always on the alert, they were ready to flee at any time. Even though it was the middle of winter, steam rose from the surface of the nearby pond owing to all the red liquid waste the mill dumped into it. The youngster took off the cap and flung it into the pond. Momentarily stunned, the people quickly regained their voices, shouting their gloating approval of what he’d done. The cap floated in the water, refusing to sink below the surface, and all Fang Shixian could do was stand at the edge of the pond and curse, “You little bastard, just wait till I get my hands on you!” But by then the little bastard was long gone, and Fang just paced back and forth, gazing out at his cap and blinking furiously, tears sliding down his cheeks. “Say, young man, go home and get a bamboo pole. That’ll do it,” someone shouted. “Ten dogskin caps would have sunk by the time you got back,” someone else said. As if to prove him right, the cap had already begun to slip beneath the surface. “Strip and go fetch it,” someone said. “Whoever gets it owns it!” Suddenly panicked, Fang tore off his uniform, until he was standing there dressed only in a pair of shorts; he stepped tentatively into the water, which quickly submerged him up to the shoulders. Finally, however, he managed to retrieve his cap. But while he was in the water, and everyone’s attention was focused on him, Jintong saw the youngster appear out of nowhere, scoop up Fang’s uniform, and disappear down a lane, where a slender figure flicked out of sight. By the time Fang climbed out of the pond, cap in hand, all that greeted him at the water’s edge were a pair of shoes and socks with holes in them. “Where are my clothes?” he shouted, the shouts quickly turning to agonizing wails. By the time he realized that his clothes had been stolen and that the theft of his dogskin cap had been a ruse, that he’d been tricked by a pro, he shouted, “My god, my life is over!” Still holding his cap, he jumped into the pond. Shouts of “Save him!” erupted all around, but no one was willing to strip down and jump in after him. What with the freezing wind and the ice on the ground, even though the water itself was heated, going in would be easier than getting out. So while Fang Shixian thrashed around in the water, the people merely commented on the thief’s scheme: “Brilliant!” they said. “Just brilliant”
Had Mother forgotten that she was being paraded in public? Whatever the answer, this elderly woman who had raised a houseful of daughters and was mother-in-law to many renowned young men flung down her dunce cap and hobbled toward the pond on bound feet. “How can you people just stand there when a man’s drowning?” she castigated the crowd. She picked up a broom from a nearby peddler. At the pond’s edge she shouted, “You there, nephew Fang, have you gone mad? Quick, grab hold of the broom and ITI pull you out!”
The brackish water had apparently changed Fang’s mind about ending it all, so he grabbed hold of the broom and, like a plucked chicken, dragged himself up onto dry ground. His lips had turned purple, and his eyes barely moved in their sockets; he couldn’t speak. Taking off her jacket, Mother wrapped it around his shoulders, which immediately turned him into a comic figure. The people didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. “Put your shoes on, young nephew,” Mother said, “then run home as fast as you can. Work up a good sweat, if you don’t want to die from the cold.” Unfortunately for him, his fingers were frozen stiff, and he couldn’t get his shoes on, so a few of the onlookers, moved by Mother’s kindness, managed to help him into his shoes. Then they picked him up and carried him off at a trot, his stiff legs dragging along behind.
Dressed only in a thin blouse, Mother hugged her shoulders to keep warm as she watched them drag Fang Shixian away. She was the recipient of admiring glances from many people. But Jintong was not one of them. It was Fang Shixian, after all, the man who the year before had been in charge of the farmers’ security unit. Every day, as the commune members headed home, he was the one who searched them and their baskets. On her way home one day, Mother had picked up a yam on the road and put it into her straw basket. Fang Shixian found it and accused her of theft. When Mother denied the accusation, the son of a bitch had slapped her, bloodying her nose; the blood had dripped onto the lapel of her shirt, the same white shirt she was wearing now. An idler like him, who strutted around just because he was categorized as a poor peasant, why not let him drown? His feelings for her at that moment bordered on loathing.
At the gate to the commune slaughterhouse Jintong spotted Zaohua standing in front of a red board with a slogan in yellow letters, and he was sure that she’d been involved in Fang Shixian’s misfortune. The youngster must have been her apprentice. If she was capable of stealing a diamond ring off the finger of Princess Monica under tight security at the Yellow Sea Restaurant, she certainly wasn’t interested in a worker’s uniform. No, that had been a payback for the bad man who had slapped her grandmother. Jintong’s view of Zaohua underwent an immediate change. As he saw it, thievery was a disgrace, and had been since time immemorial. But now he considered what Zaohua had done was right. There was no honor in being a common thief, of course, but someone like Zaohua, a thief for all ages, was worthy of high praise. In his eyes, the Shangguan family had raised yet another glorious banner to flap in the wind.
