Old Town

by Lin Zhe

  “Second Sister, I’ve never before seen you sleeping the day away. You’re all tired out, for sure.”

  As she spoke, Elder Sister opened up a bundle she was carrying, revealing a stack of neatly piled thin noodles. “Thin noodles” were a specialty of Old Town. Ordinary people could eat them only on New Year’s Day and birthdays.

  Am I still dreaming? Second Sister rubbed her eyes. “The sun rose in the west and your brother-in-law has gone mad. He told me to bring these noodles over to you.”

  Has that devil-fiend suddenly turned kind and generous? That really would be a miracle. This is the angel’s doing, for sure. Second Sister thought of her prayer just now. She had prayed for the angel to give her a pan full of cooked rice, and instead got this big pack of noodles. Pastor Chen once said that God gives you far, far more than you can imagine.

  “Thank the Lord. Sis, to tell you the truth, today our family was going to go hungry.”

  “Is your family’s foreign Buddha working his powers for you? This morning he asked me how the doctor gets by now that he’s out of work, and I said he depends on Second Sister’s pair of clever hands. He told me to bring over a pack of noodles, so I quickly wrapped up this bundle and came right over, before he could change his mind. As I was going out the door he said to be sure to invite you over tomorrow.”

  Second Sister left Elder Sister and went into the bedroom and closed the door. She knelt on the floor and uttered a prayer of thanks to her Heavenly Father.

  When the children returned they saw bowls of steaming rice-flour noodles on the table. They stared at each other in amazement, unable to guess whose birthday it must be today.

  Second Sister supposed that her brother-in-law’s invitation to visit them and delivered in this way was merely out of courtesy or for form’s sake. She took out a silken floss vest from the trunk and got it ready for Elder Sister to take back with her, one gift for another. Unexpectedly, though, after breakfast, two sedan chairs arrived at the door with the word that “the boss” had sent them over to fetch the Mrs. and Young Auntie, that is, Baohua. This put Second Sister in a bit of a spot. It had already been several years since she had last seen this brother-in-law, and that was before she had fled Old Town as a refugee during the war. One day, Elder Sister had scorched the rice, and when her man came to the table and smelled the burnt smell, he snatched up the rice bowl and smashed it right against Elder Sister’s nose, causing blood to spurt out all over. When she then ran off in tears to seek refuge in Second Sister’s home, Second Sister made up her mind that Elder Sister should make a clean break from that son-of-a-bitch husband. She told the older woman, “I’ll take care of you. If I can’t take care of you as long as you live, my children will take over from me.” When Brother-in-Law Zhang came for his wife, Second Sister wouldn’t let him in, and as he stood outside cursing and swearing in language that was painful to hear, Second Sister brought a bucket of cold water from the well and dashed it over him. Spineless Elder Sister went home again with her husband, all the same. Her child was there, so there was nothing more that her younger sister could say on the matter. But from that time forward, the Guo family had broken off all contact with this in-law of theirs.

  As she sat at her dressing table, the thought occurred to Second Sister that there was something a little peculiar about the whole thing. Her brother-in-law’s family were surnamed Zhang, not an Old Town name, not originally. The Zhang ancestors had fled to Old Town from famine up north. They were proficient at arms and boxing and they brawled their way into top control of the whole area. By the current generation, the several brothers had gone from bad to worse. At the top they colluded with the police, and at the bottom they ganged together with local bad hats and riffraff. The year before last, when the price of rice shot up, the Zhangs hoarded food supplies and made a major killing on the prices. The government plastered the streets with notices against private holdings of gold and silver, but the Zhangs brazenly made large-scale purchases. The night before, Elder Sister had secretly told her that under the floorboards of the Zhang mansion it was all gold and silver.

  Second Sister was still hesitating when Ninth Brother came into the room. She told him, “I really don’t want to go.”

  Ninth Brother moved in front of the mirror and gazed at his wife admiringly. “Just go. We shouldn’t hold grudges. Maybe he’s changed now. If Jesus could forgive the men who nailed him fast to the cross, what person couldn’t be forgiven?”

