Frog (17 page)

Dear Sugitani Akihito sensei,

It’s New Year’s day, January first. It has been snowing since yesterday evening. The world outside my window is blanketed by white, and children are already out there playing boisterously. A pair of magpies is calling in the poplar tree in front of my house, chittering like they’d been pleasantly surprised.

My heart was heavy after reading your response, knowing that my letter had caused you to lose sleep and suffer physically. Your expression of sympathy has touched me deeply. You cried when you read the part where Renmei died; writing it had the same effect on me. I did not blame Gugu, she did nothing wrong. Even though she’s expressed remorse more frequently in recent years, saying she had blood on her hands, that’s history, and history is all about effects, not what caused them. One gazes upon China’s Great Wall or the Egyptian pyramids without a thought to the blanched bones buried beneath these magnificent edifices. Over the past two decades China has resolved the problem of its population explosion by draconian measures, not only for the sake of the country’s development, but as a contribution to humanity. When all is said and done, we live together on this tiny planet, with its finite resources. Once they’re gone, they’re not coming back, and seen from this perspective, Westerners’ critiques of China’s family-planning policies are unfair.

There have been significant changes in my hometown over the past couple of years. The new Party secretary is a young man in his late thirties with an American PhD, bold vision, and lofty goals. We’ve been told that he plans to develop the area on both sides of the Jiao River, and to that end, construction equipment has begun rumbling into the area. Within a few years, you won’t be able to recognise the place, with all its changes. Much of what you saw when you were here will be gone. Whether these coming changes will work to the area’s advantage or disadvantage is impossible to say.

I will include the third portion of material about my aunt with this letter – I’m embarrassed to call it a letter. I will, of course, keep writing. Your praise is all the encouragement I need.

Let me repeat our heartfelt invitation for you to visit us again at your convenience – maybe we should welcome you with the sort of treatment reserved for old and dear friends.

One more thing. My wife and I will soon retire and move back to our hometown. In Beijing we have always felt like outsiders. Not long ago, near the People’s Theatre, we were pilloried for two hours by a pair of women who, we were told, had grown up in a Beijing lane, one of its famous hutongs, which cemented our desire to return to our roots. We don’t expect the people back home to mistreat us like the people in big cities do. And maybe I’ll be closer to literature there.

Tadpole

New Year’s Day, 2004

Beijing

After dealing with Renmei’s funeral and putting things in order at home, I rushed back to my unit. A month later I received a telegram informing me that Mother had died. I took the telegram to my superior and asked for more leave. At the same time I handed him a request to transfer to civilian life.

On the night of Mother’s funeral, the yard was bathed in silvery moonlight. My daughter was sleeping on a rush mat laid out beneath the pear tree. Father was fanning her to keep the mosquitoes away. Katydids chirping on the bean trellis added to the sound of water flowing in the river.

You should find someone, Father said with a sigh. With no women in the family, this doesn’t seem like a home.

I’ve sent in a request to return to civilian life, I said. So let’s wait till I come back home.

Everything was going along fine, he said with another sigh, and look how it’s turned out. I don’t even know who to blame.

You can’t blame Gugu, I said. She didn’t do anything wrong.

I wasn’t blaming her, he said. It was just our fate.

Without dedicated people like Gugu, I said, government policy would be impossible to implement.

What you say makes sense, but why did it have to be her? It broke my heart to see her get stabbed in the leg and bleed like that. She is, after all, my cousin.

Nothing we can do about that, I said.

According to Father, after my mother-in-law stabbed Gugu, the wound became infected and Gugu spiked a high fever that stubbornly hung on. Yet that did not stop her from leading a team to search for and arrest Wang Dan. The term sounds unduly harsh, but that’s what they used.

Wang Dan’s gate was locked and not a sound emerged from the other side. So Gugu told her team to break down the gate and enter the yard. Your aunt had to have been tipped off, Father said. She hobbled into the house, where she removed the lid from a pot on the stove and saw it was half filled with porridge. She tested it with her finger; it was still warm. She smirked. Chen Bi, Wang Dan, she announced loudly, either you come out on your own or I’ll come get you, like dragging rats out of their hole.

Silence.

Gugu pointed to a wardrobe in the corner. Nothing but old clothes. Your aunt had people take out all the old clothes, exposing the bottom floor. She then picked up a rolling pin and pounded on it until a hole opened up. You can come out of there, guerrilla heroes, she said. Or do you want us to pour water in?

