Ha Jin - Under the Red Flag

“You mean I should burn my mother?”

“I don’t mean that. In fact, I came to inform you that we’re going to have a Party meeting tonight and discuss this matter. Please come at eight.”

“A Party meeting to discuss how to get rid of my mother’s body?”

“No hard feelings, Old Ding. This is a decision made by the Party committee. I’m here only to deliver the message and make sure you will be present.”

“All right, I’ll come.”

In fact, Huang was not Ding’s enemy in the Commune Administration. He always sat on the fence. That was why he had been sent to notify Ding of the meeting, which the men of Ding’s own faction wanted to hold more eagerly than others. Secretary Yang was on bad terms with Ding and had his own men. The two factions were almost equal in power and would fight over whatever involved their interests and by any means except for assassination. As a precaution, however, the Dings would dump the edibles given to them by those who belonged to the opposite faction whenever they suspected there was poison in them.

At eight Ding arrived at the Commune Administration on Bank Street. The other six committee members were already in the conference room, waving fans and drinking tea. Ding was not afraid of such a meeting, since two men here, Feng Ping and Tian Biao, were loyal to him. Though Yang was the Party chief in the commune, he had only one man on the committee, Dong Cai, who obeyed him like a dog. The other two members, Huang Zhi and Zhang Meng, were fence-sitters and would trim their sails according to the wind.

After they gave condolences to Ding, the meeting started. While the secretary was introducing the topic, Ding was somehow bewildered, seeing that Yang seemed uninterested in this matter. He had expected Yang would jump at him and criticize him severely for having the coffin made.

“In short,” Yang said, “I think this belongs to family affairs. We should let Old Ding decide by himself. Now everybody may express his opinion.”

Ding couldn’t understand why all of a sudden the secretary appeared to be so gentle and sympathetic. Then his own man, Tian, began to speak. “I agree that it’s a private matter, and Chairman Ding has the right to decide on his own. But as the head of the commune, he ought to think of the consequences, the political effect. What will we do if lots of commune members begin to follow Chairman Ding’s example and refuse to cremate the dead?”

“I agree,” said Feng, who was also Ding’s man. “I think the political consequence is enormous. We can’t afford to let our leader make such a mistake.”

Ding was unhappy about his men’s performance. Why do they all turn against me today? he asked himself. They all have a mother. Could they burn their mothers’ bodies? I can bury my mother secretly without a ceremony. Few people will know where. I just don’t want to burn her up. I promised her not to do that.

While Ding was lost in his thoughts, Dong Cai, Yang’s man, began to speak: “I agree with Secretary Yang. I think this is a personal matter that we shouldn’t interfere with. We all have old parents. I wouldn’t have my mother cremated if she died. That would wreck my family’s fortune; at least my father would think so. No, never.”

“Thank you,” Ding said, so grateful that he couldn’t contain himself anymore. “I promised her not to burn her body! Before she died, she begged me with tears not to do that. She just wanted to be buried somewhere deep in the earth. I won’t take any arable land.”

The meeting dragged on for an hour without reaching a decision. Finally, the secretary proposed a vote, not on whether to bury or cremate the dead but on whether to let Ding choose himself. The result was 4 to 3, in favor of personal choice. Ding felt relieved.

Without saying good night to his men, Ding set out for home. When he turned at the corner of Old Folk Road, Feng and Tian emerged from the side entrance of the Commune Administration. They called Ding and wanted to have a word with him.

“Chairman Ding,” Tian said, “do you trust a bastard like Dong Cai or us?”

“Of course I trust you.”

“We’ve followed you for years,” Feng said. “We know you are a good, filial man. But they don’t think so. Don’t be taken in by them. They want you to make a mistake and then they’ll jump at you and rip you apart.”

“Well, how come?”

“They set a trap for you, Chairman Ding,” Tian said, his narrow eyes glittering. “If you bury your mother tomorrow morning, I’m sure they will report you to the higher-ups tomorrow afternoon. To prevent ground burials is a major political task this year, you know that. In fact, Secretary Yang didn’t want to hold tonight’s meeting. It was Feng and I who persuaded Huang Zhi and Zhang Meng to propose the meeting. They just want to see you fall into a well and then they’ll stone you to death, but we want to stop you before you fall.”

“Yes,” Feng said, “as the saying goes: ‘Loyal words jar on your ears—bitter medicine is good for your illness.’ We don’t want to please but save you.”

Ding was shocked. He held out his hands and laid them on both Feng’s and Tian’s shoulders and said, “My friends, I just realized the true intention behind their sympathy. At the meeting I was too emotional to see through them. I’m grateful for your timely words, which made me stop before it was too late. All right, I will follow your advice.” He paused to think for a moment, then said resolutely, “Please help me arrange with the crematory for the service tomorrow morning. Do it tonight, my friends.”

Having watched Feng and Tian disappear in the dark, Ding turned and went his way home. A cicada was chirring sleepily in the clear night, and someone was piping a bamboo flute in the distance. By now Ding knew that he had no choice, and that his official career would have been ruined if he had given his mother a ground burial at this moment when the superiors were eager and ready to punish someone so as to check the trend of ground burials. But he had promised his mother. How could he convince his family that the change was reasonable? There would be little trouble with his wife, since she understood such a matter and wouldn’t insist on a ground burial; besides, the dead was his mother, not her own flesh and blood. The trouble would come from his son, who had heard him promise the old woman and might not understand how serious this matter was.

Ding was right. When he broke the new decision to the family, Sheng wouldn’t accept it. “You promised her yourself. How can she rest in peace if we burn her up?”

“Yes, it’s true I promised her,” Ding said, trying to be as calm as possible. “Remember what she said about death? She said, ‘When I am dead, everything will be over for me.’ She can’t feel anything now. What matters is us, the remaining ones. We have to live and work.” Reasonable as he sounded, Ding felt his voice lacking the force it should have.

“Sheng, your dad is right,” Yuanmin said.

“No.” Sheng shook his head. “A ground burial is the least thing we can do for her.” He turned to his father. “I know it may keep you from being promoted, but at worst you’ll be demoted one rank.”

“Damn it, it’s not a matter of demotion or promotion. Those bastards, they want to bury me together with your grandma. Don’t you understand? They want to destroy us!”

“Don’t yell at each other, please,” Yuanmin begged.

As the son couldn’t be persuaded, the father proposed a vote. Certainly the wife agreed with the husband, but Sheng wouldn’t give up. He mentioned his aunt in Shandong, who was also a family member and should be a voter. “That’s ridiculous,” Ding said. “Even though we send her a telegram tomorrow morning, it’ll take two days to get her word back. Do you want your grandma’s body to rot in the heat?”