Liu Lian reveals her possible pregnancy

Liu Lian reveals her possible pregnancy at the end of her remaining time alone with Wu Dawang, turning their parting into a test of what their affair has made possible and what it has put at risk. Her announcement forces Wu to confront not merely exposure to the Division Commander but the prospect that their relationship could entail a child, divorce, and obligations to his existing family. The scene’s decisive tension lies in the collision between private promises and circumstances neither lover controls: Wu offers to accept punishment and rearrange his marriage, while the Division Commander’s return is already imminent and the military structure around them is about to change.

The Disclosure and Its Immediate Meaning

After they have eaten together, Liu Lian tells Wu that she thinks she might be pregnant. He does not grasp the full implications at once and asks her to repeat herself. Her answer remains uncertain: her period is due, but has not begun, and she has not experienced nausea from strong flavors. She suggests that their sexual activity may simply have delayed it. The episode establishes a possibility, not a confirmed pregnancy; the uncertainty is essential to what follows, because the consequences begin to press on the pair before they know whether a child is actually expected.

Wu initially responds to the disclosure as though it were another problem that might be assessed and managed. As its implications sink in, however, he recognizes that this is not a political transgression that could be answered by enduring punishment for a set period. The prospect reaches across moral, social, cultural, and political boundaries at once. His practical attention briefly returns to the chives growing in the garden, which will become inedible if they are not cut back; the ordinary task registers beside a revelation that has made their situation feel much larger than the lovers’ immediate happiness.

Liu Lian does not immediately resolve the uncertainty. When Wu repeats what she has told him, she first answers that she said nothing, then clarifies that she only thinks she might be pregnant. Her composed, matter-of-fact manner eases some of his anxiety, and the two briefly recover a sense of intimacy through a small, reciprocal gesture. But the reassurance is temporary: she asks him to lie beside her because she wants to ask questions and requires truthful answers. The scene shifts from disclosure to examination, with the possible pregnancy opening onto decisions about danger, marriage, and responsibility.

Fear, Punishment, and the Division Commander

Liu Lian asks whether Wu would be afraid if she really were pregnant, and then whether he would fear the Division Commander finding out. Wu says he wants the Commander to discover the affair. He accepts that he might be sent to prison, but imagines that, if he were not executed, he could marry Liu Lian after his release. The answers make his willingness to face punishment plain, while also showing how readily he turns an uncertain future into a proposed resolution.

Liu Lian raises the possibility that disclosure would end her marriage to the Division Commander and allow the two lovers to marry. She does not affirm that outcome. Instead, she tests Wu on the existing marriage he would have to leave behind, asking whether he would divorce his wife. He agrees, but attaches conditions: Zhao Ezi and Wu Dawang’s son would have to be moved to the city, his wife would need steady work, and the boy would need a school. His response makes the affair’s consequences inseparable from the family he had already formed.

When Liu Lian asks what would happen if she could not meet those conditions, Wu invokes the oath he made before marrying Zhao Ezi. He insists that he had sworn to her and that the obligation cannot simply be set aside. He then offers a more sweeping assurance: he will divorce when Liu Lian wants, marry her if she accepts him, and remain available even if the Division Commander casts her out and she later rejects him. He promises not to marry anyone else or resume relations with his former wife, and says she need only write or telephone for him to come. These pledges are not a settled outcome; they reveal the scale of what Wu is prepared to promise while leaving unresolved whether his promises can be reconciled with one another.

Earlier Promises and the Limits of Choice

The scene’s marital bargaining reaches back to the written pledge Wu made before marrying Zhao Ezi. In that document he promised to earn commendations within a year, join the Party within two, and become an official within three. He also promised to move Zhao and their future household to the city, where she could eat steamed rolls every day; if he failed, he swore not to return to Wujiagou unless she allowed him to, and to serve her as she chose. The pledge made advancement and urban relocation the terms of his marriage, turning his military career into a promise owed to his wife as well as a path to personal promotion.

Wu’s subsequent progress was real but incomplete. After becoming Deputy Sergeant of the Catering Squad, he rose to full Sergeant, joined the Party, and received commendations and awards, yet promotion to officialdom remained out of reach. When he answers Liu Lian, he therefore speaks from within a long-running arrangement: advancement was supposed to deliver his family to city life, and now he is offering to divorce only if that family’s urban future is secured. His promise to Liu Lian does not erase the earlier one; it exposes how a new attachment must contend with obligations Wu himself put into writing.

Neither lover controls the conditions on which their proposed future depends. Liu Lian does not promise that she can arrange the move, work, and schooling Wu requires, and Wu’s insistence that she would have to meet his condition leaves the apparent certainty of his vows qualified. Nor is the possibility of marriage simply a matter of the Division Commander discovering them: Wu’s own wife and son remain part of the decision. The dialogue therefore turns a declaration of devotion into a negotiation about competing responsibilities rather than a clean escape into a new life.

The Parting and the Closed Future

After hearing Wu’s answer, Liu Lian studies him for evidence that he is speaking lightly. Convinced by his seriousness, she kisses him and tells him that the Division Commander is returning earlier than expected, that very day. These are their last few hours together. She says that Wu has done everything for her for weeks and proposes to serve him for the time remaining, so that he will remember her. The timing gives their exchange its immediate limit: questions about a possible child and a possible marriage must be asked before the Commander returns.

The disclosure does not produce a confirmed pregnancy, a divorce, or a marriage. Instead, it stands as an unresolved possibility at the edge of separation. Soon afterward, the Political Instructor tells Wu that Liu Lian had arranged for him to receive an extended period of home leave because of serious family problems. He also reports that the Division Commander volunteered to test a restructuring scheme at a seminar in Beijing, a decision that means the division will be disbanded. With promotions cancelled and personnel in the barracks unsettled, Wu’s former place in the Commander’s household is no longer available; he is told not to return to the house unless necessary. Wu is relieved that the affair remains undiscovered, but the lovers’ expected reunion is effectively cut off by the departure and institutional changes.

Narrative Significance

The scene gathers the novel’s personal and institutional pressures into one conversation. A possible pregnancy makes the affair’s consequences concrete without resolving them; Wu’s willingness to accept prison is followed by a chain of promises involving his wife, son, and future marriage; and the Division Commander’s return places a deadline on every imagined solution. The conversation is intimate in setting but expansive in consequence, moving from bodily uncertainty to family arrangements and the prospect of punishment.

Its central irony is that Wu’s vows sound absolute while depending on circumstances he cannot guarantee. His earlier pledge to Zhao Ezi tied marriage to career advancement and a move to the city; his later assurances to Liu Lian propose another marriage while retaining conditions imposed by that first pledge. The impending disbandment of the division then alters the institutional setting from which he had expected promotion and access to the Commander’s household. The pregnancy remains uncertain, but the scene makes clear that even an unconfirmed possibility can reorganize the lovers’ understanding of responsibility, risk, and the future they may not be allowed to share.