Naked Earth (11 page)

THE NEXT
day Liu was among the Corps members sent out to measure the fields and look into the matter of Black Land, hidden, unreported land. When they came back in the evening he heard that all the landlords had been sent to the
hsien
prison. There wasn’t much hope for them once they got sent up to the
hsien
, village. The only ones left were Han T’ing-pang and his wife, who were still detained in the back courtyard of the school. Liu was surprised to learn this because Han was definitely a genuine landlord. How was it that he alone got special treatment? Then he learned that it was because they had forced Han to write to his relatives for money to pay back what he owed his tenants for exploitation going back for generations. Han had written urgent letters to his father-in-law in Peking and the old man had sent some money but nothing like what was expected. So they were still making him write letters. They had high hopes for him.

After the events of the past three days Liu wanted nothing more than a moment alone with Su Nan, if only to talk over all those things that shocked him so deeply. But there were always so many eyes and ears around. That was a part of living the Collective Life.

The
hsien
government sent them a message saying that the landlords of Han Chia T’o had been tried and sentenced and were going to be shot the next day. The village militia and the Land Reform Workers’ Corps were invited to send representatives to witness the execution.

Chang and Liu were among those chosen to represent the Corps. The next day they started out before dawn, walking all the way to town. The mass execution was to take place outside the city wall, but as they hadn’t been in town for a long time they took the opportunity to go shopping on the main street for toothpaste, soap and sweets.

The morning sun shone down the empty yellow dirt street, spotted here and there with mule and horse droppings and bits of straw. All the little shops had mud counters. When they finished shopping they came across a street barber who carried all his implements on a flat-pole. Liu took off his cap and felt his hair. He needed a haircut, so he stopped the barber and sat down on a stool by the wayside. The pharmacy he sat in front of had a mulecart hitched near its door. The mule chose to urinate just then, splashing noisily right into the barber’s brass basin placed on a low washstand.

The barber cursed richly. The pharmacy was built around a big tree. Half of its scaly black trunk bulged out of a side wall. The huge forked branches stuck out of the roof and the sun had lit up the treetop. When Liu looked up he saw two golden green leaves drifting down against the blue sky, scratching the rows of black tiles on the roof and then floating slowly down until they finally landed among the little black heaps of short hair at his feet. It was early in the day and nobody was in a hurry. And yet for T’ang Yü-hai this was the last hour. When Liu thought of this he felt the edge of the barber’s razor cold against the back of his neck.

After he had his haircut he went with two other Corps members to find Chang Li at the
hsien
Public Security Bureau. But Chang had already sent somebody out to find Liu. When Chang saw them he came up to them calling excitedly, “Where’s Comrade Liu Ch’üan? Hey, Comrade Liu, there’s a new task for us! Here’s a letter from Peking. The two of us are to go back right now. We’re assigned to a new task.”

Chang was evidently as surprised as Liu was by the order. The Organization had mentioned him and Liu in the same breath. Either he was slipping or Liu had considerable backing. In which case he had made a mistake in continually reminding Liu of his place, putting on the airs of an old
kan-pu
in front of him. Now he tried to make it up by suddenly getting very chummy. Sending away the other two Corps members on some excuse, he showed Liu the letter from Peking. It said they were to wind up the task at hand as soon as possible, come back to Peking for instructions and start south immediately to report to the East China Branch of the Resist-America Aid-Korea Association in Shanghai.

“Haven’t seen the papers for a week,” Chang said. “Just now I borrowed some newspapers from the people here. There’s this new Resist-America Aid-Korea movement going on. Everybody’s in it.”

He showed Liu the week-old newspaper. It carried the Joint Declaration of the various Democratic Parties. “The American imperialists have started a war of aggression against Korea on June 25th of this year,” the statement said. “Their dark schemes absolutely do not end with the destruction of the Democratic Republic of Korea—they want to take possession of Korea, they want to invade China, they want to rule Asia, they want to conquer the whole worl
d...
As everybody knows, Korea is a comparatively small country, but its strategic position is very important. In invading Korea the purpose of the American imperialists lies principally not in Korea itself but in the invasion of China, as the Japanese imperialists have done in the pas
t...
The people of the entire nation are now extensively and enthusiastically asking to be allowed to struggle, through voluntary activities for the holy task of Resist-America Aid-Korea, Protect the Home and Defend the Country.”

