Old Town

by Lin Zhe

  You probably don’t know who Ah-Q is. It’s not important. But, in short, I rejoice that I possess the genes Grandma bequeathed to me. I have persistence in abundance.

  Baosheng was still treasure-hunting: a whole porcelain bowl, an inlaid picture frame with the family portrait. When he found a silver necklace with little bells, he went running over, all excited, to claim a reward. “Ma, look, wouldn’t this be worth money?”

  Ninth Brother had a silversmith make this when Baohua completed her first full month of life. That day he shook the bells all the way home, his complete joy so plain to see. Grandma felt more like weeping over the gardens that had been destroyed and for the happy life that had now vanished, but she didn’t shed another single tear over them again.

  The Guo compound at West Gate was still intact and Old Lady Guo cried in joy for this. She stood at the doorway and, clasping her hands together, thanked heaven and earth and all the various spirits and Bodhisattvas for the virtues of the Guo family ancestors that brought lives of ease and comfort to their descendents.

  The gateway was unlatched. They supposed that Eldest Son and his wife were inside. Gan’er pushed the door open and rushed in. In the sky well sat a strange woman sorting vegetables. Old Lady Guo wondered: So Eldest Son and his wife have money enough to hire a servant woman? The woman asked who they were looking for. Fifth Brother said, “This is our home.” The woman craned her neck around and shouted, “Mr. Fan, Mrs. Fan, your relatives have come!”

  This family has changed its name to Fan?

  Mr. Fan walked out. Second Sister recognized him as the owner of a local tea company. This fellow, Boss Fan, didn’t extend a single word in conventional greeting, but just turned around and went back inside. Then he came right out again, now bearing a title deed in his hand.

  Second Son had sold the house! “This is impossible, absolutely impossible!” Old Lady Guo pulled open her jacket and snatched out her stomach bib, an item of clothing that had never before left her body. “I haven’t even told Second Sister, so how could that have flown into your rotten-egg hands?” But what the trembling old lady had gropingly reached for turned out to be nothing more than two sheets of coarse straw paper! She gaped, unable to make a sound. Then, lifting one three-inch foot, she stamped the ground and fell with a crash on the steps by the sky well. At once blood began to drip from her.

  Second Sister did not come forward to help her mother up from the ground but raised her eyes to the blue, blue sky and cried out angrily and resentfully. “Oh God, what sin has our family committed that you should punish us so?”

  4.

  THE HOUSES OF Old Town, especially those of the poor, were all built of flimsy wooden planks. Just one artillery shell would have been enough to destroy a whole street of such dwellings. Those who had fled Old Town were now continuously returning, but many came back to their native place after long and arduous journeys only to find that they had no home to return to.

  The West Gate church was filled with people living there who had experienced the painful loss of their homes, and among these were the three generations of the Guo family. Pastor and Mrs. Chen gave the big upstairs room to Second Sister, while the three Chens themselves squeezed into the little room at the foot of the stairs. The religious activities of the congregation began to return to normal. Since the church hall was now packed with the old and the young, the sick and the crippled, every Sunday the congregants sang hymns in the yard.

  After living in the church for several months, the sound of prayer, hymns, and the organ played by Pastor Chen’s wife lingered always in her ears, but in her heart my grandmother had gone far away from her angel. She refused to take part in the services and every Sunday would go to the tailor shops. Three shops employed her and she could do these jobs at home so she intentionally arranged to pick up her work on Sundays. When Pastor Chen and his wife invited her to pray together with them, she said she preferred to pray alone. But she secretly said to her angel, “I’m no longer asking anything from you. I have been afflicted with so many misfortunes, and you watched unmoved as these happened. From now on, you can just shut your eyes and no longer watch over me. When I go to heaven, I am going to register a complaint about you to our Heavenly Father, that you did not fulfill your angel duties and responsibilities.”

  Eighty-year-old Grandma was sewing her angel outfit and when she got to this part of her story, she chuckled and removed her old-age glasses.

  Nor can I help being amused. It all makes me think of a young girl in love who’s throwing a little temper tantrum. I myself often acted like this when I felt wronged. I would ignore Chaofan, while actually expecting to be loved even more passionately. Just before one summer vacation, I was sulky and annoyed with Chaofan. I think I was just being jealous of that pretty little violinist who had put a piece of chocolate into Chaofan’s mouth. I was standing off to the side and they didn’t see me, like I was the Invisible Man. In the middle of the night, I bickered with him and told him I was going back to school. Chaofan didn’t try to get me to stay. Furious, I stomped out to the gate and turned around, expecting he would come chasing after me. Instead, I discovered that the light in his room was out. He had actually and calmly gone to sleep! The hurt I felt was beyond all description. To the present day, I’m still angry over it.

  I asked Grandma, “You’ve never thought that your angel didn’t really exist?”

  “Not really exist? How can you say that?” She again took off her old-age glasses that she had just put back on and looked at me in wonder. “It’s just like your neighbors or your relatives. You might not like them, or you might be angry with them, but you can’t say they’ve never existed. That second brother of mine, I never forgave him, and never saw him again either, but he did exist. Oh, that’s not the right comparison. The angel knows what I mean and won’t be angry.”

