Ha Jin: Under the Red Flag

A breeze came and swept away the fluffy curls from the terrace and scattered them on the sandy ground. It was so hot that some people took out fans, waving them continuously. The crowd stank of sweat.

Wooooo, wooooo, woo, woo . That was the train coming from Sand County at three-thirty. It was a freight train, whose young drivers would toot the steam horn whenever they saw a young woman in a field beneath the track.

The questioning continued. “How many men have you slept with these years?” the nearsighted man asked.

“Three.”

“She’s lying,” a woman in the crowd cried.

“I told the truth, sister.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand.

“Who are they?” the young man asked again. “Tell us more about them.”

“An officer from the Little Dragon Mountain, and—”

“How many times did he come to your house?”

“I can’t remember. Probably twenty.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. He told me he was a big officer.”

“Did you take money from him?”

“Yes.”

“How much for each time?”

“Twenty yuan.”

“How much altogether?”

“Probably five hundred.”

“Comrades and Revolutionary Masses,” the young man turned to us, “how shall we handle this parasite that sucked blood out of a revolutionary officer?”

“Quarter her with four horses!” an old woman yelled.

“Burn her on Heaven Lamp!”

“Poop on her face!” a small fat girl shouted, her hand raised like a tiny pistol with the thumb cocked up and the forefinger aimed at Mu. Some grown-ups snickered.

Then a pair of old cloth shoes, a symbol for a promiscuous woman, were passed to the front. The slim young woman took the shoes and tied them together with the laces. She climbed on a table and was about to hang the shoes around Mu’s neck. Mu elbowed the woman aside and knocked the shoes to the ground. The stout young fellow picked them up and jumped twice to slap her on the cheeks with the soles. “You’re so stubborn. Do you want to change yourself or not?” he asked.

“Yes, I do,” she said meekly and dared not stir a bit. Meanwhile the shoes were being hung around her neck.

“Now she looks like a real whore,” a woman said.

“Sing us a tune, sis,” a farmer shouted.

“Comrades,” the man in glasses resumed, “let us continue the denunciation.” He turned to Mu and asked, “Who are the other men?”

“A farmer from Apple Village.”

“How many times with him?”

“Once.”

“Liar!”

“She’s lying!”

“Give her one on the mouth!”

The young man raised his hands to calm the crowd down and questioned her again, “How much did you take from him?”

“Eighty yuan.”

“One night?”

“Yes.”

“Tell us more about it. How can you make us believe you?”

“That old fellow came to town to sell piglets. He sold a whole litter for eighty, and I got the money.”

“Why did you charge him more than the officer?”

“No, I didn’t. He did it four times in one night.”

Some people were smiling and whispering to each other. A woman said that old man must have been a widower or never married.

“What’s his name?” the young man went on.

“No idea.”

“Was he rich or poor?”

“Poor.”

“Comrades,” the young man addressed us, “here we have a poor peasant who worked with his sow for a whole year and got only a litter of piglets. That money is the salt and oil money for his family, but this snake swallowed the money in one gulp. What shall we do with her?”

“Kill her!”

“Break her skull!”

“Beat the piss out of her!”

A few farmers began to move forward to the steps, waving their fists or rubbing their hands.

“Hold,” a woman Red Guard with a huge Chairman Mao badge on her chest spoke in a commanding voice. “The Great Leader has instructed us: ‘For our struggle we need words but not force.’ Comrades, we can easily wipe her out with words. Force doesn’t solve ideological problems.” What she said restrained those enraged farmers, who remained in the crowd.

Wooo, woo, wooo, wooooooooooo , an engine screamed in the south. It was strange, because the drivers of the four o’clock train were a bunch of old men who seldom blew the horn.

“Who is the third man?” the nearsighted man continued to question Mu.

“A Red Guard.”

The crowd broke into laughter. Some women asked the Red Guards to give her another bottle of ink. “Mu Ying, you’re responsible for your own words,” the young man said in a serious voice.

“I told you the truth.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. He led the propaganda team that passed here last month.”

“How many times did you sleep with him?”

“Once.”

“How much did you make out of him?”

“None. That stingy dog wouldn’t pay a fen. He said he was the worker who should be paid.”

“So you were outsmarted by him?”

Some men in the crowd guffawed. Mu wiped her nose with her thumb, and at once she wore a thick mustache. “I taught him a lesson, though,” she said.

“How?”

“I tweaked his ears, gave him a bloody nose, and kicked him out. I told him never to come back.”

People began talking to each other. Some said she was a strong woman who knew what was hers. Some said the Red Guard was no good; if you got something you had to pay for it. A few women declared the rascal deserved such treatment.

“Dear Revolutionary Masses,” the tall leader started to speak. “We all have heard the crime Mu Ying committed. She lured one of our officers and one of our poor peasants into the evil water, and she beat a Red Guard black and blue. Shall we let her go home without punishment or shall we teach her an unforgettable lesson so that she won’t do it again?”

“Teach her a lesson!” some voices cried in unison.

“Then we’re going to parade her through the streets.”

Two Red Guards pulled Mu off the bench, and another picked up the tall hat.

“Brothers and sisters,” she begged, “please let me off just this once. Don’t, don’t! I promise I’ll correct my fault. I’ll be a new person. Help! Oh help!”

It was no use resisting; within seconds the huge hat was firmly planted on her head. They also hung a big placard between the cloth shoes lying against her chest. The words on the placard read:

I am a Broken Shoe

My Crime Deserves Death

They put a gong in her hands and ordered her to strike it when she announced the words written on the inner side of the gong.

My pals and I followed the crowd, feeling rather tired. Boys from East Street were wilder; they threw stones at Mu’s back. One stone struck the back of her head and blood dropped on her neck. But they were stopped immediately by the Red Guards, because a stone missed Mu and hit a man on the face. Old people, who couldn’t follow us, were standing on chairs and windowsills with pipes and towels in their hands. We were going to parade her through every street. It would take several hours to finish the whole thing, since the procession would stop for a short while at every street corner.

Bong, Mu struck the gong and declared, “I am an evil monster.”

“Louder!”

Dong, bong —“I have stolen men. I stink for a thousand years.”

When we were coming out of the marketplace, Squinty emerged from a narrow lane. He grasped my wrist and Bare Hips’s arm and said, “Someone is dead at the train station. Come, let’s go have a look.” The word “dead” at once roused us. We half a dozen boys set out running to the train station.

The dead man was Meng Su. A crowd had gathered at the railroad two hundred yards east of the station house. A few men were examining the rail that was stained with blood and studded with bits of flesh. One man paced along the darker part of the rail and announced that the train had dragged Meng at least seventy feet.