Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today (4 page)

The woman was still there. Her hands were on her knees, palms up. She was sitting with her eyes closed, beneath the big parasol tree, absolutely motionless. I stood beside her for a while, but she seemed oblivious to my presence. It occurred to me that as a man, I should go talk with the man. I walked over to the small gate and pushed it, but it didn't open. I pulled it, and it still didn't open. It was locked; there was a great big lock on the outside. Strange. Then how did the woman get inside? My head, like my heart, is not particularly good. I thought for a minute before recalling how I myself got inside. I ran over toward the south gate, planning on circling around to the west side of the building. It would be best to first go have a look at the child. It was late and getting cold. The child had to be kept from getting sick. I would go have a talk with the young father and then maybe speak to the child's mother also.

What is it you're doing? Just what are you doing? What calamity has occurred? You're not married? If you're not married, then hurry up and get married. There's still time. You simply cannot do this. You were pretty daring in the beginning, so what are you afraid of now? There's no need to be afraid of anything. Let people talk. "Go your own way and let others talk." An important person said that, so it can't be wrong. Look, you two, this is a wonderful child, so well behaved. Illegitimate children are all smart. He could grow up to be a great man. Great men shouldn't just be tossed aside in some cemetery.

But, but! There was a river in front of the main gate on the south side. I had all but forgotten it. The river flowed right up against the green brick wall; there was virtually no space between them. The bridge could take one only to the south bank, and there was absolutely no way to circle around to the west side of the wall. I crossed the little bridge and walked west a long way but didn't find any place where I could cross the river. Then I followed the riverbank east. I walked a long way, but there was still no place to cross. Now what was going on? The wall around the compound was so high that the man would have had a hard time jumping over it, let alone the woman. I continued on, figuring that sooner or later there had to be a place where I could cross the river. By the time I'd gone another considerable distance, it was deeper into the twilight, and still I hadn't found a place to cross. If there were such a place, I reasoned, it had to be on the west side; so I turned and headed back. After I had walked for a while, I met up with a woman.

"Excuse me," I said, "where can I cross the river?"

"Cross the river?" She glanced all around. I realized she was the woman who had been sitting beneath the tree.

"Go west. After about five hundred yards, more or less, there's a big bridge," she said.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

She looked at me for a moment with suspicion. "I'm going home."

"Well, what about him?"

"Who?"

"Who's that man on the other side of the wall?"

"What? What man? What do you want?"

"OK, we won't talk about that," I said. "But what about the child?"

"Child? What child?"

"The child in the woods to the west."

She laughed. "You're not feeling well, perhaps?" She turned and was about to leave.

"There's an abandoned child over there! Listen, no matter what, it's getting late, and we have to get that child and take it home. Tell me again, where is the bridge?"

Events proved my heart was OK, for I jogged all the way to the woods, and it kept working normally. I found the gravestone. I was positive it was the one. I could swear my eyes hadn't deceived me. I couldn't have been wrong. But there was nothing in front of the gravestone-no child and no baby carriage. I hurried off to find the man. He was still outside the western wall. He was just then in the process of tidying up a pile of painter's things. Brushes, portfolios, paints, bottles, and jars were spread out at the base of the wall, and a finished painting titled
Cemetery in the Woods
stood to one side.

I walked up and asked him, "Did you happen to see a child in the "Woods?"

"A child? What sort of child? How old?"

"Very small, a couple of months."

"Good Lord, aren't you a case? How could you lose such a small child? He couldn't run away by himself, could he?"

We looked off toward the woods simultaneously. I walked back and forth along the green brick wall, from south to north and north to south. I couldn't see it; from there, I couldn't see the gravestone at all. Then the woman showed up. I described for them everything I had seen.

"Please believe me, my eyes work better than anything else in my body," I said to them. "Please don't look at me like that, like there's something wrong with me."

I said to them, "If we spent some time together, you'd realize that I'm quite normal."

