Serve the People! (10 page)

He shivered to hear her talk of dying, as if she had seen right through him, and into the terrible, ridiculous idea that had just seized him. Nervous that his murderous instincts had in some way betrayed themselves, he leaned over attentively and took her hand. `How do you feel?' he asked her. `You scared me half to death. You fainted, it was all my fault.'

She looked gratefully at him, tears wetting the corners of her eyes, and stroked his face. `Would you bring me my clothes?' she asked. He picked them up from the table and helped her get dressed, the two of them still sitting on the towel, talking away, holding each other's hands.

`I wish you were my husband,' she said.

`You're the Division Commander's wife,' he reminded her. `You're the envy of every woman in China.'

`That may be.' After a brief, slanting glance away, she looked straight back at him. A blush returned to her cheeks. `Do you know why the Commander's first wife divorced him?'

He answered her only with an expression of surprise.

`He's impotent.'

He continued to stare at her in silent, mounting amazement.

But she had nothing more to say. After heaving a long, pained sigh-a sigh that hinted at an unutterable sadness -she changed the subject, as if the mere act of breathing out had dispelled her sorrow in a single puff. `You want to be an official, don't you?' she asked after a brief pause.

`Yes, like every other soldier in the army.'

'Why? And don't tell me it's because you want to Serve the People or anything like that. I want to know the real reason.'

He hesitated. `It'll make you angry.'

It won't, I promise. I know you want your wife to join you here.' She smiled a magnanimous smile. `I'm your Sister, remember. I understand these things. Don't worry, I'll help you. All promotions are suspended at the moment but the minute things start moving again I'll sort it out for your family.' Her tears started up again, for no clear reason as if there were other things she wanted to say to him but this was not the moment. She stood up and went in search of a comb. `What do you want to eat?'

`I'll cook whatever you want,' he answered.

She smiled. `I'm your wife, remember. I'll cook whatever you want.'

Then down the stairs they went, hand in hand, to prepare lunch. In the kitchen, they both immediately spotted the Serve the People! sign lying on the table, and smiled. `Serve the People,' he said. `Sit down and rest.'

`Fight Selfishness and Criticize Revisionism,' she replied. `Sit down and rest yourself.'

`We've Come Together for a Common Revolutionary Goal,' he countered back. `Let's cook together.'

'The People,' she concluded, `and the People Alone, are the Driving Force of History. Let's make a competition of it, to find out who's the better cook.'

Between them, they produced two meat and two vegetable dishes: Liu Lian worked on cucumber with scrambled egg, and green pepper with diced pork, while he made stewed chicken and stir-fried aubergines. After each had sampled the other's, she declared hers superior, while he championed his. She was from south China, she argued, it stood to reason she would cook better than a rough northerner. He'd won second place in an army cookery competition, he countered; the Division Commander had chosen him for his culinary prowess. She flashed a mysterious smile at him. The meek will inherit the Revolution,' she said, as if conceding partial defeat. 'I'11 award you a narrow victory in the main course. But wait until you've tried my soup.' She then prepared a soup of dried shrimps and stewed white gourd.

`The Eyes of the Masses are Indeed Bright,' he admitted, after tasting it. 'This is something special, better than anything I could do.'

Afterwards, they sat opposite each other to eat, their legs and feet touching and intertwining under the table. The meal quickly became a game as, laughing, they took turns to feed each other mouthfuls. Halfway through, Liu Lian struck her forehead, as if she'd suddenly remembered something terribly important. `Have you ever tasted mao-tai?' she asked. He'd seen the senior officers drink it at this very table, he replied, the night he cooked a banquet-eight hot dishes and four cold-to celebrate the country's first successful nuclear explosion.

`Come on,' she said, `let's have some. After all, we've got something to celebrate, too.'

`What's that?'

`Your making my life worthwhile.'