The little Red Guard leader, who was upset over what Mother had done, picked up a battery-powered bullhorn, a rarity those days, but well suited to and necessary for revolutionary activities, and, in the style of the leader of Northeast Gaomi Township’s land reform decades earlier, announced in a sickly, shaky voice, “Revolutionary – comrades – Red Guards – comrades-in-arms – low and middle poor peasants – do not be misled – by the phony kindness – of the old-line historical counterrevolutionary – Shangguan Lu – who is trying to divert the direction of our struggle -”
This Red Guard leader, Guo Pingen, was in fact the abused son of the eccentric Guo Jingcheng, a man who had broken his wife’s leg and then warned her not to cry. When people passed by their house, they often heard the sound of someone being beaten and a woman’s muffled moans. A good-hearted man by the name of Li Wannian once decided to try to put a stop to it, but had no sooner opened the door than he was struck by a rock that came flying out. Guo Pingen had inherited his father’s cruel, ruthless ways. As the Cultural Revolution progressed, he had already injured the kidney of a teacher by the name of Zhu Wen with a vicious kick.
His exhortation completed, he slung the bullhorn over his back, walked up to Mother, and aimed a well-placed kick into her knee. “Kneel!” he demanded. With a yelp of pain, Mother got down on her knees. He then grabbed her by the ear and demanded, “Get up!” She’d barely gotten to her feet when he sent her to the ground again with another kick and stepped on her back. All his beatings were administered to give concrete meaning to the popular revolutionary slogan: “Knock all class enemies to the ground, then step on them.”
The fires of rage burned in Jintong’s heart as he watched his mother being beaten; he ran up to Guo Pingen with balled fists, but was brought up short by Guo’s sinister glare. Two deep creases ran from mouth to chin on the face of this revolutionary leader, who was little more than a boy himself, which gave him the appearance of a prehistoric reptile. Jintong unclenched his fists, as if by instinct. His heart shuddered, and he was about to ask Guo what he thought he was doing when the young Red Guard raised his hand, and Jintong’s question emerged instead as a wail: “Mother…” He fell to his knees beside his mother, who raised her head with difficulty and glared at him. “Stand up, my useless son!”
Jintong got to his feet, while Guo Pingen signaled the Red Guards with their clubs, their gongs, and their drums to round up the Ox-Demons and Snake-Spirits and recommence the parade through the marketplace. Resorting once again to his bullhorn to exhort the marketgoers to shout slogans along with him, the effect of his strangely altered voice was like feeding them poison. They frowned, but no one answered the call.
Meanwhile, Jintong stood there caught up in a fantasy: A sunlit day. Armed with the legendary Dragon Springs sword, he has Guo Pin-gen, Zhang Pingtuan, Mousy Fang, Dog Liu, Wu Yunyu, Wei Yangjiao, and Guo Qiusheng dragged up onto the stage, where he forces them to kneel and face the glinting tip of his sword.
“Get back there, you little bastard!” one of the little Red Guard generals growled as he drove his fist into Jintong’s belly. “Don’t you dare think of running away!”
Jintong’s fantasy had brought tears to his eyes, but the fist in the belly brought him back to reality, which seemed worse than ever. The road ahead was an impenetrable haze. But at that moment, a dispute broke out between Guoping’s faction and the “Golden Monkey Rebel Regiment,” under the leadership of Wu Yunyu. And what began as a battle of words soon led to pushing and shoving, and, finally, to war.
Wu Yunyu started it with a kick, which Guo answered with a punch. Then they tore into each other. Guo ripped off Wu’s cap, his prized possession, and scratched his scabby head bloody. Wu stuck his fingers into Guo’s mouth and pulled with all his might, opening a cut in one corner. As soon as the factions of Red Guards saw what was happening, they turned it into a gang war, and in no time clubs were cutting through the air, bricks were flying, leaving the participants bloody but determined to fight to the death. Wu Yunyu’s subordinate Wei Yangjiao stabbed two combatants in the gut with the steel tip of his red-tasseled spear; blood and some sticky gray oozed from the wounds. Guo Pingen and Wu Yunyu backed off to direct their troops in battle. At that moment, Jintong saw the veiled young woman he recognized as Zaohua pass in front of Guo Pingen, her hand seeming to brush his face as she passed; a moment later he set up a loud agonizing wail, a gash appearing on his cheek, almost as if he’d grown a second mouth. Blood gushed from the wound, a terrifying sight. He turned and ran in the direction of the
