Naked Earth (5 page)

Liu was still staring up at the swinging bough when Su Nan stepped out of the doorway. He looked again. It was Su Nan all right, shielding her face with a notebook, her cap pushed to the back of her head because of the heat. The way he stood there looking up, it was just as if he was waiting for her.

He nodded and smiled. “Very hard to find your way about in this place,” he said. “I was lucky I met somebody from the village who took me here. You’re marvellous, you got here all by yourself.”

Su Nan started to laugh. “You think I know the way? If I didn’t follow you people, I’d never have made it.”

“Oh, you saw me walking in front of you?” He had wanted to ask, “Why didn’t you call me?” but somehow he didn’t say it.

“Who’s that girl? Very lively.”

“She’s from the family I’m staying with. Their name is T’ang. She’s going down to the field to call her father to the meeting. Happens to be on her way.”

Perhaps this explanation was superfluous. Anyhow Su Nan didn’t seem much interested. He had hardly finished, when two other girls passed by and she ran up to greet them, catching them by the arms with more chummery than she usually displayed and went up the steps chattering with them, leaving him behind. If it was some other girl he would have thought it was nothing unusual. But he felt baffled because it was Su Nan and wondered what he had said or done to offend her. If he thought she was displeased because of Erh Niu, he ought to be pleased. But not being so conceited, at least where she was concerned, he was in a bad mood all day.

After the Land Reform Workers’ Corps had mustered at the temple they split up into two teams to attend the meeting of the Farmers’ Association and the Women’s Association separately. The meeting was just routine. Chang Li and some of the students gave talks on the principles of the Land Reform, starting from the Origin of Private Property. It was like a lesson in social history from the Marxian standpoint and easy enough for the students. The speakers’ subjects overlapped so that the meeting lasted almost six hours.

It was dark when they returned to the village. Liu was met at the door of the Tangs’ house by a slight man with a foot-long pipe in one hand and red-bronzed arms and shoulders coming out of a sleeveless white blouse. He guessed it was T’ang Yü-hai, his host.

T’ang nodded and smiled. “Come and sit in this room here, sir.” He led Liu to the same room that had been shown him in the morning. Apparently he didn’t even know enough to say “comrade.” His wife had been more glib in using the word. The men were usually slower and more reserved, Liu thought.

Erh Niu came in after them, bringing the oil lamp. But the table tilted to one side and wouldn’t hold the lamp. The dirty floor was uneven. She left the lamp on the
k’ang
and went out and got a brick which she tucked under a table leg. Still kneeling, she looked up to see if the table was now level, bent down to adjust the brick, peered up again and then gave the table a little push to see if it wobbled. The lamplight was feeble and flickering, but Liu suspected that she had reddened her lips and cheeks and she had a small pink flower in her hair which he did not remember seeing in the morning.

T’ang sat on the
k’ang
sucking his pipe. His long face was deeply seamed.

“Today’s meeting was too long, wasn’t it?” Liu said conversationally. “A little too long?”

T’ang laughed politely. “Not so long. No so long.” Again he fell silent.

Liu thought he looked worried, so he explained to him all over again the general picture of the Land Reform. In answer to Liu’s questions he said he had eleven acres of land, reaped less than ten
tan
of grain every year, which just left the family enough to eat after paying the taxes in kind. A Middling Farmer like him had absolutely nothing to worry about, Liu told him. His property was under government protection. The Land Reform was based on the principle of Level both Ends without Touching the Middle.

But T’ang still brooded. “There’s this talk of pooling all the land and redividing,” he finally said. “Is there anything to it?”

“No, there’s no such thing. Where did you hear such a rumor? Nobody’s going to touch the land of Middling Farmers.”

“Then that’s all right. That’s fine.” T’ang sighed with relief. “Ever since I heard that talk of redividing, it’s been troubling me. There’s nothing special about my land, but I’m used to handling it, I know its nature. Take that piece near the creek. I bought it the year before last from Yang Lao-erh, Yang Number Two. Nice land, but the Yang brothers were a bunch of no-goods; they’d let it go to waste. The earth was hard like anything. Ever since I got it I’ve turned it twice a year and I’m always carrying baskets of ripe earth to it on a pole, padding it all over with ripe earth. Now it’s not bad at all—best land I’ve got. I’d sure feel bad if I had to exchange it.”