She went upstairs and fetched, from who knows where, a bottle of mao-tai -the finest, costliest of all Chinese spirits-and two cups. She filled both to the brim, passed one to him and raised hers as if about to toast him. He paused and looked across at her. `If I drink this, you have to tell me the story of howyou came to marry the Division Commander.'

A blank look passed over her face. `You really want to know? All right. As long as you drink up first.'

Promise?'

I promise,' she replied.

He lifted his cup and drank. `Where are you from in the south?'

`Yangzhou,' she answered, after draining her own cup. `Ever been? You northerners are always saying how wonderful Hangzhou and Suzhou are, but Yangzhou's better than both. The girls are much prettier. Apparently, when they were looking for concubines for Deputy Head-of-State Lin Biao, they ignored Suzhou and Hangzhou completely, and chose two from Yangzhou instead.' As she spoke, she refilled both cups and passed his back to him. `Anything else?'

Did the Division Commander choose you, too?'

She swallowed her wine down. Of course. It was when he was on an inspection tour of the hospital. He picked me out straightaway.' Her radiant smile showed how proud she'd been that the Commander had noticed her. At the same moment, however, tears began to splash from her eyes and into her cup.

`What's wrong?' he asked.

`I'm happy. Happy I married the Division Commander.'

`Didn't you know how much older he was?' he asked.

`Yes.'

`And you still married him?'

`He's the Division Commander.'

`But he's impotent.'

`Don't say what you shouldn't say.'

`I'm your husband, I can say anything I want.'

`You're the Division Commander's orderly, and I'm his wife -remember?'

He slammed his wine cup down on the table, glaring at her. `I don't know why,' he said, a sudden, solemn urgency in his voice, `but just then the thought of you wanting to marry the Commander made me want to throttle you.'

She drank another cupful. `Go on then,' she challenged him. `We all have to die sometime, so we might as well go together.' Gulping another cup down, she looked in Wu Dawang's direction, already half-tipsy. `I'm one of the Party faithful, too, you know. I knew more quotations by Chairman Mao than anyone else in the Division Hospital. Once, I recited a hundred of them to the Commander, one after the other. I was word-perfect. I even recited the punctuation. I think that's when he really took a shine to me. First promotion, then marriage. I was perfectly willing to marry him, truly I was, he didn't need to push me in the slightest. But it had never crossed my mind he'd be impotent, or that his first wife had divorced him because of it. Just when I was about to tell him I wanted a divorce, too, he kneeled in front of me. Imagine it! At his age, his rank. He joined the Communists to fight against the Japanese when he was only fourteen. He'd been wounded four times by 1945. Then, during the Civil War, he took a bullet between his legs. He's still got two bullets in him, one in his back, one in his knee. He's got a whole cupboard stuffed with medals and honours. How could I divorce him? A man who'd given everything for the Revolution, kneeling in front of me, crying like a baby?

`Come on,' she continued. If you drink up, I'll recite a hundred quotations by Chairman Mao. If you don't, I'll have a hundred from you.I

`I'd rather hear one of his songs,' he said.

'All right.' Once his cup was empty, she sang `The Morning Sun'. Another cup later, she sang The Long March'. After another, `Self-Reliance'. Soon, the tally of how many cups had been drunk and how many songs had been sung was lost in a drunken haze. When they woke, dusk was falling over the compound. The evening sun shone in through the kitchen window, illuminating a scene of near-orgiastic debauchery: the table scattered with cups, dishes and an empty bottle, the chairs piled with clothes, the floor strewn with chopsticks one pair having inexplicably ended up behind the kitchen door.

Our hero and heroine lay, their arms wrapped around each other, on the cement floor of the kitchen, as nakedly pinkish-white as two pigs tossed by their butcher under his slaughter table. The Serve the People ! sign lay unaccountably across their bodies, like a price tag.