  To keep the Guo family face, Second Sister didn’t mention the history of the Zhangs, and at this moment she found it impossible to talk about her own misgivings. There was so much about the people and things of this world that Ninth Brother would never understand.

  When the sedan chairs arrived by the moat at the southern part of Old Town, Brother-in-Law Zhang, all smiles, and holding a gold-plated water pipe, greeted her at the door. He had grown very corpulent—the House of Zhang had prospered and grown fat during these hunger years.

  “Oh, Second Sister, you’re as pretty as ever. Does your husband give you some elixir of life to keep you from getting old? Just look at your elder sister—she’s looking ancient enough to be your mother!”

  “Second Sister’s husband doesn’t have any fairy elixir, only a good temper. If Brother-in-Law’s temper were good, Elder Sister would surely turn young.”

  Second Sister was straightway invited into the dining room where a sumptuous repast was set out on the grand twelve-place dining table. It was just like the wedding banquet she had dreamed of the night before, where there was everything she could ever wish for. Elder Sister also seemed a bit bemused, and she whispered to her younger sister. “This could be a Hongmen banquet.”42 Second Sister had never read as widely as her sister and didn’t know what “Hongmen banquet” meant, but she did sense Elder Sister’s unease.

  As he pulled on his water pipe, Brother-in-Law Zhang kept on praising Second Sister’s good looks. Back then, he said, if the Guo family had not insisted on marrying off their daughters starting with the oldest, it would have been Second Sister who entered the Zhang home, and that’s for sure.

  “Brother-in-Law, in our family we are all one line of sons and daughters, and I am not pleased with this kind of talk. Your invitation today should be for some other, respectable matter, should it not?”

  “Of course! Second Sister is exceedingly intelligent. Eat, eat! First eat! Second Sister’s husband lost his job so things at home can’t be all that easy for you. I have given special orders to the kitchen to prepare more good things to eat so that you can take them back with you. The children can satisfy their craving for delicious things.”

  I’m sure he holds a grudge against me for splashing cold water on him, and today he wants to take advantage of our hunger to shame me. “These days, how many people could compare to the Zhang family? Brother-in-Law has invited me alone to eat all these exotic delicacies, but wouldn’t it have been better to cook a few buckets of rice gruel and set up a tent to provide relief to poor people? Doing good deeds has its own rewards.”

  “What do poor people have to do with me? They’re poor because that’s how fate predestined them. Listen, Second Sister, your brother-in-law is no Bodhisattva. Today I’ve invited you here not to provide you with relief. This isn’t just a friendly banquet. I have a money-earning matter that I would like to ask your help with.”

  And as he spoke, Brother-in-Law drew out from inside his lapel three silver dollars. “Take them. Consider it a prepayment.”

  Second Sister grew even more puzzled and ill at ease. “What can I, one woman, do to help the Zhang family?”

  Brother-In-Law lowered his voice: “My big brother has a business going with Old Ridge and needs a woman to pretend to be a rich wife taking goods back to her family home. Leaving Old Town isn’t the problem. And at the other end, receipt of the goods has been all arranged. It’s only one portion of the road midway there that we can’t be sure about.”

  “What can I do?”


  “You’re that rich wife! Go one trip and get this amount.” Her brother-in-law opened three fingers. “Loudly clinking, real silver dollars!”

  Second Sister had not yet touched her chopsticks. If up to then she had behaved out of a feigned reserve, now she couldn’t eat at all. She didn’t even know what kind of goods were to be escorted. Her heart beat wildly, pu-tong, pu-tong. The name Old Ridge was an extremely sensitive one. Enchun and that girl student were there. Whoever had anything to do with Old Ridge would be committing the crime of “contacting communist bandits,” and that brought with it a beheading. The Zhang family was doing business you could get beheaded for.

  No, I am a respectable woman from a respectable family. I haven’t the courage to run goods for you. These unspoken words were on the tip of her tongue but in her mind also floated the image of that rice jar so starkly bare. The noodles that Elder Sister had brought over would take care of three days at the most. After that, where would they get their food from? And the children’s school fees had to be paid soon. Where was the money for that? Three silver dollars were right before her, radiating their enticing gleam.

