Old Town

by Lin Zhe

  My grandmother hovered between belief and denial. “You can’t get out of going?”

  “I thought of not going. I was born in Old Town, and here I’ll die. But it’s no good. The city government has issued the notice. When the time comes, they’ll bring trucks and take us away. Second Sister, your older sister is going to become a lonely, wandering ghost. If you live through it, you’ve got to help me by looking after Ah Chang, shut up in the insane asylum. The Zhangs did evil things and are now receiving their retribution.”

  Grandpa sank into his throne with a long sigh and resumed his human vegetable state.

  Pussycat was already senile now. The times it had torn up the roof tiles with its lovemaking had long gone. It wanted only to burrow into its master’s chest and doze there. Even that height was more than it could manage, so it stuck by my grandfather’s foot, mewing feebly. It didn’t know its master had already shut his ears and closed his eyes.

  My grandmother brought Great-Auntie to the No. 1 bus and when she got back home it was time to prepare dinner, but she just sat dully at the Eight Immortals table. The atmosphere at home made me uneasy and though my stomach was making hunger noises, I didn’t dare ask Grandma for anything to eat.

  Ah Ming came by when it was dark outside. He stood by the side of the sky well smoking cigarette after cigarette, and no sooner had he opened his mouth to say something when Grandma suddenly interjected, “Ah Ming, where is our family being evacuated to? Will you give us a few days to get ready?”

  Ah Ming flicked away the cigarette butt.” Uncle, Auntie, I really would like to go in your place.”

  A military representative had come to West Gate. Ah Ming no longer had any real authority and couldn’t protect Dr. Lin.

  “Ah Ming, don’t feel bad. No one can escape good fortune or bad. Just go ahead and tell us straight.”

  “I’ve put Mrs. Chen and her grandson together with your family of three to Nanping County. It’s a commune not far from the train station. You have five day to get ready and I will help you by keeping watch over this house. With us in the house, not even one roof tile will go missing. Anyway, I really don’t feel that war will break out. You’re sure to come back soon.”

  After Ah Ming left, Grandma turned on all the lights in the house and went from room to room, not knowing where to start. Suddenly, she thought before anything else she ought to send letters to her three children. In this home, correspondence was Grandpa’s responsibility. She bent over and spoke into his ear, “Ninth Brother, can you write letters to our children and tell them where we will be evacuated to?”

  Grandpa waved his hand slightly. “I’m not going anywhere.” She could think of nothing else she could do, so she just stood there, perplexed. All these years while she was coping with so many difficulties by herself, my grandfather not only didn’t stand with her shoulder-to-shoulder through all this, but even baffled and frustrated her in every way. How did she provide the support to get through those years that were so beset with difficulties at home and outside?

  Two days passed. Second Sister still couldn’t calm down enough to organize the things they were going to take with them. She would open clothes closets and trunks and her mind would just draw a blank. She didn’t know what to bring. When Baosheng and Baoqing left, not a tear had fallen from her eyes, for faith propped her up. She would hold the garrison at West Gate and wait for the children to come back. But the moment she received the evacuation notice, she really wanted to weep loudly and bitterly. To be suddenly uprooted at this age—would she still be able to return home alive? But she could not cry. A mansion was about to collapse. Her skinny shoulders, now enfeebled by age, were the final support columns. She had to hold everything up, right to the last minute.

  The air at home thickened. The two old folks were preoccupied with their own separate matters as they numbly waited to be transported out. A scene hovered in front of Second Sister’s eyes: The military representative of the revolutionary committee sending people to escort Ninth Brother out of the house and shove him onto the train. He lacked the strength to deal with reality. He might just turn against himself, or run off along the way, or not eat or drink or say a word. He was already seventy years old. How long could such a skinny old fellow hang on in the guttering-candle years of his life?

  When Mrs. Chen received the evacuation notice she came to the Lin home with an old faded map that she spread out on the table. She appeared to be in high spirits, as if being given the chance to go to a place she had always dreamed of.

