Do Not Say We Have Nothing: A Novel (9 page)

Big Mother wrote back, “They turn into wretches.”

It was 1956 and Big Mother’s family had been in Shanghai for almost a decade. In quick succession, she had given birth to two more fluffy-haired boys with soft, triangular eyebrows. Ba Lute had insisted on naming them Da Shan (Big Mountain) and Fei Xiong (Flying Bear). What next, Big Mother had shouted at him, Tasty Mutton? The walls of the alleyway house had begun to press in on her like a jacket grown too tight. This morning, for instance, Da Shan was jabbing all ten fingers into his younger brother’s screaming face. Meanwhile, Sparrow was deaf to everything but the records he had borrowed from the Conservatory. Her oldest son was about to graduate with a double major in piano and composition but, night after night, he sat with his foolish forehead
pressed to the gramophone, as if the machine was his mother. He was transcribing Bach’s
Goldberg Variations
into jianpu and the bourgeois music fluttered through the house, on and on, until Big Mother heard it even when the rooms were silent. Meanwhile, her hero husband was busy leading another land reform campaign, he was always away, overthrowing a landlord’s family, repossessing fields of mung beans, flax and millet, and maybe the air itself, on behalf of the People. And if it wasn’t land reform, it was song and dance troupes, political study sessions, Party meetings, or private flute lessons for yet another influential cadre. Did he even teach at the Conservatory anymore? At home he was petulant and insufferable, and looked at Big Mother and the boys as if at a very dirty window. She ignored him. It wasn’t difficult. The insults that should have pricked her heart were as harmless as porridge.

Still, those pretty piano notes were mocking all the movements she made. They dripped from the kitchen to the bedroom to the parlour, seeping like rainwater over the persimmons on the table, the winter coats of her family, and the placid softness of Chairman Mao’s face in the grey portrait framed on the wall. She thought he looked doughy, not at all like the handsome, intrepid fighter he had once been. Regret crawled through her heart and limbs; did it crawl through Chairman Mao’s? Despite her best efforts, loneliness was encroaching upon Big Mother Knife.

Around noon, after the boys had left for school, Ba Lute unexpectedly arrived home. Her husband carried his army bag over his shoulders, and grinned as if he’d just won a nasty brawl. His padded coat was the same oyster-shell blue as the winter sky, except for a streak of what looked like blood, and it saddened Big Mother that the outside world, with all its hatreds, both petty and historical, had come inside her home.

“Stupid me,” she said. “I thought the war ended in 1949.”

Ba Lute had been gone for six weeks and, at the thought of seeing his family again, had broken into a run as soon as he entered the laneway. His wife’s indifference made him feel like a
beggar. Big Mother was still in her nightdress and her curly hair stood up on her head like cotton batting. He couldn’t decide whether to scold her or comfort her.

He threw down his copy of
Jiefang Daily
and a pack of Front Gate cigarettes. “The Party has launched another bold campaign. Aren’t you interested? And why aren’t you dressed?”

“Oh, good. A new campaign. As Chairman Mao says, ‘After the enemies with guns have been wiped out, there will still be the enemies without guns.’ ”

He ignored her tone. “Haven’t you been reading the papers?”

“They closed our office because the pipes froze,” Big Mother said. “Everything flooded. We’re a unit of more than two hundred people and the committee has to find a new space for us. So I’ve been liberated.”

“That’s no excuse to stay indoors and feel sorry for yourself!”

Big Mother eyed her husband.

He sighed and tried to soften his tone. “Isn’t there anything to eat?” He took off his coat and went to the water basin, drinking straight from the dipper. Underneath all the padding, she saw that Ba Lute’s clothes seemed far too large, as if he had halved in size. Perhaps he had donated his flesh to the peasants. She got up, smashed around and finally slapped some food down in front of him. Ba Lute acted as if hadn’t eaten in a week. After polishing off a mountain of rice and a leg of chicken, their entire meat ration for the week, Ba Lute conceded he had missed her.

She sniffed. “Is it so bad out there?”

