Becoming Madame Mao - Anchee Min [42]
What are you? the peasant girls ask Fairlynn.
A poet.
What is a poet? What is a poem? Sesame still can't get it after an explanation is given.
Fairlynn throws her a book. Why don't you help yourself and find it out?
I don't read, Sesame says apologetically.
Why did you join the Red Army? I ask Fairlynn.
To continue my study with Chairman Mao. He is a poet too.
Fairlynn is a spiritual athlete. She needs a rival to exercise her mind. She calls me Miss Bourgeois and says Yenan is going to toughen me up. In the morning she leaves the door open and lets the wind bang it about. She gets a kick out of it. I hear her manlike laugh. The harsh wind will resculpt your bones and nerves! She is happy that she has made me speechless. Thank Buddha she is ugly, I think to myself. With such a chunky figure, I am sure she has plenty of loneliness to deal with. Her hairstyle, according to her, is inspired by Shakespeare. It looks like an open umbrella. Her long face has sharp lines. A chain-smoker's yellow skin. When she talks her hands are on your face.
I play Qu and Pai verse games with poems, Fairlynn says. I can't wait to play with Chairman Mao. I have heard he loves to be challenged. I am strong in Tang's and I hear he is strong in Song's. His specialty is Fu. Among the Song's, he prefers "Late North" and I "Early South." My specialty is in Zu Hei-Niang's four-tone-eight-line verses and the Chairman's is two-tone-five-line verses. The pin-pin-zbe-zhe stuff.
That will be a surprise if the Chairman receives her, I tell myself. Men must look for different kinds of stimulation in different women.
The place where I live for the next few months is called Qi Family Slope. The cave village has over thirty families and everyone's last name is Qi. Because of the valleys the wind blows harshly. My skin has already begun aching. I have been put in the new soldiers' training program. The village has only one street, which extends and connects to an open field. At the east end is a barn. At the west end stands a public well. The well has no bars and is covered with ice in winter.
My squad passes the street heading toward the training base. I see a young boy with applelike cheeks by the well. He is pulling up a rope with a bucket of water. The weight makes him bend dangerously over the well's mouth. He could slip and fall at any second. I shut my eyes while passing him. There is a blind man selling yams in the street. His yams look ages old. Next to him is a coal shop. A pregnant woman sits in front of a heap of coal washing clothes. Her two young children wear open-rear pants and are playing with the coal. Their butts are coated black. Next is a wood shop. A carpenter is making giant buckets. His young children help sand the surface of the wood.
Fairlynn and I are assigned to live with a peasant family. I have developed a crick in my neck from sleeping on the ground. When the master of the house comes to say good morning one day I mention my pain. The next day the master brings in two straw mats.
My hope for a good night's sleep is ruined by Fairlynn. It's our job to overcome bourgeois weakness, she says, and picks up the straw mats and sends them back to the master.
After a week of poor sleep I begin to feel sick. Fairlynn tosses all night long too. One morning after breakfast, the house master comes with a neighboring woman, who is a tailor. The master explains that he has asked the tailor to lend out her sewing room. It has beds, the tailor says. The city comrades who have fragile bones may prefer beds more than the ground.
This time Fairlynn accepts the offer without a word. We pack up and follow the tailor to her room. We are presented with two beds. One is a single bed made of bamboo and the other hangs down from the ceiling. It is actually a board. Fabrics and miscellaneous rags are laid over it. It is about four feet wide and eight feet long. And it is about seven feet up from the floor, nearly at the ceiling.
Fairlynn suggests that I take the board and she