CHAPTER II

 

Early in the morning when the cicadas just started singing, they sounded young, high-pitched and frail. Egg-yellow sunlight slanted down the yellow mud walls that lined the straight narrow lane. Heaps of human excre­ment dotted the ground near the walls. A group of uni­formed men trudged down the lane — Land Reform Workers with knapsacks on their backs, still half asleep,. with the local Party man, Go Forward Pao, leading the way. The dust under foot was dead silent, wet with dew.
They passed a small folding-door, its black-paint whitened with age, that opened out of the smooth dirt wall - Pao beat on the door with the flat of his palm,. shouting "Tang Yu-hai" twice. Without waiting for an answer he pushed the door oven and walked in. The others trailed in behind him into a square courtyard with. a trellis climbed over by cucumber plants.
"Ai! Tang! Tang Yu-hai!" Pao shouted.
A worn-looking woman emerged from the house and stood smiling embarrassedly on the low stoop of beaten-<> earth. She rolled down her sleeves and kept pulling at them and smoothing them.
"T' a tieh has gone down to the field, Comrade Pao," she said, referring to her husband loosely as "his dad".
Pao pointed out. Liu Ch'uen to her. "This is Comrade Liu. He'll stay with you as your guest- Remember that these comrades are here to help us. The least we can do is to look after them well."
"That's right. That's as it should be," the woman said smiling. "We know. The Farmers' Association sent word last night."
"Go in and look around, Comrade Liu- No need to stand on ceremony. You're among your own people." Pao hurried off with his other charges.
"Come in and sit down, comrade," the woman said a bit uncertainly, adding "Have you eaten?" which was the usual phrase of greeting, any time of day.
"Not yet."
"Yo!" She gave a small cry, expressing concern. 'Then I'll go and light the fire. Shall I steam some mau for you?"
"Don't bother to steam them. I'll just have them cold."
"Come in and sit down," she kept saying. As she led the way into the house she lifted her chin and yelled into space, "Erh Nu! Fetch some steamed bread — Better warm them, maybe?" she said to him.
"No, really. Don't trouble."
He followed her into a room almost entirely taken up by the k'ang, the bed of beaten earth with a stove built in underneath to keep it warm in winter. One or two empty baskets and earthern jars stood. amidst a bedraggled heap of straw in the farthest corner of the vast bare k'ang. But the family seemed to be faring better than Average. The uneven wall surface had been halfheartedly whitewashed. But Liu could see that the roof leaked;; broad tearstains of dismal yellow ran all the way down the big white patches. The woman made Liu sit on 'the k'ang while she stood leaning against the doorway.
"How many children have you got?" Liu tried to make her talk. He must learn to get close to the Masses.
"Ai," she sighed. "We had two boys but we've lost them early. There's only a girl now. The older boy lived. to eleven," she said, wiping her eyes.
He asked her other questions about their family.
"The Tangs are not from this village, not in the beginning," she said. Though she had been married for almost twenty years she still referred to her husband's family as "the Tangs", with a kind, of maidenly reserve. "When Erh Nu's father was in his teens he came here with his parents. They'd been refugees in a famine. They had a hard time getting on their feet. Now at least they have their own land to till." With his prompting she prat­tled on some more about the old days but he noticed that she did not say much about present conditions.
A girl about sixteen or seventeen came in, wearing a faded purple blouse and pants and a black apron- Hold­ing up the corners of her apron she walked up to the table and flung it up. A number of dark cup-loaves rolled clat. tering over the table- They sounded as hard as iron.
"Nothing nice to eat, comrade," the mother said,. pulling out a stool for Liu from under the table. "Really shameful. And the bread not even steamed-" Then she fussed, "Erh Nu sweep the k' ang-look how messy it is."
Erh Nu climbed on to the k'ang and swept it with a little broom made of kaoliang stalks bunched together.
