The Hungry Ghost Murder

by Chris West

  ‘Maybe,’ said Bao distantly. A thought occurred to him. ‘Of course, he would also have flooded a memorial.’

  ‘What memorial?’ put in Ming.

  ‘The one to the victims of the Snake Valley ambush.’

  ‘Oh, that old thing.’

  ‘That memorial is important,’ Bao replied. ‘Father said we shouldn’t forget. He used to take us up there every year to pay our respects.’

  ‘We were just kids. ‘

  ‘Those people died for us!’

  ‘Fifty years ago. It’s history. We’ve got enough of that as it is.’ Ming turned to Rosina. ‘We Chinese are always looking back. Don’t you think so?’

  Rosina did think this, but didn’t want to be disloyal to her husband. Fortunately, she didn’t have to say anything, as Ming didn’t wait for her reply.

  ‘That Yellow River thing on TV was right,’ he went on, alluding to a recent, highly controversial revisionist history series. ‘We can’t become a really modern nation until we stop lugging round all those Emperors and Generals and Sages and Revolutionary Heroes. It’s like having a huge carrying-pole over our shoulder, weighted down at each end – ’

  ‘Without our history and our culture we’d be nothing better than savages,’ Bao cut in. ‘Luckily you weren’t able to destroy it all during that Cultural Revolution of yours – though you did your best.’

  He regretted the comment at once.

  Silence fell.

  Rosina coughed. ‘Let’s get the first dishes in. They smell delicious.’

  Ming went to fetch them, and everyone began to eat.

  ‘Oh, look. Journey to the West,’ said Bao after a while. ‘Father used to read to us from that, too.’

  Ming managed a forced grin. Conversation for the rest of the evening was almost as formal as at a Party function.

  *

  ‘Do you two always argue?’ said Rosina, as they walked back through the muddy alleyways.

  ‘Eventually,’ Bao replied.

  ‘You shouldn’t.’

  ‘I know. But he says such stupid things. Being provocative for no reason. Just like you say he did at that meeting.’

  ‘He’s still your brother. He needs help, not criticism.’

  ‘I’m giving him all the help I can.’

  They left the old village and walked in silence across North Square. As they passed the old millstone, Bao looked at his wife, took her hand and said: ‘I’m sorry. Ming got the best treatment as the eldest son. That’s standard practice in the countryside, so I can accept it. But I can’t forgive him for wasting it all. When he says things like “forget the past”, I just see him doing it again. Wasting. You know I get angry when some of your artier friends criticize our country, our traditions and so on – but to hear that sort of thing from your own brother, who always got first call on reading and learning … It just gets me.’

  ‘You were too busy hunting frogs!’

  ‘I always wanted to learn more,’ Bao replied primly.

  ‘You had fun. Ming clearly didn’t, despite all those advantages.’

  They walked a little further: the tarmac road ended, the hill began to steepen. ‘So who was the lucky one?’ Rosina added.

  Bao nodded.

  ‘What Ming really needs to do is face up to his past,’ Rosina continued. ‘It’s serious. If he doesn’t, drink will ruin his life. You do want him to have a decent life, don’t you?’

  Bao thought for a moment. ‘Yes, of course I do.’

  ‘I knew you’d say that. I shall go and see him tomorrow. Try and get him to open up. It will do him good. He said he was doing the evening shift, so I’ll make it morning time.’

  ‘You really think that would – ’

  ‘It’s the modern way.’

  *

  Rosina made her way carefully through the old village. This wasn’t going to be easy. But nobody else could do it. Zheng couldn’t. The local medical service – Rosina felt a pang of sadness as they came into her mind – didn’t offer counselling of any kind. Ming had to face up to his addiction and he also had to face up to its cause. Whatever that was.

  Rosina had some ideas what it might be, but it was up to Ming to tell her. Supposing he wouldn’t? She sighed. You can only do your best.

  Left again, wasn’t it? Yes. Tinker’s Alley.

  Ming answered the door himself. ‘Rosina! I’m surprised you want to see me.’

  ‘Families argue. But also make up. Both can be important.’

