CHAPTER X

"Comrade Liu! You're wanted in the meeting-room!"
Liu turned from his desk and saw Comrade Ho, the
Culinary Officer, standing at the door of the front office holding a baby in his arms, the two-year old boy of Tsui Piing, Liu's superior. Ho had- been an army cook and had been with Tsui for years. Because his Revolutionary History was long, although he still did a cook's work after the Victory on All Fronts, he now enjoyed the living allowance of a battalion commander, eating well and draw ing more pocket money.
"Warm day, isn't it?" Chang Li looked up from the papers he was working on. He always made a point of being friendly with Ho.
"Sticky as hell. Nothing like this up north," he grunted. Summer uniforms had not yet been issued. Ho had unbuttoned his lumpy padded uniform of soiled light yellow cloth all the way down the front, showing his bare chest. Jolting the baby up and down, he walked up to the tall window. They were high up in one of the few

skyscrapers in Shanghai- The city below was a sea of gray and red bricks, mostly. gray, in a tumble-down,. widespread heap. Chimneys and boxy little Western-style buildings pushed up darkly here and there,
"Living so high up," Ho muttered. "Bad for a person. No wonder my feet get all swollen. They're hanging in mid-air all the time."
"Must be awful for you to be cooped up here all day," Chang said sympathetically. "But when you go to the market you can stretch your legs a bit, huh?"
He snorted. "That's only a few steps away. Not enough to get the smell of earth back on your shoes."
Liu put away the blurry snapshots he had been re¬touching with a Chinese brush. Taking a writing pad he hurried off to the meeting-room at the other end of the corridor. He had heard that some Democratic Per¬sonages were coming down for a meeting this afternoon. He would be acting as recorder-
Tsui P'ing's wife was already there to play hostess.. She was talking to the only woman among the Democratic Personages, and probably the only woman lawyer in Shanghai- Tsui's wife headed the secretarial department and was known by her maiden name Chu Ya-mei. It was no secret around the office that Ya-mei hadt been a peasant girl in the old Communist area in Shantung while Tsui had been a college student when he joined the Revolution. She was a blooming young woman, a little thickset but otherwise attractive, with bobbed hair that swept forward. from behind her ears making a thin black crescent on each of her wide pink cheeks.
The guests were -drinking tea. Nobody was looking when a small door opened on the far side of the sofa and Tsui and two of his aides trooped into the room. All the guests stood up in some confusion. After a round of hand shaking the three newcomers sat down by themselves on the sofa, rather stiffly and evenly -spaced, with Tsui in the center. Tsui was young looking in his immaculate black woolen uniform. According to the unwritten rules his position did not as yet warrant his wearing foreign suits, although he was already expected to wrap himself in a certain amount of mystery and drama, like making surprise entrance's.
After chatting for a while, everybody went over to the long table and the meeting got down to business. Liu took the humblest corner seat at the far end of the table.
The guests did all the speaking. It was understood -that Tsui and his wife were only sitting in on the meet¬ing, and were not to speak unless the situation called for a little steering. Tsui took a little brocade box out of his pocket and got out a seal of chicken-blood stone, which looked something like soapstone but had deep crimson blotches. He looked it over and then fumbled for a tooth¬pick to clean the engraved lines, which were clotted with the dry vermilion ink- He was not being inattentive. Attending meetings was something like breathing; Tsui had learned to take it easy. His face was pale and oblong, with three-cornered long black eyebrows. He was irrit¬able, even querulous at times, but Liu thought, looking at him from across the table, that there were worse bosses.
Seals were the newest craze among the kan-pu. When Liu had first come to Shanghai last winter, 'Tsui had used wooden chops on documents subjected to his approval. Now he had a collection of seals of good stone or ivory to choose from. The fad was started by a Shanghai business¬man who hit on the idea of giving his kan-pu friends something other than Parker pens and wrist-watches —something really distinguished and personal. No matter how jittery about taking bribes a person might be, he need have no qualms in accepting a seal with his own name beautifully carved on it.