While Liu was reading the newspaper, Chang put an arm around him and whispered, “We better go back early today—there’re so many things that haven’t been settled. It’s best to see to the more important points before we leave. Let a thing drag on unattended, and it might become a real problem, don’t you think so? Those village
kan-pu
are no use.
T’u pao-tzu
, mud pies, all of them. Nothing inside them but earth.”

Liu made affirmative noises absentmindedly. He supposed that a
kan-pu
of the Revolution had to be psychologically ready all the time to be whisked off to another post a thousand miles away on short notice. But being new at it, he scarcely knew what to think except that he would be leaving Peking. He had thought that after they got back to Peking he would be able to see more of Su Nan. He hadn’t realized how much he had counted on it.

“It’s time now!” The other two Corps members bustled in. “Come on, let’s go.”

The
hsien
militia had taken the prisoners out of jail. The throng of invited spectators trailed behind them through the streets and out of the town gate—representatives of the
kan-pu
and militia of the surrounding villages and country towns.

The prisoners walked in single file, the ends of the thick ropes looped around their ankles tied together to make one long rope dragging in the dust across their pale shadows on the sunlit ground. Each one of the condemned wore a white placard giving the name and the nature of his crime. It stood on a little stick of split bamboo stuck into the back of his collar. Liu’s eyes found the placard marked “T’ang Yü-hai, Feudal Landlord.” T’ang was still wearing his dirty white blouse though the weather had turned cold. The placard stood high and erect out of his collar, above his drooping head. The thin white paper on its frame of split bamboo rattled in the cold wind.

Some of the townspeople also trailed along to see the execution. There was a clearing just outside the city wall. The captain of the town militia shouted “Halt!” to the guards and then, “Right turn!” From a marching column the prisoners had turned into a horizontal row facing the fields.

The militia ranged themselves in a row immediately behind them, aiming the rifles at their backs in case anyone should try to break away and run.

“Kneel down!” shouted the captain.

Some of the prisoners were dazed and slow in obeying. But one after the other, they all knelt.

The row of militiamen behind them started to walk backward to the bark of “One, two, three, four, fiv
e..
.” Ten paces away they stood still, then knelt on one knee and took aim.

Bang!
the noise of all the rifles going off at once was not very loud in the open fields. Still, it sent all the birds flying up from the trees, and the purplish gray watch-towers on the city wall.

Then there was an unexpected sound, high and quivering. Several of the prisoners lying face downward on the ground were shrieking and twisting about on the stained grass and tearing it out by the roots.

“Again! And aim carefully this time!” the captain shouted, red with anger, feeling that he had lost face in front of all the village
kan-pu
.

But his men did even worse the second time. Owing to the scarcity of cartridges they never did have much chance to practice shooting. And they were too nervous now. Their targets were no longer a row of tame, obedient backs. Instead they faced a line-up of unruly, crazily wriggling corpses, still startlingly alive after the volley.

Chang Li came forth from the crowd, drew his gun out of its holster, went up close to the bodies on the ground and walked down the row.

He looked at the captain. The captain nodded approval and stood blank-faced as Chang pointed the gun at the head of the first man on the ground, hesitated a second, and then fired. He moved quickly to the next body. It was motionless now, but Chang aimed again and fired another shot. Holding the pistol still pointed at the earth, he turned around and began to walk back toward Liu. He looked pale, but he walked steadily, almost with military precision. Thrusting the gun with its twist of red ribbon hanging from the ring on the butt into Liu’s hand he said, “Come on, it’s your turn. It’s a hard thing to do. But they’re enemies of the Revolution. There’s another one over there. Let’s see you dispose of him.’

Liu walked toward his victim mechanically, gun in hand. Lucky the man is lying face downward, he thought. And T’ang Yü-hai was not the only one wearing a white blouse. The placard also faced downward and he could not puzzle out the writing through the back of the thin paper. There wasn’t time. He heard the bang of his shot and then, a long moment later it seemed, he felt the gun jump warmly in his hand.

