The Last Days of the Wind and Thunder Faction - Part One

On Tuesday, we blew up the last of our teachers. The day before, we
had taken Old Man Chen out to the athletic field and buried him alive.
When he tried to cry out he got a mouthful of dirt. His hands were
bound behind his back so he couldn't escape from the hole we dug for
him.

On Tuesday morning, we made them take a pack of explosives up onto the
middle school roof. There were four of them: Teachers Zhang, Li, Zhou
and Long. Teacher Li was crying hysterically; her spectacles fell off.
The three men were more taciturn, none wanting to show the others that
he was afraid. We left them a box of matches. We ordered them to sit on
the pack of explosives and light it themselves. It was Zhou who did it
in the end. He had once beaten me for being late. He taught us how, two
thousand years before, Emperor Qin Shihuang had burnt all the books and
buried the scholars alive. The first match he struck went out before he
could touch it to the fuse. He cupped his hand around the second, to
shield it from the wind blowing in from the east.

There was a tremendous noise, and suddenly our teachers had
disappeared. I looked around and legs and arms were in the trees and
all over the roof. Zongwei was first to lead the cry: 'Long live
Chairman Mao!'

* * *

By Thursday, six of us had travelled north into Hunan. We called
ourselves the Wind and Thunder Faction. The Chairman provided us all
with free train passes to travel anywhere in the country. We stopped at
Rucheng, Liuyang and Dongmen. We wanted to visit all the great
revolutionary sites.

Zongwei began to get restless. His eyes were always crawling over
everything and everyone. He did not like using the trains. He wanted to
travel on foot, like our revolutionary forebears. Whenever we
encountered someone he did not like the look of, he would demand to see
their Little Red Book, and if they could not produce it and quote
aphorisms without looking, he would berate them, sometimes even beat
them with the butt of his pistol while the rest of us watched. Such
outbursts seemed very tame compared to the things we had done at the
school. It was not until Zongwei heard about the shrine that I began to
get uneasy.

We were drinking tea from a stall when I saw Zongwei's eyes drift to
the two old men having a conversation behind us.

'When I have finished my work for the day,' one said to the other, 'I
must travel to the shrine and make an offering.'

Lin Biao had incited us to smash the Four Olds - old thought, old
culture, old customs and old practices. Zongwei was hungrier for
rebellion than I; his reactions were on a hair-trigger. I was poised to
take another sip of tea when he whirled round and caught the man by his
pigtail. The man cried out. A ripple of murmurs passed through the
marketplace. The rest of us stood to attention and puffed our chests
out to show off our uniforms. The murmurs faded away and people
returned to their business.

'Aii!' the old man wailed. 'What have I done to you?'

Zongwei was snarling. 'You are a poisonous weed,' he said, and yanked
the man's pigtail so he was forced to stoop lower. Two of us had
grabbed hold of the old man's friend. 'Where is this shrine of
yours?'

I saw the man's eyes turn beady with fear as he realised what we meant
to do.

'Please, kind young comrades,' he begged. 'Please? it is nothing, just
a -'

'Reactionary pig!' Zongwei tripped the old man and watched him land
heavily in the dirt. He rested his boot on the old man's stomach.
'Where is the shrine?'

'The tomb is sacred! The Twelve Elders have protected the surrounding
fields and villages for over a thousand years!'

Zongwei fell on the old man with his fists. By the time his rage was
spent, the man lay bloody and bruised and still. Zongwei stood and
pushed his face right into the face of the other man.

'Will you take us to the shrine?' he said. We could all see that he
wanted the man to resist.

'I will take you,' the man said sadly. Zongwei nodded, then cuffed
him.

* * *

It was a short train ride to the nameless stop; a mud brick platform
with a dirt track leading away from it. Weeds had forced their way up
through the cracks then withered in the sun. The platform was covered
with brown tufts, like an adolescent's patchy stubble.

'Where now?' barked Zongwei.

The old man lowered his head. We had tied string round his neck, as if
he were a stray dog.

'Through the fields,' he said. I lifted the peak of my cap and looked
around. There was nothing but cotton fields in every direction.

Zongwei grabbed the old man's face and squeezed, so his dry lips
widened into a pout.

'Where?' he shouted. 'Is this some kind of trick?' He took his hand
away so the old man could speak.