HAD LIFE BEEN A GAME all along, or had it only recently become one? Is all the world a stage, the men and women on it merely players? Does passion come from love, or can love come from passion? Does it matter? A river doesn't need to know its source; the source doesn't need to know what rivers it feeds--all that matters is that it does so. In some instances, the question of cause and effect is, ultimately, beside the point. Some things-the love affair between Wu Dawang and Liu Lian being one of them-seem to come from nothing, then return to nothing.

As he worked in the back garden, she would watch him-either from the kitchen doorway or from the side of a vegetable patch, until her thoughts began to wander when, say, a pair of butterflies fluttered languorously past. Blushing slightly, she would go back inside, then re emerge a few seconds later holding the Serve the People! sign behind her back. After setting it down a few feet away from him, she would turn back toward the house.

'Where are you going?' he would shout out.

'To get a drink of water,' she would reply. 'I'm thirsty.'

Not thinking to doubt her, he would carry on with his work until he discovered the sign. He would then look around him, throw down the hoe, take the sign back into the house, replace it on the dining table and, without pausing even to wash his hands or face, gallop upstairs to the bedroom where she would be undressed and waiting for him. No further communication was required. If he gave satisfaction, she would cook him whatever he felt like eating. If not, she would devise some domestic penalty for him. He ate what she cooked for him with an easy conscience, as easy as if he were the Division Commander eating food cooked by his Orderly; it was his reward fora job well done. Her punishments -washing her clothes, cleaning her ears, cutting her nails-he accepted just as easily, as fair penance for a selfish dereliction of duty. Love was a game to be played seriously. Once, she slipped the Serve the People! sign under his knife as he chopped vegetables in the kitchen. After he'd followed her upstairs, the smell of chilli still on his fingers, and given exceptional satisfaction, it was she who returned to the kitchen to pick up where he'd left off. In fact, she took over all the cooking for the next three days, not even allowing him to wash up afterward.

As the affair went on, the Serve the People! sign seemed to grow legs. An instant after she decided she wanted him, it would lodge itself in a blossoming shrub as he weeded a flower bed. Or, as he pruned the vines, it would suddenly appear hanging from a branch, nudging at his shoulder. While he was out shopping for food, the slightest thing could set him off on fantasies, which on discovering the sign lying in wait for him back at Compound Number One-would swiftly become reality. Sometimes, of course, his thoughts would be elsewhere--with his wife and son, for example--but one glimpse of the sign obliterated everything except Liu Lian's glorious body and his desire for it. They would come together whenever and wherever: the sitting room, kitchen, bathroom, study, the Division Commander's conference room; even, under cover of darkness, beneath the vine trellis.

In a few short weeks, they'd become both the masters and slaves of instinct, allowing sex to dominate all other aspects of life. Between them, they could make the sexual act simple one minute, elaborate the next; now perfunctory, now ceremonious; now civilized, now decadent; now relaxed, now painstaking. But it was not until their last week together that their affair attained a truly extraordinary, climactic intensity.

Shortly before this, the Division had left on camp and field training. For days, trucks loaded with firewood, coal, clothes and grain had been parked in front of each company barracks. The poems, essays and lists of commendations that usually filled noticeboards had given way to posters urging their readers to Prepare for War and Natural Disasters, to Dig Holes That Are Deep and Amass Grain Stores That Are Large; to Triumph over US Imperialism and Soviet Revisionism on the Path to Victory in World War III, while constantly bearing in mind that Hegemony Must Not Be Sought. Battle challenges were exchanged; councils of war proposed. As slogan piled upon slogan, so the entire Division worked itself up into a revolutionary frenzy. Tucked away in the Division Commander's compound, Wu Dawang had almost forgotten what it was to be a soldier; how a single spark of propaganda could set the barracks alight. On the day of the Division's departure, he was pushing his bicycle out of Compound Number One after almost a week spent exclusively behind its reinforced steel fence, en route to market, when suddenly, what looked like the entire Division jogged past him in full battle dress toward the drill ground.