The speakers droned on. Once when Liu -looked up from his notes he saw that Tsui had put away his seal and was blowing his nose with what appeared to be a striped handkerchief. He must have stared, because Tsui hurried¬ly thrust it back into his pocket, and Liu realized that it had been a sock. Lately, as the weather warmed up, Tsui was in the habit of removing his shoes and stockings as, soon as he sat down anywhere, and scratching between his toes. Long ago he had contracted athlete's foot from long marches and life in the country. Most of the old
kan-75u suffered from the same thing, and when they sat
down they invariably drew up one of their legs, to scratch their toes.
Tsui's drawn-up knee showed above the edge of the table- His face, leaning against the black-trousered knee, looked absorbed. But it seemed to Liu that somewhere about him there was a mocking swagger that showed he was not totally unconscious of offending petit-bourgeois. fastidiousness. Liu felt he ought be ashamed of himself.. After all, athlete's foot was as much an occupational disease of the Revolutionist as tuberculosis was-
Tsui's hand appeared above the table, reaching for the glass of tea in front of him. Liu was also drinking. his tea. At the sight of Tsui's pale fingers curled around the glass, somehow the tinny smell of the weak tepid tea revolted him. He put down his glass hastily and never touched it again.
At the end of the meeting Tsui and his wife and his aides stayed behind to talk to the Democratic Personages while Liu left the room with his notes-
i
There was nobody n the front office. His mind still on the meeting, he returned to his desk. But this was not his desk. His desk was a big dark one designed for two people to sit face to face across it. Now a small. orange-tan one stood in its place. A wide crack ran all the way across the top and there were grains of sesame in the dusty split.
The desk-lamp, paste jar and ink-stand and some of his things and Chang's, had been moved to the window¬sill. He pulled open all the desk drawers a little wildly. Where were the photographs he had been working on? Those were probably the only copies in the whole country. He did not like the idea of having to tell comrade Ko Shan at the Liberation Daily News that he had lost them.
He dashed out into the hall. He knew where to find Chang- He would be in Comrade Ho's cubicle down the hall, sitting on the Culinary Officer's bunk smoking and chatting away. Ho liked to talk about the old days and gossip about his superiors. And Chang, probably believ¬ing that knowledge is power, was always interested in Tsui's doings, his wife, his favorite dishes and general likes and dislikes.
"Found a bit of ink from his new carved seal on his shirt. Thought it Was lip-rouge," Ho was saying when Liu came to his door. "Haugh! Such a big row! Talked about divorce. Such a row! The Organization had to send a Big Old Sister to talk her out of it—"
He stopped when he saw Liu. He had no use for a non-Party member. He did not ask Liu to come in -- not that there was enough room for three persons. He had a cheerful little place. An office boy had slept here when it had been the office of a foreign firm. The lower half of the peeling whitewashed wall had been pasted over with foreign Sunday comic sheets — Donald Duck, Bring¬ing Up Father and Terry and the Pirates. He had put his padded military coat on a hanger, hooked on a nail above his bunk. Then he had hung his spare cap on the nail- The coat and cap blocked off part of the gaily color¬ed horizontal strips of comics. The clothes looked like a giant lumbering across fairyland, his head dipping forward