Chen Er, Wang Dan’s daughter, was first out. Her face was streaked with dust, making her look like a temple demon. Not only did she not cry, she bared her teeth and giggled. Chen Bi was next. He hadn’t shaved, his hair was curled, and he was wearing a vest that showed his chest hair; he was a sorry sight. A big man like that, Father said, and he immediately fell to his knees in front of your aunt and banged his head on the floor over and over, setting up a racket. His pitiful wails affected the whole village.

Gugu, dear, dear Gugu, I was the first child you delivered and Wang Dan is so tiny, won’t you raise your noble hand and spare us . . . Gugu, our family will remember your mercy for generations . . .

Father said, People who were there said your aunt heard this with tears in her eyes. Chen Bi, she said, oh, Chen Bi, this isn’t for me to decide. If it were, that would make it easy. I’d cut off my hand for you!

Please, Gugu, be merciful.

Chen Bi’s daughter cleverly fell to her knees, just like her father, and banged her head on the floor.

Be merciful, she intoned, be merciful . . .

Right about then, Father said, Wuguan, who was part of the crowd, began glibly singing lines from the song ‘Tunnel Warfare’: Tunnel warfare/Hey, tunnel warfare/Thousands of brave fighters hidden below . . . tunnel warfare spread out over the boundless plain . . . If the Japs resist, we’ll finish them off.

Your aunt wiped her darkening face. That’s enough, Chen Bi. Now call Wang Dan out.

Chen Bi crawled up to your aunt on his knees and wrapped his arms around her leg. Chen Er copied him, wrapping her arms around the other leg.

Wuguan sang more of the song: Tunnel warfare spread out over the boundless plain . . . We’ll cut them to pieces if they dare come here . . . Tie every man’s tubes, practise birth control . . .

Your aunt tried to break free, but they refused to let go of her legs.

Then she realised something. Go down there! she ordered.

One of the militiamen climbed down into the hole, holding a flashlight in his mouth.

Another followed him down.

There’s nobody here, came a shout from below.

Overcome by anger, Gugu toppled over and passed out.

That Chen Bi nearly put something over on your aunt, Father said. Remember that vegetable plot behind his house? Well, it had a well with a pulley, and that was the escape hatch for the tunnel. I don’t know how Chen Bi managed such a big job, with all that dirt he had to get rid of. While he and Chen Er were tying up your aunt, Wang Dan had gone through the tunnel and pulled herself up by the pulley over the well. It couldn’t have been easy, Father said, for that little slip of a woman, big belly and all, to climb up that rope to get away.

They carried your aunt over to the well. How could I be so stupid! she spat out angrily, accentuated by a stomp of her foot. How could I! Back when my father worked at the Xihai Hospital he led a team to dig just such a tunnel.

Your aunt passed out a second time. This time she was taken straight to the hospital. She came down with the same illness that had struck Bethune, and nearly died from it. She was a devoted Communist, and the Party reciprocated by treating her with an emergency supply of the finest and most expensive medicines.

After two weeks in the hospital she left on her own before her wound had completely healed. The incident weighed heavily on her mind. She said she wouldn’t be able to eat or sleep until she’d gotten that child out of Wang Dan’s belly. That’s how strong her sense of responsibility was. Would you call someone like that human? Father sighed. No, she’d become a god or a demon.

Chen Bi and Chen Er were confined in the commune. There was talk that they were strung up and beaten, but that was just a rumour. When village cadres went to see them, they were being held in a room with a bed and bedding, a vacuum bottle and two glasses. Food and water were delivered to them. Their meals were the same as the commune cadres: steamed rolls, millet porridge, and whatever else was being served. Father and daughter gained weight and healthy complexions. They had to pay for their food, but Chen Bi had plenty of money from his business ventures. The commune checked with the bank to see just how much: it was thirty-eight thousand yuan! While your aunt was in the hospital, the commune sent a work team into the village, where they met with the local members and announced that all able-bodied villagers were to search for Wang Dan and would be paid five yuan a day, all to come out of Chen Bi’s bank account. Some villagers said they wouldn’t go, calling it blood money, but were told that if they refused, they would be
fined
five yuan a day. In the end, all seven hundred souls turned out. Three hundred of them searched the first day; when they returned home they were given their five yuan, making a total outlay that day of about eighteen hundred yuan. The commune also announced that whoever located Wang Dan and brought her home would be given a two hundred yuan reward. A hundred went to anyone who produced a viable clue. That turned the village into a frenzied mass, some clapping their hands from delight, others privately uncomfortable. Father said, I knew that some people coveted those rewards, but most only searched half-heartedly, making a turn or two around farmland and shouting: Come out, Wang Dan. If you don’t, you’ll be wiped out financially. After a few moments of that, they went back and worked their own plots. At night, of course, they went to get paid; they’d have been fined if they hadn’t.

