Serve the People! Read Online Free PDF

brewing. At the time, however, he remained unconscious of his own complicity. Again and again, the bars of soap slipped out of his trembling grasp, his heart pounding so wildly he almost feared it would gallop out of his chest. Days - many days - later, Liu Lian would still tease him, stroking his head, about how he had rushed back up to her that evening with streaks of soap running through his hair.

    Most of his clothes were in his company barracks, but for emergencies he kept a spare white cotton shirt and pair of yellow underpants in a cupboard in the Division Commander's kitchen. While he hastily dressed, inserting his left leg into his right trouser leg, he found himself unable to master his feelings of agitation through the power of reason; a rush of blood to his head had swept away any possibility of rational thought. All he could grasp, dimly, was that Liu Lian was waiting for him upstairs, like a honeyed trap into which he was longing to step. He hungered for her soft skin as a starving beggar hungers for bread; he thirsted for her rosy, round face as a parched throat thirsts for a sweet, ripe melon.
    As he showered, fancying that he could still smell her Osmanthus-flower scent, his overwhelming impulse to succumb to temptation had transformed itself into something altogether more noble-into the will to sacrifice everything for love. At that moment, his only desire was to complete his brisk toilette, then charge directly upstairs to discover what exactly it was she wanted of him, what lay behind that enigmatic sign. He wanted to throw open the door to her bedroom and find out everything there was to know there, like a child desperate to explore a mysterious cave he had chanced upon.

    He was still dressing as he climbed the stairs, still struggling to do up his buttons as he reached the top. Time has long since blunted the sense of feverish anxiety that took hold of Wu Dawang as he ascended, dulling the memory of his excitement like so much dust collecting over a cherished memento. By now it was dark outside. Through the window on the firstfloor landing Wu Duwang could see squares of weak yellow light from the barracks windows. Occasionally, soldiers on night duty could be heard shouting to each other across the parade ground. Approaching the door to her room, he heard her soft, padding footsteps.
    She was waiting for him behind that door.
    He knocked.
    Just then, he noticed he'd buttoned his shirt up wrongly. Hastily undoing, then redoing it, he tugged it down flat. As he smoothed out his trousers, he tried to slow his heartbeat, then stood once more, ramrod straight, in front of the door. Having recovered some semblance of calm, he cleared his throat, as if about to launch into a long dramatic monologue, then announced his arrival with the same solemn declaration as three days ago: `Reporting for Duty.'

    But the words that emerged no longer resonated from within, but were gasped out, weak and hoarse-as understated in their enunciation as any casual, colloquial interjection. He fell silent again, waiting to be beckoned in as before. This time, however, no such instruction floated out. The only sound was of Liu Lian's footsteps quietly retreating into the room, followed by a dry, cracked cough after she'd sat down on the bed.
    Although he understood that her cough was precisely the summons he'd been hoping for, he took a step closer in, to make perfectly sure: `I've showered,' he informed the door. `What was it you wanted?'
    This time he received an answer: 'Come on in.'
    And that is how simple the whole business was, skipping blithely over a great mass of plot details and connections. But this is just how things were with this love story-its beginning, middle and end bereft of the intervening complexities one might imagine necessary to an affair of the heart. For complexity does not inevitably heighten a story's verisimilitude, or its power to convince; sometimes simplicity and economy make for a more vigorous