Old Town

by Lin Zhe

“What nonsense,” Grandma interrupted her.

  I didn’t know what these two old ladies’ gorgeous and mysterious allusions meant and I wallowed all alone in my feelings of self-pity. I felt terribly isolated, as if cast aside. At that moment I thought of Chaofan and wanted to see him badly.

  The West Gate church had long ceased to exist and a revolutionary committee name-board had been hung up on that little wooden building. Chaofan and his granny had been driven out of it to a small and awfully drafty hut beside the city moat. I told him I had something important to tell him and we both squeezed into the space under the bridge. With tears streaming down my face I told Chaofan that I was going to die. Grabbing hold of his hand, I made him feel the lumps of cancer on my chest. We knew how dark and scary death was. During the early part of the Cultural Revolution, Pastor Chen’s suicide had been an enormous shock to us. Its inescapable shadow enveloped our young years.

  I saw terror and hurt in Chaofan’s tear-flecked eyes. That gave me great comfort and satisfaction. So I wasn’t so totally insignificant after all.

  Suddenly he shouted in a strange voice, “I won’t let you die! I just won’t let you die!”

  “I don’t want to die either. I’m scared!” I said, crying.

  “If you’re really going to die, I’ll carry you on my back and we’ll both jump into Little West Lake!”

  In those days, corpses were often pulled out of that lake. A few couples had tied themselves together and jumped in there.

  I believed that Chaofan would do that. A gust of strength blew into me, like a ball being blown up, and made me no longer afraid. I even felt a beautiful sense of tragic heroism.

  That evening, Grandma went to the study session to see Grandpa. Study session was also called “being in the cowshed.” It was now Shuiguan’s son’s turn for night duty there, so he would arrange for Grandpa and Grandma to meet. That day she had been cooking some good things for Grandpa to eat, like Tea Leaf Eggs, or Eight Treasures in Sauce. I tagged along for a taste of these delicacies.

  Great-Auntie and I sat in the sky well, taking in the cool air. “Just go out and play, why don’t you?” she said. “I won’t tell your grandma.”

  At this time, Chaofan’s granny had started looking after him. When Mrs. Chen moved out of the church she took the organ with her. During the day she went to the revolutionary committee to sweep the floor and wash the toilets. In the evening she went back to the little hut to teach her grandson to write characters and to practice playing the organ.

  I again thought about my cancer. Without knowing it I rubbed my chest with both hands. Great-Auntie tapped me there with her big rush fan and giggled.

  “What are you laughing at?”

  “Ah, Hong’er! Those are women’s secrets. You can’t rub your breasts in front of people.”

  She had said “breasts,” not “chest” or “cancer lumps.” Suddenly I seemed to get a vague inkling of something. My whole body was starting to burn like ignited charcoal.

  “You’re starting to grow breasts. In two more years you’ll be growing into a real woman. You can then have children. Your great-uncle’s wife entered our Guo family when she was only fourteen years old. She was fifteen when she gave birth to Gan’er.”

  O heaven, this is much more serious than cancer. Today, I let Chaofan feel my chest and I raised my blouse to show him those two little red and swelling bags. But how will I explain this to him? In the darkness I curled up in a ball, so ashamed that I wished I could just die.

  Great-Auntie chattered on nonstop. I think she was talking about things from The Story of the Stone. She said that a girl in her previous life had been an herb growing out the crack of a stone, and there was a boy who had been that stone in his previous life.

  “I saw it all before. You and the Chen family’s little grandson had unfinished business from your previous lives. The year we went to the dock to meet you and your mother, you saw that bunch of strangers crowding all around and you were so scared you started howling and crying. No one could coax or cajole you. Then that small boy handed you a little pinwheel. You looked at him and smiled. At that time I foresaw both of your future lives. And I’ve been guessing all along who owed a debt to whom in your previous lives.”

  It’s impossible for me to recall just what day of what year Chaofan entered my life, as if he were innate in what had been eternally predestined for me. Why, after all, would two apparently accidental spirits make an appointment to come to this world?