  They walked down the corridor, through the yard and into Ming’s room. Dinner hadn’t been cleared away.

  ‘Sorry it’s a bit of a mess. If I’d known you were coming …’

  ‘That’s OK. I’ll help you tidy up.’

  ‘No. Please sit down. Relax.’

  ‘Only if you do the same.’

  Ming nodded.

  ‘That was wonderful food last night,’ Rosina said.

  ‘I love to cook. But when you’re on your own, you don’t bother.’

  ‘You should bother.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you have a duty to yourself.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rosina said firmly.

  ‘Duty’s to the Party, the People, that sort of thing.’

  ‘And to yourself.’

  Ming paused. ‘Isn’t that bourgeois individualism?’

  ‘I’ve never understood politics. Can I have some tea?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’ Ming scuttled off into his kitchen, from which Rosina heard the clattering of metalware, mutters of complaint about a tap, something falling to the floor and breaking, and finally the sound of steam escaping from a kettle.

  While Ming did battle with the tea, Rosina ran her mind over the therapeutic techniques she’d studied as part of her training. Forget three thousand years of qi, her lecturer had said. Forget Maoist exhortations to right thinking. Chronically depressed people suffer from memories that need to be faced up to and re-evaluated in the company of another person (‘Just like a Struggle Meeting,’ an older nurse had commented drily). The process wasn’t easy. The unconscious mind could put up stiff resistance. Patients would try and change the subject. They could get abusive, even violent. But in the end, that was the only way to get them past all the blockages, face up to whatever was eating away at their souls and become better people.

  She’d loved that course, but after it, she had gone straight back onto ward duty and had had no time to practice it. Now, perhaps, here was a chance.

  ‘I’m grateful to you,’ said Ming, re-entering with two china tea mugs, one minus its lid. ‘Your husband and I…’ He sighed. ‘You’re lucky to be the age you are, Rosina. You missed all that business back in the late sixties. Zheng missed it too, and I don’t think he really understands how lucky he was. I’ve no doubt that Army recruits got all the brainwashing we did, but they didn’t have to go and put it into practice, in their own home villages, to people they knew and … ’ He raised his mug to his nose, sniffed the steam and smiled. ‘But I shouldn’t be going on about the past, should I? Not after what I said last night.’

  ‘I don’t see why not. You’re my brother-in-law. I want to get to know you better. And I’ve only got a few more days in Nanping.’

  ‘I should have organized our dinner earlier.’

  ‘Stop apologizing! It was a lovely meal. And I’m here now.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ming smiled. ‘It’s nice to have someone to talk to, someone family. You know the phrase: “Private problems must not bring public shame.” But I’m determined not to bore you!’

  ‘It won’t be boring.’

  ‘It will be. My life here is boring. Tell me about life in Beijing.’

  Rosina looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Plenty of time. So she told him about the traffic, the dust storms, the pollution, shopping on Wangfujing, the foreigners on the streets, the Western-style restaurants, the company of artists and intellectuals. She told him about the books you could get there, about
movies by people like Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou that won awards in the West but only urban Party members got to see, about the latest slang and fashion and silly things like the way people had started carrying replica mobile phones to impress everyone else.

  Ming listened with the eagerness of a child, then said: ‘I went to Beijing once. In nineteen sixty-seven, to a Red Guard rally in Tiananmen Square. Me and a million other sheep. Baa! Baa!’

  ‘You should tell me about those days,’ said Rosina.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re desperate to. I can tell.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Ming. He then fell silent. Rosina sipped her tea.

  ‘Zheng was right to criticize me,’ Ming said suddenly. ‘I made a clear commitment to join the Red Guards, long before it became necessary for survival. I stood up for Chairman Mao Zedong. I volunteered to march round chanting his slogans. All Imperialists are Paper Tigers! Death to all Capitalist Roaders! And, of course, Down with the Four Olds! The smash-up slogan, the one we used when destroying people’s property or those statues on the hundred-Buddha pagoda. I thought Mao was going to build a new China. Something better, fairer, stronger. Everything had to be judged by those standards: me, my friends, my family, my home, my life.’

