The Interior - Страница 36

"When you're here longer, you'll find out," Peanut answered.

"But Siang already knows, and we've been here the same amount of time."

"But she's different. The manager told her himself."

Hulan put down her chopsticks. "I don't think this is fair." The words seemed tame enough, but in China they were the first step toward public criticism.

Peanut sighed. "Okay, but if you get caught, don't tell them I told you. There are actually several ways to meet," she went on, trying to sound more worldly than her fourteen years. "Staying in the compound is the least dangerous, but it's hard to avoid their eyes."

"Last night Madame Leung caught me when I went outside," Hulan said.

"That's because you left after lights out," Peanut explained. "You have to be gone much earlier than that." Peanut looked around to make sure that none of the officials were nearby, then leaned forward and continued in a low voice, "Did you notice that when we came in here that we didn't have to check in? Well, the same goes for breakfast and dinner." "So?"

"So they only check us when we go in and out of the factory. Otherwise they don't pay much attention."

"People sneak out during lunch?" Hulan asked dubiously. "Lunch. Dinner." Peanut's eyes scanned the room. "I can tell you not everyone is having lunch right now." "But where do they go?" "Oh, the warehouse, the shipping area, the Administration Building, even here." Seeing Hulan's shocked look, Peanut laughed. "They aren't doing it in here right now! That's only at night after lights out and the men have supposedly gone home. Outside, you put a man and a woman together, how long does it take? Not so long and then the man goes to sleep. But"-Peanut's eyes gleamed-"if you stay in the compound-if you're in here perhaps-you do your thing and then you have all night to talk, because these floors are too hard for much sleeping. Believe me, I know!"

"Still, won't you get caught?"

"Depends where you go," Peanut said, "depends who with."

"What if I wanted to leave the compound?" Hulan asked.

"Do you have a special man too?" Peanut wanted to know.

"Maybe," Hulan said. "Maybe I just don't believe you. What about the gate? What about the guard?"

"Oh, leaving is easy!" Peanut bragged. "We're dismissed at seven and so are the men. You take off your smock, give it to a friend, join the men-walking in the middle of the group-and go right out through the gate. In the morning, you just reverse the process. And if you really want out, you can always pay the guard. He's very greedy."

Hulan remembered back to the first time she entered the compound and how the guard had paled when he'd seen her identification. He must have thought he was on his way to a labor camp.

"You've done this yourself?" Hulan asked. "Paid the guard?"

"Me? No. I'm here to make money, not spend it." Peanut turned her attention back to Siang. "So, where did the manager want to meet you?"

Siang studied her empty bowl. "He said to come to his office. He said we would have dinner there and we could talk about my promotion."

"Um." Peanut nodded sagely. "He wants to talk." Then she burst out in raucous laughter, stood, and called out across the room in a shrill voice, "Manager Red Face wants to talk!" The laughter that followed was accompanied by a few more comments on Aaron Rodgers's prowess.

Feeling sorry for Siang, Hulan reached across the table and patted her hand. "You don't have to do what he says."

Siang looked up not in embarrassment but in defiance. "Why wouldn't I go?" f "Isn't it obvious that he does this with other girls?"

"So what?"

"So you could get hurt. You could get a disease. You could-"

"You only say those things because you're old." Siang filled the last word with as much contempt as she could marshal. As Hulan recoiled at the insult, Siang went on. "Don't look so surprised. It's true you look young, almost like one of us. But you are a friend of Ling Suchee. Tsai Bing's mother says you are girlhood friends. Well, if you are friends for that many years, then you are as old as that old woman."

Peanut consumed all this with considerable interest, and Hulan had no doubts that their conversation would be common knowledge by lights out tonight.

"And what about Tsai Bing?" Hulan asked.

"He's the reason I'll do it." Siang pushed her tray away and stood. "We want to be together, but how can we without money?"

Hulan and Peanut watched Siang wend her way through the tables. "True-heart love, eh?" Peanut asked. Hulan nodded. "Parental objection too?" When Hulan nodded again, Peanut sighed at the hopelessness of it all.