  “Grandma, you’ve really got a lot of guts to make an angel mad at you.”

  “True! And I don’t even understand why. Even though very many of the buildings in Old Town had burned down, those were, after all, still in the minority. My mother-in-law’s house was destroyed and my own family home was lost to us. Men who went off to become soldiers would send some news home to tell whether they were alive or dead. I saw some widows who suffered injustice call out their husband’s name in their bitter tears. I wanted to cry but couldn’t because I didn’t know whether my husband was alive or dead. I thought I was the most wretched woman in the whole world.”

  Not long afterward, when the municipal government and the Guomindang Party office came back down into Old Town from the mountain district, you could say that Old Town swallowed a tranquilizer. There was still fighting going on in the world outside, but lucky Old Town achieved a kind of limited peacefulness. The signboard of the municipal government was rehung, and all the merchants who were watching which way the wind blew then hurriedly opened for business.

  Second Sister began devising a “Spring Flower Barges into the Magistrate’s Court”30 stratagem, in which she would bring both her mother and the three children bursting into the government office and demand her husband back. Unexpectedly, however, the government made the first move and found Second Sister. They ordered her out of the church. At the time, Pastor Chen was there and he tried to find out the reason for this but was sternly reprimanded by two plainclothesmen. She was pushed blindfolded into a car, and only after some time finally got out. Such details made her think of how they caught communists. The Lins’ neighbor had a son studying at teachers’ college who had been picked up like this. She had seen with her own eyes an identical car drive out of Officials Lane, and ten days later, the family recovered the corpse from the government office. She wanted to say, “I am a respectable woman and no communist,” but her tongue had gone stiff and her teeth were chattering as if she had malaria. She couldn’t get out a single word.

  When she realized that death was the worst that could happen to her, she immediately freed herself from her terrors and she sta
rted thinking clearly and vigorously.

  Angel, I’ve offended you, so you are punishing me like this. You aren’t a good angel, but I want to tell you, I’m not afraid to die. I have lived enough. I have now brought three children back to Old Town. Pastor and Mrs. Chen can look after them well. Don’t think that I would be brokenhearted out of concern for them. I will return to my heavenly home joyfully and with an easy mind.

  Second Sister was brought to a special organization of the Guomindang. This organization was quite mysterious. There wasn’t even a sign at the door. Once the black cloth that had covered her face was removed, she saw sitting behind a wide desk a middle-aged official in a Western-style suit. She thought he would perform the interrogation by pounding the table and demanding that she turn over the Communist Party people she knew. She deliberated how to best respond. She couldn’t say she didn’t know. If you said you didn’t know, that was the same as protecting communists. The best approach was to act like some hellcat woman weeping and raising an uproar over her unjust persecution. However, she really didn’t have the strength to make any kind of uproar. Furthermore, she was annoyed with her angel. She believed that the angel was there within that high-ceilinged, gloomy room and she didn’t want it to see the ugliness of her weeping and sniveling.

  The official’s expression hardened. He jabbed his finger in the direction of a chair and told Second Sister to sit down. She was stunned and didn’t dare believe her own ears. He again pointed to the chair, “Just sit down.” He then looked down and opened up a folder of documents. “Where is your husband?”

  Second Sister had just sat down, but now she sprang up again, holding onto the desk for support. “My husband? Did you say my husband? Is he dead?”

  “Sit down, you! I ask. You answer. And don’t talk nonsense. Where is your husband?”

  “You’re asking me where he is? That’s what I want to ask you! My husband went to war to fight for your government. There hasn’t been the slightest bit of news from him for several years now. Even if he’s dead, you should have issued a notice to me.”

  At this point, Second Sister became unable to control herself. She took out a handkerchief and covered her tear-filled eyes.

  The document folder in the official’s hand contained none other than the letters that Ninth Brother had sent home from various places up north. So, well before the Japanese bombing of Old Town, this organization had been keeping its eyes on him. The reason was an extremely simple one. In their routine sample-checking of mail, they had discovered that in one of Ninth Brother’s letters there was no writing, only a cartoon sketch. The inscription on the envelope merely consisted of two written characters: “He Nan.”31 The greater part of Henan Province belonged to the communists. Ninth Brother had been recruited into the army directly by Division Commander Zhang and the local government had no record of this. They couldn’t identify this man’s family status and therefore suspected him of some entanglement with the communists and thought that the sketch was code related to the underground movement. Although during the War of Resistance against the Japanese, officially the Guomindang and the communists were cooperating, the Communist Party was not allowed to grow and spread in the Guomindang areas. This special organization picked up and retained every letter from Ninth Brother. More than half of these consisted of cartoon sketches that he had done to strengthen the ties between him and his children. Probably this officer also could see that these were nothing more than ordinary letters home and had early on decided to ask Second Sister about this just to close the case. What with the bombing and everyone fleeing, though, the matter had languished until now.