I said, "Will you go with me to have another look?"

The man said, "I don't doubt your sincerity, but how can you guarantee you saw everything there was to see? As for me, I'm sorry, I have to go home."

The woman said to me, "All right, I'll go with you." I could tell she said this only because she wasn't entirely satisfied that I was OK.

We went into the woods and walked to the gravestone. Sure enough, nothing. There was nothing there at all. I sat down beside the grave. I said, "Go on home. Weren't you on your way home? Go on." She sat down beside me. I said, "Don't worry. You don't have to worry about me. I'm a little tired. I think I'll rest here for a while." She reached out and felt my pulse.

I said, "Maybe the painter was right, maybe the child's parents were nearby."

I said, "But maybe I wasn't wrong, and someone took the child away while I was looking for the bridge."

I said, "Shall we take another look around?"

We walked through the woods together. We walked until the sky was completely dark.

I said, "What sort of person do you think took him away?"

I said, "I think it was a good person who took him away. What do you think?"

I said, "What do you think that child's fate is going to be?"

She said, "Go with the flow."

And that's how we met. Who would have expected it? Two years later, she became my wife; three years later, the mother of my son.

Translated By Thomas Moran

Only at daybreak did the gunfire finally stop, if ever so reluctantly. Li Jiming heard the distant rumbling of a tank. He crawled up to the rim of the crater, hoping to get a look, but heard only the sorrowful cries of the wounded. Though no snow had fallen during the night, a bitter wind swept across the field, blowing about bits of frost that resembled gunpowder smoke.

At the base of the crater, Junni rolled over. She murmured, then slept again, knocking off in the process one of three field coats that covered her. Li Jiming slid back down the slope and replaced it.

"I dreamed about Chinese New Year." Junni did not open her eyes. "The crowd at the Daweiwu opera was going wild, and the fireworks were so bright they hurt your eyes." She smiled. "Jiming, did your dad let you go that year?"

"What year was that?"

"What do you mean, what year? When did my dad come back with the militia?"

Li Jiming was about to answer when a muffled voice called out, "Big Brother." A man holding a rifle appeared at the rim of the crater and came slithering down. Junni sat up. "You're wounded. Where were you hit?"

Sonny felt his face, his hand sticky with blood. "Fuck, this smells." He took off his large, blood-soaked coat. "It's not my blood. This coat is completely ruined."

He pulled something battered looking from his pocket. "These are all I could get. It's motherfucking incredible-people getting killed right and left for a few measly crackers."

Junni picked a coat up off the ground and draped it over his shoulders. "What's wrong? We'll be going back soon."

"No way to cut through." Sonny looked over to where the shells continued to explode and shook his head. "I don't think there's a single man left from the Thirty-fourth." He turned to Ji-ming. "Give me some water to wash down these crackers."

As Junni searched through the heap of coats for the canteen, Jiming said, "Look, don't worry about me and Junni-get to a village, dress up like a native, dump the rifle, and make a break for it when you can."

Sonny smiled. "In all these years, I've never known you to give up like this." But the enemy lines were in fact closing in, and the few villages in the area had long ago fallen to the regular forces. Militia stragglers had little choice but to tuck themselves away in a shell hole like the one that sheltered them now.

Jiming lowered his head. "If I'd known this was going to happen, I'd never have left Xuzhou with the Nationalist retreat. Let's wait till the regiment has gone by, then watch for a chance to run."

"And go where?"

"Back home."

"Too risky," Junni said. "The tenant farmers are out of control these days; if we get caught, they'll cut us to pieces. You want us to get our heads chopped off like our dads did?"

She walked over to the two men. "Don't be so depressed. Why do we have to go anywhere? Isn't it nice here, all of us together?" Making a bed out of the coats, she said, "Sonny, why don't you stretch out for a little while; you haven't slept all night."

Sonny lost no time lying down and was soon buried in the pile of coats. "Head or no head, I need to get some fucking sleep."

