Anchee Min - Red Azalea

You know the snakes are poisonous, don’t you? I said. She nodded. Her smile was calm and that touched me deeply. I asked if she would allow me to join her. I said I would not be afraid of the snakes. She nodded, grabbing my shoulders.

We went out to hunt for the snakes separately. I never caught one. I was scared of these creatures. Their shape horrified me. The grease on their tails made me paranoid. I had nightmares, my body wrapped in snakes. I didn’t tell Yan about my dreams. I couldn’t believe that she was not scared of them. When she brought more snakes back, I imagined the horror she had gone through. She was my heroine again.

We talked more about men, in particular Leopard Lee. I suggested that, if she wanted, I could be her personal messenger. She shook her head and said if it was wrong for Little Green, it should be wrong for her too. I’m a Party member. I can’t do things I have forbidden others to do. She looked sad but determined. She was being ridiculous, yet her dignity caught my heart. I was drawn to her as I looked at her. I couldn’t have enough of her that evening. She was my Venus.

It’s only superficial, isn’t it? I said on our way back to the barracks. She said suddenly, I bet you can fight with Lu now, because you’ve developed sharp teeth. She laughed. She made a hat of reeds for me as we discussed how the letter should be written and how to find an official excuse for me to deliver it to Leopard Lee.

I felt joy. The joy of being with Yan. The joy of having her depend on me. Two weeks passed. Still Yan had not given me anything to deliver. When she saw me, she avoided the subject. I could tell that she was happy, yet a little nervous. I saw her hang red-colored underwear to dry. Bright red. She hummed songs, spending more time looking at herself in front of a palm-sized mirror by the door. She stopped swearing. I teased her. I swore the words she used to swear. She knew my intention. She just smiled, called me a brat. I asked her about the letter to Leopard. She kept on equivocating. She said that she had no time to write. I said Leopard might have forgotten her. That night, when I was lying in bed, she opened my curtain and threw in a folded letter.

Comrade Leopard Lee:

How are you? I was wondering how the agricultural initiative is progressing in your company. Here we are making good progress. I have thought of our meeting often. It was meaningful as well as politically fruitful.

In the margin Yan had written, “Will you please help?” I took a piece of paper and replied that I would do whatever the Party required of me.

The next day I rewrote her letter. I did not know what Leopard Lee looked like, so I described Yan’s face instead. I tried to imagine what they would do when they would be together, how they would touch each other; just thinking of it made my heart beat fast. I wanted to describe Yan’s body but I had never seen it. I described my own instead, touching myself and imagining my body was hers and my fingers his.

When Yan returned, I whispered that I had finished. She was excited and said that she could not wait for bedtime to read it. I told her that I wanted to see her reading it. Yan said then we should make an excuse to get in bed together. We made a plan and waited for the dark to fall.

After dinner Yan and I sat by the door. She started to repair her rain shoes while I took out my rifle to clean. We said nothing to each other and pretended that we were concentrating on our hands. I took apart the gun and cleaned it. I was absentminded. I stole a couple of moments to glance at Yan. She sanded the cracked shoe, applied glue and let it sit. She didn’t look at me, but I knew that she knew I was looking at her. Her face flushed. She smiled shyly. Lightly, she gave a few blows to the shoes. I adored her shyness because no one else would think that she could be shy. Her intimacy belonged to me.

Lu was reading Mao’s work aloud. Other roommates had being going in and out of the room hanging their clothes on a string, splashing dirty water outside. The male soldiers in the opposite building were tapping their bowls with chopsticks. They sang, “When the sun rises, Oh-Yo, Oh-Yo, Oh-Yo, Yo, Yo, Yo, Oh, Oh…” Their song had no end. The soldiers splashed water on the muddy ground as well and walked into their rooms barefooted. The doors were closed. The song dashed on.

When darkness fell, I was already in bed. I waited for everybody else to get into their beds. I looked around the room through the net. I looked at Lu from the top down. Her concentration amazed me. She really read the Little Red Book every day. I was sure she had memorized every comma and period. Did she enjoy this? Or was she just putting on a show? Or both? Did she ever feel restless? She was young, her body was full. She liked to watch her own feet, I noticed. She often took a long time washing her feet. They were tanned dark brown, and her toenails were as clean as peanuts. They were not like ours, dyed orangish with fungicide. She used vinegar to rub off the dye on her toenails each night as the rest of us slept. Once the strong smell of her vinegar woke me up at midnight and I saw through the net that she had dozed off while applying it. Her feet rested on a stool, like two big rice cakes. It was a pair of young feet, elegantly shaped. I asked myself the reason Lu spent so much time taking care of her feet. And I understood. Her feet were her intimacy. She needed that intimacy to survive just as I needed Yan’s.

I began to say that I did not have enough blankets and was afraid of catching cold. Yan sneezed and said that she felt cold too. Lu, as usual, was still studying. Annoyed by our noises, she said impatiently, Why can’t you help each other, comrades? Why couldn’t you think of something to solve the problem, such as to share the blankets together? She fell right into our trap. I jumped down with my blankets, rushed into Yan’s mosquito net. We closed the curtain tightly. I couldn’t help giggling. Yan covered my mouth with her hands. I gave her the letter. She pulled the blankets up over our heads and turned on her flashlight.

Her face flushed. She read and reread the letter. She whispered that it was the best thing she had ever read. She said that she did not know I was so talented. She pressed her cheek against mine. She whispered the same words again and again, that I was talented. After she read the letter two more times, she wanted me to imagine how Leopard Lee would react after reading this letter.

I told her that he would fall in love with her. She told me to repeat what I had just said and I did. She whispered, How can you be sure? I whispered back, If I were a man, I would. She asked if I ever tasted pellet fruit. I asked what pellet fruit was. She said it was a type of fruit that grew in the South. When it ripened, it cracked itself open, making pang-pang-pang sounds like firecrackers. She said this was how her heart was beating now. I said I was glad I had talent. She said I should be because I made her spellbound and she was at the mercy of my hands.

Turning off the flashlight, we came out of the blankets for air. I asked if pellet fruit was edible. She said, Yes, it’s sweet, but the fruit has an ugly shell like a porcupine. I said I couldn’t tell that you had such a mellow heart when I first saw you. I told her that her mellowness made me question whether she was a real Party hard-liner or just an armchair revolutionary. She said, Grind and level your teeth now.

Through the mosquito net I saw Lu finishing off vinegaring her feet. She capped the bottle, stood up, turned off the light and climbed into her bed. Yan and I lay awake in the dark, too excited to sleep. Soon we heard Lu’s snoring. The moon’s pale lilac rays scattered through the curtains. I heard the sound of our roommates’ even breathing. The snakes were beating against the sides of the jar under the bed.