Naked Earth Read Free Page A

puddle.
    Just glancing in her direction once or twice made Liu Ch’üan feel that everybody was watching him. She was too pretty. Before they got on the truck they had each announced their own name and the university they came from. And they usually mumbled it half laughing, feeling that self-introduction is a ridiculous thing if you perform it seriously. But somehow all the male members of the group had managed to catch Su Nan’s name and knew that she was a graduate of Yenching University.
    Liu Ch’üan turned and looked the other way, fanning himself with his cap. Then it occurred to him that this was really superfluous with a roaring wind blowing straight at him, so he put the cap back on his head. The wind immediately snatched at it. He caught it just in time.
    He could not remember hearing Su Nan talking to anybody. But she looked happy. She was carrying an oil-paper umbrella and she often stuck it out, brushing it against the trees so that it kept bouncing back jerkily with a sharp noise like ripping silk. The sleeves of her bluish gray uniform were rolled up above the elbow, showing thin young arms.
    The singing died down when throats went dry. The girl who had been beating time with a tree branch was Yü Ling, a classmate of Liu’s. She leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder with her long whip of a bough.
    “Hey, Liu Ch’üan, Liu Ch’üan,” she called out. “How much longer to go?”
    Because he did not answer at once the tree branch knocked him on the head. “Hey, Liu Ch’üan! We’ve covered half the distance, haven’t we?”
    He didn’t like it much when he saw Su Nan looking at him. “No use asking me. Ask the driver!” he said smiling. Maybe this was nothing between classmates, but other people might misunderstand. They were all cadres now, he told himself. And for a low-ranking cadre, one of the worst offenses was to nao nan-nü kuan-hsi , get up man-woman relations. Besides, they were setting out to do a very serious and important job. This kind of tso-feng would give the leaders the wrong idea.
    The man who represented the leaders in this group was Comrade Chang Li, a party member, an organizer sent down by the Cultural Bureau. In his middle thirties, Chang was of medium height, with full, long blue-green cheeks and rather full mauvish pink lips. He sat quietly smiling among these effervescent youngsters, trying to get all their names straight. Liu had introduced everyone he knew to Chang. Liu had been active in the Students’ Association of Peita, the University of Peking, so he had been in constant contact with similar groups in all the other universities. He was also a member of the Youth Corps and was being considered for admittance into the Party. Chang obviously regarded him as a leader among the students and relied on him to maintain order in the group.
    The dusty, creamy glare of the sun gave them a headache. They all dozed off sitting back to back, until they were wakened by the soreness at the end of the spine where the jolting hurt them. Thus they alternated between sleeping and waking, headache and rump-ache.
    Towards mid-afternoon it looked like rain. The sun became a furry, soft white spot in the oppressive uniform gray of the sky. The truck was now bumping along at breakneck speed. Rain would turn the dust into mud as slippery as rice gruel. Wheels wouldn’t be able to move an inch in the mire and it would be disastrous to be stranded in these parts, miles away from anywhere. The driver stepped on the gas.
    Liu Ch’üan’s last nap was cut short by a burst of song. He looked out the back and saw rain. The drenched young people at the back were singing, defiantly cheerful. The truck had already turned out of the ditch and was running along a narrow lane with broad fields stretching away flatly to the sky on both sides. They passed a kao-liang patch, the stalks taller than a man. It was the season of the “green gauze curtain,” the affectionate name the farmers give to