Wang Dan’s gate was locked and not a sound emerged from the other side. So Gugu told her team to break down the gate and enter the yard. Your aunt had to have been tipped off, Father said. She hobbled into the house, where she removed the lid from a pot on the stove and saw it was half filled with porridge. She tested it with her finger; it was still warm. She smirked. Chen Bi, Wang Dan, she announced loudly, either you come out on your own or I’ll come get you, like dragging rats out of their hole.
Silence.
Gugu pointed to a wardrobe in the corner. Nothing but old clothes. Your aunt had people take out all the old clothes, exposing the bottom floor. She then picked up a rolling pin and pounded on it until a hole opened up. You can come out of there, guerrilla heroes, she said. Or do you want us to pour water in?
Chen Er, Wang Dan’s daughter, was first out. Her face was streaked with dust, making her look like a temple demon. Not only did she not cry, she bared her teeth and giggled. Chen Bi was next. He hadn’t shaved, his hair was curled, and he was wearing a vest that showed his chest hair; he was a sorry sight. A big man like that, Father said, and he immediately fell to his knees in front of your aunt and banged his head on the floor over and over, setting up a racket. His pitiful wails affected the whole village.
Gugu, dear, dear Gugu, I was the first child you delivered and Wang Dan is so tiny, won’t you raise your noble hand and spare us… Gugu, our family will remember your mercy for generations…
Father said, People who were there said your aunt heard this with tears in her eyes. Chen Bi, she said, oh, Chen Bi, this isn’t for me to decide. If it were, that would make it easy. I’d cut off my hand for you!
Please, Gugu, be merciful.
Chen Bi’s daughter cleverly fell to her knees, just like her father, and banged her head on the floor.
Be merciful, she intoned, be merciful…
Right about then, Father said, Wuguan, who was part of the crowd, began glibly singing lines from the song ‘Tunnel Warfare’: Tunnel warfare/Hey, tunnel warfare/Thousands of brave fighters hidden below… tunnel warfare spread out over the boundless plain… If the Japs resist, we’ll finish them off.
Your aunt wiped her darkening face. That’s enough, Chen Bi. Now call Wang Dan out.
Chen Bi crawled up to your aunt on his knees and wrapped his arms around her leg. Chen Er copied him, wrapping her arms around the other leg.
Wuguan sang more of the song: Tunnel warfare spread out over the boundless plain… We’ll cut them to pieces if they dare come here… Tie every man’s tubes, practise birth control…
Your aunt tried to break free, but they refused to let go of her legs.
Then she realised something. Go down there! she ordered.
One of the militiamen climbed down into the hole, holding a flashlight in his mouth.
Another followed him down.
There’s nobody here, came a shout from below.
Overcome by anger, Gugu toppled over and passed out.
That Chen Bi nearly put something over on your aunt, Father said. Remember that vegetable plot behind his house? Well, it had a well with a pulley, and that was the escape hatch for the tunnel. I don’t know how Chen Bi managed such a big job, with all that dirt he had to get rid of. While he and Chen Er were tying up your aunt, Wang Dan had gone through the tunnel and pulled herself up by the pulley over the well. It couldn’t have been easy, Father said, for that little slip of a woman, big belly and all, to climb up that rope to get away.
They carried your aunt over to the well. How could I be so stupid! she spat out angrily, accentuated by a stomp of her foot. How could I! Back when my father worked at the Xihai Hospital he led a team to dig just such a tunnel.
Your aunt passed out a second time. This time she was taken straight to the hospital. She came down with the same illness that had struck Bethune, and nearly died from it. She was a devoted Communist, and the Party reciprocated by treating her with an emergency supply of the finest and most expensive medicines.
After two weeks in the hospital she left on her own before her wound had completely healed. The incident weighed heavily on her mind. She said she wouldn’t be able to eat or sleep until she’d gotten that child out of Wang Dan’s belly. That’s how strong her sense of responsibility was. Would you call someone like that human? Father sighed. No, she’d become a god or a demon.
Chen Bi and Chen Er were confined in the commune. There was talk that they were strung up and beaten, but that was just a rumour. When village cadres went to see them, they were being held in a room with a bed and bedding, a vacuum bottle and two glasses. Food and water were delivered to them. Their meals were the same as the commune cadres: steamed rolls, millet porridge, and whatever else was being served. Father and daughter gained weight and healthy complexions. They had to pay for their food, but Chen Bi had plenty of money from his business ventures. The commune checked with the bank to see just how much: it was thirty-eight thousand yuan! While your aunt was in the hospital, the commune sent a work team into the village, where they met with the local members and announced that all able-bodied villagers were to search for Wang Dan and would be paid five yuan a day, all to come out of Chen Bi’s bank account. Some villagers said they wouldn’t go, calling it blood money, but were told that if they refused, they would be fined five yuan a day. In the end, all seven hundred souls turned out. Three hundred of them searched the first day; when they returned home they were given their five yuan, making a total outlay that day of about eighteen hundred yuan. The commune also announced that whoever located Wang Dan and brought her home would be given a two hundred yuan reward. A hundred went to anyone who produced a viable clue. That turned the village into a frenzied mass, some clapping their hands from delight, others privately uncomfortable. Father said, I knew that some people coveted those rewards, but most only searched half-heartedly, making a turn or two around farmland and shouting: Come out, Wang Dan. If you don’t, you’ll be wiped out financially. After a few moments of that, they went back and worked their own plots. At night, of course, they went to get paid; they’d have been fined if they hadn’t.
Didn’t they find her? I asked.
How would they find her? Father said. Everyone felt she’d gone far away.
A little thing like that, with short steps and a big belly, how far could she have gone? I’ll bet she was still in the village. I lowered my voice. She might have been hiding in her parents’ home.
They didn’t need you to point that out, Father said. Those people from the commune knew what they were doing. They wouldn’t be happy until they dug down three feet in Wang Jiao’s house. They even broke open the kang to see if maybe Wang Dan was hiding inside. I doubt there was a person in the village who’d have borne the responsibility of hiding her and not reporting. The fine was three thousand.
Could she have decided to end it all? Did they search the river and all the wells?
You underestimate that little woman. She was more intelligent than all the other villagers combined and had more ambition than the tallest man you could find.
You’ve got a point. I recall her pretty little face and her expressions, from crafty to headstrong. The problem was, she must have been seven months along by then.
That’s why your aunt was so anxious. She said, Before it was ‘out of the pot’ it was just meat, and it needed to come out one way or another. But once it was out of the pot it was a human being, even if it had no arms and no legs, and was protected by national laws.
I conjured up an image of Wang Dan: two and a half feet tall, with a big belly, her delicate little head held high, a pair of thin legs in motion, a bundle over her arm, moving clumsily across a bramble-infested mountain road as she looked over her shoulder, tripping but getting back up, and running again… or seated in a large wooden basin, with an oversized stirring slat as her oar as she paddles breathlessly down river rapids.