Old Town

by Lin Zhe

How I longed to say something to Grandpa, something that would move him, but I was afraid of setting off an unbearable storm of emotions. Eyes all misty, I laughed loudly and, pretending that no one takes offense at children’s words, rudely pointed at him. “Gramps, I guessed from the start that you were faking deafness! You fooled everybody. I was the only one who knew you could hear. You could hear everything!

  “Everything you said when you scolded me I’ve kept in my heart.”

  Grandpa smiled rather awkwardly but also in a way that showed he was a bit pleased with himself. His smile held both an innocence and a naughtiness not at all in keeping with his age.

  2.

  WHEN GRANDMA WOKE up her eyes alighted on Wei’er. This child was the image of Baoqing when they fled during the War of Resistance, and unconsciously she called out “Baoqing!” She wanted to ask him, “Baoqing, what about your sister?” Grandma never fully got over my mother Baohua’s disappearance at that time and whenever she became confused she would look for Baohua. She glanced up and saw Baoqing, now middle-aged and holding his daughter, and was baffled, unable to tell whether or not she was still in some dream.

  All the family members who had scattered around the country continued to return home. One by one they entered Grandma’s Happy Family portrait.

  All three generations of Lins were in favor of going to the photo studio for a Happy Family portrait, but they felt there was plenty of time to do this, so everyone went happily about their busy lives. Finally, half a year later, the three generations finally managed to collect together at West Gate, and the studio photographer came with the equipment on his shoulder. But Grandma refused to have the picture taken. That was the day of my grandpa’s funeral.

  As a doctor, the first time Grandpa received his body’s signal he clearly realized that the day of the Great Departing was near, and calmly and systematically he placed a period mark on his life. It was only during his final two weeks when he took to his bed for the last time that the Lin family members realized that a parting from life had silently descended upon them all, now gathered from the four points of the compass.

  After it was all over, the rice shop boss-lady told us that during his last months she often saw the doctor walking along the crossroads all by himself during the darkest hours of the night. We couldn’t guess what had been on his mind.

  Everyone says that Christians see death as a homecoming. When life’s final moment arrives, do they ever have an instinctive dread? Are they unable to bear leaving this home, this world? What do they feel, looking back over the years of their human existence?

  What we saw was a hale and hearty old man. He was just getting started with preparations to travel northward once again and he was going to take Second Sister on this journey. This dust-covered intention of more than ten years again drew up its agenda. He had already contacted Mrs. Yang in Shanghai and Brother Yu in Hangzhou. These old friends who had gone through so many of life’s storms and changes were still alive. There was truly no greater blessing than that.

  He tried to achieve the realization of this travel plan. Late at night he would stroll along the street crossing, arranging in his mind the little time that was left for him. But he just had to give it up.

  It escaped everyone’s notice that he was planning his own posthumous affairs, for we all were taken in by his lively spirits. Also, during those several months our attention was centered on Grandma.

  After Grandma recovered, she became ambitious about returning to public life. Just then the Residents Committee was holding an election for director. Grandma went out on her own initiative and tirelessly canvassed the voters. The people were all inclined toward the reinstallation of Director Guo; it was just that she was getting on in years. Thus she had to let the voters know that she was in better health than she had been ten years before. At home, though, there was general opposition. Baoqing shook his head. “Ma, can’t you just stay at home and enjoy a leisurely retired life?” Baosheng put it more bluntly. “Ma, you really don’t want to be lonely.” Only my grandfather cast a vote in favor. One vote decided the fate of heaven and earth. There were no further objections.

  When my grandpa fell, my grandma was already tied up with her many official matters as the Resident Committee Director. She sat by the sickbed, dejected and weeping. “Why didn’t you tell me about all this?” she said reproachfully. Grandpa answered with a smile, “If you had known about it, would you have felt like running for election?”

  Grandma could never forget a conversation she had with Ninth Brother on the eve of Winter Solstice. Every word he said was his last will and testament. But she actually hadn’t the slightest inkling of this and later she felt annoyed at how very obtuse she had been then.

