My Name is Number 4 (18 page)

For the first few nights I had nightmares about falling against the barrel and being shredded to bloody bits. I wasn’t sure whether it was my pleas or the fact that I would often lose my hold on the bundle and watch helplessly as it was torn from
my
arms and pulled under the barrel, causing the whole production line to come to a halt, but Lao Chang eventually reassigned me to pile up the threshed bundles.

Thus the first anniversary of my coming to the farm rolled around. It was Jia-ying who reminded me of the date. But what use was it to remember?

I had never bought Great-Aunt’s theory that I was a girl born with bad luck, but occasionally I wondered. One sunny day during our lunch break, I fell to the threshing ground with a sharp pain in my abdomen. The pain grew and I was soaked in sweat, curled up like a shrimp. Yu Hua immediately sent someone to the road-construction site for Dr. Wang. Lao Chang arrived but could do nothing except stand there and make guesses. A while later Dr. Wang ran up with two young men, Xiao Zhu and Xiao Qian, who carried a stretcher between them. It took the doctor only a few moments of prodding my stomach to diagnose acute appendicitis.

“You need an operation,” he urged. “Immediately. We must get you to a hospital.”

Xiao Zhu and Xiao Qian wrapped me in quilts and put me onto a cart, the kind we had used to haul bricks. There were no proper medical facilities in our village nor on the sub-farm; worse, because the main road was under construction, the farm hospital couldn’t send its ambulance over. So Dr. Wang took the lead and the two men followed, one pulling, the other pushing along the rutted country road to the Sanlong—Three Dragon—River, which bordered a commune about two kilometres away. The distance seemed like the Long March, as every bump and shudder of the cart sent a searing arrow of pain through my belly. Yu Hua periodically mopped the cold sweat off my brow as she jogged alongside.

The Sanlong River was about fifty metres wide, broader and cleaner than the tributary that flowed beside our road, and marked the boundary of the commune which, because of constant raids by prisoners who stole crops and animals to supplement their meagre diets, was like an armed camp surrounded by a wire fence.

It was about two o’clock when we reached the river. Dr. Wang and the two men called across for help. There was no response. Yu Hua began to run along the bank, jumping and shouting in her surprisingly deep voice. “It’s an emergency! Please help us!”

Sweat bathed my face and soaked my clothes. Scared, still curled tight, knees to my chest and chin tucked in, I fought the nausea and piercing jabs of pain. Yu Hua’s frantic calls and the doctor’s urgent commands did little to dispel my anxiety.

Finally a voice floated across the river. “Wait a bit. We’re sending a boat over.”

Xiao Qian and Xiao Zhu carried my stretcher onto a barge. The doctor and Yu Hua scrambled aboard and we were poled across. Another cart was found and the painful jouncing began again.

By the time I was in the operating room night had fallen. Dr. Wang was beside me. I wished desperately that someone from my family were present. I knew nothing about appendicitis and its possible complications. All I knew was that Dr. Wang was going to cut me open and I might die.

I had been put under only local anesthetic, so I was fully aware of what was happening. I could see nothing but the ceiling but heard the clink of surgical instruments dropped onto trays and the rustle of clothing. There were two other doctors, constantly asking Dr. Wang questions and criticizing him about the delay. No one wanted to talk to me, apparently.

Then everything went black.

“Doctor, help! I’ve gone blind!” I cried out.

Curses rang out in the pitch darkness. Feet shuffled.

“No, no, Xiao Ye,” Dr. Wang said. “The electricity went off. Don’t worry, the nurses are out looking for flashlights. Thank goodness I have already removed your inflamed appendix.”

Losing electricity was not new to me or to anyone else in China. Even in Shanghai, power was regularly cut off in residential areas on certain days to conserve energy. Factories sometimes sent an entire shift home, especially during the summer, a time of peak consumption. But there was usually a warning.

The nurses soon returned, barely visible behind the bobbing orbs of their flashlights. I closed my eyes again,
completely spent, only to open them wide when a sharp pain shot through my stomach, causing my right leg to recoil. The anesthetic had worn off. Someone pushed
my
leg down and I realized the operation was still going on. I screamed when another bolt of pain went through me.

“What’s wrong! What are
you
doing to me?”

“It’s all right,” one of the nurses said calmly, “the doctor is sewing you up. He shouldn’t be long.”

I screamed for more anaesthetic.

“Not possible,” Dr. Wang said. “The needle would have to be administered in your spine and we can’t turn you over.”

Holding her flashlight to illuminate her little red book, a nurse started to read quotations from Chairman Mao. “Do not fear hardship; do not fear death,” she urged.

When Chairman Mao penned that advice, I doubted he was being repeatedly punctured by a sewing needle. I gritted my teeth against the pain. The nurse recited more useless advice.

Finally, I was carried on a stretcher into the dimly lit ward, completely drained but out of danger. Yu Hua and the two young men who had brought me all that way were waiting to see how I had fared in the operation. I was deeply touched by their kindness and I wanted to thank them, but all I could manage was a weak smile.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I
was released from the hospital a week later and given light duty cleaning up in the canteen. I felt lucky to be working indoors, for the northwest wind had turned sharply cold again and the dampness chilled us to the bone. The male students were still labouring to complete the road and the women were building paddy dikes with heavy iron-toothed rakes. If the dikes were not made properly, Cui or Zhao squashed them flat and ordered them redone.

