Literature Appreciation：百合花/Lilies资料文件与下载

Lilies

Ru Zhijuan

MID-autumn, 1946.

When our coastal command decided to launch a general offensive against the Kuomintang forces, some of us in the concert group were sent by the commander of the leading regiment to lend a hand in different combat companies. Probably because I was a woman, the commander kept me till one of the very last before finally assigning me to a first-aid post near the front. I put on my rucksack and followed the messenger sent to show me the way.

It had rained that morning, and though the weather had cleared the road was still slippery, and the crops on either side sparkled fresh and green in the sunlight. There was a moist freshness in the air. If not for the sporadic booming of the enemy artillery which was firing at random, you could have imagined you were on your way to a fair.

The messenger strode along in front of me. Straight off, he put a distance of about a dozen yards between us. Because my feet were blistered and the road was slippery, try as I might I could not catch up with him. If I called to him to wait, he might think me a coward; but I couldn't hope to find the post alone. He began to annoy me.

The funny thing was that he seemed to have eyes in the back of his head, for presently he stopped of his own accord. He didn't look at me, though, just stared ahead. When I had nearly struggled up to him, he strode off again, promptly leaving me a dozen yards behind Too exhausted to catch up, I plodded slowly along. But it was all right. He neither let me fall too far behind nor get too close to him, keeping at a distance of a dozen yards. When I quickened my step, he swung along with big strides; when I slowed down, he started sauntering too. Oddly enough, I never caught him looking back at me. I began to feel curious about this messenger.

I had barely glanced at him at regimental headquarters. Now I saw he was a tall young fellow, but pretty strong judging by his strapping shoulders. He was wearing a faded yellow uniform and puttees. The twigs in the barrel of his rifle seemed put there more for ornament than camouflage.

Though I couldn't overtake him, my feet were swollen and smarting. I called out, suggesting that we stop to rest, and sat down on a boundary stone. He sat on another stone further on, his gun across his knees and his back to me, ignoring my existence completely. I knew from experience that this was because I was a girl. Girls always had trouble like this with bashful young fellows. Feeling rather disgruntled, I went over and sat down defiantly opposite him. With his young, ingenuous round face, he looked no more than eighteen at the most.My closeness flustered him. He didn't know what to do. He hardly liked to turn his back on me, but it embarrassed him to look at me and he couldn't very well get up either.Trying hard to keep a straight face, I asked where he was from. Flushing up to his ears, he cleared his throat and told me：

"Tianmushan."

So we were from the same district!

"What did you do at home?"

"Helped haul bamboo."

I glanced at his broad shoulders, and through my mind flashed a picture of a sea of vivid green bamboo, with a narrow stone path winding up and up. A broad- shouldered lad with a square of blue cloth over his shoulders was hauling young bamboos whose long tips rattled on the stones behind. . . . That was a familiar sight in my home village. At once I felt drawn to my young fellow countryman.

"How old are you?" I asked.

"Nineteen."

"When did you join the army?"

"Last year."

"Why did you join?" I couldn't help asking the questions, though I realized this sounded more like a cross- examination than a conversation.

"When the army passed through my village, I came along with it.”

"What family do you have?"

"Mum, dad, a younger brother and sisters, an aunt who lives with us."

"Are you married?"

"・・・・" He flushed and fumbled with his belt, looking more sheepish than ever. With his eyes on the ground, he laughed awkwardly and briskly shook his head. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if he had a fiancee, but I bit the question back.

After we had sat there, tongue-tied, for a while, he looked at the sky and then at me, as if to say: "Time to move on!"

It was two in the afternoon by the time we reached the first-aid post.This was set up in a primary school three li from the front. Six buildings of different sizes were grouped roughly in a triangular formation, and the weeds in the yard between showed that classes has stopped for some time. We arrived to find several orderlies there preparing dressings, and the rooms filled with doors taken off their hings and laid across bricks to serve as beds.

Presently a cadre from the local government came in, his eyes bloodshot from working late at night. To shade his from the light, he had stuck a cardboard visor under his old felt hat. He had a gun over one shoulder, a scale over the other, and was carrying a basket of eggs and a large pan. He walked in, panting, put down these things, and between sips of water and bites at a ball of cooked rice produced from his pocket apologiz­ed for the state things were in. I was so fascinated by the speed with which he did all this that I hardly heard what he was saying, simply catching something about bedding which we would have to borrow. I found out from the orderlies that as the army quilts had not arrived but casualties who had lost blood were extremely susceptible to the cold, we had better borrow quilts from better than nothing. Anxious to be some of use, I volunteered for job, and because it was urgent asked my young fellow countryman to help me before he agreed.

We went to a nearby village, where he turned east, I west. Before long I had handed out three receipts for two mattresses and one quilt. Heavily laden as I was, my heart was light, and I had decided to deliver these and come back for more when the messenger walked over — empty-handed.

