Under the Hawthorn Tree (15 page)

She woke, her body covered in sweat. It took her a long time to believe that it had all been a dream. But these scenes were not entirely creations of her imagination; there had been a similar public denunciation when she was still at primary school. It was said that the woman had been a prostitute before Liberation, but had since reformed and had even got married and raised a son, who was in Jingqiu's class. Only a few days after being paraded through the streets she drowned herself in a nearby reservoir. Her belly was swollen with water, and the body floated in the water for days as everyone refused to dirty their hands by removing it. Jingqiu had no idea why loose women were called ‘worn-out shoes', nor why they called it committing ‘illicit relations', but ever since that day, she had refused to wear worn-out shoes – she would rather go barefoot – and she felt sick at the mere mention of the word ‘relations', let alone ‘illicit'.

She was on tenterhooks, convinced that Old Third's letter had been distributed to her school teachers, reading into their glances signs of her disgrace. After a week of this her nerves were ready to collapse. She decided to write a letter to Old Third to warn him that he was driving perilously close to the edge. She wrote and rewrote it, and fearing that the school was already investigating her dealings with him, decided not to sign her name so that it could not be used as evidence against her. She begged him to forget her and not to send her any more flowers or letters. He held both of their futures in his hands.

But this draft wouldn't do. What if someone sees it? They will know at once that something has happened between us, otherwise why would I ask him to forget me, and why would our futures be ruined?

She rewrote it, in a fiercer tone: ‘I don't know you, I don't know why you are pestering me, please behave in a more dignified manner.'

But this didn't seem right either. Such a frosty and ferocious tone might shame Old Third and make him resentful. It could prompt him to write a confession, even to make his own embellishments, and give it to her school. Wouldn't that be even worse? He was the son of a military commanding officer, she the daughter of a landowner. It was obvious who the school was going to believe.

She wrote, scribbled out, wrote, and scribbled out again like this for a whole day until she finally produced a letter that satisfied her. She tried to be detached, but polite, so as to deter him without blaming him. She decided on the following: ‘A sea of suffering has no horizon, repent and make your way back to the shore. Let's put it behind us, and not have it repeated.'

Jingqiu didn't know Old Third's exact mailing address, so she merely wrote ‘geological unit camp, West Village' on the envelope. She assumed he must have received her letter, as she received no more gifts.

The really exciting thing was that summer was soon upon them, and Jingqiu could go out to work. She was preparing to work every day, without rest, the whole summer. Optimistically, she calculated that she could make up to eighty or ninety yuan. Even before it reached her pocket, she was deciding how to spend her earnings. First she would pay back the money she owed Old Third, and then she would buy her mother a hot-water bottle. Her mother often suffered back aches that required the warming effects of just such a piece of equipment. Currently, she used a glass bottle filled with hot water, but sometimes it leaked and its surface area was limited.

She was also going to buy half a pig's head – a half-kilo meat ticket bought you one kilo's worth of pig's head. Pig's ear and tongue could be stewed in soy sauce, the cheeks could be used to make twice-cooked pork, and the scraps left over could be used for soup. Just the thought of twice-cooked pork, fried with garlic sprouts, was enough to make her mouth water, and she longed to buy some right away. Her family often went months without tasting meat, and she had felt pangs of guilt when eating the meat brought by Old Third back in West Village that she couldn't take any home for her mother and sister.

Her wages would also stretch to material to make her sister a spring outfit. She had long since decided that her sister was not going to experience the same kind of humiliation she'd endured. She wanted to buy her sister a pair of medium-high rubber boots. It was a bit extravagant, but her sister had wanted them for such a long time. Jingqiu detected a look of envy in her sister's eyes every time she saw someone else wearing a pair.

