Serve the People! (16 page)

Mass demobilization and Wu Dawang's own imminent departure seemed to be bringing this unusual tale of romance to a brusque close; fate had assertively ruled against the happy reunion of our lovers. The Political Instructor offered a kind of consolation prize-to sweeten the bitterness of separationgranting Wu Duwang a brief period of calm before unhappiness reclaimed him.

His company's Captain was nowhere to be seen. Earlier in his career he himself had once served as the Division Commander's Orderly (at exactly the time, in fact, when the Commander had reluctantly parted company with his first wife). The Captain therefore enjoyed much closer relations with Liu Lian and her husband than the Political Instructor did. It was this intimacy that made Wu Dawang keen to learn more from him about what was going on -he was like a murderer torn between wanting to keep up the appearance of innocence and to find out if anyone knew about his crime. So, once the afternoon study session was underway, he told the Political Instructor he had an urgent report to make to the Captain. After considering this request, the Instructor asked the Signals Officer to help him find the Captain-even though he himself would have known perfectly well where he was and what he was doing.

The Signals Officer led Wu Dawang to the southernmost end of the barracks, to the rooms of the Commander of the Third Battalion, Second Regiment. The battalion barracks were fronted by a large copse of tung trees, whose withered, yellow leaves had formed a gloomily autumnal carpet over the ground. A sentry stood in the doorway to the Battalion Commander's quarters-short, stout and stubbornly conscientious to the point of refusing them entry. The Commander, he informed them, had been most particular that no one should be allowed in. So they waited by the door while he disappeared inside to report their arrival, and see if the Captain of the Guards Company was available.

He kept them waiting for what felt like an inordinate length of time. Fidgety with impatience, Wu Dawang took himself over to the Battalion Commander's window. Through it he witnessed a scene that gave him his first, glimmering sense that perhaps his entanglement with Liu Lian had not been as straightforwardly personal an affair as he thought. He could see the Commander's desk piled with dishes, bowls and empty bottles of the local sorghum-distilled liquor. A dozen or so scarlet chopsticks lay scattered on the floor.

The Commander and his four guests had obviously been drinking since lunchtime, for at least three of them now looked too far gone for any more sense to be got out of them that day. As a stunned Wu Dawang took in this debauched display, he noted that, in addition to the Battalion Commander and Wu Dawang's own Captain, the party included the Deputy Commander of the Third Regiment, the Political Instructor of the Third Battalion and a staff officer from Division HO. These individuals neither shared a common place of origin nor had they fought alongside each other. The one thing that united them was their link to the Division Commander -they had all served him either as Personal Orderly, Bodyguard or Signals Officer earlier in his career, when he was only a Captain or Battalion Commander.

Nevertheless, Wu Dawang couldn't fathom why they should have gathered in this dissolute, undisciplined manner, tarnishing the dignity of their military office. The Deputy Commander was prostrate, snoring, on the bed. The Staff Officer was on the floor, leaning against the bed, crying hysterically. Or perhaps he was laughing: it was hard to tell from the other side of the window. Their host, in the meantime, had squatted down by the legs of the table and was slapping his own face, muttering over and over, 'Why couldn't you keepyour damned mouth shut?' The Captain and Political Instructor, by contrast, still seemed to be relatively coInpo,% ,neatLi, as they attempted to reason with the Battalion Commander. `It's too soon to worry,' they appeared to be saying, `we don't yet know who's being demobilized, and who's being transferred.'

But the Battalion Commander simply sat there, roaring with mirthless laughter. `I know what's going to happen! I know!'

At this instant, the Captain happened to turn round and spot Wu Dawang looking in at them all. Paling, he glanced at his fallen comrades, then abandoned the Battalion Commander and strode out of the room to confront their eavesdropper. `What are you doing back here again?' he barked at him, yanking him away from the window.

`I'd been at home over a month, Captain.'

`Have you been to the Division Commander's house?'

`Not yet.'