"What happened?" The people here were so solidly behind our army and so hospitable that I couldn't understand why they had refused to lend him bedding.

"You go and ask them, sister. . . . These feudal-minded women!"

"Which house? Take me there." He must have said the wrong thing and annoyed someone. Getting one quilt less didn't matter, but offending the local people would have serious consequences. He stood there as if nailed to the ground till I reminded him quietly how important it was not to offend the masses and what a bad effect this was likely to have. At once he led the way.

No one was stirring in the hall of the house we entered. A blue curtain with a red border on top hung over the door of the inner room, and on both sides were pasted in bright red characters: ''Happiness". Standing there, I called several times: but no one answered though we heard movements inside. Presently the curtain was raised and a young woman appeared. She was very pretty with fine features, arched eyebrows and a fluffy fringe. Her clothes were homespun, but new. Since she had done her hair like a married woman, I addressed her as elder sister-in-law, apologizing if the messenger had said anything to annoy her. She listened with a slightly averted face, biting her lips and smiling. When I had finished, she simply hung her head and went on biting her lips as if to keep from laughing. I scarcely knew how to bring out my request. But the messenger was watching me intently, as if I were a company commander about to demonstrate some new drill. Putting on a bold front, I asked bluntly for a quilt, explaining that our soldiers were fighting for the common folk. She listened to this without smiling, glancing from time to time back into her room. Then she looked first at me and next at the messenger, as if to weigh my words. The next moment she went in to fetch a quilt.

The messenger seized this chance to protest：.

"Well, I never! I told her the same thing just now but she wouldn't listen."

I threw him a warning glance, but it was too late.She was already at the door with the quilt. At last I understood why she hadn't wanted to lend it. It was a flowered quilt, completely new. The cover was of imitation brocade, with countless white lilies on a rich red ground. As if to provoke the messenger, she held the quilt out to me, saying:

"Here you are !"

Since my hands were full, I nodded to the lad. He pretended not to see. When I called him he pulled a long face, and with downcast eyes took the bedding and turned to rush off. There was a ripping sound — his jacket had caught on the door and torn at the shoulder. Quite a large rent it was. With a smile, the young woman went in to fetch needle and thread, but he wouldn't hear of her mending it. He went off with the quilt.

We hadn't gone far when someone told us that the young woman was a bride of three days’ standing, and this quilt was all the dowry she had. That upset me, and the messenger looked unhappy too as he stared in silence the quilt in his arms. He must have felt as I did, for he muttered to me as we walked:

"How could we know we were borrowing her wedding quilt? It’s too bad..."

To tease him, I said solemnly："Yes. To buy a quilt like this, ever since she was a girl she must have got up at dawn and gone to bed late, doing all sorts of extra jobs to make a little money. Think how much sleep she may have lost over it! Yet I heard someone call her feudal-minded. . ."

He halted suddenly.

"Well — let's take it back!"

"You'd only hurt her feelings, now that she's lent it." I was amused and touched by the earnest, unhappy look on his face. There was something extraordinarily lovable about this simple young countryman of mine.

He thought that over and evidently decided I was right, for he answered:

"All right. Let it go. We'll wash it well when we've done with it." Having settled this in his mind, he took all the quilts I was carrying, slung them over his shoulders and strode quickly off.

Back at the first-aid post, I told him to rejoin regimental headquarters. He brightened up immediately, saluted me and ran off. After a few steps he remember­ed something, and fumbled in his satchel for two buns. He held these up for me to see, after which he put them on a stone by the road, calling:

"Dinner's served!" Then he flew off. As I walked over to pick up the two stale buns, I noticed that a wild chrysanthemum had appeared in his rifle barrel to sway with the other twigs behind his ear.

He was some distance now, but I could still see his torn jacket flapping in the wind. I was very sorry I hadn’t mended it for him. Now his shoulder would be bare all evening at least.

There were not many of us in the first-aid  post. The man from the local government found some village women to help us draw water, cook and do odd jobs. Among them was the bride, still smiling with closed lips. She glanced at me from time to time, and kept looking

round as if in search of someone. At last she asked：

"Where has that comrade gone?"

When I told her he had gone to the front, she smiled shyly and said, "Just now when he came to borrow bed­ding, I treated him rather badly." Then smiling she set to work, neatly spreading the mattresses and quilts we had borrowed on the improvised beds made of door­boards and tables (two tables put together is one bed). She put her own quilt on a door-board under one corner of the eaves outside.

In the evening a full moon rose. Our offensive still hadn't started. As usual the enemy was so afraid of the dark that they lit a host of fires and started bombarding at random, while the flares that went up one after the other to hang like paraffin lamps beneath the moon made everything below as bright as day. To attack under these conditions would be very hard and would surely entail heavy losses. I resented even that round, silver moon.

The man from the local government brought us food and some home-made moon cakes. Apparently it was the Moon Festival!