The narrow body on the ground shuddered and all ten fingers dug deeper into the earth. Liu did not wait to see the man grow still. He shot at him again, two or three times, and stopped only when the pistol gave an empty click. He had been afraid that the man would twist around in his agony and show his face.

He walked back and returned the gun to Chang.

“Not bad! You’ve certainly got it in you!” Chang put an arm around him and patted him.

Liu walked off to watch the men from the Public Security Bureau making arrangement for putting the bodies on exhibition before the townspeople. He wiped the sweat from his face while nobody was looking. Even if it had been T’ang Yü-hai, all he had done was to put him out of his misery, since he was as good as dead anyway. There was no call to feel as he did.

Chang wrangled a lift for all of them aboard a truck going to Paotingfu. They got back to Han Chia T’o village in mid-afternoon. The execution had made Liu forget that this was the day for
Fen Fu Ts’ai
, the Distribution of Floating Riches. All the landlords’ clothes, furniture and household goods had been concentrated in Han T’ing-pang’s courtyard because it was the most spacious. “Better have a look—these mud-pies have probably made a botch of it,” Chang said. They hurried over to see.

The courtyard was like a bazaar. Chairs and tables were piled together, and earthenware jars of all sizes, wooden buckets, wooden basins, padded blankets, brooms, wooden boards for chopping meat and vegetables, tiered baskets for steaming bread, mats for the
k’ang
trimmed with blue or black cloth. All the articles were soaked through with a deep dark indoor odor from years and even centuries of usage, so that they smelled strange under the blue sky and sun. The jostling, sweating crowd milled around, breathing garlic. “Ai,” Liu thought. “Even when they have nothing else to eat, these bumpkins always stink of the stuff.”

Amid the great din and confusion the Land Reform Workers were busy examining papers, affixing seals, handing out articles. The original idea had been that the People should draw lots for everything. But Go Forward Pao said, “The thing a person draws may not be what he needs. Our motto should be:
ch’üeh sha, pu sh
a
;
Supply Whatever is Lacking.” So they asked every family to fill out a form listing in order of urgency the things that they needed most. Every case came up for discussion at the unit meeting. The unit then decided what to give in each case and issued a paper to be exchanged for the piece of goods. Thus the situation remained open to the manipulation of a few
kan-pu
. Some of the People complained behind their backs, “If we’d known it’s going to be like this, we’d have voted for drawing lots, then trade around. That’s the fairest way, after all.” But there weren’t many saying that. The majority were philosophical about it. “It’s not so bad, considering that you’re getting something for nothing,” they said.

Liu saw Su Nan standing in a mat booth distributing padded blankets. Hsia Feng-ch’un, the Party Branch Office Propagandizer, got one of green cloth printed with small, starry white blossoms. He was distressed to find it quite old and worn and insisted on giving it back and getting one of his own choice. Su Nan refused to take it back. He argued endlessly and was getting crimson in the face and neck. Liu waited by the booth for a long time. He was anxious to tell her that he would be leaving in a day or two. But she wasn’t free to talk to him and finally he had to walk away.

A farmer pushed by him holding a clock of imitation black marble with the minute hand missing. Some of his neighbors were admiring it but the man kept shaking his head helplessly, with a tinge of sarcasm in his smile. The farmers always had been contemptuous of this kind of gimcrack. Maybe it was partly out of self defense because they could not afford such luxuries. What they really coveted were the good strong plows, the spades and kitchen knives, the pots and pans and big jars.

Liu saw Sun Fu-kuei coming with a bamboo pole and ropes, happily stringing up a huge brown jar and carrying it away on his flat-pole. The jar looked familiar to Liu. A bit of the blue-green glaze on the rim had been chipped off. It must be the Tangs’ water jar. When he saw Sun squatting before it on the ground, tying the thick ropes crisscross around it, he could not help remembering that time Erh Niu had looked into the water at her own reflection and the pink flower in her hair had fallen into the water. Then he thought of T’ang Yü-hai coming back from the fields, dipping water out of the jar, drinking from the gourd dipper and spitting it out to wash his hands. Where is T’ang Yü-hai now, he thought. Here somebody is going off with his jar.