get up, get up now. We’ve come through it and have been rehabilitated. And you? You’ve gotten rich. And if your conscience still bothers you, donate the money you made to the cause of rebuilding a temple.”
Racked by sobs, Yang roared: “I won’t donate money I worked so hard to put aside. How dare you even suggest that!… What I want is for you to come beat me the way I beat you years ago. I don’t owe any of you a thing. You owe me…”
Just then I saw Hong Taiyue walk up on unsteady legs. He passed right by me, reeking of alcohol. In all the years I’d been on the run, this was the first time I’d been able to closely observe the onetime supreme leader of the Ximen Village Production Brigade. His hair, which had turned white, still stuck up in the air like spikes. His face was puffy and he was missing several teeth, which gave him a somewhat dull-witted look. The moment he stepped through the gate, the clamor stopped abruptly, surefire evidence that the men in the compound had not lost their fear of the man who had ruled Ximen Village for many years.
Wu Qiuxiang rushed up to greet him, and the onetime bad individuals jumped to their feet as a sort of conditioned reflex. “Ah, Party secretary!” she called out with enthusiasm and familiarity as she took Hong Taiyue by the arm, something he was not at all accustomed to. He jerked his arm free, nearly falling over in the process. Qiuxiang reached out and steadied him; this time he let her hold his arm as she led him to a clean table, where he sat down. Since it was a bench, Hong was in constant danger of falling backward; sharp-eyed Huzhu reacted by quickly moving over a chair for him. Resting one arm on the table, he turned sideways to stare at the people under the tree, his eyes bleary and unfocused. After wiping the table in front of Hong in a practiced move, Qiuxiang asked genially:
“What can I get for the Party secretary?”
“Let’s see, what’ll I have…” He blinked, his heavy eyelids moving slowly up and down. Then he banged his fist on the table, sending the dented old revolutionary canteen bouncing into the air. “What can you get?” he shouted in anger. “Liquor, that’s what! That and two ounces of gunpowder!”
“Party Secretary,” Qiuxiang said with a smile, “I think you’ve had enough for one day. For now, I’ll have Huzhu make you a bowl of fish broth. Drink it hot and then go home and get some sleep. What do you say?”
“Fish broth? Are you implying I’m drunk?” He glared at her, crusted material in the corners of his puffy eyes. “I’m not drunk!” he bellowed unhappily. “My bones and my flesh might be affected by alcohol, but my mind is as clear and bright as the moon or a shiny mirror. Don’t think you can put something over on me, no ma’am! Liquor, where’s the liquor? You small-time capitalists, you petty entrepreneurs, are like winter leeks. The roots may be withered and the outer skin dry, but the spark of life persists until the weather turns good and you start sprouting buds. Money is the only language you people speak. Well, I’ve got money, so bring me some liquor!”
Qiuxiang winked at Huzhu, who carried a white bowl over to Hong.
“Party Secretary, try this first.”
Hong Taiyue took a sip and spit it out. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and said in a loud voice that sounded both dreary and tragic:
“I never thought you’d gang up on me, too, Huzhu. I ask you for liquor, and you give me vinegar. My heart has been steeping in vinegar for so long that my spit is sour, and you give me vinegar. Where’s Jinlong? Call him over here so I can ask him if Ximen Village is still part of the Communist Party realm.”
From the moment Hong walked into the compound, he was the focus of attention. All the while he was entertaining the crowd with witty remarks, everyone – including Yang Qi, who was kneeling on the ground – was enthralled, watching him with open mouths, not to snap out of it until Hong was drinking again.
“All of you, come over here and beat me, give me back everything I gave you…,” Yang Qi implored. “If you don’t, you have no right to call yourselves human, and if you aren’t human, then you must be the offspring of horses, mule spawn, sprung from the eggs of chickens, little bastards covered with fuzz…”
“Yang Qi,” Wu Yuan, leader of the onetime bad elements, said, unable to hold back any longer, “Elder Yang, we give up, how’s that? When you were beating us you did so as a representative of the government to teach us a lesson. If you hadn’t done that, how could we ever have reformed ourselves? It was your rattan switch that made it possible for us to cast off our old selves and be transformed into new people, so get up, please get up.” Wu Yuan called the others over. “Come, let’s drink a toast to Yang Qi to thank him for educating us.” The onetime bad elements raised their glasses and offered a toast to Yang; he refused to accept it. “Stop that!” he insisted as he wiped the beer foam from his face. “That’s not going to work. I’m not getting up until you do as I ask. Murder demands the death penalty, and borrowed money has to be repaid. You owe me.”
