“Then how did you hit it off with An Mali?” Deng asked.
Kong remained silent, biting his bottom lip.
“Little Kong,” I resumed, “there must have been something between you two which you’ve hidden from us.”
“No, I didn’t hide anything. I didn’t know it when we came back together.”
“Know what?” Deng said.
“The note. She left a note in my breast pocket. I didn’t know it till three days later.”
“Let’s have a look at it.” Deng stretched out his hand, and Kong slowly took out his wallet and produced the note. Deng read it and then passed it to me and cursed, “Bitch.”
On the scrap of yellow paper there were these few words:
I know you. Your name is Kong Kai. — An Mali.
No one could say that was a secret message or a love note, so I said to Kong, “There’s nothing unusual in this. It doesn’t explain the affair.”
“I was curious to see how she knew my name.”
“So you went back to her?” Deng said.
“Yes.”
“Shame on you two!”
I didn’t feel the girl was in the wrong. Kong was the one who had broken into the Youth Home and then gone back to look for her, so he should be held responsible. However, it would be impracticable to order him to cut the affair at one stroke. He was a man and should break it off on his own initiative, so I switched the topic a little by asking him how he was going to make sure he would be elected an exemplary soldier at the end of the year. He said he would try every way to gain enough votes. We knew that was an empty promise, for as long as he was carrying on the affair, he had no chance of being voted in. Commander Deng got impatient and said, “Comrade Kong Kai, you know, you’re already a dishonored man. You want to know how your men feel about you? They told me they felt fooled by you. Your task now is to regain your honor and make them respect you again. Otherwise how can you command the squad?”
Kong lowered his eyes without a word. I was impressed by Deng’s pointed speech, to which I couldn’t add anything. By nature, Deng was a reticent man. Obviously this matter had been preying on his mind for a while, though we had talked of it only twice. I felt bad, because I was the company’s political instructor and Party secretary and I should have done something about the affair before the election.
After Kong left, I admitted my negligence to Deng and promised that I would try every means to stop the affair. Deng was always forthright and said we should have taken action when I showed him those candy wrappers three weeks before.
The next morning I sent Scribe Yang to Garlic Village to investigate the girl. I told him to go to the production brigade’s Party branch first, look through her file, and find out all the information about her and her family background. “Trust me, Instructor Pan,” Yang said with a smile. “I’m a professional sleuth.” He swung a thin leg over a Forever bicycle and rode away with the handle bell tinkling.
Then I set about writing a report on our preliminary election to the Regimental Political Department. I had graduated from middle school, so the writing wasn’t difficult, and I finished it in an hour. Having nothing else to do before lunch, I considered Kong’s case again, particularly the girl involved. I remembered she had a pleasant voice. On National Day the year before, we had heard her singing an aria from the revolutionary model play Seaport at the marketplace. She worked in the village’s tofu plant, where our cooks would go to buy dried bean curd and soy sprouts. Though tall and delicate, she wasn’t pretty, and there were freckles on her cheeks. She often reminded me of a giant fox in human clothes. Among all the girls at the Youth Home, I would say she was the least attractive.
The scribe returned at noon. I was shocked by the results of his investigation:
An Mali, 23, female
Family Background: Capitalist
Personal Class Status: Student
Political Aspect: Mass
An Long (An Mali’s father), male, died in 2
Class Status: Capitalist; owned two textile mills before Liberation
Political Aspect: Counterrevolutionary
The true nature of the affair was clear now. If he knew her family background, Kong must have lost his senses and ignored the class distinction. As a high school graduate, he must have read too many Russian novels, in particular Turgenev, whom I had once heard him praise beyond measure, as though the story-maker were as great as Lenin and Stalin. Kong acted like a petty intellectual, who believed in romances and universal love.
After exchanging views on the new discovery, Deng and I decided to talk to Kong again. The next afternoon, when the other soldiers were wearing straw hats and hoeing potatoes on the mountain, Kong sat in the headquarters answering our questions.
“Did you talk to An Mali?” I said.
“Not yet.”
“When do you plan to do it?” Deng put in.
“Probably this weekend.”
“Comrade Kong Kai,” I said, “do you know what her family background is?”
He nodded.
“Then why do you fool around with that capitalist’s daughter?” Deng asked.
“She’s not a capitalist, is she?”
“What? You don’t mind having a counterrevolutionary capitalist as your father-in-law?” Deng thumped the desk.
“Commander Deng, Mali’s father died years ago. She’s an orphan now and I’ll have no in-laws. Besides, she was born and raised under the Red Flag like me.”
“You, you — ”
“Kong Kai,” I broke in, since Deng was not his match in this sort of verbal skirmish, “your offense is twofold. First, you violated the rule that allows no soldier to have an affair; second, you crossed the class line. Chairman Mao has instructed us: There is no love without a reason, and there is no hatred without a reason; the proletariat has the proletarian love, whereas the bourgeoisie has the bourgeois love. As a Communist Party member, to which class do you belong?”
Kong hung his head in silence. Deng launched an attack again. “What can you say now?”
No answer.
“You’re ill, Little Kong,” Deng went on in a voice full of comradely affection. “Everybody gets ill sometimes, but you shouldn’t hide your illness for fear of being cured.”
“Today we called you in,” I added, “because we care about you and your future. We want to remind you of the dangerous nature of the affair.”
Seeing that he seemed too ashamed to talk, I thought it better to dismiss him, so I said, “We don’t need to talk more about this. You understand it well and must decide how to quit it yourself, the sooner the better. If you don’t have anything to say, you’re free to go.”
Slowly he stood up and dragged himself out, with his cap in his hand.
“You should’ve ordered him to quit it,” Deng said to me. I was surprised and didn’t say anything. He went on, “He’s so stubborn. How can we let him lead the squad? It’s all right to fall into a pit, but he simply refuses to get out. How — ”
“Old Deng, let’s give him some time. He promised to quit it.”
As I expected, Kong entered the larch woods with the girl on Sunday. This was necessary, because he needed to meet her once more to break it off; I didn’t ask him to report progress. I wouldn’t give him the wrong impression that I enjoyed seeing young people suffer. As long as he quit in time, it would be fine with me.
I met Kong several times the next week. Judging from his calm appearance, it seemed he had disentangled himself. But the following Sunday, Scribe Yang, who had been assigned to keep an eye on him, reported that Kong had sneaked out. I told him to go look for Kong in the larch woods and bring him to my office immediately, together with the girl. An hour later, Yang returned empty-handed and said they were not in the woods. Then I sent him, with the orderly, to search the village. They spotted the lovers, who were lying in each other’s arms on the sandy bank of a stream, under a wooden bridge, but the couple slunk away at the sight of the searchers. Yang and Zhu returned with a used condom as evidence.