The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China (24 page)

We followed the zigzag footpath between the trees. The only sounds were our own soft footfalls cushioned by the twigs and pine needles and the scratch-scratch of small animals that could only be heard if one held one's breath. Sacred legends had protected this place from ravagers. Some trees were so tall and straight that they seemed pillars supporting the sky. Others, overshadowed and weak, arched towards each other and intertwined their branches as if for mutual support. I felt that we had entered another world, a world far away from land reform, Longxiang, mundane tasks. It was a world of dreams, and of a beauty that was always there for the taking.

Wang Sha and I were totally alone. It was rare now for this to happen, and as I grew conscious of his presence I felt a sudden anxiety and then a strange perturbation of spirit.

“Let's sit down for a while,” I said. I caught a glimpse of alert apprehension in his eyes when they looked at me from under his bushy eyebrows, but, ironically, for once my intentions were entirely innocent. I simply needed time to collect myself.

We sat in silence apart from each other. Little by little I regained my composure as I compelled myself to recall what we had all vowed to do after that conference: avoid all scandal involving “men and women relations.”

After a while I managed to force myself to turn to another subject.

“Do you know what I'm thinking about now? I'm keeping a diary. I want to write about the land reform as I am seeing it and experiencing it.”

Wang Sha shot a quizzical glance at me, but he seemed relieved to talk about something specific and “objective.”

“Diaries can sometimes be dangerous things to leave lying around,” he warned. “You've told me several times
that you want to be a writer. That's fine. But you will need to know much more about the peasants before you can write about them. Be patient.” He paused. “And there's another thing: You imagine that after the land reform everything will go smoothly and writers will have much greater opportunities to write and publish. You're seeing things with your own young eyes. When I was your age, it was no use telling me anything I didn't want to hear.”

After another pause, he added, “Do you know how long I've tried to do what you're trying to do now? It's more than twenty years since I first went to work in the countryside. Yes, more than twenty years ago. It's strange, I didn't realize how long ago that was.”

He laughed to himself at some escapade or mishap that he recalled, then, serious again, he resumed his lecture. Both of us still felt ill at ease; our eyes rarely met. He, because he was lecturing me, and I because I didn't want to be lectured, but couldn't say so, for his lecturing was oblique.

“I remember the first time I went out. It was with Cheng and many others. We were all youngsters then like you, just thinking of beginning our careers—would-be scientists, artists, writers. I think I had some talent as a writer, and if I had devoted more time to writing, perhaps I might have done something worthwhile in that line. It was up to us to decide what to do.

“Many of us came from fairly well-to-do families. We had some freedom of choice. We could have left the Communist areas; we could have avoided going to the villages to work with the peasants. But we were living in a guerrilla area. We knew that the peasants were starving and had to have land. Their first need was for food, not plays or poetry. I chose to make revolution because for me there was really no alternative. I realized that what might be good for the vast majority of the people might not be so good at the moment for individuals like myself. I thought the land revolution would be successful, the peasants would quickly prosper, and so would the whole country and then literature and art. I put off writing, for the moment, but that moment dragged on and on. More than
twenty years have gone by since then and I still haven't done much writing. The peasants have made some headway, but you see yourself how far they still have to go. It may take another twenty years before they achieve some measure of prosperity. Or fifty years. Or more.” He gave a mock rueful smile. “I'll be gone then.”

“So will I.” As I said this, I suddenly felt let down.

We lapsed into a long silence. He was moody, and my spirits plunged as the meaning of his words sank in. Both of us were debating with ourselves. Conflicting ideas and emotions jostled together and kept us silent. Several times I saw him looking hard at me, as though counting my freckles. Then suddenly he would grow conscious of his stare and abruptly turn away.

