The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China (35 page)

“We'll come back later,” I said, changing my mind. “You'd better think again and make a clean breast of your crimes.”

Night fell early in the wintertime. When I returned, the courtyard was in darkness. I had cautioned Xiu-ying and the other young peasants to be on guard, but not even a single militiaman was in sight. Had they moved Chi to some other place? I looked at the window of the office. It was dark. Not a sound was to be heard. Increasingly apprehensive, I began to imagine all sorts of explanations when suddenly all hell broke loose. A sharp sound like a clang of metal. A cat screeched and flew off the roof. Yells of anger and of triumph. Imprecations. Pounding fists. Scampering feet.

“We've got him!” a voice cried exultantly. Four young militiamen running up the road from various directions converged on the door of the office where a lantern, hastily lit, sent flickering shadows darting over the walls. They carried me inside with their rush. Several young activists were in the room. Two of them were still scuffling with someone. It was Tu! One had his neck locked in a savage grip, while the other was trying to get his arms tied behind his back. Tu's jacket was torn off and he was stripped to the waist.

“He has been nosing around here ever since he got back to town and heard about Landlord Chi. We began to wonder why. So we laid an ambush and caught him undoing the rope that tied Chi.” Xiu-ying spoke fast in an excited voice.

Events were running away with me. Was I losing my head or were the young activists?

“Xiu-ying, send for Shen and Old Gao. We must get their opinion on all this.”

Shen came promptly, Gao soon after. Newly elected to the township council, he had already become not only representative of the middle peasants but unofficial spokesman of all the go-slow moderates in the village who were doing their best to rein in the impetuous young activists. Both were alarmed at the unexpected turn of events, and they listened carefully to our explanation of what had happened.

“Is there any real evidence against Chi that we don't know of already?” Gao asked cautiously, his eyes still lowered over his pipe.

I looked at the neatly stacked cartons of documents covered with paper and replied a bit sheepishly, “Not really.”

Xiu-ying had told me that nothing had been stolen.

Now Gao looked up. “I would say that Tu should first have discussed the matter of releasing Chi and not taken matters into his own hands. There was no need for such hurry.”

“Tu is not a thoughtful man. He sometimes acts on the spur of the moment. Perhaps he thought he was doing the right thing. Maybe all he needs is a good scolding,” Shen
said with a heavy sigh. He had taken his cue from Old Gao.

Gao took over. “We country people do things differently from you city people. We tend to work in a sort of random way. The young activists also arrested Chi on the spur of the moment. They were also acting in good faith, thinking they were doing the right thing.”

Gao deplored hasty action on both sides. We could not miss the hint. “So you think we should let both of them go?” I asked in a low voice.

“I didn't say so.”

“Then what did you say?” I could not keep my impatience out of my voice. “You think that the young activists made a mistake. Then let's correct it. Let's not shillyshally. What do you propose we should do?”

They both remained silent, looking at each other.

I warned myself, “Ling-ling, keep your temper. You've gone far enough.” Struggling to calm myself, I got up and walked back and forth. I must have looked absurd there, pacing the kang in my socks.

Finally I said, “Landlord Chi was prowling around this place and the young people were right to protect the documents here and arrest him on the spot. There was no time to hold a meeting and consult anyone about it. But what Tu did was completely different. The young people were here all day. He could have come here at any time to consult with them. But he chose to act on his own, and he wasn't acting on the spur of the moment, but deliberately.”

Old Gao did not comment on my last sentence. He asked me with some doubt, “Chi was prowling around this office?”

My silence answered yes.

“Well, I suppose it's all right to hold them, at least until Wang Sha returns and you can report to him.” Shen stood up. He was so anxious to get out of the room that he stumbled over a carton of documents and practically fell out the door. Gao the sage followed him, shaking his head worriedly as he said good-bye.

Their departure left me with gloomy thoughts. Perhaps
it was some petty thing, some small present that Chi had given Tu to put him in his debt. I knew there had been a number of cases where peasants had gotten themselves entangled in landlord intrigues. In most instances, once these cases were sorted out, petty transgressions were ignored. If in other ways the peasant was a decent sort, as soon as he had made a clean breast of his wrongdoing he was considered to have been deceived by the landlord and was welcomed back into the revolutionary ranks. But what if Tu were innocent of any crime or wrongdoing? Untying Landlord Chi could have been simply an ill-considered act, an error of judgment.

I confided to Xiu-ying: “To tell the truth, I am worried that we may have made a serious mistake in detaining Chi and Tu.”

Xiu-ying's silhouette against the windowpane was immobile, but I sensed her tense up. I thought I should reassure her.

“If we've made a mistake, I am the one who will be held mainly responsible. I won't try to shift that responsibility onto anyone else's shoulders.”

I could already picture myself at a meeting being criticized and laughed at as a blunderer; then, thinking back on Tu's behavior—I had suspicions enough about Chi—I could not honestly exclude the possibility that there might be some clandestine relationship between the two, so I added, “And yet it may not be a mistake. Then we will be making a worse mistake if we let him go. I will be blamed still more if they stir up trouble later on. If we let them go now that will give them a chance to cover up their tracks.”

“What shall we do then?”

“What shall we do?” I shook my head. “I don't know.” Then a sudden thought struck me: “If I can get her to talk …”

“Who?” In the dim light Xiu-ying's eyes shone with intense interest.

