Ocean of Words (11 page)

When spring arrived, I gave orders that each battery must open up wasteland as much as it could and sow soybeans and vegetables. That was the way to improve our food quality. Soybeans were vital, for out of them you can make oil, tofu, and soy milk. The next step was to raise pigs; every battery had to get thirty piglets. I told the soldiers, “Now we must learn not only how to fight but also how to live.”

Dragon Head had not changed a bit. His men would still ride to the Wusuli River to keep watch on the Russians. Very often, when hoeing in the fields, we could hear gunshots — they never stopped practicing. Because we lived in our own barracks, we had no dealings with them. I ordered my men not to be mixed up with the militia without my or Commissar Diao’s permission.

One summer afternoon we were planting cabbages near our barracks. As I was fetching water from a ditch with a pair of buckets, an explosion thundered in the north. Then some shells landed randomly, and numerous dark smoke pillars rose in the woods and in the fields. Large fireballs bounced along on the plain. One shell whistled by over our heads and exploded two hundred meters away in a valley. This is war. The Russians are bombarding us. I dropped the buckets and ran back to the barracks.

Orderly Liu blew the bugle, and all our men dashed to the
cannons. But I had no idea what orders I should give next. I called the Regimental Headquarters, and they didn’t know what was going on either. “What am I supposed to do? Wait to be shelled in the barracks?” I yelled at the staff officer on the phone.

“Old Gao” — Regimental Commander Zhang Yi spoke now — “it’s not war. Remain where you are. We’ll know the truth soon.” The phone was hung up.

Carrying my binoculars, I scrambled to the top of the hill to have a view of the northern land. There they were. Through the glasses I saw Dragon Head and his men, about twenty of them, riding desperately back along a path through the birch woods. Two Russian gunboats on the river were firing at our side aimlessly. To my surprise, another boat, full of smoke, was motionless, and its crew were leaving it. They jumped into the water, swimming to the other boats.

“Damn it, it’s Dragon Head’s men,” I told Commissar Diao, who had just come up, gasping for breath.

“Let me have a look.” He took the binoculars from me and watched.

“It seems that the militia had a skirmish with the Russians on the river,” I said.

“A gunboat is sinking, but I can’t see the militia.”

“Let me have a look again.” I got the binoculars and watched. Now the disabled boat had disappeared, while the other two were retreating to their base. The gunfire had stopped. Everything had returned to normal.

Half an hour after we came back to the barracks, Dragon Head and his cavalry arrived. Commissar Diao and I went out to meet them. All the horses were sweating, and some of the militiamen stood by their horses, bareheaded. Dragon Head couldn’t help laughing. “Record a merit for us, Commander Gao and Commissar Diao,” he shouted. “We got rid of one of the Russians’ river rats.”

“Who gave you the orders to do it?” I asked.

“We did it ourselves. What an experience. Bang, just one bazooka shot, and it crept no more. We lost nothing but some caps.”

“You should not have done it, Dragon Head,” I said loudly, “The surface of the river is a neutral zone. This may cause a war.”

“War? Sure, we’re fighting a war with the Russians, aren’t we? That’s why you’re here.” He looked irritated. “Tell me, Commander Gao, which side are you on?”

“Cool it, Comrade Dragon Head.” Commissar Diao intervened. “I will report the victory to the Regimental Headquarters. I assure you that the Party and the people will not forget this heroic deed. Now you fellows return home and have a good rest. We will inform you of the merit soon.”

“On your horses!” Dragon Head ordered. They all leapt into their saddles. “Commissar Diao, I’ll wait for your word,” he said from the back of his black horse.

“Sure, you wait,” Diao returned in a low voice.

They all dashed off, leaving behind a dusty cloud. I turned to Diao and asked, “Why did you call it a victory?”

“Don’t be angry, Old Gao. Is a name so important?”

“I don’t know how to play on words, Comrade Commissar. Neither do I bear a grudge against Dragon Head personally. He’s a brave fellow, I agree. But this is a matter of principle — we must never fire the first shot.”

“I won’t argue with you, because what you said is absolutely right. But we had to find a way to dismiss him, didn’t we?”

I didn’t answer, although I had to admit to myself that he was not wrong. We went separately to the batteries to explain to the leaders what had happened.

