In the Pond

Four

FROST FELL AT NIGHT. In Dismount Fort children began to wear felt hats or scarves when going to school in the morning. The sound of bellows could be heard everywhere in the afternoon, when many families were boiling cabbages to make sauerkraut. A few households were pickling kimchee, and there was a scent of garlic in the air.

The Shaos were upset because they couldn’t pickle sauerkraut; there was no space in their room for a large crock. The corridor of the dormitory house would be blocked if such a thing was put there; also, the smell would be awful. What Meilan did instead was salt a tall jar of turnips. For storing fresh vegetables, Bin was digging a pit in the southern corner of the courtyard, near the street wall. When it began to freeze, he would place their cabbages and turnips into it and cover them up with sorghum stalks, straw sacks, and earth. By comparison, the families in Workers’ Park could put their sauerkraut crocks in their outer rooms and dig vegetable pits in their backyards; some families even built brick vegetable cellars, in which beer and fruit could be stored in summer.

On Sunday, at noon, having shoveled earth out of the vegetable pit, Bin opened the southern window to let in some warm air. The loudspeaker, hung on a pole on the street, stopped playing music and began emitting static. Then a crisp female voice announced that Secretary Yang was a candidate for the position of vice chairman of the County People’s Congress. This was an honor for the whole commune. Together with him, there were two other people running for the position, and the election would be held the next morning at the County Administration.

Bin was convinced that Yang was also his enemy. Obviously, Yang had passed his letter of accusation on to the plant’s leaders; this was a gross violation of the Party’s policy of protecting discontented masses. No doubt the three leaders were in the same clique and should be exposed together. In his new letter of accusation, Bin had written, “The three of them wear the same pair of trousers and breathe through one nostril.” Now, the news of Yang’s candidacy for the congress suggested to Bin a bold idea. He had to do something to prevent Yang from winning the election; the People’s Congress ought to be in the hands of an honest man who would serve the people heart and soul.

On second thought, he wondered whether it was too rash to confront Secretary Yang so soon. He was merely a worker, whereas Yang was the Party boss of Dismount Fort. Would people believe what he said about Yang?

Then he remembered that a few days ago Hsiao Peng had said to him in private, “Bin, cheer up. Don’t be intimidated by them. Our Maintenance supports your exposing them. Yang Chen should be reprimanded for having your letter sent to Liu Shu.” Hsiao’s words convinced Bin that he had grassroots support among his fellow workers. If the County Administration had the case investigated, surely there would be people willing to testify against the leaders.

So he made up his mind to deal with Yang now.

That night, he took out a big brush made of goat’s hair and wrote on a large sheet of paper: “Yang Chen Always Persecutes Me!” After the ink dried, he pasted the writing on a piece of cardboard. With a pair of scissors he poked two holes at the top of the board and attached a red ribbon to it.

To him the five words looked strenuous and elegant, each as big as a brick. Finished with the work, he couldn’t help appreciating his own calligraphy with squinting eyes. His wife and daughter meanwhile were sleeping in the bed near the southern window; Meilan was snoring a little, her face pale and flabby and her nostrils slightly swollen. She was twenty-eight, but already had wrinkles on her forehead and temples. A yellow towel wrapped her permed hair, to keep the curls from being crushed in her sleep. One of her legs stretched out from under the flowery quilt, displaying bluish veins beneath the skin; her foot was shapely, but the toes had ringworm nails. On her sole there was a curved cut, about an inch long, inflicted by a piece of broken glass two days before. The cut seemed to have festered, so Bin moved to the tiny medical cabinet on their oak chest and took out a vial of merbromin. With a cotton ball held at the tips of the scissors, he dabbed the red solution on her wound. The moment he was done, she kicked her foot, moaning faintly, and withdrew her leg under the quilt.

Having returned the vial to the cabinet, he resumed watching his wife and child, whose chubby face was chapped by cold wind. He heaved a sigh and felt ashamed. Logically speaking, with such handsome calligraphy, he should have been a distinguished man, at least in this town. He asked himself, Why am I still a worker if these hands are cut out for brushwork? Why on earth can’t a man like me get a decent place for his family to live? Look at this room, it’s a doghouse, a snail shell.

