Free Naked Earth by Eileen Chang Page A

letter. Then he read it a second time just to gain time. His only comforting thought was that hers was the only signature at the bottom. Perhaps she hadn’t shown it to anybody else yet.
    “Of course I agree,” he said. “But I don’t think you should send this letter.”
    Su Nan smiled. “Sure, I know you can’t write letters to Chairman Mao just like that. It’s an Unorganized and Undisciplined Action.”
    “And furthermore, nothing will ever come of it,” Liu said. “We are not Party members, we have no connection with the Organization. What we say just won’t be taken seriously.”
    Leaning against the table she drew her forefinger back and forth across the tiny flame of the lamp, quickly so that the finger never got burned. She kept at it with childish absorption. But finally she raised her head and looked at him. “But the way they’re running things around here! I don’t think Chairman Mao knows.”
    Liu did not speak. After a while he said, “Chairman Mao himself has said, ‘To correct a wrong, you must go further than what is just.’”
    “Still, you can’t just struggle against anybody, with no standard, no principle!” Sudden anger made her raise her voice a little.
    Liu stopped her with a slight shake of his head. He glanced back at the door over his shoulder and whispered, “Let’s go out for a walk. We can talk outside.”
    She took her letter back, folded it and stuffed it into her pocket. As they came out of the room Erh Niu was squatting in front of the stove, poking at the ashes. T’ang and his wife sat across the table, smoking and sewing respectively, both looking tense. Obviously they thought Su Nan’s coming had something to do with them, it being too late for ordinary social visits. And she had pointedly got Liu to go into the other room where they had held a whispered consultation. And now she was going away with him.
    The smooth yellow mud walls looked clean and dismal in the frosty blue moonlight. They walked along the dirt path between earthen houses which had not changed much for the last two thousand years. The moon was so bright that cocks mistook it for dawn and crowed, cracked and quavering, all over the countryside. Some houses they passed were too run-down to have doors. Across the deep blackness of the courtyard, a faint glimmer of unearthly dark yellow light showed through the rounded, humped mud house, exactly like a burial mound peopled with ghosts. Sometimes there was the sound of children crying feebly. It was like those old stories of post-mortem child-bearing which told of live babies dug out of graves.
    It was impossible to talk stumbling along the uneven ground, one after the other. They finally stood still and turned toward each other.
    “I want you to promise me not to mail that letter,” he said. When she did not answer, he said, “Did you show it to anybody else?”
    “No.”
    “I’m glad you didn’t.” His relief was mingled with and all but drowned by a delirious flush of happiness at the thought that she had come to him first, out of all the people. It was difficult to keep talking in a worried tone. “Really, right now we have no status whatever. Within the Corps we’re regarded as the Masses. We can’t save anybody even if we ruin ourselves doing it.”
    “I know,” she said after a pause.
    “For instance, that day—picking on you for no reason—it was really too ridiculous. I was furious, but I thought it’s no use getting into direct conflict with him. There’s nothing we can do at present except to be patient.”
    Su Nan sighed shortly. “Let’s go back. If somebody should see us there’ll be more talk of Small Circle-ism.”
    “I’ll walk you home.”
    On the way back the dogs suddenly started barking and there was a regular stomping of feet marching in step. The house lights went out quickly one by one. Liu and the girl stopped under the eaves of a house and peered out at the small band of militiamen moving past the lane