  ‘And love?’

  Ming blushed. ‘Love was for the Party, for Chairman Mao, the People and so on. Not for individuals – that was bourgeois, Western, decadent. We had to avoid what Lenin called dissoluteness. We had to keep our energies pure and strong. And we had always to remember the class struggle. Supposing a man found a woman attractive, then found out she was from one of the black classes … ’

  ‘Difficult,’ Rosina said slowly.

  ‘Very difficult – for those it happened to, of course.’ Ming fell silent again. ‘Did my brother send you?’ he said after a pause.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He wants to winkle out some family secrets that he can use against me.’

  ‘I’m not aware that he does. If you think that is the case, you should be open and ask him directly. I am here because I want to be. You said it: I’m family. Your family are either the people you lie to the most, or the people you trust. It’s your choice.’

  Ming nodded. ‘I’m sorry. Where was I?’

  ‘In love.’

  ‘Ah.’ The former Red Guard’s eyes roved round the room. His feet shuffled, as if they wanted to bolt for the door. ‘Eradicate all poisonous weeds!’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘Long live the People’s Communes!’

  ‘You can change if you want to, Ming.’

  ‘No. That carrying-pole is too heavy’

  ‘Put it down, then.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because … ’ Ming’s voice died away.

  ‘You can, Ming. If you choose to.’

  ‘People like me don’t have choice.’

  ‘You do in matters like this. In your interactions with other people.’

  ‘You’re young. You don’t understand.’

  Rosina sighed. ‘Maybe I don’t. Maybe you can help me understand. Maybe that’s the whole point of this visit for me, actually. So I understand. Perhaps I’m the one who needs to learn.’

  Ming looked up at her. He gave a nervous laugh.

  ‘She was the daughter of the local landlord,’ he began.

  14

  Bao Ming told his story almost without pause.

  ‘Xu Yifeng and I grew up together, but we weren’t close friends as kids. Our backgrounds made that impossible. Even before the Cultural Revolution there were plenty of campaigns to remind us how much class mattered: Anti-Rightism, Socialist Education and so on. But I always liked her. She was naturally lively; I was the quiet type. Bookish, you know.’ He gestured round at the room, piled high with earnest, pastel-covered paperbacks from New China Publishing House.

  ‘Of course, she’d have her down times, too. At the height of those campaigns, usually. But that was against her nature. Heaven gave her a cheerful temperament. The self-appointed Son of Heaven took it away.’ He grimaced. ‘Anyway, I liked her for her down moods too. I hated girls who were pushy and jolly and sporty the whole time. Yifeng was, well, perfect.’ Ming blushed. ‘I wrote poems and sent them to her. Anonymously, of course. I didn’t even compose them, I just copied them from A Dream of Red Mansions. You know, that bit where they sit around in the garden writing verses for one another.’

  Rosina tried to keep the smile off her face: the speaker’s brother had done the same to her.

  ‘I hate that book now,’ Ming went on. ‘Long-winded, sentimental drivel about rich people with too much time on their hands.’

  Don’t get into debates with clients, her tutor had said. Rosina gave a nod.

  ‘Anyway, one day I summoned up the courage to speak to Yifeng. We became acquaintances. Then a few weeks later we went for a walk, up the hill. There weren’t any of those disgusting rich men’s villas there then, just trees. She said she was afraid of me, because of politics, and I said – Ai, it sounds so bloody platitudinous now – something silly like “politics doesn’t matter if you’re in love”. She told me to go away and read Marx. She told me to read Marx! I suppose I got angry, and we parted on bad terms.’

  Ming shook his head. ‘After that, I spent hours imagining that walk over and over again, saying different things each time, producing different outcomes – all favourable, of course. Then I moved into another class and we didn’t see each other. Then Father died. Then Zheng … well, I think he rather liked the look of her, too. Has he told you that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ming looked disappointed. ‘Anyway, then he went away to join the Army. Little brother trying to be all big and tough. Then it all started: that bloody Cultural Revolution.’

