Ha Jin - Under the Red Flag

Kai woke up with a cry. She grabbed the baby and dashed out, shrieking, “Help! Save my life! Help!”

In front of her, ducks and chickens were flapping and whirling. Two young cocks flew up and landed atop the latrine.

The villagers were bewildered by what had happened. Lanlan had run into the street screaming and wailing with the baby in her arms. She was wearing only a shirt, without anything on below her waist. Some men laughed and smacked their lips. Her neighbor Aunt Wang pulled her away to the Wangs’ and gave her a pair of slacks. People went to Lanlan’s house and found a half-naked man, pants around knees, in the outer room. His head was buried in the cornstalks beside the cooking range, while his bare butt pointed towards the ceiling. A few men kicked him, and he slid on his side, no breath left in him. A trail of blood led to the brick bed, on whose glossy surface was a crimson puddle. The big knife lying in a corner looked so expensive that a boy slipped it into his sleeve. The whole house smelled like a fish shop. Obviously, the man and the woman must have been doing it when he was struck down. Perhaps the spirit of the late husband had intervened.

How come on the very day of her husband’s burial another man was found in her home? And both Lanlan and the man were half naked? Did they go to bed together? More confusing, nobody in the village knew the man. Who was he? Why did he choose to go to Lanlan’s house and not another’s? If he was a rapist as Lanlan claimed, how come he knew that no man was in her home today? What was their true relationship? Nobody could tell. It seemed there must have been something between them. This couldn’t be a pure coincidence.

In the production brigade’s office the Party secretary, Chian Heng, and the director, Zhang Gu, were restless. By Lanlan’s appearance and account they were convinced that the dead man had attempted to rape her, though they were uncertain whether her denial of knowing him was true. During their questioning of her, she had never stopped crying and hadn’t been able to describe everything clearly. More disturbing was that the man was killed, so whatever she said became the statement of one party. Nobody could prove the dead man was a rapist.

“Stop worrying about the evidence, Old Chian,” Director Zhang said. “We’ll never have it. The man is already dead. What really matters is who he is.”

“That’s true.”

With a teacup in his hand the director went to a room across the corridor to call the police in Dismount Fort, while Secretary Chian remained in the office rolling a cigarette. In the next room Lanlan began crying again and declared she would kill herself for shame. A few female voices whispered, trying to calm her. Chian sighed and puffed out smoke. He had been a friend of Lanlan’s late husband and knew the couple had gone through a tumultuous marriage, and he had never liked Lanlan since the day she came to the village.

Zhang returned, heaving a sigh. “Any news?” Chian asked.

“Only Shen Li is in town tonight. They’ll come tomorrow morning.”

“Does he know anything about the dead man?”

“He said there was a report on a missing man—Dong Cai’s nephew, a lunatic.”

Chian was shocked, because Dong was the vice-secretary of the commune. “Did he know what the madman looks like?”

“Yes, a small man in corduroy pants.”

“Damn it,” Chian slapped his thigh, “that’s him.”

“We’re in trouble now.”

Chian stood up and went to the next room. Zhang followed him. At the sight of them Lanlan winced and lowered her head. “You know who you killed?” Chian asked her. Without waiting for an answer, he added, “You killed Vice-Secretary Dong’s nephew, a madman. Damn you, such a jinx.”

Lanlan burst into tears again.

“Why did you say that?” asked Aunt Wang, who was Secretary Chian’s mother-in-law’s cousin. “What else could she do? Hothead Chian, what do you want your wife to do if a strange man is on top of her?”

“No matter what, she shouldn’t kill him,” Chian said. “Now he’s dead, she can’t prove her case and she’ll go to jail.” He shook his head.

“Let’s go home. No use arguing with him,” Aunt Wang said, and held Lanlan by the elbow. They stood up and moved to the door, followed by two other women.

After covering the corpse with rice straws in a storeroom inside the office house and assigning three militiamen to stand guard at the door for the night, the secretary and the director left for home. They assured each other that they had better stay off this mess and let the police handle it.

Lanlan and Kai stayed at the Wangs’ that night. The fear and exhaustion upset her breasts, from which no milk came. She used to be proud of the two spurting fountains that had fattened the boy as if blowing up a balloon. Sometimes there had been so much milk in them that her husband had to suck them to relieve her pain, but now Kai, screaming, chewed her dry nipples ferociously with his two teeth. Aunt Wang gave her a large bowl of rice porridge; Lanlan fed the boy with it and ate two sweet potatoes herself.

Kai fell asleep soon afterwards, but Lanlan couldn’t stop tossing and turning in bed. She worried about what was going to happen the next day. Are they going to send me to jail? she asked herself. For sure they will. I killed an important man. Tears streamed down her cheeks again. What should 1 do about Kai if I go to jail? Oh, I’m such an unfortunate woman. Today I buried my husband and tomorrow I’ll squat in a dark cell. Whose fault is this? I was defending myself and that man was going to kill me, but they won’t believe me. Oh, what a life, so miserable, one misfortune after another.

It serves you right, she cursed herself. The moment your husband was buried, you began thinking how soon you would get married again, thinking of another man. It serves you right. Now you have a man and you can’t get rid of him. Shameless, you can’t live without a man.

The self-scathing words seemed to make her feel a little better. With her stomach gurgling from time to time, she wept continually until she fell asleep.

Early next morning Aunt Wang accompanied Lanlan back to her house. On the ground, in the outer room, there were a few large patches of dried blood. With a coal shovel Aunt Wang scraped them off; she brought in some fresh earth with a basket and covered the spots with it. They stamped about to tamp down the earth. Then they used water and towels to wipe off the blood on the bed. Because the bed’s surface was made of oilpaper, it wasn’t hard for them to get rid of the blotches and stains. After the cleaning Aunt Wang left. Still, the house smelled fishy, so Lanlan opened all the windows.

Having tied one end of a rope to the window frame and the other end around Kai’s waist to prevent him from falling off the bed, Lanlan began to bake corn cakes and make glue. She kept telling herself she had to eat—it would be a long day. Oddly enough, though she knew she might be sentenced to prison, somehow in her heart she felt the whole thing wouldn’t turn out that ugly. Hard as she tried to take the matter seriously, she seemed quite certain they would let her return home in the evening. She went out to feed the chickens, ducks, and piglets. At the sight of the food—chopped radish greens mixed with corn flour—the poultry made so much noise that Widower Bao, Aunt Wang’s brother-in-law, who happened to be passing by, stopped at the front gate to watch and whistle. Lanlan dared not raise her eyes to look at the man, who had a wry mouth.

The moment she put down her bowl on the dining table, two young men came to take her to the brigade’s office. They said that the police would arrive at any time and that she must go with them without delay. She left Kai with Aunt Wang and went with the men. Unable to keep herself from imagining the interrogation, she began to retch and had to stop at the roadside. She sat down on her haunches and vomited several minutes. Standing up, walking another few steps, she had a cramp in her right leg again. The two militiamen had to pull her along like dragging a counterrevolutionary to a public denunciation. She was moaning all the way.