Unable to stop myself, I blurted out, “Grandma, it's human gall, it's from Ma Kuisan and Luan Fengshan. Daddy scooped out their bladders!”
With a shriek, Grandma fell backward onto the brick bed, dead as a stone.
Love Story
THAT AUTUMN THE TEAM LEADER SENT FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD JUNIOR and sixty-five-year-old Guo Three out into the fields to man the waterwheel. Why? To wheel water. For what? To irrigate the cabbage crop. A “sent-down” city girl named He Li-ping, in her mid-twenties, was in charge of the irrigation ditches.
Once the thirteenth solar period – Autumn Beginning – arrives, the cabbage must be watered daily, or the roots will rot. In his orders, the team leader spared the three workers from mustering for duty each morning, since they had to go into the fields to water the cabbage right after breakfast. Which they did, from Autumn Beginning to Frost's Descent, the eighteenth solar period. Naturally, irrigation wasn't all they did; other tasks included spreading fertilizer, controlling pests, binding up drooping cabbage leaves with sweet potato sprouts, and so on. They took four breaks a day, each lasting half an hour or so. The city girl, He Liping, owned a watch. Frost's Descent arrived, and the temperature plunged; the cabbage curled up into balls, bringing an end to the team's irrigation duties.
They dismantled the waterwheel and transported it back to the production team compound on a handcart, where they turned it over to the storekeeper. After a cursory inspection, he sent them on their way.
The next morning, right after breakfast, they stood beneath the iron bell to wait for new orders from the team leader. He had the old-timer, Guo Three, hitch up the ox to till the bean field and sent Junior out to re-sow millet at the farthest edge of the production team land. “What about me, Team Leader?” He Liping asked. “Go with Junior. You can prepare the furrows while he spreads the seeds.”
One of the commune wags extended the team leader's orders: “Junior,” he teased, “take good aim on He Liping's furrow. Make sure you spread your seed where it belongs.”
While the crowd laughed raucously, Junior felt his heart pound against his chest wall. He sneaked a look at He Liping, who stood stony-faced, obviously unhappy. That really upset him. “Fuck your old lady, Old Qi!” he cursed his playful tormentor.
The cabbage patch was located on the east side of the village, next to the pond. Swollen with rainwater, the pond was a breeding ground for algae and moss, making it greener than green and deeper than anyone could imagine. The main reason the production team had chosen that site to plant cabbage was the proximity of all that water. There was nothing wrong with well water, of course, but it wasn't nearly as good as the water in the pond. Mounted high on the pond's edge, the wa-terwheel looked like a poolside arbor. Junior and the oldster Guo Three stood on a shaky wooden footrest and turned the iron winch handles, one up and one down, squeaking and twisting as water flowed steadily. It didn't rain from Autumn's Beginning to Frost's Descent, not once. The skies were washed clean by the glare of the sun, day in and day out, and the surface of the pond stayed placid, wind or no wind. Clouds in the sky were matched by clouds in the pond that were, if anything, clearer than those above. Sometimes Junior stared at the clouds until he was in a world of his own, and forgot to turn the winch, to Guo Three's vocal displeasure: “Wake up, Junior!” At the northern tip of the pond stood a solitary patch of marshy reeds no larger than a sleeping mat, looking like a mirage. The reeds grew yellower each day, until in the bright rays of the morning sun and slanting rays of the setting sun, they seemed brushed by gold.
Let's say a really large, bright red dragonfly lands on one of the golden leaves, forming a dreamy plateau with the pond and the reeds. Then a dozen or so ducks and seven or eight geese, all pure white, glide across the surface. From time to time the long-necked ganders mount female geese, at other times they grant similar favors to female ducks. Junior stands transfixed when the ganders do that, and of course he forgets to turn the winch, which invariably earns abuse from Guo Three: “Just what are you thinking about?” Quickly averting his eyes from the naughty ganders and ducks, he starts turning the winch extra hard. Out the water gushes, as the rickety waterwheel creaks and groans. Amid the clanks of the chain, Junior hears Guo Three gripe, “Little peach-fuzz doesn't have a man's pecker yet, but his head hasn't gotten the message!” Junior is deeply shamed. The lovely bright red dragonfly soaring above the pond has got a new name, thanks to old-timer Guo Three: Little Bride.
He Liping was a tall girl, taller than Guo Three, and she knew martial arts. In fact, they learned, she had performed in Europe with a team of martial arts experts. Most people agreed that she could have made quite a name for herself if not for the Cultural Revolution. Too bad. Ruined by her family background. Proof of the two most frequently heard versions – that her father was a capitalist and that he was a capitalist-roader – was not actively sought, since the difference between the two is negligible. It was enough to know that her background was bad.
He Liping was a taciturn girl who, in the eyes of the villagers, knew her place. She had been sent to the countryside with lots of other educated city kids: some ended up by going on to school, others took jobs, the rest returned to their hometowns. Only she was left behind, and everyone knew it was because of her background.
Only once did He Liping demonstrate her martial arts skills, and that was soon after showing up in the village. Junior was no more than eight or nine at the time. Back then, “Mao Zedong Thought” propaganda meetings were common occurrences. The city kids were terrific talkers and singers, and some played the harmonica or flute or two-string huqin. There was a lot going on in the village back then: during the day the commune members worked in the fields, and at night they made revolution. With all the excitement, every day seemed like New Year's Eve to Junior. One night, very much like all the other nights, everyone poured out of the dining hall after dinner to make revolution. On the dirt platform, which had a post stuck in both ends to support gas lamps, the city kids filled the platform with their songs and instruments. Junior recalled that suddenly the young emcee shouted above the din: “Poor and lower-middle peasant comrades, our great leader Chairman Mao instructs us: Power comes out of the barrel of a gun! Now please turn your attention to He Liping, who will demonstrate her ‘nine-stage plum-blossom’ spear routine.”
Junior recalled that everyone applauded like crazy, anticipating the arrival of He Leping. They didn't have to wait long. She came out in a skintight red outfit and white plastic sandals, with her hair coiled atop her head. All the hot-blooded young men buzzed about her pert breasts, which nearly popped out of their tight wrappings. Some said they were real, others said they weren't. One of the latter insisted that she was wearing plastic cups. She stood on the stage, striking a martial pose, red-tasseled spear in hand. With her chin held high, her back arched, and her dark eyes sparkling, she cut quite a figure. Then she began to twirl her spear, until all anyone could see on the stage was a red blur, and no one could follow the twists and turns of her lithe body. Finally she stopped spinning and stood ramrod straight with her spear, looking like a column of red smoke. The audience seemed frozen in place for a moment, no one making a peep. Then, suddenly snapping out of their trance, they clapped politely, as if physically drained.
It was a sleepless night for the young men of the village.
The next day, as members of the commune sprawled on the ground to rest, He Liping and her “nine-stage plum-blossom” were all anyone talked about. Someone said the girl's performance was like a flower stand: attractive but hardly practical; but someone else said it was like the wind, so fast she could keep four or five people at bay at the same time, and how much more practical can you get? Then someone said that anybody who took a girl like her for a wife was in for real trouble, that he'd get off lucky if all she did was beat him, that she definitely was a woman who rode her husband in bed, that no man, even one as strong as an ox, was a match for her “nine-stage plum-blossom.” At that point the tone of the discussion took a dive, and Junior, who was working with the older men at the time, was a little embarrassed and a little upset by what was being said.