Under the Red Flag Read online

  “All right,” the boy said, taking the whip. He had driven loads of crops before and didn’t suspect anything.

  Watching his son’s triangular back, Tang realized the boy was almost a man. This further convinced him that he was doing a timely thing. Heaven help! Let it work out.

  With a slight toss, the cart started moving out of the field. Everything seemed normal, and the other people turned to their work. Tang stood there, watching the load wavering toward the road and wondering why the hot peppers didn’t work. The load of the crop sank and rose, bumped a little, and got onto the surface of the road. As soon as the cart wheeled around to move down the slope a front horse, the roan stallion, plunged. Then the other horses began galloping too. The load was jolting wildly from side to side.

  “Help!” The boy’s cry rent the air.

  People were too shocked to respond at once. Without a word Tang was dashing toward the bumping cart. “Let’s go help,” someone shouted. Several men set off running behind Tang.

  The load of the crop was plunging down the mountain road. The din of the horses’ hooves, the wheels, and the boy’s cries was fading away. After a few turns the cart disappeared; so did the noises, except for the horses’ neighing. Tang was running desperately. Gasping hard for breath, he felt as though his head was going to explode. Sparks and golden rings were floating around him while a taste of blood surged up into his throat. The commune members, left far behind, were amazed by his speed.

  The cart fell into a small valley. Millet bundles were scattered everywhere, a few hung on the branches of apple trees. There beside a wheel lay Da Long, his eyes shut and his lips puffing out scarlet froth. Blood was trickling out of his nostrils. Tang threw himself at his son’s side and lifted his head up. The boy moaned, without much breath left in him. His chest had been crushed. Tears sprang to Tang’s eyes. It dawned on him that there was no hope for his son anymore and that he’d better finish him off. He looked around but couldn’t find a rock, then he saw the peg partly underneath a bundle. He picked it up, raised it with both hands, and struck Da Long on the skull.

  “Hold it!” someone yelled from behind. “Don’t do it, Uncle Tang!”

  The voice startled Tang and the peg fell to the ground. His son stopped breathing instantly. Two men grabbed Tang while others carried the boy off to the village. Everybody blamed Tang for his bad temper. However angry he was with his son for the accident, Da Long was merely a fourteen-year-old and a new hand in the work; there was no reason for Tang to strike him like that. Besides, the boy was dying, no father would beat a dying son. It was inhuman not to save the life in danger. Some people believed Tang had actually killed Da Long with the peg.

  After the boy’s burial Zhen, together with Hsia, left for her parents’ in Apricot Village that very day. She couldn’t bear to see her husband drink hard and eat fish and meat. He had even killed the only four chickens that the commune allowed the family to raise. Nobody understood why Tang enjoyed himself so much, sonless though he was now. In the meantime the whole village was talking about his bad temper and cruelty.

  Next morning two Beijing jeeps pulled up before the Tangs’, and a group of policemen jumped off and surrounded the yard. Two of them entered the front gate with pistols in their hands. Tang saw them and understood it was time to leave, so he put on an army cap and for the first time buckled his broad leather belt around his waist. He didn’t bother to look at the police, whom he simply took as his bodyguards. In a few days they would all salute him as General Tang. Surprised by his calm appearance, the two policemen stepped aside and let him pass without handcuffing him. They followed him out.

  Tang inhaled the fresh air that made his chest contract with joy. In the distance, colorful clouds were tumbling and gleaming on the treetops like an army of horses and men marching onto a battlefield. He stopped and narrowed his eyes, listening to a bugle call to charge, the beating of drums, the din of a hot battle, the shouts of killing, the sweet female voices singing triumphant songs, the clinking of glasses mixed with the tunes of pipes and strings, the hurrays for the grand general, the explosions of firecrackers, and salvos. He smelled the fragrance of gunpowder and roast pigs.

  “Ha, ha, ha—ha—” he laughed heartily to the sky while striding to the jeep. Never had he felt more like a man.

  Taking a Husband

  The moment Hong Chen entered the narrow lane leading to Lilian’s house, a bloody rooster landed before her, jumping about and scattering its feathers. Four little boys ran over with knives and a hatchet in their hands. “Kill, kill him!” one boy cried, but none of them dared approach the rooster, whose throat was cut half through.

