To Live (12 page)

Who could have known that before long even cooking pots would have to be turned over to the people’s commune? They said it was to smelt iron. One day the team leader went door-to-door smashing pots and pans. When he got to our house he laughed and said, “Fugui, are you going to hand it over yourself, or do we have to go in and smash it?”

Since everyone’s pots were to be broken anyway, I figured there was no real way out, so I said, “I’ll get it, I’ll get it.”

I carried our pot out and placed it on the ground. Two young men raised their hoes and smashed it. All it took was four or five blows to smash a good pot to pieces. Jiazhen stood by watching, so upset she even shed a few tears. She said to the team leader, “Now that our pot is broken, how are we supposed to eat?”

“You’ll eat in the dining hall,” the team leader said, waving his arms. “The village is setting up a communal dining hall. Smash your pots and nobody will have to worry about cooking at home anymore. You’ll save a lot of energy and at the same time we’ll all be on our way toward communism. If you’re hungry, just pick yourself up and head on over to the dining hall. We’ve got fish and meat—so much you’ll choke to death!”

The village set up a dining hall and our supplies of rice, salt, firewood—everything—were all confiscated by the village. The biggest shame was our pair of lambs. Youqing had raised them to be plump and strong, but even they had to be given up. That afternoon, as we carried our rice and salt over to the dining hall, Youqing, his head drooping, led our two lambs toward the drying ground. Deep down he was filled with reluctance. He had fed and cared for them with his own two hands. Every day he ran all the way to school and then all the way home, all for our lambs. He brought the lambs down to the drying field, where everyone in the village turned their oxen and sheep over to the village stockman, Wang Xi. Although the others were also reluctant to give their animals away, after handing them over to Wang Xi they all turned around and went home. Only Youqing remained—he stood there biting his lip without moving. Finally he asked Wang Xi in a pathetic voice, “Is it okay if I come back to visit them every day to give them a hug?”

As soon as the village dining hall opened up, mealtime each day became quite a show. Every family sent two women to pick up the food. They had to get in a long line just like the steamed breadline I was in while a prisoner of the communists. The sound of all those women yammering away was like the twittering sound of a flock of sparrows that flies in when it’s time to dry out the rice husks. The team leader was right: having a dining hall really did save a lot of effort. If you were hungry, all you had to do was line up and you’d have plenty to eat and drink. The portions were unlimited; you could eat as much as you wanted, and every day there was meat. The first couple of days the team leader, with his bowl in hand, happily went laughing from door to door, asking everybody, “So, did it save you a lot of energy? Do you think the people’s commune is a good idea or what?”

Everybody in the village was happy. They all said it was a great idea and the team leader responded, “These days our lives are more comfortable than that of a carefree loafer!”

Jiazhen was happy, too. Every time she and Fengxia came back carrying our food, she’d say, “There’s meat again!”

Jiazhen would put the food on the table before going out to call Youqing. After calling out to him a couple of times, we’d see him appear, running along the ridge carrying a basket full of grass. He was actually going to bring our two lambs some grass. The village’s three oxen and twenty-some lambs were all
kept in the same livestock shed. As soon as those animals were taken by the people’s commune, it was their bad luck. They were often underfed and hungry. As soon as Youqing entered the shed he’d be surrounded. Youqing would call out to his lambs, “Hey! Hello! Where are you guys?”

When his two lambs would emerge from the herd, Youqing would put the grass on the ground in front of them. At the same time he had to push away the other animals. Only after his lambs were done eating would Youqing, breathing heavily and sweating, run home. Almost late for school, he would chug down his rice as if he were drinking water, pick up his book bag and be off.

Seeing him still running back and forth like this, I felt angry inside but didn’t say anything. I was afraid that if I said something other people would say that I was politically backward. But one time I just couldn’t take it. I told Youqing, “If other people take a shit why the hell should you go wipe their asses?”

Youqing didn’t understand what I meant, and after looking at me for a while he began to giggle. That pissed me off so bad I almost slapped him upside the head.

“Those lambs belong to the commune now,” I said. “What the hell do you have to do with them?”