She moved about on her knees, sweeping with long dry rustles. Her pigtail had fallen forward, dragging along the hard smooth earth. She would snatch at it and toss• it back over her shoulder. But in a moment it would slip over her shoulder again and sweep the k'ang ahead of the broom. Patiently she kept thrusting" it back.
The woman had been looking at the girl's slender back and her plump naked golden feet showing above low-cut blue cloth shoes. "Erh Nu," she suddenly said, 'Go and get some salted turnips for the comrade. I'll sweep the k'ang."
The mother kept glancing back over her shoulder while she was kneeling and sweeping and did not relax until the girl had come back, put down the bowl of salted -turnips and was finally gone.
Then she turned her worried eyes to Liu, watching him eat. "Can you get used to this kind of food?" she said smiling. "I heard you're all students that came down this time."
Liu smiled- "What if we're students? Does that mean we can't stand hardships?"
She also smiled. "I'll get you something hot for lunch," she said.
"Don't trouble about lunch, Aunt Tang. I'll be going out in a minute."
"I heard there's going to be a meeting today. Are we in it?" She squinted at him with knitted brows.
"Are you members of the Farmers' Association? Or the Women's Association?"
"We weren't in the Farmers' Association because they said we're Middling Farmers. But this spring there's been all this talk of chic p'ien, Correcting Deviation, and they tell us that Middling Farmers are also members." She turned and shouted toward the door, "Erh Nu! Go and find your dad. Tell him to go to the meeting. You hear me, Nu? And you go and listen at the women's meeting, see what they say. You hear?"
The bread tasted like it was full of sand. It crunched under Liu's teeth and was hard to swallow. He asked for some water. The woman went to boil water but it wasn't ready yet by the time Liu finished his breakfast.
"I'm going out now,. Aunt Tang!" he shouted on his way out. He passed Erh Nu hoeing the cucumber patch under the trellis.. She wiped at her flushed perspiring face with the back of her hand but did not look up.
He was going back to the school. They were all sup­posed to meet there. But he was not sure he knew the way. He turned back at the gate after a moment's hesita­tion. Seeing that the girl was so shy, he pulled a long face before he addressed her. "To get to the school, do I go straight towards the east?"
"Towards the east, but  " She gestured inanely
with her hoe, then she leaned on it, thinking. "Walk east­ward, and turn when you come to that date tree. Then you walk on until you see that hi (green) bean patch- You go through that door in the village wall and there you are." She came up to the gate and pointed as she talked. The wind had split her bangs, pushing them to the sides of her forehead, emphasizing the oval of her face- Her profile was classic, with straight long eyelashes shading the liquid black glow of her eyes.
"Erh Nu! Aren't you gone yet?" Her mother called out from within when she heard her voice. "I told you to go and call your dad to the meeting."
"What's the hurry? They haven't sounded the gong yet," Erh Nu answered. Still, she leaned her hoe against the wall, took off her apron and dusted her clothes.
Liu was going to ask for more details about the land­marks but he thought better of it. Anyhow, he was sure to come across other students or villagers on the way. So' he just thanked the girl and walked off. He wondered if Aunt Tang always got so jittery whenever a comrade ca near her daughter.
The village seemed, deserted in the quiet of the fore­noon. The cicadas' loud eternal singing ,had become a ringing silence in his ears. The exact sameness of the dirt walls made it difficult to remember the way the little lanes went. He was pausing at a corner studying a tree
leaning out of the wall when a voice spoke behind him. "That's not a date tree."
He turned round, startled. It was Erh Nu- "Lucky
that you're going in the same direction," he said smiling. "Otherwise I might really get lost."
Erh Nu smiled and gave a small pull to the skirt of her blouse, straightening it, and as if checking it, turned
away to lock at her pale shadow on the sunlit mud wall.
The ground was extremely uneven, sloping upwards on both sides, and in the middle of the lane where it was lowest there was only room for one. So Liu continued to walk On a step ahead of her. If he turned to speak to her
he wouldn't be able to see where he was going. And be­sides, there really wasn't anything to say. For a long
while the only sound was the scuffing of loose earth under their feet.
