by Cheng Nien
“If I paid the rent, could you find some other place to live?” I asked her. The housing shortage was an extremely serious problem in Shanghai.
“I have a recently widowed cousin. She might take me in and let me share the rent. Do you want me to sleep out?”
“Good! We’ll arrange it this way. You go to live with your cousin and come in the mornings only. I’ll pay you the same wage and the rent. How about that?”
“That’s a good arrangement. You can have quiet afternoons and evenings. If you don’t open the door, no one can blame me for it,” she said happily.
That weekend A-yi made the arrangement with her cousin and moved out. I got a piece of cardboard, wrapped it in a sheet of red paper, and secured it with tape. Then I pasted a piece of white paper in the center, leaving a red border. On the white paper I wrote the following message: “Because of advanced age and indifferent health, I need rest. Visitors without previous appointments will not be admitted. Representatives of the government on official business are welcome anytime.” I signed my name, hung the cardboard notice outside my front door at the foot of the stairs with a red ribbon, and locked the door.
Next morning when I opened the door to go into the garden, I saw that my carefully made cardboard notice had been torn up and was lying on the ground. Mrs. Zhu was on the terrace. I picked up the pieces and confronted her with them.
“Did somebody in your family tear up my notice?” I asked her.
“Oh, no! Of course not! We never go near that door. As you know, when I come up to see you, I always come up the back stairs.”
Her unemployed son came out to lend his support to his mother and said, “Somebody must have climbed over the wall again last night. We lost two shirts that were hanging on the clothesline on the terrace.”
“You know there have been several cases of theft in this neighborhood. Don’t you remember the Party secretary warning us to be extra careful at our last study group meeting?” Mrs. Zhu joined in.
I did not believe a thief had climbed over the wall at all, so I asked them, “Have you reported your loss to the police?”
“No.” Mrs. Zhu’s son threw a glance at his mother and said quickly, “But we will certainly do so.”
“I’ll go to the police now and report it,” I said, glancing at my watch to see that it was after eight o’clock.
“Please don’t bother. I’ll go later,” Mrs. Zhu’s son said.
“I’ll go now,” I said.
With the pieces of cardboard in my hand, I walked to the local station at the end of our street. I thought it would be interesting to find out if the police were behind my harassment. If so, my local policeman, Lao Li, should know about it. I might discern something by watching his reaction during the interview.
The police station of our district was formerly the private residence of a wealthy Shanghai merchant who had fled to Hong Kong just before the Communist takeover. It was one of the largest houses in the area, with an attractive garden. I walked up the steps and entered the house. The large living room had been partitioned. In the front section, a man and a woman in uniform sat behind a counter. There were a few tables and benches scattered about the room. An elderly man with his resident’s book in hand was registering the arrival of his son on home leave from another province.
I stood by the counter and waited until the policewoman asked me, “What’s your business?”
“I’m a resident of Number One Taiyuan Road. I’ve come to see Comrade Lao Li, who is in charge of our street,” I answered.
“Did he tell you to come see him?”
“No. Something happened last night. I’ve come to report to him.”
“Everybody is at a study group meeting this morning. Come another time,” she said.
“I’ll wait for him.”
“They may be a long time. Sometimes the study group meetings last the whole morning.”
Determined not to be put off, I said, “I don’t mind waiting, if it’s all right.”
She didn’t say anything, so I sat down on one of the benches. Several people came to register births, deaths, arrivals, and departures. I watched the routine work of the police department and from time to time looked up at the clock on the wall. The hands seemed to move very slowly that morning, but I was determined to see Lao Li. Soon after eleven o’clock, the door leading to the inner section opened, and a man in uniform came out.
“Tell Lao Li there is someone from Taiyuan Road to see him,” the policewoman said to the man.