  One day, Grandma was in the sky well grinding rice for rice milk—people in Old Town eat glutinous rice dumplings at Winter Solstice—and Grandpa was sitting inside, writing. She thought he was writing a letter to Mrs. Yang in Shanghai.

  “Oh, Ninth Brother…Don’t forget to ask Mrs. Yang what size she wears. There’s still a length of satin in the trunk. I am rushing to make her a silk jacket…”

  Grandpa put down his pen and walked over. “Second Sister, your eyes and hands aren’t like they used to be. Don’t do any more sewing.”

  “That’s what I do to show my regards.”

  “Let’s see about that next year, all right? Haven’t you always wanted to have a Happy Family picture taken? One of these days we’ll go together to visit Fangzi and give her that jade bracelet…”

  Her grinding slowed, and after a pause she heaved a sigh, lowered her gaze, and continued with her work.

  Everywhere was calm and peaceful. Only the Lin family’s local wars continued, with the flames and gun smoke between Baohua and Baoqing’s families even tending to escalate. The snow in front of Baoqing’s gate had not been swept clean, so to speak, when he meddled in the frost on his big sister’s roof tiles. A few days before, Baohua’s two brothers made a special trip to P Town to give her their vocal support. This caused a falling-out with Big Zhang. The family members all kept a tight lid on this intelligence, and didn’t let Grandpa know.

  “Hai! Just seeing them all come back safely would be good enough. Taking the Happy Family photograph isn’t all that important. And one bracelet won’t necessarily win Fangzi’s heart.”

  “There’ve definitely been times we could have treated her more nicely. I believe in the old saying, ‘Complete sincerity can affect even metal and stone.’ I hope to see her returning in happy spirits.”

  Grandma knew that in the Bible there was the line that went, “If a person strikes you on the left cheek, turn your right cheek for him to hit,” and said, with some effort, “All right, then. ‘God knows whose prayers are sincere.’ I’ll go with you to see her.”

  “We ought to see Maomao also…let him know that he too is our grandson and we love him just like the others. I’d like to give him my wristwatch.”

  “Give him the wristwatch and won’t he have it sold within three days?”

  “What I intend is to give the watch to Big Zhang in front of Maomao and tell him that after he’s eighteen he can do with it as he likes.”

  “Now why do you have to do all that?”

  In those years, a watch was a fairly valuable possession. It wasn’t Maomao’s turn for this among the several grandsons and granddaughters of the family, so how could this be given to this bad boy that everyone disliked on sight?

  When Big Zhang left prison he spared no effort looking for the vanished Maomao. This child, not yet ten years old, had already become a noted cat burglar in the world of hard knocks and quick wits. Back home again, his bad ways didn’t mend. He ransacked Baohua’s house and those of the neighbors. Again and again Big Zhang drove him out. Again and again he would come back crying to show that he had now changed, painfully and thoroughly. And each time Big Zhang’s hopes would be dashed. Maomao was the source of the discord between Baohua and her husband.

  “Ac
tually, we ought to bring him back to West Gate. We’ll use love to persuade him to change his ways. Too bad I have no more time now.”

  Grandma heard “bring him back to West Gate” and her scalp tingled. But she knew nothing she could say would be of any use. She laughed and said in resignation, “You’re more Christian than ever. Jesus must really love you.”

  “Jesus has loved me all along. And his greatest love for me was in giving me a good wife.”

  Grandma’s mind was so preoccupied over Fangzi and Maomao that she didn’t detect from just what depths Grandpa said this.

  He came over and helped her grind the rice for a while. “Second Sister, I want to put off the travel plans. I don’t know if it’ll work out. Maybe I’ve really let you down a bit in this…”

  “You haven’t let me down. I’ve also wanted to discuss with you that postponing it would be the best thing to do. The election for Residents Committee is still not over and the children have all just returned. How about if we invite Mrs. Yang and Mr. Yu to come to Old Town?”

  “Tomorrow let’s both go and visit Fangzi and after Winter Solstice we’ll visit Maomao.”

  “Why so urgent?”