That made me think of home. At home now, for the festival, there’d be a small bamboo table outside each gate，with incense and candles burning beside a few dishes of sunflower seeds, fruit and moon cakes. The children would be waiting impatiently for the incense to burn out so that they could share the good things pre­pared for the goddess of the moon. Skipping round the table, they would sing: "The moon is so bright; we beat gongs and buy sweets. . . ." or "Mother moon, please shine on me. . . ." My thoughts flew to the lad from Tianmushan who had hauled bamboos. A few years ago he had probably sung the same songs. . . . I tasted a delicious home-made cake, and imagined the messenger lying in a dugout, or perhaps at regimental headquarters, or walking through the winding communication trenches. . . .

Soon after that our guns roared out and red tracer bullets shot across the sky. The offensive had begun. Before long, casualties started trickling in, and the atmosphere grew tense in the first-aid post.

I registered the names and units of the wounded. The lighter cases could tell me who they were, but when they were heavily wounded I had to turn back their insignia or the lapels of their jackets. My heart missed a beat when under the insignia of one badly injured man I read: "Messenger". But I found he was a battalion messenger. My young friend worked in regimental head­quarters. I resisted a foolish impulse to ask if casualties ever got left on the field, and what messengers did during combat apart from delivering dispatches.

For an hour or so after the offensive started, every­thing went swimmingly. The wounded men, as they came in, reported that we had broken through the first stockade, then the barbed wire entanglement, occupied the first fortifications, and started fighting in the streets. But at that point the news stopped. In answer to our questions, incoming casualties just told us briefly："They’re still fighting....""Fighting in the streets?" But from the mud which covered them, their utter exhaustion and the stretchers which looked as if dug out the mire, we could imagine the fierceness of the battle.

Soon we ran out of stretchers, so that not all the heavily wounded could be sent straight to the hospital in the rear. There was nothing I could do to alleviate the men’s pain, except get the village women to wash their hands and faces, give a little broth to those able to eat, or change the clothes of those who had their packs with them. In some cases we had to take off their clothes to wash away the blood and filth in which they were covered.

I was used to work like this, but the village women were shy and afraid to attempt it. They all wanted to cook instead. I had to persuade the young bride for a long time before, blushing furiously, she would consent. She only consented, though, to be my assistant.

The firing at the front was spasmodic now. I thought it must soon be dawn, but actually it was only the middle of the night. The moon was very bright and seemed higher than usual. When the next serious casualty was brought in, all the beds inside were occupied and I had him put under the eaves outside. After the stretcher-bearers’ laid him there, they gathered around and wouldn’t go. One old fellow, taking me for a doctor, caught hold of my arm and said earnestly: "Doctor, you’ve got to think of a way to cure him! If you save him our stretcher-bearers’ squad will give you a red flag!" The other bearers were watching me, wide-eyed, as if I had only to nod to cure the soldier. Before there was time to explain, the bride came up with water, and gave a smothered cry. I pushed through the bearers to have a look, and saw a young, round ingenuous face which had been ruddy but now was deathly pale. His eyes were peacefully closed, and the torn flap in the shoulder of his uniform was still hanging loose.

"He did it for us," said the old stretcher-bearer remorsefully. "Over ten of us were waiting in a lane to go forward, and he was just behind us when the bastards threw a hand-grenade down from a roof. The grenade was smoking and whizzing about between us. He shouted to us to drop flat, and threw himself on the thing...."

The bride drew in her breath sharply. I held back my tears while I said a few words to the bearers and sent them off. When I turned back again, the bride had quietly fetched an oil lamp and undone the messenger's jacket. Gone was all her previous embarrassment, as she earnestly gave him a gentle rub down. The tall young messenger lay there without a sound. ... I pull­ed myself together and raced off to find the doctor. When we got back to give him an injection, the bride was sitting at his side.

Bending over her work, stitch by stitch she was mending the tear in his uniform. The doctor made a stethoscope examination, then straightened up gravely to say: ''There's nothing we can do." I stepped up and felt the lad's hand 一 it was icy cold. The bride seemed to have seen and heard nothing. She went on sewing neatly and skilfully. I couldn't bear to watch her.

"Don't do that!" I whispered.

She flashed me a glance of surprise, then lowered her head to go on sewing, stitch by stitch. I longed to take her away, to scatter this atmosphere of gloom, to see him sit up and laugh shyly. At that moment I felt some­thing in my pocket — the two stale buns the messenger had given me.

The orderlies brought a coffin, and removed the quilt. The bride suddenly turned pale. Snatching up the quilt, she spread half of it on the bottom of the coffin, leaving half to cover him.

"That quilt belongs to one of the villagers" an orderly said.

"It's mine!" She turned away. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears in the moonlight. I watched as they covered the face of that ordinary country lad, who had hauled bamboo, with this red quilt dotted with white lilies — flowers of true purity of heart and love.

March，1958

                                                                         Translated by Gladys Yang