Wu Yuan looked around and, seeing no way out, said, “Elder Yang, since you’re going to be stubborn, it looks like hitting you is the only way this will be settled. So on behalf of all bad elements, I’ll slap you across the face and the account will be settled.”
“No way will one slap settle accounts. I gave you people no fewer than three thousand lashes, so you owe me three thousand slaps, not one less.”
“Yang Qi, you son of a bitch,” Wu Yuan said as he walked up close to Yang, “you’re going to drive me out of my mind. A bunch of us who suffered for decades are here to enjoy ourselves, but you’ve made that impossible. You call this an apology? This is just another way for you to bully us… Well, I’m not going to take it any longer. I’m slapping you today, no matter who you are.” And that’s exactly what he did, right across Yang Qi’s pear-shaped face.
With the sound reverberating in the air, Yang wobbled on his knees, but managed to stay upright. “More!” he cried out fiercely. “That was one. You’ve just started. You’re not men if you don’t give me 2,999 more.”
His shout hadn’t even died out when Hong Taiyue slammed his canteen down on the table and got to his feet, however unsteadily He pointed to the table where the onetime bad elements were sitting, his right index finger straight as the cannon on a sailing ship being tossed on the waves.
“You’re rebellingYou bunch of landlords, rich peasants, traitors, spies, and historical counterrevolutionaries, enemies of the proletariat, every one of you, how dare you sit there like normal people drinking and enjoying yourselves! Stand up!”
Hong had been relieved of his position of authority for years, but he was still a man to be listened to. He was used to ordering people around, and had the voice for it. The recently rehabilitated bad elements jumped up as if they were shot out of their seats, sweat dripping from their faces.
“And you -” Hong pointed at Yang Qi, ratcheting up his anger a notch or two. “You damned turncoat, you lily- livered scumbag who kneels before class enemies, you stand up too!”
Yang tried, but when his head bumped up against the wet necktie hanging from a low branch, his legs buckled and he sat down hard, his back resting against the apricot tree.
“You, you… you people-” Like a man standing on the deck of a wave-tossed boat, he tried but failed to point steadily at any of the men standing at their open-air tables. “You people,” he said, launching into a tirade, “think you’re home free. Well, look around and you’ll see that this spot under the sky -” He pointed skyward and nearly fell over. “This spot still belongs to the Communist Party, even though there are dark clouds in the sky I’m telling you, here and now, that your dunce caps have only been removed temporarily, and before long there’ll be new ones for you to wear, this time made of iron or steel or brass. We’ll weld them to your scalps, and you’ll wear them to your death, into your coffin. That is the answer you get from this proud member of the Communist Party!” He pointed to Yang Qi, who was snoring away under the apricot tree. “You’re not only a turncoat who kneels before class enemies, you’re a profiteer who has dug holes at the base of the wall that is our collective economy.” He then turned to Wu Qiuxiang. “And you, Wu Qiuxiang, I took pity on you and spared you from having to put on a dunce cap. But it’s in your blood to exploit the masses, and you were just biding your time till the weather turned so you could sink roots and began to flower. Listen to me, all of you. Our Communist Party, we members of Mao Zedong’s party who have survived countless intraparty struggles over the proper line, we tempered Communists who have weathered the storms of class struggle, we Bolsheviks, will not knuckle under, we will never surrender! Land distribution? I’ll tell you what that is. It’s a scheme to make the broad masses of middle and lower poor peasants suffer a second time, be beaten down all over again.” Raising his fists in the air, Hong shouted, “We will keep the struggle alive, we will bring Lan Lian to his knees, we’ll lop the top off this black flag! That is the mission of enlightened Communists of the Ximen Village Production Brigade and all middle and lower poor peasants! The cold, dark night will come to an end -”
The sound of an engine and a pair of blinding lights coming from the east brought Hong’s tirade to an end. I flattened up against the wall to keep from being discovered. The engine was shut down, the lights turned off, and out from the cab of the ancient Jeep emerged Jinlong, Panther Sun, and others. Vehicles like that are considered
