Old Town

by Lin Zhe

  The pastor and his wife stared tongue-tied at this fierce and implacable woman. They thought of Miss Huang Shuyi in her student days, such a sweet and wonderful girl. This child was definitely possessed by devils. They firmly believed that here on earth all pain, trouble, and evils were caused by devils.

  When Chaofan had been younger, Huang Shuyi came to West Gate several times to make off with her son, driven perhaps by longing for him, or perhaps consciously to make him a prop in her litigation. Once, with her sick child in her arms, she succeeded in stopping the provincial governor’s special car. At the time, Chaofan was running a high fever and having convulsions. The governor had his secretary send the mother and the child to the hospital while he himself issued a memo requesting the appropriate department to investigate this woman’s grievance. But several months later what Huang Shuyi received was an official notification disallowing a reversal of the case. Her elder brother Huang Jian could not escape implication in the homicide case south of the city. Therefore, Enchun’s and her party membership would not be recognized.

  Huang Shuyi immediately set out on a wandering northward course to seek out a higher level of leadership with whom to make her appeal. At that time she hadn’t one fen to her name, so along the way she got jobs doing rough work, like breaking up quarry stones and carrying heavy loads at depots and wharfs. This stop-and-start journey from Old Town to Beijing ate up more than half a year’s time.

  3.

  WHEN HE RECEIVED his daughter’s telegram from Sixteen Wharf Landing in Shanghai, Dr. Lin just couldn’t stay seated, but paced alone around the dining table, first this way, and then that, the message clutched in his hand. Second Sister had gone out to a meeting and Little Su’er was at the kindergarten. The doctor tried to calm himself down to say a prayer of thanksgiving to Jesus and the Heavenly Father, but as he lowered his head, he just sobbed, unable to say a single word. His heart beating wildly, pu-tong! pu-tong! he impulsively dashed into the street yelling, “Baohua is coming home! My daughter is coming home!”

  The voyage from Shanghai to Old Town would take two days and two nights. He had suffered through the prolonged separation of over ten years but these last two days and nights were just too unbearable. How many times did he sit down? How many times did he stand up? He took Baohua’s picture out of the photo album and guessed what she looked like these days and what his granddaughter looked like. The image of three-year-old Baohua emerged in his mind, dainty and delicate as he held her in his arms, as soft and insubstantial as a kitten. What was the child’s name? He hadn’t known he had a granddaughter. Back when he named Su’er, he had prepared a name to give to a future granddaughter—Hong’er—“Little Rainbow.” A rainbow was the sign of God’s covenant with man.

  Mindlessly the doctor walked out the gate and over to the church where the pastor and his wife were tending the flower garden in the yard. The doctor stood at the fence and said rather idiotically, “Baohua will be home in two days.”

  The couple did not pause in their work. They knew that Baohua would soon be home. “Yes, this batch of flowers is waiting for Baohua’s return. Look how gorgeously they’re blooming!” said Mrs. Chen.

  “She will be on board for several hours. Two days and two nights.”

  The pastor’s wife stood up and gazed off into the distance. “When the railroad comes through here, I’ve just got to go back to Beijing to take a look. I’m really looking forward to a bowl of Dashanlan douzhi. It’s been so many years now…”50

  The three people all soliloquized at cross purposes. The doctor felt the host of feelings clogged up inside him was straining to get out. Turning around, he found himself looking straight at the boss-lady there in the window of the rice shop. She was just then combing her hair and the sight of that head of white hair in the sunlight startled him. Holding her comb, the boss-lady waved at the doctor. He really wanted to shout over from across the main street, “Boss-lady, my daughter’s coming home!” But he swallowed the words that were on the tip of his tongue and instead said a silent prayer. O God, thank you for bringing Baohua back to my side and please look with favor upon that poor mother there.

