by Ha Jin
What a bizarre idea, Bin thought. Even if Yang lorded over this commune and his flunkies could do whatever they liked here, they could hardly find their bearings in Beijing, to say nothing of abducting others. Yet Meilan’s fear proved her love for him, so he was pleased.
Though having planned to go to work that morning, Bin was so exhausted that he soon fell asleep. His wife didn’t wake him when she left for work; he snored nonstop for five hours.
Toward noon, when he woke, a note from Secretary Liu was lying beside him, saying that if Bin had been struck by diarrhea, as the medical certificate indicated, he should have been bedridden, unable to fool around in the county town, fanning up evil winds. Apparently he was well and didn’t have to go to the latrine incessantly, so Liu ordered him to show up at work without delay.
Bin was too sleepy to worry about the note, which was dated the day before. He resumed snoring, his palm on his daughter’s pillow.
During her lunch break, Meilan came back and cooked for Bin. Tired out, he didn’t want to eat the dough-drop soup, and he told her he had to go to the plant.
Before leaving, he let her do cupping on him. She smeared a few drops of cold water on the hollow below his Adam’s apple, lighted a scrap of paper with a match, dropped the fire into an empty jam jar, and pressed the “cup” tightly on the wet spot. In a few seconds a swelling rose inside the jar. He gave her a toothy grin, hoping she hadn’t burned him.
“It’s bloody dark,” she said, referring to the swelling.
He couldn’t speak, because the jar tightened his throat. He nodded at her twice.
After the cupping, he pulled on a low-necked T-shirt, so that the round patch on his throat was fully visible, like a gigantic birthmark. This would convince others of his illness, if not the leaders, who would turn a blind eye to his condition anyway. Examining the purple patch with a pocket mirror, Bin believed the treatment was timely. He obviously had too much poisonous fire in him and needed it to be sucked out. He put away the mirror and set off for the plant.
When Bin arrived at Maintenance, Hsiao greeted him, waving a pair of greasy gloves, and told him bluntly, “The leaders think the medical certificate is a fake. They want to have these days deducted from your wages.” Hsiao’s tone, however, wavered as he noticed Bin’s sick face and the dark patch on his throat.
Anger surged in Bin, but he didn’t show it. He merely said, “Damn their mothers.”
Hsiao assigned him to go to the lab and repair a ventilator. On his way there, Bin was wondering whether he should drop in on the leaders. For the three days’ absence he might lose a little more than four yuan, but he needed the money badly, since he had already made up his mind to repay Jiang Ping for the fare. Besides, the deduction would hurt his name; he couldn’t afford to let the whole plant think of him as a malingerer. He was certain that the leaders would publicize this and make his illness look like it came from mental or moral deterioration. There was also a strategic concern here. He was unsure whether or not the leaders knew of his trip; therefore he felt he should go and find out. Without entering a tiger’s den, one couldn’t catch tiger cubs. Yes, he ought to meet them.
Before he turned to the office building, Bin saw Secretary Liu coming out of the garage, with an umbrella under his arm. So Bin went up to him and asked why the leaders refused to acknowledge the sick-leave certificate. Liu said there was no Doctor Sun in the County Central Hospital and Bin had made up the whole thing.
“What?” Bin cried. “You have called the hospital to check on it, haven’t you?”
“It’s unnecessary.” Liu waved his hand as though chasing a mosquito. “I tell you what, people here don’t go to the Central Hospital for a sick-leave note. If you were really sick, you wouldn’t have been able to move around in the county town. Now, tell me what you did there. Why didn’t you stay in bed at home? You must confess everything first.”
“I’ll answer that after you tell me whether you’re positive there’s no Doctor Sun in the hospital. If you haven’t checked, you’d better shut up.”
Liu was taken aback by Bin’s sharp tone of voice. “All right, describe to me what he looks like,” he said and closed his eyes, ready to visualize Doctor Sun.
Bin’s face went blank because he had never met the doctor; his nose was twitching while his mouth spread sideways.
