Naked Earth (7 page)

The Chairman of the Women’s Association also opened her mouth for the first time. “The wife’s got a new padded jacket too. Some real fancy cotton print.”

Amid eager chatter, a list of names was drawn up. T’ang Yü-hai’s name was among the first three. Although T’ang had no tenants and could not afford a regular hired man, there were several day laborers who had worked for him during the busy seasons. The Farmers’ Association summoned these men and mobilized them to Struggle against T’ang.

The men were all timid and quite speechless before the authorities. Except for Feng T’ien-you, who was one of the best stiltwalkers for miles around and had a commanding presence, his ruddy long face theatrically black-browed. He alone spoke up, with considerable hesitation, “I dare not lie in front of you comrades. I don’t know about T’ang, but when I worked for him, I ate what he ate. And there’s never been any trouble when it comes to getting paid.”

“Ai-yah, wake up, old Feng! Are you too dumb to know when you’re being exploited?” Pao said. “Just think, if he doesn’t exploit poor people, where did he get all his land from?

“That’s because his whole family has been working hard all these years. Men, women or children, they all go down to the fields to work. When his dad was alive he worked in the fields when he was well past seventy.”

“Don’t be so silly, old Feng. You’re defending those who ride on poor people’s necks and turning against your own brothers in poverty. Your elbows turn outward, eh?”

“It isn’t that, Comrade Pao. A man can’t do without a conscience. Old T’ang hasn’t treated me badly, considering. That year when my dad died, even my own granduncles and grandaunts refused to help, and it was he who lent me money to buy the coffin.”

“So that’s it!” Chang Li broke in. “He’s bought your heart with this bit of
hsiao en, hsiao hui
, petty favor, petty boon.”

“Don’t be so foolish,” Pao said. “What’s this petty favor, compared to what you’re really entitled to, if you settle your accounts with him? I won’t be surprised if he has to give you half of his land.”

Pao was quick to notice a slight nervous movement in Feng’s face that might mean a flicker of interest. “Now think it over, Feng T’ien-you,” he said heartily, slapping him on the shoulder. “Don’t be so dead-brained. It would seem that you’d rather die than be well off.”

Chang slapped him on the other shoulder. “Today is the day that your luck changes.”

“The world nowadays is the poor man’s world. The man who’s poor always has the last word, just as if he’s three generations older than everybody else,” Pao said. “You just go and make a row, and ask for the back wages that he must owe you. Don’t worry, the Government is right behind you.”

Feng hung his head and said nothing. But the other men with him started to mumble something about T’ang having given them less wages than was their due.

“You hear? You hear?” Pao said to Feng. “They’re talking. You’re the only one who still defends him, content to be his
kou t’ui-tzu
, dog’s leg.”

“Must have been bribed,” Chang said. “What did he give you?”

Feng cried out, “No, nothing! Whoever took anything from him, may his right hand rot if he took it with his right hand, may his left hand rot if he took it with his left hand!”

“Then why don’t you speak the truth?”

They pressed him further and Feng finally admitted haltingly that the money T’ang lent him was “
yen-wang ts’ai
, a loan from the king of hell.” A high rate of compound interest had been charged. So in recent years he had never got paid when he carried water for T’ang, padded loose earth over his land, repaired ditches and ground wheat and wheat-stalks for him.

Liu had been watching with smouldering indignation. Twice he had written a short note on a slip of paper, passing it to Chang. Each time Chang had crumpled it into a ball after glancing at it and stuffed it into his pocket, and had gone on with the questioning and prompting. Liu reminded himself that he could not speak out strongly for T’ang since he was staying in T’ang’s house and could very well be accused of having been bought or softened up. But in the end he could not stand it any more. “Comrade Chang,” he said, “I don’t hold with mobilizing the Masses in this manner. It doesn’t encourage them to tell the truth.”

“What do you mean?” Chang looked at him coldly. “We’re always talking of mobilizing The People, but when The People have really Risen, you don’t think we’re going to get frightened and try to gag them, are we? I tell you, nowadays nobody can gag The People when they choose to speak.”