Heaving a sigh of relief, the Captain went back inside to say something, then came out again to drag Wu Dawang and the Signals Officer back to barracks. On the way, he issued a single command to his Sergeant. `Tell no one anythingyou heard or saw just now. If any-any of this-reaches the Division Commander, we're all of us finished.' After that, he was silent.

And so Wu Dawang returned to barracks, still unable to make sense of a single thing going on around him. He didn't really trouble himself with the complexities of the restructuring. He thought only of his affair with Liu Lian, and of the succulent fruits of victory that it was going to bring him: honourable discharge from the army, and jobs for him and his wife in the city.

To begin with, this was exactly how simple everything appeared to Wu Dawang. In the short time that he'd been back in the army, he'd been genuinely taken aback by how happily things were working out for him. It looked as if his untimely reappearance in barracks had made the Division authorities desperate to be rid of him again, and as quickly as possible. Within a week he and his family had been fixed up with work and housing in the city nearest their village. While his comrades-in-arms agonized over the uncertainty of their prospects, all Wu Dawang had to do to assure his own future was fill in and sign a few forms handed to him by army bureaucrats. That was all.

Wu Dawang's army career drew to a close so fast that it almost took him by surprise. For his last few days, he tried to put thoughts of the restructuring-of its Strengthening of the National Economy and Improving of the People's Livelihood--to one side. Instead, he took the opportunity to wander about, reacquainting himself with the barracks after his long absence, calling on comrades-in-arms from his village, washing his bedding and clothes. At night, he struggled to temper his impossible longing for Liu Lian by sternly reminding himself how fortunate he'd been to enjoy the time he'd had with her.

But this exceptional period of idleness also gave Wu Dawang time to reflect on everything that had gone before, hardening his suspicions that the entire course of this affair of his had formed part of an elaborately choreographed scheme. He was beginning to sense that his liaison with Liu Lian was a piece of theatre scripted and directed from behind the scenes, in which his only freedom had been whether or not to engage emotionally with the role he had been cast in. As his suspicions grew, he could feel the intensity of his feelings waning, but he was still unwilling to acknowledge the absence of any real emotional honesty in his relationship with Liu Lian. Nor could he replace his fairytale memories of their affair with hardheaded contemplation of how it might relate to the way the Division was being dismantled. He refused to believe that the Division Commander would, for purely self-interested reasons, exploit the Central Party Streamlining Initiative in order to scatter his own troops like autumn leaves. Even though three battalions and four companies had already been banished to a remote frontier division five hundred miles away, still Wu Dawang would not believe it. Over the past two days, however, the Corps Commander-the Division Commander's immediate superior-had arrived to take charge of the restructuring and demobilization. This was clearly a serious business. Wu Dawang had witnessed how troops, on the eve of their departure, would sit woodenly through their farewell banquets. Then afterward, emboldened by liquor, they would seek out isolated corners of the barracks on which to vent their anger, shattering windows and smashing equipment that had been with them through years of struggle, honour and disgrace. In the minutes before leaving, they would weep openly in front of each other, resigned never to meet again in this life.

But still they left: the First Regiment in its entirety, then the First Battalion of the Second Regiment, then the Machine Gunners.

The previous afternoon, Wu Dawang had taken himself quietly over to the Machine Gunners' barracks, by which point the entire company-which had twice won collective commendations in the Civil War-had already been dispatched in five trucks marked `Liberation' to the special militarytransport station. Chaos as complete as the chaos he and Liu Lian had spread throughout the Division Commander's house some two months agoprevailed in the empty building.

But while the disorder that he and Liu Lian had generated had been an expression of their love for each other, the cheerless anarchy of the Machine Gunners' barracks spoke only of despair and uncertainty. Wooden guns used in drill practice lay uselessly on the floors, while the rubber coating on a vaulting horse had been hacked into scars that gaped like screaming mouths. Across the notice board that in happier days had been the mouthpiece of discipline and orthodoxy, someone had scrawled `Fuck you all'.

On the paper strips used to seal off the vacated dormitories, someone else had scribbled a few lines of mournfully ironic doggerel in red pen: `Our Helmsman guides us over the seas, sailing where the currents please; when the sea goes east so do we, as free as the wind and rain.'

