it?”
Before Nini could reply, a policeman came out of the patrol car and yelled to the girls, “Where is your home? Go home now. Don't stay in the alley.”
Little Sixth was startled from her dozing and started to cry. Nini grabbed Little Fifth's hand and told Little Fourth to come with her. A few steps into the alley Nini saw one of the row houses without a fence. She pulled her sisters in and hid behind the fence of an adjoining house, and told them to keep quiet. Little Sixth was squirming on Nini's back. She put a finger into the baby's mouth and calmed her. The two younger girls wandered around the yard, checking the pile of firewood at a corner, crushing a few pieces of soft coal into powder.
Nini peeked out from behind the fence. A few people jumped out of an ambulance, all of them wearing white lab coats, white head covers and masks. One of them pulled a gurney out of the ambulance, and the two shorter ones—two women, Nini realized, as their hair crept out from underneath the head covers and reached their necks —pulled from the ambulance white and blue packages, tubes, and a strangely shaped lamp that connected to the inside of the ambulance with long metal arms. One of the women switched the lamp on and off for a test, and the four policemen, uncurious, patrolled nearby with black batons.
All of a sudden, someone started to shout. A dog darted across the alley, yelping, chased by a policeman waving his baton. “Quick, they're coming,” a voice shouted. The man who had been chasing the dog ran back, and Nini looked out again. Someone was dragged into the alley. For a brief moment, Nini thought she saw the black hair of a woman, but before she could take another look, several men lifted the person onto the gurney, which was at once covered by a piece of white cloth. The body struggled under the sheet, but a few more hands pinned it down. “What is it?” Little Fourth asked. Nini did not answer, her heartbeat quickening when she saw a red spot on the white sheet covering the body, at first about the size of a plate, then spreading into an irregular shape.
A few minutes later, the body was lifted off the gurney, its legs kicking; yet strangely, no noise came from the struggling body. Nini felt an odd heaviness in her chest, as if she was caught in one of those nightmares where, no matter how hard you tried, you could not make a sound. The policemen shuffled the body inside the police car. The men and women in the white lab coats climbed back into the ambulance, and a moment later, both vehicles turned onto the main street and, with long and urgent siren wails, disappeared.
“What is it?” Little Fourth asked again.
Nini shook her head and said she did not know.
“What is it? What is it?” Little Fifth said. Nini told her to stop being a parrot. She led them to the entrance of the alley where the ambulance had parked a few minutes ago. Before the younger girls could notice the drops of blood on the ground, Nini dragged her bad foot across them and smeared them into the dust. Little Fourth pointed to a black cotton shoe on the ground, and Little Fifth picked it up. There was a hole in the rubber sole; she pushed a finger through it and wiggled the finger. Nini told Little Fifth to get rid of the shoe, and when she refused, Nini grabbed it and threw it as hard as she could across the alley. Little Fifth started to cry and then stopped when a huge rumble came from the sky. Nini and her sisters looked up. An army helicopter flew over them like a huge green dragonfly. “Helicopter,” Little Fourth said, and Little Fifth echoed her, both of them pointing their fingers at the sky.
Soon the gates to the stadium opened, and people swarmed out, all chattering. Nini grabbed her sisters by their hands and walked closer to the crowd.
“The woman did not say a word throughout the meeting,” a man said. “I wonder if they drugged her.”
Another man swore that he had seen the woman open her mouth during the meeting. “She didn't look drugged at all to me,” he said.
“How could she speak? They must have cut her trachea,” another man said. “Didn't you see her neck was covered by a bandage?”
“Trachea? You fool. How could she live if her trachea was cut? It was her vocal cords that they cut.”
The first man shrugged. “She couldn't speak, for sure.”
“Pardon me,” Nini said, and raised her voice when she was not heard. “Pardon me, Uncles. Is the counterrevolutionary still in the stadium?”
“What's that to do with you?” one of the men said.
Nini stuttered and said they wanted to see the woman counterrevolutionary, but before she finished her sentence, she was cut off by the men. “What's there to see? They took her away first thing after the meeting was over. By now she's probably been shot.”
Disappointed, Nini told her sisters to stand farther away from the entrance so the crowd would not step on them. They waited until the crowd thinned and the last group of elementary students marched away. There was nothing for them to do now but go home.
THE ARMY PILOT did not look down at the city of Muddy River and its many upturned heads when he flew the helicopter over the giant statue of Chairman Mao. The flight to the provincial capital was no more than thirty minutes, and after that was the lunch he looked forward to. The meal, after a special operation, with roast chickens, beef ribs, and steamed fish, was fought over even among the best-maintained pilots. He thought about the first year he had joined the army, sixteen and a half and a full head shorter than the training officer who, at formations, liked to spit in his face and kick his legs. For the first three months they had not had a taste of meat. The pilot wished his training officer could see him now, one stripe and three stars on his shoulders. His father had often said that he who could suffer the insufferable would one day become a man above all men. A man above you all, the pilot thought, imagining the boys running in the crowded alleys, pointing out the helicopter to one another.
Among the upturned heads was Bashi's. He was standing across the river from Hunchback Island. The island, located at the eastern end of town where the Muddy River widened and turned down south, was a long and narrow piece of land in the shape of a whale's back. In the summer it was overrun by wild geese and ducks when their migration brought them north; in those months, children liked to swim out to the island and steal the eggs, which, unless cooked with the strongest spice, had a strong, unpleasant taste; the egg hunting was more for the fun of it than for practical reasons. Apart from the wild birds and children, once in a while other visitors included the police, who would clean up the island, as it was the site where executions for Muddy River and several of the surrounding counties took place. The last time someone had been shot dead on the island was the summer two years before, when a man from a neighboring county had been found guilty of raping a young woman and nearly strangling her to death. The policemen had cleared the island ahead of time, but a few daredevil young men swam there and hid underwater just offshore. Later they claimed to have seen the man's head pop like a watermelon at the single shot. Bashi was not one of the young men, but after a while he believed that he had been; he told people about how the man's member had pointed to the sky, inside his pants, even after he dropped dead like a heavy sack. “A man like him, you know, with problems down there,” Bashi said to men and women alike, with a knowing smile.
Bashi watched the red flags and the yellow tape that circled the island. With the unthawed river, there was no