Staring at Bin, Liu chuckled and said, “You aren’t good at anything, you’re not even a good liar. Go home and write out a confession of what you’ve been doing these days. Not until—”
“Damn it!” Bin cried, his senses restored at last. “Doctor Sun has big, dark eyes. I didn’t see his face because he had on a large gauze mask. You must call the hospital and talk with him personally.” Bin supposed Doctor Sun’s eyes were similar to his nephew Song’s.
Liu stopped chuckling and shifted his weight to the left leg. He said, “Okay, write out your confession and we may give you the pay.”
“You give me the pay? This plant doesn’t belong to you. It’s our country’s. The pay is given to me by the Party and the people. You have no right to take it away from me. I was sick and had diarrhea, couldn’t move. No, I have nothing to confess.”
“Then I can’t help you.”
“If you take a fen off my pay, my wife and I will visit your home every evening.” Bin turned and walked away with a gleeful face.
For a whole day Bin’s ears echoes with Tu Fu’s lines inscribed on a painting of a grand eagle:
When will it strike ordinary birds,
Splattering blood and feathers on the plain?
Time and again, a large eagle emerged in his mind’s eye, circling in the sky and catching sparrows, jays, swallows, titmice. The air was full of ecstatic cries and pitiful noises.
The poetry reminded him of the book of bird paintings published by Master Chen Fan, a distinguished professor in the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Bin usually copied the book once a year as a part of his apprenticeship, but he had not done it for two years.
After supper, he moved to his corner in the room and prepared to practice eagle painting. Meilan was listening to the historical serial The Female Generals of the Yang Clan, broadcast by Radio Liaoning, while Shanshan was playing with pocket magnifying glass on the floor. Bin spread out a large sheet of paper, opened the model book, and began to apply the brush.
For some reason he felt his wrist stiffen; the brush wandered without any sense of destiny. The eagle’s broad wings turned out disproportionate, too large for its body and lacking the spirit of the model painting. He tore the sheet and threw it into the basket for kindling. He painted another piece, which came out similarly; the eagle’s neck stretched up, like a giraffe’s.
Bin was bewildered by the sudden change and thought it must have been caused by the noise from the radio. He wanted to tell Meilan to turn it off, but seeing her so engrossed in the Chinese troops pressing their attack against the northern barbarians, he changed his mind. Putting away the model paintings, he began to practice calligraphy by copying a stone rubbing. To his dismay, the brush seemed to have its own will, determined to disobey its master. The strokes on the paper lacked the vigorous movement of swords and spears, and a few even stretched like bands of black cloth waving in the breeze. Every word was devoid of life; some didn’t stand upright and looked like piles of sticks. The characters just lay dead on the paper. Bin gave a sigh and put down the brush.
With his head hanging, he tried to think why all of a sudden he couldn’t harness the brush any longer. He felt as though something blocked his windpipe. One obvious cause of the relapse could have been that he hadn’t worked hard on his arts these months but had spent too much time fighting those thugs. His heart was aching when a short poem on the methodology of study by a well-beloved octogenarian revolutionary echoed in his ears:
Against the current you must punt hard;
One stroke skipped, you fall back many a yard.
The ancients said every minute was gold;
&n
bsp; So, cherish your time and have it controlled.
As though the poem triggered his lachrymal glands, all at once his face was flooded with tears. How he regretted wasting his time on those hoodlums! Why couldn’t he concentrate on the real work and forget the turmoil outside? What good was getting the better of those idiots, who shouldn’t have existed for him in the first place? Why couldn’t he utilize his talent and energy exclusively for the improvement of his arts? For whatever reason, he should never have let his brushwork regress.
Shanshan noticed her father’s tears and sang out, “Mommy, Daddy’s crying again.”
Meilan came over and patted him on the shoulder. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“My brush, oh, my brush becomes disobedient!” he wailed, rubbing his chest with both hands.
His wife broke out giggling, and Shanshan followed her mother, laughing too. Bin gazed at them, his face dark and long.
Meilan said to him, “I thought heaven collapsed or your mistress dropped dead. You scared us.”
