Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

“Oh, good. A new campaign. As Chairman Mao says, ‘After the enemies with guns have been wiped out, there will still be the enemies without guns.’ ”

He ignored her tone. “Haven’t you been reading the papers?”

“They closed our office because the pipes froze,” Big Mother said. “Everything flooded. We’re a unit of more than two hundred people and the committee has to find a new space for us. So I’ve been liberated.”

“That’s no excuse to stay indoors and feel sorry for yourself!”

Big Mother eyed her husband.

He sighed and tried to soften his tone. “Isn’t there anything to eat?” He took off his coat and went to the water basin, drinking straight from the dipper. Underneath all the padding, she saw that Ba Lute’s clothes seemed far too large, as if he had halved in size. Perhaps he had donated his flesh to the peasants. She got up, smashed around and finally slapped some food down in front of him. Ba Lute acted as if hadn’t eaten in a week. After polishing off a mountain of rice and a leg of chicken, their entire meat ration for the week, Ba Lute conceded he had missed her.

She sniffed. “Is it so bad out there?”

“The usual.” He found a clean cloth and wiped his mouth, then his whole face, pressing down on his eyes. Ba Lute had always been too round and cocky for his own good. This new thinness gave him a vulnerable, starved look, which confused her. He ran the cloth over the back of his neck. “Our land reform policy is glorious, but the People are in disarray. Still, it’s necessary work we’re doing. No one can say otherwise.” Without seeming to realize he was doing it, he started humming “Weeds Cannot Be Wiped Out.”

“You and land reform,” she said. “You’d think your mother gave birth to the idea.”

Ba Lute was so startled that he laughed. He checked himself and said abruptly, “Go to the devil, how can you joke like that? You’re going to get yourself killed.” As he put the cloth down, his hands seemed shaky. “Big Mother, you’ve got to learn to hold your tongue.”

She looked at the bone on his plate. Picked clean. “You’re home for awhile, are you?”

“I am.”

“Good. Because I’m going to Bingpai to see my sister.”

“Eh?” he said. His eyebrows lifted so high she thought they would fly away. “But what about your husband?”

She picked up the bone and chewed on the end. “He’ll survive.”

Ba Lute smiled but then, thinking over what she said, frowned. He slapped his hand on the table, working himself up into a grand annoyance. “Big Mother, listen here. Don’t you know we’re right in the middle of a life-and-death campaign? Please! Don’t look at me like that. I’m telling you, there’s a war going on in the countryside.”

“It’s always a war with you people.”

“There you go again! Now just hold on and think it through.”

Once Ba Lute got going, she couldn’t stop him. She stared hungrily at his empty plate.

“Some of these peasants, these desperate people,” he continued, “have to be forced to remember every humiliation. Forced! They have to be driven nearly out of their minds with grief before they can find the courage to pick up their knives and drive the landlords out. Of course they’re afraid. In the whole history of the world, what peasant revolution has ever made a lasting change?” He rubbed his bald head again. “I know what I’m talking about, don’t think I don’t. Anyway, it was all calming down but the Hundred Flowers Campaign stirred everyone up again. Encouraging the masses to criticize the Party! And now they’ve done it….”

“My work unit has already issued me a travel permit.”

“Your husband forbids it.”

“Chairman Mao says women hold up half the sky.” She took his plate, picked up the chicken bone and flung it towards the scraps bucket. She missed. The bone hit the wall and stuck there. “Be a model father,” she said, “and look after your sons.”

“Do you always have to be so stubborn?” he yelled. Ba Lute slumped forward over the table. “You weren’t so pigheaded when I married you.” He was like that. He exploded and then settled right down again. Like a trumpet.

For the first time in two months, Big Mother felt slightly better. “It’s true,” she nodded. “I wasn’t.”

—

The journey from Shanghai to the village of Bingpai was nineteen hours by train and minibus. By the end of her journey, Big Mother Knife felt like someone had broken both her legs. In Bingpai, she stumbled from the bus into the drizzle and found herself in an empty field. The village, which she remembered as prosperous, looked bedraggled and ugly.

When at last she trudged up the mountain path to Wen the Dreamer’s family house, she was in a foul mood. At his gate, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. Surely the driver was a crook, and the fool had let her off at the wrong village or even the wrong county. Yet…there was no denying that the flagstones looked familiar. The courtyard was missing its gate, it had plain disappeared. Seeing lamplight, she marched through the inner courtyard and into the south wing. There was junk everywhere, as if the fine house was about to be torn down. Entering, she saw a half-dozen wraiths crawling on the ground. In her fright, she nearly dropped her soul (her father’s expression), but then Big Mother Knife realized these were not wraiths but people. People who were busily removing the tiles and digging up the floors.

“Greetings, Sister Comrades!” she said.

A wraith stopped its digging motion and peered at her.

Big Mother pressed on. “I see you are busy with reconstruction work? Each one of us must build the new China! But can you tell me, where I should go to find the family that resides here?”

The woman who was staring at her said, “Thrown out. Executed like criminals.”

“Travelling — like criminals?” Big Mother said. Her instinct was to laugh. She thought she had mistakenly heard xíng lù “executed” (刑 戮) rather than xíng lù “traveller” (行 路).

Another woman made a gun with her hand, shot at her own head, and broke into a chilling smile. “Firstly the man,” she said. “Secondly,” she shot again, “the woman.”

“They buried silver coins under the floor,” another said. “That money belongs to the village, they know it does, and we’ll uncover it all.”

Big Mother reached her hand out but the wall was too far away.

“Who are you, anyway?” the woman with the make-believe gun said. “You look familiar.”

“I would like to know who gave you permission to be here,” Big Mother said. To her fury, she could detect a trembling in her voice.

“Permission!” the woman hooted.

“Permission,” the others echoed. They smiled at her as if she was the wraith.

Big Mother turned and walked outside. She went slowly through the inner courtyard, all the way to the front of the house. Here she lost momentum and sat down on a low brick wall a hundred yards from the entrance. Nobody had followed her and the kerosene lamp continued to flicker from inside. Now she heard the thwack of their shovels. That bus driver was the grandson of a turtle! He’d certainly dropped her at the wrong place. Ba Lute’s warnings were getting under her skin. She pulled on her hair and tried to wake herself, she pressed her hands violently to her face, but no matter what she did, her eyes refused to open and the dream would not end. She stared all around and saw the absurdity of her travelling bag, the muddy ground, the grey house and tiny night stars coming out. She would have to go back into the house and straighten things out. Yes, she would go back inside. It was a strange, windy night and she could hear a shrill cry echoing over the hillside. What ghosts were visiting this place? She could hear shouts now, coming nearer, and the ringing of a gong. A funeral, she thought numbly, but still Big Mother did not stand up or withdraw.