Free The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw

chair, worn smooth through years of use. Johnny lashed this tightly to his bicycle, and then tied the bales of cloth to it so that they stuck out at right angles. He soon became a familiar sight in the smaller villages of the Valley—a stern-faced man riding a funny contraption which seemed less like a bicycle than a moving pile of textiles. The children looked forward to hearing the ring of his bell every few weeks, for he always brought with him a large bag of boiled sweets, which he would distribute generously.
    But sweets were not all Johnny brought. In each of the villages, he would seek out the people known to have Communist sympathies. He brought news, from Tiger, of what the Party was doing in the rest of the Valley. He told them about secret lectures and campaigns to raise funds for the movement in China. He gathered information too, and soon he knew which farmers had sons who wanted to join the Party, which villages were not sympathetic to the Cause, which people could be relied upon to provide donations. He knew the villages as he knew people—some were friends, some reluctant allies, others plain enemies. There were beautiful ones, ugly ones, dull ones, naughty ones. Soon he knew everything. More than Tiger himself.
    On these trips Johnny began to feel a swelling sense of duty. Not only was he working to cement the future of the shop, he was imparting the word of the Party. True, this wasn’t quite the same as hand-to-hand combat in the jungle, but representing the Party in his way was surely more noble and demanding. His way required cunning beyond that of a simple soldier. It required charisma and intelligence and, above all, the ability to read and write. In this respect Johnny had became superior to the other men, for he was now armed with literacy. On each journey to the outlying villages he took with him The Communist Manifesto in English, together with a pocket dictionary he had found in Tiger’s library. He also took an exercise book in which he wrote out all the words he did not understand. Fraternity. Absolutism. Antagonistic. Jurisprudence. He wrote these down on one side of the page, and on the other he wrote out the meanings of the words in Chinese, simplifying and paraphrasing them to facilitate the memorising process (Proletariat : Me). Then he simply looked at the lists of words, learning them by heart. As he cycled along the uneven tracks, veering to avoid the rocks and the potholes and craters carved out by the floods and the droughts, he spoke the English words aloud, letting the Chinese translations echo silently in his head. At first they sounded strange and fascinating. Sometimes his voice seemed not to belong to him—he did not recognise the person who made these wonderful noises. But soon he grew to love these sounds. He loved feeling the words form at the base of his throat and then well up in his mouth before dancing in the quiet jungle air.
    When at home, he began to creep more frequently into Tiger’s library. For a long time, this was a place which had intimidated and mystified him, but now it began to feel warmer. Its allure became stronger and less forbidding. But which ones should he read? They were still indistinguishable from one another. He could by now read most of the words on the spines, but the names—they were names, weren’t they?—remained shadowy and foreign. Once, he ran his fingers along the spines of a row of guava-coloured books, feeling the indented gold letters with his fingertips. Perhaps the touch of his flesh against the printed letters would suddenly reveal all kinds of hidden secrets. He came away, breathlessly, with A Choice of Shelley’s Verse and something by Dornford Yates. Those two books kept him busy for many weeks. He filled three whole exercise books with lists of new words which would stay with him for the rest of his life. As an old man he would often quote Shelley, muttering under his breath if he thought no one was listening. The fitful