'Over there,' said the old man. He raised an arm and pointed at a hill
close to the horizon.

Zongwei knocked his arm away. 'Let's go.'

* * *

We marched single-file through cotton fields for hours. It was late
summer and the heat brought smells whispering out of the soil. Even
though my shirt clung to my back with perspiration, I was enjoying
myself. Tramping along a furrow between rows of late-planted cotton
with our rucksacks, we felt like real revolutionaries. I had seen more
of China in two weeks than in the rest of my life. Best of all, I got
to spend time with Zongwei. I walked behind him, watching the roll of
his buttocks in tight military trousers. I was hopelessly, painfully in
love.

Heng was the youngest, so we made him carry the sledgehammer we had
requisitioned from one of the stalls in the marketplace. I could hear
him panting behind me. Every so often, he would stumble, then scramble
to his feet. He did not want any of us to doubt his revolutionary
zeal.

Yi marched in front. He had hold of the string tied round the old man's
neck. If he thought the old man was moving too slowly, Yi would hit him
with a long bamboo cane and bellow things like:

'Faster, you old bandit!' He often glanced over his shoulder
expectantly, waiting for an approving nod from Zongwei.

The sun was low and to our back as we approached the hill, the sky
cloudless save for a pink and blue gash on the far horizon. The hill
was stubbled with yellow grass and, for a moment, we thought the old
man had deceived us.

Yi yanked on the string and the old man fell to his knees. His fingers
went to his throat as he tried to loosen the noose. Zongwei stood in
front of him.

'Where's the shrine?'

'It's set into the hillside,' said the old man. Suddenly, he clasped
his hands together in petition. 'Please, you mustn't go in. It's
dangerous. The seal-'

Zongwei drew his pistol, put it to the man's temple and fired. Cotton
stalks rustled and blood spattered the dirt. Yi let go of the string
and the man slid to the ground.

'Come on,' said Zongwei, and took the lead. We marched round the base
of the hill, following the dip of a drainage furrow. The earth was dry
and powdery and we left a tail of dust in our wake. As we rounded the
westward side, a dark hole came into view.

Zongwei gave Heng the rifle and the field glasses we found in Teacher
Chen's attic and told him to take a lookout position on the summit of
the hill. The five of us that were left unshouldered our packs at the
shrine entrance. Yi got to carry the sledgehammer. I carried the oil
lamp. Zongwei went in first, cradling his pistol with both hands. The
roof to the entrance was low and he had to duck. I went in next, then
Yi, then Minfan, and lastly Hongrong. Hongrong had only recently
changed his name from Gao, in honour of the Chairman. I had watched him
on the train, reading the Little Red Book with tears in his eyes.

The shrine entrance opened out into a large rectangular chamber. The
roof was high enough for us to stand. Our shadows played and danced on
the walls like ghosts as I moved with the lamp to a better position. I
could see that we had left deep footprints in the dust that covered the
floor.

At the far end of the chamber, a big stone slab was set into the wall.
It was covered in worn carvings. Aside from that, the room was stark.
Yi stepped forward with the hammer.

'Well,' he said. 'This is what we came for.' He looked to
Zongwei.

Zongwei nodded. The lamp light picked out the high ridges of his
cheekbones and the swell of his throat.

'Go ahead,' he said. 'This place smells of mould.'

Yi heaved the sledgehammer back over his shoulder. At school he had
been a champion wrestler. Once, I watched him break a boy's arm during
a bout. Afterwards, he claimed it had been an accident, but I had seen
his eyes. He was driven to it not by malice, but by curiosity.
Yi took one step, then another. His shadow shortened as he moved
farther from the lamp.

'Go on!' called Minfan. 'Smash it!'

I saw Yi's shoulders heave as he took a final breath. He planted his
boot in the dirt and swung the hammer in a loose crescent over his
head. It struck the slab with a crunch. Flakes of stonework fell away
as he staggered back from the impact. Yi rested the head of the hammer
against the ground.

'More!' cried Minfan. Yi lifted the hammer and swung horizontally,
pivoting to throw his entire bodyweight behind the blow. His aim was
not quite right. The hammer struck the slab at an angle, clipping the
surface then ricocheting back, nearly dragging him off balance. When he
turned to face us, he was puffing and he looked flustered.

