The big red flower on his chest cast red light on his face and made it all red. Xu Yong and several farm workers held a very lively farewell ceremony and many children followed to watch the jolly scene. He got on a military truck with the other raw recruits and when the truck started moving, Pu Yuanhui saw his aunt and her husband were waving goodbye to him. Perhaps life was made up of many partings.
Getting off the ship, they boarded on a train as stuffy as a sardine can. It was a freight train and there were all raw recruits in its wagons. In the wagon you could do nothing but to sit on the ground. They were talking. The boy talking with Pu Yuanhui was the very tall boy who told jokes during the physical examination. He came from Chaozhou and introduced himself, “My name is He Qiming.”
His teeth were neat and white when he smiled. Pu Yuanhui also reached out to shake hands with him, “I come from Guangzhou, I’m Pu Yuanhui.”
After they got off the train, Pu Yuanhui still felt himself trembling with the beat of the moving train. The surroundings of the barracks was open and empty. There was a basketball court in the camp. There stayed some lonely hills and roads. The nearby areas seemed unoccupied by any inhabitants. One could only see endless mountains. The planes were parked far away in the caves.
He followed the group for the roll call and they were divided into the squads of ten. The squad leader was Lu, full named Lu Yuejin, who spoke with a Shandong accent. He was tall and strong, and he was in charge of recruit training.
From the first night Pu Yuanhui became homesick-the food he had at home and the bed he lay in at home, he missed very much and couldn’t go to sleep, tossing and turning in bed. All kept quiet and no one let out a single word.
When the Basic Training began, Lu Yuejin trained them crazily: before lunch they have to sing Army Song aloud first, those who could sing with louder voice could have lunch first, while those whose voice wasn’t loud enough or couldn’t keep pace with others must look at the others eating. The food they would have could be Mantou with satled vegetables. Occasionally there would be eggs and meat, but only a little.
Pu Yuanhui found that the leader of the kitchen squad seem to treat him in a special way each time when he went to get food. For others he always tossed the ladle to shake some off, while for him, he never did this and the food would be piled high up in his bowl.
What made Pu Yuanhui feel strange most was that each time Dong Chao the leader would smile at him meaningfully. He told this to He Qiming. He Qiming said, I heard those soldiers from the countryside talking about his oddity. You’d better leave him alone. It was said he was a bit out of his mind.”
When the recruits first came, Dong Chao had a talk with each of them and took notes of everyone’s birthday into a notebook with plastic cover. And on each one’s birthday the kitchen squad would add a poached egg to the birthday person.
Pu Yuanhui’s birthday was on the fifteenth of the seventh lunar month. Dong Chao seriously noted the date down.
In the barracks there was no female soldier, women were rarely seen, either. Once an art troupe came to barracks to give a special performance for the soldier on the Army Day on August 1.
On the next morning, many soldiers had to wash the quilts. When the quilts were air dried, the seminal spots on the quilts were very conspicuous, looking like a world map.
In the company, He Qiming was now the one who had a strong relationship with Pu Yuanhui because they had “drawn the map” at night together, imagined sexual arousal together when browsing through fashion magazines for film stars, and because they had been locked in the small dark room, that is, the confinement cell, together. The small dark room was in the easternmost corner of the barracks. Locked in it to hear the wind blowing, they had nothing to do but chat. In the pitch-black cell, they talked about their own family. He Qiming envied Pu Yuanhui when he got to know Pu’s father was a government official. He Qiming’s father was a peasant, but he also hoped He Qiming to join the army. Then they shifted their topic from unimportant family affairs to major state affairs, imagining if they were sent to the Sino-Vietnamese War front, would they step on mines or something? He didn’t know Pu Yuanhui was lying. His father had long abandoned him. God knows how much a man could sacrifice that he shouldn’t have sacrificed for their so-called future.
“Who else do you have in your family?” Pu Yuanhui licked his lips. It should be over twelve o’clock at midnight and he could hear vague whistles of an emergency assembly. The only advantage to be locked up in the small dark room was that you could go to sleep without scruple.
“I have a younger sister.” He Qiming said. “She can drive a tractor and she is vital and appealing. But she already has a boyfriend. How about you?”
“I’m the only child in my family and I have no girlfriend. Except my aunt, I’ve never touched a woman’s hand. He-he, what if I tell you a joke?” Pu Yuanhui said. In the dark, the helpless expression on his fair face couldn’t be seen.
“Well, if only a beauty were locked up with me.” He Qiming bemoaned to himself. “OK, just tell.”
“The leading commander said, ‘Good morning, Comrades!’ And the soldiers answered, ‘Good morning, Commander!’ The leading commander patted a soldier on the chest and said, ‘Look, that’s a lot of muscle!” and the soldier answered, ‘Presentation, Sir! I’m a female soldier!?
He Qiming thought it was really an uninteresting cold joke.
Suddenly there was a woman’s giggle from outside the window, which made the two men startled. Pu Yuanhui looked out of the window. The window was high up the wall and it was pitch-dark without even a single star. ‘What have you heard?”
“A woman’s laughter.” He Qiming said, “Quick! Lift me up to and have a look! Even if it’s the ghost, I must catch one.” He Qiming stepped on Pu Yuanhui’s shoulders to just reach the window.
It was a huge eye hidden in long black hairs behind the iron bars, reflecting the moonlight.
Pu Yuan hui only heard two cries of “ah, aah”, the squeals outside the window, the dull sound when the body fell to the ground and He Qiming’s groans mingled with a cry of “Ghost!”
“Ghost…”Pu Yuanhui’s palms were icy cold. “How could there be a woman in our camp? It was said the cell used to be a place where criminals were shot.”
“It has long hairs, huge protruding eyes, and a huge red mole in the middle of the forehead! I’m scared to death.”
He Qiming trembled a lot, but finally the two couldn’t resist sleepiness and they leaned against the wall when the drowsy feeling crept over. The laughing woman didn’t appear again after midnight.
It was until the early morning two steamed dumplings were thrown in from the window.
A very loving Dong Chao. The two looked at each other and laughed.