Naked Earth (3 page)

When the truck finally pulled to a stop, the crowd had been left behind. But two men who were presumably
kan-pu
(cadres), puffing along behind the tail-gate, caught up with the truck as it slowed down. They were all ready to help everybody down but seemed a bit put out upon noting the youth and good looks of the girls in the group, fearing criticism if they should appear too eager to hold the young women by the hand. They decided instead to lead the way to the temple where their guests were to be quartered. Sitting on top of a small wooded mound, the vermilion-walled temple had two large white vertical signboards on either side of the gate, both saying “Primary School of Han Chia T’o, 3rd District.”

The fast walkers in the welcoming party were catching up now too, gongs and cymbals clanging thinly in the damp. The Land Reform Workers, their knapsacks on their backs, jumped down from the truck into the mud and hurried after the
kan-pu
up the steep winding steps of crumbling brick. Liu Ch’üan lingered behind to herd them along. Then he ran up alone, shielding his head with an arm. Midway up the steps an umbrella tilted over him.

“Comrade Liu,” Su Nan said.

“No, it’s all right,” Liu said smiling in perfunctory polite refusal. Then he took the umbrella from her. “Let me hold it.” After a few steps he realized that he was holding it away from himself, almost at the length of his arm. He hadn’t been so old-fashioned with other girls he had known at college. But he was not at ease with Su Nan. Water slid off the edge of the umbrella in silvery sheets, dripping on his head. He was considerably worse off than before. And then he also had to slow down his pace. Two could not run as fast as one. Su Nan probably noticed his plight. She said nothing, but as they neared the end of the climb she was walking quite close to him, forcing him to come under the umbrella.

Those who had arrived before them were crowded on the porch of the temple, busy shaking their caps and wringing out their trouser legs. Everybody looked up when they came in together. When Liu Ch’üan went up to talk to the men he thought he could sense quiet disapproval, then had an uncomfortable feeling that he was becoming supersensitive.

Chang Li was surrounded by several village
kan-pu
. He turned to introduce them to the students. The secretary of the Party branch office, Pao Hsiang-ch’ien, Go Forward Pao—a name obviously adopted after the Liberation—was a youngish farmer with thin, birdlike good looks, rather high-shouldered in a high-collared white Chinese shirt.

“Comrades, I wish I could find the words to tell you how happy we are at your coming,” Pao said smiling. “All of you have Culture. We have a lot to learn from you.”

“Not at all, not at all,” Chang said. “It’s we who ought to learn from you. You
kan-pu
are closest to the people.”

“The comrades must be hungry.” Pao said to Sun Fu-kuei, who had been introduced as the Farmers’ Association Organizer. “Tell them to hurry up with the dinner.” He turned with an apologetic smile to the Land Reform Workers, “Nothing to eat here. We’ve got thirty catties of white flour ready and a hundred eggs. Didn’t dare kill a pig—we weren’t sure whether you comrades would be able to get here today. You know, meat won’t keep in this weather.”

Chang protested, “Please don’t bother. We’ll eat whatever there is.”

“We don’t have to eat white flour,” Liu joined in. “Fact is, you don’t have to cook separately for us. We’ll board with the farmers.”

Pao scratched his head and laughed uncertainly, blowing through his teeth. “Raining like this—” he said after a moment, “Better eat here and go to bed early. You comrades must be tired out.”

“Besides, there’s no trouble at all. Everything’s at hand. Everything’s at hand,” added Sun.

“It seems to me we better not start by Taking the Opposite Stand from the group,” Chang said to Liu with a smile. “Whatever question comes up, it’s got to be United with Actual Circumstances. We can’t be Dead Brained, set on having our own way. That’s also a form of dogmatism.” He laughed.

Liu was taken aback by the reprimand, which he felt was quite uncalled for. Maybe Chang had resented his speaking up with what might be misconstrued as a tone of authority and thought it was a good idea to snub him before the other students in order to build up his own prestige within the group. Liu noticed Su Nan looking at him. She must be thinking that he had been trying to show off. And instead of gaining face, he had lost it. He flushed and it took all his will power to stay smiling. Above all he must not have it said of him that he could not take criticism.

