The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China (27 page)

As she held her face in her hand, her eyes looked larger than life because of the dark circles that ringed them.

“Can you get a doctor to treat her?” It was the first hopeful sign from the mother.

“Yes.”

“Thank you. She mustn't die.” The mother wavered between hope and fear. “We don't know what's happened inside her. Perhaps she is pregnant already? If she dies now, that may be the best thing for her.” If the girl lived and gave birth to a child, according to village tradition she
would be left alone in a sheep pen or beside a latrine when it was time to deliver. She would be in labor without a soul to help her. If she knew the meaning of shame, after the baby was born she would kill both the child and herself. Only that grim ritual would atone for the sin of being a woman.

I had heard of a similar case around this area some years before, but the girl who had been raped had refused to take her own life. The whole clan had then taken her to the ancestral temple and put her alive into a coffin. Her father had been assigned the task of nailing her in, while her mother listened to her shrieking for mercy. It seemed to me a grisly and unforgivable act, but, as they saw it, it was their duty to preserve the stability of society, to carry out justice.

“Will they come to drag her to her death?” The mother's face was suffused with terror.

“No.”

“Even after you people have left?”

There was a moment of uncertainty. Then I repeated, “No.”

“It wouldn't have happened if we had sent her to our relatives in Xian just one day earlier, before you came to search. It was I who delayed her departure. I was beginning to pack her things, but my heart ached when I thought of her going there like a poor relation, asking for shelter in a strange place. So I decided to make her a few new things to take with her. We delayed one day, just one day.” Landlord Wu's wife drummed her temples with both fists in a fit of remorse. “I sent her to hell myself. But how could I tell that this would happen? I should have sewed faster. But I sewed as fast as I could. Late into the night. My daughter only had time to try one new jacket on. Heavens, you should have seen how her face glowed! Then all her new clothes were taken away with other things after the search.”

“You mean to say that if the search had been one day later your daughter would have been spared this fate?” I could hardly get out the question.

“No. I said that if we had sent her away one day earlier
she would have been safe in Xian. How can I dare complain whether you did something earlier or later?”

I stood up. As they stared, puzzled, I looked around me and then walked around the room, pretending to search for some clue, some trace of the criminals. All the time, I was beset by the thought that I had been an unwitting participant in this crime. All this might never have happened if the search had been delayed. At the meeting at which we had discussed Landlord Wu's case, Malvolio Cheng had proposed postponing the search so as to give Shen and Tu no excuse for not taking part in it. I had disagreed, and finally Tu had in fact been forced to lead the search himself. The timing of the search had been my doing. Wasn't I at least partly to blame for this crime then? My arrogant ego cringed and asked forgiveness, but I dared not say anything aloud.

When Wang Sha, Cheng, and I met that afternoon to pool what we had learned and discuss the situation, it appeared ever more likely that Little Jade's attackers were indeed men from outside the township but who knew the township well. This made it more difficult for us in Longxiang to investigate the case further. We reported it to the county authorities, but they were inundated already with all kinds of complaints and investigations, and the misfortunes of a landlord family had a low priority. It was all we could do to get the county's one half-trained modern doctor to treat Wu's daughter.

We were disturbed to find that the innocent girl was becoming a pawn in a political battle. The conservative older villagers accused the young people of getting out of hand, while the young activists accused the conservatives and landlord reactionaries of being in league to frame them. It was only too clear that public opinion was swinging against the young candidates in the election. The plight of the victim was forgotten.

The conservatives pressed their advantage. They broadened their attack to include the whole idea of women's emancipation. The real cause of the crime, they argued,
was the way girls and women were now flaunting themselves in public. The unbridled behavior of young people in general was leading to the breakdown of social order. It was time to call a halt.

Inspired by the talk around him, Da Niang's idiot son now began to make a public spectacle of himself. After he had exposed himself in the middle of the township lane, women and girls fled whenever they saw him approach. The excitement he caused only encouraged him further. He took to lying in ambush and suddenly appearing before approaching women with his trousers down. Da Niang tried tying up his pants with a complicated system of strings and knots, but this led to other problems. At length the uproar subsided and with it his interest in the game.

These events left me anxious and on edge. I took every convenient excuse to tag along with Wang Sha or Malvolio Cheng, so as not to be left by myself at any time.

16
  

In the dark I wandered down an endless village street gazing at rows of dimly lit windows. I was shut out in the cold and no one would open his door to me. I peered in one window; inside, beside a stove, sat Cheng dressed as Malvolio. Dai Shi, that little shrew in cadre's uniform, sat opposite him, knitting. She raised her eyes from her knitting needles to give him a wifely smile. So he had married Dai Shi! But how could he have forgotten me so easily? I tried to break through the window, but as I beat on it with my hands I woke with a start.

I could not bear to be alone. Lying sleepless, the same thoughts constantly gnawed at my mind. I could have had marriage, a home, and, perhaps, love. How could I have given all that up so lightly—just to pursue an ideal which might never materialize?

Only the pressure of work kept me from brooding futilely and endlessly. Luckily for my peace of mind, with the election almost upon us, every waking moment was occupied. One of my tasks was to bring out the women's vote. I was especially concerned about the virgin widow and the wife of that drunken misanthrope Sun. While most of the other women had at least promised to come and vote, these two still showed no sign of rousing themselves from their apathy. I determined to approach them once again.

