Under the Hawthorn Tree (3 page)

She couldn't remember ever before being so aware of what she was wearing; it was a first for her to worry about making a bad impression in this regard. She hadn't felt so self-conscious for a long time. When she was at primary and secondary school the other students bullied her, but once she got to senior high school none of them dared look her straight in the eye. The boys in her class seemed scared of her and turned red when she spoke to them so she had never given any thought as to whether they liked the way she looked or dressed. They were silly, just a bunch of little monsters.

But the well-dressed man before her made her so nervous her heart hurt. His brilliant white shirt sleeves peeped from under his unbuttoned blue overcoat. His shirt, so white, so neat and smooth, must have been made from polyester, which Jingqiu definitely couldn't afford. His rice-grey top looked homemade, and Jingqiu, who was good at knitting, could see that the pattern was difficult. On his feet he wore a pair of leather shoes. She looked down at her own faded ‘Liberation shoes' and thought, he's rich, I'm poor, it's like we're from different worlds.

He also wore a slight smile, asking Huan Huan, ‘Is this Auntie Jingqiu?' Addressing her, he said, ‘Did you arrive today?'

He spoke Mandarin Chinese, not the local county dialect, nor her city dialect. Jingqiu wondered who he would speak Mandarin to around here. Her own Mandarin was excellent, and as a result she did the broadcasts at her school and was often picked to read out loud at gatherings and sports events. But she felt embarrassed to speak it as, apart from when speaking with people from outside the county, it wasn't used in everyday life. Jingqiu didn't understand why he was speaking Mandarin with her. She gave a short ‘mmm' in reply.

He asked, ‘Did my writer comrade come via Yiling or Yanjia River?' His Mandarin was melodic.

‘I'm not a writer,' Jingqiu replied, embarrassed. ‘Don't call me that. I came via Yiling.'

‘Then you must be exhausted, as from the town you have to walk, you can't even push a manual tractor up there.' As he spoke he held his hand towards her. ‘Have a sweet.'

Jingqiu saw that he had two sweets wrapped in paper in his hand. They didn't look like the ones you could buy in the market at home. Shyly, she shook her head. ‘I won't, thanks. Give them to the little one.'

‘And you're too old for them?' He was certainly looking at her as if she were a child.

‘Me? Didn't you hear Huan Huan call me Auntie?'

He started laughing. Jingqiu liked this laugh a lot. Some people only move their facial muscles when they laugh, their mouths appear happy while their eyes are not, the expression in them cold and detached. But as he laughed small lines appeared at either side of his nose and his eyes squinted faintly. It was a laugh from deep within him, not at all mocking. It was heartfelt.

‘You don't have to be a child to eat sweets,' he said, holding his hand out again. ‘Take one, no need to be embarrassed.'

Jingqiu had no choice but to take a sweet, but she said, ‘I'll take it for Huan Huan.' Huan Huan rushed over to her, begging to be carried. Jingqiu didn't know what she had done to secure his affection so easily and was a bit surprised. She lifted him up and said to Old Third, ‘Auntie Zhang wants you to come home and eat dinner, we'd better go.'

‘Let Uncle take you,' Old Third said. 'Your auntie has had a long day of walking, she must be very tired.' He scooped Huan Huan out of Jingqiu's arms, signalling to Jingqiu to start walking ahead. Jingqiu refused, for fear that he would watch her from behind and think her gait unattractive, or see that her clothes didn't fit. She said, ‘You walk first. I . . . don't know the way.'

He didn't press her, and carrying Huan Huan went in front allowing Jingqiu to follow him. She watched, thinking that he walked like a well-trained soldier, marching with long rod-straight legs. He didn't look like either of his brothers, but as if he was from a different family altogether.

She asked, ‘Just now, was that you playing the accordion?'

‘Mmm-hmm, did you hear me? You must've heard all my mistakes.'

Jingqiu couldn't see his face, but she could sense that he was smiling. She stuttered, ‘I . . . No, what mistakes? I don't really play, anyway.'

‘Such modesty can only mean one thing: you must be an expert despite your young age.' He stopped and turned back. ‘But lying is not good behaviour in children . . . So you can play. Did you bring one with you?' When Jingqiu shook her head he said, ‘Then let's get mine, you can play a couple of tunes for me.'

