Serve the People!: A Novel
Language: English
Pages: 217
ISBN: 0802170447
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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another battalion beat him to it, then the yin fell out with the yang. For whatever reason, the four-pocket jacket that distinguished officials from the hoi polloi remained tantalizingly out of reach. There could be little doubt that Wu Dawang's transfer to the Division Commander's house more than doubled his chances of promotion but, just as he had begun to hope the prize was within reach, Liu Lian suddenly brought his coolly untroubled emotional depths to a turbulent boil. It was like
FOR THREE DAYS AND THREE nights, Liu Lian and Wu Dawang imprisoned themselves within the house, attending only to their most primitive needs. The compound began to seem like a wholly autonomous domain, answerable only to its own laws, independent of the world beyond its steel fence. They came together whenever and however they wanted, and when they were tired they rested as they were -- sitting or lying, his head resting on her thigh, prickling her tender skin with its bristly crew cut-
tang to the room's musty air. They gazed at each other, both their faces suddenly wet with tears. It was as if this unhinged passion had, somewhere deep inside their numbed psyches, awoken a capacity for love of which neither had known they were capable; a love that both knew could only end in painful separation. Neither dared say or do anything, for fear it would bring their fragile, unsustainable liaison instantly to an end. Their tears pattered onto the ground, like raindrops falling from
flick aimlessly through the pages, then, equally aimlessly, hand it back. When, in the distance, he spotted the postman from town approaching the village, he would go out into the road to wait for him. 'Anything for me?' he would bellow, while the postman was still a way off. 'No,' the reply would drift back. 'No telegram?' 'If a telegram comes foryou,' the postman would say, as he drew closer, 'you'll get it the night it arrives.' One day, as he watched the postman cycling back into the
bedding and clothes. At night, he struggled to temper his impossible longing for Liu Lian by sternly reminding himself how fortunate he'd been to enjoy the time he'd had with her. But this exceptional period of idleness also gave Wu Dawang time to reflect on everything that had gone before, hardening his suspicions that the entire course of this affair of his had formed part of an elaborately choreographed scheme. He was beginning to sense that his liaison with Liu Lian was a piece of theatre