mouth. “Dont make a sound,” Zhu said, “and hold your breath.” He covered Gao Mas head with a well-used gourd, then slid a battered lid over the vat, leaving just a crack.
Footsteps sounded in the yard. Gao Ma raised his head to listen. He could tell the police had reached the sty. “You… you’re hiding in the p-pigpen, don’t think I wont f-find you. C-come out of there.”
“Come out or well shoot!”
“Comrades, what’s going on out here?” Zhu asked them.
“C-catching a c- counterrevolutionary! ”
“In my pigpen?”
“Stay out of the way. We’ll get to you after we’ve caught him,” the policeman demanded. “Come out of there, or we’ll shoot! We can use deadly force if you resist arrest.”
“Comrades, is this a joke or something?”
“W-who’s joking?” the stammerer said. “I’m going in to see for myself.”
With his hands on the low wall, he leapfrogged into the pigpen, then waded into the covered area and stuck his head in, where he was greeted by a couple of hornets that stung him on the mouth.
“Comrades,” Schoolmaster Zhu said, “what do you take me for, a Nationalist spy? Do you really think I’d try to put something over on you? I heard shots, and when my pigs started to squeal, I came out to see what was going on, just in time to spot a dark figure running like hell toward the southern wall.”
“Aiding a fugitive is a felony,” the policeman said. “I want you to be clear on that score.”
“I know,” Zhu replied.
“W-what’s your name?” the stammerer asked.
“Zhu Santian.”
“Y-you say you spotted a dark figure running toward the southern wall?”
“That’s right.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a teacher.”
“A p-party member?”
“I was in the Nationalist Party before Liberation.”
“The Nationalist Party? That must have been the life. I’m t-telling you. if you’re 1-lying, you’ll be up on charges, no matter what party you belong to.”
“I understand.”
Both policemen jumped out of the pigpen and ran toward the southern wall in search of the dark figure. Gao Ma knew that the lane beyond the southern wall dead-ended at a noodle mill alongside a ditch of putrid stagnant water.
Schoolmaster Zhu removed the beat-up gourd from Gao Mas head and said urgently, “Get moving. Head east down the lane.”
Gao Ma pulled himself out of the gooey slops. He was covered with rotting sweet-potato leaves, and a dark-red liquid dripped from his arms and legs. The room was filled with the stink. Again he bent over as if wanting to kneel in front of Schoolmaster Zhu to show his gratitude. “None of that,” Zhu said. “Get moving!”
Dripping wet, Gao Ma was greeted in the yard by a chilling wind as he tore through Schoolmaster Zhu’s gate and headed east down a narrow lane that opened into a wider north-south lane after about fifty paces. He paused at the intersection, fearful that a hard leather boot was waiting for him no matter which way he ran. The wide lane appeared to be deserted. He stood for a moment in front of a waist-high bamboo fence, then took a step backward for leverage and shot forward, clearing the fence and landing in a field of coriander about two hands high, emerald green in color, and sweedy redolent. It was wonderful. But this was no time to sightsee, so he jumped up and headed east down a field dike as fast as his legs would carry him. White-haired old Gao Ping-chuan, unseeing, crouched on his hands and knees, tending some cabbages. Another bamboo fence blocked his way, so once again he leapt over it. This time he wasn’t so lucky. The handcuff dangling from his wrist caught on a sorghum stalk, which snapped in two. “Who’s there?” Gao Pingchuan called out.
Gao Ma didn’t linger, but entered another broad north-south lane, where a group of women sitting under a shade tree at the southern end were enjoying a noisy visit. Since a row of linked houses blocked his way east, he headed north, reaching the sandy riverbank in a minute or so; after stumbling into a grove of red willows, he turned east instinctively. The untended grove was like a maze, with branches growing every which way, their limbs serving as home for millions of light-brown poisonous caterpillars the locals called “scar creepers.” Just touching their little brisdes turned the skin all red and puffy and made it itch horribly. Gao Ma didnt realize he’d encountered the scar creepers until he was well past them, and far too busy trampling over the puncture vines that grew in wild profusion on the sandbar to notice their stings; even now, running barefoot over the vines, he felt no pain.
His sudden passage startled jackrabbits out of their hiding places in the willow grove, and even though they ran beside him, he quickly outdistanced them all. As he reached the end of the willow grove, a tottering cobblestone bridge resting on wooden stanchions appeared on his left. Built for horse carts, it linked the eastern edge of the village with the fields. Fearful of being seen, he cut across a patch of ground dotted with holes dug by village thieves and rushed into a woods where mulberry and acacia trees grew side by side. The acacias were just blooming, and the air was stiflingly heavy with their fragrance. He kept running, his legs feeling more and more like lead weights, his vision blurring, his skin stinging painfully, his breath coming in pants. The gnarled tree trunks- white mulberry and rich brown acacia-formed a perilous and nearly impenetrable net. As soon as a path opened up, it was closed off by the next tree, and in one of his sudden lurches he crashed headlong to the ground.
2.
Gao Ma regained consciousness sometime around dusk, and his first sensation was a parched thirst that made even his belly burn, followed by an awareness of painful itches all over-wherever he pressed the skin with his finger, a gloomy breath of cool air seeped into the pores. His eyes were nearly swollen shut, but it wasn’t until he actually touched the puny skin that he vaguely recalled diving into Schoolmaster Zhu’s pigpen and banging a hornets’ nest with his head.
The sun, a red wheel, was sinking slowly in the west. Besides being spectacularly beautiful, the early-summer sunset was exceedingly soft and gentle: black mulberry leaves turned as red as roses; pristine white acacia petals shed an enshrouding pale-green aura. Mild evening breezes made both the mulberry leaves and the acacia petals dance and whirl, filling the woods with a soft rusde.
He stood up by holding on to a mulberry branch, even though every joint in his body cried out in pain. His legs were swollen, as were his feet, and his sinuses felt as if they might explode. He desperately needed some water. For a moment he wresded with his. thoughts to determine whether the events of that afternoon had actually happened or were just a bad dream. Dried bits of pig slops sticking to him and the glistening bracelets dangling from his left wrist were all the proof he needed that he was in fact a fugitive from justice. And he knew the crime for which they wanted to arrest him. He had been nervously expecting it to happen for over a month, which was why he had stopped securing the latch on his window. Debilitating thirst and the painful tautness of his skin made calm thought impossible, so he continued through the stand of mulberry and acacia trees heading north toward the dry riverbed where, he recalled, Gao Qunjia and his son had dug a well that spring.
In order to avoid stepping on more puncture vines growing in the sandy soil, he was forced to walk among prickly reed-grass that was only slighdy less painful to the soles of his feet. Bright red ribbons of light filtering through the acacia flowers and mulberry leaves settled on his bare skin, and as he examined his nakedness, especially his arms and chest, he saw that he was a mass of angry red blisters: mementos bestowed upon him by the scar creepers.
The gleaming sand of the dry riverbed nearly blinded him as he emerged from the wooded area; the descending fireball crackled as it picked up speed, painting the sky to look like a celestial flower garden. But Gao Ma was too busy scanning the area for a sign of the well to notice. Finally, amid the seemingly endless red-and-yellow sand of the riverbed, he spotted some mounds of chocolate-colored earth and staggered toward them.
Water, water. He fell to his knees and greedily sucked up the water like a thirsty horse. Within seconds his mouth, throat, and stomach shared the relief of the craved-for water. But the walls of his stomach cramped up with
