The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China (13 page)

Intrigued by what he had said, I asked, “What makes you so determined to hang on to this job?”

“Because I am poor,” he replied simply. “From the beginning my wife didn't like it. ‘You fool, haven't you got yourself into enough trouble by being meddlesome?' she whined. I told her, ‘Woman, I was born that way and I cannot help it.' ” He waved his hand in a “who the hell cares?” gesture.

“Old Shen, thank you for your help. I hope we can talk again soon.”

“No problem. Anytime. I tell everybody that he can drop by and have a chat anytime and they do.” Shen did not seem to realize that some people might be trying to exploit his warmheartedness. He was pleased with his popularity.

Wang Sha arrived on the third day. We had a meeting with Shen and Tu and it was agreed that we should start making a systematic round of all the peasant households and ask them to join our meetings. We hoped that there they would tell about their lives in the past. It was, as Wang Sha put it, a means of “raising their level of consciousness.” “Speak bitterness meetings,” as they were called, would help them to understand how things really had been in the old days, to realize that their lives were not blindly ordained by fate, that the poor peasants had a community of interest, having suffered similar disasters and misery in the past—and that far from owing anything to the feudal landlords, it was the feudal landlords who owed them a debt of suffering beyond all reckoning.

Wang Sha and Malvolio Cheng, Shen, and Tu rallied the men; the women and children were left to me. Xiu-ying and her mother were of invaluable help in this task. Through them I met quite a few women in the village, and
for several days I visited them in their homes and talked with them.

Talking with Xiu-ying's family first, I thought my job would be a simple one: They had their differences, but it was a close-knit, happy, outgoing family. The mother was living again through her daughter, whom she loved. The father, though grudging, was trying to restrain himself from interfering.

But they were exceptions. Most women I met would only speak guardedly about their lives; as to doing something about changing their lives, they believed that was useless. Their suffering had little to do with landlord exploitation. Everything was predestined, all their hardships and subjection. The landlords or whoever were simply the instruments of fate. Once when I urged a middle-aged woman to speak further, she gave a heavy sigh, pressed her hands to her breast, and murmured, “The bitterness is here. I can't get it out.” They refused to accept me as a living example of a girl who had “come out of the kitchen.” I came from Shanghai—another planet to them—where the natural laws were different; besides, I had what they considered “a lucky face.” For these reasons they tolerated my often “strange” behavior like mixing with men almost as if I were a man myself.

Only two women refused to talk to me at all.

First there was the virgin widow, a short, big-boned woman with over-broad shoulders. Twenty years previously, when she was only fourteen, her betrothed died suddenly on the very eve of their wedding. But the compact had been made, the marriage presents had been given, and she was married anyway. A small wooden tablet with his name inscribed on it “stood in” for the groom. But the death was taken as a sign that Heaven's curse had fallen on her. Barbarous old village custom regarded her as being responsible for the death of this man whom she never even laid eyes on and she was semi-ostracized by the village. The silence of the grave had surrounded her for twenty years, and she had almost lost her capacity for communicating with others. I could not get a word out of her.

The other one was the wife of the farm laborer Sun Zuguang.

If I had played my aunt's garden hose long enough on the Suns' hovel it would have dissolved back into the yellow loess earth it was made of. Nothing would have remained except for a few rafters, a door and window frame, a couple of rickety stools, a table, an iron pot, and some chipped crockery. Sun was at home when I went to visit his wife. It was a bright day, and their door was open to let in warmth and light. I stopped with one foot on the doorsill, waiting for them to invite me in. But Sun shot a sidelong glance at his wife, and she scurried to hide herself behind the stove in the room. I just caught a glimpse of her: two emaciated arms folded over an enormous belly and a pair of short, stick-like legs. I tried to exchange a few pleasantries with him, but he stubbornly stared into space in front of him, lips compressed, not saying a word. I sat myself down on the doorsill. He did not budge. I began to give a lengthy explanation of my visit. I spoke loudly and slowly, so that every word would be clear to them both. Several times Sun's wife, consumed with curiosity, took a peek at me and I saw her tousled hair, scanty and brownish because of malnutrition, appearing above the top of the stove, but each time Sun growled like some watchdog, and immediately his wife's head disappeared. I had been told that Sun's mother, a widow, had run away with a stranger when Sun was only six or seven years old, and he had been left an orphan. Ever since he had sulked in a perpetual state of obstinate sullenness, never trusting any woman or any “intruder” again. He shut his wife off from the outside world. I hated to see his glowering face grow mean, the forehead strained and protruding, the chin jutting out, the mouth curling into a cruel snarl as he turned in the direction of the hapless woman who was his wife.