Startled, Jingqiu waved her hands violently. ‘No, no, I'm not good at it, you play . . . really well. I don't want to play.'

‘Okay, another day then,' he said, and started walking again.

Jingqiu asked, ‘How come people from around here know “The Hawthorn Tree”?'

‘It's a famous song. It was popular around five or ten years ago, lots of people know it. Do you know the words?'

Her thoughts had jumped from the song to the hawthorn tree up on the mountain. ‘In the song, it says that hawthorn trees have white flowers, but today Mr Zhang said that the hawthorn tree up on the mountain has red flowers.'

‘Yeah, some hawthorn trees have red flowers.'

‘But with that tree, isn't it because the blood of those brave soldiers watered the tree's roots, turning the flowers red?' She felt a bit stupid. She thought he was laughing, so she asked, ‘You think that question was stupid, don't you? I just wanted to be clear, you know, because I'm writing this textbook and I don't want to include any lies.'

‘You don't need to lie. Whatever people tell you, you should write. Whether or not it's true, well, that's not your problem.'

‘Do you believe that the flowers were coloured by the blood of those soldiers?'

‘I don't believe so, no. From a scientific point of view it'd be impossible, they must've always been red. But it's what the people around here say, and of course it makes a nice story.'

‘So you think everyone around here is telling lies?'

He laughed. ‘Not telling lies exactly, they're just being poetic. The world exists objectively, but every person's experience of the world is different, and if you use a poet's eyes to look at the world, you see a different world.'

Jingqiu thought he could be quite ‘literary', or as the king of spelling mistakes in her class would have said, ‘aerodite'. ‘Have you ever seen this hawthorn tree in bloom?'

‘Uh-huh, it flowers every May.'

‘Oh, I'm leaving at the end of April so I won't get to see it.'

‘You can always come back to visit. This year, when it flowers, I'll let you know and you can come and see.'

‘How will you let me know?'

He laughed again. ‘There's always a way.' He was just making empty promises. Telephones were rare. No. 8 Middle School only had one, and if you wanted to make a long-distance call you had to trudge all the way to the telecommunications bureau on the other side of the city. A place like West Village probably didn't even have a phone.

He seemed to be thinking over the same problem. ‘There's no phone in this village, but of course I could write you a letter.'

If he wrote a letter to her her mother would definitely get it first, and it'd no doubt scare her to death. Ever since she was small her mother had told her, one slip leads down a road of hardship. Even though her mother had never actually explained what ‘one slip' meant, Jingqiu guessed that just having contact with a boy was probably enough. ‘Don't write a letter, don't write,' she said. ‘If my mother sees, what would she think?'

He turned round. ‘Don't worry, if you don't want me to write, I won't write. Hawthorn trees don't just flower for one night and then die. The tree will be in bloom for a while. Just pick a Sunday in May, come back and take a look.'

Once they got to Mr Zhang's house he put Huan Huan down and went in with Jingqiu. Everyone in the family was back. Fen first introduced herself, and then introduced everyone else, this is my youngest brother, this is my sister-in-law. Jingqiu echoed, brother, sister-in-law, and everyone smiled, happy to have her with them.

Fen pointed to Old Third last and said, ‘This is my third brother, say hello.'

Jingqiu was obedient, and greeted him, ‘third brother', at which everyone laughed.

Jingqiu didn't understand what was so funny and blushed.

Old Third explained, ‘I'm not really one of the family, I stayed here before like you are now, but they like to call me that. You don't need to. My name is Sun Jianxin, you can call me by my real name, or what everyone else calls me, Old Third.'

The next day, Yichang No. 8 Middle School Educational Reform Association got to work. In the following days and weeks they interviewed villagers, listening to their stories from the war against the Japanese, stories of being a ‘village for the study of agriculture', stories of how they had struggled against such and such a capitalist in power. Sometimes they went to visit local sites of historical importance.