  “Here, this is where we’re going. Thirty years ago the pastor and I went there and preached the Good News. Back then, we set out from Old Town and walked seven days. Now by train it takes only a few hours. It’s really convenient. Our fellow believers there are bound to remember Pastor Chen.”

  Second Sister looked at Mrs. Chen and smiled bitterly. She couldn’t imagine why she was in such a good mood.

  “Dr. Lin, it’s a good place there, surrounded by mountains and water. The village people are extremely simple and unaffected. Take some medicines with you. They’ll think you’re Hua Tuo come back to the world.”59

  Her exalted mood stirred something in Dr. Lin. He opened his eyes and, just like his wife, puzzled over what she had to be so happy about.

  “Dr. Lin, let’s make a prayer to ask God to bless and protect us on the journey we are about to undergo. And let us also give thanks that we’re able to go to such a good place and that our two families can be together.”

  The doctor shook his head. “It’s been a long time since I’ve known how to pray. I think God has forsaken me and Jesus doesn’t want me.”

  “I completely understand how you feel. There was a time when I too asked the Lord Jesus, ‘O Jesus, are you still with me?’ Sometimes at night I would wake up in a sudden fright, thinking that there simply was no God in this world. That was really very, very frightening, for I had believed in God ever since I was little. I didn’t know if life would have any meaning if there were no Lord. One night I dreamed of the Lord Jesus and seeing the blood flowing endlessly from him on the cross, I knew I was wrong. Our Lord has never forsaken me. It is only that our own faith weakens and goes astray.”

  “Lord Jesus,” the doctor prayed in a choking voice, “ever since I was a boy I accepted you as the savior of my life. For many years I was very close to you. I beg you not to forsake me. Without your love, I am all alone and lonely.”

  “Amen!” The late pastor’s wife clapped her hands joyfully. “Such a good prayer! Jesus has surely heard it! Dr. Lin, our God didn’t promise that life on earth could be without difficulties, but He tells us that we will have happiness and peace by trusting in Him. Perhaps being evacuated to the mountain district is not just some chance matter. I myself don’t understand why I feel so excited. It’s like I’ve returned to my childhood years. When I was little and Mother would take me home to my grandmother’s, the first night I was there I would be so excited I couldn’t sleep. This is God working in me. As long as God is with us, the far corners of the earth are our garden.”

  Tears flowed from the doctor’s eyes. “Yes, I was wrong.”

  Yes, how many years has it been now? I can barely feel my guardian angel, Second Sister thought. What was it, after all? Did I leave my guardian angel, or did the angel leave me? Forty years before, on the eve of her wedding to Ninth Brother, she was baptized in the West Gate church. From that time forward, she began to have a guardian angel by her side. Her guardian angel shared in her life’s happiness and troubles. During those years when Ninth Brother had abandoned hearth and home, she would pour out her sorrows and anxieties to the guardian angel. She asked the angel to protect her missing husband and her three children. She clearly recalled that time when they were refugees and Baohua had been kidnapped and sold, the guardian angel had spread its wings and lifted her up. O Angel, forgive me, please come back into my life and once again spread your wings and lift me up…

  That picture of them sending th
eir son off to join the army was still hanging on the wall of the main hall. Starting then, she, an ordinary housewife, went into public life. She held the positions of committee head, women’s representative, juror…all the various titles deluged her with work, while honors and recognition made her intoxicated and confused, and she could never spare the time or the strength to make a real prayer.

  O God, O Angel, are you angry at me? Life has been so difficult over these past few years. Is it because this home has been without you?

  In her heart, Second Sister called out, “Lord Jesus,” and at that very instant, so many grievances welled up within her. Lord Jesus, you surely have seen over these last years how perverse Ninth Brother’s temper has been. I have looked after and cared for him day and night but I have no idea what he is thinking. I can’t predict how he will behave. Day after day I am in a state of constant worry and alarm in case he might stir up some calamity. I often feel all alone and without strength, even more than during the War of Resistance when it felt like we were separated at different ends of the earth.