  The doctor sat in the bus without knowing where he wanted to go. Nor did he know what he wanted to do. Old Town had just this one bus route which crossed the city from West Gate to the side of the moat beyond South Gate. As he passed the provincial newspaper office gate he thought of his niece Baolan whom he hadn’t seen in so long. He decided to get off the bus and look for her. He would invite her to go with them to the dock at noon the day after tomorrow to greet Baohua.

  Baolan’s father and mother both left this world not long after Liberation. Ever since then she had been taken care of by that male student, Ah Jian, her boat mate on the night they returned to Old Town. He provided financial assistance to her so she could attend university in Shanghai. After she graduated, Baolan was busy with her career and unwilling to get married. Ah Jian quietly waited for her. The year before last at the New Year the two of them brought their wedding “happiness candies” to their ninth uncle and ninth aunt. Ah Jian had waited almost ten years.

  To enter the newspaper building to find someone, he had to fill out a form at the gate house. The old fellow on duty saw Baolan’s name and said, “This person has long since stopped working here.”

  “Where has she been reassigned?”

  “A rightist. She went to labor reform.”

  Dr. Lin looked at him in shock. Every New Year, Baolan and Ah Jian would come to West Gate to offer the season’s greetings to him and Second Sister. Baolan was still a well-turned-out person and always sparkling with laughter. It’s true that she had lost weight and looked darker. He just supposed she had gotten sunburned from going to the countryside on reporting assignments.

  It was impossible for him to believe this was really so and stammered out, “I’d like to look for Lin Baolan. The one you said was a rightist was named Lin?”

  “Correct. Lin Baolan. Formerly the “Girl Genius” of this newspaper. She wrote a lot of articles.”

  “You haven’t remembered wrong?”

  The old fellow in the gate house office sent out a sneering laugh from inside the window, then turned away and went on with what he had been doing.

  After who knows how much time passed, the doctor heard him say to someone who had gone into the room for a newspaper, “That person’s looking for Lin Baolan. Do you know where she is now?” The other person said, “Oh, Lin Baolan’s returned from labor reform. She’s a worker at the printing plant.” Coming back to his senses, Dr. Lin asked for the directions and immediately set off.

  In a dingy factory building, every one of the old-style printing machines was pounding away fit to shake the heavens and shift the earth. Somebody told Dr. Lin that the woman in the corner moving paper sheets was Lin Baolan. He excitedly moved forward several steps, then suddenly turned and went back out the door.

  Baolan had been a highly competitive girl. Under these circumstances, she certainly wouldn’t have been happy to meet a Lin family relative. He withdrew a ways and stood under a tree gazing at her. She was loading the paper onto a little wheelbarrow and distributing it at each of the printing machines and then transferring the printed product to another corner. This was the kind of work for a husky fellow. She was bent over the whole time and, from the look of it, extremely tired. Dr. Lin’s third brother and third sister-in-law had so treasured this girl, their only child. What would they have thought had they seen this scene? The doctor felt that he himself had a responsibility he couldn’t shirk regarding Baolan’s present fate. Originally it had been Baoqing who had intercepted Baolan and Ah Jian out at sea and brought them back home. Perhaps that had been a mistake. It was inevitable that Baolan, with her scintillating brilliance and all-too conspicuous talents, would become the bird that sticks its head out and gets hurt.

  I didn’t look after Baolan properly. I should have realized early on that she would stir up trouble for herself. Intelligent pe
ople are always going to be proud and stick their necks out. The Bible says it clearly: God will always block the way of the proud. Over the past ten years, I have been terribly worried about Baohua, but thought little about Baolan. I have been too selfish.

  Seeing the girl laboring so bitterly, he wanted all the more to go forward and lend her a hand, but again decided against bothering her and forced himself to move on.

  Now he especially wanted to meet with Ah Jian. In the Oppose Rightist Movement, many couples broke up, sensing the calamity about to hit them, but Ah Jian married Baolan after she became a rightist element. Dr. Lin, as a senior member of the Lin family, wanted to express his gratitude to Ah Jian directly.

