Naked Earth (13 page)

Chang looked up from the accounts and scratched his head with an inverted pen. He was alert enough to notice how the disturbance died down as soon as Pao came over to the front courtyard.

“Han’s tenants—aren’t they the same people who refused to go and get the land deeds from him that time? They’ve certainly made progress very fast.” He smiled at Pao. “What made them so Positive all of a sudden?”

Pao smiled back at him. “Well, however dead-brained they may have been, I should say they have awakened by now. Seeing with their own eyes the Great Struggle Meeting going off with a bang and all those landlords shot, they know that the world has really changed—it’s a poor man’s world now.”

“Hmm, yes.” Chang had to nod, smiling. Turning to the other Corps members in the room he said, “You see, the Masses have really risen! Now that the Masses have risen, we mustn’t be frightened and shrink back and become the Masses’ Tail.”

“Right!” Pao said quickly. “I’ll go and get all the other comrades; we’ll all go and look on. We’ll pump gas into them, all right.”

All the Corps members were summoned to the school. Chang met them below the stone steps in the front courtyard and gave a little speech to prepare them psychologically before they went in to watch what was going to happen.

“We are not one-sided humanitarians. As it has been so well-put by Chairman Mao, ‘The Revolution is not a dinner party; it’s not writing, or painting, or embroidery. It can’t be so refined, so unhurried, so elegant, so gentle, polite and modest. The Revolution is an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. A short reign of terror has to be created in every village in the country. Without this, the activities of anti-revolutionary forces in the country can never be suppressed, and the power of the gentry can never be overthrown.’ We should also remember another of Chairman Mao’s sayings, ‘To correct a wrong we must go further than what is just; without excesses we can never correct a wrong!’”

After his explanation everybody looked at his neighbor, a bit jittery and at the same time childishly curious and excited. As they trooped into the temple, heading for the back courtyard, they passed the schoolroom where the children were having their lesson. The teacher read one sentence from the book and all the students repeated after him in a tuneful chant, swaying their bodies sidewise on the benches. The afternoon sun was on them and the voices were drowsy. As the Corps members walked past and the shrill monotonous chorus gradually receded behind them, they had a strange feeling that they had left behind the world they knew.

All of them tried to find the right expression upon entering the back courtyard—just the right shade of gravity, dignified without being funereal. As they approached the low flight of stone steps they saw that a thick rope hung down from the eaves. It hung loose, swaying a little in the breeze. Several tenant farmers were standing around, looking nervous. The atmosphere was thick, as if somebody had hanged himself here and the body had just been taken down and removed.

All the Corps members stood waiting under the eaves. Go Forward Pao and Sun Fu-kuei also came. Then several militiamen dragged a middle-aged woman out of the windowless room at the back where they kept the firewood. It was Han T’ing-pang’s wife, heavy with child, wearing a striped gray blouse and pants, streaks of her bobbed hair plastered by sweat to her bruised, sallow face.

“You Big Feudal Exploiting Landlord! Facing death right now, and you don’t know enough to be afraid!” a Positive Element shouted. “We’ve been too polite to you all this time. You don’t seem to appreciate it. You want to be Reactionary to the very end. Today, if you still won’t
t’an pai
, confess, we’re going to take your dog’s life!”

Though the woman hung her head, it was impossible for a pregnant woman to look humble. She looked infuriatingly proud and overbearing with her belly thrust far out.

“Tie her up! We’ll ‘string up half a pig’ for her!”

“Look at the slut,” the Positive Element shouted. “Old enough to be a granny. And she’s still breeding brats for old Bloodsucker Han.”

Several Positive Elements directed the tenants to push her down on the ground. Quickly they tied her left arm and left leg together with the rope that hung down from the eaves. When they pulled at the other end of the rope, she went up in the air, left side up. Then they tied her right arm and right leg together and hung two heavy wooden buckets on the leg.

The woman began to moan and mumble indistinguishably, begging for mercy. The sun coming in under the eaves lit up the top half of her body, hanging head down. A fly flew through the sunlight, turning gold all over. It circled and settled on her nose, which had been beaten into a blob.

They had a tubful of water ready. Two tenants lifted it between them and started to pour water a little at a time into the buckets hanging from her leg.

