Naked Earth (10 page)

“Smash up Feudal Landlords!” everybody yelled after Sun.

“Farmers all over the world are one family!”

“We support Chairman Mao!”

“Follow Chairman Mao all the way!”

After a rousing round of slogans, when it was quiet again, Feng seemed to have forgotten what he had to say. For an awful moment he and T’ang just stood awkwardly side by side on the platform.

Then somebody below shouted, “Why isn’t T’ang Yü-hai kneeling? He’s got no right to stand on this platform!”

A man fetched two mud bricks. The two militiamen holding T’ang by the back of his blouse, pushed him to make him kneel on the bricks.

Feng pulled himself together and rushed forward, seizing T’ang by his collar. “Don’t think you can get by just by kowtowing, T’ang Yü-hai! We’ve got to settle our accounts today. Five years ago when my dad died, you pretended to be so kind and helpful, didn’t you? Said you’d lend me money to buy the coffin. Once I get into this
yen-wang ts’ai
I can never pay it back. Not to the end of my days! Isn’t that true? Speak out!”

T’ang kept still, facing the audience with bowed head. Kneeling, he looked taller than when he was standing up. He was so close to the edge of the stage that Feng could not get in front of him and could only direct his attacks at his profile. The golden smoke of slanting sun drifted across the tableau they made. Pale blue dust floated in slow waves down the broad beam of sunlight which had lit up the stage as it had always done in the past whenever there was a show on. The villagers watched with a vague sense of surprise and unreality. Some of the troupes coming to play here were pretty down-and-out but the costumes had never been so ragged.

Feng repeated his charges about the
yen-wang ts’ai
. From where he stood, Liu thought he detected a faint flicker of expression cross T’ang’s half hidden face. He fancied it was meant to show scorn or cynicism but such expressions were foreign to T’ang; he succeeded only in looking bitter. Feng must have seen it too. He again stopped short.

“Don’t be afraid of him, Feng T’ien-you!” Sun shouted from below, not using his loudspeaker so as to be more distinct. “Just say whatever you have to say. You have the backing of the Masses!”

Flushed and angry, Feng gave T’ang a violent push, knocking him off the bricks so that he sprawled in a heap on the platform. The Positive Elements in the audience started to yell, “That’s right! Hit him! Hit that bastard son of a dog! Hit that mistress of a dog! Pull him down here—give everybody a chance at him!”

The two militiamen helped T’ang get back to a kneeling position. This time Feng slapped him and spat in his face.

“Let’s all spit on him!” Several men clambered onto the platform.

T’ang bent forward as much as he could, tucking his head under him to shield it from the rain of spittle, mixed with blows. His face was set in a mulish calm, at once guarded and remote, as if thinking that all they could do was wet his feathers, while the real him was wrapped into a small package tucked in the bosom of his blouse.

The struggle against the prisoner had reached its climax. A high conical white paper cap was slapped on his head. Written on it was the slogan “Exterminate the Feudal Forces.” Then he was led down the platform to give way to another landlord. When all the landlords had been Felled in the Struggle, the big white banner across the stage was taken down and hauled off by two men holding it stretched out between them by bamboo poles. The banner headed a parade out of the lot and through the village. The militia marched behind it, taking with them the landlords wearing their conical caps. The villagers, each in his own group, followed in their wake, shouting slogans. After the parade the landlords were sent back to the school to be locked up again.

AFTER
the Great Struggle Meeting the work entered its tensest phase. In another mass meeting called on the next day, a Committee for the Survey of Land was elected to judge the quality of all the land around the village. The Land Reform Workers helped calculate the number of acres. The abacus rattled and clicked from morning till night at the co-operative and those students who did not know how to use the abacus had to do long sums in arithmetic. They also had to calculate all the back wages and the amounts owed by the landlords through generations of exploitation.

Chang Li left all this routine work to the Corps members while he assisted the
kan-pu
in the other half of the work of getting the landlords to pay their debts—the part called
Wa Ti Ts’ai
, Dig for Bottom Wealth.

Quite a number of Corps members were now living in the school. All of them had moved out of the village in a hurry like Liu Ch’üan, their former hosts having been promoted from Rich Farmer or Middling Farmer to the rank of Landlord. They slept in the school office far from the back courtyard, but they often heard the shrieks at night. Nobody dared ask questions though they all knew it was the
kan-pu
working at the Digging for Bottom Wealth.

