Naked Earth (26 page)

Liu took off his cap and put it on the table. “I want to talk to you,” he said without turning round. “About us. I’m awfully sorry. Really I am.”

“What for?” she said smiling. “It’s all a matter of inclination. When I think of you, I phone you. When you think of me you come and see me. That’s all there is to it.”

“I came to talk to you,” he hastened to correct her.

“All right, let’s talk. Who’s stopping you? Come sit over here.”

He eyed the indicated spot on the edge of her bed with some nervousness. “Aren’t you getting up?”

“Yes, but when I’m up I’ve got to run. I haven’t got all day.”

He leaned on the window-sill looking down into the alley. It was autumn now. Already there was a frosty note in the peddlers’ calls in the dusk and in the shouting and thrilled, frightened laughter of children chasing each other.

“What’re you looking so miserable for?” Ko Shan said. “Quarrelled with your Comrade Su or something?”

He smiled slightly.

“Was she suspicious?” she asked. “That day at the exhibition.”

“No, she didn’t guess anything.” When Liu turned round to speak to her he preferred to look into the wardrobe mirror facing her bed. Some clothes thrown over the back of a chair happened to block off part of her reflection, showing little more than her head. The mirror’s surface was the only bright thing in the room.

“Some women are dumb,” Ko Shan said with some annoyance. Then Liu saw the shadow of a second thought cross her face, and he knew that she was thinking the same thing as he did, that Su Nan had not suspected because Ko Shan was much older than he. She turned and glanced quickly at herself in the mirror. For a moment she looked like somebody who had seen a ghost peering in at a window. The next minute she had sat up and snatched the clothes off the chair back which had modestly screened her from the neck down. Her nakedness flashed palely in the mirror. She looked at herself again with evident satisfaction and started to dress, but very slowly.

Liu said, resolutely keeping his eyes on her face, “But it’s got nothing to do with her—you see that, don’t you? Her being here or not makes no difference. It was all over between us before she came.”

She glanced at him. “Oh, you mean we had a quarrel,” she said smiling.

“No, it’s not that.” Then he said, “No use going into that now.”

“You don’t look so happy,” she said, looking at him. “What’s wrong? How far have you gone with her?”

He flushed with sudden anger. “We’re pure.” He felt bitterly sorry toward Su Nan for subjecting her to this outrage.

“Don’t lie,” Ko Shan said half laughing. “A year ago, maybe. But you’re getting to be so bad now, you’re not going to be such a fool as that. I happen to know how bad you are.” The provocatively plaintive note had entered her voice and she half glared at him from the corner of her eyes.

He was so angry he could not speak. He hated her because what she said about him was true. He did want Su so badly. He was angry with himself for his wavering, and with Su Nan too for making it impossible for him ever to tell her any of this.

Ko Shan stood up, stepping into her shoes. All she had on was the dark serge jacket of her uniform. The pale legs looked helpless, the way the frail ankles came out of the heavy black walking shoes with shoelaces trailing on the floor. She came and leaned against him.

“We’re through,” he said.

“Are we?” she laughed softly, nuzzling him. “Are we? I didn’t know.”

Between him and the cool plumpness of her bare thighs there were his serge trousers, feeling now like the dull gray veil of sleep that gives the best of dreams a kind of gloved feeling—frustratingly vague and not quite real. Struggling against that feeling he put his hand on her leg. The breath of autumn was cold on her thigh. And his hand was there, as inevitable and certain and reassuring as the return of the seasons.

“Don’t you ever think of me, sometimes?” she whispered.

He would never be able to break things off if he were to give in now. It would not be fair to her either, using her as a whore when he was yearning for someone else he could not have. Though probably she wouldn’t mind. His hand passed from the delicious coolness into the mild warmth under her loose jacket, sliding up the incurving waist along her back, heavy-hearted, lingering.

Then he broke away abruptly. “No.” He hesitated a moment, thinking of going. “But I’ve got to explain to you before I go,” he said.

“There’s no need to, I told you.” She turned away disgustedly. “A man might talk himself into a woman, but he can’t talk himself out of her. You bribe your way out or just walk out. Talking won’t do you any good.” She picked up his cap from the table and held it out to him as she went on talking loud and fast. “Unless you’re hoping to make a big enough bore of yourself so I’ll drop you. As if I wasn’t fed up enough as it is—you and your crazy fits and your jealous tantrums!”

