Naked Earth (9 page)

So he forced himself to turn back. Long before he came to the Tangs’ door he could hear the wife’s shrill whine penetrating the hubbub. “I beg you,
t’a yeh-men
, masters, do a good deed—let him off! All you masters are do-gooders, and we’re all neighbors here—”

“Don’t waste our time with all this silly chatter. Tell T’ang Yü-hai to come out quick!”

“Where is he? No use hiding—it’ll be adding crime upon crime. Tell him to come out quick!”

“Let’s search the house.”

The woman talked fast through her sobs. “Why do you want to arrest him? In the first place we’re not landlords. And in the second place we’ve always been law-abiding. The child’s dad has never done anything against his conscience in all his life. Ask around if you don’t believe me. All neighbors here—don’t you know about us?”

“Shout once more—” a man threatened her, “Shout once more and you’ll be tied up and taken along with us, too.”

“Comrade Liu!” Erh Niu’s voice cried out desperately. “Where’s Comrade Liu? Where’s Comrade Liu? Where’s Comrade Liu gone to?”

The first thing Liu saw when he came into the courtyard was Erh Niu. He also saw his uniform—after it had been smoothed out it had again been hung out to dry. Erh Niu had been frantically pulling at the sleeve of the uniform as if it were his arm.

Liu felt that he was the most despicable person in the world as he went up and took his pants off the washline, then reached for his tunic. As soon as Erh Niu saw him she dropped his sleeve guiltily. “Comrade Liu, save my dad!” she cried out. “You save my dad!”

“
T’a ma ti!
He’s gone up on the roof!” a militiaman was shouting. “
Tso t’a ma ti
, hit the son-of-a-bitch!” A gunshot banged.

“Help! Somebody’ll get killed!” Erh Niu forgot herself and grabbed Liu by the arm, shaking him hard, “Beg you! Beg you! Save my dad!”

Liu managed to wrench himself free. He tried to take his tunic off the washline but his hands were shaking and somehow it wouldn’t come off no matter how he pulled at it. He could not understand. It was the kind of thing that only happened in nightmares.

Then he realized that the tunic was all buttoned up in front so that it was strung securely along the line. He had to unbutton the whole row of buttons, with fingers that were clumsy from exasperation and anger with himself. He never looked at Erh Niu but he was aware of her bright stare, her face a pale blue mask in the moonlight, her eyes glittering stupidly like large silver beads hung suspended in the black peepholes of the mask.

“Roll down the roof to us while you can,” somebody yelled upward. “If you don’t come down at once we’ll shoot to kill! Send you home to your granny!”

Bang! Bang!
Another two shots. A crouching black shadow on the roof swayed into sight against the sky for the briefest instant before it came tumbling down. The crowd broke into a tumult and Erh Niu shrieked, “Dad! Dad!” as she pushed into their midst.

Liu made off with his uniform.

He identified himself for the sentry at the village gate and got out without much difficulty. Soon he was climbing the steps up the hill toward the school. It gave him a slight jar, even in his stunned state, to see that a pair of lanterns hung over the temple gate, lighting up the vertical white signboards. The vermillion doors silently ajar in the stillness of the night had a strange, expectant air. Nobody was at the gate, but when he went in he found the rooms brightly lit. Chang Li was still up and all the important
kan-pu
were there. They put him up in Chang’s room. Liu heard from them that all the arrested landlords would be locked up in the two dark rooms where the firewood was stacked, in the back courtyard of the temple. A few minutes later someone came along with the news that T’ang had only been hit in the arm by a bullet. Liu supposed that he felt more or less relieved to hear that. Altogether he did not quite know what he felt about playing the part of a clown in a tragedy. The next morning when he changed into his other uniform he found a button missing. He must have torn it off when he was trying to pull the tunic off the washline.

After breakfast T’ang’s wife came with a basket, bringing food for her husband. She insisted on seeing him, saying that she was worried about his wounds. When the militiamen refused to let her take the food in to him, she sat down on the ground and cried. Liu could hear her from across the courtyard. She was loudly blowing her nose, sobbing and bawling out, “People came and sealed everything up. Came early in the morning. Pasted a slip of paper on the cupboard, another slip on the rice ja
r...
Two rooms sealed up out of three. No matter how you kowtowed, begging them to paste a slip or two less, they stuck another one on the grindstone—even the salt jar and oil jar were sealed up!”