The final decision arrived two weeks later. No merit citation was awarded to Dragon Head, but his militia company
received an internal commendation which said: “Let the Invaders Come but Not Return.” I was bewildered. Why should the higher-ups praise the militiamen? Did they intend to encourage them to provoke the Russians again? Then why did we have to obey the orders not to fire the first shot? When I raised these doubts with Diao, he smiled and said, “You wait and see. It’s not over yet.”

As he predicted, a month later the Military Department of Hutou County issued an order that required all the militiamen to turn their weapons over to the Military Department. From now on, private possession of these weapons would be dealt with as a crime. Because every piece of arms had been listed and numbered, each militiaman had no choice but to hand in whatever happened to be in his hands. Even a dagger or an ammunition belt had to go. At once, Dragon Head’s company was disarmed.

“In a way, I feel sorry for them,” I told Commissar Diao one day. “They have had guns for quite a few years, then suddenly everything is gone.”

“You have a good heart, Old Gao,” Diao said, laughing.

I laughed too. “It must feel like you had a tidy sum in the bank yesterday, then overnight you’re penniless.” Although I said this, I did believe it had to be done that way. It was not safe to have so many civilians armed with guns when the Russians didn’t seem eager to attack anymore.

The disarmament delivered a considerable blow to Dragon Head. A month later I ran into him in Guanmen Village, where I had my leather shoes repaired. I stood at the door of the cobbler’s shop, watching with amusement a group of kids forcing a bear cub to climb to the top of a flagpole that rose in the middle of the village square. “Up, up,” they shouted. Two long bamboo poles were poking the young animal from beneath. A boy catapulted a pebble at the rump of the bear, which at once sprang up two meters.

Here came Dragon Head. He walked alone, his feet kicking away horse droppings now and then. His head drooped forward, as though he were watching his own shadow. The front of his gray jacket was open, revealing a large red character “Loyalty” on his white undershirt. He saw me standing by and turned his head away. His right hand moved unconsciously to his flank, which one of the Mausers used to occupy.

“Dragon Head, how are you doing?” I walked up to him, holding out my hand.

“Not bad, still alive,” he muttered. We shook hands. His large face was expressionless, and his eyes were ringed with yellow.

I felt somewhat uneasy and managed to ask, “When will I drink your wedding wine? You’re going to get married soon, aren’t you?”

“Not soon.” He shook his head. “Maybe at the Spring Festival. I don’t know.”

“Don’t forget to invite me, and we’ll have a few.”

“Sure, I’ll have you over.” He smiled, his large eyes glittering a little.

“Anything I can do for you, please let me know, all right?”

“Sure. Thank you for saying that, Commander Gao.”

Although I had said that, I had no idea how I could help him. In fact, I could not, because what he really needed was nothing but weapons, without which he could not be the former Dragon Head again. Since the disarmament, the militia company had been literally disbanded. Now Dragon Head’s men would be carrying hoes and spades to the fields instead of riding with arms to the river.

Fall came. We were busy getting in crops, felling trees for fuel, and digging vegetable cellars. For a month the three batteries had not taken the canvas covers off their cannons.
Everybody worked hard; even the cooks could not go to bed until midnight, because they had to pickle a lot of vegetables — cabbages, turnips, eggplants, green peppers, garlic, and the like. By the end of September, we had finished most of the preparations for the winter. Now we could spare some men and sent them to help the villagers in Guanmen with their harvest and their threshing and winnowing.

On the evening of October 1, National Day, right after the holiday feast, the leader of the mess squad, Mu Lin, burst into the Battalion Headquarters. At the sight of Diao and me, he cried, “Our guns are stolen!”

“What?” I jumped to my feet. “What guns? How many?”

“Two semiautomatic rifles,” he said, panting hard. “They just disappeared this afternoon, when we were busy cooking the dinner.”

“Damn it, it must be Dragon Head again. Let’s go.” I put on my pistol and went out with Mu. Commissar Diao and Scribe Niu came along with us, but they didn’t wear their pistols.

No trace of the crime could be found at the mess squad. Two guns, which the cooks had seen on the rack at noon, were missing. No doubt it was the work of Dragon Head’s men. But without any evidence in our hands, what could we do? I couldn’t help swearing.

