Under the Red Flag Read online

  The militia in the Pangs’ yard changed their attitude at once and joined the family looking for the bride. They went to the railroad station and the six bridges in town. They combed several bushes and a few cornfields. Every reservoir in nearby villages was checked too. Nobody had seen a shadow of Hong, and group by group the men returned empty-handed. Hai never stopped cursing Feng Ping, declaring he would level the graves of Feng’s ancestors and annihilate the entire Feng clan if anything happened to his young wife.

  It was almost dark. The half-moon cast a bluish curtain of mist on the tiled roofs, the treetops, the streets. Light bulbs flashed on one after another, and children were playing hide-and-seek on the streets. The militia had gone home for dinner, while the Pangs, Mrs. Chen, and Lilian were still searching. The well keeping Hong had been looked and shouted into several times, but Hong, clinging to the jagged wall, wouldn’t respond to the calling. She was uncertain who was up there and didn’t want to be surrounded by a crowd when she got out, though she was trembling all over and her stomach was twinging with hunger and fear. Finally came a familiar voice. “Hong, are you down there?”

  “Yes, I’m here, Lilian!”

  “My goodness, you are in there. Did you hurt yourself? Oh!” Lilian broke into tears.

  “No, I’m all right.”

  “Wait, we’ll pull you out.”

  “Come back, Lilian. Come back.” It was too late to stop Lilian, who had left for help.

  A few minutes later Hai and Mrs. Chen arrived with a rope and a large bucket. Hai shouted into the well while sobbing and lowering the bucket, “Hong, are you all right? Why do this to yourself? It’s not your fault …” Words just gushed out of his throat. Never had he been so talkative.

  Hong climbed into the bucket. “I’m in it now. Pull,” she cried.

  The second her feet touched the cement terrace, Hai embraced her and burst out wailing. “Even heaven collapsed, you shouldn’t do this. How could I live without you!” Despite her dripping clothes, he held her tight as though afraid of losing her again. She felt his arms and chest so warm and so powerful that she let herself go, leaning against him as if nesting in a comfortable bed. Lilian was wiping her cheeks with a white handkerchief.

  “My little devil, how could you abandon your old mother!” Mrs. Chen said while wrapping her daughter with a blanket. She was also unable to control her tears.

  Hong was too overwhelmed to say a word. The street was shimmering in the moonlight. A smell of baked sweet potato was lingering in the air and aroused a pang in Hong’s stomach. Together they walked back to the bridechamber, which would be safe and quiet for the first night.

  Again, the Spring Breeze Blew

  At her husband’s funeral in the afternoon Lanlan cried so hard that she fainted and was unconscious for almost twenty minutes. The leaders of the production brigade assigned an oxcart to carry her back from the graveyard. Once home, she placed her one-year-old boy Kai on the brick bed and lay down beside him. Soon her sobbing subsided. She thought of returning to her mother’s in Quarry Village the next morning.

  She wasn’t sure why she was so heartbroken. Certainly she missed her husband, but she couldn’t tell whether she loved him so much as to cry her heart out for him. Since their marriage, they had fought almost every week. Now it was over. Two days ago, her husband had fallen from their house while repairing the roof. He broke his neck on the edge of a large water vat and died instantly without leaving her a word.

  Outside, a hen began clucking. That’s the black one, Lanlan told herself. Forty-six eggs now. Remember to boil ten for tomorrow’s trip.

  Eggs reminded her that her husband had died without food in his stomach. This again brought tears to her eyes. Though he had often beaten her, they had managed to live together; as the old saying attests: “One night’s husband and wife guarantees a hundred days’ affection.” They had shared the same bed for twenty-two months and had been somewhat attached to each other. Besides, he had left her a son who was healthy and almost an exact copy of him.

  Why am I so unlucky? she asked herself. I’m still young, just twenty-seven, a young widow. From now on, I’ll have to take care of everything inside and outside the house, and have to be both mom and dad to Kai.

  As if something tore at her heart, she sobbed again, mumbling to the pillows, “A young widow, a young widow.”

