They all got into the car, including the orderly. The movie was to be shown in the Workers' Cultural Palace, which was just a mile away.
The theater was almost full. As they were walking to their seats, Manna noticed several of her colleagues sitting among the audience and turning their eyes toward her. Haiyan was there, talking in different directions. At the sight of Manna, she stood up and signaled that she should join her. Manna waved back and shook her head, reddening a little.
Before they reached their seats, a fat official in a blue Mao suit appeared and stretched out both hands to the commissar, saying in a booming voice, "How are you, Old Wei? How I miss you!"
Commissar Wei looked startled, then smiled. "I'm well. How about you, Old Zhao?" he said delightedly.
"Fine, fine," the man said.
"Please join us."
The two men were still holding each other's hands while walking toward Row 14, talking about the condition of the municipal Party secretary, who had just broken his leg on a fishing trip. Manna recognized the official, who was a vice-major of Muji City.
They all took their seats. On her right sat the commissar and the vice-mayor; on her left were seated Geng Yang and the orderly. A few minutes later the lights went off and the movie started. Commissar Wei dropped his half-smoked cigarette on the terrazzo floor and stamped it out.
The movie told a sad story about a poor Korean family. Strange to say, it had almost no plot. A little girl was eager to have a fresh chestnut, so she went under a large tree, on which two boys, whose father was the richest landowner in the village, were plucking nuts and throwing them down at the children in rags. One of the brothers aimed at the poor girl and hit her with a thorny nut, which injured her eyeball. Then her elder sister had to sell flowers on the streets to support the blind girl and the family. The sisters went on weeping from the beginning of the movie until the very end. Their tears had a tremendous impact on the audience. As the girls cried on screen, many people in the theater could not hold back their tears.
Manna heard people sobbing and sniveling around her. Their weeping was so contagious that soon almost everybody in the theater began to mist up. Manna couldn't keep her tears back, but she didn't raise her hand to wipe them, just letting them trickle down her face. On her right, Commissar Wei dabbed his eyes again and again with a handkerchief, while the vice-mayor lowered his head sobbing and at times gasping for breath. Commissar Wei squeezed her hand and whispered, "I'm really sorry about this."
"It's a good movie," she said earnestly.
Then she noticed that Geng Yang on her left didn't show any emotion. Unlike others, he was sitting stock-still, making no noise at all. Doesn't he feel sad? she wondered. Time and again, out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed his stony face, which looked distant and detached. He seemed aware of her observation and exhaled a sigh, which betrayed more impatience than sadness.
At long last the movie was over and all lights came on. Many people had red eyes, but nobody looked ashamed. Some were still wiping their faces and blowing their noses with grimy handkerchiefs or scraps of newspaper. "Comrade Manna Wu," the commissar said in a miserable voice, "I didn't know it was such a sad picture. Otherwise I wouldn't have invited you."
"It was good and I was very touched."
"I have to stay with Old Zhao for a while. Do you mind if I let Comrade Geng Yang take you back to the hospital?"
"No, not at all."
"Please write to me and tell me what you think of Leaves of Grass, will you?"
"Yes, I will. "
Commissar Wei shook her hand and said good-bye. He gave instructions to Geng Yang, then moved away to join the vice-mayor.
The Volga was waiting for them in front of the building. They got into the car, which started heading north toward the hospital. Because the night had grown quiet, Manna noticed how little noise the car made. Only a small whirring sound could be heard as they drove along the asphalt road partly sheltered by sycamore leaves. The chauffeur had also seen the movie just now, and he was so affected by it that he began talking to the two passengers. "What a sad picture!" he said.
Manna entered into conversation with him, but meanwhile Geng Yang, seated in the front, didn't say a word. She was curious and wondered why he was so cold. "Geng Yang, what did you think of the movie?" she asked.
"It was all right."
"So you were not moved by it?"
"Actually not."
"Why not? Everybody was crying in the theater. Why were you so calm?"
"I don't cry. I've seen things more terrible than that."
The chauffeur seemed irritated by his answer and said, "Tell us what you've seen. "
"Oh, I've seen a lot."
"Like what?"
"For instance, last fall we dug a large vegetable cellar. As we were laying bricks to build its wall, a landslip happened and buried twelve men in the pit. In less than a second they all disappeared from sight, buried right under my nose. When we dug them out, nine men had no breath left in them. Then their parents came to my battalion from different provinces. You should've seen how they cried their hearts out; it twisted my entrails to hear them. But I had to remain coolheaded in order to maintain discipline among my men. One by one I turned down the parents' unreasonable demands, even though they called me names and made terrible scenes. If you were on the front, you'd see deaths and injuries quite often and grow used to them. So many men die in accidents; a man's life is worth nothing. In military exercises there are casualties all the time. "
As he was talking, the car rolled to a stop. Both he and Manna got off, but instead of holding out her hand to him, she just waved good-bye.
She turned and walked away toward the dormitory house, feeling his eyes following her for a long time. Then came the sound of the car door being shut, and the Volga pulled away quietly. To some extent she found Geng Yang interesting; he was so manly and so different from the others.
6
Sitting at his desk, Lin kept saying to himself, I must see her today.
For a whole morning whenever he was not with a patient, his mind would wander to Manna's meeting with Commissar Wei. He was anxious, because he had heard horrible stories about the top officers' private lives and was afraid Manna might become a victim. There was this general of a field army, Commander Pengfan Hong, who had changed wives every three or four years because he was too savage in bed for a regular woman to last longer than that. Every one of his wives would fall ill within a year of the wedding and soon die of kidney disease. Again and again the Party arranged a new wife for him, but after the deaths of several women he was finally persuaded to marry a large Russian woman, the only one who remained unbroken after living with him for seven years. Lin was fearful, since he had been told that Commissar Wei was a bulky man.
From Ran Su he had heard that Commissar Wei had called the hospital the morning after meeting Manna, saying that he had been very pleased to see her in person, and that he would like to keep contact with her and see where the relationship would go. Also from Director Su, Lin had found out that the commissar had divorced his wife not because of any marital problem but because she had written a booklet criticizing some member in the Political Bureau in Beijing and had been turned into a counter-revolutionary. Now she was being reformed on a remote farm north of Tsitsi-har. Fortunately they had only one child, a daughter, who had already grown up and was a fledgling actress at Changchun Film Studio.