by Chris West
‘I rain blows down on him. I’m terrified. Then I suddenly realize I’ve killed him. I panic, and run away – taking the paintings, even though I know I won’t be able to sell them.’
Huang finished writing. ‘Sign this. It may save your life.’
‘It’ll certainly save your job.’
The chief called out for Constable Kong. ‘Take this runt away from here,’ he said.
*
By the time he got back to Nanping, Bao had the story clearly worked out in his mind. He crossed Snake Pass, paused where the path led off to the guesthouse, then carried on into the village. It was already early evening. No time to lose.
Station Chief Huang was in his office, looking very happy.
‘I’ve done it!’ the chief announced.
‘What?’
‘Got that little fucker to confess.’ He handed over a type-written sheet, signed ‘Ma Kai’. ‘Go on, Bao Zheng, read it.’
Bao took it and read. For a moment, his hand was unsteady – then a broad smile crossed his face. ‘It’s false,’ he said.
‘False? What d’you mean, false? He’s signed it. He dictated it to me half an hour ago!’
‘What about the office light?’
‘Bugger the office light. It says there, he killed the Secretary.’
‘The light was on. Any thief would notice that. It’s easy to check if the room is occupied. And what’s this about “striking the Secretary with a piece of wood”?’
‘It’s a confession, damn you, Bao. You think you’re so bloody clever; you tell me what really happened.’
The inspector did so.
At the end of it all, Station Chief Huang shook his head. ‘You don’t seem to have much proof,’ he said in a dull voice. ‘It’s just a story. An interesting story, but nothing more. For example, that girl might have been lying. She’s an intellectual; people like that aren’t reliable.’
‘Will you come with me and check it? After all, you’ve done all you can with Ma Kai.’
‘And more!’
‘If you come, and if my story’s true, it’ll look good for you,’ said Bao. ‘I don’t want any credit.’
The chief looked thoughtful, then said dully: ‘Fine.’
*
Huang led the way to the house of Secretary Wu’s killer, down a long muddy path that led at first between high walls then out across fields. They crossed a stream and walked up a stone- flagged path. He rapped imperiously on the door; Bao put his finger to his lips and said: ‘Gently.’
A voice from inside asked who it was.
‘Bao Zheng,’ Bao replied.
‘Ah.’ The door opened. Bao hadn’t seen Fei Duan before; he only had descriptions from Rosina and, more recently, Ping Li. But this individual seemed to fit. ‘Fei Duan?’ he asked, anyway. The man nodded.
‘You’re under arrest!’ The voice was the chief’s, who had pressed himself against the wall out of sight, but who now bounded into view. The door slammed shut in an instant.
‘You bloody fool!’ Bao exclaimed.
‘You said he was a murder suspect. Therefore it is my responsibility to arrest him.’
‘Let him answer the questions first!’
‘He can do that at the station. Anyway, he’s refused arrest, which is a crime in itself. I’m going in to get him.’
‘No. That’s totally the wrong – ’ Bao began, but the chief was already hammering at the lock with his boot. ‘Stop!’ he called out.
Huang kept on kicking. Bao grabbed him and pulled him away. The chief rounded on his fellow policeman and made as if to hit him. Then he stopped, shrank back and gave a very foolish grin.
‘Sorry. All that work I put in on Ma Kai.’
‘Help me over the wall,’ said the inspector. ‘Then watch round the back to see if he tries to run.’
The chief meekly formed his hands into a stirrup. Bao pulled himself up on to the big wall that surrounded the courtyard where Fei Duan lived.
‘Watch the back,’ the inspector reminded his colleague, and was gone.
Bao dropped down into the front passage of the yard. He knew the layout, because almost all courtyard homes followed it: a dog-leg corridor from the front door into the quadrangle, accommodation round the three other sides of the square (traditionally the north, east and west). He also knew it would be best to act swiftly: he hadn’t wanted it to be this way, but it was. He had to catch Fei Duan while the fellow was still confused. He paused just briefly for one deep qigong breath, then ran round the corner into the quad.