Zongwei crossed the chamber and took the sledgehammer from him. I could
see Yi was reluctant to give it up; his mistake had made him angry. He
wanted to unleash that anger through the head of a hammer. He wanted to
smash everything.

'Step back,' Zongwei told him. Yi stepped back. I held the oil lamp a
little higher and, for a second, the flame sputtered.

Zongwei was more calculating than Yi. He eyed the stone slab up and
down, working out where to hit it. He patted a spot at chest-height. In
the lamp light, we could see the air around him boiling with dust. His
hands left swirling eddies in their wake; glowing currents billowed
round the curves and inlets of his body. The chamber reacted to his
every move.

When he swung the hammer, he let out a short, controlled yell:
'Ha!'
We heard a hollow bang. When he stepped back, we could see a lattice of
cracks spidering out from a square impact point. I thought he would
stop to catch his breath, but almost immediately he swung again. The
hammer connected with a smack. Seconds later, we heard a clatter. When
Zongwei moved away, the slab had a hole in it the size of two fists.
Through the hole, darkness.

'What is it?' said Yi. 'Is there something behind it?'

Zongwei rested the sledgehammer against the wall. 'Bring the light over
here.'

I crossed the chamber, carrying the lamp by the length of string
fastened to the top. As soon as I got close enough, Zongwei took it
from me. He held it next to the hole, stooped and peered in. From where
I stood, I could feel a warm draft.

'What do you see?' asked Minfan. Zongwei did not reply.

'Is there anything inside?' said Yi.

Zongwei straightened up. 'It's a passage,' he said. 'Sloping
downwards.' He handed me the lamp.

'It's probably full of relics,' Yi said.

Zongwei folded his arms. 'That's why those two old snakes were so
desperate to hide it.' He glanced at the slab. 'Break it down. We must
clean away the clutter to make way for total rebellion.' I heard the
confidence and precision in his words and cold thrills ran up my spine.
Zongwei stood back and let Yi take up the hammer.

We waited quietly as Yi pounded the carvings. The continual jarring
clangs made trying to chat a waste of time. Zongwei leant against the
wall, tipped back his cap and lit a cigarette. He puffed gently,
pensively, and watched Yi at work. Minfan stood a few paces behind Yi,
hoping perhaps that Yi would tire and he would get a chance to attack
the slab. Hongrong crouched on his haunches near the entrance. He was
drawing lines in the dust with his fingertip. I crossed the chamber and
stood over him with the lamp.

'What are you doing?' I asked.

Hongrong looked up. 'Planning our route,' he said. I peered at the
shape he had traced in the dirt. It looked like a rough profile of a
human head. 'We are here.' He placed a finger near the crest of the
scalp. With a start, I realised that the outline was meant to be the
Hunanese border. 'Tomorrow, we head for Shaoshan.' He dragged his
finger in a straight line through the dust, stopping where the ear
would have been. He allowed his finger to rest there for a moment, and
I saw his shoulders rise and fall in an silent sigh. He took away his
hand and looked back up at me. 'To see the birthplace of Mao Zedong? I
think, after that, I will no longer be afraid to die. I will have no
regrets.'

I said nothing. Teacher Zhou's favourite tale had been about how an
assassin had concealed a dagger inside a map he was bringing to the
Emperor. The plot had been discovered, the assassin caught and killed.
During the Qin dynasty, the six conquered states were made to submit
maps to the Emperor. Maps were a formal symbol of subjugation.

I glanced down at Hongrong's sketch, then scuffed it out with my
boot.

'Hey! What are you doing?' he said, swiping at my foot. He leapt to his
feet. 'What's the big idea?' Zongwei looked over at us but he did not
move from the wall.

'I'm abolishing feudalism,' I said. Hongrong had a tic that made him
squint his left eye whenever he got nervous or excited. He glared at me
for several seconds, eyelid stuttering. I turned away, and walked to
the other side of the room. When I looked back, his head was lowered.
He was reading from his Little Red Book, silently mouthing the
words.

For a while, I sat down and watched Zongwei watching Yi. Each time he
inhaled, his Mao Zedong lapel badge glinted. He dropped his cigarette
and ground it out with his heel.

