Red Azalea (8 page)

My tears welled up, because I saw Yan. She was pacing in the sun. She was the sun. My cold heart warmed.

I stood up and walked toward her.

She turned around, hearing me approach.

I stopped in front of her. I could not say anything.

She nodded at me, then bent down to finish the last few patches. She washed her hands in the irrigation channel. She saw the leeches on my legs and told me to pat them off. She said that Orchid came to her last night and told her everything. She said she was pleased that I stayed all night in the fields. She said I did what I was supposed to do. She unknotted her braids, bent and washed them in the channel. She squeezed the water from her hair and flung her head. She combed her hair with her fingers and braided it. She said when she had found me I looked like a big turtle. She thought I had fainted or something. She paused and said that I made her feel guilty, because I could have caught a disease like arthritis. It would be the Party’s loss if I did.

I rubbed my eyes, trying to look fresh.

She looked me in the eye, a thread of a smile on her face. She said she guessed that I was strong-willed. She said she liked strong-willed people. She looked at the sun for a while. She said, I want you to be the leader of platoon number four. She would arrange to move me to her room so that I could discuss problems with the company heads. She then walked quickly back toward the barracks.

I stood in the sunshine, feeling, feeling the rising of a hope.

I
moved in with Yan and six other platoon heads. Yan and I shared a bunk bed. I occupied the top. The decoration
in Yan’s net was a display of Mao buttons, pinned on red-colored cloth, about a thousand different kinds of them, from different historical stages. I was impressed. Yan put them up during the day and took them down at night. The room was the same size as the room I had lived in before. It served as a bedroom, conference room and makeshift dining room. It was also a battlefront. Although Yan was officially in charge and Lu was her deputy, Lu wanted much more. She wanted Yan’s position. She was obsessed. She called meetings without agendas. We had to obey her. We had to sit through her meetings in our drowsiness. She liked to see people obey her. To feel powerful was a drug she needed. Only in meetings could she feel that she was as in control of other people’s lives as she was with her own. She made warnings and threats at the meetings. She enjoyed our fear. She aimed at all our possible mistakes. She waited, had been waiting, for a precise moment, to catch a mistake and beat it into submission. She had been trying to catch Yan. Her incorrectness. I could tell that she would have pushed Yan off a cliff if she had a chance.

Lu’s full name was Ice Lu. She was the daughter of a revolutionary martyr. Her father was killed by the Nationalists in Taiwan. He was murdered when carrying out a secret assignment. Her mother suffered this loss to her death. She died three days after giving birth. It was a terrible winter. Strong wind, like scissors, cut through the skin. She named her baby Ice. Ice was raised under the Party’s special care. She grew up in an orphanage funded by the Party leaders. Like Yan, she was also a founder of the Red Guards. She had gone to visit Mao’s hometown in
Hunan, where she had eaten leaves from the same tree Mao had eaten when besieged and pinned down in the valley by the Nationalists some thirty years ago.

Lu showed me a skull she had discovered in the backyard of a house in Hunan. She said it was a Red Army martyr’s skull. She pointed to a hole on the forehead of the skull and told me that it was a bullet hole. She fondled the skull with her fingers, going in and out of the eyeholes, touching its jaws. The strange expression on her face caught my breath. She told me that an old village lady buried the martyr secretly. Twenty years later the skull had risen above the soil. The old lady dug it out and gave it to Lu when she learned that her father had been a martyr too. Lu often thought it could have been her own father’s skull.

I stared at the skull, trying to comprehend its attractiveness to Lu. Maybe the threatening spirit? Maybe the coldness that only death could carry? Lu had a look that matched her name. Her look was chilly. Her enthusiasm did not feel warm. She spoke slowly, pronouncing each syllable clearly. She had a long face, the shape of a peanut. Her expression was determined and judgmental. Her features were located evenly on her face. Slanting eyes, icy, like a painted ancient beauty. But her beauty was ruined by her forever-correctness. Her half-moon-shaped eyes were no longer warm and sweet to the soldiers. Our respect for her was that of mice for a cat.

