Under the Red Flag Read online

  Though Aunt Wang said they were a natural couple, Lanlan couldn’t help knitting her brows. That man is almost fifty, she thought. He’s too old for me. She’s making fun of me. He could be my father.

  Aunt Wang seemed to read her thoughts and said, “Lanlan, don’t think he’s old. Look at the way he walks, and the strength he shows when working in the fields, and his big hands and thick shoulders. Don’t tell me that man is old. Oh, my goodness, what an appetite he has. He eats a basin of noodles at one—” She held her tongue and regretted mentioning his appetite, since no woman liked a big eater. She added, “An older man is more considerate, you know.”

  “Aunt Wang, I’ll think about it,” Lanlan said.

  “All right, take your time. We’ll wait for your answer.”

  After the old woman left, Lanlan felt tired and decided not to go to her mother’s so soon. She would stay home for a few days to recover from the exhaustion.

  The next evening Aunt Wang came again. From then on she came almost every day, playing with Kai and helping Lanlan with housework. Lanlan didn’t like it, and by and by she was annoyed by the old woman’s presence in the house. For sure she was grateful to her, for sure she would do something in return, but not marrying her brother-in-law in such a hurry. Of course, she knew that since the villagers thought of her as a jinx, there would be few men who were interested in her, but why couldn’t she wait? She was not so cheap that she would make do with any man, even an old scarecrow like Widower Bao. She was not so weak that she couldn’t live without a man in her house. Someday she might marry a man who was even better than her late husband. Things would change as long as she waited patiently. Who knows, the spring breeze may blow again, she kept saying to herself.

  A week later a middle-aged reporter arrived at Sea Nest Village. His task was to write about Lanlan’s brave deed. At the interview in her house, he had her describing the event from the beginning to the end. The brigade leaders accompanied the reporter, and Secretary Chian kept saying she was the best young wife in the village.

  Lanlan couldn’t understand why there was so much glory in killing a man, vicious as that thug was. She wouldn’t do it again. No, even for ten thousand yuan she wouldn’t. So she told them plainly, “I was scared. I am still scared. I’ve burned all the clothes I wore that day. At night I always see a shadow in the outer room. Sometimes I wake up screaming like a man’s on top of me. Oh heaven, I can still smell him in the house.”

  The reporter smiled amiably and said, “Don’t be so scared. You’ll get over it soon.” He was writing down her words.

  She noticed that his hands had long fingers. The black fountain pen was moving rapidly and spitting out one character after another. She had never seen such male hands, which apparently had nothing to do with farm work. None of the women in the village had hands so delicate. She gazed at his handwriting, which was beautiful. He must be a good writer, who could make words flow like a stream and float like clouds.

  When she added water to their teacups, she stole a glance at the reporter. He was handsome, with a pale face, a mouth having upward corners, and a straight nose. His large eyes had double-fold lids. In every way he was different from those country men she knew. She found herself breathing strangely and couldn’t help glancing at him time and again.

  The interview ended, and the men stood up and were ready to leave. Lanlan asked them to stay for lunch, saying she would cook long noodles with oysters, but Director Zhang said the brigade’s kitchen had prepared a meal. She realized they would have a feast there, so she didn’t insist.

  They went out of the house. The reporter thanked her and shook hands with her. His hand was smooth and warm. She watched them walking to the front gate. He was taller than the other men and his gait was full of ease.

  “Lanlan, you’re in the newspaper,” Ailian shouted when they were hoeing beets four days later.

  “Really? What does it say about me?”

  Ailian read the article in Red Star, the county’s newspaper, to Lanlan and the villagers gathering around. The title said, “A Brave Woman and Good Wife.” The article described how Lanlan had fought an escaped criminal to protect her chastity; she was so brave and so determined that she wrestled with the man and stabbed him to death. It ended with a petition that such a good woman deserved a reward, just as a soldier would be awarded a merit citation or a promotion for his outstanding service.

