Serve the People! (3 page)

He immediately set down his bucket, as if a command was echoing through the house. But only a few steps up, his mind cast back six months to the day he'd first reported for his new duties. You needn't concern yourself with the upstairs,' the Division Commander had said, an understated steeliness to his voice, `and especially if my wife's not about.' These words now rang in Wu Dawang's ears as deafeningly as if Chairman Mao himself had spoken them, and when he reached the bend in the stairs he slowed and lightened his step-as if the treads were made of glass, barely able to support his weight.

The residual glimmer of the dusk was seeping through the window, like silk gauze washed red and white. A faint yet pervasive scent of decay floated about him. He couldn't tell where it was coming from-the wooden window or door frames perhaps, or the lime cementing the greenish-black bricks-but it was, somehow, curiously feminine. Though he knew perfectly well that it was utterly inappropriate for him to feel now, obeying the summons of his Commander's wife, as he had done on his way to meet his own intended for the first time, still his heart began thumping uncontrollably. This state of agitation, brought on by the prospect of presenting himself before Liu Lian, was unbecoming to a revolutionary soldier's dignity and education, to the lofty emotional and ideological state he aspired to. And so he pulled himself up, thumped his chest and reminded himself severely that he was climbing the stairs because there was work for him at their summit-as if a crucial link in the great chain of Revolution were waiting for him up there, leaving him no choice but to go and retrieve it.

Once he had, with some effort, managed to dam the busy brook of counterrevolution within and calm the beating of his heart, he completed his ascent with a light, steady tread. It didn't take him long to work out that the arrangement of the first floor was precisely the same as the ground: two rooms to the east, a toilet to the south and an extra room facing west. Located directly above the kitchen and dining room, this extra space seemed to be fitted out for conferences, its centre ringed by a circle of wood-framed sofas and tea tables, its walls hung with all manner of administrative and military maps.

This, plainly, was the Division Commander's workroom-like a novelist's study, but a hundred thousand times more important. Wu Dawang blinked at the frenzies of blood-red arrows and multicoloured lines swarming over maps punctuated by brightly scrawled circles, triangles and squares-as if an entire garden had burst into glorious bloom inside the house. He instinctively averted his gaze, suddenly understanding the Commander's warnings about going upstairs. If a man was allowed even a glimpse of the doorway to secrets, those secrets were as good as out. As a soldier, Wu Dawang's sacred mission in life was to keep military secrets secret: to make it his business not to mind what wasn't his business. It was this discretion that had won him the affection and trust of the Commander, his wife, the Revolution and the state.

Once his heartbeat had slowed again, a new, solemn self-possession descended on him. He fixed his gaze on an old-fashioned carved door to his left. Striding over to it, he raised his shoulders and straightened his spine-precisely as any rank-andfile soldier who found himself in the doorway to his Division Commander's office should tilted his head back, thrust both chest and eyes forward and barked out six over-enunciated syllables: `Reporting for Duty.'

He was greeted by silence.

Bracing his vocal chords, he barked out a second time: `Reporting for Duty.'

Silence, like the twilight, continued to wash through the house.

He knew that the Commander and his wife slept in the bedroom in front of him. While working outside, he'd often seen her face at the window, her youthful, aristocratically pallid features poised there, as if frozen within an antique picture frame. Just as the Revolution itself advanced in lopsided paces now slow, now fast, now inching, now striding-her imprisoned face was sometimes impassive, sometimes animated.

She had to be in there. He'd never known her to call at other houses in the compound, at the homes of the Political Commissar or Deputy Division Commander, or pass the time with their wives. She hardly ever spoke to them, just as the Division Commander hardly ever wasted idle words on his subordinates. This bedroom was the nucleus of her existence, the building around it her whole life. He knew she was in the bedroom and, as he considered trying another `Reporting for Duty', he instead found himself knocking-twice--on the door. His knuckles rapped against the wood, as on the surface of a drum.

`Come in,' she replied at last. Her voice, low and hoarse, had a narrow tremble to it, as if something a slight, yielding obstacle -were lodged in her throat.