  The doctor sat there. His mind was replaying back his childhood. There were whispering sounds of Mr. Qiao’s gentle voice: Child, it was God who sent me to find you…O Lord, my life then was worth even less than a wild dog. If it hadn’t been for your love, I never would have seen eight years. I wouldn’t have survived the gunfire of the War, the butchery outside the walls of Nanjing. How could I have doubted you? But, Lord, if today you still love me, please receive me back at your side. I am not afraid of war and I refuse to go destitute and homeless if I am evacuated and have to become a refugee. Doesn’t a person have the right to decide whether or not to be evacuated and to flee danger?

  The deadline arrived. Second Sister finally bestirred herself and set to organizing their travel things. The very first thing she thought of was to bring the old family cat, so she located a basket and tried putting Pussycat into it. “On the way, you take care of Pussycat, and I’ll keep an eye on Hong’er,” she said to Ninth Brother.

  Ninth Brother raised his eyelids to look, but he didn’t reply one way or the other.

  Second Sister pressed the Bible into his hand. “You haven’t read the Bible in a long time. When we reach there, let’s read it together.”

  Ninth Brother again opened his eyes. “Second Sister, are you really so attached to this world?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I don’t want to go. If an artillery shell landed on my head, it would be because it had been fated to do so.”

  “Oh, you! Right up to now you still don’t know that this isn’t us fleeing. This is an evacuation. The government’s issued the order. And obeying the government is Christian duty.”

  She also wanted to say. If you don’t go, you’ll be staying here at West Gate all alone. I certainly don’t want the government to send soldiers to arrest you at home tomorrow. Heat roiled up within her and she really wanted to let fly with her temper, but all she could do was to clench her teeth and hold it in check as best she could.

  At home the several hardwood boxes and crates were stacked up as high as a person. The sweat rolled down Second Sister’s back as she moved these from this place to that. She had one last box to organize when suddenly everything went black before her eyes and she could see nothing at all. She felt her chest being all mangled and crumpled up as if by a steel claw. Then pain hit her like a typhoon and engulfed her like a tidal wave. Faintly she heard someone far, far off calling her name. In an eye-piercing ray of light she saw herself lying on the floor of the inner room. Two boxes were overturned and clothes scattered around. And Ninth Brother stood beside her, his face looking drained of all its blood.

  Ninth Brother saw his wife, eyes closed and spitting out white foam as she lay on the floor, and was so terrified that he forgot that he himself was a doctor. The doctor who had gone through the gore and fire of war now stood there completely helpless. He had never expected that Second Sister would ever collapse like that. He thought that with her iron will she would keep a tiny safe haven for this family. But now she had fallen. It was only then that he realized that there were times when Second Sister couldn’t bear the load. He thought of the worst possible situation, that they might be forever separated. Ninth Brother hadn’t any recollection of his mother’s death. He didn’t know that his own misery and terror at this time was like that of a child bereft of its mother.

  Second Sister saw Ninth Brother’s two legs slowly bend down to kneel by the bed. She heard his heartbroken voice. “Lord, why are you punishing me this way? You can’t have saved me time after time simply to make me suffer these blows.”

  She said, “Ninth Brother, I didn’t die. I wouldn’t abandon you.” Second Sister felt she was like a cloud of smoke or mist swirling around Ninth Brother and speaking comforting words to him.

  Ninth Brother couldn’t hear her, and kept on praying. “Lord, I don’t know how I will go on living. Since you’ve taken Second Sister, please take me, too…”

  “Ninth Brother, help me up.”

  Ninth Brother turned around and his eyes met Second Sister’s tender gaze. He excitedly hugged her, “Second Sister, Second Sister, you can’t go off without me, you can’t.”

  “I’m thinking of just getting this all over with. The day will soon be light and the trucks will be here. I’ll be going, but you just stay here at home.”

  Ninth Brother’s eyes reddened and he laughed sheepishly at Second Sister. “Just now you scared me to death, I can’t be without you…”

  This was the Ninth Brother she knew so well, the Ninth Brother she hadn’t seen in so long. This very scene made her think of that late summer night in 1943. She was right beside the well, washing clothes when all of a sudden she picked up the sound of Ninth Brother’s voice behind her. She didn’t dare turn around but stared hypnotized straight ahead at the moon through the tree branches. She was filled with doubt. Am I dreaming? Ninth Brother had walked over in front of her and taken her in his arms, laughing sheepishly.

