Naked Earth (30 page)

“You’re just being polite.” She looked down at her crossed arms. Pinpoints of cotton wool were escaping through the dark blue cloth all over her padded sleeves. She started to pluck them off. “Really my Standard is too low. Tell me the names of some books I could read. I wish I could improve myself a little.”

Liu cleared his throat slightly. “I don’t know—There must be a lot of new books published that are good. I’ve been so rushed lately, I haven’t touched a book for I don’t know how long.”

The bits of cotton wool that dotted her uniform seemed inexhaustible. She went on plucking them, her head lowered. Then she said, “I’m going to be transferred to the Public Security Bureau, Yangtzepoo branch.”

Whether that meant a demotion or not, he knew that the life of a policewoman was hard. “Can you take your children with you?” he said.

She shook her head. “Nobody to look after them there, and I wouldn’t have time for them myself. I’m going to send them to their grandmother in the country.”

“That’s good. Then you won’t have any worries. You can devote yourself to your work.” He could not think of what else to say to cheer her up.

After another pause she got up, flashing one of her usual Party smiles at him. “I’ve got to go now. Come and see me when you have time. I heard that you’re progressing very fast. I’m sure I could learn a lot from you.”

She shook hands and said again, “Be sure to come and see me in Yangtzepoo. Any time you’re free.” Her eyes were bright under the seemingly rouged lids. There was an expression in them which he did not want to admit he had seen.

After she was gone he waited for Su Nan downstairs. He wished Su Nan would come. It was quarter past eight now. If she was not here within ten minutes they wouldn’t be able to make the eight-thirty show. That would mean she wouldn’t be coming. He hoped she could make it. If she was here he would not feel so unsettled, troubled by doubts about all human relations.

“Comrade Liu.”

He looked up from his newspaper and saw a policeman standing at the door. “Yes?” he said, putting down his paper and getting to his feet.

“You are Liu Ch’üan?” the policeman said, dispensing with the “comrade” and the pleasant smile now that he was sure it was Liu.

“Yes.”

The man came into the room followed by two other armed policemen. “Please come with us to the Public Security Bureau for a talk.”

“Why? What have I done that’s against the law?”

“
Tsou, Tsou!
Come on, come on! You’ll know when you get there.”

“Is this an arrest?”

“
Tsou, tsou!
” They had surrounded him and were giving him impatient little pushes.

So Liu walked out of the room at the head of the group, with two of the yellow-clad men stepping closely behind him. It was not long after supper. The narrow passage still smelled of vegetable oil. The electric light was murky yellow against the crimson-painted wooden panelling under the slope of the staircase. He was aware of faces hanging over the rail on the steep stairs, mutely watching him going.

He was still surrounded by that aura of humdrum everyday living that nothing could ever seem to penetrate, impregnable alike to tragedy or great strokes of luck. What was happening to him just did not seem real. Otherwise he was clear-headed and calm enough. He felt his heart, all flattened out inside him, stretching away to great distances and swept clean and empty by the winds in anticipation of some terrible feeling which never came.

He looked for Su Nan when he went out the back door and into the car parked outside, in case she came just in time to see him off. She was not there.

THE FACES
were still hanging over the staircase rail like drab yellow flowers on some creeper. They were staring down at the coolie who was standing in the lamplight below, telling them exactly how it had happened, how the police had walked in and asked for Comrade Liu. “No, they had not said why. Just asked if Comrade Liu Ch’üan was here.”

The faces wavered like flat yellow flowers in a breeze, turned vacantly to each other and again turned away, making rustling, leafy murmurs. They stared down mutely with just as much concentration when the coolie repeated his story for the ninth time, but for variation, started with what he had been doing when the bell rang.

He had left the back door open as a gesture of non-resistance, in case the raid was not over yet and they came back for somebody else. So when Su Nan came, she walked straight in through the empty kitchen. She had never been to Liu’s hostel before and thought it quite a feat that she had managed to read the number plate in the dark alley. But she stopped, a little startled by all the blank, still faces turned toward her from all levels, up and down the stairs, in the golden dusk of the passage.