Liu was about to speak again but Chang cut him short. “Comrade Liu, it seems that you have taken the wrong Class Route. You’re due for some Self-Examination. Think it over by yourself first. We’ll discuss your problem some other day.”

His last words were clearly a threat. Liu fell silent, and after that nobody else dared say anything.

When the meeting had ended and they were on their way back to the village, Su Nan caught up with Liu and whispered, “Really, it’s too undemocratic.”

At first Liu did not speak. Then he suddenly burst out furiously, “You saw what happened today. Anybody who so much as opened his mouth must be the landlord’s
kou t’ui-tzu
.”

“All right, all right, that’s enough,” another young man in the Corps whispered as he brushed past them. “If anybody should hear, they’ll say we’re Holding a Small Meeting.”

Su Nan hurried away without another word.

Liu lagged behind the others. He dreaded going back to the Tangs. If he should behave as if nothing had happened, he’d feel too hypocritical. But of course it was out of the question to tell them anything. On top of breaking the discipline of the Corps he would be committing the most serious crime of Sabotaging the Land Reform, punishable by death. Besides, what good would it do to warn them? The Tangs could not get away from the village and even if they could, they had nowhere to go.

Liu walked slowly, taking the long way home past the ditch to the west of the village. The tall old willow by the ditch stood golden in the setting sun. The days were quiet now without the cicadas.

Somebody was squatting on the stone slab across the narrow ditch, washing clothes. Liu took no notice of the flowered purple blouse and pants and did not realize that it was Erh Niu until he had come quite close. And then he was too stunned to turn round, but went on walking toward her.

He stood on the bank, only a few steps away from her, but he did not look at her. Instead he looked down into the thickly flowing water, specked with pale bits of straw. Long wisps of yellow mud trailed sluggishly in the current, like half-beaten egg-yolk floating in the egg-white.

Erh Niu had seen his reflection in the water. She pretended not to notice, waiting for him to address her. But for what seemed to be a long time, he just stood a little way from her looking downward, saying nothing. At first she felt surprised, then she started to blush. With the passing of each mute second she got redder and redder. The short rod she was pounding clothes with continued to rise and fall with mechanical rhythm. Then she gave a little scream. The rod had slipped out of her hand and was bobbing and pivoting very fast in the water, a slim cylindrical fish that was both stupid and incredibly agile as it swam swiftly downstream.

She made no movement to retrieve it but her cry had wakened Liu. He stepped off the bank, wading after it. Though the water was shallow, there was a strong current and his movements were too abrupt. He almost lost his balance but he managed to get hold of the rod.

When he staggered back and climbed up to shore, Erh Niu was standing sheepishly on the stone slab, at a loss for words. Seeing the water trickle down from his trouser legs in a hundred shining threads, she just exclaimed, “Ai-yah, look at that! Look at that!” by way of apology. She didn’t seem to notice that the water in the lumped up wet clothes she held in her arms was also dripping onto her feet.

“It doesn’t matter.” Liu handed the rod back to her and bent down to wring out his trouser legs. The wet cloth had turned a deep gray.

“Look at that!” Like all northern country people Erh Niu had a horror of getting wet, probably through a very limited acquaintance with rain or any other kind of water. “And there’s nothing to change into. I just washed your other suit.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’ll get dry soon.” He nodded and turned to go. “I’ll go home first, then.”

This time he walked fast because the wet trousers clung icily to his legs and the wind was a bit cold after sundown. The mud at the bottom of the ditch had stuck to his rubber soles, making a thick padding through which he felt the ground giving way softly under his feet at every step. It gave him an uncomfortably befogged feeling.

Inside the village wall he came across two other members of the Corps in the lane.

“What’s the matter with you?” they asked in astonishment. “Fallen into the creek?”

He nodded vaguely. If he told them that he had been helping a girl to get back her rod for pounding clothes, they would be sure to make fun of him.

“How did you fall into the creek?”

“My feet slipped,” he said briefly. “Lucky the water isn’t deep.”

“Such a joke!” One of the young men giggled and whispered, “If anybody around here should go jumping into the river, it ought to be the landlords instead of you, the land-reformer.”