“I don't write much now myself,” he said again, “but I still keep churning out reports about the difficulties writers face, and especially about the meddling and ineptitude of bureaucrats and political busybodies who think that they know everything, including how to write plays, novels, music, and poetry. I send these reports to various conferences and committees and then they travel back to me. We stumble along. I'm in the middle of the cross fire: On one side are the dissident writers—some of them gifted, some of them not too wise either; and on the other, these know-it-all dogmatists. I can land myself in a hell of a mess. One day I'll have stepped on too many toes, and that will be it. ‘You've let off enough steam. It's time to shut you up.' ”

For the first time I saw him unsure of himself, insecure. “Sometimes I've felt as if I were on a treadmill exerting a lot of energy but going nowhere.” This was not the familiar Wang Sha talking.

I was slowly scribbling on the ground with a twig. The characters in the dust overlapped and as I scribbled faster became less and less legible. Just a jumble, like the chaos of thoughts in my head. Every one of us—peasants, work teams, and landlords alike—was caught in the wheel of history. Immense forces beyond our control were moving us forward, but at the same time molding and remolding all our hopes regardless of who and what we were. This
thought thrust like a dagger into my chest. A blind and stubborn determination to hit back welled up within me. I pressed the twig so hard that it broke.

I had missed some of Wang Sha's words. “… I can guess, now and then, you think about going back to your aunt and uncle. That's natural. But if you uproot yourself and leave China, your own land, you will find it even harder to grow as an artist and a writer. You told me before that your family wanted you to go to the United States. It's true, there are immigrant writers and artists from Europe, and some of them have managed to integrate themselves into that kind of life. But Chinese culture is too different from the American for you to bridge that easily. You'll be like a fish out of water.” He halted, casting a questioning glance at me. “Don't delude yourself. There's censorship everywhere. In different forms, wherever you go, you'll run into it.”

“Have you finished?” I asked. I was more than ready to move on to something less painfully personal. “Let's do something practical while we're here. Look at all this good firewood lying around. Let's make a bundle and carry it home for Da Niang.”

I wandered about picking up dry twigs. My mind, however, kept coming back to thoughts of Wang Sha. I understood that he was trying to give me a word of warning, to alert me to the hard facts of life. They were exactly the same hard facts that had scared several generations of women back into the refuge of marriages of convenience. They were scaring me now.

When I was a younger girl, I used to eavesdrop behind the door of my aunt's small upstairs parlor, listening to her friends confiding to her about their love affairs. Some had been to middle school and college and in the twenties and thirties had taken part in the various revolutionary movements that had swept the country. For more than a hundred years, ever since the Opium War with the British, China had been a nation in continuous upheaval. Women too had been caught up in the turmoil. Some had breasted the waves like bold and agile swimmers. Women like Ding Ling, the novelist, and many others both famous and obscure.
In their young days these women had left home seeking a more fulfilling life; some had found the struggle too hard. Disillusioned, they had returned home and got married as their parents had wished. But their lives of luxurious monotony drove them crazy. These were the ones who confided in my aunt. Some went into a second adolescence and had girlish crushes on men; through them they felt that they could bring more meaningful encounters into their lives. Each time love promised a new realm of feeling, a new world. But these had all been little worlds in which nothing much could ever really happen—a new house, a dress, friends—things not so new after all.

I think it was from them that I first heard about books such as
Anna Karenina
and
Madame Bovary
. Wondering why these books had such an emotional impact on them, I took them down from my aunt's bookshelf and devoured them. They were intoxicating, and I yearned to act out the same grand passions in real life. For a time this had been an obsession: The pages of fiction became my real world.

But in the past year I had moved into a very different world, one filled with living women of creative achievement, and women of the slums. Here in Longxiang I had gone even further into a whole new environment. The sufferings of Anna and Madame Bovary seemed like luxuries in which only ladies of leisure could indulge.

“Have you picked enough?” Wang Sha came up with a small bundle of twigs under his arm.

“Yes, but not as much as you.” My tone was natural and tranquil. The flood of feeling that had nearly made me lose my head had receded. I wanted to be off before anything else should happen.