between his shoulders.
"Comrade Chang, what's happened to our desk?" Liu asked.
"What do you mean — something happen to our desk?" Chang asked fuzzily.
It seemed to take a lot of explanation for Chang to understand what had happened. Liu could tell from his vagueness that Chang sensed trouble and was trying to keep out of it.
"No, I have no idea," he said. "That's funny- Better ask Comrade Tsui or Comrade Chu — I suppose they want it somewhere else. Did you see them anywhere?"
Of course he knew very well they had been at the meeting. Otherwise he wouldn't be playing truant. Chang had been sort of letting himself go lately. Liu knew that it was because their job here was as much a disappoint¬ment to Chang as it was to him. In the beginning they couldn't help but let it go to their heads a little, to be singled out in the country and sent down to Shanghai to work at Resist-America Aid-Korea, when there was al¬ready a vast organization there doing just that -- but evidently not to Peking's satisfaction- True, they had not been charged with any secret mission. But the summons had spoken for itself. It had looked as if they both had bright careers in front of them.
When they first came, the Shanghai office must have wondered whether they were • kan-pu, low in rank but in direct contact with High Places and had been planted here as spies. Liu felt ashamed recalling he had been surrepti¬tiously pleased at their attitude, half suspecting they were right — after all, they ought to know more about such things than he did. But the staff had obviously changed their minds and now did not hesitate to show the two of them exactly where they stood. Liu had read that "The ranks of our propaganda workers are one and a half mil¬ lion strong-" A very depressing statement. How on earth could he ever hope to win distinction and get ahead?
Liu went to look for the coolies. Some of them must have helped to move the desk. He hoped that nobody had cleaned out the drawers yet.
He passed the office of Comrade Ma, whose husband was in charge of 'personnel- The door was open and he thought he saw his desk inside.
"Excuse me, Comrade Ma," he looked in and said to the woman, who was walking up and down nursing a baby through a pocket that could be conveniently opened by. unbuttoning a button. She was one of those women kan pu who look like little Eskimos. Even a light uniform looked thickly padded on her. "Is this the desk we had in the front office?" Liu asked-
"Yes, I had it moved to, this room," she snapped at him, tossing back a strand of short bobbed hair from her oily dish face.
"Excuse me, I've left some important documents in the drawer."
She asked loudly, as Liu hurried toward the desk, "If they're so important why didn't you lock them up? Who's going to be responsible if they're lost?"
"Well, I always lock up before I leave, but just now I was only out of the room for a while, "Liu explained, "I didn't know the desk would —"
"You'd better be more careful next time," she said severely. "Working in an Organization, the most important thing is pao mi, Security Measure's-"
She continued to pace around as if unruffled, feeding her baby. But when he left the room with his photos he could sense her stopping by the desk for a moment, watch¬ing him. She probably thought he would have tried to get the desk back if she hadn't scared him off.

Comrade Ho was hovering at the door of the front office. Chu Ya-mei was in the room talking loudly when Liu came. in. "All this talk of regularizing, regularizing. And here they're getting more guerilla-style everyday! It's grab and run all the time. And in broad daylight! —Look at this!"
She looked at the little desk. She was gnawing the tips of her bobbed hair as a man might chew the ends of his moustache. "How can we put this here with people, visiting all the time! And there might be international friends dropping in any moment!" She had been. talking a lot about international friends lately, ever since it had been known that her husband was to help entertain the World Youth Delegates who were on their way from Peking.
Chang was over at the window sorting out their be¬longings on the windowsill.
"Seems we only have dead people here — all dead!" Ya-mei went on to say. "What have you been doing, old Ho? What are you here for, anyway? • One day the roof will be lifted from above your head and you won't even notice. All you ever do is to sit there and la, la: la, la.' She always said "pull" instead of "chat", meaning pulling the thread of conversation to lengthen it.
She was very good at "pointing at the mulberry tree while scolding the huai tree," a folk-art practiced mainly among women, especially country women. The huai tree was Chang in this case. Liu was certainly glad. he had been over in the meeting room when this had happened, or he would have been blamed for it too.
Just then a Communications Officer, or messenger boy, came in and said to her, "All sold out, Comrade Chu. Haugh! Never saw such a crowd! Such a long queue, it had to make three turns on the curb."
"I knew it — I knew there was going to be a big crush." Ya-mei was furious- "That's why I sent Old Ho there early yesterday afternoon. And the fool couldn't find the place."
"I waited for three' hours," the Communications Officer said. "I was moving up to the door when the man came out and said there were no more- All sold out."
"Been here over a year now and can't even find his way about," Ya-mei turned and said to Liu. "I heard yesterday the government has put a batch of pickled pigs' feet out on sale, so I sent him to get some- Comrade Tsui has always liked pickled things. — Couldn't find the China Products Company! You don't know how many times I've told him: "Old Ho, the city is the basic point of study now. At least get to know the roads- Learn to read the signs."
Lig wished she wouldn't address these remarks to him. Comrade Ho was standing there smiling awkwardly, pulling the brim of his cap down hard, as if to make it sit more firmly on his head. He was probably used to Ya¬mei's nagging but Liu knew he would resent strongly anything Liu might say and; would also resent it if he should smile and say nothing-
"I didn't know the people around here are so fond of pigs' feet," Liu said carefully-
"Well, they know these' are good pigs, that's why.," Ya-mei said. "Pigs killed and sent north across the border. Of course people up there don't eat the feet like we do.. That's why there are all those feet left- The very best pigs. Thin-skinned, really .paper-thin, I hear."
"I wonder how everybody got to know about it, that they're the feet of export pigs," Liu said.
"There's no keeping things from these people when it
has to do with something tasty. They always smell it out." Comrade Ho had turned to go, thinking Ya-mei had
finished with him.

