God Is Red - Liao Yiwu [50]
The soldiers put a wooden sign on his back—a “death sign,” it was called. It was half his height and listed the five crimes my father was said to have committed. His name was also there, with a big red X over its characters. The soldiers carried him to a truck and pushed him in with the other prisoners, bending his head low. Two cars led the way. My father’s truck was in the middle. Another truck with fully armed soldiers followed. A machine gun was perched on the roof of the last vehicle. I was told they paraded my father around the streets for half an hour before taking him to an old airport where he was shot.
Liao: Where were you?
Wang: We were still at the meeting place, guns pointing at us. When most of the spectators had left, the soldiers tied all of us together with a long rope and led us to the detention center and a room where all of my father’s belongings were on the floor. A public security officer said, “That’s the garbage left by the counterrevolutionary. Take it home.”
Liao: Weren’t you supposed to collect your father’s body?
Wang: Friends in the village did that for us. They had borrowed a cart, and when they reached the old airport, my father’s body was surrounded by several hundred gawkers, like black crows. A soldier was guarding the body. Once he made sure the villagers were who they said they were, he let them take my father. We met up with them at the detention center. I wiped my father’s face with a wet cloth. My sister covered his body with a quilt. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. It was sunny and the sky was blue. The road was empty by the time we left, the cart moving slowly, us on each side walking with it. I remember there were birds, flying and chirping, and it felt like Father was still alive all around us.
Some Miao people stopped our cart and said their good-byes to my father. Some were old, some young, some we knew, some were strangers. A little girl climbed onto the cart, opened the quilt, and touched my father’s body, from head to toe. We smiled at her innocent gesture and for a moment forgot our grief.
By the time we reached the village, the sun had already set. We took my father’s body inside the house. His face looked peaceful, as if he were just taking a nap. Village officials and members of the militia guarded the house to keep out visitors wanting to pay tribute, but after midnight, when the guards went home to sleep, fellow Christians quietly knocked and came in to pray with us.
Liao: How many people came that night?
Wang: Between seventy and eighty. They came quietly along the hilly paths, without flashlights for fear of being discovered. They were as quiet as sleepwalkers. By two in the morning, the last had finished their prayers and left. Our father’s body was cold and stiff. He had left too.
At dawn, I went up the hill with my two brothers and my brother-in-law and spent about two hours there digging a grave. After breakfast, we carried the coffin up the hill and placed it inside the hole. Then we went back to fetch our father’s body.
Liao: Why did you separate the body from the coffin? Was that a Miao custom?
Wang: No, no. We had no choice. We didn’t have enough strength to carry the coffin with Father’s body inside. A truck with soldiers had arrived, apparently to prevent a possible riot among the Miao people. Soldiers with loaded guns were scattered around the village. Only family members were allowed to approach my father’s grave. We had thought of having a brief funeral, but with the soldiers there, the villagers could only watch from about a hundred meters away. They were anxious to pitch in but couldn’t do anything. It normally took eight people to carry a coffin, but there were only four men in my family. We tried several times but couldn’t lift it. In the end, we had to separate the body from the coffin. The soldiers didn’t leave until we had finished filling in the grave and returned home.
Liao: Many things changed