Ha Jin - Under the Red Flag

From that day on, all the brigade leaders became very considerate to her. They asked her whether she wanted help for sowing her family plot and whether her piglets needed gelding. Whatever she was unable to do, just let them know. In a week another article appeared, but this time in the biggest newspaper in the province, Liaoning Daily . It praised Lanlan as a model in fighting class enemies, as the title declared: “A Young Woman Subdued a Violent Criminal.” Currently, the Provincial Administration was waging a full-scale campaign against crime. The article called upon all citizens to follow Lanlan’s example and participate in cracking down on the criminals so as to create a peaceful environment for everyone to work, study, and live in.

Now Lanlan became famous. The County Administration issued a document about her case, instructing the Personnel Department to assign her a good job and the Police Bureau to provide her with a residence card, which would qualify her as a city dweller. In a few days she was informed that she was given a job as a saleswoman at a hardware store in Gold County. She would be paid sixty yuan a month, 30 percent higher than the regular starting salary. In addition, she would become a permanent resident in the county town.

No one expected such a fortune could drop from heaven. Aunt Wang was unhappy about it, because Lanlan hadn’t given her an answer yet and probably had stopped considering the proposal. Now the young widow had flown beyond the old woman’s reach, and Widower Bao’s chance of marrying her was dwindling. One morning Lanlan heard beyond the wall Aunt Wang cursing a dog, “You ungrateful beast.” Lanlan didn’t care. Her mother had arrived to help her after hearing of what had happened, and her breasts had regained abundant milk, and she didn’t need to have anything to do with that jealous crone anymore. At last Aunt Wang showed her true nature. A yellow weasel never wishes a chicken a Happy New Year without thinking of the chicken’s blood, Lanlan told herself.

Two weeks later The People’s Daily , the largest newspaper in China, also published a short article about Lanlan. In addition to praising her virtue and bravery, it mentioned her residence card and her new job, which she actually couldn’t start in two months until an old clerk retired from the hardware store. This article brought her hundreds of admiring letters from different parts of the country. Dozens of men sent her letters containing their photographs and proposed to her. Most of them were soldiers in the army or farmers in the countryside. They didn’t care what she looked like, because they knew she was good—a chaste, healthy woman; and they wanted nothing but a virtuous, hardworking wife. Some men even said they would treat the baby boy as their own.

Lanlan was stunned that all of a sudden so many men would marry her, ready to give her a happy family. For the first time in her life she felt China was indeed a great country and never lacked men and women. But her mother was coolheaded and told her that besides their interest in her virtue and health, most of the men also had an eye on her residence card and her lucrative job. They wanted their descendants to be city dwellers, since according to the law an infant automatically adopted its mother’s residential status. She told Lanlan, “Men are always after a good woman, just like flies after blood.” So she helped her choose a reliable man, who was from their home village and worked as a cook at a state-owned restaurant in Gold County. The wedding was scheduled to take place at the Mid-Fall Festival. By then, Lanlan would have settled in the county town.

Sometimes she couldn’t help thinking of the handsome reporter. She regretted that she hadn’t asked his name. The memory often brought up a slight contraction in her chest, but she tried not to let it disturb her mind. In secret, she regarded him as a benefactor, an upright gentleman, and probably a sage. Now the spring breeze did blow, and she got more than she had expected. You mustn’t be too greedy, she kept telling herself. Besides, that man must have had his own family and never have thought of her—a simple rustic woman. Whoever he was, she wished him lots of children and a happy life.

“Damn you,” Fulan cursed her husband, Lu Han. “Now the whole Ox Village knows you slept with my sister. How can I go out and meet their faces?”

Lu was sucking at a pipe in silence. The wrinkles on his forehead stretched to his temples, and his small eyes were lusterless. He was not yet thirty, but he had changed so much recently that he looked like a man in his fifties. Fulan took their four-month-old boy off her large breast, turned him around, and thrust her other nipple into his mouth. She said, “Shame on you. Can’t take care of your own cock. Even a studhorse knows not to mount his sister. Shameless—why don’t you go out, find a tree, and hang yourself?”

Lu wanted to jump up and yell, “Your sister’s no good either, a cracked melon already! If a bitch doesn’t raise her tail, no dog can do anything to her.” But he remained on the bench, motionless, biting his thick lips.

“All right,” she started again, “play deaf if you like. Tomorrow I’ll go back to my parents with Leopard. If your face is thick enough, come and fetch us. My dad and brothers will skin you alive.”

Lu stood up and walked out into the dusk. He knew that talking was useless; once she got an idea into her head, you could never bring her around. Besides, what could he say? He was in the wrong to have slept with Fuli when his wife was pregnant. He felt so ashamed that he had cursed himself many times, but what was done was done, and all he could do now was bear the consequences.

The peanut plants rustled in a lazy breeze. Katydids were chirping tremulously as the night air brought its coolness. Lu sat down by a millstone under a large mulberry. His broad shoulders drooped, and his short legs wearied. He gave out a long sigh and muttered to himself, “You asked for it.”

He began thinking about how to atone for his error and start his life anew. The day before, the Party secretary, Zhao Mingyi, had told him to prepare to make a clean breast of his offense. He was supposed to go to the production brigade’s office the next evening and face interrogation by the brigade leaders. He was not afraid of their scolding, because he was certain he could keep quiet and endure their scathing words. What worried him was that if they were not satisfied with his confession and self-criticism, they could have him denounced publicly or paraded through the streets as a corrupt element. If that happened, his family and he himself would be done for. He had to be careful not to offend those leaders. For the time being, he thought, let Fulan do whatever she wants. He should deal with the external crisis first. Only after settling that could he put his family in order again.

Next morning, after breakfast, Fulan was ready to leave with their baby for Date Village, where her parents lived. She was to take a horse cart, which was going there to carry back peanut cakes for the brigade’s chicken farm. Before she got on the cart, Lu gave the driver, Chu, a packet of Rose cigarettes and asked him to take care of his wife and son on the way. Chu smelled the cigarettes and promised with a grin, “They’ll get there without losing a hair.”

After they left, Lu went directly to the soybean field on the southern hill and joined the commune members in hoeing.

He didn’t cook lunch for himself at noon; instead he ate two cold corn cakes and radishes with soy paste. After feeding the poultry and the sow and the piglets, he went back to the field. For a whole day he smoked continually, musing over the impending trial. How lucky it was that his parents were dead. If they had been alive, the shame he brought on them could have killed them. How lucky he was that the leaders hadn’t caught Fuli, or they would have interrogated her to see whether everything he told them was true. She had left for her aunt’s in Heilongjiang Province a month before the scandal became public. In the northern frontier every woman was considered marriageable, because men outnumbered women. Two brothers would even share one wife. Lu heard that Fuli became engaged to a middle-aged veteran soon after she arrived there.