“What’s so funny? I’m losing my mastery, my artistic power. Don’t you see it?” He slapped the sheet of poor calligraphy on the desk.
“Stop talking like that.” She didn’t look at the characters. Instead, she took a towel and wiped the saliva off Shanshan’s mouth. “You just had a bad day. Keep practicing. Nothing is as easy as eating noodles.”
Somehow her casual remark enlightened him. Indeed this may be just a bad day, he thought. Probably it’s only a painter’s block. No artistic pursuit can be smooth sailing. It’s a lifelong endeavor, and I mustn’t lose heart so easily just because of temporary regression. I must persevere.
He struck a match, lighted a cigarette, and blew out a coil of smoke.
On payday Bin received his full wages. He took this as an initial victory. “If they gave me a fen less, I would shake heaven and earth,” he told his fellow workers. Everybody was impressed, but some people still believed Bin had faked the sick-leave certificate. “Even the devil can be intimidated by a vile man,” they said behind his back.
In fact the leaders were not frightened by Bin exactly, though they had called the County Central Hospital and spoken to Doctor Sun, who assured him that the sick-leave certificate was as genuine as their fertilizers. They were lenient to Bin this time for another reason. Three days ago they had received a classified bulletin which reported a tragedy that had resulted from a wage-scale adjustment. An old worker in Forever New Leather Mill in Sand County had lost his mind because most of his comrades had got a raise but he hadn’t. To vent his rage on the mill’s leaders, he blew up a corner of the apartment building where their families lived. Though nobody was killed, four people were seriously injured. Fortunately the old worker hadn’t had access to TNT and had made do with a gunpowder package.
Unlike the leather mill, the Dismount Fort plant’s Fourth Workshop produced high explosives for the army. Dynamite was always available to the workers here; quite a few men fished with homemade bombs; the year before last, an old storekeeper had been sentenced to eight years because he had in secret sold half a ton of TNT to a quarry and pocketed the cash. No doubt to Liu and Ma, Bin was insane and capable of doing anything, not to mention razing a house in Workers’ Park. The bulletin gave full rein to their imagination, so they revoked the order to have three days’ pay deducted from Bin’s wages.
Fifteen
THREE WEEKS LATER an article about the case, entitled “Engulfed by the Evil Stream,” came out in Law and Democracy. On his first reading of it, Bin was rather disappointed. The view and the tone of the writing were fine, but the report was too short, merely one and a half pages; the limited space wouldn’t impress the reader. To Bin’s mind, such an article should have been massive.
After reading it for the second time, though, he felt better and found it actually well written, even fiercely elegant. In fact, none of the main events and figures was left out. Reading it for the third time, he was impressed by the skill of the writer, who hadn’t wasted a word, as though doing a poet’s job.
His friends in Gold County were very pleased with the article. Yen called and said excitedly, “Brother Shao, this time we nabbed them. The County Administration wanted to talk with Old Jiang yesterday evening. Boy, they’re scared.”
“Good,” said Bin.
Yen went on, “It’s a victory, and they’ll have to rehabilitate every one of us soon. Get ready for it, Brother. Don’t let them off the hook easily.”
Secretary Yang was shaken by the article and became restless. Intuitively he realized the whole thing would grow bigger and bigger if he didn’t take action to stop it. The article’s last sentence said clearly, “We are waiting with our eyes open to see how the local leaders will respond to this report.” So he had to correct the case in time, to prevent the highest authority in the capital from pursuing him further.
His aide, Dong Cai, reported that Chairman Ding had ordered his men to investigate the case and interview Bin. Surely the enemy faction would use this article to destroy Yang, driving him out of Dismount Fort.
After brief consideration, Yang concluded that Bin was the key figure in the series of events. If he could pacify Bin, the Ding faction would be automatically stopped. By now he was very impressed by Bin’s ability — not only as an artist but also as a political activist. Nobody else in the entire commune was able to get the attention of all levels of authorities and have his case printed in such a top legal journal. Eight months before, when he had read the report on Bin sent over by the fertilizer plant, Yang had thought Bin was no more than a crazed bookworm, of whom he had met many and had known how to handle them. Now he deeply regretted having neglected the talent in this small man.