The sight that greeted him filled him with horror.
Fei had a gun. An old Browning. And he was holding it to the head of a hostage. A female hostage. Rosina.
Bao froze. ‘How … ?’ he mumbled.
Fei Duan smiled. ‘You weren’t expecting this, were you, Comrade Beijing Gold-badge?’
Bao was still lost for words.
‘Your smart city wife came round to see my daughter, to get all pally with her again.’
‘Let her go,’ said Bao.
‘Why?’
‘She’s nothing to do with this.’
‘She’s everything to do with this. She’s your wife. And she’s a Party member, like you. This is all to do with the Party, and what it does to innocent people.’
‘It’s all to do with the past. Rosina has no role in your past.’
Fei laughed. ‘She has a key role in my present.’
Rosina tried to wriggle free, and her captor tightened his grip. Bao fought back the impulse to attack. The old man had the gun.
Hostage situation training. Rule One: keep them talking.
‘What d’you want?’
‘Freedom. A passage to Taiwan. But your people won’t keep their promises, will they?’
No. But don’t tell him that.
‘No,’ Fei went on, ‘I can see from your face that they won’t. So I guess it’s just death on my own terms. Which means taking two Party members with me.’
Bao thought fast. ‘I keep my promises,’ he said.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean that none of this absurd scene ever happened.’
‘Your friend Huang Guo is probably staring at us now through the windows.’
‘He hasn’t got the intelligence. Let her go!’
Rosina gave a muffled cry. She was trying to say something, over and over again. Two syllables –
Of course!
‘Think of your daughter,’ said Bao. ‘Think what Huiqing will go through if you kill us.’
Fei pondered, then spoke. ‘You already think I’m a murderer, of a Party official. Poor little Huiqing will suffer anyway. As she always has. You Party bastards don’t give a fart one way or the other about her.’
‘That’s not true. Why do you think my wife came round to talk to her?’
‘I’ve no idea. Sentimentality? You don’t care, anyway.’
‘She does care. She shouldn’t suffer. And nor should your daughter. Let her go, and let’s talk sensibly. For Huiqing’s sake.’
Fei began shaking his head. Then he glanced across to the east-side room, to the bright curtains his daughter had put up there. He started to speak, but his lips began trembling. No sound came from them. Rosina felt the grip around her head tighten, then loosen, more and more and –
She broke free, and ran across to her husband, who held his arms wide apart, both to embrace her and to show Fei he wasn’t going for a weapon. The gunman watched this scene with cold disapproval, then waggled the Browning to remind the participants who was in charge.
‘Sit down. A metre apart.’
Bao and Rosina did so.
‘Put your hands out in front of you. Good.’ Fei Duan glanced from the gun to his two captives and back again. A look of pleasure crossed his face. ‘Your father labelled me a rich peasant,’ he said at length. ‘He took my land away. He forced me to work like a slave on fields my family had once owned. He set spies on me day and night.’
‘He protected you,’ Bao replied. ‘Other cadres would have called your family landlords and looked the other way while a mob came killing and looting.’
‘That came later.’
‘In the Cultural Revolution? My father was dead by then. He would never have allowed that.’
‘He was still my first persecutor. And it was his Party, his leader, who launched the Cultural Revolution. And people like his son, your elder brother, who carried it out.’
‘My elder brother is a fool,’ Bao said.
Fei looked genuinely surprised. A smile crossed his face – for a moment.
‘D’you know what it was like, to be persecuted by the Red Guards?’
Rule One. ‘Tell me.’
Fei glanced down at his gun again. ‘I shall. Imagine this place, twenty-eight years ago, when I was a young man. Huiqing is a little girl and her grandfather Yeye is still alive. It’s evening; there’s been a big meeting in North Square, at which our “case” was to be discussed. We know what’s going to happen, and sure enough, it does. We hear voices, shouting slogans that I can still remember now. “Long live Chairman Mao!” “Death to all Capitalist Roaders!” Soon they’re all round us. They want us to “come out and answer for our crimes”. They say they have cans of petrol and will set light to us. They stop the political slogans. Now it’s “Send ’em on a jet-plane ride!” I think it was your brother who suggested that. “Put ’em in the cowshed!”
