After reading the article, Ding threw the paper down and flew into a rage. His face turned red, and his big eyes flashed. If he could grab hold of Secretary Yang, he would strangle him. His anger wouldn’t go away even if he ate Yang’s crooked heart. Everyone has a mother, but Yang acted as if he came from a pumpkin. Let him wait, wait for the day when his old mother went west.
That night Ding held a secret meeting in the Commune Guest House on West Street. Both Feng and Tian were present. In addition to them was the head of the Propaganda Department, Shao Bin, who was the best writer and painter in town and had recently switched sides, from Yang’s faction to Ding’s. After a round of Golden Orchid wine, Ding took the newspaper out of his pocket and put it on the table. He said, “Brothers, you know what’s in the paper, don’t you?”
Everybody nodded without a word. “Damn their ancestors!” Ding cursed. “They are screwing me. If I buried my mother they would report me to the higher-ups. Now my mother has been burned up, they begin bad-mouthing me. Whatever I do, they want to do me in. This world was not made for both Yang Chen and us, and he won’t share the same sky with us!”
“I thought they would relent this time, especially after you feasted them,” Tian said. “At the crematory I saw Dong Cai, the son of a snake, wiping his eyes with paper. I was amazed that he could have a sympathetic heart. Now his tears turned out to be a trick.” Tian took a bite of the chicken leg in his hand.
“We have to figure out a way to fight back,” Feng said, spitting watermelon seeds into his palm. “It seems that this time we’ll have a war of pens.”
“Young Shao,” Ding asked, “what do you think we should do?”
“We should write articles to correct the readers’ wrong impression given by this one.” Shao pointed at the paper on the table.
“I think we must take the high ground,” said Tian, who had been a company political instructor in the army. “We shouldn’t engage them in the same paper. We’d better begin with big papers. If we have articles published in big papers, they will be silenced automatically, because they dare not oppose a higher body’s mouthpiece.”
Ding nodded, impressed by the bright idea. Then the meeting proceeded to focus on what kind of articles should be written and to what papers they should be sent. They all agreed that the emphasis should fall on the old woman’s change of mind, which had resulted from Chairman Ding’s effort to enlighten her on the Party’s concern and on the interests of the future generations. The articles would be sent simultaneously to Beijing, Shenyang—the provincial capital—and Gold County. Since Shao was a regular contributor to several newspapers, he assured Ding that he knew where to send the articles.
“Brothers,” Ding said to conclude, “a good man needs three helpers, as a pavilion has at least three pillars. I’m grateful to you. If I have wealth and rank someday, I won’t forget you, my good brothers.”
That very night, Shao Bin roused two junior clerks in his department, and together they set about writing the articles.
Sooner than anyone expected—a week later—Liaoning Daily, the biggest provincial newspaper, published an article about the funeral. Although the contents had been changed a great deal from what Shao had written, it provided the ammunition that the Ding faction needed badly. The changed title was more resonant: “For the Happiness of Ten Thousand Generations.” The story reported that an old progressive woman in a commune town, called Dismount Fort, had volunteered to have her body cremated after her death, even though her family had prepared an expensive coffin for her. She wanted to leave a clean world for the children to come; for her, that was her best gift for future generations. The paper also printed the picture of the Dings holding the ash box in front of the crematory.
Ding was stunned by the article. He had thought that at best the county’s paper might be interested in the funeral, since he had a few influential friends in the county town and he was not unknown to the local media. Now, obviously, the funeral had attracted the attention of the officials in the provincial capital. Far from the truth though this report was, it gave him what he needed at this moment: an authoritative version for the funeral affairs. Facing that, no one in the Yang faction would dare to challenge his loyalty to the Party and his devotion to his mother again. All Ding needed to do now was repeat what the paper said. He ordered the writers in his faction to stick with this definitive version. From now on, all the guns must have the same caliber.
Though the external crisis was eased, the trouble within the family still persisted. Ever since the old woman died, Yuanmin had not slept well at night. She had her own worries. On the day before her mother-in-law’s death she took away the old woman’s key to the large red chest that contained candies, cookies, and canned fruits. Because Ding was a prominent man in the town, whoever had called on him brought a gift to his sick mother. Sometimes a box of pastry, sometimes a bag of fruits, sometimes a chunk of cooked meat. The red chest was always full of dainties. The old woman opened it several times a day, even at night before she went to bed. That was why she had said, “I’ve eaten whatever I wanted to eat.”
Since it was not healthy to go to bed with a full stomach, Yuanmin was determined to break the bad habit. People ate to work, what was the use of the rich food in the old woman’s stomach while she was sleeping? It would only make her fat. The night before her death, Yuanmin said to her, “Mom, give me the key. You mustn’t stuff yourself before you go to bed. It will ruin your health.”
“No,” the old woman said, “what’s in the chest is mine. No, I won’t give it to you.”
Seeing it impossible to bring her around, Yuanmin fished the key out of the jacket hung on the wall. Her mother-in-law started to cry, but Yuanmin wouldn’t give it back. Though the old woman planned to tell her son when he came home, she tired of crying and fell asleep.
Yuanmin dared not tell her husband what she had done. If he had known, he would have yelled at her, “You sent her to death!” How could she bear the blame for the rest of her life?
Though she didn’t mean to hurt her mother-in-law, the old woman must have hated her at the last moment. If only she had known that was her last day! She would have done anything to please her and let her eat to her heart’s content. It was too late now. She didn’t love her mother-in-law a lot, but she didn’t hate her enough to hurt her. No matter how remorsefully she cried at the funeral, the harm had been done, the wounded soul would never forgive her. She found herself tossing in bed for hours every night.
More frightening than that was her sister-in-law, Shufen, who would arrive in a few days. That country woman had been demented. If she found out what had happened or was unhappy about the cremation, Shufen would fly into a rage and might have a relapse. Then the Dings would have to send her to the mental hospital again. That would mean another huge debt. Yuanmin was terrified to think of it. She remembered that fifteen years before, Shufen had been here, raving, singing, swearing, and laughing in the yard. Sometimes she would run through the streets, imitating a dog’s barking, a donkey’s braying, a duck’s quacking, a sheep’s bleating, a rooster’s crowing. Children followed her, throwing stones at her. At meals she would stuff herself with whatever she liked without touching anything else, and nobody dared dissuade her. Once she ate a whole bowl of stewed ham and then blasted curses at Yuanmin because while she had been eating, Yuanmin had said, “Sister, why don’t you have some rice?”
At that time, the old woman was still alive; whenever Shufen messed her pants or fell into a public latrine, her mother would wash her and the soiled clothes. But now, if she went mad again, Yuanmin would have to take care of everything. It was horrifying to imagine it. She grew so nervous she cried in front of her husband several times. Ding seemed to understand his wife’s mind, and he promised that he would handle his sister once she was here for the short visit, but Yuanmin must not provoke her in any way. He tried to comfort his wife, saying that as Shufen hadn’t been demented by the death of her husband five years before, it was unlikely that she would have a relapse this time.