“The usual.” He found a clean cloth and wiped his mouth, then his whole face, pressing down on his eyes. Ba Lute had always been too round and cocky for his own good. This new thinness gave him a vulnerable, starved look, which confused her. He ran the cloth over the back of his neck. “Our land reform policy is glorious, but the People are in disarray. Still, it’s necessary work we’re doing. No one can say otherwise.” Without seeming to realize he was doing it, he started humming “Weeds Cannot Be Wiped Out.”

“You and land reform,” she said. “You’d think your mother gave birth to the idea.”

Ba Lute was so startled that he laughed. He checked himself and said abruptly, “Go to the devil, how can you joke like that? You’re going to get yourself killed.” As he put the cloth down, his hands shook. “Big Mother, you’ve got to learn to hold your tongue.”

She looked at the bone on his plate. Picked clean. “You’re home for awhile, are you?”

“I am.”

“Good. Because I’m going to Bingpai to see my sister.”

“Eh?” he said. His eyebrows lifted so high she thought they would fly away. “But what about your husband?”

She picked up the bone and chewed on the end. “He’ll survive.”

Ba Lute smiled but then, thinking over what she said, frowned. He slapped his hand on the table, working himself up into a grand annoyance. “Big Mother, listen here. Don’t you know we’re right in the middle of a life-and-death campaign? Please! Don’t look at me like that. I’m telling you, there’s a war going on in the countryside.”

“It’s always a war with you people.”

“There you go again! Now just hold on and think it through.”

Once Ba Lute got going, she couldn’t stop him. She stared hungrily at his empty plate.

“Some of these peasants, these desperate people,” he continued, “have to be forced to remember every humiliation. Forced! They have to be driven nearly out of their minds with grief before they can find the courage to pick up their knives and drive the landlords out. Of course they’re afraid. In the whole history of the world, what peasant revolution has ever made a lasting change?” He rubbed his bald head again. “I know what I’m talking about, don’t think I don’t. Anyway, it was all calming down but the new campaign stirred everyone up again. Encouraging the masses to criticize the Party! And now they’ve done it….”

“My work unit has already issued me a travel permit.”

“Your husband forbids it.”

“Chairman Mao says women hold up half the sky.” She took his plate, picked up the chicken bone and flung it towards the scraps bucket. She missed. The bone hit the wall and stuck there. “Be a model father,” she said, “and look after your sons.”

“Do you always have to be so stubborn?” he yelled. Ba Lute slumped forward over the table. “You weren’t so pigheaded when I married you.” He was like that. He exploded and then settled right down again. Like a trumpet.

For the first time in two months, Big Mother felt slightly better. “It’s true,” she nodded. “I wasn’t.”

—

The journey from Shanghai to the village of Bingpai was nineteen hours by train and minibus. By the end of her journey, Big Mother Knife felt like someone had broken both her legs. In Bingpai, she stumbled from the bus into the drizzle and found herself in an empty field. The village, which she remembered as prosperous, looked bedraggled and ugly.

When at last she trudged up the mountain path to Wen the Dreamer’s family house, she was in a foul mood. At his gate, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. Surely the driver was a crook, and the fool had let her off at the wrong village or even the wrong county. Yet…there was no denying that the flagstones looked familiar. The courtyard was missing its gate, it had plain disappeared. Seeing lamplight, she marched through the inner courtyard and into the south wing. There was junk everywhere, as if the fine house was about to be torn down. Entering, she saw a half-dozen wraiths crawling on the ground. In her fright, she nearly dropped her soul (her father’s expression), but then Big Mother Knife realized these were not wraiths but people. People who were busily removing the tiles and digging up the floors.

“Greetings, Sister Comrades!” she said.

A wraith stopped its digging motion and peered at her.

Big Mother pressed on. “I see you are busy with reconstruction work? Each one of us must build the new China! But can you tell me, where I should go to find the family that resides here?”

The woman who was staring at her said, “Thrown out. Executed like criminals.”

“Travelling–like criminals?” Big Mother said. Her instinct was to laugh. She thought she had mistakenly heard xíng lù “executed” (刑 戮) rather than xíng lù “traveller” (行 路 ).

Another woman made a gun with her hand, shot at her own head, and broke into a chilling smile. “Firstly the man,” she said. “Secondly,” she shot again, “the woman.”