"Have you joined the hsueh tze pan, the learn-to-read class?" He finally thought of something appropriate to say.
"Yes."
"You must have learned quite a lot of characters, then." "Don't know any."
"No! You're being modest, aren't. you?"
"Next turn is to the north." Though she did not
answer his question, there was laughter in her voice. She must be keeping it back with difficulty.
Vegetation flashed green through a rectangular open­ing in the high pale mud wall around the village.
"That's a bit bean patch," she pointed out. "Oh. Those are lu beans," he said.
"I knew you wouldn't know," she said with a half suppressed giggle. He had to laugh too.
Coming out of the doorway they stood under a big tree on a little hump by the wayside. The first thing he saw was the temple — a glimmer of red wall among the green trees on the rise of ground across the road. All around stretched the dark crimson swaying sea of ripening' kao-liana and the bright green squares of wheat with chalky little ochre-yellow paths in between zigzagging up to the horizon.
"Is your land dry land or watery land?" Liu asked. They call rice paddies "watery land" in this part of the country.
"That's our land over there," she pointed.
"Ai-yah, then we've passed it long ago," he exclaimed. "And this here is the school." She pointed to the' temple-
If he still couldn't find the school at this point he must be an utter idiot, he thought- He thanked her and added, "I'm really sorry to make you go out of your way and come this far."
"We're used to walking," she said carelessly, her eyes already straying to the busy scene across the road- Many students were climbing up the temple steps, uniformed boys and girls waving to one another and shouting mes­sages. She seemed much interested in the goings-on.
Liu walked down the hump alone. He looked back from the road. She was still standing up there, pulling. a tree branch down to her with one hand and swinging: it idly. The sun was on her, turning her sun-bleached hair into the same shade of golden brown as her face and arms so that she was all one color like a figurine of polished wood. But the instant he turned to look, she swung round. and disappeared through the doorway. The tree branch had been released so abruptly that it bounced up and down for a long time, green and leafy against the blue sky.
Liu was still staring up at the swinging bough when Su Nan stepped out of the doorway. He looked again. It was Su Nan all right, shielding her face with a notebook, her cap pushed to the back of her head because of the heat. The way he stood there looking up, it was just as if he was waiting for her.
He nodded and smiled. "Very hard to find your way about in this place," he said. "I was lucky I met some­body from the village who took me here. You're marvel­lous, you got here all by yourself."
Su Nan started to laugh. "You think I know the way? If I didn't follow you people, I'd never have made it."
"Oh, you saw me walking in front of you?" He had wanted to ask, "Why didn't you call me?" but somehow he didn't say it.
"Who's that girl? Very lively."
"She's from the family I'm staying with. Their name is Tang. She's going down to the field to call her father to the meeting. Happens to be on her way."
Perhaps this explanation was superfluous. Anyhow Su Nan didn't seem much interested. He had hardly finished, when two other girls passed by and she ran up to greet them, catching them by the arms with more chummery than she usually displayed and, went up the steps chattering with them, leaving him behind. If it was some other girl he would have thought it was nothing unusual. But he felt baffled because it was Su Nan and wondered what he had said or done to offend her. If he thought she was displeased because of Erh Nu, he ought to be pleased. But not being so conceited, at least where she was con­cerned, he was in a bad mood all day.
After the Land Reform Workers' Corps had mustered at the temple they split up into two teams to attend the meeting of the Farmers' Association and the Women's Association separately. The meeting was just routine. Chang Li and some of the students gave talks on the principles of thee Land Reform, starting from the Origin of Private Property. It was like a lesson in social history from the Marxian standpoint and easy enough for the students. The speakers' subjects overlapped so that the meeting lasted almost six hours.