  All the commune members in the field congratulated Lanlan, but she was puzzled a little. She wasn’t that good. When she stabbed the thug she had never thought of her husband at all, not to mention preserving her chastity for him, a dead man. But she didn’t say anything, because she believed the handsome reporter must have helped her in secret. She mustn’t appear as if she didn’t know how to appreciate favors. Calm though she seemed, she couldn’t concentrate on the hoeing. Again and again her hoe cut down some seedlings. She cursed herself under her breath and kicked tufts of weeds to cover up the felled beets.

  From that day on, all the brigade leaders became very considerate to her. They asked her whether she wanted help for sowing her family plot and whether her piglets needed gelding. Whatever she was unable to do, just let them know. In a week another article appeared, but this time in the biggest newspaper in the province, Liaoning Daily. It praised Lanlan as a model in fighting class enemies, as the title declared: “A Young Woman Subdued a Violent Criminal.” Currently, the Provincial Administration was waging a full-scale campaign against crime. The article called upon all citizens to follow Lanlan’s example and participate in cracking down on the criminals so as to create a peaceful environment for everyone to work, study, and live in.

  Now Lanlan became famous. The County Administration issued a document about her case, instructing the Personnel Department to assign her a good job and the Police Bureau to provide her with a residence card, which would qualify her as a city dweller. In a few days she was informed that she was given a job as a saleswoman at a hardware store in Gold County. She would be paid sixty yuan a month, 30 percent higher than the regular starting salary. In addition, she would become a permanent resident in the county town.

  No one expected such a fortune could drop from heaven. Aunt Wang was unhappy about it, because Lanlan hadn’t given her an answer yet and probably had stopped considering the proposal. Now the young widow had flown beyond the old woman’s reach, and Widower Bao’s chance of marrying her was dwindling. One morning Lanlan heard beyond the wall Aunt Wang cursing a dog, “You ungrateful beast.” Lanlan didn’t care. Her mother had arrived to help her after hearing of what had happened, and her breasts had regained abundant milk, and she didn’t need to have anything to do with that jealous crone anymore. At last Aunt Wang showed her true nature. A yellow weasel never wishes a chicken a Happy New Year without thinking of the chicken’s blood, Lanlan told herself.

  Two weeks later The People’s Daily, the largest newspaper in China, also published a short article about Lanlan. In addition to praising her virtue and bravery, it mentioned her residence card and her new job, which she actually couldn’t start in two months until an old clerk retired from the hardware store. This article brought her hundreds of admiring letters from different parts of the country. Dozens of men sent her letters containing their photographs and proposed to her. Most of them were soldiers in the army or farmers in the countryside. They didn’t care what she looked like, because they knew she was good—a chaste, healthy woman; and they wanted nothing but a virtuous, hardworking wife. Some men even said they would treat the baby boy as their own.

  Lanlan was stunned that all of a sudden so many men would marry her, ready to give her a happy family. For the first time in her life she felt China was indeed a great country and never lacked men and women. But her mother was coolheaded and told her that besides their interest in her virtue and health, most of the men also had an eye on her residence card and her lucrative job. They wanted their descendants to be city dwellers, since according to the law an infant aut
omatically adopted its mother’s residential status. She told Lanlan, “Men are always after a good woman, just like flies after blood.” So she helped her choose a reliable man, who was from their home village and worked as a cook at a state-owned restaurant in Gold County. The wedding was scheduled to take place at the Mid-Fall Festival. By then, Lanlan would have settled in the county town.

  Sometimes she couldn’t help thinking of the handsome reporter. She regretted that she hadn’t asked his name. The memory often brought up a slight contraction in her chest, but she tried not to let it disturb her mind. In secret, she regarded him as a benefactor, an upright gentleman, and probably a sage. Now the spring breeze did blow, and she got more than she had expected. You mustn’t be too greedy, she kept telling herself. Besides, that man must have had his own family and never have thought of her—a simple rustic woman. Whoever he was, she wished him lots of children and a happy life.