They all went inside the temple and sat down in a dark, deserted schoolroom. Chang asked Pao how many Party members they had in the locality. He informed Pao that all the different organizations should hold separate meetings the next day in order to Communicate the Policy. All the
kan-pu
had turned up in the temple, the chairman of the Farmers’ Association, the chairman of the Women’s Association, the captain of the local militia, the head of the village and his assistant, the Party Organizer and Party Propagandizer. Most of them still retained some of their peasant shyness. They squatted quietly at the door listening to the talk. Some squatted outside under the eaves, staring into the rain as they listened.

Militiamen scurried in and out, hugging sacks of flour and baskets of eggs. A man brought noodles piled in a high mound in a scarlet-painted wooden basin. The noodles, neatly tied on top with a bit of rose-red paper ribbon, cascaded downwards like thick limp strands of beige-colored hair. Liu could tell from the man’s round-eyed, self-effacing look that this was not their ordinary fare at the village. He suddenly felt like a wealthy patron of the temple staying for the night, feasting on butchered meat, desecrating the god worshipped there.

Soon he smelled the fragrance of large flat cakes baking in dry pans. Reminding himself that he must not sulk, he said brightly, “Where are the drivers?” Nobody had seen them around. “I’ll go and find them. Dinner’s about ready,” Liu said.

He thought it was still raining when he walked down the steps under the trees which were still sniffling and shedding big tears. But the sky had cleared and there was in the air a touch of the golden haze of setting sun. The cicadas had just started singing, a bit wheezily. The long syrupy threads of sound ran on unbroken from tree to tree.

A knot of people had gathered around the truck parked on the wayside. The rain had washed off the dust from the cab of the truck. Children were peering at their own reflections in the dark green metal doors, aglow with the last rays of the slanting sun. They doubled up, slapping their knees, helpless with laughter, as if they were the funniest-looking objects in the world. Men and women, both wearing odd little sleeveless blouses of white cloth, also bent down peering and giggling but barking prohibitive phrases at the children. Somehow it came as a shock to Liu that he could understand the few words that floated up to where he stood, halfway down the steps. Perhaps there had been a moment when he had felt, with a guilty twinge, that these people were as foreign to him as Malays or Ethiopians.

A short girl with greasy shoulder-length hair and a broad savage face, not unattractive, had been squatting beside the truck holding up her baby, trying to make it look at its own mirrored image without much success. A beardless old man with a basket slung on one arm came up from the rear and stood staring, his brows arched high in surprise on his vacuously handsome, smiling face.

The old man had been standing there for some moments before a man turned to ask him, “Your son back from the market yet?”

The old man hemmed and hawed absentmindedly as he continued to gape at the truck.

“Sold anything?” the other man asked.

The old man looked away vaguely as if he had forgotten some important errand and at once started across the field. He treaded carefully on the narrow winding footpath, crossing his bare feet daintily with every step, his blue tatters flapping in the breeze. After he had gone some distance he glanced back over his shoulder at the truck. He was still smiling, with brows arched high in the same pleased and astonished expression. About twenty yards from there he looked back again with the same smile and raised brows.

The crowd appeared to take no notice of his departure. But presently the man who had spoken to him sniggered. “Scared him off.”

“Bet you they didn’t sell any of it,” a woman said. “Who buys pork this time of year? It’s neither the New Year nor a festival.”

“Must be all spoiled, in this heat. Over twenty miles to the market and back,” said the man.

“Spoiled! Must be cooked!” she said. “Crazy to kill pigs at this time of year.”

Another man sighed. “Ai! He might as well kill them while the killing is good.”

Liu instinctively drew behind a tree as if he did not want to risk being seen, so he could hear more of it. He must have pushed against the tree trunk, making it shake, because the cicadas stopped singing.

The people down below stopped talking. They just stood looking at the truck.

“Did these people come down from the District Headquarters or the
hsien
—the county?” a man finally said.

Nobody answered. But another man said, “They’ll never be able to get up anything around here. Now, over there in Seven Mile Fort where there’s a big landlord they sure had fun,” he said giggling. “Before they even struggled against the landlord, his red silk, padded blankets were already piled on the beds of the
kan-pu
.”