It was dark when they returned to the village. Liu was met at the door of the Tangs' house by a slight man with a foot-long pipe in one hand and red-bronzed arms and shoulders coming out of a sleeveless white blouse. He guessed it was Tang Yu-hai, his host-
Tang nodded and smiled. "Come and sit in this room here, sir." He led Liu to the same room that had been shown him in the morning. Apparently he didn't even know enough to say "comrade'. His wife had been more glib in using the word. The men were usually slower and More reserved, Liu thought.
Erh Nu came in after them, bringing the oil lamp. But the table tilted to one side and wouldn't hold the lamp. The dirty floor was uneven. She left the lamp on the k'ang and went out and got a brick which she tucked under a table leg. Still kneeling, she looked up to see if the table was now level, bent down to adjust the brick, peered up again and then gave the table a little push to see if it wobbled. The lamplight was feeble and flickering, but Liu suspected that she had reddened her lips and cheeks and she had a small pink flower in her hair which he did not remember seeing in the morning.
Tang sat on the k'ang sucking his pipe. His long face was deeply seamed.
"Today's meeting was too long, wasn't it?" Liu said conversationally. "A little too long?"
Tang laughed politely. "Not so long. No so long."
Again he fell silent.
Liu thought he looked worried, so he explained to him all over again the general picture of the Land Reform. In answer to Liu's questions he said he had eleven acres of land, reaped less than ten tan of grain every year, which just left the family enough to eat after paying the taxes in kind. A Middling Farmer like him had absolute­ly nothing to worry about, Liu told him. His property was under government protection. The Land Reform was based On the principle of Level both Ends without Touch-. ing the Middle.
But Tang still brooded. "There's this talk of pooling all the land and redividing," he finally said. "Is there anything to it?"
"No, there's no such thing. Where did you hear such rumor? Nobody's going to touch the land of Middling Farmers."
"Then that's all right. That's fine." Tang sighed with relief. "Ever since I heard that talk of redividing, it's been troubling me. There's nothing special about my land, but I'm used to handling it, I know its nature. Take that piece near the creek. I bought it the year before last from Yang Lao-erh, Yang Number Two. Nice land, but the Yang brothers were a bunch of no-good's; they'd let it go to waste. The earth was hard like anything. Ever since I got it I've turned it twice a year and I'm always carrying baskets of ripe earth to it on a pole, padding it all over with ripe earth. Now it's not bad at all — best land I've got. I'd sure feel had if I had to exchange it."
All his land had been bought piecemeal, acre by acre, According to him every acre had a past, either unfortunate or with lots of ups and downs, and it always had its own special quirks, fears, likings and susceptibilities. Tang was unexpectedly long-winded about it, like all silent men once they had got started on a favorite subject. Liu did not mind listening. He was pleased at having made him open up.
Erh Nu had been out of the room and back again, leaning against the doorway listening. Tang's wife called -them to dinner- She had made flat barley cakes baked in a dry pan. When everybody had sat down around the table she told Erh Nu to put a pot of water on the stove. The fire was still going strong-
Erh Nu removed the wooden lid from the huge brown -water jar that stood next to the stove. She took the half gourd off the wall to dip for water, but first she took a hurried look at her own reflection in the shadowy brown depth- She pushed her flower back a little and looked .again but did not seem to be reassured. Then she took it off and tucked it into her hair, stem upwards. The pink flower fell softly in absolute silence onto the glassy brown 'surface of the water and floated. motionlessly over one eye on her mirrored face. She too was motionless as she lean­ed over looking in, one hand resting on the green glazed rim of the jar.
"Why are you taking all this time to get a bit of -water? Takes as long as embroidering," her mother grum­bled, calling out to her from the table. "What are you looking at?"
"I was wondering what's the matter with today's -water. Such a lot of mud- at the' bottom," Erh Nu said.
She fished the flower out, shook it dry and put it back in her hair. Hastily filling the pot with water, she set it -on the stove and joined the others at the table. Liu avoided looking in her direction because he did not want to embar­rass her. But he had seen her looking anxiously at herself in the water- His vague uneasiness was perhaps tinged with a sense of pleasure just as vague and remote.