The day of the Great Struggle Meeting she was there early at the meeting-ground, weeping and kowtowing to every
kan-pu
in sight. “All neighbors. All neighbors for over twenty years,” she said. “You just have to lift your hand a little, and he’ll pass through. Do a good deed—
k’uan-ta, k’uan-ta t’a pa!
‘Magnanimous’ him! ‘Magnanimous’ him!” She had learned to use the new term.

“Get out, get out!—No place for you to make a row,” Sun Fu-kwei snapped at her as he hurried by.

One of the Land Reform Workers was more patient and stood talking to her. “You better be Firm in your Standpoint,” he cautioned her. “You’ve been oppressed and enslaved by this man who’s your husband. About time that you should wake up. If you keep on waiting to join your fate with his, you will be on trial before The People too!”

When she saw that the young man was good-tempered, she wouldn’t let go of him. “Do a good deed, comrade! Take pity on him, he’s slaved hard all his life. All he got for it is those few acres of land. Even if all the land is taken, so long as you leave him his life, for the rest of his years he’ll work like a buffalo and a horse together to repay you
yeh-men
, masters.”

“
Ch’ü, ch’ü, ch’ü!
Go away, go away, go away!” Go Forward Pao walked over and said.

But they did not throw her out. The rules did not say that landlords’ families could be barred from the meeting. T’ang’s wife remained standing in front of the platform peering around through her tears, looking for people to plead with. Her running eyes and nostrils glistened, glassy and bubbly. More people were coming in. The hum of voices rose in waves and she was beginning to feel more dazed and lost. Only the rough splintery boards of the platform hard against her back felt real.

This time the Mass Meeting was held in the vacant lot in front of the ancestral temple of the Hans, the largest clan in the village. There was a stage there under the big elm trees, facing the temple. Travelling troupes used to play there during the New Year and the festivals in more prosperous times. To shelter the stage four wooden pillars painted red held up over the stage a small black-tiled roof with upsweeping corners. The two front pillars had slogans pasted on them, handwritten on two strips on white paper in the style of antithetical scrolls, “Farmers of the nation—unite!” “Smash to bits the Feudal Forces.” A huge white banner specifying the nature of the meeting and the locality ran across the front under the eaves. Grimy old blue cloth curtains were hung at the back. A yellow haze of sunlight came slanting down to the empty stage through the half-bare branches of the trees.

Headed by their teacher, the school-children filed into the meeting ground holding paper flags, singing shrilly. They were stationed up front in the eastern corner. Then came the local militia, all carrying rifles, wearing leather belts over their white Chinese blouses, their cartridge belts and hand grenades slung crosswise over their chests. They lined up impressively before the platform and some made a half circle behind it.

Sun Fu-kuei, the Farmers’ Association Organizer, pushed his way through the crowd, booming through a big cardboard trumpet in a thick, rumbling, faraway voice like a god from the sky with a bad cold. “All the women stand on the west side! On the west side! The Youth Vanguard Corps stand over here, next to the schoolchildren! Over here! The Youth Vanguard Corps over here! Don’t move, anybody, once you’ve found your proper place! Children who have to go to the toilet, take them out right now! Later nobody is to go out. Hey, you people huddling at the foot of the wall, come nearer, you can’t hear over there!”

Most of the
kan-pu
and the Land Reform Workers were distributed evenly throughout the Masses to spur them on and to keep an eye on them. Chang Li stood at the very back with a small knot of unassigned Land Reform Workers as if they were merely interested observers. But Chang wore his pistol for the first time since he came to the village to enhance the display of The People’s might and as a precaution against the possibility of any Bad Elements creating a disturbance during the meeting. He looked calm and smiling, his hands locked behind his back, but he was nervous and tense like all stage directors on the opening night.

The Chairman of the Farmers’ Association went on the platform and rang a bell to announce the commencement of the meeting. He gave a short speech. Then the various injured parties came up the platform from among the crowd and made their accusations in turn. While they talked, the
kan-pu
and the Positive Elements in the audience kept interrupting their speech by shouting slogans, duly echoed in thunderous tones by the crowd.