  “Now, Second Sister, Brother-in-Law wouldn’t hurt you. You come across quite proper and very prosperous. There’s no need to make you up to look like some rich fellow’s wife. It’s sure to be extremely safe. After you make a few runs, your family will not worry about food or clothing.”

  “Let me think about this…”

  Second Sister got up and went into the back garden where she sat on a bench. First of all, she needed to decide whether or not she would be violating a commandment. Under Ninth Brother’s influence, she saw the communists through different eyes. The Zhangs are selling to the communists and earning the communists’ money. I am just helping deliver goods, nothing our Heavenly Father would blame me for, surely? But I can’t discuss this with Ninth Brother. If I let him know that his own wife was taking a desperate risk and breaking the law, all for a few measures of rice, his male dignity would be hurt.

  After turning this over and over and reasoning this way and that, Second Sister decided to earn this money. For this she made a prayer, asking for the Holy Spirit to protect her and give her a safe trip.

  She returned to the dinner table and asked, “When do I leave?”

  “This evening.”

  “To and from, how long does it take?”

  “Three or four days.”

  A woman from a respectable family who does not return home at night was a big matter, indeed. No matter what, she had to get some word to Ninth Brother. She got up and said good-bye.

  Brother-In-Law said, “When the time comes, a chair will be by to fetch you.”

  Along the way, Second Sister thought up many excuses and pretexts. Elder Sister wasn’t feeling well and wanted her to stay with her for a couple of days. The Zhangs had a relative who wanted a trousseau made…No, that was no good. Lying was a sin. How could I avoid lying and not offend Ninth Brother’s sense of dignity?

  Returning home, she put it to Ninth Brother in this way: “Someone over in Old Ridge is bringing in a batch of goods through the Zhangs and they need a woman to help deliver it.”

  “Why would they need a woman?”

  “Wouldn’t a wife returning to her old home want to bring nine or ten shoulder poles of goods as a pious gesture to her parents?”

  Ninth Brother lowered his head and said nothing. The newspaper often carried reports of encirclement and extermination campaigns against Old Ridge. The guerrilla bands up in the mountains certainly must be having a hard time of it.

  Second Sister sensed Ninth Brother’s lack of opposition, so she hurried off to the rice shop before it was nightfall. Paper yuan was worthless, but silver dollars still had value. She spent one of these and bought a stock of emergency food supplies and items of daily use. She gave one silver dollar to Ninth Brother so he could buy medicines for the clinic. Ninth Brother didn’t ask where this money came from. It didn’t matter—this was a blessing from heaven. Second Sister concealed the other silver dollar. This was the first time that she hid household funds from Ninth Brother. O Angel, forgive me. I have to keep a little emergency money for this family, for these three children.

  2.

  FOR SOMEWHAT MORE than half a year, the Zhangs would send a sedan chair every month to fetch Second Sister and take her “back to her old home.” She never concerned herself with what had been loaded beneath the seat of the sedan chair or packed at the ends of the porters’ shoulder poles. It was as if the moment that she saw those goods with her own eyes she would offend heaven. Not knowing was no sin. She scrupulously avoided sinning to gain this hard-earned money and so before each trip she would very calmly pray to her Heavenly Father to keep her safe.

  One woman leading a group of brawny men climbed mountains and crossed ridges, pushed through Guomindang military police checkpoints, penetrated the haunts of bandits and wolves, and were beset by all manner of perils. With every step they took they might have plunged to their deaths in lonely ravines. What kind of courage and audacity did this woman possess?

  Time changes everything. Delivering goods for Old Ridge’s guerrilla force eventually became a special honor and glory. All kinds of people connected with it floated to the surface, either taking credit for others’ achievements, or seeking to use this to expiate crimes they had committed. The boss of Old Town’s biggest silk factory had funded those shipments and thus became a “red capitalist” and a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Elder Sister’s two Zhang family brothers-in-law were put up on charges of homicide. They both should have been marched, hands tied behind them, to the execution ground, but they appealed to the new regime on the grounds of their revolutionary merits and so escaped death.