The more he thought, the worse he felt. I swear, he said to himself, I shall get a good apartment for my family sooner or later! There will be no end of bothering them if they don’t give me one.

Early the next morning, after telling Meilan that he was going to the County Administration to see the designs of some propaganda posters, and that he wouldn’t be late for the second shift, Bin set out for the train station. He cycled with his right hand gripping the handlebar and his left holding the placard, which was wrapped in red paper, so that people might take it to be a framed portrait or a mirror. At the train station, he locked his bicycle to a railing bar on the wooden fence; then he bought a ticket for the eight o’clock train.

Gold County was twenty miles to the west, only an hour’s trip. It’s a remarkable town, with historic and military importance, because it borders on the Yellow Sea and to the south there is a bay which has been used as a navy base for more than a hundred years. The Russians and the Japanese had fought over it, and in turn their fleets had occupied it.

The sun was warm, though it was a chilly day. Trees had shed their leaves, standing naked around the large plaza before Gold County Train Station. On the east, beyond rows of poplars, perched a column of Russian-made self-propelled guns, which apparently had just rolled off a train. Soldiers were sitting on them, eating breakfast and drinking water from canteens. Once in a while, dark smoke was ejected from the rear of one of those guns; the air smelled of diesel. On the north, near the entrance to a boulevard, a crowd gathered at the bus stop, men shouldering parcels and trussed fowls and piglets, and women carrying babies and baskets full of fruits, eggs, and vegetables. Bin went across to join the crowd. Then a bus came. After a good deal of pushing and shoving, he got aboard.

The election had just started when he arrived at the County Administration. The guards at the door of the conference hall didn’t suspect anything when they saw Bin, who looked scholarly, walking in a meditative manner and carrying the placard with his little finger. They thought he must have been on the organizing staff or worked as an assistant to one of the candidates. The object wrapped in red paper must have been a slogan or a picture.

But once in the hall Bin turned into another man. He hastened to the stage, where Secretary Yang, a middle-aged woman, and an old man like a peasant were sitting at a long table. Behind them, in the middle of a lavender screen, hung a giant portrait of Chairman Mao; four pairs of red flags stretched upward from the Great Leader’s shoulders, as though he wore gorgeous wings.

Yang had on a blue Mao suit and a black cap covering his bald crown. He was a beardless man, over fifty, and his soft skin betrayed his career as a civil official who had been well sheltered from the elements. Also on the stage stood a tall young man in wire-framed glasses, presiding over the election. With a microphone in his hand, he was explaining the rules and procedures to the voters, while the hall was still bustling with spitting, chitchatting, sniffling, and the cracking of sunflower seeds.

As he was climbing the short stairs on the right side of the stage, Bin turned to the three hundred people sitting below. He stopped at the edge of the stage, ripped off the red paper, and raised the placard to the audience. All at once the hall was thrown into a turmoil. Many people stood up, some pushing forward to look at the words closely.

“Beautiful handwriting!” one woman said.

“He looks like a scholar, he can’t be a liar.”

“Wow!”

“Who could tell Yang Chen is a demon!”

“Shameless, Yang shouldn’t be there,” a young peasant shouted with both hands around his mouth.

“Get down, Yang Chen!”

“Yang is disqualified.”

On the stage, from where they sat, the three candidates couldn’t see the contents of the placard, so they got up and went over to look. At the sight of the words the woman and the old man smirked, shaking their heads and withdrawing to their seats. But Yang bellowed, “I don’t know this man! It’s slander, pure invention! I swear I don’t know who he is.” His big head jerked about as he stamped his feet; the loudspeakers in the back corners of the hall were broadcasting the thumps made by his white plastic soles.

It was true Yang didn’t know Bin. Naturally, he was protesting that this was a dirty trick some people had devised against him. “I’m framed, framed for nothing!” he kept blustering, his broad mouth twitching and his nose congested. Time and again he glared at the other two candidates.