“Should have planted more speakers,” Chang mumbled worriedly, half to himself. “Not enough speakers. They jump in and they jump out, but always the same faces.”

Then he turned and whispered to Go Forward Pao, who had quietly come over to stand beside him. “Go and speak to the Chairman of the Women’s Association. Tell her to push harder. Why don’t I see those women sticking up their fists?”

Pao hurried off. After some time he again wandered back to Chang, saying, “I got two men to bring buckets of water. I guess everybody needs a drink. The Masses have shouted themselves hoarse.”

“The water better wait,” Chang said.

“You’re afraid it might slow things up?”

Chang half nodded. “And it won’t do either to have everybody moving about, leaving their posts. With nobody standing watch over them, they might not roar out when they should or stick up their fists.”

For a while there was nobody on the platform. All heads were turned back, straining to look at the entrance to the meeting-ground.

“
Lai-la! Lai-la! Tui-hsiang lai-la!
Coming! Coming! The Objects are coming!” everybody was whispering.

More militiamen trooped in, bringing the Objects for the Struggle. The prisoners were not tied up; they looked tidy and well-scrubbed as they walked in with bowed heads between the guards. In the hush that had fallen, the militiamen lined up around the platform, raising their hands in unison and snapping off the safety catches on their rifles. The metallic clicks rang out flatly in the deepening silence.

The guards and the men circled slowly around the crowd, heading for their appointed place at the righthand side of the stage, under the trees.

An arm suddenly shot up in the people’s midst, and Sun Fu-kuei trumpeted skyward through his cardboard loudspeaker, “Beat down the Big Feudal Exploiting Landlords!”

“Beat down the Big Feudal Exploiting Landlords!” shouted the crowd. Sun’s arm was instantly lost in the thicket of arms that shot up around him.

From where Liu stood, he could hear the Chairman of the Women’s Association stamping her feet in exasperation, exhorting her charges, pointing them out by name, “Put some pep into it, Third Aunt Hsia! Louder, louder! And hold your fist tight, my good aunt, aunt of my very own! Hold your hand up like this—you think you’re waving to a lover, for heaven’s sake?”

“Always follow in the footsteps of Chairman Mao!” Sun boomed.

“Always follow in the footsteps of Chairman Mao!” the crowd thundered back.

The Objects for the Struggle were led up the platform, one by one, and the injured parties went up to accuse them of the wrongs they had done them. When it was T’ang Yü-hai’s turn he walked up with a limp. Liu saw that one arm was bandaged.

Watching Feng T’ien-you taking T’ang to task, demanding his back wages, Chang murmured, “This Feng T’ien-you is no good. Got a bad case of stage-fright.” He looked disappointed. He had thought Feng was his brightest discovery.

“Well, he’s a good stilt-walker,” Hsia, the Party Branch Office Propagandizer, commented with a farmer’s maddening complacency. “Best stilt-walker in these parts, for as far up as Paotingfu.”

For a moment Chang thought he would slap the man’s mindlessly calm face staring straight ahead toward the stage.

Go Forward Pao was also watching with them. Pao said with a slight shake of his head, “You can’t help slush climb walls. All slush—all of them.”

“As I’ve always said, you shouldn’t rehearse them too often,” Chang said irritably. “Rehearse too many times and they become like a gramophone record. No feeling.”

“But they’ve got to rehearse! Otherwise they can’t remember all those words,” Pao said smiling.

Chang said, “Instead of having them memorize a set piece, you should have emphasized more on the
su k’u ch’uan lien
, Complaint Link-up. Get them to visit each other and Air their Grievances, practice their speeches on each other. There wasn’t nearly enough of that done.”

Pao knew better than to argue with Chang, who seemed to have forgotten that it was he himself who said that too much of the Complaint Link-up might prove to be unwise. The more talk, the more chances of leakage, he had said. It was best to keep the landlords in the dark about the charges brought against them until the day of the Struggle.

“You and your Petty Favors! You expect you can buy my heart that easy?” Feng struck a pose, standing with one hand on his hips, the other outstretched hand jabbing at T’ang’s nose. But his delivery was poor. His voice, almost a whisper, would rise in sharp jerks and fall off again uncertainly. Sun Fu-kuei did his best to help him out with the slogans, like the chorus in a Szechuan opera, joining in at the end of a singer’s line to help prolong the last note.