Lu liked action. She did not know hesitation. She attacked and invaded. It was her style to catch and chop. Stand by, aim and shoot, as she always like to say. But that did not impress me. On the contrary, it distanced me. She
had a fixed mind. A mind full of dead thoughts. She observed me. In coldness. In suspicion. It started the moment I moved in. Her smile carried warnings. She gave me a copy of her Mao study notes. Her handwriting was extremely square. I wished my calligraphy was like hers, but her writing bored me. Her mind was a propaganda machine. It had no engine of its own. I told her so when she asked me for an opinion. I did not say her mind was a propaganda machine, but I suggested she oil the engine of her mind. She said she liked my frankness. She said people had been telling her lies. She was lied to by a bunch of hypocrites. She hated hypocrites. She said the country was filled with hypocrites. The Party in many respects was run by hypocrites. She said it was her duty to fight against hypocrisy. She would spend the rest of her life correcting the incorrect. She asked me to join the battle. I did not fully understand what she meant, but I did not say so. I said, Yes, of course. Hypocrites were bad in any case. She asked, Do you smell hypocrites in our room?

Our roommates came back after dining. They were singing and joking. They joked about how they punished those lazybones, the ones who refused to be content with their lives as peasants. The roommates quieted down when they heard Lu’s speaking about hypocrites. One after another, like fish, they shuttled into their own nets. There were sounds of groping. It reminded me of vampires in graves chewing human bodies.

Lu continued speaking. It was like a theatrical performance. As a daughter of a revolution martyr, I’ll never forget
how my forefathers shed their blood and laid down their lives for the victory of the revolution, said Lu. I’ll never fail to live up to their expectations. I hope that all of you, my comrades-in-arms, will supervise my behavior. I welcome any criticism you have for me in the future. The Party is my mother and you’re all my family.

She tried to be a living opera heroine, but I would never see her that way.

I had a hard time imagining how Lu could sleep nose-to-nose with that skull every night. I began to have nightmares after I figured out that the skull was right next to my bed, since my bed and Lu’s were connected to each other. I dared not complain. My instinct told me not to, because I was sure Lu would take my complaint as an insult. How could I afford to be quoted as someone who was afraid of a martyr’s skull?

Lu watched everyone and recorded her observations in her red-plastic notebook. She made monthly reports to headquarters. I have learned my political skills from my family, she often said. Once she proudly told us about her family: Her adopted parents were Party secretaries in the military; her adopted sister and two brothers were Party secretaries at universities and factories. All her relatives had the honor of staying in private hospitals when they were sick. Their rooms were next to the prime minister’s.

Lu made political dunce caps. She would always single out one person to wear it at meetings. She always had her way. Phrases from
Red Flag
magazine and the
People’s Daily
dropped out of her mouth like a waterfall. She reminded
me of how it would be if sheep were living with a wolf. She told me one day that a mirror was a symbol of self-love—a bourgeois extra. I dared not argue back. I said, Of course, and hid my little mirror inside my pillow cover. I knew Lu could make me a reactionary if she wanted. She had already made a number of people reactionaries. She sent them to work at jobs like blasting a mountain to make rice paddies, or digging up earth to make an underground channel. She arranged for their lives to be forfeited. Those who survived resembled Little Green. No one escaped from paying the price if they talked back to Lu. I feared Lu so much.

Strange enough, on the other hand, Lu tried hard to impress the soldiers by washing our clothes and sharpening our sickles and hoes. She visited each room every night, tucking in our blankets, making sure that no one left an arm or leg out to catch cold. She would send her entire salary anonymously to a comrade’s sick parents. She did that often. She was greatly praised. Lu liked to say, I don’t mind being the cloth used to wipe the greasiest corner of the kitchen for the Communist Party. She was good at saying things like that. We said we appreciated her caring. We had to. We put words of praise down on the monthly report to be sent to headquarters. That was what Lu wanted from us. The soldiers knew this by heart.