  It was getting dark. The smell of fresh corn cakes and fried soy paste began to fill Sea Nest Village. Sheep’s bleating and pigs’ squealing could be heard now and then. Lanlan didn’t cook, but she knew she had to eat so as to nurse the baby. Lying in the dim room, she remembered Ailian, who had been a young widow for only a year and then married another man. But Ailian is a beauty in the village, she said to herself. I can’t compare myself with her.

  She heard a creak at the door. “Who is it?” she asked loudly. No sound. It must have been a dog, she thought. Since no food had been left in the outer room, she didn’t bother to get up.

  Suddenly the door curtain burst open and a man jumped in. “Keep quiet,” he hissed, waving a long knife.

  By instinct she turned to reach for the sleeping baby. “Don’t move!” rasped the man.

  She froze, staring at him. He was a small man, bony and pallid. His hair was long and unkempt, and his round eyes were glowing luridly. Though scared, she managed to ask, “What do you want?”

  “I want your thighs.” He grinned, revealing two broken teeth. He moved close and ordered, “Take off your pants, and don’t make any noise or I’ll stab you and the little bastard.” He pointed the knife at the baby.

  A cramp stiffened her right leg, and she obeyed him, slowly untying her waistband.

  “Quick, you bitch!” He stuck the knife into the waist of her pants and ripped it open. His left hand grasped a thick layer of flesh on her belly as his other hand stood the knife on the wooden edge of the bed. Then with both hands he pulled off her pants and briefs and threw them to the earth floor.

  She was about to cry, but stopped at the sight of the knife. She was lying on the bed helplessly.

  The man unbuckled his pants. “If you make a noise, I’ll stab you through. Got it?”

  She nodded, unable to say a word. He smelled of grass and mud; his belly was flat and hairy.

  “Look at these thick thighs,” he said, pinching her hip. “I thought I had luck today. Such an ugly thing. What lousy luck! These swollen udders.” He fingered his long mustache. “Well, I guess I have to make do.” He yanked at her breast and pressed his other hand on her shoulder.

  With her nipple in his mouth, he began to enter her, moaning lustfully. Anger surged up in her. Slowly her hand moved to the knife, held it, pulled it off, raised it and thrust it into his rib cage. “Oh!” he gasped, and jumped up, tearing the cut open. The knife bounced off and hit the wall with a clang as her hand suddenly felt the warmth of his blood. He staggered away to the door. Then she heard a thump in the outer room.

  Kai woke up with a cry. She grabbed the baby and dashed out, shrieking, “Help! Save my life! Help!”

  In front of her, ducks and chickens were flapping and whirling. Two young cocks flew up and landed atop the latrine.

  The villagers were bewildered by what had happened. Lanlan had run into the street screaming and wailing with the baby in her arms. She was wearing only a shirt, without anything on below her waist. Some men laughed and smacked their lips. Her neighbor Aunt Wang pulled her away to the Wangs’ and gave her a pair of slacks. People went to Lanlan’s house and found a half-naked man, pants around knees, in the outer room. His head was buried in the cornstalks beside the cooking range, while his bare butt pointed towards the ceiling. A few men kicked him, and he slid on his side, no breath left in him. A trail of blood led to the brick bed, on whose glossy surface was a crimson puddle. The big knife lying in a corner looked so expensive that a boy slipped it into his sleeve. The whole house smelled like a fish shop. Obviously, the man and the woman must have been doing it when he was struck
down. Perhaps the spirit of the late husband had intervened.

  How come on the very day of her husband’s burial another man was found in her home? And both Lanlan and the man were half naked? Did they go to bed together? More confusing, nobody in the village knew the man. Who was he? Why did he choose to go to Lanlan’s house and not another’s? If he was a rapist as Lanlan claimed, how come he knew that no man was in her home today? What was their true relationship? Nobody could tell. It seemed there must have been something between them. This couldn’t be a pure coincidence.