Didn’t they find her? I asked.

How would they find her? Father said. Everyone felt she’d gone far away.

A little thing like that, with short steps and a big belly, how far could she have gone? I’ll bet she was still in the village. I lowered my voice. She might have been hiding in her parents’ home.

They didn’t need you to point that out, Father said. Those people from the commune knew what they were doing. They wouldn’t be happy until they dug down three feet in Wang Jiao’s house. They even broke open the kang to see if maybe Wang Dan was hiding inside. I doubt there was a person in the village who’d have borne the responsibility of hiding her and not reporting. The fine was three thousand.

Could she have decided to end it all? Did they search the river and all the wells?

You underestimate that little woman. She was more intelligent than all the other villagers combined and had more ambition than the tallest man you could find.

You’ve got a point. I recall her pretty little face and her expressions, from crafty to headstrong. The problem was, she must have been seven months along by then.

That’s why your aunt was so anxious. She said, Before it was ‘out of the pot’ it was just meat, and it needed to come out one way or another. But once it was out of the pot it was a human being, even if it had no arms and no legs, and was protected by national laws.

I conjured up an image of Wang Dan: two and a half feet tall, with a big belly, her delicate little head held high, a pair of thin legs in motion, a bundle over her arm, moving clumsily across a bramble-infested mountain road as she looked over her shoulder, tripping but getting back up, and running again . . . or seated in a large wooden basin, with an oversized stirring slat as her oar as she paddles breathlessly down river rapids.

Three days after Mother’s funeral, according to custom, friends and family turned out to ‘circle the grave’. There we burned paper replicas of horses and people, as well as a paper TV set. Mother’s grave was only ten metres from where Renmei was buried. Bright green wild grass was already growing over her grave. I was told by a family elder to circle Mother’s grave with raw rice in my left hand and unhusked millet in my right. Three counterclockwise revolutions were followed by three clockwise revolutions, during which I let the rice and millet drop slowly from my hands as I intoned: A handful of millet, a handful of rice, we send the dear departed to Paradise. My daughter followed me, tossing grain to the ground from her tiny hands.

Gugu took time out of her busy schedule to come. Little Lion, medical kit over her back, walked behind her. Gugu was still hobbling, and, in the months since I’d last seen her, she seemed considerably older. She knelt at the foot of Mother’s grave and wailed. We’d never seen Gugu cry like that, and it shook us to our core. Little Lion stood off to the side, her eyes tear-filled. Women came up to console Gugu; they lifted her up by her arms, but the moment they let go, she fell back to her knees and wept even more bitterly. Affected by the display of Gugu’s grief, women who by then had stopped crying fell to their knees and began to keen along with her.

I bent down to help Gugu to her feet, but Little Lion said softly, Let her cry. She’s been holding this back for a very long time.

The look of compassion on Little Lion’s face gave me a warm feeling.

When she finally stopped crying, Gugu got to her feet, dried her eyes, and said to me: Xiaopao, Chairwoman Yang phoned me to say that you want to leave the army.

Yes, I replied. I’ve already handed in a request.

Chairwoman Yang has asked me to talk you out of it. She’s made arrangements to reassign you to the planning section, where you’ll work directly under her, with a promotion to the rank of deputy battalion commander. She thinks highly of you.

That means nothing to me now, I said. I’d rather go back and collect manure than work in family planning.

That’s where you’re wrong, she said. Family planning is Party work, important work.

Phone Chairwoman Yang and thank her for her concern. But I’m coming home. I don’t know how the very old and very young will get by if I don’t.

Don’t be so firm, she said. Give it more thought. You really should stay in the army. Fieldwork is hard on a person. Look at Yang Xin and then look at me. We’re both involved in family planning, but she has a leisurely life and it shows, with her nice complexion and all. And me? Scurrying here and hopping there, blood one moment and tears the next, until I look like this.