Under the Red Flag Read Free

turned to us, “how shall we handle this parasite that sucked blood out of a revolutionary officer?”
    “Quarter her with four horses!” an old woman yelled.
    “Burn her on Heaven Lamp!”
    “Poop on her face!” a small fat girl shouted, her hand raised like a tiny pistol with the thumb cocked up and the forefinger aimed at Mu. Some grown-ups snickered.
    Then a pair of old cloth shoes, a symbol for a promiscuous woman, were passed to the front. The slim young woman took the shoes and tied them together with the laces. She climbed on a table and was about to hang the shoes around Mu’s neck. Mu elbowed the woman aside and knocked the shoes to the ground. The stout young fellow picked them up and jumped twice to slap her on the cheeks with the soles. “You’re so stubborn. Do you want to change yourself or not?” he asked.
    “Yes, I do,” she said meekly and dared not stir a bit. Meanwhile the shoes were being hung around her neck.
    “Now she looks like a real whore,” a woman said.
    “Sing us a tune, sis,” a farmer shouted.
    “Comrades,” the man in glasses resumed, “let us continue the denunciation.” He turned to Mu and asked, “Who are the other men?”
    “A farmer from Apple Village.”
    “How many times with him?”
    “Once.”
    “Liar!”
    “She’s lying!”
    “Give her one on the mouth!”
    The young man raised his hands to calm the crowd down and questioned her again, “How much did you take from him?”
    “Eighty yuan.”
    “One night?”
    “Yes.”
    “Tell us more about it. How can you make us believe you?”
    “That old fellow came to town to sell piglets. He sold a whole litter for eighty, and I got the money.”
    “Why did you charge him more than the officer?”
    “No, I didn’t. He did it four times in one night.”
    Some people were smiling and whispering to each other. A woman said that old man must have been a widower or never married.
    “What’s his name?” the young man went on.
    “No idea.”
    “Was he rich or poor?”
    “Poor.”
    “Comrades,” the young man addressed us, “here we have a poor peasant who worked with his sow for a whole year and got only a litter of piglets. That money is the salt and oil money for his family, but this snake swallowed the money in one gulp. What shall we do with her?”
    “Kill her!”
    “Break her skull!”
    “Beat the piss out of her!”
    A few farmers began to move forward to the steps, waving their fists or rubbing their hands.
    “Hold,” a woman Red Guard with a huge Chairman Mao badge on her chest spoke in a commanding voice. “The Great Leader has instructed us: ‘For our struggle we need words butnot force.’ Comrades, we can easily wipe her out with words. Force doesn’t solve ideological problems.” What she said restrained those enraged farmers, who remained in the crowd.
    Wooo, woo, wooo, wooooooooooo
, an engine screamed in the south. It was strange, because the drivers of the four o’clock train were a bunch of old men who seldom blew the horn.
    “Who is the third man?” the nearsighted man continued to question Mu.
    “A Red Guard.”
    The crowd broke into laughter. Some women asked the Red Guards to give her another bottle of ink. “Mu Ying, you’re responsible for your own words,” the young man said in a serious voice.
    “I told you the truth.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “I don’t know. He led the propaganda team that passed here last month.”
    “How many times did you sleep with him?”
    “Once.”
    “How much did you make out of him?”
    “None. That stingy dog wouldn’t pay a fen. He said he was the worker who should be paid.”
    “So you were outsmarted by him?”
    Some men in the crowd guffawed. Mu wiped her nose with her thumb, and at once she wore a thick mustache. “I taught him a lesson, though,” she said.
    “How?”
    “I tweaked his ears, gave him a bloody nose, and kicked him out. I told him never to come back.”
    People began talking to each other. Some said