  In the production brigade’s office the Party secretary, Chian Heng, and the director, Zhang Gu, were restless. By Lanlan’s appearance and account they were convinced that the dead man had attempted to rape her, though they were uncertain whether her denial of knowing him was true. During their questioning of her, she had never stopped crying and hadn’t been able to describe everything clearly. More disturbing was that the man was killed, so whatever she said became the statement of one party. Nobody could prove the dead man was a rapist.

  “Stop worrying about the evidence, Old Chian,” Director Zhang said. “We’ll never have it. The man is already dead. What really matters is who he is.”

  “That’s true.”

  With a teacup in his hand the director went to a room across the corridor to call the police in Dismount Fort, while Secretary Chian remained in the office rolling a cigarette. In the next room Lanlan began crying again and declared she would kill herself for shame. A few female voices whispered, trying to calm her. Chian sighed and puffed out smoke. He had been a friend of Lanlan’s late husband and knew the couple had gone through a tumultuous marriage, and he had never liked Lanlan since the day she came to the village.

  Zhang returned, heaving a sigh. “Any news?” Chian asked.

  “Only Shen Li is in town tonight. They’ll come tomorrow morning.”

  “Does he know anything about the dead man?”

  “He said there was a report on a missing man—Dong Cai’s nephew, a lunatic.”

  Chian was shocked, because Dong was the vice-secretary of the commune. “Did he know what the madman looks like?”

  “Yes, a small man in corduroy pants.”

  “Damn it,” Chian slapped his thigh, “that’s him.”

  “We’re in trouble now.”

  Chian stood up and went to the next room. Zhang followed him. At the sight of them Lanlan winced and lowered her head. “You know who you killed?” Chian asked her. Without waiting for an answer, he added, “You killed Vice-Secretary Dong’s nephew, a madman. Damn you, such a jinx.”

  Lanlan burst into tears again.

  “Why did you say that?” asked Aunt Wang, who was Secretary Chian’s mother-in-law’s cousin. “What else could she do? Hothead Chian, what do you want your wife to do if a strange man is on top of her?”

  “No matter what, she shouldn’t kill him,” Chian said. “Now he’s dead, she can’t prove her case and she’ll go to jail.” He shook his head.

  “Let’s go home. No use arguing with him,” Aunt Wang said, and held Lanlan by the elbow. They stood up and moved to the door, followed by two other women.

  After covering the corpse with rice straws in a storeroom inside the office house and assigning three militiamen to stand guard at the door for the night, the secretary and the director left for home. They assured each other that they had better stay off this mess and let the police handle it.

  Lanlan and Kai stayed at the Wangs’ that night. The fear and exhaustion upset her breasts, from which no milk came. She used to be proud of the two spurting fountains that had fattened the boy as if blowing up a balloon. Sometimes there had been so much milk in them that her husband had to suck them to relieve her pain, but now Kai, screaming, chewed her dry nipples ferociously with his two teeth. Aunt Wang gave her a large bowl of rice porridge; Lanlan fed the boy with it and ate two sweet potatoes herself.

  Kai fell asleep soon afterwards, but Lanlan couldn’t stop tossing and turning in bed. She worried about what was going to happen the next day. Are they going to send me to jail? she asked herself. For sure they will. I killed an important man. Tears streamed down her cheeks again. What should 1 do about Kai if I go to jail? Oh, I’m such an unfortunate woman. Today I buried my husband and tomorrow I’ll squat in a dark cell. Whose fault is this? I was defending myself and that man was going to kill me, but they won’t believe me. Oh, what a life, so miserable, one misfortune after another.

  It serves you right, she cursed herself. The moment your husband was buried, you began thinking how soon you would get married again, thinking of another man. It serves you right. Now you have a man and you can’t get rid of him. Shameless, you can’t live without a man.

  The self-scathing words seemed to make her feel a little better. With her stomach gurgling from time to time, she wept continually until she fell asleep.

