time.

  I did not tell my mother that I had stolen and read the book a long time ago when she hid it in a closet. It was what I used for Yan’s love letters to Leopard. I copied the poems and phrases from the book. It was a story I told Yan. Yan never got to read the book, but she knew all the details of the story.

  I asked my mother to explain love. Mother said that I had embarrassed her. She said that there was no lesson to learn regarding this matter, because all one had to do was to follow the guide of nature.

  The guide of nature. Had I ever not followed it? Yan and I learned from nature and did the best we knew how in regard to our needs. The river of her youth overflowed its bank when she was not allowed to have a man to love. I had to pretend to be a man for her. But I gave her my full love.

  There was a big meeting at the studio. Afterward, every unit was given a document to read criticizing Chou—“Confucius.” The government wanted the workers to read between the lines and begin gossiping about Chou the Premier, his illness, his conflict with Comrade Jiang Ching. We were led to wonder about his loyalty to Mao. When it was my turn to read the lines, I read without interest. I did not care about the Chous. It bored me. People were asked to comment. People gave comments. The comments of nonsense. We must keep China red forever—this was every speaker’s opening line.

  I saw a net full of dead turtles and snakelike brown-green fish in the yard. It was Monday morning and I was assigned to pick up some study materials at a bookstore near my parents’ home. I decided to stop at the house. Since I was no longer in favor, the studio people would not notice my absence. When I got down from the bicycle, I wondered who had brought those turtles and fish. The lady who was my neighbor said to me, Your friend has been waiting for you by the staircase for hours.

  I made guesses of who it might be. I found I was unable to park the bicycle when my guesses came into focus. The turtle and fish brought me the smell of Red Fire Farm. I leaned the bicycle against the wall and rushed in. I saw her rise from the staircase. Yan, my commander, looked like a bride. New haircut, to the ears. She wore a brand-new indigo jacket, red shirt with the collar showing, deep blue pants and a pair of brand-new square-toed black shoes. She looked determined and calm. Though still pale, she was no longer sad. She looked at me and tried to compose herself. She then said hello to me. By her trembling voice, I knew she wanted me badly. I went up and took her hands in mine. Now she knew that I wanted her just as badly.

  I didn’t expect you, I said. She said, Just finished the harvest. I cleaned the turtles and fish for you this morning. I caught them yesterday.

  I stared at her. I tried to see how much she had changed from the last time I saw her. I tried to learn if she was doing all right. She turned away from me and said, Look, only dead fish and turtles stare.

  I guided Yan to my family’s apartment. I opened the door and took her to sit down on the porch. I poured her a cup of tea. I looked at her. I didn’t know how to start the conversation. I said, You look good. She said, I don’t know. I guess I was born a cheap thing. I feel like a pig—nothing matters to me. She stopped and there was a silence. She then looked around and pointed at a painting of Mao on the wall. She said, It’s good—who did it? Blooming, I said. It was her homework. Yan sighed and said that she always wished she could paint, but she gave it up because she could not get Mao’s nose straight.

  She pointed at the big wooden bed and said, It’s big. I said, Yes, Blooming and I slept here, but she only comes home on Sundays. Yan asked about my mother’s health, and I said, Still the same. She wasn’t given any day off. She has to go to work every day. I said, She goes, gets sick, and when her heartbeat goes over one hundred ten she gets a letter from the doctor and a day off. She comes home, rests, has to be at work the next day. And the bad circle starts again. I asked if she saw my sister Coral at the farm. Once, said Yan. She was carrying bricks with the team. She was slow, the last one dragging behind the ranks. She is not as strong as you. I said, I know. I remember Mother once told me that Coral was weak. She could not stand up until she was two years old. The nanny Mother hired secretly stole all Coral’s food coupons and sent them to her village to feed her own children. I asked Yan how I could help my sister. Yan said, Oh, come on. Coral is not the only one in prison.

  Yan said, Look at me, I am old. She was looking at herself in a mirror. I looked at her in the mirror for a while. Rebuttoning her collar, she said, Life goes on, it really does.

  I said, How is Leopard? Yan glanced at me, then said, His father has just passed away. He came back to Shanghai to attend the funeral. Did you come with him? I asked. Who do you think I am? His daughter-in-law? Anyway, Leopard left the farm first and I just got in today. You are dating him, aren’t you? I looked at her. She went silent. She sipped the tea and bent to look at the wood patterns on the table, then she looked at the newspaper. After a while she said, You know I never started with him. It’s an old meal already, I mean our relationship. My best years were not with him. He missed it. Am I sounding like a pig? Well, of course I wrote him letters. How can I say that I never started with him? You delivered my letters to him, didn’t you …? Then you left for good. He came to me. I mean he sent a letter to me. He
asked me to meet him in the brick factory. He said he had always wanted me. He was just afraid of political pressure. His secretary was after him. Do you remember that short heavy girl you always described to me? The one who showed up every time you passed the letters to Leopard? Yes, I do, I said. I remember Old Wong. Anyway, his company now was doing poorly, Yan continued. Their fields were closer to the sea. They’re saltier than ours. He even lost his seeds. He let the soldiers eat them. They had nothing to plant. He is more desperate than I am. So we—you know—talked about this stuff. He said he always loved my letters. My letters! For Buddha’s sake, my letters. Then of course I confessed I never wrote those letters. You know he forced me out of the closet. I told him about you. Oh, well, nothing shocking, you know, something to the effect that you were a better writer than I. That’s all. Are you embarrassed?

  Does he love you? I asked. He said he does. But I don’t know how much I could count on that, Yan said. And you? I asked. She said, Well, you know, I am not good at it. She sipped the tea and began to chew the leaves. I hope you like him enough, she said, swallowing the leaves slowly.

  Have you had … Before I started the phrase, Yan lowered her head shyly as if she knew what I was going to ask. Well …, she said. The farm was too dangerous to … You know one gets caught easily. She looked at me, cheeks reddening. I said, How can I help? She said, He is coming.

  I jumped up and looked out the window. What? Who? When? She said, I invited him to meet me here in the afternoon.

  How bold! I said. She said, I guess so. But you know, I’m just going to meet him and we’ll have a cup of tea together. What’s so shocking about that? Just to sit and have tea? I laughed at her poor lie. It would be like scratching the foot through a boot. I said, It will make you feel quite itchy afterward. She said, Well, you know me, unless … I said, Yes, maybe I can do something. Her face flushed. Do it for me, please, she said. I nodded. I said, I know you want him. She said, Well … I said, Do you want him? Would you like to have a space alone with him for a while? She turned to the window and nodded lightly. Will you be my guard? she asked slowly, without looking at me. I will, I said. I will be your guard. I’ll always be your guard. You know I used to be your guard. I want to. She said, Would you? She turned to look at me. She looked into my eyes, then said, Would you? I stood up and went to the kitchen. I could not bear her burning eyes.