  There once was a playwright of Old Town-style opera who tried to bring to the stage the story of the Old Ridge guerrillas. He had interviewed the red capitalist and laboriously tracked down my grandmother. Before meeting her he had already formed the strong impression that she was some fabled heroine and he had hopes of writing a revolutionary masterpiece.

  Comrade Second Sister Guo was clearly a disappointment to this playwright. She insisted that she was just a woman. Her husband had lost his job, and to keep her family from starving to death, she just had to perform that arduous task. She didn’t even know what was in the packages the porters were carrying with their shoulder poles. Nor did she know who the people were who received the goods. The playwright prompted her by saying that it had been rifles and ammunition for the guerrillas and that she had accomplished a great deed for the Revolution. But Second Sister stubbornly argued, “I didn’t know, I really didn’t know. I was only doing this to earn a little money for rice!” The playwright didn’t realize that Second Sister was just then pleading her innocence to her angel, and he thought this ignorant housewife was a bit deranged. And so, reckoning the whole thing to be hopeless, he closed his notebook and left.

  In talking about the past, especially those times when Elder Sister came running to them for refuge, the two sisters would gab on and on about that wicked fellow who beat his wife even in his old age. Elder Sister said her husband actually wasn’t all bad. “He had helped the communists and helped you Lins out.” Second Sister let out a snort of disgust. “The Zhangs still owe me for two trips. They are just plain black-hearted. Imagine cheating a woman out of payment for which she risked death!” As for helping the communists, Second Sister had her own views on that. She once told Elder Sister, “That year when the communist’s head was hung on the South Gate city wall, it’s very likely the Zhangs had betrayed him.” Elder Sister turned pale and cried out in fright, “Never talk such rubbish!” Second Sister apologized, saying that she hated that brother-in-law so much she just didn’t know what she was saying.

  Older people remember when the communist was beheaded and publicly displayed. His head on the city wall became for the timid and conservative people of Old Town a nightmare they couldn’t
shake off. Second Sister didn’t know that this also set off a ruthless internal purge by the communists. Nor did she know that some people were unjustly blamed for it, among these Huang Shuyi’s older brother. Second Sister was a housewife who kept well away from all the political whirlpools but this ordinary housewife had witnessed the astounding affair. Her reasoning and conclusions may have been the closest of all to what had really happened.

  It was almost the New Year and “the rich wife” was again about to return to her family home. As Second Sister sat in the sedan chair, she discovered there was a new face among the shoulder-pole porters and clearly not someone who had grown up in a home where they did heavy labor. She imagined that, like Ninth Brother, the fellow was some out-of-work scholar. Because of her sympathy for him, she would glance at him from time to time. She also found that the shoulder-pole loads seemed lighter than previously and that the chair itself fairly floated above the ground.

  There was no avoiding the South Gate inspection post. This was within the Zhangs’ sphere of influence and they had often passed through it without ever being stopped for checking. The atmosphere today was very different. Far off down the middle of the road Second Sister saw several policemen poised for action. The damp and rainy air was heavy with ill omen. She quickly took out the Zhangs’ fake road pass. That was the travel request from her “high official husband” to the military police along the way. With rifles held at the ready, the police swarmed forward. She forced herself to sit calmly and motionlessly in the sedan chair. She saw them ransacking a few trunks. These contained bottles and cans of no worth at all. Were the Zhangs doing this death-defying business for such stuff? She took special note of the baleful look of one policeman as he appraised that scholar. Is he going to be called out for a frisking? Just as she grew worried about this, that policeman waved his hand to let them pass. The chair was lifted and Second Sister closed her eyes and endlessly thanked her angel. O Angel, please protect me. Protect me one last time. From now on I will no longer risk my life to earn this money. Even though the Zhangs are sitting on my pay, I want to forget all about it. Then, on second thought, she said to herself, Since I’ve decided to give up my pay for those last two times, why not decide right here and now to turn around and go back home?