‘It was Yeye who saved us. He told us to gather up all the paintings in the house, and to run out with them. Imagine him and me and even little Huiqing, ripping our beautiful collection off the wall and running across this yard with it in our arms. We open the door, the door I opened a few minutes ago to you and that pig Huang. This time it’s a huge crowd of Huangs, all full of mindless hate. Have you ever seen a hundred people wanting to kill you? It’s an unforgettable experience.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Bao. As an ex-soldier, he could.
‘Yeye offered the paintings to the leader of the mob,’ Fei went on. ‘He’d heard that Party boss Kang Sheng collected art. Instead, they just ordered us to build a bonfire.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, as the pain of the memory was too much. For a second, Bao contemplated action, but Fei flicked his eyes open and gave the Browning a reassuring pat. ‘I expect you think it’s sentimental to love art. Bourgeois, reactionary, decadent and so on. Maybe it is, but I loved those paintings. I grew up with them. I lived in them in my imagination. Especially the one showing boats on a river. That was so beautiful. As a boy I’d travel down it. Have adventures. In my mind. People like me do have minds, you know.’
Fei checked himself. ‘Zhang said our pictures were all old culture and fit only to be burned. He was just about to douse them in petrol, when one of his sidekicks came up and tried to save them, as Yeye had hoped. Zhang let him take a few, but torched the rest. Whoosh! A family’s pride all gone up in useless smoke.
‘That was just the beginning, of course. A few weeks later we were paraded down the main street in dunce’s caps then made to stand on a public stage bent forward with our arms straight and tied together behind our backs. That was the jet-plane ride. Have you any idea how much that hurts? In your forearms, in your shoulders, all down your back? Yeye never stood properly again. And soon after that it was the cowshed, us and two other local families and various farm animals. We lived like the animals. We were worked like the animals. We ate like them, slept like them and died like them. Yeye didn’t live long after that. Xu and his son were taken out one evening and slaughtered. For no reason. And Xu Yifeng was sent away to die.’
The old man shook his head. ‘I vowed revenge, though I wasn’t sure how, or when, or even on whom. And I never forgot that vow, even though I came to think it impractical – Huiqing depended on me, you see.’
‘She still does,’ said Bao.
‘Worse luck for her.’
Silence fell. The inspector broke it. ‘Tell me the rest of the story.’
‘What rest?’
‘All of it, from then till now.’
Fei Duan gave the Browning a reassuring pat.
‘I shall. The Cultural Revolution ended. Finally. And things got a little bit better. But not that much. They never really took the class hats off. Secretary Wu, Yao and his wife, your Station Chief Huang – they never let us forget our background. We got some land rights back. Huiqing got a job. Everybody had a bit more money. But the stigma remained. In nineteen eighty-six, Huiqing met a doctor and they wanted to get married. Mrs Yao stopped it. The village had quotas for marriage, she said, and they were all full with poor-peasant categories. I couldn’t get a job at Wei’s factory: Public Security gave me a bad reference. Then Wu came up with this fish-farm scheme, which would have flooded my fields. Those fields were all I had to live off. The money on offer was pathetic. It would have vanished in no time, with inflation, with taxes. That is if I ever saw any of it … ’
‘What about Ping Li?’ asked Bao.
Fei looked puzzled, then angry. ‘Was it her who informed on me?’
‘No,’ Bao lied.
‘How do you know about her?’
‘Through my brother. But I’m sure she came to visit you, as a former fellow-sufferer.’
Fei paused. ‘Yes, she did. I chased her away the first time. I thought she was a ghost. Then she wrote me a note, and I realized the truth. It was like having a second daughter! And she told me what fun she’d been having, haunting her family’s old tormentors. We roared with laughter at some of her stories. Good loyal Red Guards lying, grinning, squirming with embarrassment, blushing, turning pale with fear.’
‘She told you about the art, too,’ said Bao.