  Resurrection

  “Damn you,” Fulan cursed her husband, Lu Han. “Now the whole Ox Village knows you slept with my sister. How can I go out and meet their faces?”

  Lu was sucking at a pipe in silence. The wrinkles on his forehead stretched to his temples, and his small eyes were lusterless. He was not yet thirty, but he had changed so much recently that he looked like a man in his fifties. Fulan took their four-month-old boy off her large breast, turned him around, and thrust her other nipple into his mouth. She said, “Shame on you. Can’t take care of your own cock. Even a studhorse knows not to mount his sister. Shameless—why don’t you go out, find a tree, and hang yourself?”

  Lu wanted to jump up and yell, “Your sister’s no good either, a cracked melon already! If a bitch doesn’t raise her tail, no dog can do anything to her.” But he remained on the bench, motionless, biting his thick lips.

  “All right,” she started again, “play deaf if you like. Tomorrow I’ll go back to my parents with Leopard. If your face is thick enough, come and fetch us. My dad and brothers will skin you alive.”

  Lu stood up and walked out into the dusk. He knew that talking was useless; once she got an idea into her head, you could never bring her around. Besides, what could he say? He was in the wrong to have slept with Fuli when his wife was pregnant. He felt so ashamed that he had cursed himself many times, but what was done was done, and all he could do now was bear the consequences.

  The peanut plants rustled in a lazy breeze. Katydids were chirping tremulously as the night air brought its coolness. Lu sat down by a millstone under a large mulberry. His broad shoulders drooped, and his short legs wearied. He gave out a long sigh and muttered to himself, “You asked for it.”

  He began thinking about how to atone for his error and start his life anew. The day before, the Party secretary, Zhao Mingyi, had told him to prepare to make a clean breast of his offense. He was supposed to go to the production brigade’s office the next evening and face interrogation by the brigade leaders. He was not afraid of their scolding, because he was certain he could keep quiet and endure their scathing words. What worried him was that if they were not satisfied with his confession and self-criticism, they could have him denounced publicly or paraded through the streets as a corrupt element. If that happened, his family and he himself would be done for. He had to be careful not to offend those leaders. For the time being, he thought, let Fulan do whatever she wants. He should deal with the external crisis first. Only after settling that could he put his family in order again.

  Next morning, after breakfast, Fulan was ready to leave with their baby for Date Village, where her parents lived. She was to take a horse cart, which was going there to carry back peanut cakes for the brigade’s chicken farm. Before she got on the cart, Lu gave the driver, Chu, a packet of Rose cigarettes and asked him to take care of his wife and son on the way. Chu smelled the cigarettes and promised with a grin, “They’ll get there without losing a hair.”

  After they left, Lu went directly to the soybean field on the southern hill and joined the commune members in hoeing.

  He didn’t cook lunch for himself at noon; instead he ate two cold corn cakes and radishes with soy paste. After feeding the poultry and the sow and the piglets, he went back to the field. For a whole day he smoked continually, musing over the impending trial. How lucky it was that his parents were dead. If they had been alive, the shame he brought on them could have killed them. How lucky he was that the leaders hadn’t caught Fuli, or they would have interrogated her to see whether everything he told them was true. She had left for her aunt’s in Heilongjiang Province a month before the scandal became public. In the northern frontier every woman was considered marriageable, because men outnumbered women. Two brothers would even share one wife. Lu heard that Fuli became engaged to a middle-aged veteran soon after she arrived there.

  At seven in the evening Lu reached the brigade’s office. The door was open, and inside the room the radio was playing a song, “I See the Pole Star When I Look Up.” Lu stepped in, but dared not go farther; he stood by the door waiting for instructions. Secretary Zhao, the brigade director Wang Peng, and Scribe Hsiao sat at a table smoking cigarettes and drinking tea. Zhao motioned to Lu to sit in front of them. The scribe turned off the radio. The room grew quiet, but Lu could hear a droning sound made by a few flies. He was reminded of the lines from a poem by Chairman Mao: “On our small planet / A few flies bang on walls / Buzzing, moaning, sobbing.”