I got up, put on my padded cotton jacket and trousers, and pulled my cap down to cover my ears before I stepped out into the winter morning. I reached the field where I had first met the virgin widow, but no one was there. A cold wind stirred the dust between the still-unbroken clods and the stubble of the last scanty harvest. It moved the mist that darkened the early dawn. I moved along the narrow footpath by the field. All was quiet, but in the silence I sensed rather than heard a disturbing, muffled whisper of sound. I stopped to listen beside a pool of stagnant, algae-covered water, the last remaining moisture in the pond until the snow fell. Something, glimmering coldly, was reflected on the water. I looked up to find a square of thin white paper hung on a twig. It was a piece of sacrificial spirit money usually placed on a grave for the use of the departed one. Some naughty child had picked it up and hung it on the tree.

My eyes moved from it to a recently dead toad near the tree. Its intestines still oozed blood. Its legs spread-eagled, its eyes popped out glowering at me. Someone had evidently taken its heart. Placed in a small box beneath one's pillow, this was a talisman which could exorcise demons. The outdriven demons would take refuge in the dead toad.

Again I heard those muffled whisperings, and peering into the mist, I saw the virgin widow not far away kneeling in the dust beside a grave mound. She was wrapping something in a piece of cloth and then she stuffed it into the pocket of her jacket. She uttered a deep, stifled sob and threw back her head in a gesture of total despair. Hearing her cries sent a thrust of pain from the pit of my stomach up to my heart.

In the classical stories and folktales, I had read about lovelorn women being possessed by demons. I remembered Da Niang's story about the widow talking to her dead husband in the middle of the night. Perhaps it was not her husband but some other man who entered her dream and seduced her. She dreaded that he was a demon disguised as a man. Waking, she felt guilty and came to ask for her husband's forgiveness.

She bent forward, and her long uncombed hair cascaded over her face as her hands rhythmically stroked the sparse weeds on the grave. She was begging him to take her along with him. Why should she cling to a life which was empty of everything?

I hesitated to intrude on her sorrow, but I could not leave her in such a state. I approached her slowly. She heard my footsteps and raised her head.

“Please don't go.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “I want to talk to you.”

“About what?” she asked dully.

“A lot. About you and about myself.”

We sat opposite each other on each side of the grave, motionless and silent. She looked at me closely. I wondered if my face showed that I, too, had cried out in the dark.

“Are you—are you the same—as I?” She paused and waited for my answer.

“You mean—was I given to a man by my family and he passed away like—” I looked down at the grave. “It was not quite the same, but something like that.”

Her interest was kindled.

“We sinners.” It was her soul speaking. Her face darkened and then cleared, becoming younger and comelier. A struggle was going on within her: her duty to mortify the flesh, as she had been taught was the right thing to do, and the urgent, instinctive will to live and love.

“The man was my parents' friend,” I began. I was not inventing this story. There had been a bachelor, a friend of the family. One day when my aunt asked him why he did not get married, he dodged the question by turning to me and saying that he was waiting for me to grow up and be his bride. My uncle said that he would not object to having him as a son-in-law. It was only half a joke.

“Did he give you any presents?”

“Yes, he gave me many presents, at the New Year, on my birthday—”

“Birthday?” she asked.

“The day I was born. It was a happy day for me, so he gave me nice presents. You must have a birthday too.”

“Before my mother had me, she had a miscarriage. It was a son. They believed that I had squeezed that boy out before his time, so they cursed the day I was born.”

“What nonsense!” I added decidedly. “A birthday is a day of happiness.”

She merely looked askance at that.

“Your family accepted his presents. You are his,” she said, returning to the previous subject.

“No, I am not. Some day I will get married.”

“Won't he haunt you?”

“No. Do you believe me?”

“You people have changed so many things—I don't know what to believe anymore.” She puckered her brows, bewildered but also relieved to have my assurance.

“Much more will change. Soon you will all choose people to look after village affairs. Look at Xiu-ying—”

“She is always trying to attract attention,” the widow interrupted with more envy than censure, combing her hair with her fingers.

“Let me do your hair.”

“Oh, no. My hair is dirty. Your hands are clean—” She took my hands in hers. “Fair and smooth.”

I withdrew my hands and hid them behind my back, speaking in a more lighthearted way. “You're making fun of me. My aunt never allowed me even to wash my handkerchief, but she was still sorry that my hands weren't as pretty as she wished. When I was a child, I used to hide my hands like this, like now.”

“If only she saw my hands—” said the widow. She lowered her face as she did up her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. But I could discern a hint of a smile flitting across the corners of her mouth.

Encouraged by her more friendly spirit, I told her, “My aunt once asked me to knit a sweater for that man. You know, as a present. He was rich, and there was nothing I could buy him that he needed. So my aunt said that if I knitted a sweater for him, he could wear it at home and think of me. The trouble was that I couldn't knit. I still can't! Anyway, whenever he came to call on us, I took up my knitting, doing a row or two. I did it this way, look, this
way,” and I went through the motions, “so he could not see my hands. Then I put it down.”

“How did you finish it?”

“I didn't. One of our servants finished it. She was good at knitting.”

“Why didn't you ask her to teach you?” She was growing more intrigued.

“I had no time. I was busy playing with friends my own age. We were all about thirteen or fourteen then.”