All the Flowers in Shanghai (36 page)

Madam Zhang and I, like many others, learned to follow orders when necessary and occasionally to anticipate them, always being careful to use the vocabulary expected of us. Everything was playacting, it seemed to me. It had been nearly eight years since I had come to find Madam Zhang, and I realized now that I would die here. What had happened to you, my children, to both of you? I heard that Shanghai was safer, that there was more order there than in the countryside. I hoped that Xiong Fa had used all his wealth to find a way to protect you and Lu Meng.

The worst of the winter had passed but it had been harsh. The ground had been frozen solid so that the dead could not be buried. They were piled up to await spring in the western part of the town, where it was coldest. There was also a shortage of firewood, and there had been no coal for two months. Two women in our workroom had died just before the end of the year and we had been forced to break up their tables almost immediately so that each of us could take pieces home to burn. When I stared in the mirror I was frightened to see how much I had aged; my skin had passed from smooth and supple to tough and lined. The beating had left me with a scar on the right side of my head, cutting across my temple. When I touched it, I imagined touching you.

During the winter cold it was my chest, though, that became the worst affected. During the intervening years, I had watched my breasts shrivel and droop, the skin around my nipples becoming dry and flaky. I was happy to wrap cloth around my chest to keep me warm; beauty was no longer a concern. But it was internally that I felt the most sore; when I breathed in I ached, and my chest felt heavy as my lungs expanded and contracted.

Even though I now limped slightly, when we returned from the workroom it was so cold inside the house that Madam Zhang would have to hurry me in as quickly as possible so that we could both set about laying and lighting a fire in the
kang
from whatever scraps of wood we had scavenged. The main room always seemed cold; even after the fire had started to emit a hearty glow, I felt the cold deep in my bones. It felt as if there would never be another warm day, that the sun had changed its orbit and, even if it burned forever elsewhere, the heat would never reach us. We were to be punished by this cold until we could no longer move and it froze the life from us. At least it would save us from continuing this existence.

Once the fire provided some heat, we would cook whatever food we had and then huddle close together under a single blanket to eat. Meat had become so scarce I often laughed to myself, thinking how I would have loved some of Father-in-law’s chicken soaked in rice wine or Jin Hua ham.

Madam Zhang, too, suffered terribly from the cold; her fingers in particular would become stiff and locked into claws until I massaged them. We would place the chairs in front of the fire inside the
kang
and, after eating, would sit and watch the flames, falling asleep holding each other, still wearing our thick jackets and trousers filled with cotton wadding, which we would often supplement with newspaper. We had also made ourselves large hats to cover our ears, from material taken from the storeroom, pretending that they were a new item to equip the People’s Army. Like every other soul in the town, possibly in the entire country, we were hungry and tired, half-waiting to die and half-expecting to be killed.

During the spring, summer, and early warm autumn, after each day’s production and then our supper, we worked on the dress wrapped around the mannequin in the bedroom. Over the years we had collected more scraps of different fabric to add to it. Madam Zhang had folded each scrap into a tiny diamond shape, which she then hand-stitched together to form a beautiful structured bodice. It was elegant and enticing, and reminded me somehow of my old friend Ming; she would have been able to wear it, her beautiful pale shoulders and arms unfurling above it like wings. She must be living far away by now, free from this insanity. I tried to help Madam Zhang with the folding and stitching but my work was a poor imitation and often she would undo my efforts and repair them. So I would just sit behind her at the end of my bed, drinking tea and watching her work, following those gentle and nimble hands as they created what was likely to be their last work of beauty. Now it was too cold to work and without firewood or coal those beautiful hands were being slowly broken and her skills lost forever.

One morning it was particularly cold and I had been up early to fetch water from a tap nearly three miles away. The walk there had been difficult because of the ice, and my slippers—we did not have boots—had become wetter than usual, causing me to slip and fall. When I stood up, I felt a sharp pain in my knee. I should have rested myself then but it was too cold and I continued. There was a queue for the water and I waited in it. The other people were also cold and hungry. The children’s faces were thin and wretched; although my own life had been painful, at least I had lived. Without better food these children would die soon. There were no crops to feed them, the overworked soil having been drained of its resources. A young girl stood in front of me.