During the long, hot afternoon, as Hulan continued to jab hair through tiny holes in the Sam dolls, Peanut peppered them both with questions: What villages were they from? How had they been hired? What were they saving money for? Fortunately, Hulan didn't have to worry too much about her answers due to Siang's repeated interruptions. Eventually Peanut directed her questions solely to Siang, who responded with an insolent brashness, as though she were taunting them with her family's superiority.

"A hundred years ago my family was important in this area," Siang said. "They were landowners, the worst of the worst, but even so, they didn't have so much. They weren't Mandarins or educated, but they'd been in this district for many centuries. They were slave owners. They bought girls to work in the house and eventually become the concubines of my great-great-uncles."

All of these words were spoken with perfunctory contrition, for there was no masking Siang's pride in her family's past. Still, to be on the safe side, she covered her haughtiness by adding, "I had a great-uncle-a younger brother naturally-who joined the People's Army. It's a good thing too. Otherwise my entire family would have been killed during Liberation or during Land Reform."

"What about the Cultural Revolution?" Peanut asked. "Your family must have paid then."

"I wasn't born yet, so I only know the stories," Siang said. "In those days there was a big commune not far from here where thousands of youths from the city came to learn the ways of the people. Can you imagine?"

"In my home village," Peanut said, "we also had a work camp for people from the black classes."

"Maybe that's where my father was sent. Who knows?" Siang said. "But always I have thought this was kind of funny, because it isn't so easy to live here even now. The whole time that my father was gone from Da Shui, the villagers held criticism meetings against our family. Eventually they sent away my aunties. They never returned. Then the team leaders of the commune assigned my grandparents the worst jobs-filling buckets of shit from the public latrine and carrying them to the fields. My grandparents, already weak, died very quickly. By the time my father returned, he no longer had a family. His home, tools, and land had long been confiscated and incorporated into the commune."

"This was life for people everywhere," Peanut observed. "Your family is not so unique."

"A little less talking and maybe the new girls would get more work done," a voice cut in. Hulan looked over her shoulder to see Madame Leung.

"Sorry, Party Secretary."

"Peanut, I gave these two to you because you are fast. But"-she pointed at Hulan-"look at the job this one here is doing." Then she turned her attention from the work to the person doing it and instantly recognized Hulan. "You're the one from last night."

Hulan bowed her head. It was an admission of guilt and an act of repentance.

"This work will never pass inspection," Madame Leung said. Then she grabbed Hulan's hands. "And look at this! You're bleeding through your bandages. No one wants your blood on our products. Here," she said as she reached into her pocket and pulled out some gloves. "These ought to help your hands, but if I don't see an improvement in the work, we'll have to move you to a less demanding job." Madame Leung surveyed the room for her next targets. Once she spotted them, she said, "Get back to work, and, Peanut, you're responsible for this one."

When she walked away, Peanut said, "You'll have to try harder, Hulan. This is a bottom-rung job. I'm still here, but I'm team leader of Appendage Assembly. If you don't succeed, you'll be given an even lower job, like hauling water to the bathrooms or cleaning the floors. They'll drop your salary even more and you'll work longer hours. I know you didn't come here for that. Now, watch exactly what I do…"

Peanut devoted the next hour to helping Hulan. The work itself wasn't all that difficult, but Hulan's left hand was bandaged and awkward. Peanut taught Hulan to modify her grip on the doll's head. Soon enough muscles she didn't know she had in her hand started to ache, but at least she wasn't worried about driving the punching tool into her wound. The minutes ticked past and Hulan became aware of Slang's growing impatience, as she bumped into Peanut and cleared her throat, inexpertly trying to get the team leader's attention. Finally Peanut said to Hulan, "Your hands are clumsy and your arms don't have much strength, but you are doing better. Try it on your own for a while. The next time Madame Leung comes around, you'll be ready for her."

As soon as Peanut picked up her own tool, Siang began to speak as though no time had passed since her earlier speech. "When the responsibility system came in 1984, everything changed for us," Siang said.