Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

“Haven’t you seen it? I thought the land reform campaign had reached everywhere. During the war…I’ll never forget the cruelties we saw. I understand why nothing can stay the same.”

“Of course, but…”

“Once everything is broken, they can build society once more.”

How many times had her sister spoken these words? “They,” Big Mother said. “The revolutionary committees? The Communist Party?”

“They say it’s the wheel of history. I’m not afraid. You know how it is, one hand can’t stop the flood from destroying the bank. Only…I worry about Zhuli. She’s been born into the wrong class, she’s the daughter of Wen the Dreamer. The daughter of a landlord. Nothing I do can change that. What if I can’t protect her?”

“Come with me to Shanghai. My no-good husband can arrange it.”

“It’s the wheel of history,” Swirl said. There were no tears in her voice, just the cut glass of pragmatism. “The Party says only the guilty try to escape punishment. If we run away, not even Ba Lute will be able to intervene. We can’t risk it. I have to protect Zhuli, but how?”

—

Much later, in the years after Swirl had been released from the desert labour camps, when Zhuli had already grown into a young woman, Big Mother pieced the story together.

The Party men had arrived in Bingpai on the day Wen and his uncles were dragging ice off the mountain lake. It was arduous work, but worthwhile because, once covered in straw, the ice, ever useful, would keep for many months.

The uncles used to have labourers but now preferred to do this kind of work themselves. The previous year, when land redistribution had reached Bingpai, the brothers had known better than to argue. There were far worse fates than having to give up a few acres of land. In the neighbouring county, a dozen people had been struggled against — a sort of large meeting where accusations were shouted, where the accused were beaten and sometimes tortured — and executed, but the dead had been, mostly, rich men infamous for their savagery. Last year, when delegates from the Bingpai peasants’ association arrived at their gate, the brothers had not resisted and had relinquished the title deeds for all seventeen acres of the family holdings, which would be redivided among the village. True, Er Ge’s wife had left him, but he still had the two grown children. And Ji Zi had talked of killing himself, but no one took him seriously. Meanwhile life continued: until land reform was finalized, the fields still had to be tilled and orchards tended. In fact, the harvest of sweet apples that year was the most bountiful in the brothers’ memory.

As the cart complained its way through the gate, Wen and his uncles were surprised to see two strangers, as well as the village head and the chairman of the peasants’ association, standing outside. Da Ge stepped out from behind the block of ice. He greeted the visitors and invited them inside to share a meal. The village head declined. It was all rather uncomfortable and Da Ge, who had always been impatient, said, “Well, if there’s nothing urgent, we’ll get back to work. The ice can’t wait.”

One of the strangers, who had yet to introduce himself, intervened. There was a meeting underway at the village school, he informed them, and the brothers were late.

The village head stepped forward. “These two teachers,” he said, indicating the strangers, “have come all the way from the county Party committee. Of course, as your family is so prominent in Bingpai, how could we start the meeting without you?”

In the courtyard, the silence seemed to echo off the bricks and ice. Where was everyone anyway? Neither Da Ge nor his brothers had eaten in almost six hours. Still, he led his siblings and Wen through the gate and fell in line behind the strangers and the village head.

—

At the primary school, Swirl had been bundled off to the side with her daughter, where they knelt with twenty-odd others on the cold ground. Among them were the wives of Wen’s uncles, who had been brought under guard and were now at centre stage. The crowd was already in the hundreds, yet more people kept arriving to take part in the meeting. Da Ge’s wife was repeatedly slapped and kicked until she cried out for mercy. The fierce, no-nonsense woman, already in her mid-fifties, was hysterical. She was pawing at the ground as if trying to find a coin in the ice.

Zhuli had long stopped crying. She clutched her mother, completely silent. Swirl didn’t dare try to comfort her. When I get home, she told herself, I will warm a little water, wet a cloth and wipe her frozen tears away. It’s nothing. Nothing that a little warm water can’t clean away.

Now the men came, the four brothers and her Wen. They were surrounded and quickly trussed up. Swirl could hear Da Ge shouting. Her daughter was weakly calling out, “Ba!” Swirl cupped her body around Zhuli, thinking that the child must not see, nothing must happen. But hands came and pulled at Zhuli. Voices shouted at the child to open her eyes, she had to learn. Swirl stumbled to her feet and tried to get her daughter back, but they moved decisively and brutally. When she looked up from the ground, she saw that Zhuli had been lifted onto a man’s thin shoulders. The girl sat, unmoving, staring ahead of her.

The arrival of Wen the Dreamer and his uncles had brought renewed life to the freezing crowd. New accusations came to the fore. One spoke of the famine and how he’d sold his land to Da Ge for nothing. “Robbery!” someone shouted. “You used your good fortune to trample your neighbours into the mud. How else could you acquire over seventeen acres in so short a time?” The brother of Er Ge’s wife accused Er Ge of mistreating her, beating her and even depriving her of food. Er Ge denied it, he tried to put up a fight but others came to knock him down. It was chaos. The strangers had dispersed through the crowd asking people, “Who beat you? Who humiliated your fathers and raped your daughters? Was it them?”

“It was…It was…”

“Who made their fortunes during the war?”

“These landowners think they can spit out a square of land. They think you should get down on your knees and bless them!”

“We must free ourselves!” There was revenge in their voices but also grief and weeping.

“Comrades, have the courage to stand together once and for all!”

“A life for a life!”

“Who humiliated you? Tell us. This is not your shame! Why should you carry it?”

A woman had rushed into the circle. She pointed at a man in a dark blue gown. “This man raped me when I was six years old,” she said. “He covered my face with my mother’s clothes and he…” She was cradling her stomach and began to sob. “That was only the beginning. He saw that my father was dead and I had no one to stand up for me. This monster, this animal! Every pain I suffered gave him pleasure.” Someone pushed a shovel into her hands. At first her blows were weak, as if only grief, not rage, motivated her. But the chanting of the crowd drove her on and the shovel took on a new, determined rhythm. She continued to land the shovel even after it made no difference.

“Twenty years of war and for what? To be thrown back into the gutters of society again?”

“I worked myself to death to harvest five dàn of grain. Meanwhile you took four dàn in rent,” a man said to Da Ge. “We ate the husks of rice, the husks of wheat, the husks of millet. My children have been hungry from the day they were born. But what are your tenants to you? Nothing but fertilizer!”

“I gave you fair terms,” Da Ge began but he was immediately drowned out.

“Fair?” The man laughed bitterly.

“Pay your debts! Everyone must pay their debts!”

“If you don’t settle with them now,” one of the strangers said calmly, “these landowners will wait until we’re gone, and then they will wipe you out one by one. You cannot make half a revolution.”