by Lin Zhe
The commerce bureau was also split into two factions, and Fangzi and Baoqing joined one of these, where she was a backbone element in it. Today the rival faction had stuck up a big character poster exposing Baoqing’s reactionary lineage. Fangzi and the other leaders could but “flick away their tears and decapitate Ma Su”54—they posted a notice announcing Baoqing’s expulsion. This calamity was Fangzi’s golden battlefield opportunity to set about uprooting her husband’s social relationships, and her mother-in-law was the number one enemy target for uprooting. That always elegant and poised woman was a disease in her vital organs. Because Baoqing always so deeply venerated his mother—for him there was no one in this world more pretty and capable than she—Fangzi had gnashed her teeth in hatred early on. She never expected to have to face this choice. To her surprise, Baoqing preferred divorce and to stick with his West Gate family no matter what its fate might be. How could this have not driven her crazy?
The doctor walked along aimlessly, like a withered leaf blown about by the wind this way and that. He had now arrived at the hospital, but he had forgotten why he had come in the first place. Uneasily he stood at the outpatient main gate. From his pallor he looked like someone needing to register as a patient himself.
It was the rightist nurse, just then sweeping the floor, who first noticed him. Coming up to him, she asked, “Dr. Lin, are you ill?”
“Don’t take it to heart. Right! Don’t take it to heart, couldn’t it…”
The rightist nurse lowered her voice. “Dr. Lin, your Heavenly Father will be by your side.”
In those years past, he had tried to get this same person to believe that there was an Almighty Father in heaven. That one would surely be blessed by relying on Him. But the rightist nurse to this day had not accepted any kind of religious belief. Right now she was just comforting the doctor by offering medicine when the disease was at its most critical stage. The look of despair on his face made her uneasy.
Heavenly Father? Dr. Lin trembled inside. It had been many days since he had prayed in earnest. He had not only closed his eyes and ears from the people around him, he did this to God too. He truly couldn’t understand why, if people were learning from Lei Feng’s wonderful millennium, all of a sudden the beacon fires had blazed forth on all sides and the entire world descended into insane chaos. Pastor Chen had said that everything that happened was permitted by God. O God! Why did you permit all this?
“Dr. Lin, you wanted me to go on living. Now I want you to go on living.”
“Go on living, of course…”
Footsteps sounded in the corridor. The rightist nurse rushed off, broom in hand.
The doctor went to Old Town University where Enchun worked as a furnace stoker in the school’s heating plant. The doctor by now had come here more than a few times to rendezvous with Enchun. In the most recent struggle session, the Red Guards had shorn Enchun’s head. Today the doctor brought with him a pair of little scissors to trim what remained of Enchun’s hair.
“Enchun, come, have a seat. I’ll tidy up your hair a bit.”
Enchun laughed good-naturedly and pulled over a broken wooden crate and sat down. “Actually, it doesn’t matter. Nobody sees me, and I can’t see me either.”
The doctor stood behind Enchun and worked on his hair practically strand by strand. Until this point in time he still hadn’t told him that Pastor Chen was no longer in this world. Enchun supposed that West Gate remained peaceful under Ah Ming’s protective influence.
“Uncle Lin, after this, don’t come and see me anymore. Don’t leave West Gate. I am doing all right. Physical labor is the best rest for mental labor. Please convey to my daddy and ma to take good care of themselves and to look after little Chaofan.”
“Mmmh.”
“I’m studying socialist economics. Here I can continue my research. There are a lot of specialized subjects that have been denied right across the board. The professors have all burned their books. Compared to them, I count myself very fortunate.”
Enchun had long been reading a tome thicker than the Bible called Capital. It was written by Karl Marx. The volume was inside the broken crate, and each time he added coal to the furnace he would then wash his hands clean with soap, take out the book, and continue reading.
“Enchun, way back then you described to me the beautiful vistas of communism. That truly attracted me to it. I really embraced communist…”
“Uncle Lin, don’t be too pessimistic. Setbacks are inevitable. Our China is a backward, agricultural society. Ideological problems will definitely appear.”
