When Rape Flowers Bloom油菜花开(8) 英文小说 by Swann Lee
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When Rape Flowers Bloom
By Swann Lee
Chapter 8
They keep me locked up and feed me little food. Linlin and Chunyang come by a few times, but my parents turn them away each time. Sometimes I can see my older sisters on their way to the kitchen. They look at me but do not smile. Police officers come and talk to me while Baba and Mama stand in the backyard and stare at me through the window.
The hunchback matchmaker comes often and talks to my parents in a low voice. I look at them, trying to figure out what they are saying. I see the matchmaker spread her right palm in the air.
“Wu,” she seems to be saying. “Five.”
My parents begin coming into the brick house to get things. The red wooden trunk disappears. A few days later the five-chest drawer disappears. A few days later, the “Plum Flower” radio disappears. In the night I see them come out of the kitchen, dressed in their best. I see the nylon-string bags of cans and bottles in the dim lantern light. They come back late in the night.
On a fair day they lead the pig Black and Shiny away. In the night, Baba and Mama ask me to go with them. We walk silently through the fields. The lantern that Mama is holding casts a trembling shadow of its bamboo veins in front of us.
“Hua, when we see Commissar Pan,” Baba clears his throat and says, “do your best to beg him to save Datong, remember? We’ve given him many things and are almost there. Now if you can plead with him and tell him it’s your fault that Datong…”
“What is my fault, Baba?”
“Datong made you bleed. Tell Commissar Pan it’s your fault.”
“What did I do?”
Baba takes a harsh look at me, but then realizes that I really want to know.
“You don’t have to say what you did. Just say it’s your fault. Then Datong probably won’t have to spend twenty years in the prison.”
“Aye,” I answer, thinking that it doesn’t matter if it’s my fault or not, as long as they will let Datong out sooner than later. Despite what has happened, I still miss him and all the things that he did for me.
We go into Yulong Town, make a few turns on the stone-slab streets before stopping at a brick building. My parents begin to climb up the cement stairs. I follow them to the third floor.
They knock on a door a few times before a woman with curly hair opens it.
“It’s you again,” she says. “Like he said, he’s still working on it.”
“Can we come in?” Baba says.
She lets us in and sits us down on stools. Before long, a middle-aged man with a muscular face comes out of a room.
“Commissar Pan, how is your precious health?” Mama asks, and then she turns to me. “Hua, kneel down, kowtow to him, beg him to save our Datong.”
“Kneel down? No way!” I cry. This is much more than I can take. Kneeling sounds so humiliating, something that should only exist in the China before the liberation.
“That’s not necessary.” The man throws his hands in front of him and shakes them. “It’s not a matter of begging or not. Like I said, it’s a matter of principles.”
I heard a stool squeaking against the floor. Baba suddenly kicks me behind the knees. I plop on the cement floor.
“Kowtow to Commissar Pan,” Baba yells. “You did the wrong thing. Now admit your fault and beg Commissar Pan to save Datong.”
I stand up. Baba kicks me down again. I stand up again and run to a corner of the room.
“You don’t have to abuse your own child,” the woman says, hiding me behind her.
“Commissar Pan, here is a little of our sincerity.” Baba takes a wrapped handkerchief from his pocket. He slowly unfolds it until a stack of bills appear. He hands it to the man. “Please, on behalf of my ancestors, I beg you to save our Datong.”
“Don’t, don’t.” The man shakes his hands rapidly.
Baba plops down on his knees. Mama kneels down too. They begin to kowtow against the cement floor. The scene scares me. I have never seen them so humble and low. I begin to feel guilty, though I don’t understand why.
“You’re our only savior. You’re our big benefactor. Without you the Song family is finished, Commissar Pan. We’ll always remember you,” Mama mumbles. “We don’t have much but we’ll try our best to repay your priceless help. Every month I’ll come here, bringing live chickens and ducks with me. Eggs I will bring to you, walnuts I will bring to you…” She breaks off, unable to finish among her sobs.
“Please help us.” Baba inches forward on his knees, holding the money high above his head. “In my next life I’ll be your grandson. I’ll be your cow, your horse, your mule.”
“Get up, get up,” the man says.
“If you don’t take it, we’re not getting up,” Baba says.
The man looks from Baba to Mama to Baba, back and forth.
“Get up, then we’ll talk,” he says at last.
My parents shake their heads rapidly. In the dim yellow light, they are both smiling stupidly like a scarecrow with a permanent grin.
I rush towards Commissar Pan and collapse in front of him, knocking my head on the floor repeatedly.
“It’s my fault,” I say. "It's all my fault."
“Your fault?” Commissar Pan and his wife blurt out at the same time.
“What does she mean?” the woman looks at her husband, then she turns to me, “What did you do?”
“I…” I frantically search for an answer but cannot find any. Maybe I am indeed the genius that Teacher Zhang thinks I am; something flashes into my head. “I shouldn’t have taken him to see the dianying.”
“Dianying?” Commissar Pan looks dumbfounded.
“Yes, I took him to see a dianying. They made a mistake and played the wrong dianying, and…and…” Everything comes back to me now: the dancers, the object poking me, the bleeding, the steaming bowl of poached eggs with rock sugar, the broom stick thrashing my body, the policemen dragging Datong away. Before I know it I am crying shamelessly.
“Just do your best to help them,” the woman sighs and walks into a room.
Reluctantly the man takes the money and pulls up my parents.
“I’ll do my best,” he says. “Datong might have to stay in there for a couple of years, but not that long. He can work hard and make a good impression. Then they might release him even sooner.”
My parents keep bowing to him, “Thank you, thank you, Commissar Pan, Benefactor Pan, Savior Pan.”
The man shows us to the door. Before we leave, he says, “Like I said, in a situation like this, nothing can be guaranteed. I’ll try my best, all right?” He shakes Baba’s hand, pushing the door forward.
“These poor peasants.” I hear his wife say in an inner room before the door finally closes.
We climb down the stairs in darkness. The lantern has gone out by now.
In the starlight, we fumble our way home. Mama sometimes chuckles, then sometimes sobs, worried that Datong will be treated badly in the prison. Baba frequently sighs and spits into the field in relief. Still, he occasionally wallops me on the back of my head, calling me a rotting whore that has brought bad luck to the family.
