Wild Ginger - Anchee Min [5]
Wild Ginger rose in blood. Her eyes stared like a mad bull's.
Hot Pepper lunged again, citing Mao. "'Kill the bourgeois bugs! Save the patient! Kill the bourgeois bugs! Save the patient!' May Fourth, 1939, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. Volume eleven, page two-forty-six, 'The Orientation of the Youth Movement.'"
The gang joined in reciting. '"How should we judge whether a youth is a revolutionary? How can we tell? There can only be one criterion, namely whether or not he is willing to integrate himself with the broad masses of workers and peasants and does so in practice. If he is willing to do so and actually does so, he is a revolutionary; otherwise he is a nonrevolutionary or a counter-revolutionary. If today he integrates himself with the masses of workers and peasants, then today he is the revolutionary; if tomorrow he ceases to do so or turns around to oppress the common people, then he becomes a nonrevolutionary or a counterrevolutionary.'"
Like a cornered animal Wild Ginger used her abacus as a shield; she fought until the abacus fell apart. Throwing away the broken frame she took up her school bag. The gang came to seize her again. I tried to help but got pulled and pinned down by Titi and Yaya. Hot Pepper and her other gang members got Wild Ginger's school bag. All her books and materials flew out. She was punched down to the ground. While the others held her head and feet, Hot Pepper hopped on her back and began to stab with her umbrella.
With ear-piercing cries, Wild Ginger gave in.
Hot Pepper shouted a Mao quotation with a tone of victory: '"Reading is learning, but applying is also learn ing and the more important kind of learning at that. Our chief method is to learn warfare through warfare. We learn through fighting in war. A revolutionary war is a mass undertaking; it is often not a matter of first learning and then doing, but of doing and then learning, for doing is itself learning.'"
Lying on her stomach, Wild Ginger gasped. Hot Pepper and her gang walked away. The campus became quiet. I got up from where I lay.
Wild Ginger rose slowly, crawling to her feet. She looked around for her shoes. The beads of the abacus and the i pages of her books were scattered all over. She located a shoe behind the bushes and went to fetch it. She hopped on one leg, in pain, her face torn. On her way back she picked up her school bag. The buckles were gone.
I walked toward Wild Ginger. I picked up the abacus beads and the pages. I wanted to thank her but didn't know how to begin.
"I suppose this is your sleeve?" Wild Ginger picked up a piece of fabric that matched my jacket and passed it to me. "The other one is behind the bushes."
I nodded a thank you and passed her the pages.
"What's your name?" she asked, stuffing the pages into her bag.
"Maple."
"I see. You turn red in fall." She smiled and began to tie her shoelace.
"Are you making fun of my name?"
"No, not at all." She wiped the dripping blood off her mouth. "I like your name. It sounds proletarian, Maoist. It's perfect. Your parents must be very thoughtful people ... Anyway, how do you write it?"
"The character Wind with a Wood on the left-hand side."
"You are quite like your name." She stood up and patted the dirt off her buttocks. "You bend."
What could I say? What did she know about Hot Pepper? I started to assemble the abacus.
"I didn't say it was your fault, did I?" She was sorting the pages and trying to restore the textbook.
"Anyway, thanks for coming to my rescue."
"You're welcome." As if caught by a sudden twist of pain she got down on her knees.
"Are you all right?"
"I ... am fine."
"I'm sorry."
"No, don't ever feel sorry for me. I take the wounds as my medals."
What a thought! "Do you fight a lot?"
"With my kind of looks, people don't leave me alone."
"Do you