Ha Jin - Under the Red Flag

The moment Hong Chen entered the narrow lane leading to Lilian’s house, a bloody rooster landed before her, jumping about and scattering its feathers. Four little boys ran over with knives and a hatchet in their hands. “Kill, kill him!” one boy cried, but none of them dared approach the rooster, whose throat was cut half through.

Lilian’s big body appeared; she was carrying a cleaver. “Finish him off, boys. Don’t let him suffer!” she cried. She walked over and stamped the dancing rooster to the ground. The biggest boy raised the hatchet and chopped the dangling head off.

At the sight of Hong, Lilian took her foot off the rooster and said, “I’m helping them kill the chicken. Their parents shouldn’t let these boys do this. It’s crazy. Blood is everywhere.”

“I can smell it,” Hong said. Together they entered the house.

“My parents are not home.” Lilian patted Hong’s arm with her free hand. She stood the cleaver on a cutting board, on which was a pile of cabbage leaves that she had just chopped for the ducks. She washed her hands in a basin and then led Hong into her own room.

Without delay, Hong said Pang Hai’s matchmaker had come to press her again. She asked Lilian whether there was any news about who would become the commune’s vice-chairman. Lilian’s father was a train attendant going to the county town three or four times a week, so he might learn the news before others.

“No, I haven’t heard of anything.” Lilian rolled her broad eyes.

“What should I do?” Hong sighed and placed her slender hands on her lap.

“If I were you, I’d take Pang Hai.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know which one of them will be the chairman, right? We can assume they’re equal in this aspect, right? Then Hai looks better than Feng Ping.”

Hong smiled, the skin around her nose crinkling slightly. “He doesn’t look better to me.”

“Ah, I forgot to show you something.” Lilian clapped her hands and walked over to her desk. She pulled a drawer and took out a paper clipping as large as a palm. “Read this, and you’ll think differently.” She grinned.

Hong recognized that it was an article from The Journal of Women’s Health and Hygiene . The title read “Don’t Be Scared on Your Wedding Night.” She lowered her head and read. In an elegant style the article described to the virgin reader the experience of losing her hymen on the first night. “It may hurt a little initially,” the author wrote, “but do not panic. Ask him to be gentle. Gradually you will feel a pleasant sensation that you have not experienced before.”

“Why do you want me to read this?” Hong’s face reddened.

Lilian smiled. “Tell me what it’s like.”

“What?”

“The pleasant sensation.”

“Damn you, how could I know!” Hong went for Lilian, waving her fist. Her almond eyes were shining and blinking.

“All right, I believe you, Little Nun.” Lilian turned away. “God, I wish one of us knew.” She sounded serious.

“Why did you say that?”

“Only by comparison can we tell who is better, right?”

“I don’t get it.”

“God, you’re so naive. I wish lots of men were after me, and I’d do it with all of them. Too bad my parents didn’t give me a pretty face like yours.”

“That’s silly.”

“I mean it.” Lilian kept her face straight. “If I were you, I’d do it with both of them and choose the better one.”

“No, no, that’s crazy. Once you sleep with a man, you’ll never get rid of him. Don’t you understand? Remember the girl who hanged herself because her ex-boyfriend talked about what they’d done? Nobody would marry me if I were known as ‘a broken shoe.’”

“That’s just an idea, but you should think of the physical part, shouldn’t you?”

“How could I know?”

“See, that’s why I said you should do it.”

“No, I can’t.”

“At least you should think which one of them is abler, shouldn’t you? I mean physically.” Lilian rolled her eyes again.

“Damn you, Lilian. You have a dirty mind.” Hong pinched her friend on the fleshy cheek.

“Come on, I said truth. Oh let go, let go!”

Hong released her grip. “To be honest,” Lilian said, rubbing her cheek, “I think Pang Hai is better. He’s taller and stronger.”

“I don’t know.” Hong sighed.

It was already dark when Hong left Lilian’s. A locomotive tooted its steam horn in the distance as the power lines were droning softly along the street. Hong thought of her friend’s words and couldn’t help smiling. Lilian had always been knowledgeable about things between a woman and a man, though she had never gotten good grades in school. “A muzzy head,” as a math teacher had called her. Yet it was Lilian who, when they were in high school, had told Hong how babies were made. In her candid words, “Your dad did it to your mom, and then you were born.” Before that enlightening moment, Hong had believed that if a woman sat together with a man in a dark movie theater she would be pregnant with his child.

Unlike Lilian, Hong had been disgusted with boys during her teens. In her eyes they were all rascals. When she was a sixth grader, she began to have her period. She was terrified at the sight of her blood and called out, “Mom, I’m bleeding!” Her mother, Mrs. Chen, smiled and said, “You’re a big girl now.” Then she found her a roll of soft gauze.

The next day in the PE class the students were running together around the playground. Suddenly Hong felt something passing through her trouser leg. She shuddered and almost fell down. She looked back and found the boys kicking forward her roll of bloody gauze and laughing and whooping. At this moment the recess bell rang. She hurried back to the classroom and buried her face in her arms on her desk, but the boys wouldn’t let her off. Within half a minute a crowd gathered at the window shouting, “Bad girl,” “Broken shoe,” “Shameless,” “Cracked melon.” One of them was holding up a bamboo stick, on whose tip was exhibited that piece of scarlet evidence. Several small girls who hated her also joined them. Pang Hai and Feng Ping were among the crowd. Hong burst into sobs and dared not raise her head. Then the teacher ran over, grabbed the stick, and yelled, “Leave her alone, idiots!” She chased her students away, striking them so hard with the bamboo stick that it cracked.

That afternoon Hong drank a bottle of DDT at home; fortunately her mother found it out in time and took her to the Commune Clinic to have her stomach cleansed. At that time her father was the Party secretary of the commune, so the school leaders handled the incident very efficiently—the boy who had raised the stick was expelled.

It would be unfair to say that the boys always maltreated Hong. When the yellowish hair on their upper lips began to turn to soft mustaches in the high school, the chest of Hong’s desk often received a chocolate bar, or an apple, or a pear, or a pomegranate, once even a baked sweet potato which was still warm. The donors always remained anonymous. Every time Hong handed the dainty to the teacher, who would take it home for her own children. The boys were brazen and despicable, and Hong was irritated by them, even believing that most of them were interested in her mainly because she had a powerful father. The more indifferent and elusive she was, the more charming and virtuous she grew in the boys’ eyes. In her last year of high school she became the beauty queen, without winning any contest; the boys chose her in secret among themselves. Heavens, they would never leave her alone.

After her father died of bone cancer, life was hard for the Chens. Most of his former subordinates stopped showing any respect for his family. Two years after his death, the Chens were forced to move out of the compound inhabited by the cadres’ families. Mrs. Chen begged some former friends to help, but nobody would intercede on her behalf. By now both the mother and the daughter had fully experienced the difficulty and humiliation caused by lacking power in their own hands. When several young men proposed to Hong, she told the matchmakers that she wasn’t interested in marriage, but her mother persuaded her, saying, “If I die tomorrow, I won’t be able to close my eyes unless you have a good husband.” Every woman ought to marry; if she didn’t, people would think her abnormal.