Her brother still owed money for his rice rations, so she hoped she could use some of the money to pay back at least part of his debt. Students sent to the countryside often went hungry, so sometimes they would steal vegetables and chickens from the lower and middling peasants. In many places the students had made enemies of the local peasants, and they often came to blows. Sometimes peasants from several villages would band together to beat up the city kids, and groups of the sent-down students would join together in response. Recently her brother had been wounded by a group of peasants. He said he had been very lucky as the other students had sustained serious injuries. Some couldn't walk and had to be carried back. Only his little group had been able to run away fast enough, suffering only surface wounds as a result.

Following this incident the beaten-up students and their parents met up in Yichang to discuss their options. The students maintained that the peasants had made a mistake, that they hadn't stolen anything. The city people reported the incident to the brigade and the commune, then to the prefectural Party committee, and eventually the Party committee agreed to send someone to meet them and listen to their grievances.

That evening Jingqiu had gone to the meeting with her mother and brother. They waited for hours. No one knew the source of the rumour, but word spread that the secretary had been wining and dining a guest, and being a bit tipsy, wasn't sure he could receive them that day. Some of the students were laid out in the hall, unable to move after the beatings, some sat, their faces swollen and limbs broken from the blows, and around them their parents' chests burned with anger. And this secretary still dares to go off boozing?

A feeling of hatred gripped Jingqiu. She knew that Yichang constituted a separate military area, and that Old Third's father was a military commander of a rank most definitely above the regional level. She imagined that Old Third must have grown up in a compound with armed guards, along with his fiancée. She thought of what Yumin had said to her: We're not made to be friends with high officials. She had understood the words, but only by seeing the Party committee's compound with her own eyes could she really absorb their meaning. She and Old Third were from two different worlds. Waiting for the Party secretary, she imagined she was waiting for Old Third's father and she was overflowing with resentment.

After waiting some time a few of the parents became fearful; could it be a trap? They'll round us all up, and all they need do is accuse us of ‘attacking a government organisation' and we'll be tossed into jail. Everyone grew steadily more nervous, and Jingqiu's mother said, ‘Let's go. Maybe the others can make this sort of stand, but people like us can't. A beating's a beating. I mean, sure, we can feel sorry for ourselves, but can we really expect a Party secretary to catch those peasants?'

Jingqiu hated her mother's cowardice, and she insisted they wait a little longer, saying, ‘If you're scared, then I'll wait by myself.' Jingqiu's mother had no choice but to wait with her. When at last a cadre arrived it wasn't the secretary, no one knew what his rank was, but he told them he was representing the secretary and scribbled down their statements before sending them back home.

They never heard anything more on the matter. Jingqiu's mother comforted herself: ‘Never mind, that's how it goes.' Swallowing her tears, she sent her son, who had yet to recover from his injuries, back to the countryside. Fortunately he was put in charge of drying the crops, considerably easier work than going out on the fields but it only earned him half as many work points, so by the end of the year he would need even more money for his rice ration.

Filled with thoughts of these necessary expenditures, on the first day of the summer holidays Jingqiu asked her mother to take her to see the head of the neighbourhood committee, Director Li, so that she could find a job. Early that morning mother and daughter went to Director Li's house and waited. Jingqiu's mother had taught Director Li's son, Kunming, so Director Li was very polite to her. She asked Jingqiu's mother to return home while she sorted out a job for her daughter. Every year Jingqiu would allow her mother to present her to Director Li before she too would insist that her mother go home. Jingqiu was a bit ashamed because at school Kunming and she didn't have much to say to each other, but now, here she was, waiting in his home and asking for his mother's help.

At that time, enterprises in need of temporary workers would send a manager to Director Li's house who would lodge his request before nine in the morning. If the jobseeker hadn't found employment by nine o'clock, there would be no chance of work that day. Most of the time, if you found a job it would last a good few days until the task in hand was completed, and then the temporary workers would head back to Director Li's house to wait for a new job.

That day there was an old, toothless granny of indeterminate age waiting with Jingqiu. Jingqiu recognised her; they had worked together before. People called her Granny Copper. Her real name was Tong, which meant ‘child', but also sounded just like the character for ‘copper'. Jingqiu thought this nickname suited her perfectly, considering the fact that she was still working at her advanced age. Apparently her son had been beaten to death during a struggle session and his wife had run away, leaving a boy of school age for Granny Copper to look after. Jingqiu couldn't bear to think about what would happen to the grandson were she to die.