He did not take the cap quick enough. She had already lost patience and just tossed it out the window. “Now quick! Get it!” she said laughing, in the tone people use when they tell a dog to fetch back a twig.

The cap fell out of sight suddenly; watching it Liu felt his insides sink as if he was in an elevator going down too fast. Then he was walking in the alley picking it up from the dry gutter.

Perhaps at the end of anything there was a little of that end-of-the-world feeling. He did not know about her, except that she was very angry. That he knew. Dully he clung to the thought, not necessarily because it soothed his ego. It was the one clearly formed feeling that cut through the crumpled, soiled tangle in him, dirty clothes stuffed into a bursting trunk.

OVERNIGHT
the nation-wide Campaign for Increased Production and Economy had changed into the Three-Anti Movement, anti-corruption, anti-waste, anti-bureaucratism. Probably, Liu thought, because the drive for greater economy had brought to light many cases of corruption and wasteful spending among the
kan-pu
, the new movement promised to be an ordeal for all
kan-pu
, great and small. But, reading about it in the
Liberation Daily News
, Liu couldn’t help think that the more ominous it sounded the more hopes there were of great changes and a new start. And perhaps even faster advancement for those
kan-pu
who could show a clean slate. His own record would stand up under investigation, Liu was quite sure. Perhaps there was nothing wrong with the regime that could not be righted by a thorough housecleaning.

Early in December the government began to pick out “politically pure, non-proletarian-origined, non-Party-member
kan-pu
” to attend a special class for the study of the policy of the Three Antis. Liu’s name was on the list. He moved into the Organizing Department of the City Government, bringing his own bedding roll, and lived there for three weeks. Like a boarding school, he thought.

At the end of the course he returned to his own unit to propagate the principles of the Three Antis in evening classes and unit meetings, preparing everybody for what was coming. Then he was sent down to the headquarters of the movement—the old Committee for Increased Production and Economy—to assist in the examination of material. Now thousands of letters were pouring in every day informing against guilty
kan-pu
. It seemed that the vengeful fury of the public had proved to be stronger than their scruples. The contents of some of the letters Liu read stunned him—bribery and falsified accounts amounting to billions of JMP, the investment of embezzled funds in private enterprises, army officers getting the pay of large numbers of non-existent soldiers. In his blackest moments he had not guessed that things were as bad as that. But how much could he believe of those charges? Ch’en I, the mayor of Shanghai, had said encouragingly at the start of the movement, “Charges need only be 5 per cent correct.”

His job was to sort out the letters of denunciation, refer the important ones to his unit leader, file the rest and keep his mouth shut. But the sense of responsibility did him good. The government was drawing on young
kan-pu
like him for the “front-line operations of the Three Antis.” He and his comrades were newcomers who hadn’t had time to form strong connections with any one clique and would be less inclined to shield anybody. Officially it was put like this: these young
kan-pu
were “politically pure, essentially good, but often vacillating in thought and infirm in their standpoint, and could do with being tested and trained in the firing line of the Three Antis.” It made Liu happy too, to have his status so aptly defined. It was reassuring to know that there were many others like him. Perhaps the rebellious moods he felt so guilty about could be merely symptoms of an awkward stage in his development, and nothing escaped the all-seeing, all-compassionate eye of the Party.

After two weeks at headquarters he was given three days’ leave in order to take part in the mass confessional meeting at the newspaper office. Under the new “queue-up system” all the names, from the leading
kan-pu’
s
down to the office coolies’, had been listed, in a row. One by one they walked to the platform, made a confession and subjected themselves to group discussion.

Liu was lucky that his work had never required or entitled him to handle money. And his position had been too low to afford him the remotest opportunity for taking bribes. Since he got paid under the Supply System instead of in cash, he had no savings and never sent money home. Alone in Shanghai, he was free from all suspicion of ganging up with capitalists. Still, when his turn came there was no lack of attackers who shouted accusations at him, clapping all kinds of “hats” on his head—individual hero-ist, bureaucrat, saboteur of public property, among other things.

