Old Town

by Lin Zhe

  Separately, the husband and wife prepared for the changes in their family life. Second Sister stopped working on the New Year’s orders of qipao and rushed to sew a silk and wool vest for Ninth Brother. Although there was no lack of clothing in the army, she still worried about how terribly cold it got up north. Could her fragile southern scholar stand the winters there? Ninth Brother had taken care of his personal matters, and was busily running to the people at West Gate whom he had treated. They were poor people and Ninth Brother distributed pills to those who might have use for them, leaving instructions on dosage and storage.

  The moment of departure and farewells came imperceptibly. One morning at 4:30, Second Sister heard in her half-asleep state the sound of light footfalls. Opening her eyes, she saw there was candlelight in the children’s room next door. She got out of bed to look in on them, only to see Ninth Brother in his army uniform holding a candle and standing by Baohua’s bed as if under a spell. Today was the day of his departure. But Second Sister still actually fantasized that maybe in some innermost part of him, seeing Baohua would make him change his mind at the last minute. She was again disappointed. He came out and said to her, “The Chens are waiting for us. Let’s go to the church and say a prayer together. At six o’clock, the division commander will be sending over a vehicle to fetch me at the West Gate corner. Let’s put everything in the hands of our God.”

  Ninth Brother rode Second Sister on his bicycle to the church. He wanted to leave the bicycle with Pastor Chen. With all his preaching hither and yon, the pastor badly needed something to get around on, something other than just his two feet. Ninth Brother’s bicycle-riding technique was by no means up to par. On the road he wobbled right and left in a most alarming and dangerous manner, but luckily there weren’t yet people walking along the streets. The two of them frolicked their way to West Gate like kids playing some risky game.

  Pastor Chen and his wife had been kneeling in prayer for two hours already when the Lins arrived. Tearfully they beseeched God to allow Dr. Lin to return to Old Town without the slightest harm, for Old Town needed him.

  Second Sister heard Ninth Brother say, “O Lord, your child still begs you to give him strength and courage. Make him always pursue what is right without turning back.” She thought of Ninth Brother as already being indomitable and unyielding. She almost didn’t know him anymore and she silently prayed to God that after the war ended to give him back to her as she knew him before, as that loving family man, Ninth Brother.

  At six o’clock, an army truck arrived. Ninth Brother got up into the cab and the vehicle roared off. He did not cast a single glance back at Second Sister, standing there by the roadside.

  3.

  ALL HER LIFE, Grandma never could understand Grandpa’s enormous act of going off and leaving his family behind. After he passed away, she found a photograph of him in his military uniform, and she was just as perplexed as ever. Putting on her old-age glasses, she scrutinized the picture and said to me, “Look at this, your grandpa looks just like a student in that uniform. In his whole life, he had never killed a chicken or a fish. How could he have ever dared go off to war?”

  I was in high school when I learned that my grandpa had been a Guomindang army officer. I had applied to join the Communist Youth League. “Communist Youth League member” was a synonym for outstanding student—it was an honor and a glory. I wrote out many applications but they never accepted me. A student who was a member quietly took me aside and told me: Your family is very complicated. Your grandfather on your mother’s side was a Guomindang army officer, a major, even. She said a lot of other stuff too, but I didn’t hear a word of it. The blood surged from my heart to my head and blocked my eyes and ears. How was this possible? The grandpa who warmed up cow’s milk for me to drink every day turns out to have been a reactionary officer? I imagined the way Grandpa wore his uniform and his sword. That was just so funny, funnier even than those foreign tourists renting gowns of imperial yellow to wear when they have their picture taken in front of the Forbidden City. Major, how many revolutionaries did you kill? But the year before last when our cat died, Grandpa was red-eyed from sorrow. He was much more easily moved to tears than my grandma. Returning home, however I looked at it, my grandpa didn’t seem like someone who had worn a military uniform. I could completely understand Grandma’s puzzlement and surprise back then.

  Later, I had the opportunity to sneak a look at the résumé that my grandfather had written. In those years, people had to complete so many résumés each year. His own was really complicated. Just for the War of Resistance alone he had written two pages. He really was a reactionary military officer. And I suffered over this for a long time.

  Later on, people in China no longer saw any shame in anyone of the older generation having been an officer in the Guomindang Army. Those old soldiers who went to Taiwan and now returned to visit their relatives became an honor and glory for the ancestors. I really wanted to write about my grandpa. He and Grandma were the people who had influenced me the most in my life. But every time I would start to do so, after a while, I always gave up. The most I ever wrote was about fifty thousand words. I couldn’t write about them, because always in the end I couldn’t connect all those “tales of marvels” with the grandpa who used to stand by the little coal stove heating up cow’s milk for me.

  My great-aunt had another version of my grandpa going north with the army. According to her, when he had been a student up north he had been on intimate terms with someone, someone who, with her “intoxicating aroma and seductive sleeves,” as she put it, had been his companion during the period of his studies. They had a child together, and she and the child were waiting for him. And Great-Auntie said she was very pretty, a reformed woman from “the world of smoke and flowers.”