“Ai-yo! Ai-yo!” Her groans rose higher and her face gradually came alive with pain as more water splashed into the heavy buckets. The fly slowly flew away.

“Quick,
t’an-pai
, confess! Where’s the rest of your money? And your jewelry? Where did you hide them?” a Positive Element shouted at her.

“Ai-yo! Ai-yo!” She kept changing the tone and pitch of her groans as if trying to find in certain sounds a momentary relief, however slight.

“Quick—speak! Speak and you’ll be let down. You can go home right now if you
t’an-pai
. Where’s the money? And the gold? The gold rings?”

“There isn’t any!” she panted. “Ai-yo, there really isn’t! Ai-yo, my ma! Ma-a ya! I die of pain! Can’t bear it any more!” With her head hanging upside down, the skin on her face was drawn up so that she looked much younger. Her eyes were bright and she seemed to be grinning.

The Corps members consciously avoided standing too close to one another; it might appear they huddled together in fear. They were not so much afraid as ashamed and repulsed at the sight of the pregnant woman strung up in mid-air like a lumpy, triangular rice cake. They tried not to shuffle their feet or stir uneasily.

“Well? Are you going to
t’an-pai
or aren’t you?”

“Ai-yo, I’m wronged, I’m innocent! Ai-yo, what sins I must have committed in my last life, to deserve such a death!”

“Think you’re going to die now? That easy?” Pao could not help laughing out loud.

“Come on, hurry it up!” Sun said. “We’ve got to break through this fort of bigotry today.”

“A
h..
.” A sudden long shriek sailed high in the air. The sound was so coolly clear and shrill, for a moment it was difficult to tell where it came from.

There was not much water left in the tub, but the tenant who had lifted it suddenly found it too heavy for him. It half slipped out of his hand as he set it down with a thump, splashing water on his feet.

“Speak! Speak quick! Any gold?” asked a Positive Element.

“
Yu, yu
;
there is, there is! Ai-yo, spare me! There’s a gold ring!”

“Where’s the gold ring?”

“There’s a gold ring! Ai-yo, ai-yo! Spare me,
t’a yeh
, master!”

“Where is it? Speak, quick.”

“Can’t remember—Ai-yo! Let me down so I can think—”

“You’ll be let down as soon you’ve said where it is.”

“In the hollow wall! In the hollow wall!”

“Nonsense! The wall has been searched. Even if it were a needle we’d have found it.”

“Then there isn’t any left,” she said, panting.

“All right, so you won’t talk—you’re asking for it! Reactionary to the very end!”

The rope with pig’s bristles woven into it was biting deep into the swollen flesh of her wrist and ankle, tied together. The groans had stopped.

“
Ts’ao t’a nai-nai
,” Sun swore. “Fainted!”

“Splash water on her face,” Pao said.

A tenant reached down for the tub and emptied it over her face, flooding the stone floor. Water dripped down from the tips of the greasy strands of hair.

“Ai-yo! Ai-yo!” The groans resumed, only they were more like sighs or just the sound of outgoing breath. Her eyes, now dull and half open, were the only lusterless things on the glistening wet face.

“
T’an-pai
, quick! Otherwise I, your father, will be at you again!—
Ma-ti
, no more water!”

The man looked around and happened to spot in the crowd a little boy he knew, who had apparently sneaked out of the schoolroom to watch the free show in the courtyard. “Hey, Keng Hsiao-san, Little Number Three Keng,” the man called out. “Go get a bucket of water!”

But the child was frightened. He turned and ran, dropping his head between his shoulders.

“
Hsiao kou t’ui
, little dog’s leg! Landlord’s spawn!” the man cursed.

“I’ll go.” Another man picked up the bucket and walked down the steps.

“Ai-yo! Ai-yo!” With eyes closed, the woman seemed lulled by her rhythmic groans.

Liu stood rooted with his hands in his pocket. He had held his fists tight all this time and his arms had gone to sleep. When he tried to change his stance he found he could not take his hands out of his pockets and had to slowly unfold his fingers first.