'Okay, that's enough,' he told Yi. Yi let the sledgehammer fall to the
floor. He was wheezing. He had taken his cap off and sweat streaked his
forehead. Zongwei turned to me. 'Give me the lamp.' I handed it
over.

Zongwei approached the narrow hole that Yi had made. He glanced over
his shoulder. 'Follow me in. Minfan - you carry the hammer.'

Minfan snatched the hammer from the ground and, one by one, we filed
through the gap. The air in the passage was thick and muggy. I brought
up the rear; the journey had me worn out and I was in no particular
rush to find out where the passage led. I looked forward to getting
some sleep and perhaps catching a glimpse of Zongwei's bare chest
before the lights went out.

The passage led downwards for some way.

'We're going to the centre of the earth!' quipped Minfan, but nobody
laughed. At one point, we had to duck beneath a beam where the roof had
partially collapsed. Chunks of rock were all over the floor. I patted
the beam before I passed under it. It did not move.

A little farther on, the passage turned ninety degrees to the left. As
I reached the corner, I heard Minfan say: 'Well?'

The passage opened out into a chamber. It was similar in size to the
first. Thick layers of cobwebs hung from the ceiling like bed sheets.
Both left and right walls were lined with tall stoneware urns. Lamp
light glinted off the glaze and picked out intricate floral patterns
incised across their bellies. There were twelve in total, six on either
wall. At the far end of the room, there was a wide, shallow basin
shaped like a huge dish. I could hear the sound of running water.

Zongwei folded his arms. 'Smash it,' he said. 'Smash all of it.'

Minfan bellowed like an ox and rounded on the nearest urn. I watched it
fall into shadow. He brought the sledgehammer over his head in a
double-handed swing, as if it were an axe and he were chopping
firewood. It punched through the lid and the urn burst, clattering to
the floor in little pieces and sending up a cloud of dust. The head of
the hammer went jink as it struck the flagstone beneath.

We heard footsteps; someone moving through the passage at a
canter.

'Hey!' It was Heng. 'Hey!'

I imagined having to find my way through that musty tunnel alone, with
no light, and shivered.

Everyone stopped to look. When Heng entered the room he was out of
breath.

'What is it?' Zongwei growled.

Heng held the rifle diagonally across his chest. Somehow, carrying the
most powerful firearm we owned only managed to emphasise his junior
status. It seemed too big for him.

'There's a storm moving in,' he said, nodding deferentially.

Zongwei arched his back. 'And?'

'It's a huge storm.' Heng stroked the rifle barrel nervously. 'The
wind's picked up already. If we get caught in the downpour?'

'You left your post to tell me that?'

To tell us that, I thought, and wondered if the others had noticed the
subtle but significant distinction.

Heng hunched up his shoulders, shrinking into himself. 'If we don't get
back before the storm sets in, then-'

'Then what?' Zongwei threw up his arms. His cheeks were red and
glistening. 'Then what?' Feng did not reply. I could see the rifle
trembling in his hands. 'We're revolutionaries, on a mission for the
Chairman! Will we let a little bad weather stop us?' He glanced at me
and the others, then rapped a fist against his chest. 'No! Bring on the
storms! Let the sky split open and let the deluge pour down on us! The
might of the heavens is like a dog pissing against a wall compared to
the might of the People!' He glared at Heng. 'Well? What are you
waiting for?' Heng blinked and remained stock-still. 'Get back to your
post!'

Zongwei roared the command. I saw all of his teeth. Heng winced, and at
last withdrew, melting into the darkness. Zongwei turned and looked at
us. 'What's the matter?' Nobody answered. 'Come on! You don't all need
hammers to break open these goose eggs!'

I took the initiative and marched over to the urn next to the one
Minfan had smashed. It came up to my stomach. I tried to lift it, but
it was much heavier than I had expected. Hongrong crossed the room to
help. For the next half an hour, the room rung with grunts and the
clatter of fractured stoneware.

* * *

The lamp began making a putt putt putt noise, the chamber vanishing and
reappearing as the flame winked off and on.

'Damn it,' said Yi.

Zongwei gave the lamp a shake; the flickering stopped.
'It needs more oil,' he said.

'Who's got the oil?' said Yi.

'It's in my pack,' I said.

'Go and get it,' said Zongwei. I nodded and, learning from Feng's
error, left immediately.