“Is Comrade Liu home?” she asked.

Nobody stirred, but the unmistakable feeling of having said something shocking came over her at once. She looked at the men, wondering dumbly if she had come into the wrong house. Then she saw Chang’s face among them. He was slow in recognizing her, probably because he had never expected to see her in Shanghai.

“Yieh!” he exclaimed eventually. “When did you come down south, Comrade Su? You remember me?” He came downstairs smiling. “We worked on the Land Reform together.”

“But of course, Comrade Chang,” Su Nan said smiling. “How are you?” There was no longer any reason why she and Liu should keep their relations secret from Chang. Still, she had an irrational dislike of letting him know, feeling it would invite trouble.

“Where are you working now?” Then he said, “Well, this is a surprise! Had no idea you were in Shanghai.” He frowned and lowered his voice. “You’re looking for Liu Ch’üan? Just now some people came from the Public Security Bureau, asked him to go and have a talk. He went with them just a few minutes ago.”

“They—they didn’t say why?” she stammered.

“No. That’s just what we were wondering. Have you any idea?” he suddenly fixed her with a keen eye. “Any clues?”

“No, I haven’t the faintest idea. This is very unexpected.”

“You know him quite well, don’t you? Kept in touch ever since the Land Reform? Really, I had no idea,” he said with a curious smile. “That Liu certainly kept things to himself.” Then he added, to cover up, “Like this time—nobody could imagine what they want him for.”

“This is so unexpected,” she murmured, realizing that it was no use talking to Chang. He must be quite angry now, feeling cheated because she and Liu had got together right under his nose while he himself had got nowhere with her. “Well, I’ll be going now,” she said.

“Where are you staying? Have you got a telephone? I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

She extricated herself in such a hurry that she knew it looked as if she were afraid of being drawn into the case. Which was just as well.

It wouldn’t be much use anyhow, to try and get information from Liu’s own unit. She understood that things had been in a state of confusion there ever since the responsible
kan-pu
, Ts’ui P’ing, had been executed. But Liu had been stationed at the
Liberation Daily News
for some time. Perhaps she could get some help there.

Lucky that newspapers work at night, she thought. And it was early yet. On her way to the bus station as she passed a brightly lit fruit shop she turned and glanced automatically at the grandfather clock that almost every shop has on its wall. Instead she saw the round white face of the weighing machine hung in mid-air under the blue-white glare of fluorescent light. Hurrying by, she shook off the momentary shock of thinking that the needle pointing upward at zero was both hands of the clock pointing straight up at twelve. She would not have been really surprised if it was already midnight. It seemed such a long time since she had started out to meet Liu for the eight-thirty show.

At the newspaper office she asked for Ko Shan. She did not know anybody else there, and though she had only seen Ko Shan for a few minutes at the Native Products Exhibition, Liu seemed to know her quite well. And being an old
kan-pu
the woman might have useful connections.

Waiting outside the waist-high partitions, she saw Ko Shan get up from her desk across the large room. The office was working full force but as in all other organizations during the Three Antis, somehow it looked deserted. Like a closed-down department store it echoed from silence, bleakly uncluttered and gray with dust. Except that there was also a feeling that the slightest motion in this glassed-in cold twilight of an aquarium did not escape observation.

Ko Shan did not seem very pleased to see her, which was to be expected. Nobody welcomed visitors these days. When Su Nan had told her about Liu she said the usual thing about its being most unexpected.

“We know nothing about this,” she said. “He’s been with us for several months, but his organizational connections haven’t been transferred here permanently. It’s true that he was brought in on our Three-Anti Mass Meetings. But he was cleared all right. At our end.”

“I know I shouldn’t impose on you like this, Comrade Ko. But you see, he has very few friends here in Shanghai. And I’m new here; I don’t know anybody.”

“I wish I could be of help,” Ko Shan said, “but as far as I know, the only thing to do in a case like this is to wait. If there’s been a mistake, he’ll be out in no time.”