All his land had been bought piecemeal, acre by acre. According to him every acre had a past, either unfortunate or with lots of ups and downs, and it always had its own special quirks, fears, likings and susceptibilities. T’ang was unexpectedly long-winded about it, like all silent men once they had got started on a favorite subject. Liu did not mind listening. He was pleased at having made him open up.

Erh Niu had been out of the room and back again, leaning against the doorway listening. T’ang’s wife called them to dinner. She had made flat barley cakes baked in a dry pan. When everybody had sat down around the table she told Erh Niu to put a pot of water on the stove. The fire was still going strong.

Erh Niu removed the wooden lid from the huge brown water jar that stood next to the stove. She took the half gourd off the wall to dip for water, but first she took a hurried look at her own reflection in the shadowy brown depth. She pushed her flower back a little and looked again but did not seem to be reassured. Then she took it off and tucked it into her hair, stem upwards. The pink flower fell softly in absolute silence onto the glassy brown surface of the water and floated motionlessly over one eye on her mirrored face. She too was motionless as she leaned over looking in, one hand resting on the green glazed rim of the jar.

“Why are you taking all this time to get a bit of water? Takes as long as embroidering,” her mother grumbled, calling out to her from the table. “What are you looking at?”

“I was wondering what’s the matter with today’s water. Such a lot of mud at the bottom,” Erh Niu said.

She fished the flower out, shook it dry and put it back in her hair. Hastily filling the pot with water, she set it on the stove and joined the others at the table. Liu avoided looking in her direction because he did not want to embarrass her. But he had seen her looking anxiously at herself in the water. His vague uneasiness was perhaps tinged with a sense of pleasure just as vague and remote.

FOR THE
last few days the Land Reform Workers’ Corps had been busy with
Fang P’in, Wen K’u
, Visiting the Poor and Asking about their Pains. In small units of two or three they paid visits from door to door. To catch the men at home they had to work until late in the evening, trying to engage the farmers in conversation and pumping them to make them
T’u K’u Shui
, Disgorge Bitter Fluid. Once every day the Reform Corps met in the village school for Collective Reporting, sorting out the material gathered that day and discussing it.

“The People still have scruples. They dare not speak out,” Chang Li said. “They’re scared of the revenge of the Remnant Feudal Forces.”

The Corps tried to find out whether it was the landlords that they were afraid of or the village despots. The few landlords in Han Chia T’o had very little land for rent and could not live on their income from the land. They generally had some member of the family who was in business or who taught school in town, sending money home regularly to help things out. There were a few local
hun-hun
, gangsters, but none of them was powerful enough to be called a despot. Go Forward Pao had been a ne’er-do-well before. But since he had mended his ways after he became Progressive and had, furthermore, been made the Party Secretary of the Branch Office, nobody was inclined to speak ill of him. The two men who had been
chia chang
—block leaders—during the Japanese occupation had been appointed against their will. Their job had been mostly to take up collections to provide for food and supplies for the Japanese army or the army of the puppet government, whichever happened to be passing through the district. They had to make up the deficit out of their own pockets and had to sell their land to do it, later even their houses. One of them had been appointed after his predecessor had gone half crazy with grief. If anything, the villagers were sorry for them.

It would seem that the people in the village had no real complaints against anybody. But the members of the Corps tackled the job with youthful zeal. They went at it as if was artificial respiration, throwing themselves on the peasants, pressing hard on their stomachs to force out the water. And slowly, in one case after another, the Bitter Fluid was Disgorged.

The most common grievance the students heard was that after the harvest last year when the whole country-side competed in paying tax ahead of the final date, the village
kan-pu
had been too keen on winning the Red Flag. They had kept after everybody, threatening that those who delayed the payment would have to help build roads. When that didn’t work too well, there had been arrests and beatings. Han Teh-lu, classified as a Poor Farmer, had been so badgered that he had broken down and cried four times. Many of the farmers had been forced to sell their seeds before their crops were ready for harvesting.

