Red Azalea

When it was my turn to read the lines, I read without interest. I did not care about the Chous. It bored me. People were asked to comment. People gave comments. The comments of nonsense. We must keep China red forever-this was every speaker’s opening line.

I saw a net full of dead turtles and snakelike brown-green fish in the yard. It was Monday morning and I was assigned to pick up some study materials at a bookstore near my parents’ home. I decided to stop at the house. Since I was no longer in favor, the studio people would not notice my absence. When I got down from the bicycle, I wondered who had brought those turtles and fish. The lady who was my neighbor said to me, Your friend has been waiting for you by the staircase for hours.

I made guesses of who it might be. I found I was unable to park the bicycle when my guesses came into focus. The turtle and fish brought me the smell of Red Fire Farm. I leaned the bicycle against the wall and rushed in. I saw her rise from the staircase. Yan, my commander, looked like a bride. New haircut, to the ears. She wore a brand- new indigo jacket, red shirt with the collar showing, deep blue pants and a pair of brand-new square-toed black shoes. She looked determined and calm. Though still pale, she was no longer sad. She looked at me and tried to compose herself. She then said hello to me. By her trembling voice, I knew she wanted me badly. I went up and took her hands in mine. Now she knew that I wanted her just as badly.

I didn’t expect you, I said. She said, Just finished the harvest. I cleaned the turtles and fish for you this morning. I caught them yesterday.

I stared at her. I tried to see how much she had changed from the last time I saw her. I tried to learn if she was doing all right. She turned away from me and said, Look, only dead fish and turtles stare.

I guided Yan to my family’s apartment. I opened the door and took her to sit down on the porch. I poured her a cup of tea. I looked at her. I didn’t know how to start the conversation. I said, You look good. She said, I don’t know. I guess I was born a cheap thing. I feel like a pig-nothing matters to me. She stopped and there was a silence. She then looked around and pointed at a painting of Mao on the wall. She said, It’s good-who did it? Blooming, I said. It was her homework. Yan sighed and said that she always wished she could paint, but she gave it up because she could not get Mao’s nose straight.

She pointed at the big wooden bed and said, It’s big. I said, Yes, Blooming and I slept here, but she only comes home on Sundays. Yan asked about my mother’s health, and I said, Still the same. She wasn’t given any day off. She has to go to work every day. I said, She goes, gets sick, and when her heartbeat goes over one hundred ten she gets a letter from the doctor and a day off. She comes home, rests, has to be at work the next day. And the bad circle starts again. I asked if she saw my sister Coral at the farm. Once, said Yan. She was carrying bricks with the team. She was slow, the last one dragging behind the ranks. She is not as strong as you. I said, I know. I remember Mother once told me that Coral was weak. She could not stand up until she was two years old. The nanny Mother hired secretly stole all Coral’s food coupons and sent them to her village to feed her own children. I asked Yan how I could help my sister. Yan said, Oh, come on. Coral is not the only one in prison.

Yan said, Look at me, I am old. She was looking at herself in a mirror. I looked at her in the mirror for a while. Rebuttoning her collar, she said, Life goes on, it really does.

I said, How is Leopard? Yan glanced at me, then said, His father has just passed away. He came back to Shanghai to attend the funeral. Did you come with him? I asked. Who do you think I am? His daughter-in-law? Anyway, Leopard left the farm first and I just got in today. You are dating him, aren’t you? I looked at her. She went silent. She sipped the tea and bent to look at the wood patterns on the table, then she looked at the newspaper. After a while she said, You know I never started with him. It’s an old meal already, I mean our relationship. My best years were not with him. He missed it. Am I sounding like a pig? Well, of course I wrote him letters. How can I say that I never started with him? You delivered my letters to him, didn’t you…? Then you left for good. He came to me. I mean he sent a letter to me. He asked me to meet him in the brick factory. He said he had always wanted me. He was just afraid of political pressure. His secretary was after him. Do you remember that short heavy girl you always described to me? The one who showed up every time you passed the letters to Leopard? Yes, I do, I said. I remember Old Wong. Anyway, his company now was doing poorly, Yan continued. Their fields were closer to the sea. They’re saltier than ours. He even lost his seeds. He let the soldiers eat them. They had nothing to plant. He is more desperate than I am. So we-you know-talked about this stuff. He said he always loved my letters. My letters! For Buddha’s sake, my letters. Then of course I confessed I never wrote those letters. You know he forced me out of the closet. I told him about you. Oh, well, nothing shocking, you know, something to the effect that you were a better writer than I. That’s all. Are you embarrassed?