  “What was your husband previously? Where did he join the army?” Startled and suspicious, Second Sister looked at the official. “How is it that none of you knows this? If you’re asking this, do you mean that if my husband is dead, he died in vain?”

  “I ask. You answer.” The official’s tone of voice was much milder now.

  “My husband is a doctor. Old Town’s first Western-medicine clinic was opened by him. When the War of Resistance first started, a Nationalist division commander came to the clinic for treatment and he then took my husband off with him.”

  The official asked a number of inconsequential questions and then closed the documents. “All right, you can go now.”

  Second Sister was astonished. “What does this mean? Are you letting me go?”

  The official nodded.

  Second Sister took a few steps in the direction of the door, and then abruptly turned around and firmly sat back down in the chair. “Sir, I am not going. I had originally intended to come to you. I want you to tell me: is my husband dead or alive?”

  “This is not something I handle.”

  “If you don’t handle this, then who does?”

  The official hesitated and pondered this for quite some time. Then, from the documents, he drew out two pieces of letter paper and slid them over to Second Sister.

  “Here, take a look if these are your husband’s letters. If they are, then he’s still alive.”

  My dear Second Sister…These four characters were like thunderbolts knocking her flat. This was no time to be irritated with the angel. With a loud cry, she burst into a violent fit of weeping. The official told his subordinates to get her into the car and set her down in the vicinity of West Gate.

  Her hair bun had come undone and the tear-soaked ends of her hair were disheveled in every which way. She gripped the several late-arriving letters from Ninth Brother and wept bitterly as she ran back to the church. Dashing upstairs and crying uncontrollably, she threw herself onto her mother’s breast. She cried so hard that the very colors of heaven and earth vanished.

  Old Lady Guo said nothing to console her daughter, just quietly stroked her hair. This news of Ninth Brother’s death came as no surprise as far as she was concerned. She ached for her daughter. All the daughters of the Guo family are intelligent and beautiful. And all of them are sow-thistles. The eldest’s husband is a wife-beating scoundrel. Fourth Daughter’s husband is a useless loafer-princeling. Only Second Sister had married a good man. Ninth Brother respected the elderly, cherished the young, and was cultivated and sensible. But now he had died young. Does all this mean our Guo family has no good luck? Or that those Lin ancestors had done some awful deed?

  She also thought of Third Sister from whom there had been no news for so long. Many years back Third Sister had once secretly returned home. The old lady had not met with her but had ordered Big Brother’s wife to drive her away. Now having gone through so much wartime chaos and disaster, the old lady’s heart was no longer so inflexible and she felt regret and sadness when she thought about Third Sister.

  The pastor and his wife also supposed that death news had descended on them. They ascended the stairs and stood behind Second Sister hand in hand, praying with tears in their eyes. “Oh, Lord, we ask you to come and comfort Mrs. Lin. We ask you to take away her pain and bitter suffering and infuse her heart fully with Your great love.” They also thought of their many friends in the West Gate district who had received Dr. Lin’s help. They ought to hold a memorial service for him.

  The three children were scared out of their wits by their mother’s grief. It was quick-thinking Baosheng who saw the letters in his mother’s hand. He went up and very carefully and gently took them from her. He saw a line of writing: “Is Baosheng still naughty?”

  This was Daddy’s letter! He raised the letter in front of Pastor Chen and his wife, saying, “Here’s a letter from Daddy!”

  Mrs. Chen helped Second Sister get up and, seating her comfortably, began combing her hair. She didn’t stop her from crying. “Go ahead and cry, Mrs. Lin. In the bosom of God draw from painful experience and give free vent to your tears. You are an unusual woman. You have ‘supported the old and led the young by the hand’ and endured irredeemable disasters one after the other. O Lord, thank you for leading her through the valley of the shadow of death. Let her rest by the grassy banks
of the stream. Let her husband safely return so that united, husband and wife will never be separated.”

  A few days later, that same postman, for whom Second Sister had once so eagerly waited, appeared, his whole body dripping sweat. He had heard here and there that Mrs. Lin was living at the church and now he placed in her hand a letter from Dr. Lin, postmarked “Shanghai.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT – REVOLVING MONTAGE

  1.

  TO ENTER INTO my grandmother’s stories is to leap across space and time. All those long-ago events come gushing out, just as if they were my yesterday. On the other hand, the reality of today, the age I live in, then becomes something fuzzy and chaotic.

  It’s only after a long string of words comes from Beibei on the telephone that I come back to my own space and time.

  “Ma, where are you now? How come I hear train sounds?”

  “Uh, you’re right—I’m on the train.”

  “On the train going where?”

  “Back to the old home in Old Town.”

  “Where’ve you got the time to take a train to Old Town?”

  Beibei doesn’t wait for my answer, but immediately moves on to other things. She doesn’t care about Old Town. She had lived there only for a while when she was quite small. Later on, at home in Beijing, when she answered telephone calls from Old Town, she’d report these to me in the voice of a complete outsider. “Your uncle called. Someone from your old place is trying to get in touch with you.”