Naked Earth (29 page)

Ts’ui should have remembered the old saying about “hitting a rock with an egg.” Had Ts’ui been hoping that the letter would fall into the hands of one of Ch’en’s political rivals? Or had he believed in the inviolability of all the incoming letters during the Three Antis? Liu could not blame him for swallowing his own Party’s propaganda, since Liu had more or less believed in that himself at the start of the movement.

And Ts’ui could not have foreseen that the tide was already turning. Two of the leaders of the Three Antis down east had been penalized for overdoing things—Jao Shu-shih (purged in 1955 for conspiring with Kao Kang in anti-Party activities), chairman of the East China Military Executive Committee, and Liu Hsiao, chairman of the People’s Supervisory Committee. Too anxious to get results they had discharged large numbers of high-ranking
kan-pu
, “sapping the Party’s fighting strength.” At the latest mass meeting of
kan-pu
working on the Three Antis, Jao and Liu had not been sitting at their usual places on the platform. Nor had they appeared anywhere else since. Everyone wondered. Then there were whispers that plump, moustachioed Jao had been called back to Peking to study at the Marx-Lenin Academy. Liu Hsiao had been relieved of his duties as Vice-president of the Committee for Increased Production and Economy, and was therefore no longer in charge of the Three Antis.

Peking must have felt alarmed at the amount of letters pouring in exposing corrupt
kan-pu
. With the new change in policy the public’s enthusiasm had boomeranged. So now the government was putting the blame on the businessmen for corrupting the
kan-pu
. A new Five-Anti Movement was launched against merchants, factory and shop-owners. Shanghai was in a turmoil from the initial fury of the new movement. But like millions of other
kan-pu
Liu was drawing his breath more easily these days. The thunder was rolling away from above his head.

One evening when he returned from work he found that Chang had come back to the hostel. After two weeks of nightly discussions and questioning Chang had admitted with tears of shame and repentance that ever since he came to Shanghai his thought had undergone a change in quality. Aside from his Obscure Relations with Ko Shan he had visited cabarets from time to time to “censure the putrid life of the capitalistic class.” Two cabaret girls had seduced him. He had money because he got commissions from the printing presses and paper dealers he was in contact with. But as such things seldom came his way, the total sum did not amount to very much. The Party unit had his confession sent out as a circular, posted on the wall newspaper everywhere, attaching to it their conclusion: “He was saved at last under the education of the Communist Party.” Because his confession had been thorough he was promoted one grade. “We will test him in work and hardship,” promised the Organization.

Though it had all ended happily for Chang, on his return he looked thin and worn. Liu congratulated him, thinking that this was not the only case he had seen recently in which the Party had taken care of its own. Whenever a Party member was incriminated they always made a big fuss in the initial stages to impress the masses with their painful fairness. But in the end the punishment meted out was usually very light, often just a transfer.

Liu felt embarrassed talking to Chang because now he knew that Chang had known all along about Ko Shan and him. Wouldn’t Chang hate him? Chang wouldn’t have got into trouble if not for Ko Shan. And here he had stayed out of it all, because Ko Shan had shielded him.

He could detect no change in Chang’s manner toward him. Naturally Chang was a little subdued because he had been in disgrace. But he got quite excited over the news about Ts’ui and asked Liu a lot of questions. He probably wouldn’t be going to Comrade Ho for information now, though they had been such chums, Liu thought wryly.

Chang seemed eager to catch up on all that had happened during his absence. Altogether he seemed friendly. “These Party members,” Liu said to himself, “they really think nothing of man-woman relations.” Still, he did not sleep well that night in the same room with Chang.

It was not that he expected Chang to strangle him in his sleep. And yet he slept poorly night after night. Once when he was just dropping off toward dawn, he heard a thump down in the alley, followed by a thin scream. The sounds were not loud but they came to him greatly magnified by the fuzzy waves of sleep lapping over him. He started, wide awake at once. For a while he heard nothing more. Then there were the voices of several people talking, hushed and sniffling with the cold.

There was more talking, shrill and agitated. Then footsteps shuffled away heavily and silence followed.

At breakfast the hostel coolie was full of news. “That widow who owned the corner cigarette shop jumped out of the window last night. From that hanging shed she lived in, across the mouth of the alley.” He had got the story from the watchman who had been the first to rush out when he heard the noise. “And he got scolded for his trouble,” the coolie said grinning. “There’s this woman
kan-pu
staying with the widow talking to her day and night telling her to
t’an-pai
. Set up a camp bed in her room. Wouldn’t let her come down or see anybody until she had confessed—tax evasion. Comes to hundreds of thousands, I heard. Last night this woman
kan-pu
just dozed off for a moment and this business happened. The
kan-pu
was so mad, she yelled at the watchman when she came down: ‘What business is it of yours that you’ve got to come running out so fast? So nosey! Now don’t go around blabbing!’ Gave him a good scolding. The watchman was so mad that he told the first person he saw.”

Liu was glad the body had been removed when he left for work. But he saw that a section of cement paving was wet from washing. The ground was crunchy and gritty, with bits of ice forming in the shadows under the hanging shed that bridged the alley.

