Ha Jin: Under the Red Flag

Beneath the track, Meng’s headless body lay in a ditch. One of his feet was missing, and the whitish shinbone stuck out several inches long. There were so many openings on his body that he looked like a large piece of fresh meat on the counter in the butcher’s. Beyond him, ten paces away, a big straw hat remained on the ground. We were told that his head was under the hat.

Bare Hips and I went down the slope to see the head. Other boys dared not take a peep. We two looked at each other, asking with our eyes who should raise the straw hat. I held out my wooden scimitar and lifted the rim of the hat a little with the sword. A swarm of bluebottles charged out, droning like provoked wasps. We bent over to peek at the head. Two long teeth pierced through the upper lip. An eyeball was missing. The gray hair was no longer perceivable, covered with mud and dirt. The open mouth was filled with purplish mucus. A tiny lizard skipped, sliding away into the grass.

“Oh!” Bare Hips began vomiting. Sorghum gruel mixed with bits of string beans splashed on a yellowish boulder. “Leave it alone, White Cat.”

We lingered at the station, listening to different versions of the accident. Some people said Meng had gotten drunk and dropped asleep on the track. Some said he hadn’t slept at all but laughed hysterically walking in the middle of the track toward the coming train. Some said he had not drunk a drop, because he had spoken with tears in his eyes to a few persons he had run into on his way to the station. In any case, he was dead, torn to pieces.

That evening when I was coming home, I heard Mu Ying groaning in the smoky twilight. “Take me home. Oh, help me. Who can help me? Where are you? Why don’t you come and carry me home?”

She was lying at the bus stop, alone.

At the Spring Festival Hao Nan was very happy, because a week ago he had been engaged to Soo Yan, one of the pretty girls in Flag Pole Village. She was tall and literate. By custom, the dowry would cost the Haos a fortune: eight silk quilts, four pairs of embroidered pillowcases, ten suits of outer clothes, five meters of woolen cloth, six pairs of leather shoes, four dozen nylon socks, a wristwatch, two thermos bottles, a sewing machine, a bicycle, a pair of hardwood chests. Yet Nan’s parents were pleased by the engagement, for the Soos were a rich family in the village and Yan was the only daughter. The wedding was scheduled to take place on the Moon Day the next fall. Though the Haos didn’t have much money left after the engagement feast, they were not worried. Since they had two marriageable daughters, they would be able to marry off at least one of them to get the cash for Nan’s wedding.

It was the third day of the Spring Festival. Nan and four other young men were on duty at the office of the village militia. Because the educated youths from Dalian had returned home to spend the holiday season with their families in the city, the young villagers had to cover all the shifts. It was a good way of making ten workpoints—a full day’s pay, so nobody complained. Besides, it was an easy job. For eight hours they didn’t have to do anything except stay in the office and make one round through the village.

Outside, a few snowflakes were swirling like duck down around the red lanterns hung at every gate. The smell of gunpowder and incense lingered in the air. Firecrackers exploded now and then, mingled with the music of a Beijing opera sent out by a loudspeaker. Inside the militia’s office, the five men were a little bored, though they had plenty of corn liquor, roasted sunflower seeds, and candies with which to while away the time. They had been playing the poker game called Beat the Queen. Liu Daiheng and Mu Bing wanted to stop to play chess by themselves, but the others wouldn’t let them. There was no fun if only three men drew the cards, and they wanted to crown two kings and beat two queens every time.

Slowly the door opened. To their surprise, Sang Zhu’s bald head emerged, and then in came his small body and bowlegs. “Hello, kk-Uncle Sang,” Nan said with a clumsy smile that revealed his canine teeth.

Without answering, Sang glared at Nan, who had almost blurted out his nickname, Cuckold Sang. People called him that because his young wife, Shuling, often had affairs. It was said that she was a fox spirit and always ready to seduce a man. People thought that Sang, already in his fifties and almost twice his wife’s age, must have been useless in bed. At least he didn’t have sperm, or else Shuling would have given him a baby.

Sang was holding his felt hat. He looked tipsy, his baggy eyes bloodshot. “Uncle Sang,” Wang Ming said, “take a seat.” Without a word, Sang sat down and put his elbows on the table.

They needed a sixth person to play the game One Hundred Points. “Want to join us?” Nan asked.

“No poker, boys,” Sang said. “Give me something to drink.”

Yang Wei poured him a mug of corn liquor. “Here you are,” he said, winking at the others.

“Good, this is what I need.” Sang raised the mug to his lips and almost emptied it in one gulp. “I came here for serious business tonight.”

“What is it?” Daiheng asked.

“I invite you boys over to screw my wife,” Sang said deliberately.

All the young men were taken aback, and the room suddenly turned quiet except for the sputtering of the coal stove. They looked at one another, not knowing how to respond.

“You’re kidding, Uncle Sang,” Daiheng said, after a short while.

“I mean it. She’s hot all the time. I want you to give it to her enough tonight.” Anger inflamed Sang’s eyes.

Silence again fell in the room.

“Afraid to come, huh?” Sang asked, his sparse brows puckered up. A smile crumpled his sallow face.

“Sure, we’d like to come. Who wouldn’t?” said Ming, who was a squad leader in the militia.

“Well, sometimes heaven does drop meat pies,” Bing said, as if to himself.

“No, we shouldn’t go,” Nan cut in, scanning the others’ faces with his narrow eyes gleaming. He turned to Sang and said, “It’s all right to do it to your wife, Uncle Sang, but that could be dangerous to us.” Turning to the others, he asked, “Remember what happened at the brickyard last summer? You fellas don’t want to get into that kind of trouble, do you?”

His words dampened the heat in the air. For a moment even the squad leader Wang Ming and Liu Daiheng, the oldest of them, didn’t know what to say. Everybody remained silent. What Nan had referred to was a case in which a prostitute had been screwed to death by a bunch of brick makers. Of course, prostitution was banned in the New China, but there were always women selling their flesh on the sly. The woman had gone to the brickyard once a month and asked for five yuan a customer, which was a big price, equal to two days’ pay earned by a brick maker. That was why the men wouldn’t let her off easily. They gave her the money but forced her to work without a stop. As they had planned, they kept her busy throughout the night, and even after she lost consciousness they went on mounting her. She died the next day. Then the police came and arrested the men. Later three of them were sentenced to eight years in prison.

“Nan’s right. I don’t think we should go,” Wei said at last.

“You’re no man,” Sang said with a sneer, stroking his beardless chin. “I invite you boys to share my wife, free of charge, but none of you dare come. Chickens!”

“Uncle Sang, if you want us to come,” Daiheng said, “you ought to write a pledge.”

“But I don’t know how to write.”

“Good idea. We can help you with that,” Ming said.

“All right, you write and I’ll put in my thumbprint.”

Ming went to the desk, pulled a drawer, and took out a pen and a piece of paper. He sat down to work on the pledge.