Chapter 11

A RESOLUTION HAD BEEN PASSED BY THE Farmers' Association that during the New Year the villagers would visit the Soldiers' Families in the neighborhood to wish them a happy New Year and send them gifts. Each household would contribute half a pig and forty catties of New Year cakes. All contributors were supposed to drape the presents with red and green streamers and deliver them at the proper doors with the Rice-Sprout Song Corps dancing and making music. A slip of red paper with the words 'Glorious Family" writ-ten on it would be pasted over the doors of lucky families with sons in service, amid the explosion of firecrackers.
Households who owned no pig would pay money instead and everybody was asked to pay a certain sum for the firecrackers. All contributions were to be delivered to the Village Public Office by the twenty-fifth of the twelfth moon. But the day passed without anybody mak-ing a move. The farmers had unanimously raised their hands in favor of the proposition without quite knowing how they were to fulfill it. So each man waited to see what his neighbors were going to do about it.
The Chairman of the Farmers' Association and his wife, who was the Chairman of the Women's Association, called meetings and talked to each family separately without getting any results. Comrade Wong had to visit every house in turn to put pressure on the peasants. At Gold Root's house he said, 'Gold Root T'an, you are a Labor Model and a Positive Element in the village. You ought to set an example for others. We must carry out this task. It is really a political task, with political signifi-cance. Doesn't that mean anything to you? The families of soldiers in the People's Liberation Army ought to be taken care of. Without the People's Liberation Army how would you have got your land? In the old days the soldiers did nothing except bring trouble to the people. Now it is different. Now the army is the people's own army. And the people and the soldiers are supposed to be one family."
Gold Root still argued that he could not produce the money or the rice for New Year cakes. "Why, we have eaten rice gruel for the last two months," he said.
Alarmed by his curtness, Moon Scent hurriedly cut in with a gently sad but lengthy account of all their hard-ships and privations.
"Every family has its troubles," Wong said, smiling. "But look at the other villages. They are no better off than we are. And yet they buy New Year presents for Soldiers' Families just the same. Are we any less patriotic than the others?" He stepped one foot on the bench, composing himself for a long, cozy chat.
When Gold Root insisted for a third time that he had neither rice nor money, he said with a grin, "I know you are not having an easy time. But at least it is not so bad with you people as with some of the others. Your wife had been working in the city. Both of you produce, and you have very few people in your family. You have al-ways eaten better than the others, for one thing."
Gold Root flushed darkly. Of course Comrade Wong was referring to that time when he caught them eating rice gruel thicker than what people usually had, on Moon Scent's first day home. Gold Root knew it was all his own fault, which enraged him all the more, and he lost control of himself. "Comrade Wong," he shouted, "you ask around here! People will tell you what we eat every day-who can hide anything from anybody else? As it is, our rice is running out. Here the New Year is upon us and my heart feels as if it is being fried in oil."
Moon Scent went frantic in her efforts to stop him. But Comrade Wong kept a smile fixed on his face and continued to reason with him. This was the kind of thing Wong could do in his sleep. He carried on for hours and could have gone on forever, since they were arguing on parallel lines. Gold Root insisted on his destitution. And Wong, not believing him, harangued him on his duty to the Soldiers' Families.
"Do not make your troubles look bigger than they are. Look farther ahead, Comrade," he counseled.
"But how can we, when we won't have anything to eat next spring? Are we going to have 'big pot rice'?"
Comrade Wong was rattled for the first time at the mention of "big pot rice." Before Liberation, Nationalist agents had tried to frighten the peasants by telling them the Communists were going to force them to pool their food stocks and eat from a single kitchen. The peasants had always dreaded the idea of a communal "big pot" for all. By now, though, they had come to the state where they were fervently wishing for it, thinking of it as a form of government relief.
"You people would fare much better if you stop dream-ing about 'big pot rice' and try to get more out of your own land," snapped Comrade Wong. With his smile gone it looked as if a regular feature were missing from his face. It was frightening.
"Do not listen to him, Comrade Wong," babbled Moon Scent. "He is grouchy today because yesterday I kept him from pawning our wadded blanket and going on a spree."
They both ignored her. "After the spring famine will come the summer famine! And then where will we be?" yelled Gold Root.
Wong pounded the table. "This attitude of yours is very wrong, Gold Root T'an. I have been patient with you because of your past efforts. But don't go too far. What has come over you? Is anybody 'holding on to your hind legs'?"
He was, of course, referring to Moon Scent, who had stolen away while they were talking. She had fled to the dark recesses at the side of the bed from which she pres-ently emerged holding something in her hand. Flushed with inner struggle, she approached Wong and said with a steady smile, "Comrade Wong, I have some money here which he knows nothing about. It is all I have left.
