Frog

Gugu fought harder to pry open Huang’s fingers, apparently not hearing the director. By this time Huang Qiuya’s screams had turned into tearful wails.

Stop that, Wan Xin! the director demanded angrily. And you people, he said loudly to the rubberneckers, have you all gone blind? Pull those two apart!

Two male doctors went up and, with difficulty, pulled Gugu off Huang.

Two female doctors picked Huang up off the floor.

Huang’s dark glasses had fallen off and there was a trickle of blood from her gums. Cloudy tears poured from her sunken eyes. But she was still clutching the handbill. Director, she bellowed, you have to back me on this!

Gugu’s clothes were pulled this way and that, and her face was ashen. A pair of bloody gouges marred her cheeks, obviously from Huang Qiuya’s nails.

What’s this all about, Wan Xin?

Gugu’s face wore a desolate smile; tears fell from her eyes. She threw the torn pieces of the handbill in her hand to the floor and, without a word, walked unsteadily back to the ward.

Like someone who has performed heroically under brutal circumstances, Huang Qiuya handed the crumpled remains of the handbill to the director and then got down on her hands and knees to feel around for her glasses, which she found and put back on, holding them to her face since one of the arms was broken. When she saw the torn pieces Gugu had thrown away, she frantically scooped them up, as if she’d found hidden treasure.

What’s this? asked the director as he smoothed out the handbill.

A reactionary handbill, said Huang as she handed him the torn fragments, as if they were treasured gifts. Don’t forget these, they’re the rest of what the defector Wang Xiaoti sent to Wan Xin.

The curious doctors and nurses were transfixed.

Suffering from a case of far-sightedness, the director held the handbill out at arm’s length so he could read it. The doctors and nurses crowded around him.

What are you people looking at? What’s there to see? Get back to work, he scolded as he put away the handbill. Come with me, Dr Huang.

The doctors and nurses wasted no time in sharing their views of the incident as Huang followed the director to his office.

Gugu’s heart-rending wails erupted from the obstetrics ward, and I was suddenly aware of what a destructive thing I’d done. I stepped nervously into the ward, where I saw Gugu sitting with her head down on a table, crying and pounding her fists on the tabletop.

Gugu, I said, Mother sent me over with some rabbit for you.

She ignored me, just kept crying.

I laid my bundle down on the table, opened it, and placed the bowl of rabbit meat next to her head.

Gugu swept the bowl off the table with her arm. It shattered on the floor.

Get out of here! Go! Go! She raised her head to scream at me. Get out of my sight, you little bastard!

11

It wasn’t until later that I realised just how terrible the thing I’d done was.

After I fled from the health centre, Gugu slit her left wrist, then dipped her right index finger in the blood and wrote: I hate Wang Xiaoti! I have always been a Party member, and I will die a Party member!

When Huang Qiuya returned triumphantly to the ward, Gugu’s blood had seeped all the way to the door. Huang shrieked before crumpling to the floor.

Gugu was saved, and placed on probation by the Party. The reason was not that her relationship with Wang Xiaoti remained suspicious, but that she had tried to use suicide to show the Party what she was capable of.

12

Northeast Gaomi Township enjoyed an unprecedented harvest from its thirty thousand acres of sweet potatoes in the autumn of 1962. After putting us through three abominable years, soil that had refused to grow anything regained its bountiful generosity and its innate ability to nourish. Each acre produced a record of more than ten thousand jin of sweet potatoes that year, and the mere recollection of that year’s crop made me sense a stirring for some reason. A rich yield of sweet potatoes lay beneath the ground. The largest potato unearthed in our village came in at thirty-eight jin. A photo of Yang Lin, the county’s Party secretary, holding it appeared on the front page of Masses Daily.