  Great-Auntie’s tale out of the Arabian Nights spread fast throughout the Guo household. Granny was the last one to hear it though. Normally she would smile such things away. When they were children they had grown up sharing the same bed, and the stories her older sister composed didn’t stop at one thousand and one. Had these all been written down, they would have been as tasty, if not more so, as those popular tales about Ming Dynasty city folk by Feng Menglong and Ling Menchu. But without any letter or money for housekeeping from Ninth Brother for so long now, Second Sister found getting through these days very hard. Feeling on edge without any clear idea what was happening, she really couldn’t endure any stimulation of this kind. So right away, she called a rickshaw to take her to South Town and her older sister, to have her clear all this up. Only when the rickshaw man pulled up at her sister’s gate did Second Sister come to her senses. How could I ever have taken Big Sister’s crazy talk seriously? She didn’t get down, just told the puller to turn around and go back home.

  The town’s old folk had a saying: “A man shouldn’t be allowed to read The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and women shouldn’t read novels.” Reading The Romance of the Three Kingdoms would turn a man into someone sinister and ruthless, while novels would give a woman all kinds of wild and silly ideas. Take, for example, Great-Auntie, who had certainly read lots and lots of novels. In her days, love between “women of the smoke and flowers” and gifted scholars was the hottest theme in novels about ordinary city people. My Great-Auntie missed her calling—she was a natural-born writer. Too bad.

  No one corrected Great-Auntie’s erroneous mental creations. Over the past few decades she forgot that she herself was the author of these stories and that she had treated them as historical fact. She firmly believed that Ninth Brother had another family up north. When my grandpa died, Great-Auntie had words to say to my uncles for not informing those people. She knew I was at university in the north, and, quietly pulling me over to one side, she said, “You ought to go see the people in that family. They are also your uncles and aunts.” Fortunately, we all knew that she was an old crackpot and such rumors never led anywhere.

  When the army truck took Ninth Brother away, it was as if
a little boat had been rowed into the middle of the water and abandoned just like that by the helmsman. And while the woman and children left on board were at their wits’ end, a great tempest was following close behind. Their situation was much more awful than they had ever expected, and it grew steadily worse.

  For the first three months, Ninth Brother’s letters and remittances came regularly. In them, he promised his wife that every month at the very least there would be a letter from him telling her that he was all right. And that, except for two silver dollars of spending money, he would be sending the full amount of his payroll home to her. After the postman delivered three remittances to Second Sister, Ninth Brother seemed to have dropped into the sea like one of those ritual clay oxen at springtime. There just wasn’t any news from him at all. Before this, neither of them had expected the war would sever the postal routes. Coming without warning, this disaster caught Second Sister totally unprepared. Far into more nights than she could count, she thought of the very worst possibility: that Ninth Brother would never return home. If it hadn’t been for the children, there’s no telling what she might have done.

  The Lin household split up and formed six little family units. Six dining tables were set up in the sitting room closest to the kitchen. The daily three meals were ordeals for her children. Three pairs of eyes watched the red-braised meat. Their mouths drooled, but the children didn’t dare move their chopsticks. When Second Sister thought of this, it was as if her heart was being cut by knives and pierced by needles. Afraid that her relatives would see something odd, she moved the table into her room and told her sisters-in-law that this made it easier to teach the children to behave.

  There was that plate of meat a few days before, set out right in the middle of the dining table and enticing with its aroma. Three pairs of bulging, greedy bug eyes were rolling in their heads. While Second Sister’s attention was elsewhere, the older boy, Baosheng, stealthily gripped a piece of the meat with his chopsticks and stuffed it into his mouth. Then he took another piece and put it into his brother Baoqing’s bowl. Five-year-old Baoqing’s long eyelashes drooped low as he stared and stared down at that piece of meat. Then, swallowing his saliva with difficulty, he put the meat back on the serving plate. The daughter, who was a bit older, knew what her mother had in mind. “Ma’s afraid other people will see we can’t afford to eat meat. So now that the dining table’s been moved inside, we can just go ahead and eat.” Her little brother stubbornly resisted this enticement and, pursing his little lips said, “We ought to let Daddy eat the good things first. I want to wait for Daddy to come home before eating.”

  Second Sister was standing by the door and saw all this. Again, she couldn’t help feeling the pain of a knife carving into her breast. The three children were all sweet little angels but that little one was an angel among angels. He understood best of all how things were and showed the greatest concern for her. When he was only two years old, Second Sister’s mother had said, “This little one will be your and Ninth Brother’s support someday.”

  She came forward and embraced the little boy. “Baoqing, eat now. When Daddy gets back, there’ll be even better things to eat.”

  Baoqing’s eyes couldn’t disguise his joy. However, holding a piece of meat with his chopsticks, he didn’t cram it into his own mouth, but brought it to his mother’s mouth first. “Ma, Daddy’s not home, so you should begin before us.”

  Such good children. She felt hope as she gazed at these little angels. This somewhat softened the pain of having no word from her husband.

