Eventually, there were more parades, but now there were changes, in China and around the world. The biggest change was in the number of trucks and their appearance: there were now five festooned trucks with fifteen actors, presenting a unified front of workers, peasants, soldiers, students and merchants — workers carrying hammers, peasants holding wheat stalks, soldiers with rifles on their shoulders, students reading books, and merchants fingering abacuses. Teacher Song brought some of the young directors from the cultural centre to Milltown to search for actors and actresses. No matter which class they were to represent, they all had to exude a commanding presence, the boys with heavy features, the girls displaying a valiant air that made the enemy tremble with fear. Huixian, of course, was a natural. Teacher Song had planned for her to be on the fifth truck, representing a student in the prime of life. He even gave her a pair of non-prescription glasses. But after several rehearsals, although her body was acting the role, her mind was elsewhere, feeling that she’d been given a supporting role as a student. She wanted to be on the first truck. ‘The first truck is for a member of the working class,’ Song said, ‘who holds a hammer. If you had a hammer in your hand, people would mistake it for a comb.’
‘I want to be on the first truck,’ she replied, ‘or no truck at all.’
Song recognized her attitude as the typical vanity of a young girl, and was determined to stick to his guns. He was confident he could talk her round, never anticipating that she would forget the debt of gratitude she owed him and turn wilful. She refused to participate.
Ordinarily, Huixian would have been a student at Milltown’s middle school. She did attend for several days, but her mind wandered when she was sitting in class. At first the teachers and the other students treated her like a myriad of stars circling the moon. But it only took a few days for the novelty to wear off. She was well suited to play the part of Li Tiemei, but ill suited to student life; she was much too deeply immersed in the ambience of the stage, feeling that everyone else was a member of her audience. Once the attention wore off, she decided to stop going. But she needed an excuse to do so, and found one in her braid. Combing it out in the morning was so much work she could never make it to school on time. Besides, she said, some of the other girls were so jealous of her that they tucked scissors into their school bags and hoped that one of the boys would be bold enough to cut it off. There was no evidence of this, but people did feel that she had the right to protect her braid, since it was Li Tiemei’s mark of distinction. Owing to her unique status in town, there was a consensus among local officials that maybe she should not be in school, after all. If their superiors came to town and wanted Little Tiemei to accompany them during their visit, to banquets, for instance, having to call her out of school didn’t seem quite right.
She was Milltown’s celebrity. The visits of senior officials were a busy time for her. Dressed in her Li Tiemei costume and holding her prominent braid, she rode around town in a Jeep in the company of the out-of-towners. But most of the time she had no commitments and was not inclined to look for something to do. She could usually be found in or around the offices, wherever there was any activity. She’d blink her eyes as she listened to whoever was talking, and when a senior official’s name came up, she’d smile enigmatically and add her voice to the conversation. ‘Are you talking about Gramps Li? Is that Uncle Huang? I know them, I’ve been to their homes.’
Huixian had grown up as a child of the barges. To her no one was a stranger, and she did as she pleased. No door in the General Affairs Building was left unopened by her hand. Not a single drawer escaped her attention. That was especially true of drawers belonging to the women, which she treated like a scavenger. She ate their snacks, she primped in their mirrors, and she dabbed her fingers in their face creams. Some of the less charitable among them kept their drawers locked; if Huixian could not open them, she shook them and complained, ‘How stingy can you be! Who’d want to steal your stuff?’
Zhao Chuntang was responsible for seeing that Huixian’s demands were met. She ate her meals in the public dining hall, and was free to enjoy her favourites, but had to also have some things she didn’t like. One of the cooks, the one responsible for preparing her meals, was not permitted to throw any of her food into the slops bucket. Except on summer days, Huixian wore her Li Tiemei costume — red jacket with white flowers over dark-blue trousers — on Zhao Chuntang’s orders. At first she was happy to oblige, but over time she came to realize that the glorious days on festooned trucks had come to an end. She waited and waited, but Teacher Song stayed away; with no news and no summons, she grew impatient, even irritable. How to vent her unhappiness, and to whom, was the question. She settled on her attire. ‘Wearing this stuff doesn’t make me look like Li Tiemei, it makes me look stupid.’ She was too young to have any sexual awareness, but her body was awakening. Most of her costume jackets had split seams or missing buttons and had become tight-fitting in places. So she packed them up and deposited them on the desk at the propaganda section.
‘What’s this all about, my Little Tiemei?’ the surprised official asked. ‘What are you going to wear if you don’t keep these?’
‘Who says I have to wear this stuff?’ she said. ‘I have plenty to wear.’ She reached up and fingered the collar of her pink blouse to show it off. ‘Have you seen this blouse? Notice the embroidered plum flower on the collar? It’s from Shanghai. Granny Liu at District Headquarters gave it to me.’ After showing off her blouse, she rested her foot on a chair so they could see her shoe. ‘Know what this is? It’s what they call a T-strap. You can’t buy them anywhere in Milltown. Guess who gave them to me. They were a gift from Gramps Liu.’
She was not an indifferent, heartless girl. Often, when she heard the sound of the tugboat whistle, she ran down to the piers to see the people who had cared for her as a child. But they found her behaviour hard to accept: she tossed fruit drops to each of the barges, and when they were gone, she turned and ran off, disregarding all the questions about her health and ignoring her childhood playmates. They could not decide whether she had thrown the sweets as a charitable act, as an expression of gratitude, or in an attempt to maintain ties of friendship. Some of the children looked forward to the sweets and nothing more; others refused to be swayed by her sugar-coated assault. Yingtao, for instance, grabbed the treats out of her little brother’s hand and flung them hatefully into the river. ‘What’s so wonderful about that?’ she’d ask. ‘We don’t eat her stinking candy!’
Everyone knew that Yingtao was jealous of Huixian. But so was her mother, who regularly reminded anyone who would listen that her daughter too had had a chance to ride in one of the festooned trucks, but had let her obstinacy deprive her of a bright future. While bemoaning Yingtao’s shyness, she did not hesitate to criticize Huixian maliciously. ‘How can a girl like her know how to deal with grown men?’ she wondered aloud. ‘A little seductress is what she is.’
That was more than Desheng’s wife could take. ‘Not everybody can be a seductress,’ she said pointedly. ‘Every girl has her fate, so there’s no need to compete. Your Yingtao doesn’t have what it takes to seduce anybody.’