Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [88]
My mother and Yong share a look. How did we end up here?
“Bring your cleavers,” the loudspeaker continues to trumpet. “Bring your door hinges. Bring your scissors.”
“We must hurry,” Kumei says. She gestures to the objects on the table. “You may take the wok, if you’d like.”
“For the blast furnace?” my mother asks.
Kumei nods.
“But a wok? Don’t you need it?”
“It’s our last one,” Kumei answers. “We had to give the others to the canteen.”
“But what will you use to cook?” my mother asks, appalled.
“We get all our meals in the canteen.”
“That’s a long way from here.” Then my mother gestures to Yong’s feet. “How can you go there for your meals?”
“They let Kumei and the boy bring me food,” Yong answers.
“Come on,” Kumei implores. “Grab something. We have to go.”
I pick up a soup ladle. I watch the others pick the smallest items possible—a Western-style spoon, a metal basket for fishing tidbits out of a hot pot, some hairpins. With our donations in hand, we troop to the village square. Everyone holds something made from metal—an old farm tool, the business end of a hatchet, some spikes, and more kitchen utensils. We give our pieces to a woman, who passes them to someone else, who feeds them into the blast furnace.
“This reminds me of when we used to gather tinfoil, bacon grease, and rubber bands during the war,” I say to my mom. “We had fun collecting those things, remember? What we did helped us win the war.”
My mother stares into the middle distance. I can tell her head still aches, but what she thinks remains a mystery. Then she pulls her shoulders back, steps forward, and says to the woman collecting metal, “In Shanghai, I worked the bellows for my street’s backyard furnace. May I help here?”
“Everybody works so everybody eats,” the woman replies. “We welcome your help, comrade.”
Just then, a few people pull out red flags and raise them above their heads. The villagers systematically fall in behind those with the flags. Military music bursts again from the loudspeakers. Tao grabs the hem of my blouse—careful not to touch my skin in public—and pulls me into the line led by Z.G. Then everyone except those working at the furnace marches behind the red flags, flowing out in different directions like streams of ants.
Our group heads to the main part of the commune, stopping outside the leadership hall, where we had lunch yesterday. Our project is simple but ambitious. We have one week to create seven thousand posters. Even though it’s easy and fast to print posters, Mao wants to show the world what the communes can do if people use their hands to work together in the Great Leap Forward. The content has been approved by the Artists’ Association. The image will show the masses harvesting a cornfield. Identical couplets will decorate the left- and right-hand borders. One side will read, “The longer the communes exist, the more prosperous they will be.” The other side will read, “The higher the sun rises, the brighter it will shine.” Although four thousand people live in the commune, not all of them can participate in our project. Each of the commune’s thirteen villages has sent about thirty people to help us. Every person on our team will need to produce about twenty posters in seven days. And, except for a few people I recognize from last summer, most of our helpers have had no art training and almost none of them are literate.
Z.G. hangs the sample poster on the cinder-block building’s wall. I distribute paper, brushes, and paint. The villagers do their best to copy the image on the sample poster, and I write the couplet when they’re done. We work until eleven, when we break for breakfast in the canteen, which is the largest of the cornstalk buildings, covering a huge piece of cleared land. The meal is plentiful and filling—porridge, dumplings stuffed with meat, and a hearty soup. Then we’re back outside for the worst heat of the day. Still, we work as hard and as fast as we can. We cheer each other on. We laugh. We’re contributing the best way we