Anchee Min - Red Azalea

Lu brought back a dog from the headquarters. His name was 409. 409 was a military-trained German shepherd. It was said that he could do anything. 409’s mission was to watch a pig named Tricky Head. Tricky Head, a male pig weighing almost two hundred pounds, was the company’s big headache. He was the trickiest of his group. The company did not have enough fine animal feed. The pigs were given half fine feed and half coarse grain. One day the farmhands found that a few of the bags of fine feed were gone-one of the pigs must have eaten them, but they could not figure out which one. Two days later another few bags of fine feed were gone. This time the farmhands noticed that the pigs were eating the undigested shit of Tricky Head. They suspected that Tricky Head was the thief. They targeted him and caught him in the middle of his theft. The strange thing about Tricky Head was that he had the face of a dog and he acted like a dog. He could jump out of the pen and into the grain storage and afterward, when he had enough fine feed, he would run back to the pen and pretend nothing had happened. He did not eat any less at the last feeding of the day. He was bigger than the others.

Lu adored 409. She spent all her savings and bought the dog dry meat. She trained him and rewarded him. 409 soon became very attached to her. They would take a walk by the sea every night. Lu became more pleasant than she used to be. 409 was mean to everybody but Lu. Lu was proud of 409’s loyalty. She encouraged his meanness. She often recited one particular Mao quotation to 409. She ordered 409 to sit by her feet, then she would say, Isn’t it a key question that one must learn to be able to tell who is his friend and who is not? 409 would bark a yes to her. And he would be rewarded with a piece of dry meat. Then Lu would go on, Is it not a capital question that one must answer as a true revolutionary: Who is the people’s friend and who is not? 409 would bark again and receive another piece of meat.

When 409 stood on his feet, he was as tall as Lu. Lu often had him walk on his back legs while he put his front legs on her shoulders. One day when Lu was out at headquarters for a meeting, 409 wailed all day. It sounded like an old woman crying. By noon he began to hit himself against the wall. Two male soldiers shut him in a pigpen and he hurled himself into the bars until they broke in half. No one could stop him until Lu got back. Seeing that the dog could not do without her, Lu broke into tears.

409 was a terrible watchdog. The soldiers said that he must have had a past-life relationship with Tricky Head-the two animals got along the moment they met. They stared at each other uncertainly, then went to smell each other and they accepted each other. Was it because Tricky Head had the face of a dog? They sat by each other like brothers. When it came to stealing the fine feed, not only did 409 not stop Tricky Head; he helped him rake out the feed from the bags so Tricky Head could eat faster. They played in the pigpen. 409 was always excited about the sawdust. When the farmhands came, 409 put on a sincere face as if he had fought to guard the feed but failed. Yan did not like 409. She called him a traitor. She kicked him and suggested that Lu send him back to the headquarters. Lu reluctantly said yes. As if knowing Lu’s feelings, 409 went up to her and put his tongue all over her face.

Lu begged Yan to let 409 stay. She showed Yan the dog’s file. It said that 409 had good credit in his war records. She said, Give me two weeks to train him to watch Tricky Head. I promise he’ll be as good as he was promised to be. Yan said that the fine feed was running short. The company could not afford to lose one more bag. The other pigs were going to starve. Lu took night shifts to watch the animals. 409 was still the same. Lu could not get him to behave correctly. Yan was upset and ordered Lu to send 409 away. The same day, the day when 409 was supposed to be sent, Lu caught Tricky Head stealing the fine feed. She went to Yan and said that sending the dog away was not going to stop Tricky Head. Why don’t we kill Tricky Head instead of sending the dog away? She was permitted.

Lu had the pig killed for supper. Tricky Head was in everyone’s bowl. 409 chewed the pig bones, and afterward he went to look for Tricky Head everywhere. He smelled Tricky Head’s pen and stayed in the sawdust until Lu called him out. Lu was happy; she combed 409’s back hair with her fingers. Lu spent hours with 409, putting her whole hand in his mouth and making him do all kinds of tricks.

Lu took 409 to local villages where he could mate. 409 was nice to the female dogs but mean to their owners. It was said that he would mate with the female dog and afterward, in expressing his pleasure, would tear the owner’s pants. He would jump on the owners, stand on his back legs, and bark. The villagers said that he woke up the dead. The villagers told Lu never to bring 409 around again. Lu just laughed. She did not know just how serious the villagers were.

Early one evening when Lu brought 409 back from a nearby village, 409’s face was turning green. He vomited and vomited. Lu tried to feed him water and porridge, but 409 could take nothing in. I was sharpening the hoes when Yan came to me with the news. Yan said, Lu is singing an opera. I went to the grain storage where 409 usually slept. Before I saw 409, I heard Lu’s sobbing. 409 was lying in Lu’s bosom, dead. Lu sobbed like a village widow. A vet was standing next to them. Yan came and passed Lu a wet towel. As Lu wiped her face, Yan asked the vet about the poisoning. The vet said that it was in a steamed bread. The villagers did it, said Lu. They are reactionaries, she added, clenching her teeth. We must make them pay for it. Yan did not respond to her at first. After dinner when she noticed Lu was still sitting by 409, Yan said, If I were you, I wouldn’t have taken him to mate so much.

Lu buried 409 by the river. When our platoon went to work hoeing the fields the next dawn, Lu was already at work. She had swollen eyes. I asked her if she slept well last night, and she said that she had sat by the grave the whole night. At break time she asked me to accompany her to the grave to visit 409. I went with her. I was moved by her sadness. I did not know Lu was capable of being sad. She kneeled in the mud and planted wildflowers on top of the grave. She sobbed as she was doing so. I took her up by the arms and she leaned on my shoulders. She thanked me. I wished that I could do more for her. She looked at me and said, I’ve lost my only friend, my best friend. What am I going to do? Her tone scared me. I dared not say a word. I looked at her. She stared into the fields. The wind blew her hair up from its roots. She murmured to herself, I will, I will. You will have new friends, I said. She looked at me suspiciously. You see, 409 never lied to me, she said.

Lu knew I was not really saying what I meant. She knew I did not want to be her friend. I could not tell her that I was afraid of her being too capable. She had the quality of a murderer, and that was what kept me away.

Lu and I worked shoulder-to-shoulder all day. We exchanged few words. I was thinking of Yan, her hearty laughter. Lu was quick at work. Her slim figure moved like a mountain goat on a cliff, her every move was precise and sufficient. Like a mountain goat, she had thin ankles and thin wrists. It enabled her to run faster and bend quicker. She was an ardent worker. She was a hard-liner. But to me she was like a stage light: she was bright in the dark. But when the sun rose, she lost her brightness. She faded in the sunshine, and Yan was the sun.

Yan and I betrayed no intimacy in public. We silently washed each other’s clothes and took trips to fill hot-water containers for each other. We became accustomed to each other’s eye signals. Every couple of days we would go separately to meet at the brick factory. Yan would make excuses such as checking the quality of the day’s work. I would take the thickest Mao book and my notebook and pretend to find a place to study by myself. We shuttled through the reeds, hand in hand. She taught me how to make whistles with reeds. She would roll up a piece of reed to make a green trumpet. She told me to blow when she blew hers. We made music of the reeds, of the evening. We messed with each other’s tones and laughed when the tone sounded like the cough of an old man.