He went inside. After a while Lao Li came out. He was a burly man with a relaxed manner. Unlike most other policemen, he did not wear a habitual scowl on his face, nor did he let me know by his attitude that he thought me an undesirable character. I rather liked Lao Li and respected him as someone down-to-earth and fair. Behind his mild appearance, he was shrewd and alert. On his few visits to my apartment, he was always polite. But I knew he took in the situation at once just by a casual glance at the room. Certainly he was very different from the young policeman who had spat on my carpet as he strode into my living room in the early days of the People’s Republic.
When Lao Li entered the room, I stood up to show him respect. He told me to sit down and took a seat opposite me across the table.
“I’m from Number One Taiyuan Road,” I introduced myself.
“I know who you are,” Lao Li said impatiently with a glance at the clock. “What is it you want to see me about?”
“I’ve come to report that a thief climbed over the wall at our place last night.”
“Is anything missing?”
“The Zhus downstairs said they lost two shirts. I only had this torn up.” I placed the pieces of my cardboard notice on the table. Lao Li put them together and read it. The frown on his brows deepened.
“What’s this all about? Why did you write this?” He looked genuinely puzzled, so I knew that he did not know anything about my stream of visitors. The police department as a department was not involved in harassing me, but I could not rule out the possibility that some individual officials, most likely Maoist Revolutionaries promoted to official positions during the Cultural Revolution, were behind it all. During the entire 1970s, Maoist Revolutionaries and the rehabilitated old officials coexisted side by side in every government department in China. In the atmosphere of hostility and noncooperation, very little got done. The already clumsy bureaucracy became truly unwieldy. If a project had been formulated by the Revolutionaries, the rehabilitated old officials would most likely not know anything about it. At the same time, the Revolutionaries would make sure the rehabilitated officials did not recover all the power they had lost when they lost their jobs during the Cultural Revolution. In most cases, the rehabilitated officials found that though they had been given their old titles back, they had become simply figureheads. The Revolutionaries just carried on as if they were not there.
“So many people who claim to be my daughter’s friends call on me at all hours to talk about her death. I am tired of seeing them. I’m an old lady. I’ve had a serious operation. I need to rest,” I told him. He nodded and looked thoughtful.
“Why should a thief want to tear that up?” Lao Li asked me, pointing to the pieces of cardboard on the table. “It doesn’t look like something a thief would do.”
“The Zhus told me the thief did it.”
“All right. I’ll go over there to have a word with the Zhus this afternoon.”
I thanked him and went home.
It seemed Lao Li did not know anything about my string of visitors. While I was no wiser as to who was behind the scheme to harass me, I derived some encouragement from the fact that Lao Li did not tell me to stop putting up cardboard notices. I decided to make another one and hang it up again.
When I got back, A-yi was already there. I told her where I had been and showed her the pieces of my cardboard notice. She said, “It must have been torn up by the Zhus. No thief came over the wall at all. It’s just a pack of lies.”
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br /> “Why should the Zhus want to do that?”
“Someone must have told them to do it,” she replied in a low whisper, as if frightened, although no one could possibly overhear us.
“Who could have told them to do it?” I asked her.
“Who knows?” she said. But I thought she did know.
I had a peaceful afternoon. The second cardboard notice I made was not disturbed, and no one came to the locked door.
On the following day, after A-yi had left, my resolution was put to the test. Hean’s mother came to the door. I thought she would go away when she had read my notice. But she did not go away. Instead, she called me and knocked on the door. It was difficult to ignore my old friend. But I had to. She called me again. Then she left.
The day after that, my niece came with her baby. She was the daughter of my sister who had died. When the Cultural Revolution started she was only a teenager. Because of her family background, she was treated very harshly. The result was that she became nervous and timid, fearful of offending the Revolutionaries. Because I had been in the detention house, she had been reluctant to visit me. I had to send A-yi to urge her to come at Chinese New Year time. Therefore I was very surprised to hear her calling me outside my door. However, I ignored her. After a while she also went away.
