Naked Earth Read Free

face as he shouted supplications to the slow, lumbering coal truck just ahead of them. He had shouted himself hoarse but either his words were drowned in the roar of the engines or the coal-truck driver pretended not to hear him.
    When they had reached a bend in the road the other truck finally, in a burst of conscience, swung out of the way and let them move up front.
    “Let’s slow down a bit,” the assistant said to the driver, “so they’ll also eat some dust.”
    The driver nodded.
    Hanging on to the window frame with one arm, the assistant twisted around to look back, grinning happily. Now and then his plump face would suddenly go all red and blotchy again with rage and he would yell back, “ T’a ma ti! Your turn to eat some dust!”
    The truckful of young people started to laugh. One of them said half seriously, “This driver’s tso-feng , style, is no good. He should go under discussion. Maybe we should call a meeting tonight.” He winked at his comrades.
    They were all students from various universities in Peking. When the People’s Government mobilized university students to take part in the Land Reform, all the Active Elements in the student body vied with each other in signing up. Some of them had just graduated this summer.
    Liu Ch’üan, one of the new graduates, sat at the back of the truck where it jolted the worst. He had his arms crossed loosely, elbows resting on his knees. The sun was still broiling hot though it was already autumn. His bluish gray summer uniform, soaked through with perspiration, clung in ripple-marks on his back. Warm puffs of wind blasted the dust against his face like a flapping, stinging, coarse veil. He frowned and could hardly open his eyes, but he was smiling. He was tall with a thin, dark gold face dimpled on one cheek, and keen narrow eyes.
    “The east is red;
    The sun has risen;
    China’s produced a Mao Tse-tun g.. .”
    They had started singing in a corner up front. With a sudden lurch towards the side of the road the truck just managed to miss a mule-cart coming from the other direction. Half a tree and a big clump of green reeds swept into the open truck and switched against the faces of the riders. The girls shrieked and squealed with laughter, piling on top of one another as they ducked. One of them pulled off a leafy branch from the tree and started to beat time with it on her friend’s back as they sang.
    They sang a Land Reform song they had just learned, “Unite, hey!—Tillers of the land !.. .” But they liked the old favorites best, like that one beginning with “Our China, so big and wide.” The tune was probably adapted from some Russian song. It had the gray, windy sadness that vast spaces bring.
    The road gradually sank and the bare smooth banks on either side kept rising until they stood up sheer, like yellow mud walls. The earth was loose and sandy in this part of the country. Every time a mule-cart passed with its iron-bound wheels it dug deep ridges in the road. Centuries of traffic had worn the road into a ditch from ten to twenty feet deep. Sitting high up on the truck the students could just see the yellowish green tree tops on the plain.
    Some of the riders began to complain that their legs had gone to sleep, so they shifted position as best they could. A pretty girl now sat facing this side, framed in a hole in the crowd. Her skin had the bluish pale translucency of fresh-peeled lichee flesh and her eyes were wide splits in the ripe fruit showing the moistened lacquered surface of the purplish black seed within. Liu Ch’üan looked at her. The fold of her eyelid made a long deep line fading out at the end with an upward sweep. The wind had plastered a small green leaf on her hair. She had short hair curling outward a little at the ends. Set against the dully throbbing, changeless yellow countryside, her head and shoulders made a startling little picture, distinct and yet infinitely far away, like a patch of sky reflected in a wayside