He pushed the door open. Only then did he see that the light was off, that the room was cast in shadows, the bed, table and chairs melting into partial obscurity. She was seated on the edge of the bed, a book in hand-volume I of The Selected Work,, ofzao Zeaonzq. Later, much later, as he cast his mind back over a memory that had sweetened with age, it would dawn on him that it had been far too dark to read, that she had only been holding the book for show. But at that moment as it was happeninghe had believed she truly was reading, just as he had believed everything else that happened had followed on as naturally and spontaneously as rain falling from an overcast sky, or the sun emerging into a blue one.

'Aunt Liu,' he said, 'what can I do foryou?'

'The light cord is stuck,' she replied. 'Would you get it back down for me?'

Following her gaze, he saw that the cord for the light over the bedside table had wrapped itself around its discoloured fitting, and he would need to stand on something to untangle it. So he walked over to her side of the bed, pulled out the chair from under the bedside table, took the woven cane mat off it, removed his shoes, brushed the soles of his feet-which were, as it happened, not in the slightest bit dirty-and laid an old newspaper out on the chair. He then stepped onto it, unwound the cord and while he was up there, gave it a tug.

The room was flooded with light.

Against the sudden electric brightness of the interior, the window shone dark, and threadlike cracks crept, exposed, across the plaster walls. Like an armoury bereft of exciting, new-issue weapons, the room held no surprises: a portrait of Chairman Mao and a framed print of his quotations hung on the wall, while a plaster bust of the Great Helmsman kept watch over the writing desk. A large mirror-its upper edge inscribed with the Chairman's key imperatives--rested next to a washbowl; to one side hung the Division Commander's telescope, to the other the 54-revolver he rarely wore, its leather holster gleaming dark burgundy. Directly beneath the mirror was a dressing table, its glassy green surface covered with jars of face cream, pots of face powder, scissors, combs and other such objectsluxuries you didn't often see in those days.

None of this, however, confounded Wu Dawang's expectations. Though he'd never before seen the first floor of the Division Commander's house, he had been upstairs in the residence of the Political Commissar and his wife--who worked in the division's accounts office. Their home (another two-storey, Soviet-style construction) was exactly the same as the Commander's: simple, modest, every surface inspirationally resplendent with the glorious traditions of the Revolution. It roused, urged, all visiting subordinates to the most exalted, the most revolutionary homages they could muster-to recount to anyone who would listen the revolutionary past and present of their senior officers, to worship them as idols of political correctness, as lustrous reflections of their glorious Party, as proof positive of the astonishing fortune and honour that had fallen into their laps, permitting them to become soldiers in such a miraculous era.

Wu Dawang was overwhelmed by the hidden, abysslike reservoirs of simplicity lurking upstairs in the Commander's home. As he jumped back down off the chair, he searched for a sentence that would express to Liu Lian his sense of awed respect. He thought of the phrases that rang out most often during New Year house visits in his village: the simplest homes are the most glorious, the most glorious are the most revolutionary; take pride in the traditions of the Revolution, struggle for glory. And so on and so forth. A number of salutations from his military education classes also sprang to mind. For example, the power of tradition can transcend the passage of time to shape our tomorrows. Or, the simplest things are always the most moving, the most moving things are always the simplest. Or (as his Political Instructor had once read out from an editorial), if our leaders can inherit and disseminate the Yan'an Spirit, can embody and pass on the simple virtues of our illustrious Party leadership, our revolutionary endeavours will glow red like the sun, bringing radiant hope wherever they shine.

Intensely moved by the wealth of beauteous expressions that had come so readily to him, he was on the verge of blurting out a few when suddenly he thought better of it. He began to feel that, however impressive they looked written down, if you actually spoke them out loud, they might sound a little indi gestible, a little off, like undercooked rice, or sour soup. You might even sound like you were a bit, well, not all there--not quite right in the head. Especially as this was his first time upstairs, the first time he'd been moved by the Yan'an Spirit in Liu Lian's bedroom, the first time he'd wanted to express his admiration to her, he didn't want to regurgitate the pompous formulations found in essays. He wanted to come out with some priceless gems of his own, with the simplest, purest, most moving words he could find.