Fearful that he would take his anger out on her after I was gone, I hastened to say good-bye and left them. My lack of success with them bruised my self-esteem, but I comforted myself with the thought that Wang Sha and
Cheng had not succeeded either in getting on friendly terms with Sun.

Back in Xiu-ying's little room I took out my diary and confided my frustration to its pages.

“Are you writing about us?” Xiu-ying asked, sitting down on the kang and pointing at my diary notebook on the short-legged table between us.

Her question took me by surprise. Flustered, I closed the diary and stammered no, then added more truthfully, “Well, not really.”

“That looks like our house and yard.” She pointed to the paper lying beside my diary. It was a rough sketch I had made to use in our next study class. “Even the wooden loom is the same as ours.”

“It's the house of a peasant family in the Han dynasty, two thousand years ago.”

“So long ago?”

“Even before that time, it seems, the peasants lived practically the same way they do today.”

“Did that mother tell her daughter the same thing Mother tells me?”

“What's that?”

“When a girl lives at home, she must obey her father. When she is married, she must obey her husband. And when her husband dies, she must obey her son.”

“Exactly the same,” I said emphatically and with obvious disapproval in my voice.

“If a good teaching has lasted for two thousand years, why do you want to change it?” Xiu-ying's father interposed from the next room. He looked at us through the open door, his eyebrows raised, dubious and puzzled.

“It's not a good saying. People believe it because it has been drilled into their minds.”

I tried to speak quietly and reasonably, but I felt a rising impatience and I could not keep it out of my voice.

“Nobody can drill wrong ideas into my mind. Let me tell you: You say I can get the land without paying for it and I don't believe it.”

His honest, broad face grew red and his stubbornly pursed lips quivered. “I always tell my children not to take
anything they haven't worked for. I don't want them to be led astray.”

Xiu-ying's mother stopped spinning and looked imploringly from her daughter to her husband, and then to me. “Are you going to your study class this morning?” she asked hurriedly.

“It's early yet,” I replied stiffly.

“Let's take a walk,” interrupted Xiu-ying. There was a conciliatory note in her voice. And she added in a whisper, “Don't take him too seriously.”

Goodness knows there was plenty that needed to be done in the village as well as in the fields, but when winter set in, the peasants seemed to abandon work. Low on food supplies and energy, they passed the cold months in near hibernation. So when Xiu-ying and I announced we would start a class to study “women's questions” we met unexpected enthusiasm from the restless village women. When we came to the class on the first day, several women already sat on the ground on the open space in front of Tu's house, chattering while they waited for the class to begin.

Some had come to learn, others to watch the new “show” and, while watching, do their morning toilet. Water was a precious item in Longxiang, which had only one pond and a scattering of half-dry wells. A person in Longxiang was only assured of getting three baths in his whole life: one on the day he was born; one on the day he got married; and one on the day he died. So instead of washing their children's faces and brushing their teeth with precious water, they cleaned their families by catching the lice which plagued everyone in the village, big and small, rich and poor.