Beneath a vermilion sunset, Wu Dawang stood at the main door to the deserted barracks, feeling the desolation wash over him. Though he knew that he owed the departing Machine Gunners a few tears, his eyes remained obstinately dry. It dawned on him that he was, deep down, indifferent to the distress his comrades felt as they were restructured back to the dead-end homes from which they'd come. The true source of his pain was the warning he'd been given against returning to the Division Commander's house.

On his way back to barracks, he bumped into the Head of Management, who needed his signature on a job assignment form. Once the document had been signed, he patted Wu Dawang on the shoulder and flashed him a mysterious smile. `Thanks to Liu Lian,' he remarked, you've come out of this better than any of us.' And off he went with his form, leaving Wu Dawang still pondering his words-and that ambiguous smirk of his-until past dinnertime.

After lights-out that evening, as the Division collectively closed its eyes and prepared for sleep, Wu Dawang lay wide awake, thinking things over. For some reason, in the daytime he was able to keep the restructuring separate in his mind from his affair with Liu Lian, but at night the one would always surreptitiously become intertwined with the other.

That particular evening, the suspicion that a trick had somehow been played on him was eating away at him. But when he thought back to his time with Liu Lian and to the many ways she'd been good to him, his memories of her marvellous body and smooth, flawless skin soothed his sense of wounded pride like a balm. As he shifted restlessly in bed, recollection of those intense, exhilarating days revived hopeless, romantic dreams, destroying his hard-won peace of mind. For an irrational moment, all that he had achieved so far-his distinguished army career, his imminent painless return to civilian life, the transfer of his family to the city together with the traumatic breaking up of the Division, paled into insignificance next to the euphoria he'd felt with Liu Lian. His longing to see her-just one more time-swept away everything in its path.

Late that night he plucked up courage. Creeping out of bed, he put his uniform back on and padded off in the direction of the Division Commander's house. But just as he was about to leave the barracks behind, a furious roar brought him to an instant halt.

`What the hell do you think you're doing?'

Turning around, Wu Dawang found his Captain standing only a few steps behind him. He couldn't be sure whether the Captain had been up and about anyway, or whether he'd been followed. Wu Dawang took refuge in the shadow of a tree, while the Captain stationed himself under a streetlamp, his face flushed with rage.

'Get back to barracks!' the Captain barked at him again, after a few minutes of this face-off. Wu Dawang obediently turned back toward his dormitory, past the Captain. As he drew level with his superior, the Captain spoke to him again, still reprimanding but in a gentler, more brotherly tone. 'You have to remember you're ... the son of a peasant, while she-she's the Division Commander's wife. It's not as ifyou've been punished for whatyou did. The Commander's even fixed you and your family up with jobs in the city. What have you got to complain about?'

Wu Dawang paused.

`Go back to bed,' the Captain went on. `No one but me has guessed.'

Still Wu Dawang remained where he was, staring at his Captain.

`I was his Orderly before he became Division Commander, remember. D'you think I don't know why his first wife divorced him for a factory worker? Come on, Sergeant, have a sense of proportion: in three days' time, they're going to tell everyone left in barracks who's going to be demobilized and who's going to be transferred. While everyone else is going out of their minds with worry, here you are, moping about in your own fantasy world. Take a long hard look atyourself: is this the stuff a revolutionary soldier is made of? The wayyou are now, I have no idea why the Division Commander thought enough of you to make you his Orderly. And I can't understand what Liu Lian saw in you either.'

Wu Dawang thought back to the scene he'd stumbled upon three days ago in the Battalion Commander's room--to those five drunk, despairing officers, all former staff in the Division Commander's household. `Will our company be demobilized, too?'

`Maybe it will and maybe it won't,' the Captain replied. `But one thing's certain--you're not going to help matters by calling on Liu Lian.'

Bowing his head, Wu Dawang made his way back in silence.

From then on he confined himself to his dormitory, sleeping away his few remaining days in barracks. And, just as the Captain had said, three days later at noon, Wu Dawang received formal notification of his demobilization. Shortly afterward his immediate superiors called him in.