  On one snowy day, Chrysanthemum sat in front of me stirring her coffee. This character had disappeared for several months, like the proverbial clay ox thrown into the sea, and I thought that she had found her final anchorage. But she came floating back up to the surface and drifted back into her previous groove. She drifted from one man’s embrace to another’s, tasting to the fullest the winds and dust of carnality and the vicissitudes of life, but she always believed that before she came to this world, God or the Holy Spirit, or some supernatural force beyond human comprehension, had already prepared her other half. They were searching for each other in the vast sea of humanity, a search that was bitter and painful.

  “Now just think about this calmly.” She stopped moving the little spoon in her hand as she earnestly looked at me. “Your other half stood right there blocking your vision when you were nothing but primordial chaos, so how was it you both got on so well, but then ‘raised the bridle bits to take your separate paths’”?

  Why indeed did we raise the bridle bits and go our separate ways? Why couldn’t we have become like Grandpa and Grandma? In war, sickness, poverty, life, and death, nothing could separate them. When Grandpa died, Grandma prayed diligently every day, speaking with God and Jesus to let her return before much longer to heaven and be reunited with Ninth Brother.

  Chrysanthemum went back to stirring her coffee. “It might be that you two are both going in a circle and that in the end you will get back together again. Isn’t there some song that says that when you reach the end you return to the beginning?”

  All I could do was to bitterly smile. Sometimes I would imagine my own declining years. I would always experience the beautiful and heart-stirring feelings in the form of those white-haired couples walking hand in hand in the evening’s fading light. But by no means was that to be Chaofan’s and my fate. We would only face each other in silence and count up the hurtful grudges we bore against each other.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – PATHOS ON ISOLATED ISLAND

  1.

  GREAT-AUNTIE FELL SICK in the summer of her eighty-fifth year. She couldn’t eat and would get bloated whenever she took even a little rice gruel. Looking in the mirror and seeing a face growing more emaciated by the day, she would remember her mother who died this same way. Old Town people called it the cut-off-from-food sickness, something like anorexia. The very first time Old Lady Guo ate a meal that held no savor for her, she announced that she was going to die because her own mother and her mother’s mother had both died of this sickness. When Great-Auntie realized that her own time on earth would not be long, she grew both afraid and angry. Her husband had been dead for over three years now. That devil just won’t let go of me! He’s probably already been reborn in some other person’s family and is waiting for me to die and begin another life of retributive fate.

  The older generation’s attitude toward life and death was more relaxed than ours today. They don’t struggle with fate by going to a hospital for a liver or lung transplant. They all say that when the King of Hell calls your name from the register at three o’clock in the morning, you can just forget about dawdling around another two hours before reporting in. Although my Great-Auntie was scared and angry, she didn’t resist. She pulled out a statue of the Bodhisattva from under her bed and started praying to it. Every day she would say, “O Bodhisattva, I don’t know what form that devil is in his new life, but if he’s a fish in the water, please make me a bird in the sky. If he’s here as a human, please just keep me as a ghost in hell.” />
  Apart from this, she wanted to lose no time in settling some matters long weighing on her mind. There were only two of these, and both were related to marriage. One was her worry over the Guo family’s “temple incense sticks and candles,” that is, the continuation of the family line. The government had started to implement its single-child policy. The third generation of the eldest Guo son was entirely female. Second Son’s only child had been the girl with “peach epilepsy.” Third Son had died young, Fourth Son had produced no issue, and Fifth Son had a boy who hadn’t yet married. We Guos are the descendants of General Guo Ziyi. The incense sticks and candles must be kept burning. Could we scrape together a little money for Gan’er to get another daughter-in-law? Or spend it on moving the Guo family cemetery to a place with better feng shui? She always felt it very likely that one or two gold pieces had been left behind under the rotting floorboards of the old Zhang residence and she wanted her Guo nephews to know this secret.