I had kept my promise to Wang Sha not to mention that midnight meeting between Tu and the Broken Shoe to any villager, but Xiu-ying was no longer “any villager,” but a cadre now. And I'd been told not to divulge it even to
Shen, a senior village cadre. If I told Xiu-ying, I'd be accused of breaking the work team's discipline. Yet time was running out. I poured the whole story out to her.

“I can't tell this to the villagers. To them I'm ‘an outside cadre.' If I wrongly accuse Tu, I would be—that mistake would be too much for me to get away with.”

“If you can't, then I can. If there is nothing really serious involved, then it will be dismissed as village gossip,” said Xiu-ying. “I am one of the villagers.” The corners of her eyes narrowed. This gave a certain sharpness to her expression. The childish naiveté I had seen before was gone.

“Xiu-ying, are you sure it will be all right? When this story about Tu gets out it may be like opening the floodgates of a dam. We must be careful. I'm going to talk to the Broken Shoe and we'll see what she says. You will be in charge here.”

I thought I should make the situation even clearer to her. We couldn't afford any more mistakes.

“You and I are in the same boat. If we work well together we stand a good chance of pulling through this crisis. You know we didn't handle Xia's case very well. If we mishandle this case too, it will be difficult to restore the villagers' trust in us. I don't only mean you and me. I mean all of us who want to see more radical changes in Longxiang. All in all, what I really mean to say is that we must not permit any more horseplay.”

“The young activists are clamoring to give Chi a real lesson. They say ‘He's been beating and humiliating us for more than thirty years. Now it's our turn to give a bit back to him.' ”

“Xiu-ying,” I expostulated. “No more beating!” I made a gesture with my arms that I hoped expressed utter finality. “All right,” she grudgingly conceded.

21
  

I found the Broken Shoe at home. She did not seem perturbed by my sudden visit; as a matter of fact, she was almost friendly as she motioned me to a chair and then herself took a seat at the rough board that served as her dressing table. She bore me no malice. Affronts were a normal part of her life and were quickly forgotten.

Propping her elbows on the board, with one arm supporting her chin and gesturing with the other, she leaned towards me and asked, “What can a Broken Shoe do for you?”

I answered equally bluntly. “I saw you with Tu at midnight on the first day I came to Longxiang.”

“You did?” Smeared with powder and rouge and with arched eyebrows drawn in black, her face looked like a mask animated only by her two lively eyes.

“You tried to egg him on to break into my room.”

“On the contrary. I tried to persuade him not to. And he listened to me,” she corrected me, unruffled.

“What did he intend to do?”

She giggled. “What do you think a man intends to do when he breaks into a woman's room in the middle of the night?”

“How did you stop him?”

“I warned him that you were a land reform work team cadre.”

“Was that all?”

“Yes.”

She wouldn't tell me any more than was necessary and even then covered her tracks by adding, as if it were an afterthought, “Perhaps that was just a joke on his part.”

“That was a funny kind of joke for a Party member to make.” She remained silent, and I tried another tack.

“If you were a friend of Tu's, why did you make such a spectacle of yourself at the meeting we held to discuss the land reform law?”

“Who said I was a friend of Tu's? And as for the meeting, I don't know that I made such a fool of myself.”

The corners of her mouth lifted slightly as if she would burst out laughing. She knew she held a trump card in this game and she took a gambler's delight in playing it in her own good time. I lapsed into silence. Behind the mask of makeup, I saw a puffy face with sagging, tired muscles, tormented and vexed. A little sardonic, she was also appraising me. I had to say something.

“Why did you spread that rumor about attacking the rich peasants?”

“It happened in other villages. Everybody was whispering about it. I am just more straightforward and I say what's on my mind. I tell you things that others won't.” Her steady, scornful stare said to me, “Everybody is sitting on the fence, why shouldn't I? If I play my cards well, you will yet have to thank me—me, the Broken Shoe.”

“What else have you heard?” I asked.

“People in other villages are whispering about the death of that rich peasant Xia.”

“Nobody killed him. He killed himself.” But I felt uncomfortable as I said this.

“Yes, you might say that, or you might put it that he was killed by his own hand. I certainly understand why a person wants to take his own life. I tried a couple of times myself. Do you know how I felt at that moment? No, of course you don't. You've never been forced to consider taking that step.” She said this with surprising feeling.

“Will you come with me to make a statement about Tu and sign it?”

“Whatever I know about Tu I've already told you.”

“We need a written statement.”

“I don't know how to write. How can I sign my name?”

“You can put your fingerprint to it.”

It was snowing when we left the cottage. Whirled by a blustery wind, snowflakes merged earth and sky into a single void without paths or roads. The intense cold made breathing difficult. I covered my mouth and nose by wrapping my woolen scarf up to my eyes, but still I breathed hard. The Broken Shoe was stronger than I. She walked a little ahead of me, leading the way. I lowered my head against the wind and followed her footprints. About halfway to the township office, her pace slackened. Slushy mud, dragging at her slippers, made every step an effort. I was better off; the laced tops of my sneakers held them to my feet.

She suddenly stopped. I wiped the melting snowflakes off my face and eyelashes. The slush oozed up almost to the tops of her shoes, but she stood stock-still as if rooted to the spot. Not far ahead two figures chased and clawed at each other like two maniac children. While one figure took his stand, gesturing like a ringmaster in a circus, the other circled crazily around him, staggered, then fell. The ringmaster jumped up and down, flapping his arms.

“They look like the idiot and landlord Wu,” I faltered.

“No,” she whispered, her lips quivering.

The wind screeched and bit my face. I closed my eyes and protected my face with my hands. When I looked again the two figures were nowhere to be seen.