As I rounded the first corner of the passage, the light fell away, as
if smothered by a blanket. I walked into a darkness so total that I
felt reduced to my thoughts alone; it was easy to imagine I did not
exist. I kept moving forward, with one arm raised, until I reached the
fallen roof beam. Stooping beneath it, I placed a palm against its
underside to steady myself. The beam rocked slightly. I jerked my hand
away, and when I stood my heart was thumping like footsteps coming
closer. I started to run, then checked myself, and slowed to a brisk
march. If Zongwei had ever seen me panic like that, I would have lost
his respect permanently. He set high standards which he expected
everyone to keep.

The passage lightened gradually as I approached the smashed mouth of
the entranceway. Stepping into the chamber, I could hear a sound like
one thousand fingertips drumming impatiently on a desk. Beneath tons of
rain-lashed soil, the shrine rumbled and resonated. The dust covering
the floor seemed deeper than before. It sloughed and sighed apart as I
scuffed my way towards the exit. We had dumped our packs outside. The
nape of my neck tingled like a rash.

The bags were stacked in the doorway. Heng had moved them.

I clambered past our packs. Rain was blasting dents into the ground
directly in front of me. Across the fields, swathes of cotton plants
were being threshed flat by fierce winds. The sky was a churning mix of
greys; cement, charcoal, gun metal. Lightning ripped the horizon in
two, illuminating deep gullies in the cloud bank. Seconds later,
thunder broke across the hill like a tidal wave. The lightning was no
more than a couple of li away, and closing fast. Heng was nowhere to be
seen. I braced myself, then stepped out into the storm.

It was as if I had dived into a lake. Instantly, I was soaked through
to the skin. Rain pummelled my shoulders and head, thudding, bursting.
It was heavy; I had to rise to meet it. I swiped strands of hair from
my brow and shielded my eyes. After the darkness of the passageway, the
fields seemed bright and alive; I stared and stared but Heng was gone.
As I turned to duck back inside the shrine, I saw a dark figure on the
hill's summit. I lifted my head into the oncoming rain.

Heng was stood in the horse stance, his legs wide apart, the rifle
clutched across his chest. His cap was pushed back on his head.
Lightning flashed closer, and I caught a glimpse of water streaming in
runnels down his face. He was staring straight ahead, with a fixed,
dogged, thousand-li gaze.

'Heng!' My cry was lost to the storm. I cupped round my mouth and tried
again. 'Heng!' It was no use. Either he could not hear me, or he was
ignoring me. I blinked water out of my eyes and started to scramble
hand over hand up the sodden hillside. Clots of mud flecked with yellow
grass blades came away in my fingers as I fumbled for purchase. Dirt
covered my boots, the front of my trousers, my shirt, my palms, my
face. A few hours earlier, it had all been dry as a grave.

'Heng!' Panting, filthy and desperate, I called out to him. 'Hey! Hey,
you idiot!' I scooped up a ball of mud and flung it at him. The ball
broke into two mid-flight. The larger clump struck him across the side
of the head. He snapped upright, thrusting the gun muzzle forward
challengingly. 'Heng!' I waved my arms above my head. He had the rifle
pointed at me in a flash. I knew he was a poor shot. It didn't stop my
feeling nervous. 'Hey! What are you doing?'

He frowned at me as if he hadn't heard, then yelled back, 'I'm on
sentry duty!'

'You're going to drown!' My right foot skidded out from under me. I
fell onto my hands and knees. 'Come down!'

Heng shook his head. He lowered the rifle. 'I'm not leaving my
post!'

'Don't be so stupid!' I motioned for him to follow me back to the
shrine entrance.

Heng resumed his teetering horse stance. Water dribbled from the rifle
stock and spattered onto the grass around his boot.

'Heng! What's wrong with you?' I pulled my cap off and flung it into
the mud. I was drenched, an absolute mess, with no prospect of a change
of clothes or even a fire to dry off next to. 'Get down here now,
before I come up there and break your nose!'

He knew I was serious. 'Zongwei told me not to leave my post!' he
called out, keeping his eyes on the horizon.

'You can stand guard inside the entrance!' He didn't move. 'Hey! Don't
ignore me!'

'I'm staying here!'

'Don't be an idiot!' I tried to get to my feet but my palms kept
slipping. 'Who's going to disturb us in this weather? Stop trying to
impress Zongwei!'