Failure to reach quotas no longer brought a simple minus sign on the posted list. It was now considered to be politically motivated, and that meant trouble. After the PLA’s arrival, everything was done the military way. We were no longer allowed to walk to the canteen individually, “like a plate of loose sand,” as Cui put it. As “real soldiers” we
marched together, bowls in our left hands, swinging our right arms in unison. Students with red family backgrounds were formed into a militia with daily training, including rifle practice, led by Zhao. The militia was on call twenty-four hours a day.

On call for what? Although I had never been a “news digger,” I had never been so ill-informed as I had been since coming to the farm. There was no newspaper available, and transistor radios, at that time rare and expensive, provided only repetitive propaganda because all media in China was state-controlled. Needless to say, the camp’s loudspeakers offered the same. Even though mail was delivered twice a week, everyone knew that putting things down in black and white in such dangerous times was not a good idea. I was aware only of what was going on in our little village.

As I had seen during my medical leave in Shanghai a few months earlier, the whole country was building air-raid shelters because of the conflict with Russia, but why did our farm need a “ready for war” road, broad and strong enough, in Zhao’s words, for two tanks to travel side by side? And why did we need a militia? What strategic importance could our village have, out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by flat land that produced poor crops?

As winter deepened, we looked forward to a few relatively easy months before spring brought back the intensive heavy labour of growing rice. The temperature dropped so low that on some mornings we found the water jars sealed with ice. To stay warm at night when the wind hissed through the wattle
walls of our unheated dorm, Yu Hua and I put our bedding together, as did others.

But many was the time we were torn from our sleep by the sharp ringing of bells calling us to military exercises. Militia members or not, we all had to go, jumping out of our beds into the freezing darkness, fumbling into our clothes, dashing to the threshing grounds to be harangued by Cui and Zhao, snug and warm in their army greatcoats, peering at their stopwatches. I had accepted hard labour long ago, but I hated the “war preparation.”

One night at our regular political study meeting, a few women were talking about the cost of building the road, trading rumours and passing on gossip.

“All that effort and expense to build a road nobody uses,” I joked. “Too bad we couldn’t put half the time and money into building dorms with thicker walls.”

That remark would come back to haunt me.

When February rolled around the students’ spirits lifted, for it was time for
tan-qin
—home visit—the national government policy of a two-week paid holiday each year for employees who worked away from home. Travel costs were picked up by the work unit. Lao Chang had told us long ago that we could take our
tan-qin
at any time during the year, except busy seasons, but Cui had changed that, saying we must all go home at the same time.

Lately, I had been worried about Number 5. In her letters she sounded so depressed that I was afraid she was heading for a nervous breakdown. Each letter ripped my heart to
pieces. I had planned to wait and take my
tan-qin
in July to coincide with hers so that I could meet her at home. Cui’s new policy ruined my plans.

When I asked Yu Hua what I should do, she suggested I explain things to Cui and Zhao. “You have reasonable grounds for an exception,” she advised. “I am your squad leader. I’ll go with you to talk to them.”

That night we went to the brick building and knocked on the door. The reps’ office was lit by two bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Cui and Zhao sat at their respective desks, sipping tea, their faces blank.

I was so nervous that I tripped over my words, so Yu Hua stepped in to explain that both my parents were dead and that I had hoped to take my vacation at the same time as my siblings. “They have been scattered,” she finished, “and want to see each other when they can.”

“If I can take my two weeks later on,” I said weakly, “I promise to work all the harder when I return.”

Cui and Zhao sat silent, as if we were not there, as if neither of us had said a word. I recalled the humiliation I felt on my many visits with Mother to uncaring factory officials who offered no financial help after Father died. Suddenly I missed both my parents terribly and began to cry.

Cui stood up and came around to the front of his desk. A cold smile crossed his face. “What are you crying for?” he said harshly. “We haven’t said a word yet, have we?”

He smirked at Zhao, who was leafing through the registration book that held all our names and family histories.

“Tan-qin
is for comrades who are married and working away from their spouses, or for unmarried ones to visit their parents. Isn’t it?”

“Yes, Representative Zhao,” I muttered.

“Are you married?” he asked with phony politeness. Cui smirked.

“No, Representative Zhao.”

“Then you have no spouse to visit, do you? And your parents are dead. So it seems,” he concluded, “that you are not eligible for
tan-qin
at all.”

I turned cold with fear. I would never see my brothers and sisters or Great-Aunt again.

Zhao stood up, his face still calm, his voice restrained. “There are millions of brothers and sisters sent to different places to serve our motherland. Why should you get special treatment? You of all people,” he added, “with your black class background.”

My lips trembled. I looked at my friend. Yu Hua’s expression told me she was as astonished as I.

“Please,” I managed, but Cui cut me off, laughing.

“We’ll let you know. You’re not in a hurry, of course. You said you wanted to delay your visit. And your parents won’t be in a hurry, will they?” He laughed even louder. “The two of you are dismissed.”