Does he love you? I asked. He said he does. But I don’t know how much I could count on that, Yan said. And you? I asked. She said, Well, you know, I am not good at it. She sipped the tea and began to chew the leaves. I hope you like him enough, she said, swallowing the leaves slowly.

Have you had… Before I started the phrase, Yan lowered her head shyly as if she knew what I was going to ask. Well…, she said. The farm was too dangerous to… You know one gets caught easily. She looked at me, cheeks reddening. I said, How can I help? She said, He is coming.

I jumped up and looked out the window. What? Who? When? She said, I invited him to meet me here in the afternoon.

How bold! I said. She said, I guess so. But you know, I’m just going to meet him and we’ll have a cup of tea together. What’s so shocking about that? Just to sit and have tea? I laughed at her poor lie. It would be like scratching the foot through a boot. I said, It will make you feel quite itchy afterward. She said, Well, you know me, unless… I said, Yes, maybe I can do something. Her face flushed. Do it for me, please, she said. I nodded. I said, I know you want him. She said, Well… I said, Do you want him? Would you like to have a space alone with him for a while? She turned to the window and nodded lightly. Will you be my guard? she asked slowly, without looking at me. I will, I said. I will be your guard. I’ll always be your guard. You know I used to be your guard. I want to. She said, Would you? She turned to look at me. She looked into my eyes, then said, Would you? I stood up and went to the kitchen. I could not bear her burning eyes.

As I was making jasmine tea for her and myself, the feel of her touch went through me. I felt the warmth of her body. I was possessive of that body. My hands shook. The hot water streamed out of the mugs onto the floor and wet my feet. I grabbed a mop and began to wipe the floor. My mind went on seeing things. I could see the joy on her face, the joy of being taken, being deeply penetrated. I could feel her wetness. I could hear her animallike groan. I knew the way she moved when she was aroused and could not help herself from pulling me closer and closer to her, pressing me, pasting me to her skin, leaving teeth marks on my shoulders. I wanted to be an observer, to observe Leopard doing what I have and have not done.

Yan stood by the kitchen entrance, looking at me.

It was ten in the morning. We had a few hours before Leopard would arrive. Yan asked me if I would have any problems with my working unit. I said I would lie again. Yan asked how I would lie. I thought for a while and said I would break my bicycle, then tell Soviet Wong that I had a traffic accident. Yan said, Would it do? I said, To lie or not to lie-the result would be the same because they would not believe me anyway.

Yan suggested that we go and take a shower in the public bathhouse on Salty Road. I agreed.

We were hand in hand like schoolgirls. Her braids were sun-beaten, yellowish. A neighbor saw us as we passed by; he nodded at me, looking at Yan, and said, A relative from the countryside? Then he asked Yan, How do you like Shanghai? Ma-ma-hoo-hoo, Yan said in the Shanghai dialect. So-so. The neighbor was surprised. He said, Her dialect is pretty good. I am a Shanghainese, can’t you tell? Yan said. The man shook his head. You look Tibetan.

Yan said, Let’s go to the department store. I want to buy something I’ve wanted to have for a long time. We moved through the crowd and stepped into the Shanghai Second Department Store. We went to the fabric counter. Yan said she was too old for the colors she liked. She said, Maybe I could make them into underwear. What do you think? I said they cost too much to be worn as underwear. We moved on to the clothing counter. Yan saw bright red underwear. She immediately asked a clerk to show her a pair. Without consulting me, she bought a set, the bright red underwear. Stop it, she said to me when she saw me smiling. I said, Can you ever get over the color red? I started laughing. She said, What’s so funny? I said it had just popped into my mind how we used to use red cloth to make bags for the Little Red Book. She said, Well, to me red is a passionate color, and one is what one wears. I said, Is this what you have been wanting? She said, As always, you know me better than the worms in my intestine.

I said I was afraid of being seen by any unit colleague. She said, What’s all that shit about? I said, You don’t understand the studio people. They are starving wolves. They don’t like me. Yan said, But you made it through their