  “‘Time is an arrow.’ I never thought our lives would go by this fast. This lifetime of being married to you hasn’t been enough. If there’s another one, I’d still want to be your husband.”

  Grandma laughed awkwardly. “I’ve got to think about whether or not I want to be your wife in the next lifetime.”

  The jade bracelet would be going to Fangzi tomorrow. She found this difficult to accept. That was an heirloom passed down through the generations of the Lin family. It ought to be kept for Su’er’s future wife. We really wouldn’t have anything better than this to give her as a First Meeting gift.

  That night my grandma couldn’t sleep from thinking about the jade bracelet. As she lay in bed she couldn’t dispel the worry-ridden eyes of Baoqing that appeared before her. He was unhappy, even though he did his best to disguise it. She could still easily see that. It all came from the endless trials with Fangzi. She wouldn’t let him come to West Gate to see his father and mother and she was unwilling to let them have the living allowance. Arguing daily, monthly, arguing to exhaustion, arguing until thick calluses grew on Baoqing’s heart…He thought that Fangzi could no longer hurt him, but Fangzi always came up with some new way to do so.

  Following Baoqing’s return to Old Town, he had been given a work position of some importance. From an ordinary section member he rose three levels to become a deputy department head. And word had it that the superiors were going to break all precedent and promote him to deputy bureau chief. But Fangzi had been demoted to work in the mailroom because she had been too prominent during the Cultural Revolution. The change in her husband’s position put her in a state of constant fear and trembling and home life became all the more contentious. Baoqing thought that the battle was limited to their home only and so didn’t let it get to him. He never expected Fangzi would actually write to all the various office heads that the suspicion about Baoqing’s father having been a secret agent had never been settled, and thus he shouldn’t receive such an important position. With this, Baoqing’s candidacy was eliminated.

  How could a wife be so treacherous and underhanded toward her own husband?

  Grandma tossed and turned to past midnight, when she finally decided to make Baoqing and Fangzi’s situation clearly known to Ninth Brother.

  The light in the inner room was still on. Ninth Brother was writing something. Lately, day and night, he had been at it nonstop. She didn’t know what he was writing and didn’t waste any energy on guessing. Ninth Brother was an educated person. Educated people were always writing essays and composing lyric or heroic poems.

  Grandma sat down next to the desk and after repeated sighing, tirelessly related all that had happened to Baoqing.

  Grandpa heard it through and then stood up and paced back and forth across the little room. “We should have gone to see Fangzi earlier. If you think about it, all along she had been a big star, then suddenly she was a nobody. It was inevitable she would become unbalanced. And furthermore, did Baoqing have to place such importance on the bureau chief position?”

  What my grandma had intended was to arouse my grandpa’s righteous indignation and thus put aside the idea of winning over Fangzi. She never expected this kind of a reaction from him. The way Fangzi went about doing things struck her as utterly bizarre. But the way Grandpa put it struck her as equally bizarre. She couldn’t contain her spleen and said sarcastically, “I see it now…Jesus saying to forsake the one we love and stretch out our arms to the stranger.”

  Grandpa gave this some serious thought. “Your metaphor has some truth to it.”

  “You’ve been able to do it. We couldn’t. So only you will get to heaven and see Jesus.”

  Grandpa gazed at his wife with eyes brimming with love and affection. “I’ll be waiting for you in heaven.”

  No matter how openly sarcastic or subtly you put it, he just can’t understand. If I keep going on pestering him at this rate, won’t I become just like Fangzi? There was nothing more she could do. Just treat it as some unexpected loss. How many times in this life have we gone through poverty and ruin? What’s one bracelet?

  “Don’t stay up any longer,” she said, yawning.

  The next day, Grandma excused herself from paying respects to Fangzi, claiming that she was tired and headachy. Grandpa got the bracelet from her and went off alone.

  What would Fangzi’s reaction be when she saw the father-in-law she hadn’t seen in so many years? Would she curse him to his face for being a secret agent? My grandma was worried about Grandpa, but she also wanted to see the old coot hit his head against the wall. Grandpa returned home in high spirits a few hours later and reported that the results of the talk had been excellent. Grandma didn’t ask for details. She basically didn’t believe that one conversation could turn Baoqing’s home situation around.