  There was another secret—one of the heart. All her life she had adored Ninth Brother. The many things she told him out of jealousy she ought never to have said. For example, she told him that long ago all the letters that Second Sister sent to him when he was studying in Shanghai came from her own pen. She also frequently brought up the subject of Third Sister. She said that Third Sister really didn’t elope with anybody, but became a foreign-Buddha nun. Now, though, she wanted to be totally candid with Second Sister and seek her forgiveness.

  Great-Auntie believed that my grandfather had secretly cherished Third Sister all along. Second Sister and he enjoyed a loving and affectionate married life, but that was just on the surface. He had never given his entire heart to Second Sister, for it had been carved up into several separate and unrelated pieces. Third Sister occupied one of these and his “family” in Shanghai, another. The evidence was irrefutable—ever since Ninth Brother returned to Old Town during the War of Resistance, he had always planned to take a nostalgic journey back to Shanghai. In the spring of 1965, he left Second Sister behind and went on his pilgrimage all alone, returning only at the end of the summer. Ninth Brother had gone to see the Shanghai woman. He had to see her. Only by doing so could he really show that he was a man of affection and good faith.

  Great-Auntie started to write a letter and kept at it off and on for over ten days. She packed two letters into one big envelope and mailed it to Second Sister at West Gate. She wanted to make Second Sister carry out her last request never to rest until the Guo family’s incense and candles prospered and flourished.

  As she always did, Grandma stood outside the gate waiting for the postman. Sometimes she vaguely sensed that she was back in those terrible wartime years, waiting for Ninth Brother’s letters. During the fiery and passionate 1950s, she longed for mail from Baoqing in Korea and Baohua in Xinjiang. Actually, nowadays only two people wrote to her. One was me, studying in Beijing, and the other was Great-Auntie in South Town. Great-Auntie was often at West Gate but she still wrote her letters. Letter writing was an addiction for her. Often in the morning she would put the letter in the mailbox by the gate and in the afternoon appear in front of Second Sister.

  Two days after she received her elder sister’s letter, Grandma finally put on her old-age glasses and tore open the envelope. Nothing more than old sesame seeds and rotten grains trivia on top of her totally made-up stories! It took some effort to read the cramped, fly head-sized written characters, and mostly she just skimmed over these pages and put them into her drawer for me to read when I came home for the summer. Grandma never understood why I would take any interest in an old woman’s foolish ravings. Still, she saved those letters for me and was quite happy to chatter on about the memories they aroused. She would tell me, though, that such-and-such a thing was like this and not like that. These two old ladies could talk poles apart about the same thing.

  Grandma saw only a few words throughout those ten densely written pages: I, your elder sister, am suffering from the cut-off-from-food sickness. The women in the older generations of our family all died from this. She stuffed the letter into a drawer, took out her bottle of cure-all Somidon, and then got on Bus No. 1. This bus set off from West Gate and stopped at Great-Auntie’s gate right next to the station.

  When Great-Auntie saw Second Sister, she was so happy that tears came to her eyes. “Second Sister, you’ve forgiven me? If not, it will weigh like a great stone on my soul, and I’ll have a hard time avoiding that devil Zhang.”

  Grandma didn’t know what Great-Auntie wanted her to forgive. When she saw the Bodhisattva set out on the dining table she felt very uneasy. Ever since Ninth Brother had converted her to believe in Jesus, she would always get an uncomfortable feeling whenever she saw a clay idol.

  “Since when have you been worshipping Bodhisattva? Quick! Get a piece of cloth and cover it up!”

  Great-Auntie took a face towel and put it over Bodhisattva’s head. “Death comes to everyone. I’ve lived to be eighty years old and that’s old by any account. The only thing I ask is never to run into that devil in my next life.”

  My grandma really believed that Great-Auntie wouldn’t live much longer, for she had gotten so thin she was barely recognizable. The cut-off-from-food sickness would cook you dry, bit by bit. She actually didn’t feel sad about this. After my grandpa went, Grandma eagerly looked forward to the Lord’s call home. Regardless of who she heard had passed on, she would always softly complain, “How come it’s not yet my turn?”

  “He certainly isn’t letting me go,” Great-Auntie moaned. “He said that he would look for me to be his wife in the next life. The day he breathed his last, he gripped my hand ever so tightly…Oh, Second Sister, I’m really terrified about meeting him again.”