Some accused the
kan-pu
of discrimination in
tso fu-tan
, calculating the Individual Share of the Burden. Then there were several people who claimed that they had lost over half of their crops last year through floods and bugs. They had already reported themselves as famine cases, which according to government proclamations were entitled to a tax reduction. But the
kan-pu
had talked and talked to them, refusing to let them alone until they had agreed to “voluntarily ask for exemption from tax reduction.”

The members of the Corps had been excited and enthusiastic during the Extraction of Bitter Fluid. But when it came to Collective Reporting, they were somewhat at a loss. All they had collected here were complaints against the
kan-pu
. Nothing really serious. But no mention at all was made of the landlords.

“The hatred of the farmers here for the landlord is not deep,” Liu concluded.

“If their hatred for the landlord is not deep, it’s because their Political Awareness is not high,” Chang Li said. “That’s why they don’t resent the fact that they’ve been exploited. And you people just look at it from the surface and decide arbitrarily that their hatred for the landlord is not deep. That just reflects on the extent of your understanding of The Policy.”

So the entire Corps went under the most thorough discussion and self-examination.

Go Forward Pao made a suggestion to the Corps that they might dine on Struggle Rice cooked in big pots every day at lunchtime. The members of the Corps would eat together with the
kan-pu
and militiamen so they could all keep in touch. “As it is now, we have to look all over the place whenever we want to get hold of anybody,” Pao said. “The rice is there, ready at hand. It’s the Fruit of the Struggle that we collected this spring during the Extermination of Bandits and Gangsters. It’s been in the safekeeping of the Farmers’ Association.”

“That’s the People’s property,” Liu Ch’üan said at once. “We shouldn’t be the ones to enjoy it.”

Su Nan, who seldom spoke, also said, “We’re supposed to Share in Three Things when we come to the country.” She meant “share the food, the living quarters and the labor of the farmers.” “We aren’t helping in the fields because there isn’t time. If on top of this we are eating better than other people, it would be a bit too much. The family I’m boarding with belongs to the Destitute Farmer class. They’re living on bean husks and rice husks.”

She was not the only one boarding with Destitute Farmers. Some of them were naturally anxious for a change of diet. “To save time we are not helping in farmwork. It saves time too to eat Struggle Rice together, with everybody at hand,” they argued. “There is a time limit to this Land Reform, you know. It’s most important to complete it as soon as possible.”

Opinions differed. They broke into a hubbub.

“You comrades are here to help The People to get up a Struggle,” Go Forward Pao said. “What if you eat a few meals off The People—it’s as it should be.”

“Then does that mean that if we don’t eat, we won’t help, and there’ll be no Struggle?” said Su Nan.

Chang Li gave her his support. “It’s true that it won’t look good if we eat too well. Got to Consider the Effect.”

The talk of Struggle Rice was shelved. But then it turned out that nobody had paid attention to the ventilation in the storeroom of the Farmers’ Association, so the grain had turned warm and was beginning to redden after a particularly hot summer. Part of it had begun to sprout. So there was really no reason why some of it shouldn’t be taken out and disposed of.

Big mud stoves were built in the courtyard of the school to cook lunch for everybody connected with the Land Reform. It was whispered among the members of the Corps that Go Forward Pao and the chairman of the Farmers’ Association were smuggling large quantities of rice and flour out of the granary, secretly selling them in town and charging it all to the daily consumption of Struggle Rice. Other
kan-pu
had talked because they were kept out of it. Chang Li must have also heard of this. But Pao had already worked himself into Chang’s good graces. So the matter went no further.

With the work of
Fang P’in, Wen K’u
coming to an end, the Corps was busy writing a Collective Report to the district government. Everybody helped with the copying. The part assigned to Su Nan seemed specially long. She hadn’t finished copying yet when everybody left the school office. A red candle stood on a tall pale yellow mud candlestick. A lithograph portrait of Sun Yat-sen faced a colored print of Mao’s portrait on the peeling whitewashed walls. Slogans written on two strips of white paper flanked each of the portraits like the traditional antithetical scrolls. The brass nails on a scarlet waist-drum strung high on one wall gleamed in the candlelight. Pasted in tidy rows under the drum were the schoolchildren’s essays written on flimsy green-checked paper. The faint stench of sticky Chinese ink filled the room.