The Interior (Red Princess 2)

“Tsai Bing didn’t have a car—”

“And wherever he was, he struggled to get out,” Hulan added.

They were silent for a minute. Other than the cicadas there was dead quiet. Even Madame Tsai had stopped crying. Hulan let the silence drag out, hoping Woo would figure it out for himself. At last he spoke.

“In Da Shui Village the cars are all government-owned. Our police department has two sedans. The doctor also has a car. We have one other that is shared by a consortium for driving people to other villages for a small fee. Other than this, we have buses and trucks used for transportation of people and merchandise. However, we do have one other category of vehicle that uses gasoline.”

“Farm equipment,” Hulan said.

For the first time Woo’s eyes met hers. Suddenly what had been clear to her from the moment she saw the body registered on Woo. His eyes widened and she nodded. Yes, his conclusion was correct, she seemed to say.

Woo heaved himself to his feet and addressed the assembled neighbors. “We have a saying in our government that I would ask you all to hear again. Leniency to those who confess, severity to those who don’t.”

The neighbors—all from the poorest class—looked nervously at their feet. Tsai Bing’s mother began to weep again with the realization that her son’s death had not been a horrible accident.

“Our neighbor and friend, Tsai Bing, was murdered by one of our own,” Woo said. “The murderer has one minute to reveal himself.” Woo looked at his watch, then around at the peasants. “When this minute is over, any leniency that I or the courts or your neighbors would see fit to treat you with will evaporate forever.”

No one spoke, but instead of staring at their feet, the people had begun to look around the courtyard, checking the familiar faces of those they had known for years. Woo, now emboldened, circulated among the peasants.

“There is only one person here whom we all hold above reproach,” he said loudly so that all could hear. “He has done much for our community. As his wealth has grown, he has shared his mechanized farm equipment with his neighbors. He is the only man who has the capability of killing Tsai Bing, and I’m sure when we inspect the garage where he keeps his equipment, we will find Tsai Bing’s blood on the door, for this poor boy tried to scratch his way out until he was too weak to fight anymore.”

The peasants knew of whom Woo was speaking but couldn’t believe what they were hearing.

“There is only one person here who fits this description, and we all know who he is.” Captain Woo stopped before Tang Dan. “The only remaining question your neighbors have is, why?”

Madame Tsai screamed in anguish and collapsed into her husband’s arms.

Tang Dan stared proudly at the policeman.

“Why!” Woo shouted.

Tang Dan blinked, then said, “I believe my minute is up, so it doesn’t matter what I say.” He held out his wrists to be handcuffed.

Woo glanced back at Hulan, unsure of what to do next. She nodded. He brought out his handcuffs, roughly clasped them on Tang Dan, then gave the murderer a shove toward the police car.

Suddenly Suchee rushed forward and slammed into Tang Dan’s chest with both fists, sending him into the dirt. “Why? Why? Why?”

The other neighbors circled in closer, now gripping their hoes and other tools as weapons. Even those who were empty-handed crept closer, their bodies taut with anger and the desire for revenge. A boy, an only son, had been murdered by a man who had grown rich while they had remained poor.

“He comes from the landlord class,” someone spat out.

“You can’t change a tiger’s stripes,” said another, quoting an almost universal epithet.

“Pig ass!”

“Mother of a fart!”

Chinese villagers had five thousand years of precedence for dealing with such a crime. In the olden days a robber, kidnapper, or vandal was brought before the populace of a village and made to walk among them, where they might scream out his crimes and what they thought of him, where they might throw stones or beat the evildoer with sticks. The criminal might be made to wear a cangue, a huge wooden collar that made it nearly impossible to eat or even to shoo away flies. His wrists and ankles might be locked into a public stock so that everyone in the village might know that this was a bad person.

According to Confucian tradition, punishment was meted out no less swiftly or brutally for domestic crimes. If a son hit his father, then the father had the right to kill his son. If a father hit his son, there was no punishment. If a landlord stole from the people or raped a daughter, then nothing could be done except to kowtow to that landlord and hope it didn’t happen again. If a peasant dared to do anything against a landlord, then punishment was brutal and final. For five thousand years retribution had been carried out thus; then the Communists had come into power. The forms of crime changed but the punishments very little. Now it was the government that acted swiftly. As the saying went—you sometimes had to kill a chicken to shock the monkeys. And yet the government understood that the masses still needed to have their moment of power, which was why the civil war and the Cultural Revolution had been so cruelly savage.

“Beast!”

“Murderer!”

“The devil rings his bell when he comes to get your life,” someone else shouted. “Well, it’s ringing now, Tang Dan!”

Hulan had seen crowds like this before, been a part of them. They demanded, insisted upon, blood for blood. Looking at Captain Woo and the other policemen from the local Public Security Bureau, she knew that they would do nothing to stop the crowd. It was so easy to look the other way. It made for less paperwork, and it satisfied the villagers. In fact, Woo and his comrades might even participate themselves. She was glad—if that was the word given the circumstances—that Siang was not here to witness this.