  Lilian’s big body appeared; she was carrying a cleaver. “Finish him off, boys. Don’t let him suffer!” she cried. She walked over and stamped the dancing rooster to the ground. The biggest boy raised the hatchet and chopped the dangling head off.

  At the sight of Hong, Lilian took her foot off the rooster and said, “I’m helping them kill the chicken. Their parents shouldn’t let these boys do this. It’s crazy. Blood is everywhere.”

  “I can smell it,” Hong said. Together they entered the house.

  “My parents are not home.” Lilian patted Hong’s arm with her free hand. She stood the cleaver on a cutting board, on which was a pile of cabbage leaves that she had just chopped for the ducks. She washed her hands in a basin and then led Hong into her own room.

  Without delay, Hong said Pang Hai’s matchmaker had come to press her again. She asked Lilian whether there was any news about who would become the commune’s vice-chairman. Lilian’s father was a train attendant going to the county town three or four times a week, so he might learn the news before others.

  “No, I haven’t heard of anything.” Lilian rolled her broad eyes.

  “What should I do?” Hong sighed and placed her slender hands on her lap.

  “If I were you, I’d take Pang Hai.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know which one of them will be the chairman, right? We can assume they’re equal in this aspect, right? Then Hai looks better than Feng Ping.”

  Hong smiled, the skin around her nose crinkling slightly. “He doesn’t look better to me.”

  “Ah, I forgot to show you something.” Lilian clapped her hands and walked over to her desk. She pulled a drawer and took out a paper clipping as large as a palm. “Read this, and you’ll think differently.” She grinned.

  Hong recognized that it was an article from The Journal of Women’s Health and Hygiene. The title read “Don’t Be Scared on Your Wedding Night.” She lowered her head and read. In an elegant style the article described to the virgin reader the experience of losing her hymen on the first night. “It may hurt a little initially,” the author wrote, “but do not panic. Ask him to be gentle. Gradually you will feel a pleasant sensation that you have not experienced before.”

  “Why do you want me to read this?” Hong’s face reddened.

  Lilian smiled. “Tell me what it’s like.”

  “What?”

  “The pleasant sensation.”

  “Damn you, how could I know!” Hong went for Lilian, waving her fist. Her almond eyes were shining and blinking.

  “All right, I believe you, Little Nun.” Lilian turned away. “God, I wish one of us knew.” She sounded serious.

  “Why did you say that?”

  “Only by comparison can we tell who is better, right?”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “God, you’re so naive. I wish lots of men were after me, and I’d do it with all of them. Too bad my parents didn’t give me a pretty face like yours.”

  “That’s silly.”

  “I mean it.” Lilian kept her face straight. “If I were you, I’d do it with both of them and choose the better one.”

  “No, no, that’s crazy. Once you sleep with a man, you’ll never get rid of him. Don’t you understand? Remember the girl who hanged herself because her ex-boyfriend talked about what they�
��d done? Nobody would marry me if I were known as ‘a broken shoe.’”

  “That’s just an idea, but you should think of the physical part, shouldn’t you?”

  “How could I know?”

  “See, that’s why I said you should do it.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “At least you should think which one of them is abler, shouldn’t you? I mean physically.” Lilian rolled her eyes again.

  “Damn you, Lilian. You have a dirty mind.” Hong pinched her friend on the fleshy cheek.

  “Come on, I said truth. Oh let go, let go!”

  Hong released her grip. “To be honest,” Lilian said, rubbing her cheek, “I think Pang Hai is better. He’s taller and stronger.”

  “I don’t know.” Hong sighed.

  It was already dark when Hong left Lilian’s. A locomotive tooted its steam horn in the distance as the power lines were droning softly along the street. Hong thought of her friend’s words and couldn’t help smiling. Lilian had always been knowledgeable about things between a woman and a man, though she had never gotten good grades in school. “A muzzy head,” as a math teacher had called her. Yet it was Lilian who, when they were in high school, had told Hong how babies were made. In her candid words, “Your dad did it to your mom, and then you were born.” Before that enlightening moment, Hong had believed that if a woman sat together with a man in a dark movie theater she would be pregnant with his child.