“Commander Gao,” Scribe Niu interrupted me, “I saw Ma Ding fooling around in the bushes this afternoon. He must have pretended to cut firewood there.”

I turned to Diao. “We must send a squad to Guanmen and bring Ma Ding here.”

“Why the hurry?” Diao asked.

“This time it’s not transceivers but guns, my commissar.”

“They won’t shoot us with the stolen guns, will they?” Without waiting for my answer, he continued, “Let them keep the guns warm in their hands for a little while. It won’t
hurt us. Dragon Head has done enough now, and he won’t get away with it this time. I’m going to report this to the Regimental Political Department. For sure, they will start an investigation immediately.”

What he said made sense, for Dragon Head was not our enemy and would never fire at us. There was no point in acting rashly. Besides, we did not have any evidence yet. That night Diao called the Regimental Political Department, and he was told that an investigating group would be sent over soon. At the same time he received an order that required either Diao or me to check in, within a week, at the Divisional Headquarters in Longmen City for a two-month program of studying Engels’s
Anti-Dühring
. We were told that the study was designed for officers with a rank above battalion leader.

We talked, and neither of us wanted to leave the battalion at this moment. Diao tried hard to persuade me. “Old Gao, it’s a good bargain. The board expenses are one and a half
yuan
a day; there will be six dishes at lunch. Longmen is a big city, where you can go to sports games, movies, and operas. In addition” — he smiled and blinked his eyes — “girls there are pretty, with long braids.”

“Old Diao, I appreciate your letting me have such an opportunity, but it’s no fun to study there. I can’t understand a book like that, no matter how hard I rack my brains. It will be torture. I don’t want to make a fool of myself at the Divisional Headquarters. Besides, so many things have to be done here at home. The garages are not roofed yet, and the winter drill will start soon. No, I won’t leave at this historic juncture. Old Diao, it’s your duty to sharpen your mind. You’re the brain of our entire battalion. You’re the very person who should go.”

We could not persuade each other. Strange to say, next morning a call came from the Regimental Headquarters
which ordered me to leave for the study. All right, I didn’t complain, because to obey orders is the first principle for an army man. Niu Hsi helped me pack up, and that Saturday I set off for Longmen. Before leaving, I talked to Commissar Diao about Dragon Head’s case. “This time,” I said, “we must not let him go. We must teach him a lesson so that he will think ten times before doing this sort of thing again. I don’t mind if they put him in jail for three months. It seems he should postpone his wedding for a short while. The Dragon’s whiskers have to be plucked.”

“Old Gao, trust me. I’ll handle everything well. Now it’s not a matter of hair and skin but a matter of eyes and teeth.”

Longmen was a good city indeed, very clean. Except that not many girls wore long braids there, everything appeared as Commissar Diao had described. There was fish and meat at lunch every day, and we could even have beer on Saturday evenings. Staying indoors and being fed well, I gained twenty
jin
in those two months. But Engels’s book wore us down. The two professors from Longmen City College lectured well and tried hard to make every point plain to us. Still, we couldn’t penetrate the book. Shameful as it was, we had to admit that we were too old to become pupils of Marx and Engels.

As soon as the study was over, I returned to Hutou with two other officers in a jeep. At the Regimental Headquarters, I found the chief of the Officer Section, Liu Mingyi, my fellow townsman, and talked to him about Scribe Niu Hsi, for I had heard in Longmen that our regiment was going to send a junior officer to the Second Military Foreign Language Institute to study Russian for three years. Niu Hsi was a good lad and deserved to go to college. He had cut my hair
every month for over two years; I was grateful, though I had never mentioned it. Chief Liu seemed to be convinced that Niu Hsi was a proper choice.

“We’ll look into his file and make sure that his family background is clean,” Liu said.

“Of course it’s clean; otherwise how could he be the scribe of my battalion?”

“Old Gao, I know that. This is merely a procedure.” He chuckled. “You’ll never change a bit and always have a temper like a firecracker.”

I took a carton of Peony cigarettes out of my bag and handed it to him. “Here, it’s for you, Old Liu.”

“Good stuff.” He took it with a smile, smelling the end of the carton. “Want to have a drink tonight?”