Su Nan went on speaking at some length. Then she noticed the whining creak of the waist-high swinging door she had been pushing back and forth while talking. People were looking at the two of them standing by the partition. Ko Shan had not asked her to step inside and take a seat beside her desk.

She stopped suddenly, apologized again for intruding and said goodbye.

But once outside the building she began to wonder if it was not because she had approached Ko Shan so publicly. Even if she had been disposed to help, she wouldn’t want to say anything with people around.

She decided to wait for her to come out after work. It would not be for another two or three hours but there was always the possibility that she might leave before that on some business and not come back. Su Nan thought she had better wait within sight of the entrance to the building. She wandered to the bus stop on the next block, stood around for a while and walked slowly back, holding the end of her scarf against her mouth. Lucky there was no policeman about, she thought. It savored of sabotage to loiter around the Party newspaper office on a freezing night like this. The pocked concrete pavement shimmered brownly, wet with melted snow. The few men who passed by glanced at her suspiciously but there was no danger of her being mistaken for a streetwalker. Although these women had taken to dowdy clothes as protective coloring, they drew the line at wearing uniforms. In spite of the fact that women as well as men were wearing them now, there was still something faintly official about the uniform which would scare prospective clients off.

On the way there was a little temple, tiny, low and squat between a bank and a store. She thought it was funny having a temple here right in the business center. She could just make out the five gilt characters on the scarlet signboard, “
Pao An Ssu-t’u Miao;
the Temple of the Minister of the Interior, Guardian of Safety”—some good mandarin deified after his death, probably. The wooden gate with its scarlet painted bars was closed for the night. But pin-points of firelight dotted the bottom rail. Sticks of incense stood in a little hole drilled in the sail, put there by worshippers. In the stifling cold of the night the incense was odorless and fumeless, nothing but a row of crimson glowing dots close to the ground.

Like many other things in the city, the temples would be allowed to function as usual until some new movement turned the spotlight on them. Perhaps now of all times, with the Five Antis on, the superstitious had need of their gods, Su Nan thought. Though she doubted that anybody really believed the gods could do much. Some new dark destiny had pushed them to the sidelines, reducing them to the role of vague, good-natured elders who might be prevailed upon to put in a kind word or two on your behalf. It might or might not work, but it was something to do when all else had failed you. And it would seem that gods also improved with adversity. Purged now of all their jealous wrath and vengeful fury, their all-too-human vanity and possessiveness, they had become at last mere kindly spirits, tolerant of all sins, even that of disbelief—the hardest to forgive.

Somebody had planted his incense stick in the snow on the top rail because there was no room at the bottom. The snow had piled thick there, wedged in at the corner at the end of the bar. But it was beginning to melt. Su Nan stopped by the gate and reached up to straighten the brittle, thin brown stick which looked as if it was about to topple over. For the first time in her life she came near to understanding why so many people clung to their mild, ineffectual idols. She carefully patted the snow into a hard mound. It was stinging cold and she was weeping.

She went back and forth along the block for the next two hours. Finally there was a dribble of newspaper-workers coming out. She spotted Ko Shan from a long way off. Instead of accosting her she followed her for a little distance until they were alone.

“Comrade Ko,” she whispered, catching up with her.

Ko Shan had apparently thought it was a colleague “Comrade Su!” she exclaimed in a low voice. “Why, have you been here all this time? You must be frozen!” she said half laughing.

“It’s not so cold if you keep walking.”

After a pause Su Nan said, “I’m awfully sorry I came in just like that and talked such a lot in front of everybody. It was so thoughtless of me.”

“No, no, that’s perfectly all right. We’re all colleagues there. And although Liu Ch’üan hasn’t been with us long, we all feel concerned. Naturally.”

Su Nan was silent. After they had walked on for a bit she asked, “Do you live in a hostel?”

“No, I live by myself.”

“Is it far?” She wondered if Ko Shan might let her come home with her even if it was late. This was no place to talk.

“Quite a distance from here. I’ll have to take a pedicab.”