Some young mothers suckled their babies as they talked. As modest young girls and matrons before their first baby was born, they had buttoned their blouses up to the neck. Now they opened their jackets and exposed even their bare breasts and bellies. A toddler in split pants squatted down and made water. With great interest and concentration she watched it flow in a little rivulet
through the dust. Then she thrust her fingers into the mud and patted it against her cheek like rouge. A sheep languidly relieved itself of a few droppings; Tu's wife hastened to sweep them up with a dustpan and throw them into her compost pit.

About a dozen women had now gathered in a rough circle on the ground. When I took my seat among them, they all looked expectantly at me. It was clear that only I had some idea of what we were there for, but even I could only put general questions.

“How many of you have worked in the landlords' households? Please raise your hands.” I started to count. “Did they pay you as much as they did the men?”

Only a sharp-chinned woman sat still without even lifting her little finger.

“What about you?” I asked her.

“She doesn't want you to know that bungler Landlord Wu paid her a lot more,” a masculine-looking woman interposed. As she spoke, she twisted her neck and head in an odd way. “He hired her to cook for his farmhands during the harvest. Sister Ling-ling, you know, the harvest was a big occasion for us here and Landlord Wu was generous. He wanted to give his men some special dish. But this woman here, she took the money and bought cheap food. You should have seen her soup! It was nothing more than water, a few drops of oil, and some rotten vegetables that the stirring ladle brought to the top when Landlord Wu came to look at it. And her pancake! It was so coarse that it stuck in their throats. They couldn't swallow it and they couldn't throw it up.”

“So you can't keep your big gap closed! Then speak again!” the sharp-chinned woman screamed, and turned to me: “She worked for Landlord Chi. See if she's honest and tells you the truth about him!”

“Why not?” The other woman tossed her head angrily, but I noticed that she quickly lowered her head again, pretending that some dust had blown into her eyes as she shot a quick glance in the direction of the main road. “Landlord Chi didn't pay me on time, so I went off to work for Landlord Bai.”

“Any more?” I asked.

“What's more?” She squinted at me with an arch chuckle. “Maybe you want to know how Landlord Bai treated me. Not too bad. But he was stingy, never gave me a cent more than he had to.”

“You mean he never miscalculated?” Tu's wife interjected.

“Oh, he did miscalculate now and then by giving me a cent less.”

“That's the way they are!” and they laughed and chuckled.

“Now, be serious. We're not at a tea party—” Before I finished speaking, there was a sudden hubbub among the group of children playing nearby. They shouted furiously at each other. I recognized Xiu-ying's brother and A-rong, the boy I had taught to sing on my first day there, but it was difficult to see who was doing what to whom. A-rong was shrieking out the accusations that he had heard us make against the landlords. “Thieves!” he shouted. “Bad eggs … feudal landlords!” He blurted out bits and pieces of ideas he only half understood.

“He needs a good beating.” Tu's wife threw a small stone at him. “Get away from here, all of you. Don't shit on my doorstep!”

Tu's wife was a tiny little woman. She had a perpetually alert look in her darting eyes as though she were scared that she would get beaten at any moment. Now and then she cupped her hand behind her left ear and bent forward to catch what you were saying. It was said that once Tu had slapped her so hard that she had become partially deaf.

The other women paid no attention to her complaints. A few merely lifted their heads to gaze indifferently at the brawling children. Shouting vengeful threats, the boys scattered in different directions as she advanced on them wielding the long-handled dustpan.

“I'll tell old Tu to give you a good beating,” A-rong shouted defiantly over his shoulder and made an ugly face.

“You little son of a bitch! I'll settle you,” and she moved a few steps after him.

“Can I join you?” asked someone in a high-pitched, nasal voice. Her face struck me as familiar. I knew I had seen it before, but couldn't remember where and when.

“I am a poor peasant woman, but you didn't come to visit me,” the newcomer complained in a coquettish way, pouting.

“Didn't I?” I studied her intently. She didn't look like the other peasants. Her eyebrows and the short hairs around her forehead were meticulously plucked, accentuating the blackness of her once fine eyes. But the powder and rouge heavily applied to her skin could not hide the wrinkles, distended pores, and blackheads.