Free Serve the People! by Yan Lianke, Julia Lovell

to earn a commendation every year, and to telegram me the good news as soon as you get it. It's not just about the honour, the production team will award me ten Juan, too.'
    `Agreed. And the third?'
    'I want you to kneel in front of me, right now, on the bed, and swear you'll work hard after you go back to the army, obey your commanders and do whatever it takes to become a Party official so I can move to the city.'
    'I already promised all that in the pledge I wrote for your father.'
    'I don't care. I wantyou to swear it all over again, kneeling in front of me. Then you can have me.'
    He knelt on the bed, facing his wife. 'If I, Wu Dawang, fail to work hard and obey the Party, I deserve to be struck five times by lightning. If in this lifetime I fail to win promotion and give you, Zhao Ezi, a home in the city, may Heaven above condemn me to die without descendants.'
    Whether out of hunger for professional advancement, oryearning for his wife's curvaceous form, Wu Dawang delivered his oath in low fervent tones, with the solemn, almost devout urgency born of intense impatience. His declaration made, he studied her face. 'Will that do?' he asked softly.

    'I believe you.'
    Then, in one decisive manoeuvre, he drew the body of his new wife-the body that had been his from the start of their negotiations but which she had nevertheless resolved to barter against some better, future existence-to him.
    With this, sexual intimacy began between them - but love ended.
    From that point on, he was allowed to have his way with her every night. But, as regular as clockwork, just as he reached orgasm she would pipe up with: 'You must work hard when you return to the army, Dawang.' In another, more mundane context, these words would have struck him as no more than an affectionate reminder, but spoken on the brink of climax they chilled him like a drenching in icy water. The vague semblance of affection that existed between them thus became as fragile as a sheet of sodden paper, useless as a medium for expressing emotional truths.

    FOR Wu DAWANG, IT WAS the contrast with his dispiritingly frigid marriage that truly validated his affair with Liu Lian, that gave him eyes to appreciate, once he had stepped under her mosquito net, the glories of love. To his mind, the frequency with which he and Liu Lian made love represented the soundest, the most sublime proof of their feelings for each other. For close on two months, day and night they luxuriated in passion's lake, dazzled by its surface shimmer, intoxicated by each glittering droplet. Regrettably perhaps, neither understood that a dangerously raw sexual undercurrent was choosing its moment to tug them both down.
    Not long after their liaison began, Liu Lian had telephoned the Captain and Political Instructor of Wu Dawang's company to say that she was afraid of being alone in the house at night with the Division Commander away. Having taken her criticism to heart, she told them, Wu Dawang had given complete satisfaction ever since. As a result, for the rest of her husband's stay in Beijing she would prefer it if Sergeant Wu slept in the house rather than returning to barracks every evening.

    Wu Dawang's immediate superiors readily agreed, emphasizing to Liu Lian that any inadequacy on the part of her orderly reflected directly on the company itself. If she found him guilty of further oversights or carelessness, she should address her criticism to him, then lodge an extra complaint against them and the company's Party representatives. And that is how easily the scene was set for this extraordinary affair. So easily, in fact, that in time its hero and heroine came to forget that it was only theatre, and not life itself. Like method actors, they played their roles for real.
    Every day Wu Dawang still tended the vegetable garden at the back of the house, and the flowers and shrubs at the front. But what had been a professional duty now became a performance given for the benefit of passersby, to