“Xiaojie, what’s your name?” I asked.

“It’s Comrade Li to you, old lady,” she replied aggressively. “I’m collecting water for my team. We will farm the land today.”

“But the land is frozen. How will you do it?”

“The warmth of Chairman Mao will break the soil and let us work it.” She beamed at me proudly.

I smiled a reply.

The queue diminished and it was my turn but I was cold and could not get the tap to work. My fingers were numb and I cut myself without feeling anything. I put the bucket down and looked at the blood dripping onto the ice, the deep red instantly thinning and diluting as it hit the frozen surface, leaving nothing but a faint rose-colored shape. I sucked at my finger and my blood felt warm in my mouth. A man behind me came forward to help and filled my bucket for me. It was the old team leader who had been beaten with me. His left cheek had been crushed, his eye socket had collapsed into his face and many of his teeth were missing.

“Hello,” he said, and stooped down to help me with my bucket.

“Thank you,” I replied.

I looked at him briefly, smiled quickly, and nodded to him as I turned to walk away.

We could not speak any longer. If that little girl or some of her friends saw us we would be punished. Who knew how many team leaders there had been in his place since he was beaten and his wife killed? Yet his disgrace was not forgotten. I took a few steps and looked into the People’s Square a hundred meters away. I could see into it from one corner. It was white and flat with the huge statue of Chairman Mao standing in the middle, presiding over his triumph for all the world to behold. I looked at all the banners and placards, demanding loyalty, self-criticism, and equality, fastened to the sides of the long low administrative buildings that formed the perimeter of the square. They had been erected six or seven years ago in the tide of hope that followed the Revolution, but now they were smashed and broken by children who should have had toys to play with instead. A huge sign heralded the Triumph of the People. I looked behind me at the ragged, wasted town dwellers in the queue, wondering which people had triumphed. It was certainly none of us.

I walked home and when I arrived found Madam Zhang waiting for me, pale with agitation.

“What have you been doing?” she shouted at me. “We have to go to work and you’re frozen! What has happened to your finger? Sit down and tell me.”

She sat me down and I realized that my toes were badly affected by the cold today and cried out.

“What is it?” she asked anxiously.

“My feet and toes are frostbitten, the pain is very deep this time.” I moaned and started to cry. I leaned back hard in the chair and tried to arch my foot, but it was too painful. I clenched my teeth and felt myself grow faint.

Madam Zhang quickly crouched in front of me and rubbed my feet then turned around to stoke the fire in the
kang
to generate more heat. She wrapped my feet up in a towel and then started boiling some water, which was nearly frozen in the pot and would take a long time. She wrapped the rest of me in our large quilted blanket, now greasy and stinking from so many evenings spent covering our two huddled bodies.

Sitting next to me, she took hold of my finger and examined it. Then, with a needle quickly sterilized in the flames, she stitched my wound with some black medical thread. As she did I coughed hard and nearly pulled the first stitch out again, but we ignored this and looked instead at the dark red phlegm lying on the blanket in front of my chin. Madam Zhang took a clean piece of cloth and wiped it away. I closed my eyes. I felt the thread pulling on my finger as the numbness began to recede.

After she had finished I spoke, but did not have the courage to open my eyes and look at her.

“I don’t think I will live through this winter. It’s so cold and I’m too tired.”

“Ha-ha! None of us may live through this next year,” she quipped back, “bad weather is no excuse for leaving me. You must live because there is someone who wants you to live. Here, you received this letter today. It seems to have taken over a month to get here.”

She handed me a dirty envelope with the words
THE SEAMSTRESS, DAOCHU, SHAANXI PROVINCE
, and inside there was a single folded sheet. I took it out. The message was so short but I read it ten or twenty times.