“They buried silver coins under the floor,” another said. “That money belongs to the village, they know it does, and we’ll uncover it all.”

Big Mother reached her hand out but the wall was too far away.

“Who are you, anyway?” the woman with the make-believe gun said. “You look familiar.”

“I would like to know who gave you permission to be here,” Big Mother said. To her fury, she could detect a trembling in her voice.

“Permission!” the woman hooted.

“Permission,” the others echoed. They smiled at her as if she was the wraith.

Big Mother turned and walked outside. She went slowly through the inner courtyard, all the way to the front of the house. Here she lost momentum and sat down on a low brick wall a hundred yards from the entrance. Nobody had followed her and the kerosene lamp continued to flicker from inside. Now she heard the thwack of their shovels. That bus driver was the grandson of a turtle! He’d certainly dropped her at the wrong place. Ba Lute’s warnings were getting under her skin. She pulled on her hair and tried to wake herself, she pressed her hands violently to her face, but no matter what she did, her eyes refused to open and the dream would not end. She stared all around and saw the absurdity of her travelling bag, the muddy ground, the grey house and tiny night stars coming
out. She would have to go back into the house and straighten things out. Yes, she would go back inside. It was a strange, windy night and she could hear a shrill cry echoing over the hillside. What ghosts were visiting this place? She could hear shouts now, coming nearer, and the ringing of a gong. A funeral, she thought numbly, but still Big Mother did not stand up or withdraw.

—

A crowd was coming along the road, swaying and heaving in a procession. Big Mother pushed herself onto her frozen feet. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting here, but the women with the shovels had gone home. In the fog, and in their excitement, they had not even seen her as they passed.

As the parade approached, Big Mother could hear their voices more distinctly. Although there was indeed a gong, bells and the occasional burst of singing, it was not a funeral. Certain words were repeated, “stand up,” “have courage,” “devil,” but the shouting was oddly disjointed, as if opposing leaders were battling for control of the slogans.

At the head of the procession, Wen the Dreamer walked with his body crookedly bent. A woman walked behind him. Swirl’s hair fell loose and wild. She was completely tipped forward, as if she carried a piece of furniture on her back, but there was none. The distance between them halved and then halved again. Frenzied faces closed in on Big Mother, crying and groaning. She could not make out all the words but she heard:

“Honour the Chairman!”

“Kill the demons!”

“Long live our glorious land reform!”

I have crossed into death itself, Big Mother thought. Now she saw that her sister’s arms were roped together behind her, in a position that forced her two elbows up into the air. Everyone seemed fuelled by exhaustion, as if they had recently been shaken from sleep. The cavalcade stretched along the road, but they were so absorbed by their own noise that they, too, did not notice
Big Mother. The very last person, a small boy struggling to keep up, glanced in her direction but his eyes did not fix on her. He hurried along.

Big Mother stood up and, leaving a wide gap, followed them. The procession continued for at least another hour. Finally, just before the tree line, the shouting faded and the people drained away like rivulets of water. By the time Big Mother reached the end point, her sister and Wen had been untied and were standing, incongruously, by themselves. They were cautiously testing their backs, slowly stretching out their arms. They were carrying their own ropes, as if the ropes were only props.

“Is is really you, my sister?” Big Mother said.

Swirl turned, peering into the darkness.

“Little Swirl,” Big Mother said again, afraid to touch the woman. “Is that you?”

—

Big Mother did not hear the entire story that night or in the nights that immediately followed. All her sister would say was that these parades, “struggle sessions,” she called them, had been going on for the past three months.

“Most of the time, it’s harmless,” Swirl said. “They take us to the schoolyard and denounce us as landlords. We have to kneel, but all they want is a thorough self-criticism. Occasionally, like tonight, we’re paraded through the village.”

Big Mother could not contain her fury. “And the rest of the time?”

Swirl glanced at Zhuli, who was folded into her father’s lap, and said nothing.

Everyone spoke in whispers, as if afraid to wake the gods of destiny, or even Chairman Mao himself. The hut, with its mud walls and straw roof, was meant for animals, that much was abundantly clear. Big Mother wondered where the evicted pigs and cows had gone.

“We’re not suffering,” her sister said.