Ha Jin - Under the Red Flag

I felt uneasy about that. Wenli used to be my teacher, a graceful delicate woman; cookies would show I had no taste. Unlike the country people who were obsessed with good food, Wenli had never seemed to be interested in eating. I had a new pink skirt with me, but I didn’t know her size now; she must have been much taller than I. Having thought it over, I decided to take the issue of Youth as a gift, since it contained a story of mine, which would probably convince her that I, as a student of hers once, had been trying to live up to some of the expectations that she might have cherished for herself in the past. I would tell her that I wanted to be a writer—a novelist and playwright—even though I couldn’t dance well.

After dinner I set out for East Street, which was just about three hundred paces away. In the dusk a half-moon was wavering beyond the water tower and the buildings within the army compound. Here and there chimneys were puffing out bands of smoke, which were dangling in the indigo sky. The street was much quieter than ten years before. I remembered playing soldier here with boys and girls at dusk, shouting and throwing cabbage roots and rotten turnips at each other.

The moment I entered East Street a small crowd appeared ahead on the left side. I heard people quarreling and calling each other names. Their sharp voices, male and female, fluctuated through the air like sounds sent over by a tweeter from a long distance. I walked closer and saw men and women arguing and gesticulating under a road lamp.

“No, that’s not true! Your chicken never came Into our yard to lay an egg,” a stalwart woman in white pajamas said loudly, waving a rolling pin.

“I saw it enter your yard this afternoon, and I heard it clucking afterwards,” a small woman said, holding a white hen in her arms.

“Liar! Why didn’t you come and pick it up then?”

Two men, who were apparently the husbands, tried to stop the women, saying it was merely an egg, not worth it.

“No,” the small woman said to her husband, “it’s not just an egg. Look at that shrew, she can kill me if I come near her.” Then she turned to the tall woman. “Zhu Wenli, you’re a cadre and have drunk a lot of ink. I’m just a housewife and don’t read books. I don’t care if we scratch each other’s faces.”

“If you dare to touch me, I’ll break your skull with this,” the stalwart woman said, sucking her teeth, and raised the rolling pin. She spat to the ground.

I looked closely. She was indeed my teacher Zhu Wenli, but her thick body and fleshy face belied the young person I had known. A pale scar under her nostrils tightened the upper lip and made her mouth protrude a little. All the tenderness and innocence which had marked that face was now replaced by a numb, stony look. Even her voice had changed too, full of scratchy metal. If the small woman hadn’t mentioned her name, I would never have been able to recognize her. Indeed she looked very strong, as Aunt had told me, but she was no longer the person I wanted to meet. Somehow I was overwhelmed by a kind of hatred rising in me.

Her husband, a short balding man, held her arm, turned her around, and pulled her away. Together they were returning to the granite house. A feeling of misery filled my chest, similar to how I had felt when my first boyfriend left me for another girl. Things turned misty before my eyes, and I found myself in tears.

HA JINis the author of two books of poetry and another short story collection, Ocean of Words , winner of the 1997 PEN/Hemingway Award for Fiction. He has received many other writing awards, including three Pushcart Prizes for his short stories and the Kenyon Review Prize for Fiction. He teaches at Emory University.