Youqing would bring grass to them three times a day, and just as it was getting dark he would go and give his two lambs a hug. The guy in charge of the animals, Wang Xi, seeing how much Youqing cared for his lambs, said to him, “Youqing, why don’t you bring them home with you tonight? Just bring them back first thing tomorrow morning.”

Youqing knew I wouldn’t let him, so he shook his head and said to Wang Xi, “My dad will yell at me. I’ll just cuddle with them.”

As time went by there were fewer and fewer lambs left in the shed, because every few days they’d slaughter another one. In the end, Youqing was the only one who would still bring grass to the lambs. When Wang Xi saw me, he said, “Youqing’s the only one who still thinks about them every day. The others only think about them when they’re hungry.”

Two days after the village dining hall opened, the team leader sent two young men into the city to buy a cauldron for smelting iron. The team leader pointed to the heap of smashed pots and iron sheets that were piled up in the drying field and said, “We ought to hurry up and start smelting that stuff. It’s worthless just sitting there.”

After the two young men, carrying a straw rope and a shoulder pole, went into the city, the team leader accompanied the town
fengshui
³
expert on a leisurely stroll around the village. He wanted to find an ideal spot with perfect
fengshui
to smelt iron. The fengshui expert in his long gown walked back and forth with his squinting smile. As he approached each family’s house, the family members inside must all have been holding their breath. All it would take would be one nod from this hunchbacked old man and that family’s house would be gone.

The team leader accompanied the
fengshui
expert all the way to our front door. I stood outside the door with my heart caught up in an uncertain panic. The team leader said, “Fugui, this is Mr. Wang. He’s come by to have a look.”

“Good, that’s great,” I said, nodding my head.

With both hands clasped behind his back, the fengshui expert looked around in all directions and he said, “This is a great spot, the
fengshui
here is good.”

As soon as I heard that I felt dizzy and thought I was really done for. It was a good thing that at that moment Jiazhen came out. When Jiazhen saw it was the same Mr. Wang she used to
know, she called out to him.

“Well, if it isn’t Jiazhen,” replied Mr. Wang.

Jiazhen smiled. “Come in for some tea.”

Mr. Wang waved his hands saying, “Some other time, some other time.”

Jiazhen said, “My dad said you’ve been up to your neck in work lately.”

“Yes, I’ve been really busy,” Mr. Wang said, nodding his head. “The people who want me to come check out their fengshui are all lining up!”

Saying that, Mr. Wang looked at me and asked Jiazhen, “Who is this?”

Jiazhen said, “This is Fugui.”

As Mr. Wang smiled, his eyes squinted to the point that all you could see was a single thin crack. He nodded and said, “I
know, I’ve heard about him.”

Seeing the expression on Mr. Wang’s face, I knew he was thinking back to me gambling away all my family’s property. I just smiled at Mr. Wang, and he put his two fists together in a cordial gesture, saying, “We’ll talk again some other time.”

Finishing, he turned around and said to the team leader, “Let’s go somewhere else and look.”

Only after the team leader and the
fengshui
expert left did I truly let out a sigh of relief. My thatched hut escaped unharmed, but Old Sun was really up shit’s creek. The fengshui expert took a fancy to his house. The team leader requested that Old Sun and his family vacate the house, but Old Sun squatted down in the corner, crying like a baby. He didn’t want to move. The team leader said to him, “What are you crying about? The people’s commune will build you a new house.”

Old Sun’s two hands clasped his head, and he continued to cry, but he didn’t say a word. By the time dusk fell, the team leader figured there was no other way, so he got a few of the young guys in the village to pull Old Sun out of his house and move everything outside. After they pulled Old Sun outside, he grabbed on to a tree, and no matter what he wouldn’t let go. The two young guys pulling him looked at the team leader and said, “Team leader, we can’t move him.”

The team leader, turning to look, said, “Okay, you two come over here and start the fire.”

Matches in hand, the two young guys got up on a stool and lit a match against the straw on the roof. But the straw was already mildewed, and it had just rained the day before, so it was almost impossible for them to get a fire going. The team leader said, “Fuck, I don’t believe that the fire of the people’s commune can’t even burn down a raggedy old house like this.”

The team leader rolled up his sleeves, getting ready to do it himself, when someone said, “Add some oil. Just a little bit will do.”