  Ming looked down at the floor, then up at Rosina. ‘Other generations didn’t have to go through this, Rosina. Father’s lot could stand and fight; they knew who the bad guys were. You younger people can have your careers and property ladders and bank accounts full of money and all that stuff. Nice watch, by the way. But we were used. We were encouraged to be vicious and destructive and hateful and mindless. Then we were chucked away because we weren’t any use any longer – which was true, of course. We were no fucking use at all. Sorry, pardon my language. Us tu baozi can have foul mouths.’

  ‘People swear in the cities, too, Ming. Carry on.’

  ‘After that bloody Cultural Revolution we were left with no skills, no intelligence, no kindness – just those bloody slogans going round and round in our heads. And a whole lot of memories of all the terrible things we had done. And of how much we’d enjoyed doing them.’

  He paused, then carried on his narrative.

  ‘Xu Yifeng came to see me one day. Soon after that TV broadcast by Lin Biao that kicked it all off. She got down on her knees and begged me to have a word with the new Secretary, Tiger Zhang, or with Deputy Wu, or with anyone in authority. She said she’d do anything to help her family. But I’d already joined the Red Guards, so I said right away there was nothing I could do. I came up with all the Party crap about how she came from a black class and so had to pay for the crimes of her ancestors. She began to cry. I said that if she didn’t leave, I’d report her. Then she reminded me of our walk on the hillside and what I’d said about love and politics. I tore into her. Tore into her, Rosina. All those fucking slogans came out of my mouth like a torrent of vomit, all over the one truly beautiful thing I had ever known in my life.’

  Bao Ming began shaking.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Rosina.

  ‘No, it’s not OK. It’s not OK at all and it never will be. She took it for a bit, then she just turned round and walked out. I wanted to run after her. But instead I looked up at the picture of Chairman Mao on the wall, and congratulated myself for my self-discipline.’ Ming hung his head in shame. ‘Can you believe it? I betrayed the only woman I’ve ever loved, then I turned to a photograph of a mass-murdering psychopath and sought its
approval. What kind of useless pile of shit does that, Rosina?’

  ‘You were young. Millions of others made similar mistakes.’

  ‘That makes a lot of shit.’ Ming sighed. ‘There’s more, too. The Xu family lived in one of those compounds out on the eastern side of the village. That’s the nice side. One evening there was a big march over there. We forced them all to come out and be criticized. Her father, her brother, and her. Then we burnt a lot of paintings and other stuff. We did that to anyone who had what we called relics of the Four Olds in their homes. A few days later, we moved people into their compound. Then we moved them out altogether. Another hate session, marching them through the village with their hands up behind their backs, out into the fields and a place called the cowshed. We made them work in the fields all day. In the evening there’d be more criticism sessions. They had to confess everything, you see. The father was a real fighter; it took a lot to get anything out of him. I think that’s why he was killed.’

  Ming stared at the floor again. ‘I had nothing to do with the murders, Rosina, I swear. I took part in that raid on their house. We all did. I helped march them off to the cowshed. There was a great big mob of us. Mobs are mad things, Rosina. Mad and evil.’

  Ming sighed. ‘One day, the old man and the son were found beside one of the fishponds, battered to death. With iron bars, apparently. I still wonder what it sounds like, an iron bar cracking someone’s skull. I sometimes imagine it happening to me. Why not? If there’s no justice, if a mob can do whatever they want provided they chant the right slogans, is anyone safe?

  ‘If that wasn’t wicked enough, Yifeng was arrested for the killings. Yifeng! It was such a ludicrous charge that even Red Tiger Zhang had to drop it. But they didn’t let her out of jail. They just invented some new offence. She was a black element, a potential saboteur, an ally of imperialism, a bourgeois revisionist – Aiya, I could go on forever.

  ‘She was sent to a Reform Through Labour camp in Heilongjiang. I’ve read books on that place. All the ones I could find. In winter it gets down to minus forty. Your skin freezes off your face like a burn. Get caught in a blizzard fifty metres from shelter and you’re dead. We Shandongers can’t imagine what it’s like. I doubt if she lasted more than a few months.’ Ming leant forward. ‘I sent her there, Rosina.’