Bin interrupted him. “I know you. You don’t know me? Didn’t you forward my accusation letter to the leaders of the Harvest Fertilizer Plant? Didn’t you overtly support them to suppress different opinions and persecute those who criticized them? I’d know your bones if you shed your skin!”

“Who are you? What the devil are you talking about?” Yang threw up his right hand.

“I am Shao Bin. Why are you so forgetful?”

Still Yang couldn’t recall what wrong he had done to this man. He shouted, “I don’t know you. I swear by my Communist Party membership, I don’t know what hole you jumped out of!” Turning to the other candidates, he said, “Damn it, I want an investigation of this.” His fleshy cheeks turned pink as he wheezed.

Two guards ran over and hauled Bin off the stage. They clutched his arms and dragged him to the exit while another man holding the placard followed behind. Meanwhile the audience was whooping, laughing, coughing, and chattering. It seems most of them didn’t believe what Yang said, and many had changed their minds about his candidacy. He had been transferred to this county three years before; people did not yet know him well enough to doubt Bin’s accusation.

In fact Yang had never heard of the name Shao Bin. He hadn’t seen the letter of accusation either. He had merely been informed by his aide, Dong Cai, that a troublesome worker had sent him a lengthy report on the fertilizer plant’s leaders. The letter had been transferred to Liu and Ma after Dong Cai had glanced through it and decided it had been written mainly out of jealousy. Of course Yang, having committed himself to other more important matters, didn’t ask further about it and put it out of his mind completely. Who could expect that out of a few pages of obscure writing would jump such an extraordinary election buster? Now, Yang’s candidacy was ruined, and his ambition to become the chairman of the County People’s Congress in the near future was shattered.

Because of Bin’s intrusion, Yang didn’t get enough votes for the position. The woman, who was elected, had outrun him by thirty-four votes. In Yang’s chest hatred was flaming. The moment he returned to the Commune Administration, he called the fertilizer plant. Liu answered the phone and was shaken by his superior’s rage. He tried to convince Yang that Bin was merely a madman, who was fond of painting and writing indeed, but nobody would take his words seriously.

“He pretends to be a fool,” Yang said huskily, “but he’s smarter than both of you. The timing, the word choice, the calligraphy, and even the way he raised the placard, damn it, who can do it better?”

“Yes, Secretary Yang, he’s a capable troublemaker.”

“Send me a report on this man. I must know more about him.”

“Yes, we’ll do that immediately.”

Liu was stunned, because Yang was by nature an affable man and seldom showed his temper. Without delay, he admitted his fault in not having kept closer watch on Bin and having caused such a disturbance to his superior. He promised that from now on the plant would make every effort to control this crazy man. If a similar thing happened again, he would accept any disciplinary action against himself.

Hanging up, Liu explained to Ma what had happened. For half a minute Ma was too shocked to say anything. Who would imagine a toad could grow wings and soar into the sky!

The two leaders talked about how to handle Bin this time; both of them agreed that they should remain calm and do nothing to provoke him at the moment. In their hearts, they were frightened. This mad dog Shao Bin was simply unpredictable. He was too bold and too imaginative and would do anything he took a fancy to. Unlike those puny intellectuals — the college graduates in the plant — whose faces would turn pale and sweaty and who would correct their faults the moment the leaders criticized them, this pseudo-scholar wasn’t afraid of anybody. What could you do if a man feared nothing? Even the devil didn’t know how to daunt a fearless man. In addition, Bin wrote and painted exceptionally well, his blasted brush always busy at night. Every now and then he had something published in a magazine or a newspaper. How, how could you stop him?

To a degree, Liu and Ma regretted that they hadn’t assigned Bin an apartment. If they had done that in the beginning, they wouldn’t have turned him into such a relentless enemy. But it was too late now; all they could do was adopt a quiet approach, leaving him alone for the moment, as though they hadn’t heard of the election. But this didn’t mean they would let him get away with it. No, they would square the account when it was the right time.

Presently they had Dongfang, the secretary of the Youth League, start a thorough investigation of Bin’s family background and his activities in the past five years so as to prepare the report to Secretary Yang and also accumulate material against Bin. If they tackled him again, they would finish him off with one blow.