Liu had learned some useful tips in his studies of the Three Antis. Ch’en I had said in one of his speeches, “The struggle of the Three Antis will strike like a violent storm, assailing everybody, both the good and the bad. Only thus can we make certain who might survive and who must be exterminated.” He had quoted this to Su Nan again and again so she wouldn’t be so nervous when her time came. But it wasn’t so easy to remember this when he himself was standing up on the platform besieged by howling voices. They were merely putting up a good show, he kept telling himself, and he must not lose his head or his temper. He managed to keep silent and look pleasant, taking notes all the time, until his accusers had run out of abuse. Then he pleaded guilty to roughly half of the charges, carefully choosing the less serious ones. The audience expressed dissatisfaction as a matter of course. He made one or two amendments, scolding himself bitterly for holding back. And they let him pass.

Several other people went up on the platform before it was Ko Shan’s turn. When her name was called and she stood up before the crowd to account for herself, Liu found that the palms of his hands had unaccountably started sweating. He felt the collar of his jacket wet against the back of his neck. But she made a good strong speech exposing her State of Thought, glibly accusing herself of Deserving Official-ism, Pleasure Viewpoint, a Tendency toward Extravagance, a Free and Rambling Style of Behavior and a Rough-Branch-Big-Leaf Style of work (a phrase borrowed from Chinese painting, meaning carelessness).

Somebody shouted, “These are nothing but chicken feathers and garlic peels—the merest trifles!”

“Yes, you’re avoiding the big issues!” a woman called out.

Then a man stood up in the back rows to call out, “Comrade Ko Shan! Everybody knows that you’re depraved and corrupted! Your private life is not solemn. You’re still setting up those abnormal man-woman relations of the old society. Isn’t it time that you make a real confession?”

“We’ll set her right today if it’s the last thing we do.” an angry voice boomed out.

“Got to fell her in the Struggle!” echoed another voice.

“And she’s a Party member too!”

“Beat down Depraved Elements! Purify the ranks of the Party!

Still smiling, Ko Shan tucked the cuff of her thick scarlet knitted sweater further inside the sleeve of her Lenin suit. It had been showing a little. She waited till the angry babel had died down. “I accept completely the criticism brought forward to me,” her voice rang out. “I have nothing to say in my own defense. I feel very much ashamed that even now—after so many years spent in the very nucleus of the struggle—even now there still exist in my consciousness certain bad traits of the petit-bourgeois. I have this Tendency toward Freedom and Looseness. And then when I fought in the guerillas I got into the Guerilla Style of behavior. Ever since then I’ve found it hard to Regularize my life. Now the matter of man-woman relations. My starting point was comradely love. But, it has gone out of bounds and has led to Obscure Behavior. I’m a Party member and yet, instead of setting an example before the Masses, I’m sabotaging the Party’s prestige. I deserve to be penalized most severely, but I still hope that all of you will consider giving me a second chance. In that case I will happily wash off the dirt on my body and voluntarily undergo a thorough self-reform.”

It was such a fine speech that there was a moment of silence after she had finished. Then somebody shouted, “
Pu hsing! Pu hsing!
Won’t do! Won’t do! Confession not concrete enough!”

“Who has Obscure Relations with you?
T’an-pai
, confess, quick!”
T’an-pai! T’an-pai!
Give us the name! Quick!”

Liu had been fidgety at the very start of the attack on Ko Shan. Now he was very tense. It was no use telling himself that he was not the only one who had been on intimate terms with her, that she did not really hate him, since it had been of little importance to her. Even if she had been angry and hurt at the time, she had had time to cool off—it had been months ago. She could have revenged herself on him before now if she had a mind to, couldn’t she? he argued desperately.

“
T’an-pai! T’an-pai!
” The shouts rose and fell around him like wind and rain, driving up in a sudden shrieking crescendo. The mass meeting had been going on for three hours. The crowded meeting-hall smelled close and stuffy. But the tired congregation were temporarily revived by this injection of new excitement, Liu told himself. Smart planning it was that brought Ko Shan to the platform now; Ko Shan, the woman some of them had had, and the woman so may others would have enjoyed having.