  Ah Jian taught mathematics at a high school. At this moment he was in his office correcting student assignments and was very surprised to see Ninth Uncle. The doctor didn’t ask anything but merely said that Sunday was the exact day of Baohua’s return and that he hoped that Ah Jian and Baolan would come by and see her. Then the doctor got up and firmly shook Ah Jian’s hand. “You’re a good man. Our Baolan was really lucky to get married to you. Thank you!” Ah Jian seemed to catch the drift of the doctor’s words. “Ninth Uncle, rest assured, I’ll spend my life looking after her.”

  When Second Sister returned home, evening was already well advanced. Ninth Brother was sitting in his rocker looking uneasy. He hadn’t gone to the kindergarten to fetch Su’er, nor had he lit the stove to make dinner. Something’s happened, for sure! She pulled over a chair and sat down beside him.

  “Ninth Brother, what’s wrong?”

  Ninth Brother handed the telegram to her. “Baohua has already left Shanghai.”

  Second Sister smiled in relief. “Look at you, so happy that you don’t even want your grandson!”

  Ninth Brother forced himself to return Second Sister’s smile, got up and left to fetch Su’er.

  He had not mentioned to anyone, not even his wife, about what had happened to Baolan. His heart ached so much he couldn’t bring himself to touch on it.

  Baohua’s arrival at the dock was quite impressive. The Lin family, the Guo family, and the three generations of Pastor Chen’s family, several dozen people in all, had arrived early to wait by the water. Relatives that rarely got together were all gathered here today. The eldest son of the Guos dangled a liquor bottle in his hand and told amusing if incoherent stories about Baohua when she was little. He believed that Baohua would bring him a bottle of liquor as a meeting present.

  China was now entering the period of the 1960s when many provinces experienced an endless series of natural disasters. Famine was spreading as quickly as a plague. Old Town, that lucky place, also began to show the symptoms of this. All foodstuffs began to be rationed according to coupons held by the population, but even so, supply still did not meet demand. In order to convert coupons into rice and pork, people started to line up in the middle of the night.

  The liquor that eldest Guo son depended on for his survival was also hit by the famine. Whomever he met he would beg for something to drink. He could walk for more than an hour in the middle of the night to knock on his older sisters’ doors. If his importuning didn’t succeed, he would sit right down on the ground and just howl and wail like a brokenhearted child.

  Baolan had now arrived. There in this crowd she stood out as she always did with her bright laughter and her tastefully selected outfits. Her relatives called her “Girl Genius” and “Reporter.” That Guo alcoholic pestered her with his complaints and troubles. He wanted her to write an article to the government to report that the monthly ration of liquor even when diluted was still not enough to last him two days. Baolan, leaning on Ah Jian’s shoulder, beamed her smile at him. “Ten jin of grain will only distill a little over one jin of liquor. Our country’s in trouble now. You should just drink a little less,” she said.

  Ninth Brother closely watched every twinkle and smile Baolan made, almost forgetting Baohua who at this very moment was drawing close to Old Town. This morning he had asked Second Sister for coupons for ten jin of grain and one half a jin of cooking oil, ready to slip them into Ah Jian’s hand a little later. With Baolan doing heavy work, he had to be sure she was eating well. Second Sister showed no haste in opening the drawer, a sign of the struggle going on within her. This really did put her in a difficult position. For several months now this aging couple had not eaten a full meal, and she had saved a few coupons in the event an even greater famine hit. Ninth Brother had steeled himself to ask for the coupons. Second Sister asked him whom these were for but he only said, “There are people who need these more t han we do.”

  At first he supposed that Baolan’s smile hid her real desperation, and this was like a knife plunging into his breast. Ah Jian always held Baolan’s hand. In conservative Old Town, even sweethearts madly in love with each other rarely held hands in full view. Ah Jian and Baolan’s look of total intimacy was natural and it certainly wasn’t intended to prove anything to others. They had always been this way, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, two lives fused into one. Gradually Ninth Brother’s tension relaxed and a sense of relief washed over him. He thought of his and Second Sister’s own happy marriage. No matter what awful things might happen in this world, a harmoniously married couple’s home was like Noah’s ark, or a harbor in a storm. Their own world of two was far more solid and strong than what was outside.

