Wang Sichuan rushed in, once more exhausted to the point of collapse, but when he heard someone had tumbled over the side, he instantly went to climb down and save him. It took everything the two soldiers and I had to drag him back.
Finally, after twenty anxious minutes, they returned with the rope. The deputy squad leader himself descended, hoisted the young soldier on his back, and we pulled them both up. The deputy squad leader’s hands were covered in blood. At first I thought it had to be the fallen soldier’s, but then I saw the rips and gashes on his palms. Wire netting had been wound all the way up the falls. It was hidden behind the spray of water. This was why the young soldier had lost his footing. When I went to examine him, his eyes had already closed. He’d died a martyr’s death, and before I had even learned his name. Because he’d always worn a helmet, I’d never given this soldier a close look. Seeing him now, I could tell that he was no older than nineteen—still totally naive, recklessly tramping through his youth. He had died rashly, probably without ever having fallen in love, and no one had been there to hear his last words.
The deputy squad leader had served on the battlefield. His only response was to light a cigarette. The rest of the soldiers began to cry, as did Wang Sichuan. He grabbed Pei Qing, saying the boy was still a baby, how could you let him do something that dangerous. Pei Qing said nothing. He didn’t resist and his face looked terribly ashamed. I went to console the soldiers, but the deputy squad leader held me back. If they needed to cry for twenty minutes, I should just let them, he said.
The boy’s death hit me hard. We’ve always been conscious of the dangers inherent in prospecting work, and although we may appear relaxed, we’re nonetheless highly alert when it comes to these critical points. What a shame, I thought. We’d become so accustomed to taking care of ourselves that we’d forgotten to look out for others. We should have realized that these engineering corpsmen had no experience in geological exploration. Other than their level of physical fitness, they were no different from ordinary people. It was our negligence that killed this young soldier. These were the facts and there was no escaping them. Had it been I who brought the young soldier to this precipice, I wondered, would I have cautioned him before he climbed down? I’m afraid I too would have said nothing. Though all of us are highly skilled at our professions, when it comes to other things we’re entirely too lax. Pei Qing alone was not to blame.
That night we carried the soldier’s body back to camp and laid him on a sleeping bag. We couldn’t bring him deeper into the cave with us. Though we had to give him a proper burial, that would have to wait until we were on our way back to the surface. The deputy squad leader had us tuck in early, but how were we to calm down after something like that? None of us slept a wink.
The next day, not caring whether it was morning or night, we rose from our bags and put all of our belongings in order. After ceremonially paying our respects to the dead, we continued on our way. In 1962, our duty to the country was more important than anything else. Never once did we consider returning to the surface to rest, reorganize, and return again. We thought only of completing the mission. In prospecting jobs nowadays, as soon as something like this occurs, the assignment is over.
We stopped to eat lunch beside the waterfall. Here the body bags had already thinned out. The rocks had become smaller, the distance between them much closer, and our progress was now relatively easy. Wang Sichuan requested to scout ahead and explore the route, but we stopped him—for no other reason than it just didn’t feel right. After eating we took a twenty-minute rest. While fishing around in my pocket for a cigarette, I brushed against a crumpledup piece of paper. That hadn’t been in my pocket earlier, I thought. Unrolling it, I discovered it had been torn from a labor-insurance form. There were only four words: “Beware of Pei Qing!”
CHAPTER 11
The Note
I had no idea who had covertly stuffed the note into my pocket. I glanced around at the rest of the group, but no one was paying me any attention. Then I looked over at Pei Qing. He was cleaning the martyred soldier’s old rifle. After the soldier died, Pei Qing had begun carrying the gun on his back. Though it had made no difference to me before, I suddenly found something distasteful about the sight.
Things were getting rather frustrating. Back then the country was in a bad way. We’d just suffered three years of natural disasters and were now facing the threat of invasion by the Kuomintang. I assumed the latter was to blame for the strictly enforced confidentiality of our mission. The threats were coming from both sides, however. In those years, “Kuomintang spy” had become a sensitive term on the mainland. Today this must sound like the plot of some second-rate TV drama, but at the time it was no laughing matter. Supposed US-backed spies for Chiang Kai-shek were “found out” within the police force, people’s militia, and people’s communes. Men and women were being seized at the slightest provocation. Wang Sichuan later put it best: You could look at it two ways, he said. On the positive side, the nation deeply impressed upon the minds of its citizens the importance of national security. Of course, the other way to see it, he continued, was a form of entertainment. In 1962 the country was engaged in class warfare, and as dances and parties disappeared entirely, all that was left to while away one’s days was the possibility of catching a few spies.
The sensitivity of the times cut two ways: On the one hand, the activities of these Kuomintang spies had indeed thrown China into turmoil. On the other, they’d also led to a fervor of false accusations and an atmosphere of general mistrust, resulting in a huge number of wrongful arrests and unjustified cases. Some of these stemmed from such insignificant reasons that their absurdity was terrifying. The note writer was probably just swept up in the feverish suspicions of those times. This kind of person was very common back then—the inveterate schemer, overthinking everything. He probably believed that Pei Qing was a spy, that the young soldier had not accidentally fallen to his death, but had been pushed.
But who the hell had written it? The question ate at me. It obviously hadn’t been Wang Sichuan, nor could it have been any of the soldiers. That left only Chen Luohu, already withered from fear and having just slunk off to who knows where. He was just the type to have done it. He’d said nothing since the accident, probably because he’d been the one who first suggested we continue on. Since this had most likely influenced Pei Qing’s decision to explore the route ahead, and thus had led to the accident, Chen Luohu had to be scared he might somehow be implicated in the soldier’s death.
In any case, I didn’t take the note seriously. I knew Pei Qing’s background. We were alumni of the same department at the Chinese Geological University, though I had been one year above him. At school he’d always been a logical, clear-thinking student. No way would he have ever become an enemy agent. As for Chen Luohu, he already seemed to be a rather useless character, and I had begun to feel a growing dislike for the man. So I threw the note into the fire, pulled out my cigarettes, and began to smoke, unconcerned about anything or anyone else. Before long I had forgotten all about the note. We set off once more, scrambled down the waterfall, and by that evening had traveled nearly another kilometer. Here there were no more body bags and, because we had slept so poorly the night before, we neglected to even eat dinner before heading to bed. It wasn’t even five p.m.