In reality, Yang’s faction was not as strong as Ding’s, mainly because Chairman Ding had in his hands most of the writers in the commune and could maneuver without impediment in the field of propaganda. Yet Yang bet none of those pens in Ding’s faction was as capable as Shao Bin, who could place articles and works of art in big newspapers and magazines with such ease. If only he had enlisted Bin’s help.
He telephoned the Commune Guesthouse to have two dinners arranged. Then he had Dong Cai come in and told him to find Bin and take him to the guesthouse in the evening.
The first dinner started at three in the afternoon, in honor of the fertilizer plant’s leaders. Two days before, Liu and Ma had read the article and got angry as usual, but they hadn’t taken it as something that would cause any change. Bin remained the same maniac to them, and they wouldn’t try to “rectify their mistakes” as the article demanded. By now they were somewhat used to this kind of warning from the media, which had always come like lightning without a storm.
The spacious dining hall in the guesthouse was empty, with all the chairs propped upside down on the tables. The terrazzo floor was wet and sprinkled with sawdust, which made the room smell of pine and cypress. Behind a set of sky blue screens on which white cranes were on the wing, the three diners — Yang, Liu, and Ma — sat down at a table covered with a green plastic tablecloth. They were going to eat prawn soup, crabs, and steamed buns stuffed with brown sugar.
“Since you both have read the article, what do you think we should do?” Yang asked.
“Believe me, Secretary Yang,” said Ma, “Shao Bin is a mere lunatic. We should send him to a mental home.”
Liu chimed in, “Yes, that will solve the problem once and for all. We’re just fed up with him. He enjoys pestering others so much. Do you know what his nickname is in our plant?
“What?”
“Man Hater.”
“We should have him locked up,” Ma insisted.
“No, no.” Yang shook his head, chuckling. “He isn’t a lunatic. Even if he was, the whole of China knows of the case now, and we couldn’t punish him without hurting ourselves.”
The soup came in a white enamel basin, and the crabs and the sugar buns in two bamboo baskets. Liu and Ma remained silent, drinking brandy in gulps.
After the waitresses left, Yang resumed, “I’m positive Shao Bin is an able man. We must stop him; otherwise we’ll all lose our jobs, or at least be demoted. The whole boat is in danger now. Chairman Ding will surely use this case to root us out. They’re already on the move.”
Both Liu and Ma were shocked, but they had no idea what to do, so they kept sucking crab claws.
Yang went on, “Ever since the ancient times, there have been two ways to get out of such a situation. One is punishment, the other is reward.” He paused to take a spoonful of soup.
Seeing Liu’s surprised look, Yang smiled and said, “Don’t panic. I’ve decided to use reward. I’m going to be generous to Shao Bin. This is the only way to appease him now. Besides, I want to use him and make him our man, to keep him in our pond. But I’ll have to punish you two in appearance. You’ll be criticized in the internal bulletin. Don’t be upset. Next year, I promise, you each will get a raise.”
Yang went on explaining how he would reward Bin. Though both Liu and Ma thought Yang took the maniac too seriously, they were pleased that the secretary would take Bin into his own hands. From now on, they would be able to do many things in the plant without being painted and written about. As long as there was no disciplinary action against them, their official careers would be safe. Criticism in the internal bulletin would at most inflict a scratch on them, and people would forget it in a month. So without delay they praised Secretary Yang’s wise, timely decision.
Before he left for the dinner, Bin whispered to Meilan in the corridor that if he didn’t return that night, she mustn’t go to the plant or the Commune Administration to look for him. Instead, she should get in touch with Yen, either by telephone or by telegram, and ask him to take emergency measures to get him out. Seeing that she was horrified by his words, he grinned and assured her that the invitation might be a reconciliatory sign from Yang. He then set off with Dong Cai, who had come to escort him to the Commune Guesthouse.