  Grandma felt it was her responsibility to help her elder sister escape disaster in the next life and she knit her brows to summon inspiration.

  “Just believe in Jesus. When you believe in Jesus, your soul will rise up and enter heaven. That one’s spent his whole life committing wicked deeds, so you can be sure he’s gone to hell. There’s no way he could find you.”

  Great-Auntie’s wrinkled face broke into a smile. “That would be just wonderful! Ninth Brother’s in heaven and I would meet him before you do. I would say to him, ‘Second Sister’s thinking about you every day.’ Quick, tell me how to be counted a believer in your foreign Bodhisattva!”

  “Jesus is not Bodhisattva. Jesus is God. First throw away that clay Bodhisattva and I’ll go call Mrs. Chen to pray for you.”

  Then Grandma got up and hurried back to West Gate to invite Mrs. Chen over. The church at West Gate had just been restored. Mrs. Chen, now also in her eighties, was bent over almost ninety degrees at the waist, but her zeal for preaching was now more exalted than ever. Every day, all bent over, she spared no effort in spreading the Good News everywhere.

  Great-Auntie didn’t get rid of Bodhisattva. She kept bowing to it and put it back under her bed, saying, “I am sorry, but because Rotten Egg is under your control, I’m afraid of going where you are and meeting him there. I want to go to the place run by the foreign Bodhisattva.”

  Two hours later, bent-over Mrs. Chen entered the Zhang home. The three old ladies held hands and prayed and Mrs. Chen sprinkled a little water on my great-aunt.

  Great-Auntie was in good spirits as she waited to die. She took her fine silk clothes out of her trunk and every night would fall asleep exquisitely dressed. She thought that when she opened her eyes she would be in heaven and could then speak with Ninth Brother. But to everyone’s surprise, she gradually recovered and she lived past one hundred years. She is still going strong.

  Swishing her reed fan, Grandma looked at me as she sat on the special seat, Grandpa’s venerable rattan rocking chair. “Your great-aunt has really taken leave of her senses. It was nothing of the sort at all. At the time you were still small, and your little cousins were being born one after another. I really couldn’t get away. Your grandpa sent us a postcard from every place he stopped a
t. If you’re staying for a while there’re still more of these. Here they are, all in the drawer.”

  A pile of postcards now faded yellow recorded my grandfather’s feelings on his nostalgic journey. It was obvious that he was in a fairly good mood.

  At the beginning of the 1960s, China suffered a period of famine brought on by natural disasters. Then, finally, like a withered tree coming to life again in the spring, benign scenes of peace and prosperity appeared. The news media and public opinion, with an ardor fit to set the heavens ablaze, called for study of Lei Feng’s selfless spirit. As Grandpa saw it, the Lei Feng spirit was the embodiment of the spirit of Jesus. The beautiful age of “Everyone loves me and I love everyone” had arrived. The injustices and terrors my grandfather and many others had suffered during the 1950s counted for nothing. If you didn’t go through the storm, how would you see the rainbow? Communism was the rainbow in the sky after the storm had passed.

  If you could say life still held just a few small undesirable things, these would be Baohua’s marriages. Baohua wanted to marry again. My grandfather’s journey avoided this very event.

  Their future son-in-law was a northern cadre who had originally come south to liberate Old Town. Now he was the Public Security bureau chief in a district commissioner’s office about thirty miles from Old Town. After Baohua transferred to civilian life and returned home, she worked at the hospital under the jurisdiction of that office. When this Public Security chief entered the Lin home for the first time, an army greatcoat thrown over his shoulders, right off my grandfather sensed with alarm that things did not bode well for his daughter. For some reason, he reminded my grandfather of Division Commander Hu. He had the same Henan accent, and the same loud voice. Even though the fellow tried his best to ingratiate himself with his future parents-in-law that day, Grandpa could also tell immediately he was a totally bad-tempered and unruly man. With Baohua as always so petite and delicate, one great roar from this Public Security chief might hurt her.