“Setbacks are inevitable.” Enchun is always saying that. The doctor was profoundly moved by the persistence of Enchun’s faith.
He always came to see Enchun out of deep compassion and pity. It was just like bringing a present, but one that was never handed over. Enchun did not need compassion and pity. The doctor thought of Baoqing. My poor sons. He had the impression that they never had a boyhood. It was as if from the beginning both sons were the men of the Lin family. He couldn’t even remember ever having embraced Baosheng and Baoqing. What leaped before his eyes across the decades were scenes of Baohua wearing a little dress and little leather shoes, pouting prettily in his arms. “I should show my sons some love and concern,” he thought.
This month Baoqing was a few days late in giving his parents the allowance for their living expenses. Ninth Brother noticed that when his son passed a heavy envelope to his mother his eyes appeared confused and shy. Second Sister dumped a pile of tiny denomination bills and a handful of coins out of the envelope. “How come it’s all in small change?” she asked, puzzled. Baoqing didn’t reply. He had stolen some of it from Wei’er’s savings jar. He also sold old books and newspapers behind his old lady’s back before being able to put together fifteen yuan.
Ninth Brother walked into the kitchen and brought out the Eight Treasures rice pudding, then warmed it in the stove, and placed it before his son and said, “Eat it while it’s hot.”
Baoqing tilted his head in surprise as he looked at his father. From when he was small until now his father had never personally served him food. Furthermore, of late his father had been paying no attention to him at all. Such tremendous warmth was hard for Baoqing to bear. He stood up, quelling the storm of emotions within him behind a fit of dry coughing.
“Dad, you eat too.”
His father directed at him a friendly hand gesture and a glance filled with tender love and affection.
Second Sister was also so surprised that she forgot all about pursuing the question of the envelope full of loose change and small banknotes.
Under his father’s gaze, Baoqing gulped down the pudding and wondered what this was all about today. He still couldn’t get over receiving such sudden fatherly love.
Ninth Brother drew the money-filled envelope from Second Sister’s hand and said to his son, “Your ma and I still have something left over from our inheritance, so use this money to buy something nutritious for Wei’er.”
Baoqing looked down, not daring to move. His tears fell pinging into the bowl.
Ninth Brother stuffed the envelope into Baoqing’s pocket. Then he went back to his rocker, closed his eyes and engaged in his spiritual recuperation.
Baoqing looked at his ma and then at his dad. Suddenly he recalled the old saying that before the bird dies it lets out a mournful cry. There had been a woman in their organization who committed suicide. Before she died she patched up and fixed the clothes her husband and children would wear for all the four seasons of the year.
He moved close to his father’s ear and said loudly, “Dad, our home is more peaceful than most of the others. If you want to read your Bible, just go ahead over to Ah Ming’s place. We won’t object.”
Ninth Brother, his eyes shut, was considering Baoqing’s many good qualities. He would have loved to take his son in his arms but all he did was open his eyes and say rather flatly, “Just go on home. It’s getting dark, so be careful riding your bi
cycle.”
Baoqing didn’t know whether his dad had heard what he said to him. He took out a piece of paper and pen and wrote, “Dad, I don’t feel right about you. You can go to Ah Ming’s and read the book you want to read.”
Ninth Brother glanced at the slip of paper. “West Gate is peaceful and calm. Take care of yourself. And look after Wei’er. Feed him his three meals at fixed times and in regulated amounts,” he said.
Baoqing still gave money to his mother. Second Sister caught sight of a five mao banknote55 out of a pile of small change. Last year when she had given her grandson his New Year’s Eve money present, someone had used a pen to mark the back of this bill with a small flower. She remembered it clearly. Here’s Fangzi embarrassing Baoqing again for sure. That Fangzi! From the day she went into the bridal chamber, she put on a new face. In every way, she makes things difficult for Baoqing. As she thought of her beloved son swallowing these insults for the sake of his responsibilities and living in a marriage that was far from ideal, she became so sad that she felt her heart would break. Why did Ninth Brother refuse to accept Baoqing’s money? Is it that he knows something?
