Yan Lianke - Serve the People!

Nevertheless, Wu Dawang couldn't fathom why they should have gathered in this dissolute, undisciplined manner, tarnishing the dignity of their military office. The Deputy Commander was prostrate, snoring, on the bed. The Staff Officer was on the floor, leaning against the bed, crying hysterically. Or perhaps he was laughing: it was hard to tell from the other side of the window. Their host, in the meantime, had squatted down by the legs of the table and was slapping his own face, muttering over and over, 'Why couldn't you keepyour damned mouth shut?' The Captain and Political Instructor, by contrast, still seemed to be relatively coInpo,%,neatLi, as they attempted to reason with the Battalion Commander. `It's too soon to worry,' they appeared to be saying, `we don't yet know who's being demobilized, and who's being transferred.'

But the Battalion Commander simply sat there, roaring with mirthless laughter. `I know what's going to happen! I know!'

At this instant, the Captain happened to turn round and spot Wu Dawang looking in at them all. Paling, he glanced at his fallen comrades, then abandoned the Battalion Commander and strode out of the room to confront their eavesdropper. `What are you doing back here again?' he barked at him, yanking him away from the window.

`I'd been at home over a month, Captain.'

`Have you been to the Division Commander's house?'

`Not yet.'

Heaving a sigh of relief, the Captain went back inside to say something, then came out again to drag Wu Dawang and the Signals Officer back to barracks. On the way, he issued a single command to his Sergeant. `Tell no one anythingyou heard or saw just now. If any-any of this-reaches the Division Commander, we're all of us finished.' After that, he was silent.

And so Wu Dawang returned to barracks, still unable to make sense of a single thing going on around him. He didn't really trouble himself with the complexities of the restructuring. He thought only of his affair with Liu Lian, and of the succulent fruits of victory that it was going to bring him: honourable discharge from the army, and jobs for him and his wife in the city.

To begin with, this was exactly how simple everything appeared to Wu Dawang. In the short time that he'd been back in the army, he'd been genuinely taken aback by how happily things were working out for him. It looked as if his untimely reappearance in barracks had made the Division authorities desperate to be rid of him again, and as quickly as possible. Within a week he and his family had been fixed up with work and housing in the city nearest their village. While his comrades-in-arms agonized over the uncertainty of their prospects, all Wu Dawang had to do to assure his own future was fill in and sign a few forms handed to him by army bureaucrats. That was all.

Wu Dawang's army career drew to a close so fast that it almost took him by surprise. For his last few days, he tried to put thoughts of the restructuring-of its Strengthening of the National Economy and Improving of the People's Livelihood-to one side. Instead, he took the opportunity to wander about, reacquainting himself with the barracks after his long absence, calling on comrades-in-arms from his village, washing his bedding and clothes. At night, he struggled to temper his impossible longing for Liu Lian by sternly reminding himself how fortunate he'd been to enjoy the time he'd had with her.

But this exceptional period of idleness also gave Wu Dawang time to reflect on everything that had gone before, hardening his suspicions that the entire course of this affair of his had formed part of an elaborately choreographed scheme. He was beginning to sense that his liaison with Liu Lian was a piece of theatre scripted and directed from behind the scenes, in which his only freedom had been whether or not to engage emotionally with the role he had been cast in. As his suspicions grew, he could feel the intensity of his feelings waning, but he was still unwilling to acknowledge the absence of any real emotional honesty in his relationship with Liu Lian. Nor could he replace his fairytale memories of their affair with hardheaded contemplation of how it might relate to the way the Division was being dismantled. He refused to believe that the Division Commander would, for purely self-interested reasons, exploit the Central Party Streamlining Initiative in order to scatter his own troops like autumn leaves. Even though three battalions and four companies had already been banished to a remote frontier division five hundred miles away, still Wu Dawang would not believe it. Over the past two days, however, the Corps Commander-the Division Commander's immediate superior-had arrived to take charge of the restructuring and demobilization. This was clearly a serious business. Wu Dawang had witnessed how troops, on the eve of their departure, would sit woodenly through their farewell banquets. Then afterward, emboldened by liquor, they would seek out isolated corners of the barracks on which to vent their anger, shattering windows and smashing equipment that had been with them through years of struggle, honour and disgrace. In the minutes before leaving, they would weep openly in front of each other, resigned never to meet again in this life.

But still they left: the First Regiment in its entirety, then the First Battalion of the Second Regiment, then the Machine Gunners.

The previous afternoon, Wu Dawang had taken himself quietly over to the Machine Gunners' barracks, by which point the entire company-which had twice won collective commendations in the Civil War-had already been dispatched in five trucks marked `Liberation' to the special militarytransport station. Chaos as complete as the chaos he and Liu Lian had spread throughout the Division Commander's house some two months agoprevailed in the empty building.

But while the disorder that he and Liu Lian had generated had been an expression of their love for each other, the cheerless anarchy of the Machine Gunners' barracks spoke only of despair and uncertainty. Wooden guns used in drill practice lay uselessly on the floors, while the rubber coating on a vaulting horse had been hacked into scars that gaped like screaming mouths. Across the notice board that in happier days had been the mouthpiece of discipline and orthodoxy, someone had scrawled `Fuck you all'.

On the paper strips used to seal off the vacated dormitories, someone else had scribbled a few lines of mournfully ironic doggerel in red pen: `Our Helmsman guides us over the seas, sailing where the currents please; when the sea goes east so do we, as free as the wind and rain.'

Beneath a vermilion sunset, Wu Dawang stood at the main door to the deserted barracks, feeling the desolation wash over him. Though he knew that he owed the departing Machine Gunners a few tears, his eyes remained obstinately dry. It dawned on him that he was, deep down, indifferent to the distress his comrades felt as they were restructured back to the dead-end homes from which they'd come. The true source of his pain was the warning he'd been given against returning to the Division Commander's house.

On his way back to barracks, he bumped into the Head of Management, who needed his signature on a job assignment form. Once the document had been signed, he patted Wu Dawang on the shoulder and flashed him a mysterious smile. `Thanks to Liu Lian,' he remarked, you've come out of this better than any of us.' And off he went with his form, leaving Wu Dawang still pondering his words-and that ambiguous smirk of his-until past dinnertime.

After lights-out that evening, as the Division collectively closed its eyes and prepared for sleep, Wu Dawang lay wide awake, thinking things over. For some reason, in the daytime he was able to keep the restructuring separate in his mind from his affair with Liu Lian, but at night the one would always surreptitiously become intertwined with the other.