But the moment he left those fine, worn phrases back where they belonged-in the posters, newspapers, books and deafeningly public broadcasts that were their natural habitat his head became a vast, echoing cavern, a colossally deserted public square, rudely stripped of its festoons. His face throbbed bright red under the pressure of this inarticulacy, his lips trembling beneath the anxious weight of everything he had on the tip of his tongue but was unable to verbalize.

After removing the newspaper, he put the chair neatly back under the table, replaced his shoes and straightened up, nervous sweat pouring off his face like water from a spring. He listened to the drops hitting the ground, one after another, like rainwater falling from the eaves of a house onto tiled ground below. Finally he managed to garble: Is that all, Aunt Liu? If so, I'll be off downstairs.'

`Don't call me Aunt,' she said, sounding irked. It makes me sound so old.'

Smiling brightly, he meant to risk looking at her but instead heard himself saying: `Aunt sounds more -more personal.'

She did not smile back. `Xiao Wu,' she said, her words heavy with undeclared meaning, her solemnly benevolent expression tinged with a certain nervousness, you can keep calling me Aunt in front of the Division Commander and other people, but when there's no one else around, you can call me Sister.'

She spoke softly, affectionately, like a wise old mother counselling a son before he rides off to join the Revolution, or like a real sister taking her little brother to task. Unexpectedly moved, at that precise moment Wu Dawang wanted more than anything else to do as she said, to call her Sister, to seize this beautiful moment and cement their new sibling relationship. To file it, permanently, within the archives of their lives. And yet, Liu Lian was still the Commander's wife, while he was just the General Orderly. Social inequality loomed as insurmountably between the two of them as the Great Wall, their ranks as irreconcilably different as a skyscraper and a hut. Give him superhuman powers, the power to recite flawlessly everything Chairman Mao had ever written, to cook a ten-dish banquet in less than a minute and still, still that marvellous word, `Sister', would be unutterable.

Though his lips had stopped trembling, they had instead begun to feel numb or scalded, as if by a sudden mouthful of hot soup. The word `Sister' died in his throat, killed by cowardice. Overwhelmed by a searing sense of self-loathing at his own failure of nerve, he resolved to look back up at the Division Commander's wife, his new sister and, with his eyes, to communicate his deep, sincere feelings of gratitude and respect.

He slowly raised his head. After a brief, violent explosion somewhere deep inside him, a gorgeous rainbow unfurled before his eyes--a blinding flash of colour that a second, disbelieving look translated, more matter-of-factly, into the Commander's wife.

The light shone bright as day.

The room was so quiet that you could hear the faint buzz of the light waves colliding and merging with solid objects. Outside, a sentry was pacing about the barracks, his footsteps faint but distinct. Wu Dawang stood there, paralysed, as if he were made of wood, without any notion of what he might do next.

Liu Lian, he now registered, had placed the book down on the bed and, as it turned out, was dressed only in a red-and-blue floral silk nightgown which, in the way of nightgowns, hung loose and flimsy on her as if it might tumble off her body at any moment. It occurred vaguely to him that when he had first come in, he hadn't noticed her state of relative undress because the room had been lit only by dusk. Liu Lian, he deduced, must have had the nightgown on all along, but the evening gloom had prevented him from engaging in a thoroughgoing assessment of the situation. Now, with the light back on and an uninterrupted view, the evidence was there before him, clear as day.

Of course, if it had been merely a question of Liu Lian sitting on her bed in a nightgown, he wouldn't have been hallucinating rainbows where his Division Commander's wife was meant to be. After all, he was no longer a boy, no callow member of the rank-andfile, but a man of rank, a squad leader, a married man--he was one of the few guardsmen who'd actually seen a woman. And what a woman! His wife, let it not be forgotten, was the only daughter of a commune accountant. No - it was all the weather's fault. What with it being so hot, Liu Lian had turned on the electric fan at the head of the bed and, every time it rotated in her direction, it dispatched a rippling breeze under the hem of her nightdress which then travelled inexorably upwards to escape via the neckline. The nightdress was roomy enough that each well-aimed flutter of the fan exposed a delicately shimmering, naked expanse of long, slender, snow-white thigh.