Chang Li looked very pleased when he told Liu, “T’ang Yü-hai has admitted that he has fifty silver dollars buried underground. There’s probably more than that. Don’t make the mistake of looking down on those people. They may not look like much, but as they say, ‘Better to be fat inside than fat outside.’ That’s why the intellectuals like you are easily taken in by them.” He chuckled.

Liu forced a smile. “I suppose you can’t tell from the way they live. The Tangs certainly live very frugally.”

“Sure. That’s what I’m telling you—looks don’t count. Besides, when you think they live poorly you’re still judging from your city standard of living.”

Sun Fu-kuei came into the room. “Shall I take him there right now, Comrade Chang? His family might dig it up before we do and change the hiding place.”

“Didn’t he say he’s the only one who knows? And anyway, if they were to dig it up they would have done so before now. Okay—you might as well go and see.”

“Comrade Liu,” Sun turned to Liu and said, smiling, “You’ve stayed with them, you probably know the house well, every nook and cranny. How about coming along?”

Liu felt Chang looking at him with a slightly amused air, probably thinking that he would again commit Tender Emotionalism and try to get out of it. So he answered at once, “All right, let’s go.”

Sun brought four militiamen with rifles. Liu also got a battered old musket to carry. They took T’ang out of the dark room in the back courtyard. One of the militiamen held the rope looped around his right arm and leg. T’ang’s clothes were spotted by dust and bloodstains and he hobbled much worse than when Liu last saw him at the Struggle Meeting. His eyes were almost closed in his swollen face. Liu doubted if he had enough wits left to know his former lodger was among the guards taking him to the village.

As they came into T’ang’s courtyard Liu could hear T’ang’s wife hissing breathlessly inside the window, “Erh Niu! Dad is back!” She came running out of the house. Nobody paid her any attention as they marched T’ang in and the woman seemed afraid to speak to them lest she should say something to make them change their minds and take T’ang back.

To Liu’s surprise the room seemed much the same as before. Two bundles of fuel-straw lay on the ground before the mud stove. There was T’ang’s long pipe in the little recess in the bumpy wall. Only the room had a flashy and dishevelled look with all the glaring white slips of paper pasted slanting every which way like price labels over the furniture, the kitchen utensils, the doors. Erh Niu stood a little way off, looking at them with her hands wrapped tight in her worn black apron. She made no sign of recognition when she saw Liu.

“Go get a hoe,” Sun said to T’ang’s wife.

The woman exchanged a nervous look with her daughter, then turned to Sun with an uncertain smile. She had thought of that time when somebody in the village had done wrong and a
kan-pu
had hit him on the head with a hoe, killing him with one stroke.

“Ma, aren’t the hoes and ploughs all sealed up?” Erh Niu said.

“That’s right,” her mother said quickly. “They’re all sealed up in the shed, Comrade Sun. We dare not touch them.”

“Nonsense! When I tell you to get it, of course it’s all right. Now go get it! Quick!”

T’ang’s wife still hesitated. But after one look at their rifles Erh Niu decided that they wouldn’t need a hoe if they had wanted to kill T’ang. She ran to the shed where they kept the grindstone and all the farming implements, broke open the sealed door and fetched a hoe. A militiaman took it from her.

“Close the door,” Sun said.

Erh Niu and her mother watched them thrust the hoe into T’ang’s hands.

“Now dig, and be quick about it.” A militiamen gave him a kick from the back.

“Take that broom away,” Sun said, and they took the broom from where it stood at the back of the door and threw it across the room.

“Dig for what—
t’ien na
, heavens!” T’ang’s wife quavered.

T’ang lifted his hoe and as it swung down heavily, he tottered forward after it and nearly fell.

Liu felt he had to do something. “Here, let me have the hoe.” Leaning his rifle against the door he grabbed impatiently at the hoe. “And tell him to get out of the way. It’ll take all day, the way he is digging!”

Erh Niu must have realized that he was doing T’ang a good turn. Her face became more set in its closed, resentful look.