  When payday came that month, Fangzi, as always collected Baoqing’s salary on his behalf. For more than ten years now, ever since his wife’s relations with her in-laws at West Gate had broken down, Baoqing had not collected his own salary. Normally, husband and wife did not speak to each other. Fangzi washed the clothes and cooked. Baoqing fetched the children and washed the dishes. This cooperation was a sort of tacit agreement. If husband and wife needed to communicate while under the same roof, they would ask their son to be the messenger. Whenever they didn’t require a messenger were the times for fusillades of gunfire.

  Every month it had been routine for war to burst out over the living allowance for his parents. After work, Baoqing went to get his children and came home. Fangzi had already set out the bowls and chopsticks. Baoqing discovered that fifteen yuan had been laid at his place setting. Keeping a watchful eye on Fangzi, he hurriedly stuffed this money into his pocket, thinking that war was inevitable now. But Fangzi’s expression never changed as she spooned food into their daughter’s mouth. He didn’t dare believe that Fangzi would on her own have set aside the money for his father and mother. He said to his son, “Tell your ma that Daddy’s taken the fifteen yuan and in a little while will be going over to Gramps with it.” The boy then parroted this to his mother. Fangzi’s expression remained normal. Baoqing still didn’t believe it and made so bold as to speak directly to her. “I’ll be taking the money to West Gate in a bit.” “Go ahead,” Fangzi said softly.

  Baoqing didn’t know that his father had met with Fangzi. As he rode his bike back to West Gate, he just couldn’t figure out what had touched her heartstrings.

  3.

  WHEN THE DOCTOR and his wife went to P Town they encountered Baohua’s own family war. Big Zhang had once again driven Maomao out of their home and the pictures of the boy when he was small were all torn up. Big Zhang now had been appointed commissioner of P Town, but as far as he was concerned, with the Zhang family having no descendents, even being secretary of the provinc
ial party committee wouldn’t have had the slightest meaning. In his despair, Big Zhang’s temper grew even worse.

  That morning, Big Zhang saw Baohua in the kitchen leisurely boiling rice porridge and frying dumplings. Your son is gone, but you can still be in such a good mood. All at once he flew into a terrible rage and started smashing up the kitchen. Baohua returned in tears to Baosheng’s home in Old Town. Baosheng’s home was her place of refuge.

  The doctor and his wife arrived at Commissioner Zhang’s new residence just when Big Zhang had locked himself inside and was drinking all alone. When he heard the knock on the door he roared out, “Beat it! Scram! I don’t know you!”

  Big Zhang’s natural voice was unusually loud and clear. At meetings when he made reports, no matter how big the occasion, he never needed a microphone. Long ago, the first bad impression his future son-in-law had made on the doctor was that very same voice when Big Zhang had exploded at a taxi driver at the West Gate street crossing. His voice could terrify heaven and shake the earth. Who had messed up heaven’s marriage register and introduced Baohua to this northern oaf?

  Second Sister thought that Baohua was inside and called out in the Old Town dialect, “Big Zhang, listen to me! Don’t hurt Baohua!”

  Big Zhang calmed down. He was puzzled. Baohua’s only just gone. How could she have called my mother-in-law here?

  Before the Cultural Revolution, Big Zhang harbored tremendous hostility toward Baohua’s family. But several years later, his father-in-law’s daring visit to him in jail was a kindness he would never forget as long as he lived. These days, though he might feel every kind of dissatisfaction with Baohua, he still felt a deep reverence toward his father-and mother-in-law. When he and Baohua quarreled, he would often say, “Your mother could take three children out of danger, but you can’t raise just one child.”

  He hurriedly put away the liquor bottle, scooped up some cold water and ran it through his hair a few times. After all, he was seasoned in the world of officialdom. He knew when he could let himself go and when he had to put on a mask. He opened the door and, smiling radiantly, welcomed in his wife’s parents.