“Why does he take so long?” the Positive Element grunted. “I’ll go and see.” He pattered down the steps. The little boy was still hanging around the courtyard, reluctant to go back to his classroom. He was squatting at the foot of the wall in front of a large rock, trying to tilt it back with one hand to look for crickets underneath. Seeing him, the Positive Element suddenly changed his mind and strode over, bending over him to lift the stone. The boy again scurried away, frightened.

“
Ma-ti
, since we’re at it, might as well have our fill,” the man said. Holding the boulder with both hands he walked up the steps and threw it with a loud thud into one of the buckets hanging beneath the woman. The crowd gave a shocked cry as the water splashed over them. If the woman screamed, it was drowned in the din. But after the general tumult there was silence, in which a kind of lapping sound could be heard, curiously gentle and yet heavy, like ducks’ feet paddling in shallow water. The body still hung there, but blood was flowing down the trouser leg to the foot and wrist bound together, then dripping to the ground below, the crimson wisps slowly fanning out in the water on the floor.

The bucket was still swinging from the impact of the boulder. The woman’s body swayed with it, head down, turning now this way, now that way, but aloofly, with a disinterested, far-off air. The wind fingered the greasy strands of her hair.

Pao was the only one who spoke after the pause. “
Ma-ti
, so quick!. Certainly had an easy time! Come on, let her down and carry her out.”

All the Positive Elements and tenants crowded forward to help untie the rope. Liu saw Su Nan looking around dazedly. He walked up to her quickly and propelled her down the steps, holding her by her elbow. “Let’s get away from here,” he heard himself saying.

He took her out of the school. It would only take a few minutes for them to get back their self-control, but right now he felt they had better go where nobody was watching. Walking down the mound, they crossed the road and went into the fields. Somehow it was surprising to find it was still daytime and the sun was still out. The brownish yellow fields extended all the way to the far horizon. The warmth of the sun on their backs, interlaced with cold whiffs of autumn wind, began to make things feel more real.

He was walking after Su Nan on a footpath when she half turned around and, without taking her eyes off where she was looking, whispered to him, “What’s that?”

A mule was pulling a cart around a field in circles, occasionally shifting course abruptly. City-bred, with no knowledge of farming, they could not tell what function it served. There were some people standing on a foot-path shouting, but at this distance they could not hear what they were saying. The cart seemed to prefer to run over the stumps of chopped off trees in the waste field. Otherwise it seemed quite aimless in its erratic circling, unless that was a plough attached behind it. But, it was not a plough; it was a long grayish black bundle dragging on the ground. A moment later Liu realized that it was a man. He had heard of a form of punishment called
nien ti kuntzu
, grinding the earth-roller. This must be it. The man was Han T’ing-pang then.

It seemed to Liu and Su Nan as they stood watching that the mule cart was whirling around like a truck out of control and might rush at them crazily any moment. Su Nan suddenly turned and walked away, dragging him after her. She knew what was going on. Her fingers felt cold against his and hard as sticks.

They walked swiftly to the village wall, turned with it and kept walking. After they had gone some distance they stopped, flattening their backs against the wall. They felt all hollowed out as if all their insides had been taken out. The setting sun had turned the great stretch of mud wall behind into a bleak pale orange.

They settled back against the wall without moving. Then Liu found that they were still holding hands. He drew her hand toward him but she seemed hardly to notice it, though finally she did turn round to look at him.

Liu suddenly put his arms around her, pressing her face hard against him as if to squeeze out all the sights and sounds of the world outside.

“Su Nan,” he whispered. Then he said, “Su Nan, I’ll never forget you.”

She neither moved nor answered. But after a while she abruptly lifted her head to glance at him and then looked quickly away as if displeased. “You sound as if we’re never going to see each other again.”

“All right, then I’ll forget you,” Liu said smiling. “I’ll forget you as soon as my back is turned.”

Though her face was turned away from him he could see her cheek sticking out roundly, so he knew she was smiling.

He kissed her. For a moment he shut out the things he had just seen.

“When are you leaving? You’re lucky to leave!” Su Nan said.

Instead of answering, he just held her tighter.

With her cheek pressed against the top pocket on his tunic she could hear paper crackling in his pocket. She rubbed her face against it a second time to hear the crackle.