After thinking, the team leader said, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? Quick, go down to the dining hall and get some oil.”

I used to think that I was the only wastrel—I never imagined that the team leader was one, too. I stood less than a hundred feet away, watching the team leader and the rest of them take perfectly good oil and pour it over the straw. The oil was being taken right out of our mouths and now, in their hands, was going up in smoke and flames. They poured the oil we were meant to cook with on the straw roof, and the flames whisked upward, dancing in the sky, while the smoke rolled back and forth across the roof. Old Sun was still hugging the tree, his eyes fixed on his burning house. Poor Old Sun—only after his house was burned to ash and the surrounding ground was blackened by the flames did he finally wipe away his tears and stagger away. The people in the village heard him say, “My pot’s been smashed, my house has been burned, it looks like I should probably die, too.”

That night Jiazhen and I could barely sleep. If Jiazhen hadn’t
known that
fengshui
expert, Mr. Wang, who knew where our family would have wound up? The more we thought about it the more we became convinced that it all came down to fate. It was just a shame about Old Sun—Jiazhen
kept thinking that we had pushed this catastrophe on him. I also thought so, but that’s not what I said.

“Actually, it was the catastrophe that found him,” I said. “You can’t really say we pushed it on him.”

The iron smelting area was evacuated, and the cauldron they had purchased in town arrived. They had also bought a petrol drum. A whole bunch of the villagers had never seen a petrol tank before, and they all thought it was a really curious object. They asked what
kind of gadget it was. I had seen them before during the war so I told them, “It’s a petrol drum. It’s the rice bowl a car uses to eat.”

The team leader kicked this automotive rice bowl and said, “It’s too small!”

The guy who bought it said, “They didn’t have any bigger ones. I guess we’ll just have to smelt one cauldron at a time.”

The team leader was the kind of guy who liked to hear reasonable ideas. It didn’t matter who came up with them. Just as long as they sounded reasonable, he’d believe them. He said, “That makes sense. After all, taking one bite never made anyone fat. We’ll just smelt one cauldron at a time.”

Seeing so many people surrounding the petrol drum, Youqing, with his basket full of grass, temporarily postponed his trip to the livestock shed to come over and see what was going on. His head rubbed and bumped against my waist as he emerged from the crowd. I thought, who could this be? But as soon as I looked down I saw that it was my son. Youqing yelled out to the team leader, “When you smelt iron, you’ve got to add water.”

Everybody laughed when they heard this, and the team leader said, “Add water? This little guy is thinking about cooking meat.”

When Youqing heard this he started to giggle and said, “Otherwise before the iron is smelted you’ll burn a hole through the bottom of the cauldron.”

Who could have known that upon hearing this the team leader would raise his eyebrows, turn to me and say, “Fugui, you’ve got a little scientist in your family. What this
kid said is exactly right.”

With the team leader complimenting my son, I was naturally happy, even though it was actually a lousy idea. First they set the petrol tank up where Old Sun’s house had stood. They threw in all those broken pots, iron sheets and other stuff, and then they added water, covering the vat with a wooden cover. This was how we went about smelting iron. As soon as the water inside began to boil, the wooden cover would shake, dancing up and down as the steam rushed out. In the end, smelting iron really wasn’t that much different from cooking meat.

Every day the team leader would go over a few times to check it out. Each time he removed the wooden lid, the water and steam rushing out would scare him so bad he’d jump back a couple steps and yell out, “It’s hot as hell!”

Waiting until the smoke died down a bit, he would stick a pole down in the vat, poking around to see if the iron had begun to soften. After he was finished poking, he’d curse, “Fuck, it’s still hard as a rock!”

During the time the village was smelting iron, Jiazhen got sick. She got a
kind of sickness that made her feel exhausted. At first I thought it was just a symptom of old age that she should start to feel like this. One day I was carrying the goat manure out to fertilize the field, which at the time was dotted with bamboo poles that stuck out of the ground. Originally there were little red paper flags hanging from the ends of these poles, but after a few rains the red flags were gone. All that was left were the bamboo poles with some bits of dangling red paper. Jiazhen also carried the goat manure. She walked and walked, and then her legs suddenly went soft and she had to sit down. The farmers all snickered when they saw this.