"How about you, Jiming? You haven't slept a wink either."

Jiming squatted down, holding his head in his hands. He was silent. Junni walked over to rub his scalp. His bandage was caked with dirt and crusty blood. Never before had the two been so close.

Jiming looked up at her. "If I'd known, I never would have sent Sonny to Xuzhou to rescue you from the whorehouse. At least in that hellhole, you'd still be alive."

"Don't go on about what could have been. My uncle was just trying to help me survive. What with all the fighting in the village and the bad blood, I couldn't stay near those people. He said that an orphan girl without a name was bound to run into a kind man eventually, and that way I wouldn't starve."

"Yeah, right, so look where you ended up! Here-with us-at the mercy of your fellow villagers' evil spirits after all." He forced a smile, looking straight at Junni. "I always thought there'd be a day with banging gongs and a big red sedan chair, when I could marry you the proper way."

"Oh, Jiming," she sighed, lowering her gaze. "I got myself dirty a long time ago."

"Nobody at home knows that."

"Nobody at home, maybe, but heaven and earth know." She pressed his head to her breast. The cold wind carried the smell of death in their direction, wave after wave of air so thick that it was impossible to breathe. Jiming pushed her away gently and, with his hand on his head wound, lay down on the ground, sinking into the heap of overcoats rank with blood and smelly shoes. Before he dozed off, he heard what sounded like Junni urinating and buried his head even deeper.

On January 7, 1949, the thirty-eighth year of the republic, snowy winds whipped across the plains of Xuhuai. At about three-thirty in the afternoon, the frozen and hungry militia camped between Chenguanzhuang and the Lu River awoke, stunned by sudden attack.
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As artillery shells whined overhead, Jiming tossed aside the coat covering him and jumped up but fell right back to the ground.

The bombing grew louder, as if the shells were about to drop on their heads. It was a gray, wintry day, and evening had set in imperceptibly, the low clouds illuminated only by the explosions. Out on the field, voices called out, soft and feeble. It seemed almost that several hundred thousand soldiers had all perished, leaving behind only these three civilians.

"There's no fucking way out tonight," said Jiming.

Sonny lay on his back, inert, lifting his head from time to time to watch the bursts of light. He knew in his heart what the others were thinking: "Don't run; there's no point."

"It'll be a lot worse for us if we get taken back to Daweiwu by the Communists."

"Who can say what will happen? Let's wait and see."

All three lay there, at the bottom of the crater, no longer speaking. The sound of shelling moved slowly eastward; the sky, red and black, smoked and suffocated till it could no longer support itself. Perhaps it would come crashing down and crush everything beneath it.

Softly, as if to herself, Junni said, "When I first got to the whorehouse, all I could think about was murdering somebody. Then I was going to hang myself."

The others did not reply. Sonny began to sob silently.

"But then I thought, What am I doing? They were soldiers far away from home, so lonely and sad, without very much time to live. Why should I go around killing people-why not give a little pleasure?"

Li Jiming sat up suddenly and turned to Junni. "Huh? Is that what you think? You were better off at the whorehouse? Where there's pleasure!"

Junni pushed herself up to her feet and, forming her words slowly, said, "Don't get all worked up. Look, if we're going to die, why not die happy?" She pulled at Li Jiming. "Come on, Big Brother. You first."

Jiming jumped up from the pile of clothes. "What are you saying? 'Me first!' You stinking whore!" He ran over to the far side of the crater and, opening the pocket of one of the coats, pulled out a hand grenade. "Goddamn it, I went through hell to save a fucking whore like you!"

In no time, Sonny was on his feet, too. "Just calm down; let's talk things over. Don't be messing with a fucking grenade." He was trembling.

"Slow down, Sonny. Your brother didn't mean anything," Junni said.

Sonny walked over to try to take the grenade away, but Jiming wouldn't let go. The two of them rolled around against the wall of the crater, covering themselves with snow and mud.