We were transplanting rice shoots. We worked for three hours without a break. I was working the edge of the field and noticed a trace of blood in the muddy water. I tracked the blood and found Orchid down on her knees in the water, her pants bloody red. Orchid always had problems with her period. It could last for half a month, bleeding her to exhaustion. She told me that she hadn’t understood what her period was when it first came. She felt too ashamed to ask anyone for advice. She stuffed unsterilized clothes into her pants. The blood was blocked but she got an infection. I asked her why she hadn’t told her mother or a friend about it. She said her mother was in a labor camp and her friend knew even less than she. Her friend was not sure whether Chairman Mao was a man or a woman.
I asked Orchid why she had not asked the platoon leader for a day off. She said she did. She was rejected. The head sent her to Lu, and Lu said that the transplanting had to be completed by midnight or we would lose the season. I told Orchid that I thought Lu was an armchair revolutionary who demanded other people be Marxists when she herself was a revisionist. Orchid disagreed. She said Lu was tough on herself too. She said that Lu had never taken a day off when her period came. Orchid said Lu had serious cramps every time. Orchid once saw Lu crying and twisting on the toilet because of the pain. I did not know what to say. I told Orchid that I would help her as soon as I finished with my own planting.
The rain started again and got heavier. I worked fast so I could go to help Orchid. My arms and fingers were moving as if they were not mine. Standing to stretch my back, I noticed Yan a few plots away. She moved like a dancer: passing the rice shoots from left hand to right and inserting the shoots into the mud in perfect time with her steps backward. Her wet clothes were pasted to her body.
I did my best to compete. Yan responded to the challenge. She toyed with me, like a cat does with mice. She sped up and I fell far behind; she then suddenly slowed down to allow me to catch up, before surging ahead again. She finished with one plot, then went to the next without turning her head.
The sky turned darker. A loudspeaker broadcast Mao quotation songs. The soldiers were exhausted like plants whipped by a storm. Two huge bright lights were carried to the fields and steamed bread was brought out. The soldiers crawled toward the breadbaskets. Lu stopped us. She yelled, No dinner until the work is completed. Our stomachs had begun to chew themselves. But we dared not talk back to Lu, the deputy of the Party secretary. We feared her. Then there was the commander’s voice. A voice of thunder: What kind of fool are you? Doesn’t your common sense tell you that man is the engine when food is his fuel? Yan waved her arm as if to shovel us to the bread. Go now, she shouted. We ran like pigs to the trough.
Orchid was in tears when I finally went to help her, and a long way behind. We chewed our bread while we planted the shoots. We finished at ten o’clock. Orchid thanked me, crying with relief. She said her mother would have wanted to kill herself if she had witnessed this. In frustration I told Orchid to shut up. I said if Yan could do this, so could we. We were not the only ones who were living this type of life. There were hundreds and thousands of youths in the same shoes. Orchid nodded. She used her sleeve to wipe off her tears. I was sorry for her. I did not like her pitifulness. As I dragged her out of the fields, a meeting was called.
One of the lights was being moved to the plot where we had worked; millions of mosquitoes swarmed into its ray. Lu shouted for attention. She wanted to talk about the quality of the day’s work. She passed the loudspeaker to Yan. Yan was coated with mud. Only her eyes were sparkling. She ordered for the light to be moved to illuminate a particular spot where dozens of rice shoots were floating on the water. The work was poorly done all the way to the edge of the field. Someone did a nice job here, Yan said sarcastically. The shoots will all be dead before daybreak. She wanted us to look at the dying shoots. To look hard. She said the shoots were her babies.
The soldiers began to survey the fields nervously. The word broke out that the section responsible for the careless planting was platoon number four-our territory. I knew it was the area I had worked as I tried to keep up with Yan.
Lu ordered the person responsible to step out of rank and receive public criticism. Orchid sensed my fear and grabbed my hand tightly. Lu said, No one leaves until the mistake is admitted.
As I gathered my courage and was about to step out, Yan suddenly said that she preferred to let the comrade correct his own mistake.
The fields had become quiet in the moonlight. The drizzle had stopped and the air was still. The insects resumed their nightclub singing. The fragrance of the plants wafted over me. The moon moved out of the clouds. I planted my feet in the mud and began to redo the work. My feet were swelling. I sang a Mao quotation song to fight off sleep.
The sky was piled with orange clouds when I awoke. The sun had yet to rise. I lay in the mud, joints sore, knowing I hadn’t finished the work. The thought of having to resume my work brought pain to my back. Leeches parked on my legs. I had no energy to pat them off. They sucked my blood until they were satisfied and fell off. I was in despair. Yet I knew there was no way to escape. I had to finish my work. I had no guts to face the Party’s abandonment. I feared being disgraced.
I forced myself to sit up. I looked around and thought I was dreaming. My work had been done. It had been done all the way to the edges. I looked toward the sun. There was someone. Someone about thirty yards away, pacing the field.
My tears welled up, because I saw Yan. She was pacing in the sun. She was the sun. My cold heart warmed.
I stood up and walked toward her.
She turned around, hearing me approach.
I stopped in front of her. I could not say anything.
She nodded at me, then bent down to finish the last few patches. She washed her hands in the irrigation channel. She saw the leeches on my legs and told me to pat them off. She said that Orchid came to her last night and told her everything. She said she was pleased that I stayed all night in the fields. She said I did what I was supposed to do. She unknotted her braids, bent and washed them in the channel. She squeezed the water from her hair and flung her head. She combed her hair with her fingers and braided it. She said when she had found me I looked like a big turtle. She thought I had fainted or something. She paused and said that I made her feel guilty, because I could have caught a disease like arthritis. It would be the Party’s loss if I did.
I rubbed my eyes, trying to look fresh.
She looked me in the eye, a thread of a smile on her face. She said she guessed that I was strong-willed. She said she liked strong-willed people. She looked at the sun for a while. She said, I want you to be the leader of platoon number four. She would arrange to move me to her room so that I could discuss problems with the company heads. She then walked quickly back toward the barracks.
I stood in the sunshine, feeling, feeling the rising of a hope.
I moved in with Yan and six other platoon heads. Yan and I shared a bunk bed. I occupied the top. The decoration in Yan’s net was a display of Mao buttons, pinned on red-colored cloth, about a thousand different kinds of them, from different historical stages. I was impressed. Yan put them up during the day and took them down at night. The room was the same size as the room I had lived in before. It served as a bedroom, conference room and makeshift dining room. It was also a battlefront. Although Yan was officially in charge and Lu was her deputy, Lu wanted much more. She wanted Yan’s position. She was obsessed. She called meetings without agendas. We had to obey her. We had to sit through her meetings in our drowsiness. She liked to see people obey her. To feel powerful was a drug she needed. Only in meetings could she feel that she was as in control of other people’s lives as she was with her own. She made warnings and threats at the meetings. She enjoyed our fear. She aimed at all our possible mistakes. She waited, had been waiting, for a precise moment, to catch a mistake and beat it into submission. She had been trying to catch Yan. Her incorrectness. I could tell that she would have pushed Yan off a cliff if she had a chance.