  Unlike Lilian, Hong had been disgusted with boys during her teens. In her eyes they were all rascals. When she was a sixth grader, she began to have her period. She was terrified at the sight of her blood and called out, “Mom, I’m bleeding!” Her mother, Mrs. Chen, smiled and said, “You’re a big girl now.” Then she found her a roll of soft gauze.

  The next day in the PE class the students were running together around the playground. Suddenly Hong felt something passing through her trouser leg. She shuddered and almost fell down. She looked back and found the boys kicking forward her roll of bloody gauze and laughing and whooping. At this moment the recess bell rang. She hurried back to the classroom and buried her face in her arms on her desk, but the boys wouldn’t let her off. Within half a minute a crowd gathered at the window shouting, “Bad girl,” “Broken shoe,” “Shameless,” “Cracked melon.” One of them was holding up a bamboo stick, on whose tip was exhibited that piece of scarlet evidence. Several small girls who hated her also joined them. Pang Hai and Feng Ping were among the crowd. Hong burst into sobs and dared not raise her head. Then the teacher ran over, grabbed the stick, and yelled, “Leave her alone, idiots!” She chased her students away, striking them so hard with the bamboo stick that it cracked.

  That afternoon Hong drank a bottle of DDT at home; fortunately her mother found it out in time and took her to the Commune Clinic to have her stomach cleansed. At that time her father was the Party secretary of the commune, so the school leaders handled the incident very efficiently—the boy who had raised the stick was expelled.

  It would be unfair to say that the boys always maltreated Hong. When the yellowish hair on their upper lips began to turn to soft mustaches in the high school, the chest of Hong’s desk often received a chocolate bar, or an apple, or a pear, or a pomegranate, once even a baked sweet potato which was still warm. The donors always remained anonymous. Every time Hong handed the dainty to the teacher, who would take it home for her own children. The boys were brazen and despicable, and Hong was irritated by them, even believing that most of them were interested in her mainly because she had a powerful father. The more indifferent and elusive she was, the more charming and virtuous she grew in the boys’ eyes. In her last year of high school she became the beauty queen, without winning any contest; the boys chose her in secret among themselves. Heavens, they would never leave her alone.

  After her father died of bone cancer, life was hard for the Chens. Most of his former subordinates stopped showing any respect for his family. Two years after his death, the Chens were forced to move out of the compound inhabited by the cadres’ families. Mrs. Chen begged some former friends to help, but nobody would intercede on her behalf. By now both the mother and the daughter had fully experienced the difficulty and humiliation caused by lacking power in their own hands. When several young men proposed to Hong, she told the matchmakers that she wasn’t interested in marriage, but her mother persuaded her, saying, “If I die tomorrow, I won’t be able to close my eyes unless you have a good husband.” Every woman ought to marry; if she didn’t, people would think her abnormal.

  Because Hong didn’t like any of the suitors, she began to focus her attention on their official positions. She remembered how prosperous and glorious the Chens had been when her father dominated Dismount Fort. The whole family had once taken a Russian jeep to Dalian City, the chauffeur obeying her father like a lapdog. She wanted people, especially those girls who hated and disparaged her, to look up to her again. Already the suitors without a presentable official position had retreated of their own accord; Feng Ping and Pang Hai emerged as the finalists. They knew Hong wanted to marry the vice-chairman-to-be, but neither of them could do anything to have himself elevated immediately, though they were both candidates for that position. All they could do now was force Hong to make her choice before the promotion materialized.

  Feng Ping’s matchmaker, Aunt Lin, visited the Chens two days later. She wanted them to give a definitive answer. Holding the tea Hong had poured her, the old woman turned to Mrs. Chen. “We can’t wait anymore. You’ve got to let us know your decision in two or three days.” She put the cup on the desk and shrugged her scraggy shoulders.

  “Can’t you give us another week?” Mrs. Chen said.

  Aunt Lin sighed. “Only by agreeing to marry him before his promotion can Hong prove her love for Young Feng. He wants true love.”