  “Second Sister, I’m sorry, I know this is more difficult for you than for anyone else. These years I have not felt the existence of God, nor have I felt your existence. There’s a lot of things I really don’t understand, nor do I want to understand. But so long as we can be together, that is my greatest happiness.”

  Second Sister reached out her hand and stroked Ninth Brother’s wildly tousled hair. “It’s late. Go get your own things organized.”

  Ninth Brother nodded his head obediently.

  3.

  YOU STILL REMEMBER that boss-lady of the rice shop who in one night lost both her sons? She was still an unchanging part of the West Gate crossroads. Somehow people all believed that the old woman set into the window like inlay was quietly mad. It was for just this reason that she had been able to avoid all the political movements. And so she also escaped this evacuation in preparation for war.

  The boss-lady clearly recalled the last time that Huang Shuyi came to West Gate. It was two and a half years to this day. It was when Mrs. Chen talked with the vagabond woman under her window and so she found out that Huang Shuyi was Mrs. Chen’s daughter-in-law. Her dried-up and numb eyes moistened as she recalled when Shuyi was the lively and attractive eldest miss of the Huang family and she didn’t understand how Huang Shuyi could have fallen to such a state. All she knew was that Huang Shuyi came to West Gate to see her little son and so she sympathized with her as a fellow sufferer. After the pastor’s wife moved out of the church with her grandson, every time the boss-lady saw the ragged woman appear at the West Gate street crossing, she would hurriedly call her husband. “Quick! Quick! Go out and tell Miss Huang that her son has moved to the side of the moat!” Her husband always obeyed her every word, but time and again he would fail to find the woman.

  The doctor and Mrs. Chen came to say good-bye to the boss and the boss-lady. In over twenty years, these two were the only people ever to go to the upper floor of the rice shop. The doctor had treated t
he boss-lady and the pastor’s wife had prayed for her, though the boss-lady still did not believe in God. Obstinately she told Mrs. Chen that if there were a God, why hadn’t He returned her two sons to her? The boss-lady told Mrs. Chen to leave her address with her. Nothing on earth is more heartbreaking and tragic than a mother unable to see her own son. She would keep her eyes peeled and when Miss Huang reappeared, give the address to her.

  On this day, a misty rain fell outside the window and a woman in a peasant’s conical bamboo hat was loitering by the wooden fence around the church. The boss-lady grew excited and called to her husband, “Quick! Quick! Miss Huang is here! Go stop her! Her son is going away tomorrow!”

  The boss squinted at the main street. He felt this woman didn’t look like Miss Huang, but still he submitted to his wife’s will and so he ran outside.

  The woman in the conical hat was dressed simply and neatly. The boss decided that his wife had “faulty intelligence” and he was just about to turn back when the woman stopped him.

  “Uncle, previously the Chen family lived here. Their daughter-in-law’s surname was Huang. Do you know where they have moved to?”

  Someone else was looking for Miss Huang too? I guess I didn’t run out for nothing today.

  “Who are you?” the boss asked.

  “Do you know her whereabouts?”

  “First you tell me, what is your relationship to her?”

  “It’s a long story. I was her brother’s war comrade. I have a very important matter to tell her.”

  The boss was bewildered. What important matter could be related to that crazed Miss Huang? Those were incredible times when everybody looked crazy to everyone else.

  “Her mind has gone bad. She has no fixed place to stay and has wandered about everywhere for a very, very long time now.”

  “Uncle, there’s nothing wrong with her. I know what she’s doing and I can help her.”

  Up at the window, the boss-lady saw her husband taking the woman in the conical hat in the direction of the city moat. She thought it was Miss Huang, so after feeling a great sense of relief, she immediately sank into self-pity. To date, her two sons had been away twenty years, nine months, and seven days. She had counted every day as she looked out.