‘You have been talking to her!’
‘I can piece things together, Fei Duan. She told you where your paintings were. So you went to get them back.’
Fei scowled and fell silent. Then he continued his narrative. ‘First I had to see them for myself. That wasn’t easy. I tried spying on the Secretary one night, but I couldn’t see properly into his front room. So I had a better idea. I’d lie my way into his house and get a proper view. I got a message to him that I wanted to talk to him about our protest group. I had no intention of giving him any information, of course. I just wanted to be inside that place, to see for myself.
‘He got back in touch, and I said we needed a preliminary discussion, and that I couldn’t be seen entering Party HQ otherwise people would suspect, so why didn’t I come to his house? Wu wasn’t keen at first, but I held out for that, and in the end, he accepted. I made my way up to that bloody villa – there was no one else on the road, apart from a car and a couple of new-rich and Brainwasher Hu, and I just hid from them. I found the place and rang the bell. Wu Changyan, the man who’d organized my persecution for decades, answered the door with a big smile and a string of platitudes about progress and forgetting the past and so on. Then he showed me into his sitting room.
‘There they were. After twenty-six years. The Jiaqing calligraphy. The boats on the river. My boats! My river! And the man who’d effectively stolen them from me – in the name of equality – sat me down in a chair more comfortable than anything I’ve ever sat in, got me tea in a Jingdezhen cup, offered me a pitiful bribe to betray everything I stood for, and started blabbing on about his bloody fish-farm. Then he asked me what I was looking at, and I told him. And he lied straight back and said that the pictures had belonged to his grandfather.
‘It was that that did it. That lie, and the way he told it. If I say something, it’s true, because of who I am. Party Secretary Wu Changyan. And at the same moment I saw Karl Marx, the grand originator of all the lying and the stealing and the killing, up on a shelf, looking down at me with that smug expression. Wu had some form he wanted me to sign. He’d bent down to pick it up.’
The old man clenched his fists and face muscles. ‘It was the revenge I’d promised myself but almost forgotten about: for my father, for my family home and my famil
y pride. For Huiqing’s marriage. For the jet-plane rides, the cowshed, the prejudice – and thirty years of humiliation and lies.’ He shook his head. ‘The lies! First you try and fight them, then you try and put up with them, then suddenly they’re inside you, and you’re beginning to live them. Then I picked up Karl Marx – thump! – and I was free.’ He gave a gesture of happy abandon with his non-gun hand, then trained the revolver on Bao and Rosina again. ‘I smashed the kitchen window to make it look like a break-in, and took care walking home that nobody saw me. And I had a tot of maotai when I got home, to celebrate my freedom. Now I’m going to make myself even freer.’
Bao thought back to his hostage training again. What was he supposed to do?
‘No you won’t.’ The voice was Rosina’s. ‘You’ll make yourself less free. All acts of violence do that.’
Fei rounded on her with a look of fury. Bao’s spirits fell. ‘Rosina – ’ he began.
‘Listen to me,’ she cut in. ‘Fei Duan, if you’d really been free, you would have told Wu to go to hell with his deal and his paintings and his fish-farm and everything else. Instead, you played his game, his way. You won that little skirmish – but the Party’s won the war.’
‘What d’you mean?’ Fei snapped.
‘Who said: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”?’
‘Chairman Mao, of course.’
‘And what are you waving at us?’
Fei said nothing.
‘The Party obtained power by violence,’ Rosina went on. ‘It retains power by violence. After years of passive resistance, you joined in that violence. You played things their way. However, there is an honourable way out of this situation. One that gives you your freedom back, one that shows you’re better than Secretary Wu and the Yaos and Station Chief Huang and Chairman Mao. Put that gun down, accept that what you did to Secretary Wu was wrong, look into your own heart and – ’
‘Pfah! That’s woman’s talk. Soft, sentimental.’
‘I work with the sick and dying,’ Rosina replied calmly. ‘You can’t be soft or sentimental there. And there’s no room for lies – the Party’s or anyone else’s. D’you know what the biggest lie of all is?’