They sat waiting for a while until they saw a manager arriving in search of workers. He needed muscle to unload sand from a ship that had docked on the river. Jingqiu boldly volunteered but the man was dissatisfied with the young girl standing before him; he didn't want a woman, women couldn't lift sand. Director Li told Jingqiu not to get flustered. ‘I'll only let you take lighter work.'

She waited until another manager arrived looking for workers to tamp earth, but despite her valiant efforts he didn't want her either. She was too young and definitely not tough enough. Anyway, tampers needed to have big voices for singing. ‘I'm not scared, I'll sing,' Jingqiu had replied.

‘All right, sing me a song.'

‘I'll sing, I can sing,' interjected Granny Copper. Shrivelling her nose she started singing, ‘Nuns and monks have seen the light, hey-ho. They think of their lovers day and night, hey-ho . . .'

What's all this nonsense about? Jingqiu wondered. I get that it's about boys and girls and all that . . . Maybe she wasn't suitable for this job after all. She watched as Granny Copper left with the manager, the old woman as delighted as if her name had appeared on the list of successful candidates in the imperial examinations.

Jingqiu waited until ten o'clock but there were no jobs, so she gave up and went home. A whole day at home without work was like sitting on a carpet of nails, or worse, like someone reaching into your pocket and fishing out one yuan in cash. She longed for the following morning, when she could return to Director Li's house to wait for work.

But by the third day she still hadn't found a job; the only one available was shovelling sand. The manager told her that out of those he had hired just a few days before most hadn't been able to hack it and had run away. He had no choice but to return to look for more workers. Jingqiu begged for hours before he finally agreed to give her a try. ‘But if you run off before the day's through I won't even pay half a day's wages.' Jingqiu agreed without hesitation.

She was ecstatic to have found a temporary job. She was one step closer to being a proper part of China's Communist revolution. She followed the manager to the dock, arriving just as the temporary workers were taking a rest. There was not a woman among them, and the men stared at her, bemused. In unfriendly tones, one said, ‘If you've come to work we've had it, we'll have to waste our time helping you. Go and do piecemeal work, why don't you? That way you don't get paid for other people's hard work.'

‘We work in teams of two,' another added. ‘One lifts the sand off the boat, the other piles it up. But who's going to draw the short straw and work with you? They'll exhaust themselves bringing it down off the boat for you and then carrying it up to the pile, they'll have to walk miles extra.'

‘Don't worry, I'll work by myself,' Jingqiu replied softly. ‘I won't move less than you lot.'

The manager said, ‘Just try it out first, if it's too much don't be pig-headed, you've got no work insurance here if you do yourself any damage.'

Someone who recognised her replied, ‘Your mum's a teacher. What a greedy guts, why do you need this extra money?'

After the manager left another man leered, ‘It's hot today, having a girl around's a real hassle. Once we get sweaty we'll be taking our tops off, so don't go getting all shy, okay?'

Jingqiu paid no attention. If you're not too shy to take them off, then why should I be shy? She lowered her head and readied her bamboo basket and shoulder pole. It was time to start work so she followed the men to the riverbank. The ship was joined to the bank by a long thin plank only a foot wide that swayed underfoot. Beneath it the river water gushed and surged. Summer was the season for rising waters, and with it the river swept along mud and sand, painting red streaks in the yellow water. It was scary; cowards wouldn't walk along it empty handed, let alone while shouldering heavy baskets of sand.

It had been a long time since Jingqiu had carried anything on a shoulder pole, and her shoulders began to ache at once. Luckily her pole was a very good one; not too long and with some flex in it. As anyone who has ever used a shoulder pole will tell you, if your pole is too stiff and doesn't sway as you walk, it's exhausting to use, but just a bit of flexibility goes a long way to making your load feel lighter.