"You better start in right now to learn to read and write, Old Ho," she said. "Instead of sitting around all day and just la, la; la, la, like an old woman-"
"Oh, in the army everybody was supposed to learn Culture," Ho said lightly, to show it was nothing new to him- "But I never got 'round to it. No joke, marching sixty, seventy miles a day carrying three big pots on your back. The Comrade Instructor always, said to me, "Now you're the Culinary Officer. Take care of those pots as you would your own eyes —"
"That's enough! Don't try this on me," Ya-mei. said. 'All this self-glorification! • You've got a bad case of Deserving Official-ism, Old Ho- No longer willing to learn. And when you've made a mistake you won't even accept criticism."
He smiled, holding on to the brim of his cap. He had pulled the can far down in front in order to leave plenty of exposed space at the back of his head for him to scratch-
For a while the bristly noise of scratching was his only way of answering.
"You teach him to read and write, Comrade Liu," Ya¬mei said- "Go at him whenever you have a moment to spare. Your Standard of Culture is high. You ought to help him-"
"Liu wished she would stop- The smile had left Comrade Ho's face. Looking blank and unconcerned, he had half turned toward the door, shoving his opened jacket back with both hands to get a little breeze-
"He's getting on in years, so his memory is no good. You'll have to be patient with him. But you help him to make Progress, and I'll help you to make Progress — all right?" She gave Liu a big, warm Party smile.
"Certainly," Liu answered rather formally. "When-ever there's a chance I'll avail myself of your instructions:.
"How are you getting on?" she asked. "How do you
find the work? Not homesick, are you?" She always said the same things but she had a heartwarming way of saying them- In a moment she would be saying that they were all one big family- As a matter of fact it was true, Liu thought as he watched Comrade Ho go out the door. They were like a typical big family where it was difficult to avoid stepping on people's toes, whichever way you turned; where you often get caught between two persons and get yourself bruised for nothing.
"We really ought to have a nice long talk some time,. so I can get to understand, your State of Thought," Ya-mei said. "Only Comrade Tsui and I have been so rushed lately- But don't hesitate to come to us any time if you have any problems or anything. Don't stand on ceremony!". she said reproachfully, smiling with a light frown, giving him several impatient little slaps on the shoulder. "You're. in the ke - ming to Chia t'ing, Big Family of the Revolution!".
She was pointedly fussing over him and ignoring Chang- It was a bad day for Chang. Again Liu thought how lucky he was to have been in the meeting room during the exchange of the desks.
Going into the adjoining office she turned round at the door- "Oh, have you got that speech ready? I don't want anything long. Just a little talk."
"I thought you wouldn't want it till Thursday," Liu answered.
"I'd like to go over it first, just to see that the Standpoint is correct-"
"All right, It'll be ready in a minute. I've got most of it down."
While he was putting finishing touches to the speech
Ya-mei was to give to the Women's Association of
Zeikawei, Chang whispered jokingly, "Can't do without,
you for a minute. Be careful. The boss might get jealous."
"My colleagues might — before my boss does," Liu

Thought- He was going to say something deprecatory about his being just an errand boy, but any such remark was almost certain to get repeated to Ya-mei. He just smiled bleakly in answer and let Chang think that he was well-pleased with himself.