Liu had to join in the laughter.

When he came back to the T’angs’ house, T’ang’s wife also exclaimed as soon as she saw him, “What happened?”

He was going to tell her, but then he thought of her habitual dread of any man in uniform paying special attention to her daughter. There was no point in getting her into a state. “I slipped and fell into the ditch,” he said.

“Ai-yah, you didn’t get hurt anywhere, did you?” she said. “Quick, go and dry yourself before the stove. You’ll catch cold.”

T’ang Yü-hai came back from work. He put down his hoe, went and lifted the cover off the water jar and drank from the half-gourd dipper. He dipped again and this time he held the water in his mouth and spat it on his grimy hands, rubbing them together.

He didn’t seem to be paying much attention when his wife told him about Liu falling into the ditch. He took his time washing his hands with a few mouthfuls of water, then wiped them across his sleeveless white blouse, leaving long yellow mud streaks.

His wife in turn grew silent. Liu shuffled his feet uneasily, standing before the stove. The water in one of his rubber shoes gave an embarrassing little squeak.

T’ang took his long pipe from a niche-like recess in the mud wall. He stuck his pipe into the stove to light it, then he dragged a bench over and sat down to smoke, hunched forward and staring vacantly before him.

He’d had an argument with his wife today. There were a lot of rumors in the village these few days and many Rich Farmers and Middling Farmers were feeling jittery and trying to give their land to the government. T’ang’s wife had tried to persuade him to offer half of his land to the government. He had said nothing.

“What else can we do?” she had said. “You feel pained—don’t I feel pained? Bought it acre by acre, and now, handing it out in a huge big piece.”

At this she had started to cry and said, “Ai! Not that I’m blaming you, but really—it’s not worth it. All your life you’ve stinted on food and stinted on clothes. All you want is to buy land. And last spring, to buy that piece of land from the Kengs, you had to borrow all that grain—two hundred catties. You haven’t paid that back yet and look what’s happened now!”

Sighing and nagging in an even strain, she had brought out the little wooden box where they kept the land deeds and again the tears had streamed down her face. “In the old days we just wrapped them up with a piece of rag. Then later when we’d got more of them we wrapped them with mulberry-bark paper and then made a little cloth parcel. Then you made this box and I said even then, ‘What for? We’re not like those rich people with their special blackwood box for land deeds.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s this box that’s brought us bad luck—not that I’m blaming you.”

He had just sat there without speaking. When she had sorted out the land deeds and had again put pressure on him to go to the co-operative store and offer them to the government, he had simply stood up, taken his hoe and carrying it on one shoulder had gone down to the field to work.

Now it was evening and everybody was home. His wife was thinking that as long as Liu was here, they might as well try to worm some information out of him. So she said to her husband after a longish silence, “Ai! Such a lot of things are being said in the village these days. Really, you don’t know who to believe. But what I say is: ‘Don’t you worry, Erh Niu
t’a tieh
. It’s got nothing to do with us. We’ve slaved hard all our lives and have nothing to show for it except those few acres of land. It’s scarcely been three days since we started to eat full meals. Whoever they’re going to Struggle with, it won’t be us, I tell you. Who do you think you are?’”

Though she was addressing her husband, her eyes rested on Liu. Liu remained standing before the stove with his back turned to her.

“Didn’t Comrade Liu tell you not to worry?” the woman said to her husband. “He said it’s got nothing to do with us.”

She meant to engage her husband in conversation and maybe start an argument, forcing Liu to comment on the subject. However, such subtleties were well over T’ang’s head. Even when she coughed and winked at him he failed to take notice. He just sat smoking in silence. When she had gone on talking alone for some time, she had to stop.

Erh Niu brought her washing home. T’ang’s wife was kneading flour. Affecting an air of solicitude but obviously regarding it as a diverting piece of news, she told her daughter about Liu falling into the ditch. Erh Niu could not help letting out a giggle as she turned to glance at Liu. He was in no mood for secret jokes but he had to return her smile as their eyes met. It was probably the consciousness of having a secret between them that made her quickly turn her head the other direction and give way to half smothered giggles.