I suspected that Hean’s mother and my niece were both sent to test my resolve. But I could not be sure. I decided to visit my old friend.
After I had explained to Hean’s mother why I could not open the door to her, I asked her, “Did you read my notice?”
“Yes, I did. But …” She hesitated, looking at me intently, unable to put into words what she wanted to tell me.
She could not bring herself to say that she had been told to come. Perhaps she felt ashamed, or perhaps she was afraid I might blurt it out to somebody. She bowed her head and seemed deeply embarrassed.
After a while, she said, “Wouldn’t it be better just to put up with the visitors? You can always take a sleeping pill. Why seek a confrontation? Are you not afraid of them?”
“No, strange to say, I’m not afraid. I have to fight back, otherwise I will die of anger and frustration.” Even as I was speaking, I felt anger welling up in my chest. Because of my daughter’s death, I hated the Maoists a million times more than I had when I was in the detention house. To fight back at them at least gave me some consolation.
Hean’s mother said to me, “We are such old friends that you should know I’m very fond of you. I hope you understand if I have said or done things I would not normally say or do. Living in the present circumstances, we can’t always be our true selves.”
“Oh, yes, don’t worry! I understand perfectly,” I told her and took my leave.
She accompanied me to the street. “Would you approve if I told everybody that I’m too ill to visit you? I do have rather serious heart trouble, as you know.”
“Certainly. I would miss seeing you, but it’s for the best. I don’t want you to be placed in an awkward situation.”
“I’m glad you understand. Let’s hope it won’t be for long. Take care of yourself.” She sounded relieved.
I continued to be firm and refused to open my door to people without appointments in the afternoons. Da De never talked to me about my cardboard notice, but he would carefully make appointments with me when he wanted to visit me in the afternoons. After a couple of weeks, the visitors ceased to come.
But the attempt to harass me did not stop. It only moved from my room to the street. One day when I came home from my walk, suddenly a small group of schoolchildren yelled at me, “Spy! Imperialist spy! Running dog of the imperialists!”
I walked on, ignoring them. But two bolder ones blocked my way and continued to yell at me. I could not push the children aside without creating a scene, so I stopped and said to them calmly, “Come with me. Let’s have a little chat.”
They fled. I went to the Residents’ Committee to complain. They told me that unless I could tell them the names of the children, they could do nothing.
This happened day after day, almost as if the children were waiting there to perform their act of insulting me. I varied the time of my walk. It made no difference. They were always there. And in the distance, there was always a man with a bicycle. As soon as the children started yelling, he would mount his bicycle and disappear.
Although the children were a nuisance and I was stared at by the few people who passed on our street, I did not give up my daily walk. I would just ignore the children and walk on as if I did not see or hear them.
A couple of weeks later, A-yi discovered that someone had written on our front gate with a piece of chalk, “An arrogant imperialist spy lives here.” She was furious and wanted to wipe it off with a wet cloth.
“Please just ignore it, A-yi,” I said to her.
“But it’s so insulting,” she said. “What will the people passing our front gate think?”
“Let them think whatever they wish to think. In any case, they must be used to such messages by now. Weren’t a lot of these messages written outside people’s homes during the early years of the Cultural Revolution?”
I went out at my usual hour of the afternoon and saw the same man with his bicycle across the street. He was close enough for me to see that he was about thirty, with a mop of thick black hair. Also I noticed that his bicycle had a rather bright yellow saddle cover. As soon as he saw me coming out, he mounted his bicycle and rode away. I closed the front gate without looking at the message and went on my walk.
A few days later, a heavy downpour obliterated the chalk writing on my front gate. Not long afterwards, the children also tired of their game. The most interesting thing was that although Da De could not have missed seeing what was written on my front gate, he made no reference to it at all when he came for his lessons.