  The trial started. Zhao pointed at the scroll hung on a wall beneath the Chairman’s portrait, and ordered: “Read these words for us.”

  “Leniency Toward Those Who Confess; Severity to Those Who Refuse!” Lu read in a shaky voice.

  “Good,” Zhao resumed, “you understand the Party’s policy, so I won’t waste my breath explaining it to you. Your attitude towards your crime will determine how we handle your case.”

  Lu was struck by the word “crime.” Is adultery a crime? he asked himself. It must be. Then they can treat me as a criminal, a class enemy! Sweat broke out on his forehead. The thought occurred to him that he ought to appear more remorseful.

  “Tell us, when did you start the abnormal relationship with Lin Fuli?” Wang asked.

  “Last fall,” Lu said.

  Scribe Hsiao dipped a pen into an inkstand and started taking notes.

  “How many times did you two have sexual intercourse?”

  “I can’t tell exactly.”

  “Think hard.” Wang’s eyes drilled into Lu’s face and made him shudder a little. “Tell me, how many times?”

  “Probably twenty.”

  “How many times did you go to bed together?”

  “Mmm—once.”

  “Why only once?”

  “Because my wife was home all the time. She went to town to sell chickens that day, so we two slept together on the warm bed.”

  “What day was that?”

  “I can’t remember exactly. It was last winter.”

  “Your wife was carrying your baby at that time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shame on you!” Wang thumped the table. “Your woman was big with your child and went to town selling chickens for you, while you were screwing her sister at home. What kind of a man do you think you are?”

  “I’m sorry.” Lu hung his head low.

  “Sorry, too late,” Wang shouted. Then he moved his head closer to Lu and asked in a soft voice, “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know. Couldn’t contain myself.”

  “No, it’s not a problem of self-control,” Secretary Zhao broke in. “You have too many bourgeois thoughts in your brain. Though you’re a descendant of a poor peasant, those thoughts have corrupted your mind and driven you to commit the crime.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Lu admitted.

  “Tell us why you had sex with both your wife and her sister,” Wang resumed. “What’s the difference between them? Aren’t they dishes from the same pot?” Wang’s baggy eyes searched Lu’s face.

  “Don’t know. I can’t tell the d
ifference.” Lu was bewildered by the question, but he told the truth. He had never thought of differences between the two women.

  “All right, let’s come back to the first time. Where did it happen?” Wang asked.

  “In the sorghum field by the reservoir.”

  “Talk more about it. Describe how you two met there, who started it, what you said to each other, how you did everything there. From the beginning to the end.”

  “I’ve forgotten the details.”

  “Lu Han …” Secretary Zhao spoke in a serious voice. “You’ve been trying to evade the questions. I hope you understand that this attitude will put you in an awkward situation, which will require us to take necessary measures.”

  “Yes, I do, I do.”

  “Tell us everything then,” Wang went on. “Who can believe you forgot the first time.”

  Lu began weeping. “I don’t remember clearly.”

  “All right, tell me who opened pants first?”

  “Mmm—, she o-opened mine.”

  “See, you remember it well. Then what did she do?”

  “She, she—”

  “Don’t mince your words.”

  “She took me into her mouth.”

  The secretary, the director, and the scribe all chuckled but immediately became solemn again. Lu kept his head low and dared not look at them.

  “What did she say?” Wang asked.

  “I can’t recall.”

  “We’re sure you remember. You refuse to tell us, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Tell us then.”

  “She said, said—”

  “Said what?”

  “She said, ‘I love this—this chunk of flesh best.’”

  They burst out laughing. Lu shuddered, his face covered with sweat. A cold tingle ran down his spine. He knew he had said too much. The villagers would soon know what he said, and other villages would hear of those words as well; his in-laws, too humiliated, would chop him to pieces.