A Loyal Character Dancer

on Catherine’s finger. She had certainly been helping in the kitchen.
     
    So Wen started to narrate in a mechanical voice, as if she were telling a story about somebody else, her face expressionless, her eye vacant, her body occasionally racked with silent sobs.
     
    In 1970, when the educated youth movement swept all over the country, Wen was only fifteen. Upon her arrival at Changle Village in Fujian, however, she found it impossible to squeeze into the small hut with her relative’s three-generation family. As she was the only educated youth in the village, the Revolutionary Committee of the Changle People’s Commune, headed by Feng, assigned to her an unused tool room adjacent to the village barn. There was no electricity or water, nor any furniture except a bed in the room, but she believed in Mao’s call to young people to reform themselves through hardship. Feng turned out not to be, however, the poor-and-lower-middle-class-peasant of Mao’s theory.
     
    Feng started by asking her to talk in his office. As the number-one Party cadre, he was in the position to give political talks, supposedly in an effort to reeducate young people. She had to meet him three or four times a week, with the door locked, Feng sitting like a monkey in human clothes, his hands pawing at her over the red-covered copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao. And what she had dreaded happened one night. Feng broke into her room from the barn. She struggled, but he overpowered her. Afterward, he came almost every night. No one dared to say anything about it in the village. He had not thought about marrying her, but upon learning that she was pregnant, he changed his mind. He had no child from his first wife. Wen was desperate. She thought about abortion. The commune clinic was under his control. She thought about running away. There was no bus transportation at the time. Villagers had to ride a commune tractor for miles to the nearest bus stop. She thought about committing suicide, but she could not bring herself to do so when she felt the baby kicking inside her.
     
    So they got married under a portrait of Chairman Mao. “A revolutionary marriage,” as reported by a local radio station. Feng did not bother to have a marriage certificate. For the first few months, she was tempting, young, educated, from the big city—something for his sexual satisfaction. Soon he lost interest. After the baby was born, he became abusive toward her.
     
    She realized there was no use struggling. Feng was so powerful in those years. At first, occasionally, she still dreamed of somebody coming to her rescue. Soon she gave up. In the cracked mirror she saw she was no longer what she had been. Who would take pity on peasant woman with a sallow, wrinkled face, and a baby bundled on her back as she plowed with an ox in the rice paddy. She came to terms with her fate by cutting herself off from the people in Shanghai.
     
    In 1977, after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Feng was removed from his position. Spoiled by the power he had enjoyed, he would not work like a peasant. She had to support the family. What’s worse, the perverted monster now had all his time and energy free for abusing her. And a reason, too. Among other things, he had been accused of dumping his first wife and seducing an educated youth. He attributed his downfall to that and wreaked his fury on her. When he became aware of her intention to divorce him, he threatened to kill her and her son. He was capable of anything, she knew. So things went on as before. In the early eighties, he started to stay away from home frequently—on “business,” though she never knew what he was really up to. He earned little. The only things he brought home were toys for his son. After the death of their child, things went from bad to worse. He had other women and came home only when he was broke.
     
    She was not surprised that Feng announced he was leaving for the United States. If anything, it was rather surprising that he had not gone earlier. He did not talk to her about his plans. She was a worn-out rag he was going to discard anyway. Last November, he stayed at home for two weeks. She found herself pregnant. He had her take a test. When it showed that she was carrying a boy, he was a changed man. He told her about his trip and promised that he would send for her when he was settled in the United States. He wanted her to start a new life there with him.
     
    She understood this sudden change.