Ocean of Words Read Free

us.”
    “No, I didn’t hide anything. I didn’t know it when we came back together.”
    “Know what?” Deng said.
    “The note. She left a note in my breast pocket. I didn’t know it till three days later.”
    “Let’s have a look at it.” Deng stretched out his hand, and Kong slowly took out his wallet and produced the note. Deng read it and then passed it to me and cursed, “Bitch.”
    On the scrap of yellow paper there were these few words:
    I know you. Your name is Kong Kai. — An Mali.
    No one could say that was a secret message or a love note, so I said to Kong, “There’s nothing unusual in this. It doesn’t explain the affair.”
    “I was curious to see how she knew my name.”
    “So you went back to her?” Deng said.
    “Yes.”
    “Shame on you two!”
    I didn’t feel the girl was in the wrong. Kong was the one who had broken into the Youth Home and then gone back to look for her, so he should be held responsible. However, it would be impracticable to order him to cut the affair at one stroke. He was a man and should break it off on his own initiative, so I switched the topic a little by asking him how he was going to make sure he would be elected an exemplary soldier at the end of the year. He said he would try every way to gain enough votes. We knew that was an empty promise,for as long as he was carrying on the affair, he had no chance of being voted in. Commander Deng got impatient and said, “Comrade Kong Kai, you know, you’re already a dishonored man. You want to know how your men feel about you? They told me they felt fooled by you. Your task now is to regain your honor and make them respect you again. Otherwise how can you command the squad?”
    Kong lowered his eyes without a word. I was impressed by Deng’s pointed speech, to which I couldn’t add anything. By nature, Deng was a reticent man. Obviously this matter had been preying on his mind for a while, though we had talked of it only twice. I felt bad, because I was the company’s political instructor and Party secretary and I should have done something about the affair before the election.
    After Kong left, I admitted my negligence to Deng and promised that I would try every means to stop the affair. Deng was always forthright and said we should have taken action when I showed him those candy wrappers three weeks before.
    The next morning I sent Scribe Yang to Garlic Village to investigate the girl. I told him to go to the production brigade’s Party branch first, look through her file, and find out all the information about her and her family background. “Trust me, Instructor Pan,” Yang said with a smile. “I’m a professional sleuth.” He swung a thin leg over a Forever bicycle and rode away with the handle bell tinkling.
    Then I set about writing a report on our preliminary election to the Regimental Political Department. I had graduated from middle school, so the writing wasn’t difficult, and I finished it in an hour. Having nothing else to do before lunch, I considered Kong’s case again, particularly the girl involved. I remembered she had a pleasant voice. On National Day the year before, we had heard her singing an aria from the revolutionary model play
Seaport
at the marketplace.She worked in the village’s tofu plant, where our cooks would go to buy dried bean curd and soy sprouts. Though tall and delicate, she wasn’t pretty, and there were freckles on her cheeks. She often reminded me of a giant fox in human clothes. Among all the girls at the Youth Home, I would say she was the least attractive.
    The scribe returned at noon. I was shocked by the results of his investigation:
    An Mali, 23, female
    Family Background: Capitalist
    Personal Class Status: Student
    Political Aspect: Mass
    An Long (An Mali’s father), male, died in 2
    Class Status: Capitalist; owned two textile mills before Liberation
    Political Aspect: Counterrevolutionary
    The true nature of the affair was clear now. If he knew her family