At this moment, as he pedaled his bicycle back home, Baoqing thought and thought about his father’s warm and affectionate gaze. And then this fellow who had served so meritoriously in Korea burst out sobbing.
2.
ARMED CLASHES NOW began in the streets as the two rebel factions started fighting with real guns and bullets. Whether in broad daylight or the dark of night, you could hear the bullets as they whizzed through the air. The ordinary citizens of Old Town, as always, showed great ingenuity in stocking away sufficient provisions and hiding behind locked doors and bolted windows.
The Lin family pussycat was above such mundane matters. As always, it pursued its lusty love life, every night crossing over the top of the wall to gang together with its male friends. The doctor was also above such mundane matters. Heart and mind, all he wanted was to go the thirty miles or more to P Town district office to visit his daughter and son-in-law. Capable, virtuous, and docile Second Sister spared no one’s feelings as she exceeded her authority in handling matters. Locking the front gate and back door from the inside and gripping the keys tightly in her hand, she kept a vigilant watch over her husband. At night when they were sleeping she kept an ear pricked to monitor him. Every so often she would open the back door to let the doctor out for some air by the side of the city moat. And she stood behind, not too closely but not too far away either, as she kept her eye on him. The slums on both sides of this water were Old Town’s dead space. It was a corner forgotten by the times, and always safe and secure.
The doctor did not negotiate directly with Second Sister but just quietly made his preparations to leave. He approached Ah Ming for a travel pass, but Ah Ming had already been reached by Second Sister. Ah Ming told him that the communications between Old Town and the outside world had been sealed off, and that, furthermore, he was the object of control. Therefore, never mind leaving Old Town; he wouldn’t even be allowed to leave West Gate. But this didn’t make the doctor give up his idea of going to see his daughter.
He continued to get ready for the journey. Looking in the mirror, he cut his hair short like Shuiguan, changing the style he had kept for decades, and now made it fall messily over his forehead. He also got Shuiguan to think up a way to buy a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of hard liquor. Within the family, people called the Public Security bureau chief “Big Zhang.” Big Zhang’s smoking and drinking hard stuff had been his most obnoxious habits. Now the doctor wanted to bring him cigarettes and liquor to restore the father-in-law-son-in-law relationship. Big Zhang had been in the cowshed for several months already, and these days the only news he could get about Baohua and Big Zhang came from their local rebel faction. Among the investigating personnel from P Town was a northerner who acted as a double agent. That agent would not appear for days on end and the doctor would just go crazy thinking about his daughter.
In a change from his fixed posture of sitting in the chair recharging his spirit, now all day long he stood in the main hall or the sky well looking up at the top of the wall. The cat jumped in and out of the house from the top of that wall. Sometimes it lay there with its head erect, and the two of them would look long at each other, as if each were guessing the other’s thoughts.
One night, the doctor told his wife that he wanted to go off on a long trip early the next day, and if she didn’t open the gate he would just have to pry open the lock. Husband and wife sat stiffly upright at the Eight Immortals table like two rival negotiators. Second Sister opened her mouth to dissuade him but she saw on his face the expression of thirty years before, when he was about to abandon wife and home in his single big roll of the dice. The Ninth Brother of this moment looked like both a willful, unreasonable child and a heroic martyr fervidly prepared to die. Words of dissuasion would have been superfluous, so she slowly closed her mouth. If I had not been there, Grandma would have gone with him to brave the dangers together. She thought it over, then untied the key to the main gate from her waist and thrust it into Ninth Brother’s hand. He then got up and went out through the back door to get a travel pass from Ah Ming.
Just at that time, an unexpected visitor barged into the Lin home.