  “Then tell him, go to hell,” Hong said, her thin lips pursed.

  “Shut up!” Mrs. Chen snapped at her daughter, and then turned to Aunt Lin. “She’s totally spoiled. She doesn’t mean it.”

  “Of course not. No girl’s words mean business in her marriage. That’s why we parents arrange things for them. But you’ve got to give us an answer soon.”

  At long last, the Chens agreed to make their decision in three days. Mrs. Chen was annoyed by her daughter’s lack of preference. In such a foggy situation the only reliable chart was your own heart, but Hong couldn’t feel anything. If pressed hard, she would say, “I don’t want to marry, all right?” But she was wrong. She had to choose one or the other of the outstanding young men, whom most girls in Dismount Fort would kill to marry. In her heart Hong knew she must never lose such an opportunity. After this village there won’t be the same inn, as the wise saying warns. But she felt sick at heart, wondering why people called a wedding “a Red Happy Event.” What was it that you should be happy about?

  Unable to choose, on the third day the mother and the daughter resorted to drawing lots. Mrs. Chen wrote “Feng” and “Pang” separately on two scraps of paper and rolled them into two tiny balls. She put them into a teacup. Covering the mouth of the cup with her palm, she shook it and dropped the paper balls on the glossy brick bed. “Now you pick one, Hong. Be careful, the one you choose will be your husband.”

  Hong shut her eyes and twisted the paper balls with her slim fingers, her face pale and her lips curled. “All right, I take this one.” She handed it to her mother.

  Mrs. Chen unrolled it. “No, you picked the wrong one!” On the paper the character “Pang” stood proudly.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Hong said. “I’m going to marry him.”

  “Oh, my gut feeling is that Pang Hai is not going to be the chairman.”

  “It’s too early to tell, Mom.” Hong thought Lilian would be pleased by this choice.

  On the same day the Chens’ decision was known to most households in town. Pang Hai was elated. For him this was a good beginning. He felt his spine sturdier than before and even his heels seemed full of power whe
n he walked. Of course he didn’t know how the Chens had reached the decision. He had always kept an amorous eye on Hong since he came to know that she wasn’t a bad girl at all and that the roll of bloody gauze only proved she was healthy and normal. As for the next step—the engagement, he hadn’t lost his head over the initial victory and was inclined to make everything as simple as possible. At this critical juncture of his official career, he kept firmly in mind Chairman Mao’s instruction: “We must always be modest and prudent and must, so to speak, tuck our tails between our legs.”

  He sent his matchmaker, Aunt Zheng, to the Chens to seek understanding: the engagement ceremony would be plain and quiet, whereas the wedding would be customary and colorful. The Chens didn’t think it unreasonable, so it was settled.

  The engagement dinner was held at the Pangs’ on August 1, Army Day. Only a few guests were present. Besides the members of the two families, there were the secretary and the director of the Harvest Fertilizer Plant, where Pang Hai’s father worked as a bulldozer driver. Aunt Zheng had also been invited, in addition to being presented a yard of woolen cloth by the Pangs as “a little keepsake.” The old woman wouldn’t take money from such a good family and meant to do Hai a free service. Unfortunately she was sick on the engagement day, unable to come and eat.

  At the dinner Hai couldn’t help smiling at Hong, who would glare back. His eyes were so large they reminded her of an ox’s. When he placed a chicken leg in her plate, the chopsticks slipped off his hand, which was huge and veined.

  In the beginning the two tables were quiet, and the only words that could be heard were “Eat, try this,” or “Fresh and crispy,” or “Good fish, so fat.” But after several rounds of sorghum liquor the men grew louder. The leaders of the fertilizer plant began talking of the housing program for their cadres and workers. Director Ma, a tall husky man, kept burping while drawing floor plans on the table with his fingers wet with alcohol. Liu, the stocky secretary, claimed he was so happy for the children that he must drink to his heart’s content. Then he clapped his palm on his fat lips, remembering this was not the wedding. It didn’t matter, however, because he would do that on October 1 when the young couple were scheduled to enter the bridechamber.