“Shall we go back?” I said abruptly as I gazed at the thin, glimmering stream below us. Tears misted over my eyes. I could not quite comprehend what was going on in my heart, though my mind seemed clear and it was saying over and over again, “Beware, beware.”

Back in my room, I could see my problems in a more objective way.

The paths of Wang Sha and myself had crossed at a crucial moment in our lives. For me it was a starting point of an adventure that by turns exhilarated and appalled me. For him it was just another turn in a road he had long traveled. He knew that although he could choose, the choice was already made; there was no turning back for him. He fought for creative freedom in a “legitimate” way as a leading cadre of the Party. In his committees and conferences he argued, debated, and haggled for it. Eventually, however, even though it fell short of what he wanted or thought necessary, he would obey the decision of the majority of the Party members or those who spoke for them. To win this sort of seesaw battle took time. It was no overstatement when he said it might take another fifty years before it was possible for writers and artists to get where they would like to go. It was not in my nature to sit, pray, and wait patiently. So I couldn't fit into Wang Sha's picture and he certainly couldn't fit into mine.

I could still decide to end this adventure and probably be welcomed back by my aunt like a Prodigal Daughter. But were there really only two options open to me: To press ahead and be engulfed by the revolution or to turn tail and resume my old life? I didn't want either. Could I find a way to walk the knife edge between these two fates? I had always believed that if one concentrated hard enough to solve a problem, one would probably come up with an answer, and I lay down on the kang to think.

I pulled the quilt up to my chin and closed my eyes tight. My thoughts trailed away. Instead of a solution, I found myself sobbing. I cried until I entered that hazy, dreamy realm between sleeping and waking. Outlines were blurred in a world of grey.

I don't know how long I lay there before I dozed off, nor how long I had slept when I heard footsteps. A man, immense and threatening, was coming up the steps slowly and ponderously, his left hand sliding up the handrail. His face was shadowed by his cap. He wore a belted tunic and heavy boots. He was conducting a search. I called to my aunt but no sound came from my throat, and the man came relentlessly on. He moved to my desk and put his
hand out to take my diary. I overcame my paralysis enough to leap out of bed and snatch the diary and run.

The footsteps chased me. “Ling-ling,” I told myself, “run for your life!” Out of breath, I came to the alley where Ma Li had once lived in those tiny partitioned spaces. Partitions inside partitions. I could hide in this labyrinth. But the footsteps kept coming nearer. There was no escape. I screamed, but my voice sounded like a whimper.

I sat up in the dark, still trembling with fear from the nightmare. These people who were chasing me were the same people who had been chasing Ma Li. I could not care less what they called themselves: Guomindang or Communist, rightist or leftist, counterrevolutionary or revolutionary. They were the same people.

I eyed my diary among the few books stacked in the lower corner of the kang. I pushed aside the quilt and bent forward to pick up the diary. But at that moment I felt too weary and listless even to lift it, and I leaned back against the wall. I recalled Wang Sha's words: “Diaries can sometimes be dangerous things to leave lying around.” In mine I had written down as frankly and vividly as I could my perceptions of Longxiang and the people I had met there.

How would all this look when read out at an interrogation? I had heard that in the turbulence of the so-called rectification campaigns such as the Yanan Purge, even thrown-away papers of no importance had been found and sometimes caused serious trouble, attacks in open meetings, secret torture, and even death. Some people developed special talents in reading between totally innocuous lines and deciphering nonexistent codes showing that the owner of such papers was involved in “subversive activities.” If I dropped that diary and lost it, if Dai Shi should get so much as a glimpse of it, that would be more than enough to undo me. Compared to mine, Chu Hua's sin would look like a childish prank. I decided to burn the diary.

My feet touched the cold earthen floor and, shivering, I felt around for my slippers. With an effort I got up from the kang and took the match box from my table. I lit a match and started to burn the diary page by page. On one page I caught a
glimpse of some lines that I particularly liked. I tried to snatch it back, but it had already caught fire. I slapped the flame with my hand and my fingers got burned.