Free Under the Red Flag by Ha Jin

old woman’s stomach while she was sleeping? It would only make her fat. The night before her death, Yuanmin said to her, “Mom, give me the key. You mustn’t stuff yourself before you go to bed. It will ruin your health.”
    “No,” the old woman said, “what’s in the chest is mine. No, I won’t give it to you.”
    Seeing it impossible to bring her around, Yuanmin fished the key out of the jacket hung on the wall. Her mother-in-law started to cry, but Yuanmin wouldn’t give it back. Though the old woman planned to tell her son when he came home, she tired of crying and fell asleep.
    Yuanmin dared not tell her husband what she had done. If he had known, he would have yelled at her, “You sent her to death!” How could she bear the blame for the rest of her life?
    Though she didn’t mean to hurt her mother-in-law, the old woman must have hated her at the last moment. If only she had known that was her last day! She would have done anything to please her and let her eat to her heart’s content. It was too late now. She didn’t love her mother-in-law a lot, but she didn’t hate her enough to hurt her. No matter how remorsefully she cried at the funeral, the harm had been done, the wounded soul would never forgive her. She found herself tossing in bed for hours every night.
    More frightening than that was her sister-in-law, Shufen, who would arrive in a few days. That country woman had been demented. If she found out what had happened or was unhappy about the cremation, Shufen would fly into a rage and mighthave a relapse. Then the Dings would have to send her to the mental hospital again. That would mean another huge debt. Yuanmin was terrified to think of it. She remembered that fifteen years before, Shufen had been here, raving, singing, swearing, and laughing in the yard. Sometimes she would run through the streets, imitating a dog’s barking, a donkey’s braying, a duck’s quacking, a sheep’s bleating, a rooster’s crowing. Children followed her, throwing stones at her. At meals she would stuff herself with whatever she liked without touching anything else, and nobody dared dissuade her. Once she ate a whole bowl of stewed ham and then blasted curses at Yuanmin because while she had been eating, Yuanmin had said, “Sister, why don’t you have some rice?”
    At that time, the old woman was still alive; whenever Shufen messed her pants or fell into a public latrine, her mother would wash her and the soiled clothes. But now, if she went mad again, Yuanmin would have to take care of everything. It was horrifying to imagine it. She grew so nervous she cried in front of her husband several times. Ding seemed to understand his wife’s mind, and he promised that he would handle his sister once she was here for the short visit, but Yuanmin must not provoke her in any way. He tried to comfort his wife, saying that as Shufen hadn’t been demented by the death of her husband five years before, it was unlikely that she would have a relapse this time.
    After reading the article in
Liaoning Daily
, Sheng felt outraged. How come the whole thing was reversed now? His grandmother had never wanted to be cremated in the first place, and there had never been “an expensive coffin.” Lies, newspapers always tell lies, he said to himself. But he was mature enough to keep theanger and the questions to himself. His experience in the army had taught him that disaster always comes from the tongue.
    This morning his father telephoned him and asked him to come home to see his aunt, who had just arrived. Sheng got permission from the leaders. Having saved a weekend, he would be able to stay home for two days. He took the three o’clock train. It was only an hour’s trip.
    When Sheng reached home, his father was in the yard, reading
The Hero and the Eagle
, a chivalric novel. “Was the train crowded?” Ding asked pleasantly, and put the book into his pocket.
    “No, I had a window seat.”
    “Listen,” his father said in a