Naked Earth by Eileen Chang Page A

table. Lifting an earthenware teapot with both hands, he drank gurgling from its mouth. Then he loosened his belt and walked over to the hole, watching with the others. Presently he demanded, “How come there’s still nothing at three feet deep? Is this the spot or no?”
    T’ang leaned forward panting, resting on his hoe.
    “Speak!” Sun said. “Speak the truth! Where is it buried?”
    When the question had been repeated many times T’ang finally mumbled, “Don’t know.”
    “‘Don’t know!’ Didn’t you say distinctly you have fifty silver dollars in a jar buried behind the door?”
    “Fifty silver dollars!” his wife exclaimed. “Where have we got any silver dollars, my old Lord Heaven? Where did all this talk come from?”
    “Enough, enough! None of your acting!” Sun told her. “It’s plain that you’ve dug it out and buried it somewhere else. Now get it out quick.“
    She started to weep and bawl. “Get what out? Never even heard of this much money in all my life! Whenever he had any money he bought land with it. And last spring we went into debt buying that piece of land from the Kengs. Now whoever heard of anybody paying interest for borrowed money when he has big handfuls of silver buried underground?”
    “How should I know how you people figure things out? Anyhow, whatever you don’t know, you always know how to act poor. That’s one thing you people are good at.”
    T’ang seemed to be frightened by all this bawling and had started to dig again.
    “ T’a ma ti —he sure can play the fool!” Sun happened to turn round and saw what he was doing. “What you digging for, when you know it’s not here? What kind of an act is this? Ma teh pi! ”
    The more Sun yelled at him, the more industrious T’ang became. Stroke by stroke he patiently widened the hole.
    “ Ma ti! ” Livid with rage, Sun kicked at him, sending him staggering back, nearly knocking over a militiaman and finally falling half in and half out of the cavity, with the pile of loose earth slithering in after him.
    Sun turned again to the woman but she swore there wasn’t a single silver dollar in the house that she knew of. After a fruitless search of the house Sun said, “Let’s go. No use talking to them. These people—they’re the kind that ‘won’t weep till they see the coffin.’—Now you be careful, T’ang Yü-hai. This time when you go back there, you’re not going to be let off that easy. You and your tricks! Who’s got time to fool around with you, digging at your dunghill?”
    T’ang’s wife and Erh Niu followed them into the courtyard. On their way out Erh Niu suddenly caught hold of T’ang and pressed her face against him, weeping loudly. “Dad, why did you lie?” she cried. “My dad is a tough man, he never lies. What have you done to him? Dad, what’s happened to you, dad?”
    T’ang said nothing. Half of his face gave a little twitch when his salty tears soaked into the open cut across his cheek.
    The militiamen pushed Erh Niu off with curses, but she butted her head against one of them, yelling, “I’m going to have it out with you people! Today I don’t feel like living!”
    “This slavegirl!” her mother cried out desperately, trying to hold her back. “This slavegirl!”
    The butts of several rifles were hitting at the girl’s head and body.
    “Ai-ya, help! Help! Please, the child is an idiot—don’t mind her, just this once—” shrieked her mother, and when Erh Niu was knocked down she fell over her, shielding her with her body. “Let her off this time—I kowtow to you! I kowtow to you!”
    Liu stood staring from the door of the house. Without quite knowing what he was doing he had cocked his rifle, aiming it at the group. Then he lowered it when he saw Erh Niu raising herself on her elbow. She spat on the ground, making a dark red stain dotted with several white things which must be teeth.
    “You’re looking for death!” a militiaman panted as he continued to kick at