  He handed the grain and oil coupons back to Second Sister. She looked at him, puzzled. “If you give them to me, I probably would lose them. You’d better take them.”

  Just then the boat docked with a long whistle blast. The doctor’s heart felt as though gigantic forces were at play there. Oh, my precious daughter, my poor Baohua! The day when I and Second Sister go away, who will look after this orphaned mother and fatherless child?

  My Great-Auntie was also there that day. She says that Mother and I were like real refugees. At that time there really were more than a few refugees on board fleeing to Old Town from the famine. Baohua, holding her child against her breast, her belongings packed on her back and pulled behind her, walked into the crowd of people. Among the dozens of people on the shore not one of them recognized her. Baohua and her child stood in the midst of her relatives, who were all looking off into the distance.

  They had traveled this road for more than half a month. In Lanzhou, a piece of their luggage got lost, and they lost yet another piece in Shanghai. Neither mother nor child had changed their clothes in several days. But Baohua was too exhausted to feel upset about this. She was like some frightened mother animal carrying her baby in her mouth as she rushed down a road away from death, afraid only that she might lose the child. At night when they went to sleep she would tie one end of her belt around the child and the other to her own wrist.

  She had made it home. Finally she had transferred the child safely to Old Town. Baohua slowly put the child down, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  When Grandpa was certain that this weather-beaten, utterly travel-worn little woman was Baohua, he didn’t go forward to draw his daughter to him and cry in each other’s arms. He just stood there stunned for a moment, and then abruptly turned and went behind a pile of cargo, and, taking out a handkerchief, wiped the tears from his eyes.

  Old Town folk express their feelings in this kind of self-controlled and restrained way.

  4.

  THE SUMMER I was ten years old, my body began to show some peculiarities. On my chest there bulged two symmetrical little bags as if I had been bitten there by venomous mosquitoes. I really supposed that I had been bitten by mosquitoes. In a few days, the little bags which were as big as peanuts grew to the size of broad beans. I was now worried. There was a doctor in the family, and when I first was able to read I was already leafing through medical magazines. That’s how I learned of a type of fatal illness called cancer.

  At the dinner table I thought I was about to die and was so frightened I couldn’t swallow a thing.

  ” Ah Ma, I’ve got cancer!”<
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  Grandma glanced at me. “Don’t talk nonsense. How could a little child get cancer?”

  “Really!”

  This was just at the time when the Great Cultural Revolution was raging at its fiercest. Grandpa had been ordered to go to study sessions. Great-Auntie was living with us. There were bruises on her cheeks given to her by Ah Chang. The Great Cultural Revolution had raged right into the lunatic asylum and all the crazy people ran out. Ah Chang beat his daddy until he spit up blood and hit my Great-Auntie so terribly that she was afraid to go home.

  Great-Auntie was sitting right across from me and she could see my dread. “Where do you feel bad?” she asked with concern.

  I put down my chopsticks and bowl, and covered my chest with both hands. “Two bags are growing here and they’re getting bigger and bigger every day.”

  The two old sisters immediately commenced to giggle and laugh. A chunk of unchewed rice ball moved out onto the corner of Great-Auntie’s mouth.

  I was going to die, and here they were, laughing at me! I was so mad I wanted to cry.

  Grandma said, “That’s not cancer. It’s you growing up, and very quickly you’ll become a big girl. From now on, when you stand you need to do so with the proper deportment, and when you are seated. And you can’t play all those noisy games rolling around with Chaofan anymore.”

  Great-Auntie licked the rice ball back into her mouth. “It’s the Revolution now and your thinking is still feudal. Never mind, Hong’er, you should still play your innocent ‘green plum and bamboo horse’ childhood games with the little Chen boy, just like in The Story of the Stone…”