Lu was terrified, his scalp numb. He knew they would apply the tactics called “cartwheeling”—they would take turns questioning him day and night, not allowing him to sleep until he collapsed, confessed everything, even invented things to please them. He could not possibly resist so many of them. If necessary, the leaders could send for a platoon of militiamen. He was so scared that he broke into tears. “Oh, I’ve cracked my brains, but can’t write more. I really don’t know how to write. I’ve used a bottle of ink already. Please let me go just this once. I’m going to kowtow to you.”
“Hold it,” Wang ordered. “You can’t deceive us any longer.”
Scribe Hsiao stepped forward and restrained Lu from going to his knees.
“Oh, heaven,” Lu cried out, “how can I convince you of my sincerity? Do you want me to die? All right—my family’s already broken, and I don’t want to live anymore.” He pulled a pair of large scissors out of the sewing bowl and put them against his throat. “No more! If you want my life, say it. I’ll die here to show you my remorse.”
“Stop bluffing,” Wang said, smiling with contempt. “I know what stuff’U come out the moment you raise your buttocks. Do it, kill yourself. Then we’ll believe you’re a good, progressive comrade.”
“Lu Han, don’t take us to be beardless idiots,” Zhao said. “Who’s ever heard that a man killed himself with scissors. That’s woman stuff.”
“Do it,” Wang ordered. “Let’s have an eye-opener. We’ll name you a Revolutionary Martyr and give your family provisions.”
Lu was wailing, tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Yes, do it,” Zhao demanded with his arms open. “We’re waiting. If you don’t, you’re not a Chinese.”
Lu moved down the scissors as if to prove his inability to kill himself. He turned around and bent down.
“What are you doing?” Wang said.
Lu ripped open his shorts, pulled out his scrotum, and cut it off together with the testicles. He dropped the cutting and fell to the ground, screaming and groaning. Immediately the chickens rushed over and carried away those meaty parts.
“Stop the chickens and get his balls back!” Wang yelled, kicking at a duck that was on its way to the bloody spot.
Both the secretary and the scribe ran out, but it was too late—the chickens had disappeared into the dark yard. Inside, Wang was busy stanching the bleeding with a towel. The sleeves of his white shirt were covered with bloodstains. Still Wang never stopped cursing. “Damn your ancestors. Who told you to do this? I hope you’re bleeding to death.”
“I hate it, hate it!” Lu said through his teeth, clenched to choke his moaning. One of his legs was twitching, the toe drawing small circles on the ground.
Finally Wang managed to tie up Lu’s crotch with three towels, and the blood was almost stopped. Then Hsiao returned with several men and with Chu’s horse cart. They wrapped Lu up with a flowery quilt and carried him out. The moment they placed him in the cart, the horses set out galloping to the Commune Clinic in Dismount Fort. Both the leaders went with the cart. They even gave Lu sweet-potato liquor on the way to stop him from moaning and shaking.
Lu’s self-castration earned him freedom. Nobody thought of pressing him for the confession again, since his act had indeed proved his remorse and sincerity. Naturally, a lot of men shook hands with him when he was back from town. The leaders even went to his father-in-law’s house the day after the castration and tried to persuade Lu’s wife to forgive him and come back home. On hearing of the sad news, Fulan burst into tears, saying she was guilty and shouldn’t have mistreated her husband that way. Her father, a well-respected old man, scolded her in front of the leaders and ordered her to go back at once. That very day she returned with Baby Leopard in Chu’s horse cart. Now she wanted to take good care of Lu and was determined to be a model wife.
As for Lu, he felt things were fine. Losing his testicles didn’t differ much from being sterilized by the family-planning team. Quite a few men in the village were emasculated that way, and the only difference was that they carried more weight below their bellies. Let others babble whatever they liked. Yes, he was gelded, but he had a son, who was as strong as a bear cub, to carry on his family line. From now on that devil of a penis would cause no trouble, and his family would enjoy peace and unity, which would surely lead to security and prosperity. Though he sweated more than before while working in the fields, he felt his back never so straight and his body never so sturdy. People noticed his face glowing with ruddy health and his hair turning darker and thicker. He did so well that the villagers elected him an exemplary commune member. Secretary Zhao even had a heart-to-heart talk with him and encouraged him to write an application for Party membership, which Lu was, of course, delighted to do. Most significant of all, he had a new, normal life.
A Decade
I left the countryside twelve years ago when my father was transferred to an artillery division in Dalian. Ever since then we have lived in the city. If my aunt were not in Dismount Fort, I might have forgotten that small town where I went to elementary school only for two years in the late 1960s. My aunt comes to visit us every fall, helping Mother prepare our winter clothes and pickle vegetables. Once in a while she brings that town back to my memory.
Last summer I went to Dismount Fort for the first time after a decade. The town was smaller than I had thought. Every street seemed shorter than it had been. On the first day, I rode my uncle’s Peacock bicycle to the marketplace, the Blue Brook, the Eastern Bridge, White Mansion—our classroom building, and other places that I still remembered. But the distances between them were so short I visited them all in less than two hours. From the second day on I gave up the bicycle, and instead I walked around. Few people knew me, because my family had never lived in the town and I had stayed at my aunt’s when going to school there. After strolling through the streets, I found the town basically the same, and the only difference was that there were fewer children now. I stopped at some houses where my former classmates had lived, but they had all left, working in nearby counties and cities. Most girls had become textile workers in Gold County. Their parents didn’t remember me. There was only one boy who had not left and whose mother still knew me, but he was jailed for raping two women.
Life in the countryside was dull. There was nothing going on in the evenings. After supper most people would sit outside, chatting away and fanning themselves until the cool breeze came from the Yellow Sea around midnight. I missed my boyfriend, who was my classmate at the college. He stayed with his parents in Tianjin during the summer. At night I would write to him. If tired of writing, I read Turgenev’s Smoke and a current issue of Youth, a small literary magazine published in Shenyang, which carried a story of mine. Since I had time, I read the whole issue from cover to cover. I didn’t like most of the pieces in it, but there was a narrative poem that aroused my interest. The poem tells a story from a former Red Guard’s point of view. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution a teenage boy together with his classmates paraded their teacher, an old man, through the streets. The boy kicked the teacher hard and broke his ribs. For the following years he was full of remorse and tried to make up for what he had done. Then the teacher fell ill, and the boy, a young man now, looked after him for five months until the old man died with gratitude. I didn’t like the sentiment of the poem, but it reminded me of a young woman teacher, Zhu Wenli, who had taught me at the Central Elementary School in Dismount Fort eleven years before.