  That summer the postman became the object of Second Sister’s longing. Every morning at ten o’clock he passed by Officials Lane. She calculated the time she should come outside. The Lin family had already split up with each housewife managing her own household. Second Sister would go out with her vegetable basket pretending that it was all coincidence. Looking very far off, she could tell at a glance from the postman’s pudgy face that today, once again, she would be without hope. She dawdled along the side of the street, getting a grip on her sadness. She bought some food and odds and ends. Every fourth or fifth day she would buy a bunch of fresh flowers. Ninth Brother liked flowers. After they were wed, their home was never without fresh flowers.

  Actually, she no longer felt much like looking after plants and flowers, but she didn’t want her sisters-in-law to see that there was no news from her husband. They all envied the shiny silver coins she received every month. To keep up appearances, Second Sister went to a tailor’s shop and collected some sewing to do quietly at home. And every so often she had to cook some meat dish to let the whole compound smell its aroma. That way they would know that “Old Number Nine’s” household was doing all right. At times when she was feeling especially fragile, she would find some quiet place where she could cry for a bit. When she really couldn’t stand it any longer, she would go to the West Lake church to ask the pastor to help her pray. She believed that his prayer had more power than hers and was more likely to move the Holy Spirit. In the end, it was from God alone that she could look for guidance and support. O Heavenly Father, Ninth Brother loves you. You also love Ninth Brother. You will bring him back to us all safe and sound, won’t you?

  Grandma’s infatuation with the postman continued for just about one year. In the second year, right on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, Second Sister brought the children back to her old Guo home. It was right on this day that the postman delivered a letter to the wife of their old neighbor, Ah Liu. Ah Liu was a soldier up north, and it had been several months since there had been any news of him too. “When fighting goes on for three straight months, a letter home is worth its weight in gold,” the saying goes. Ah Liu’s wife shouted and yelled in raptures that filled the entire street when she got this letter. She was illiterate, and so, catching hold of a refined-looking fellow in a long gown she pleaded, “Sir! You look to be skilled in reading. My husband has sent a letter from up north. Help me read it. What does he say?” This passerby looked down and glanced briefly at the contents of the letter. Then, with a grave expression, he stared long at Ah Liu’s wife without saying a word. Urgently, she pressed him, “Did he send money? Tell me he’s been gambling again and lost it all! He should be sliced a thousand times! If he doesn’t send any more money, I’ll sell his two sons!” The man returned the letter to Ah Liu’s wife. “Elder Sister, I can’t read this letter. Please forgive me.” Then abruptly he walked off without a further glance at her.

  Ah Liu’s wife was a real termagant among the common towns-folk. With her hands on her hips, she poured out abuse on the man’s mother as he walked away. “Wasn’t the little money your family spent on your learning so you could read books?” She came out with more foul-mouthed comments that only Old Town’s lower class of people say. Then she turned around and stopped a young man. “Younger brother, could you trouble to help Auntie read this letter? Auntie gets bullied because she can’t read. From the look of you, if you don’t place first in the imperial exams, you’ll do well in the provincial ones. Help Auntie read the letter.” The young fellow looked as if he had been called on by the teacher to read from a textbook. Every word and every pause came through clearly. In fact, this was a notification letter of death in combat. It praised Ah Liu’s patriotic sacrifice in heroically resisting the Japanese. Before the youth had finished reading the final inscription, Ah Liu’s wife let out a shriek that traveled the entire length of West Street. “Ah Liu! You unlucky devil! You’ve done it to me this time!” The young fellow raised his head from the letter and turned pale in alarm to see her flat on her bum in the street, beating her chest, stamping her feet, and wailing.

  Row upon row of gawkers pressed around. “Ah Liu’s dead!” West Street people all knew each other. It was as if everybody could tell an Ah Liu story. The old wife of the Zhang family lifted her cane and pounded the ground. “Today’s Dragon Boat Festival. Just one year ago Ah Liu ate rice dumplings made at our home.” An old gaffer of the Li family said that even wh
en he was little, Ah Liu used to carry water for many homes on this street. His water buckets were bigger than other people’s, and he got less for his work than other people did. “Good old Ah Liu! And you say he’s gone now? Ah Liu went off to be a soldier so he could send money home. He wanted his children to go to school…didn’t want them to have to sweat and slave to support a family like he did. Poor old Ah Liu!”

  Second Sister was scrubbing and cleaning the area under the sky well. She was using the same water she had cooked the festival’s rice dumplings in to scour every nook and cranny. People said that doing this could lessen the number of summer mosquitoes. She wasn’t a person to run into the street to see what the fuss was all about. But someone came rushing in through the doorway telling about the woes of Ah Liu’s wife. Second Sister knew that Ah Liu was in the north as a soldier, so naturally this led her to think about Ninth Brother. Shaking the water from her hands, she just stood there blankly for a while, unsure of what to do next. Finally, beside herself with worry, she stepped across the threshold and went over toward the crowd of people.

  Her knees went weak when she heard about Ah Liu’s wife. So what the postman delivered weren’t always ten-thousand gold-piece letters. Sometimes the postman was the envoy from hell who would cruelly say to some woman, “Your husband’s dead! From now on you’re a widow.”

  After Dragon Boat Festival, Second Sister no longer bought vegetables as an excuse for “running into” the fat postman. When things had come to this, her greatest hope was to get no news at all from her husband.