T’ang seemed afraid to let go of the hoe. Raising it high overhead he brought it down again blindly, tottering forward with the stroke. Liu would have got hit if he had not ducked and stepped aside. However, T’ang had not been a farmer all his life for nothing. He was handy with a hoe even when he was unsteady on his feet. It did not take him long to dig a shallow hole in the dirt floor behind the door.

With the door closed the room was darker than ever and the smell of turned earth was strong. T’ang’s wife suddenly went cold with a new fear. Could it be that they were making him dig a grave for himself?

The loose earth piled in a half ring around the hole rose higher and higher. The militiamen stood around leaning on their rifles, kicking idly at the small lumps of earth. Sun went and sat down on a bench by the table. Lifting an earthenware teapot with both hands, he drank gurgling from its mouth. Then he loosened his belt and walked over to the hole, watching with the others. Presently he demanded, “How come there’s still nothing at three feet deep? Is this the spot or no?”

T’ang leaned forward panting, resting on his hoe.

“Speak!” Sun said. “Speak the truth! Where is it buried?”

When the question had been repeated many times T’ang finally mumbled, “Don’t know.”

“‘Don’t know!’ Didn’t you say distinctly you have fifty silver dollars in a jar buried behind the door?”

“Fifty silver dollars!” his wife exclaimed. “Where have we got any silver dollars, my old Lord Heaven? Where did all this talk come from?”

“Enough, enough! None of your acting!” Sun told her. “It’s plain that you’ve dug it out and buried it somewhere else. Now get it out quick.“

She started to weep and bawl. “Get what out? Never even heard of this much money in all my life! Whenever he had any money he bought land with it. And last spring we went into debt buying that piece of land from the Kengs. Now whoever heard of anybody paying interest for borrowed money when he has big handfuls of silver buried underground?”

“How should I know how you people figure things out? Anyhow, whatever you don’t know, you always know how to act poor. That’s one thing you people are good at.”

T’ang seemed to be frightened by all this bawling and had started to dig again.

“
T’a ma ti
—he sure can play the fool!” Sun happened to turn round and saw what he was doing. “What you digging for, when you know it’s not here? What kind of an act is this?
Ma teh pi!
”

The more Sun yelled at him, the more industrious T’ang became. Stroke by stroke he patiently widened the hole.

“
Ma ti!
” Livid with rage, Sun kicked at him, sending him staggering back, nearly knocking over a militiaman and finally falling half in and half out of the cavity, with the pile of loose earth slithering in after him.

Sun turned again to the woman but she swore there wasn’t a single silver dollar in the house that she knew of. After a fruitless search of the house Sun said, “Let’s go. No use talking to them. These people—they’re the kind that ‘won’t weep till they see the coffin.’—Now you be careful, T’ang Yü-hai. This time when you go back there, you’re not going to be let off that easy. You and your tricks! Who’s got time to fool around with you, digging at your dunghill?”

T’ang’s wife and Erh Niu followed them into the courtyard. On their way out Erh Niu suddenly caught hold of T’ang and pressed her face against him, weeping loudly. “Dad, why did you lie?” she cried. “My dad is a tough man, he never lies. What have you done to him? Dad, what’s happened to you, dad?”

T’ang said nothing. Half of his face gave a little twitch when his salty tears soaked into the open cut across his cheek.

The militiamen pushed Erh Niu off with curses, but she butted her head against one of them, yelling, “I’m going to have it out with you people! Today I don’t feel like living!”

“This slavegirl!” her mother cried out desperately, trying to hold her back. “This slavegirl!”

The butts of several rifles were hitting at the girl’s head and body.

“Ai-ya, help! Help! Please, the child is an idiot—don’t mind her, just this once—” shrieked her mother, and when Erh Niu was knocked down she fell over her, shielding her with her body. “Let her off this time—I kowtow to you! I kowtow to you!”

Liu stood staring from the door of the house. Without quite knowing what he was doing he had cocked his rifle, aiming it at the group. Then he lowered it when he saw Erh Niu raising herself on her elbow. She spat on the ground, making a dark red stain dotted with several white things which must be teeth.

“You’re looking for death!” a militiaman panted as he continued to kick at her. “Looking for death!”

“Let’s go,” Sun said impatiently. They took T’ang back to the school.