I enjoyed a few peaceful days. The date March 27, 1975, was the second anniversary of my release from the No. 1 Detention House. I spent a quiet day sitting on the balcony in the pale spring sun knitting and reading Tang poetry. In the afternoon, I thought of the years I had spent in my cell, remembering the individual guards and the interrogations, and felt once again the cold, the hunger, and the torture I had endured. I looked at my wrists and saw the scars that would remain with me until I died. It seemed that although I was no longer confined in a prison cell, my struggle against persecution was by no means over. My enemy hovered on the periphery of my existence, and I must continue to be vigilant.
I was too depressed to go out, so I missed my afternoon walk. The next two days we had a steady drizzle. When the sun came out again, I was anxious for exercise.
“Are you going for your walk today? The weather is so nice,” A-yi said as she was leaving.
“Oh, yes, I certainly will go today,” I told her.
“Perhaps you can take the handle of the old wet mop to the co-op and get a new mop made.”
“Do I have to take the old handle?”
“Yes, they are short of handles. They won’t make one for you unless you bring the old handle.”
At the usual hour of three o’clock, I set out with the handle of our old mop to go to the little cooperative store where a few housewives in the neighborhood did odd jobs to make a few extra yuan. If I was being followed, I didn’t notice it. When I stepped off the sidewalk to cross the busy street in front of me, something suddenly hit me hard from behind. I shot out and landed flat on my back right in the path of an oncoming bus. Brakes squealed, and a man pulled me to the side. The bus slowly rolled over the handle of my old mop, breaking it. The conductor looked out of the window and shouted at me, “Why didn’t you look where you were going? Do you want to kill yourself?” Then the bus gathered speed and pulled away.
Everything had happened so quickly and so unexpectedly that I was dazed. My heart palpitated wildly, and my knees were wobbly.
“A bicycle hit you. The man didn’t stop,” my rescuer said.
“You saved my life. How am I to thank you
?” My voice was shaky. It sounded to me like someone else speaking.
“No, no. The bus stopped in time. You had better go to a hospital to make sure no bones were broken,” the kind man said.
“I think I’m all right, just a little shaken. Please come with me. I would like to thank you in a concrete way with a present. Maybe you could accompany me to the police station to report the incident,” I said.
“You didn’t catch the man on the bicycle. The police won’t do a thing. Anyway, I have a meeting to attend.”
“Did you see the man who hit me?”
“Not really. But I noticed his bicycle had something bright on the saddle.”
“Was it a bright yellow saddle cover?”
“He was sitting on the saddle. But something bright caught my eye.”
“Was he a man with a mop of thick black hair?”
“Yes, do you know him?” the man asked me. “Is he a personal enemy?”
“No, I don’t know him. But I’ve seen him before.”
“Well, I have to go to my meeting. You had better be careful. He hit you deliberately. The street was empty. He didn’t have to hit you. And he rode away quickly.”
I thanked the man again, and he disappeared in the crowd.
When I managed to get home, I took two aspirin tablets and went to bed. It was only a little after four o’clock. I slept for about an hour. When I woke up, I found my whole body stiff as a board and aching so excruciatingly that I could hardly move. With difficulty I rolled out of bed and went to the bathroom. I thought a bath with a lot of hot water might help, but I couldn’t manage to get the water ready without A-yi.
The night was terribly long, and I was most uncomfortable. Finally A-yi came and served me breakfast in bed. She was very distressed to hear of my accident. Perhaps she guessed that I was hit deliberately and felt partly responsible, for she had reported where I was going. The whole morning, she was on the verge of tears.
While she prepared a hot bath for me, I read Tang dynasty poems in bed. Suddenly I remembered that Mr. Hu had said he was going to call on me that very afternoon. Although I would have preferred to remain in bed, I got up and tidied up my room. I had no way of telling Mr. Hu not to come. After the revolutionary action of the Red Guards, no one in China was allowed a private telephone. To make a call, one had to go to a public telephone. The attendant took down the number one wanted to call and listened in to every conversation. Often she was not there at all, and the phone was locked up.