Department Head Li, Young Li in those early years, had a hidden personal history that was growing like a tumor in his body. Luckily both the tumor and he had passed safely through all the earlier political movements. With the Cultural Revolution now under way, batch after batch of city government cadres had been overthrown. Department Head Li was still teetering on the high wire. When one faction gave him a red armband to wear, the other faction “climbed to the heavens and burrowed into the earth” in search of some incriminating evidence on him. They concentrated their fire on him as a way of attacking the rival faction. The Li family’s son and daughter wore their parents’ old army uniforms when they went out to make revolution. His wife also wore her old uniform as she made revolution at the organization where she worked. Relying on Old Li (as he was now called) having been a meritorious official of the Revolution, they made revolution more vigorously than anyone. Only he himself knew how dangerous a situation his family was really in. Every minute of the day a feeling of treading on thin ice gripped his heart.
He had awakened his wife in the depths of many a sleepless night to persuade her to hang up her armor and go back to the countryside with him. Her own home place was a farming village amid the clear mountains and limpid waters of southern China. If they went there as a family and led a life free from outside strife, even if they worked the land as peasants generation after generation, it would still be better than this state of anxiety and fear. His wife would just laugh. “Before you go back to your old home place, we ought to first send you to a mental hospital for a checkup.” As she saw it, all the cadres on earth could be overthrown, but Old Li’s turn would never come. He was an orphan who had joined the Revolution before he was even eighteen years old. From squad leader, to platoon leader, all the way up to regimental commander—who could bring down this cadre who was Red, through and through?
This morning the four members of the Li family had the rare opportunity of getting together at the breakfast table and eating the rice gruel and fritters cooked by the housekeeper. Old Li said, “My mother used to say that you shouldn’t laugh at the cripples you saw on the streets, that sort of thing. One day your own legs might become crippled. You are now smashing other people’s revolution. It’s very possible the day will come when people will smash yours.”
His wife and two children looked at Old Li in amusement. They suspected he really did have a mental condition, after all. He tried to warn his family like this, lest the sudden descent of adversity upon them might prove too great a blow. He had an ominous presentiment that the tumor within him was going to burst out during this great Revolution. His daughter went round behind him and put her arms around his neck. “Daddy! How could you compare rev
olution to a cripple? If you go outside and say this, they’d arrest you. Besides, who could smash our revolution?” His daughter was the closest of all to him. Oh, my precious daughter! If you knew Daddy’s historical problems, would you still be this affectionate and loving with him? At this thought, Department Head Li’s eyes moistened. His wife put down her chopsticks. “Old Li, you’re an old revolutionary who’s come through thickets of rifles and storms of bullets. You’ve got to hold firm to the class stand.” Old Li wanted so hard to make a clean breast of his painful secret, but looking at the complacency in his family’s expressions, how could he make them believe that the heavens above this home were about to fall? How would he begin?
Old Li walked out the main gate of their group living quarters. Looking down, he drew from his pocket a red armband and was just slipping it over his hand when suddenly someone shouted out his full name. All these years, back to when he was a squad leader, his job was what people addressed him by and no one in public had ever yelled at him like this before. He felt the thin ice breaking up beneath his feet. The disaster of disasters had fallen upon him. At the same time, he discovered to his surprise a sudden calm coming over him and he felt quieter and more at peace than ever before. He pulled down the red armband that was half-on and gripped it his hand. But he didn’t even have time to look up when the rebel faction knocked him down. More than ten big fellows laid into him with fists and boots. He closed his eyes. He didn’t struggle. He didn’t resist.
Beaten almost to a pulp, Old Li was dragged to the struggle session. The rebel faction that had originally protected him thrashed him even more fiercely than the other one had. Again and again he was beaten to the ground. Again and again he was pulled back up again. Deafening slogans bombarded his ears: “Down with the Guomindang reactionary faction!” He did not intend to survive this calamity. Just like during the war, every time he reached the battlefield he had been prepared to go to his death.