Please take it and buy firecrackers for us. And we want to pay for half a pig to give as a present to the Soldiers' Families. I've never told him I have this money."
Comrade Wong went on pounding the table and shouting at Gold Root as if he had not heard her, keeping her waiting for what seemed to be a long time. Gold Root glared at her as if he would strike her dead on the spot.
At last Wong turned to her and said icily, "Why did you not say so before? All this talk about being penniless playing such a rascally trick with your own govern-ment!"
"Yes, I was wrong, Comrade Wong. But he really did not know I had the money. He knew nothing."
"See that the New Year cakes are ready by the day after tomorrow—time is short. And talk to him and straighten out his way of thinking. His attitude today is very wrong."
Moon Scent saw Comrade Wong out of the courtyard and waited respectfully in the doorway until he disap-peared into another house. Suddenly she felt her hair grabbed from behind. Gold Root slapped her right and left and she kicked and fought back wildly. She did not scream—in case Wong was not yet out of earshot.
But Gold Root would not keep quiet. "So you have money!" he said. "And you throw it about. Who wants your stinking money? So you make me look like a liar! I'll teach you to make me out a liar!"
In spite of herself she let out a yelp under the impact of the blows. Big Uncle came, and so did Big Aunt, though she had not been on speaking terms with Moon Scent ever since they quarreled and the old man gave her a beating. The old woman came to intervene because she was warmhearted and always on the spot whenever there was trouble. Besides, it was pleasant to watch an adver-sary being humiliated, even as she herself had been humiliated before all.
"Now, now, Gold Root," said Big Uncle. "There is nothing that cannot be talked over peaceably. Gentlemen move their lips; rascals move their hands."
"All right, enough now, Gold Root! Comrade Wong might hear you," Big Aunt said tactlessly, or perhaps on purpose.
"Do not frighten me with Comrade Wong," said Gold Root, hitting harder. "And she can go and report to the Women's Association. I am not afraid!"
The old couple finally managed to tear them apart and Gold Root stamped out of the courtyard.
"The one thing wrong with Gold Root is his temper," said Big Aunt. "That's what I have always said. He should not have wasted his anger on his wife."
Moon Scent said nothing. When Big Aunt helped her into her room, she threw herself face downward on the bed and abandoned herself to stifling sobs.
Big Aunt sat down on the bed. "Fighting between married couples is a common thing. Do not take him seriously. Haven't you heard the saying, 'Between hus-band and wife there is no grudge that lasts overnight'?" Then bending over Moon Scent she whispered, "You are not the only family who suffers. With us it is worse. Our pig is done for. We cannot produce the money, so we are told to borrow from relatives. 'Doesn't your daugh-ter-in-law have a sister who married a shopkeeper in town?'-the turtle's egg knows everything. Now she has gone to town to see her sister. I do not know what would happen if they should refuse to lend the money." She sighed and bent down to wipe her eyes on the skirt of her jacket. "Ai, not easy!-to pass from one day to another."
Moon Scent went on weeping convulsively. To her the sky had blacked out and she was choked with earth and buried alive under a mountain, because Gold Root did not understand her.
On the following day they began at dawn to grind the rice into flour to make New Year cakes. The creak of the old millstone was heavy and painfully slow. It was the sound of the earth turning on its axis, the passage of long months and years.
In the evening they moved a table into the courtyard and, placing a candle in the center of the table, stood around it still making New Year cakes. With both hands Gold Root deftly kneaded a big white ball of rice flour, the size of a watermelon and burning hot. Bending over the table, he kept rolling it very fast, with a curious little smile on his lips and the intense concentration of one who was fashioning something out of burning rock at the beginning of the world. From time to time he would pluck off a small piece and toss it to Moon Scent, who would press it into a small wooden mold, then empty the mold by knocking it on the table. A tiny brush made of five goose feathers tied together stood in a tin full of rouge water. She would mark the cake three times with the brush, making three red plum blossoms, blurrily superimposed on the embossed design of orchids and plum blossoms. Beckon noisily insisted that she could make those marks, but the table was too high for her.
At last the cakes were done and removed to the room where they were stacked up to dry. There was a lot of counting to be done, and calculating whether they came up to the required weight. In the deserted courtyard the candle still glowed at the center of the table, which was bare except for the tin can in which a piece of "cotton-wool rouge" was soaked in water.
Moon Scent came over, fished out the piece of drip-ping cotton wool, and rubbed it at random over her cheeks and eyelids, then smoothed over the redness with her palms.
"No sense in wasting it," she said with a short laugh. She called for the child and also applied it to her face. For the rest of the evening the mother and daughter went about with their cheeks a flaming, theatrical red. It did look as if the New Year was here.