Dear Madame Zhang,

I have been given your name by our old comrade Yan, who recently died. She told us that you knew my mother, Sang Feng. If you have seen her please tell her that our father died two years ago. Lu Meng is well and I am to get married soon. On the other side is our address.

Sang Yu

My eyes filled with tears and I simply looked up at Madam Zhang standing over me. I clutched the little square of paper between my thumbs and index fingers. You had found me.

“What can I do? Is it possible to go back to Shanghai?”

I knew that a journey wasn’t possible.

“You know the answer. Who is Sang Yu?”

She sat next to me and held my hand, which I suddenly remembered was cut and painful. She nursed it until my cut finger had stopped throbbing. She let my hand rest on the arm of my chair then and turned herself to look at me. My face felt cracked and blistered by the freezing air and snow, yet I was safe here and still alive. She reached across with her left hand to stroke my hair, touching my scar. I looked into her mild eyes.

“Little daughter, you don’t have to say anything,” she told me. “We’ve all witnessed and lived through terrible things. We live with almost nothing, and there’s nothing for us in the future. How long can we keep going? It doesn’t matter to me what you’ve done.”

She smiled at me, her eyes as pained as mine. I smiled back and leant my left cheek into her hand, which felt warm and comforting.

“I know. I would like to tell you anyway, because the ground is so hard I cannot dig a hole to whisper my story into.” I laughed a little and she along with me. Her eyes followed my movements closely: my lips as I spoke, my eyes as they looked into hers, and my brow as I frowned and sighed. In the quiet we could hear the flames crackling in the
kang
next to us.

“Very well, what is it?” she asked, continuing to cup my cheek.

“It is about my daughter, my son, and my husband. This letter was from my daughter.” I was bursting; Xiong Fa had kept you both safe.

I told her how I was married: how Grandfather had lacked the courage to stand up against tradition and left me that day; how Ma and Ba had given me away to replace Sister; what Xiong Fa had done to me; and what I had done to you. She listened and I cried, which I had not done since the first day here except while waking from dreams. But this time the tears quickly ceased. I felt too empty, too tired.

“I have missed my son deeply and regretted what I did to my daughter every single day I have been here. I have cried in my dreams, and followed lame boys down streets in the town, hoping they might have come here to find me. Each day I have watched them grow up in my imagination. What must they be like now? What must they think of me? And I am so grateful that you have loved me all these years without ever once inquiring into my sadness and silence. Xiong Fa had been a good father.”

Madam Zhang remained silent when I had finished.

“We do terrible things to each other,” she said finally. “Every time a dynasty ends, we hope the new one will not repeat the same cycle of tragedy and waste. But such is the nature of history . . . the cycle must continue.”

“Can’t we just stop it?” I asked meekly.

“Look around us. Is this not the end of one? Soon there will be a new beginning. Five thousand years since this country began, and we have stumbled and fallen, again and again. Perhaps one day soon your children may come looking for you and then you can explain things to them.”

“I don’t think I will last that long,” I replied with a short laugh. “Who can live in this craziness?”

“But you can write . . . why not write something to tell them?” she suddenly suggested. “I’ll bring some scraps of white cloth and you can write on them. We can sew them together into a book.” She seemed more excited than I was by this scheme and squeezed my cheek to encourage me. “First you need to recover . . . we can tell the team leader that you are very ill and if he comes here he will see for himself. You can stay here and write.” She calmed down a little and smiled at me. “The rest of us will do your work at the factory, there are so few useful materials left anyway that we are barely busy.”

I nodded against her hand.

“Yes, I would like to tell them everything.”

Then I was lost in that night again, sitting with my back pressed hard against the headboard, drowning in the smell of blood and shit, a glowing red light filtering through my closed eyelids, trying to escape the thin sound of your muffled crying. Yan’s fearful voice pleaded with me to stop what I was doing. The pain between my legs reminded me to continue. “Why did I do this?” I said aloud.