'Shut up!' He thrust the rifle into the air. Its weight nearly
overbalanced him; he had to put out his other arm to steady himself.
'I'm not doing it for him! I'm doing it for my love of the Chairman!
I'm doing it for my country.' He grimaced and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened. The rifle must have been heavily waterlogged.

'You're ruining our best firearm! How can you be so stupid?' I didn't
think I could climb all the way up to the summit, although fantasies of
beating his bruised and bloody face into the mud kept playing over and
over in my mind. My insults were only strengthening his resolve. I
decided to change my tone. 'Come on! The storm's going to get
worse!'

He gazed up at the weapon held aloft. 'The might of the heavens is like
a dog pissing against a wall compared to the might of the People!'
Coming from Heng, Zongwei's words sounded brittle and hollow. Heng's
voice was trembling. He wanted to look like the heroic soldiers you see
on posters, but he was just a wet and frightened little boy, and the
heavens were pissing all over him.

'Fuck you, then!' I shouted. I turned away, and began slip-sliding down
the hill on my backside. I thought that, seeing me leave, Heng might
have called out or started to follow me, but I did not hear anything,
and did not look up until I was standing, hunched and mud-heavy, in
front of the shrine entrance. I looked up and saw him. He was at the
summit, the rifle still aimed skyward. His head was fringed with a
nimbus of exploding raindrops.

I heard a crack, like a tree being felled, or the noise Teacher Long's
forearm made when Yi broke it over the edge of a desk. I looked for the
source, but I was blind; my eyes were full of aching white light. When
I closed them, I could see a silhouette, a figure edged in white. The
figure had one arm raised to the sky, clutching a rifle.

I dropped to my knees, blinked and knuckled muck into the corners of my
eyes, trying to rub my vision back.

'Heng!' I did not know what was happening to me. Cold rain pelted my
back. The lightning did not rumble, it rip-snapped. It was closing in.
'Heng! Please! Help me!' My eyes were open. I could smell the wet soil
right in front of my face, but I could not see it. I stared and
squinted and took long, gasping breaths, trying to beat back hysteria.
'Heng!' Dirt was under my nails and in my hair, and I could taste it on
my teeth and gums. 'Heng!'

My mother's father was blinded when she was still a teenager. My mother
comes from the north. She had three brothers and two sisters. When the
Japanese attacked their village, my grandfather begged the commanding
officer to spare a loving father the anguish of seeing his family
slaughtered. The officer obliged, putting out my grandfather's eyes
with a hook that my grandmother had used to hang chickens. A group of
soldiers raped my grandmother, then killed her. They beheaded the
children. My mother survived because she managed to crawl underneath
the roots of an old tree and hide, curled up like a fox. The Japanese
soldiers burnt the village to a wasteland of charred, smoking lumps,
then moved on, leaving my grandfather battered, sightless and
incoherent on the ground, the stench of scorched flesh ripe and angry
in the air.

My mother told me the story when I was six. I had misbehaved; she
wanted to show me what a wicked, ungrateful child I was.

I used to get into a lot of fights.

As I peered and strained and blinked against the pain in my eyes, I
started to see the dim outline of my fingers tensing in the mud. When I
swept my hand from left to right it became a blur of motion. I imagined
Heng watching me from the top of the hill, grinning as I scrabbled
around like an invalid. I knew he would not be above telling Zongwei -
then everybody could laugh at how weak and unworthy I was. Heng mistook
stupidity for revolutionary daring, but in the end, sometimes the line
between one thing and another is very fine indeed. Yi and Minfan
thought that aggression was the same as zeal; Hongrong, that his
bourgeois intellectualism equalled diligence and loyalty. Perhaps, in
some strange way, they were right, and I was too caught up in
self-interest to see it. As Zongwei often told us, words are meant to
be lies. They trap and snare like thick, poisonous weeds.

I crawled forwards until I was out of the rain. My fingertips found
canvas. I curled up amongst our backpacks, sodden, shivering. I stared
out at the flat, black mass of storm, waiting for my sight to return. I
waited, and waited. I became so entranced by the sheets of rain, that
when the others arrived, huffing and cursing, I barely noticed them
until Zongwei kicked me squarely in the ribs.