She pointed out Yan’s incorrectness whenever possible. She said Yan was too soft on brain reformation, too loose on the company’s budget, too impatient in conducting the company’s Mao study seminar. Yan fought back angrily, but she was a poor mouth fighter. She was not Lu’s rival. She spoke incoherently. In desperation, she
would curse. Swear word after swear word, all kinds—Spoiled rice shoot, pig ass, mating worm, etc. Lu enjoyed seeing Yan in awkward predicaments. She liked to push her into a verbal corner and beat her hard. She attacked her ruthlessly. She showed the company that Yan was uncivilized, only capable of swearing. She then would say, Why don’t we report the case upstairs and let them decide who’s right and who’s wrong? Always, Yan would give up, withdraw, because she did not want to ruin her image as a secretary of a “well-united Party branch,” as Lu well knew.

Lu knew that I was a fan of operas. She used to ask me to sing a piece or two during field breaks. She said it soothed her addiction. I sang loudly. I called up my platoon to sing with me. Lu enjoyed it. We both did. But things changed after the Little Green incident. I could no longer sing anything. When Lu asked me to sing again, I could not put myself in the mood. I tried and my mind was full of Little Green’s voice singing “My Motherland.” My eyes would go to Little Green, who like a silent spirit floated in and out of the fields and rooms. The soldiers took turns taking care of her. We tried to hide the truth from her family. We imitated her handwriting and wrote to her grandmother. Our trick did not last. Her grandmother recognized the fake handwriting. She wrote to the Party committee of the company demanding to be told the truth. She said if she had not been restricted (she was put in a detention house where she was considered an enemy) she would have come to check Little Green out herself immediately. Yan took the time to write her back. I proofread the letter to polish Yan’s grammar and tone. It was a hard letter to write. Yan tried to explain what had happened.
I could see Yan struggle through the writing. She did not really explain. She could not. She could not say we were the ones who had murdered her granddaughter. Yan said Little Green was very ill. She was suffering a mental distraction. But she was in good hands now. She had been taken care of. The farm had been looking for new medicine and treatment for her. It was a weak letter. It expressed nothing but guilt. It asked the grandmother to keep the big picture in mind, to see that it was just one incident. Hundreds and thousands of youths were assigned to the countryside by the Party. “Certain sacrifice is required when working with stamina for the prosperity of the country”—Yan ended the letter by quoting Mao.

Yan looked exhausted. Blue ink was on her fingers and lips. I made a clean copy of her letter and gave it back to her. She went to the farm’s headquarters to get a stamp and mail it. That night she said to me, When I die, I will be sliced into pieces by the demons in hell. She said she could see it clearly now.

Lu told me that I was a good sprout. Worthy enough to be selected as one of her “pillars of the state.” Her slogan-talk got on my nerves. I disliked it. Superficiality pervaded her speech. She tried to dominate everything. Many times she demonstrated her political and ideological expertise in meetings by giving long dissertations on the history of the Party. She wanted to be admired so much. She did it to remind Yan that Yan had none of the skills required of a leader. She succeeded in embarrassing her. I saw Yan’s awkwardness. She sat in the corner, rubbing her hands.
Frustrated. I felt sorry for Yan. It made me like her more. I liked her awkwardness. I adored her clumsiness.

Neither the headquarters heads nor the soldiers were responding to Lu’s exhibited leader’s skills. Seasons passed and Lu was still where she had always been. Although Lu did not like to deal with frustration, she was a good fighter. She picked more fights with Yan, pointed out her imperfections in front of the ranks. Yan became even more furious. She wanted to eat Lu up. It took me a half month to figure out the words Yan had muttered when insulted by Lu. She called Lu a mother of fart. When Lu wished to extend a meeting in order to sharpen the soldiers’ minds, Yan said, Let’s sharpen the hoes first. Lu said, You’re going to get crushed in a blind alley if you only pay attention to pushing your cart forward without watching which track you’re on. Yan said dryly, Let’s get crushed. Lu said, As you make your bed, so you must lie on it. Yan said, Damn. I should do something to sharpen my teeth.

I often felt that Lu had more than two eyes when she watched or spoke with me. Lu once said that she would like to cultivate me to join her special advanced activist study team. I did not say that I was not interested, but I must have betrayed disinterest. She said she was greatly disappointed. I said I would do my best to stay close to her team. I promised to borrow her Mao study notes. She said she knew my reason for not joining her. She said it was bad to live under someone’s shadow. She said she would hate to leave a stone in her shoes. She said if one did not come to her political senses, one would lose her political future.