  Early next morning Aunt Wang accompanied Lanlan back to her house. On the ground, in the outer room, there were a few large patches of dried blood. With a coal shovel Aunt Wang scraped them off; she brought in some fresh earth with a basket and covered the spots with it. They stamped about to tamp down the earth. Then they used water and towels to wipe off the blood on the bed. Because the bed’s surface was made of oilpaper, it wasn’t hard for them to get rid of the blotches and stains. After the cleaning Aunt Wang left. Still, the house smelled fishy, so Lanlan opened all the windows.

  Having tied one end of a rope to the window frame and the other end around Kai’s waist to prevent him from falling off the bed, Lanlan began to bake corn cakes and make glue. She kept telling herself she had to eat—it would be a long day. Oddly enough, though she knew she might be sentenced to prison, somehow in her heart she felt the whole thing wouldn’t turn out that ugly. Hard as she tried to take the matter seriously, she seemed quite certain they would let her return home in the evening. She went out to feed the chickens, ducks, and piglets. At the sight of the food—chopped radish greens mixed with corn flour—the poultry made so much noise that Widower Bao, Aunt Wang’s brother-in-law, who happened to be passing by, stopped at the front gate to watch and whistle. Lanlan dared not raise her eyes to look at the man, who had a wry mouth.

  The moment she put down her bowl on the dining table, two young men came to take her to the brigade’s office. They said that the police would arrive at any time and that she must go with them without delay. She left Kai with Aunt Wang and went with the men. Unable to keep herself from imagining the interrogation, she began to retch and had to stop at the roadside. She sat down on her haunches and vomited several minutes. Standing up, walking another few steps, she had a cramp in her right leg again. The two militiamen had to pull her along like dragging a counterrevolutionary to a public denunciation. She was moaning all the way.

  When they reached the entrance to the office two policemen were already in there. A stalwart middle-aged man—the director of town police, Zu Ming—came out to meet her. Surprisingly, he smiled at her and held out his large hand. “Congratulations,” he said in a clear voice.

  Lanlan was bewildered and dared not stretch out her hand. All the brigade leaders were standing behind the policemen and smiling at her without any trace of ill feeling. She was gawking at them.

  “Congratulations, Comrade Lanlan,” Zu said again, coming closer. She gave him her hand. He shook it and said, “We heard from the County Police this morning that a prison escapee had entered our area. He raped a woman in Sand County two days ago. The man you killed yesterday is the very criminal on the loose. Thank you, comrade. You helped us get rid of a class enemy. You must’ve had a terrible fright. Please forgive us for coming so late.”

  Without a word, Lanlan collapsed to the ground. She cried at the brigade leaders, “I told you it’s not my fault, but you didn’t believe me.” She gasped for breath, kicking her feet and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Everybody blamed me for his death. You all bully me, a poor woman who just lost her husband. Oh where, where c
an 1 find justice!”

  With a red face Secretary Chian went up to her and said, “Lanlan, don’t be so upset. It’s over now. The man isn’t the lunatic, and we made a mistake. You did a good thing. We’re all proud of you.”

  Director Zhang meanwhile told a young man to bring over a strong bicycle, a Big Golden Deer, to carry her home.

  Though the case was resolved, Lanlan didn’t seem to feel better. In one week two men had died in her house. What else could she be but a jinx to men? Who would dare to come close to her? She knew that the villagers thought her this way and that she would have to remain a widow for a long time. Looking in a mirror, she found herself resembling her aged mother more than before: her round eyes had grown broader, two dark curves appeared beneath the lower eyelids, her mouth was sunken a little, her lips took the shape of a heart, only her nose was still delicate and pretty. A gray hair stuck out on her forehead; she got hold of it and pulled it off. It was a long one and she threw it to the ground. She remembered the saying: “One smile makes you look ten years younger, while one worry turns your hair white.”

  That evening Aunt Wang came. She sat on the edge of the brick bed and put Kai on her lap. The boy gave out laughter as the old woman stuck her head again and again in his belly, tickling him. Lanlan poured a cup of boiled water for Aunt Wang and sat down at the other end of the bed.

  Then the old woman said what was on her mind; she wanted Lanlan to consider marrying Widower Bao.