The crowd tittered. While nobody told him to stop babbling, some of the more prudent people started to move away.

“Think I’ll go and see if they’ve sold any of the pork,” a man said. “I don’t know but that I’ll get some and have crescent dumplings for dinner. Might as well.”

It looked as if soon everybody would be gone except perhaps the children. Liu came down the steps shouting from far off, “Hey, kinsmen! Anybody seen the drivers?”

They turned startled faces towards this shape coming out of the dark.

“I’m looking for the drivers. Anybody know where they’ve gone?”

They began to wander off nonchalantly as if they had not heard him and the children started to run. Again Liu had a baffling sense of racial and language barriers between them.

But then one of the men turned and pointed down the road. “They’re at the co-operative,” he said.

The girl with the baby said worriedly, as if he had uttered some indiscretion, “Let’s go home,
hai-tzu te tieh
, child’s dad.” She stood watchfully with the baby in her arms, waiting for the man to get safely in front of her. The frightened baby burrowed into the dark nest of hair piled on her shoulders.

Liu turned quickly away from them and strode down the road between darkening fields. Here and there a hut with walls of
kao-liang
stalks tied together stood by the wayside. But the co-operative store was built of bricks. He could see the little one-roomed building from afar. The lamp had already been lit inside. He wondered what the drivers were doing there. What could they buy in a poky little place like this? Besides, they would be going back with the truck to Peking tomorrow.

He walked up to the little folding door and pushed it open. Two red-eared men with their backs to him stood drinking at the counter that cut across the cozy, yellow-lit room. Inside the counter there was a chimney-stove used to bake sesame cakes and a kneading board and a board for chopping meat, each perched on its own tall stand. Bolts of cloth and bars of soap lined the wall. The clerk was dipping wine out of an earthen jar with half of a dry gourd. He poured it into the men’s blue-rimmed, pea-green bowls.

Liu went up and slid an arm about the shoulders of both the driver and his assistant. “Come along. Dinner’s ready,” he said. “You people certainly know your way about around here.”

“Have a drink with us, comrade,” said the flushed driver. “You need something to drive out the cold, after getting soaked to the skin the way you have.”

“No, no danger of catching cold in this weather,” Liu said laughing “You about finished? Dinner’s ready.”

They paid and drifted out after him.

Right after dinner they made ready to sleep, the men and girls in two separate schoolrooms. Floor space had been cleared for little heaps of
kao-liang
stalks arranged in orderly rows. Liu was grateful for his soft pallet though the
kao-liang
stalks weren’t too fresh and smelled a bit moldy and ratty. The darkness was loud with the longdrawn squeaks of night insects in the courtyard and the squawks of frogs after rain. Moonlight coming in through the carved latticed window fell on the stone-paved floor in little patterns like old coins of white jade, round with a square hole in the middle.

Liu was kept awake by his thoughts and the veteran mosquitoes of autumn. The stone floor under him was pressing harder and harder against his back and as the night wore on, the moist cold breath of stone seeped through the straw. Rats scuttled along the beams and chased each other over the floor like a brood of puppies, scattering the men’s shoes.

He heard the first faint cockcrow. The loud snoring around him seemed to have died down as if the sleeping men were now far away from him. Their rafts were well over to the other shore of the night while he still had endless darkness ahead of him. He was filled with impatience with himself. The
kao-liang
stalks under him rustled incessantly with his turning. But what woke up Chang Li was probably his clapping his hands to kill mosquitoes.

He saw Chang sit up and then walk out of the room, dragging his shoes, probably to relieve himself in the courtyard. After a while Chang returned to his pallet and sat yawning audibly. The shadowy white of his undershirt stood out against the moist darkness.

“You aren’t asleep, Comrade Liu?” he asked. “Not used to this kind of accommodations, eh?”

Liu was going to say that he couldn’t sleep because of the mosquitoes. But the hint of mockery in Chang’s voice put his back up. After a slight pause he said smiling, “No. I was thinking: conditions aren’t so simple in this village.”