After the day's interviews were finished, the association's members would discuss together what they were going to write, and who was going to write what. They'd split up and write their sections, before coming together again to read out what they had written and noting down suggestions for revisions. In addition to working on the textbook, they spent one day a week in the fields with the farmers from the commune. The commune didn't rest on Sundays, so neither did Jingqiu. The Educational Reform Association members would take turns to return to their homes in Yichang city in order to report on their progress, and once home they were allowed to rest for two days.

Every Wednesday and Sunday the Zhang family's second daughter Fang returned from school in Yanjia River. She was of a similar age to Jingqiu, and as they slept in the same bed, they quickly became close friends. Fang taught Jingqiu how to fold the quilt into the special triangle shape, and Jingqiu helped Fang with her essays. In the evenings, they would stay awake late, talking, mostly about Fang's second brother, Lin, whom they called ‘Old Second', and her sort-of-brother, ‘Old Third'.

The custom of the village was that the sons in every family were nicknamed according to their age, so the oldest would be called Old First, the second son, Old Second, and the third, Old Third. This was not the custom for the daughters; for them, the family would just add the affectionate term yatou, or ‘little girl', to their names, so Fang was called Fang yatou, and Fen, Fen yatou. This, of course, was only so long as they were still ‘part of the family', as once married they would leave to join their husband's family; a married daughter was said to be like spilt water.

Fang said to Jingqiu, ‘Mum says that since you've been here Old Second has become really hard-working. He's back a few times a day, bringing water because he's worried you city girls like to wash more than us country girls. And he thinks you're not used to the water being cold, so every day he boils lots of bottles so that you have water to drink and to wash in. Mum's really happy – she thinks he's trying to make you his wife.'

Jingqiu felt uneasy. She knew she couldn't repay Lin's kindness in a way that he might want.

Fang said, ‘Old Third is also good to you. Mother said that he's been here replacing your light bulb, saying that the one we had here was too dark and it would be bad for your eyes. He also gave Mum some money and told her it's for the electricity bill.'

Jingqiu was overjoyed, but merely replied, ‘That's only because he's worried about your eyes, it's your room after all.'

‘This has been my room for a long time, but has he ever come to change my light bulb before?'

When Jingqiu next bumped into Old Third she tried to give him some money but he wouldn't accept it. They argued until Jingqiu gave up. As she was preparing to leave, however, she put a bit of money on the table and left a note, just like the 8th Route Army used to do. No one had ever been so openly attentive to her since she had been burdened by her ‘bad class background'. She felt that she had stolen a new life as Auntie and the rest of the family didn't know about her background. Just wait until they find out, she thought, they won't look at me in the same way.

One morning, Jingqiu got up and went to fold the quilt, only to discover an egg-sized blood-stain on the sheet. Her ‘old friend' was back. It always made an appearance just before something important was about to happen, and now it was conducting its usual pre-emptive attack. Whenever her class had to go learn industrial production, study agriculture or do their military exercises, her ‘old friend' would arrive unannounced. Jingqiu rushed to remove the sheet. She wanted to scrub the stain discreetly, but felt embarrassed about washing the sheet in the house. That day it happened to be raining so she had to wait until midday when it finally stopped, in order to go clean the sheet in the river.

She knew she shouldn't get into the cold water during a visit from her ‘old friend' – her mother was always reminding her about this, explaining over and over the dangers. You mustn't drink cold water, you mustn't eat cold food, and you mustn't wash in cold water, otherwise you'll get toothache, headaches, and muscle aches. But that day she didn't have a choice. Standing on two large stones in the river she lowered the sheet into the water but it was shallow and as soon as she did so it got muddied by the riverbed. The more she washed the dirtier it became. Just do it, take off your shoes and get into deeper water, she thought.

As she was taking off her shoes she heard a voice say, ‘You're here? Lucky I saw you, I was about to go upstream to wash my rubber boots. The mud would have made your sheets dirty.'

It was Old Third. Ever since she had called him ‘brother' and been laughed at she didn't know what to call him, and even had she known what to say it wouldn't have mattered as she wouldn't have been able to get the words out anyway. Everything connected to him had become a taboo, and her mouth declined to offend. But to her eyes and ears and heart everything about him was as dear as Mao's Little Red Book; she wanted to read, and listen, and think about him all day.