The only house in the alley immune from the fevered campaign of the Five Antis was his hostel because its inmates were subject to the Three Antis. The Inhabitants’ Committee of this district was starting on the new drive for one hundred letters per alley informing on merchants, clerks, shopkeepers.

It snowed that day. Liu looked out of his window in the evening at the little houses opposite, the yellow-lit windows under the snow-covered roofs, the dark elbow of slushy lane turning round the end of the row. It looked like one of those foreign Christmas cards. And perhaps its peacefulness was not altogether deceptive, he thought, looking at a window where he could see a school-boy’s book bag hanging by its canvas strap on a nail. People had to carry on as usual, worries or no worries. And he knew from his own experience how your circle of concern could be drawn in smaller and smaller. He couldn’t honestly say he was much affected by the letters he received, telling of drastic messes some of his close relatives and friends had got into. A person’s heart could shrink and shrink indefinitely like a habitually starved stomach. It got so that there was never a sympathetic pang that was not mitigated by the gladness that it was not you it happened to.

“A woman comrade to see you, Comrade Liu!” the coolie called from downstairs.

That would be Su Nan. She had telephoned this afternoon to tell him that she had come through the Three Antis with an almost spotless record—the only one in her office to get that, presumably because she was comparatively new there and had not had time to commit any crimes. He had insisted on celebrating with a movie and she had promised to meet him at his hostel this evening if she could make it.

He was a bit stunned to find Ya-mei waiting for him in the sitting room downstairs. She had never been to the hostel before. People were bound to take notice. As it was, Liu felt worried lest people might think he was specially close to the Ts’uis since Ya-mei always ordered him around on little errands.

“Ai, Comrade Chu,” he greeted her, smiling. “Please sit down, sit down.” He felt awkward not knowing what to say about Ts’ui’s death.

Probably sensing his embarrassment, Ya-mei said at once with a smile, “Have you had supper? If you’re free now, can I trouble you to do something for me?”

There was a perky defiance in her tone as if she felt uncertain how she was going to be treated. It made him feel ashamed. “Of course,” he said quickly. “If it’s anything I can do—”

“I wrote a self-criticism. The Party Branch Office said they wanted to send it to the
Hsin Wen Jih Pao
,” she mentioned the name of the most widely read newspaper in Shanghai. “But you know my Standard of Culture.” She smiled at him. “The kind of thing I write is really not presentable. I wish you’d correct it for me.”

“You’re too modest. I’m no good at writing either,” Liu said smiling.

“If you’re going to be modest I’ll take it that you despise me and won’t help me,” she joked, her eyes suddenly filming over with tears.

Liu could not let her think that he was snubbing her because of her altered circumstances. He took the manuscript from her.

The title was “Traitor Ts’ui P’ing Poisoned My Mind.” She wrote forcefully and concisely. Some of the wording was not quite right but she had a good command of the Communist vocabulary.

“I’ll leave this here,” she said. “You can go over it when you’re free. I’ll come and get it another day.”

“No, it won’t take a minute,” he said hastily. He could not afford to have her calling again. “Fact is, it’s perfectly all right as it stands. But if you insist—”

After making a few alterations he read it over again. It said:

Until he had read her autobiographical account Liu had not realized that in her he had met the most ideal kind of Party member, whose background and origin were above reproach, who had inherited the inborn nobility of farmers and had never come into contact with any influence except that of the Party. And yet she was corrupted as soon as she came into the city and lived in comparative comfort in the manner of a middle-class housewife. Where was the proletarian firmness of standpoint that was always contrasted with the eternal vacillation of the petit-bourgeois?

Liu could not follow their line of reasoning. And somehow, knowing Ya-mei, he found it hard to think of her in such terms. Above all she was a country girl who had made good. Not much different from the country girl who was converted by some missionary, had her schooling paid for and a job ready for her. She might be a devout Christian but people would refer to her, in that awful barefaced Chinese way, as one who
ch’ih chiao
, eats religion. Likewise, Ya-mei was one who ate revolutionary rice.

She was such a practical person. Liu felt that was why she had “awakened” and turned against her husband as soon as she heard he was dead and she couldn’t do anything more to help him. He was struck again by the docile indifference of Party members, the nomadic fluidity of their lives. It had occurred to him when he saw the change in Ko Shan’s room after the Three Antis. Only this time he did not feel like laughing.

Ya-mei was sitting with arms crossed, both elbows propped up on the table, staring straight ahead. Under the lamplight her eyelids were red with weeping, as if heavily rouged.

He shouldn’t think harshly of her. As everybody knew, it had become a routine now—whenever a man was executed, some member of the family was required to submit an article denouncing him and expressing gratitude to the government for putting him to death. She had to write this for her own protection and her children’s. It was the only intelligent thing to do once Ts’ui’s fate was settled and he was beyond her help.

When he handed the paper back to her she read it over again before putting it away. “Now you see how low my Standard of Culture is,” she said with a slight smile.

“No, really, I was just going to tell you—you write very well.”