Little Aunt Crane

by Geling Yan

  The detention centre was the dormitory of a cadres’ training centre, because the real detention centre was overflowing. The cadres’ training centre was on the other side of the city, and Zhang Jian remembered that he had visited this part of town when his romance with Duohe had been at its height. The dormitory had been simply and crudely constructed, and there were tiny mushrooms growing in the cracks in the brickwork. The floor was also laid with bricks, which moved against the sole of your foot when you trod on it. The windows were the most basic kind, barred with strips of scrap iron rejected from the sheet-steel plant, and to stretch even an arm outside was out of the question.

  The first day Zhang Jian sat on his bed mat and familiarised himself with his surroundings. He had a clear and eloquent response in his mind to every question that might be asked. He had spent the best part of his life in silence, but that was because he could not be bothered to engage in debate.

  Early on the second day, the questioning began. He was led under escort across the courtyard, and walked towards a row of single-storey buildings. Through the windows he could see that every room had six or seven prisoners in it. It could not have been easy, searching out so many convicts. Suddenly he found himself reconsidering his ideas: other people had six or seven cellmates, while he was in solitary confinement, which showed that his crime was either too serious or too trivial. It must have been too serious. They were confining him as a prisoner condemned to death. They wanted him to pay for Xiao Shi’s life with his own. All hopes were dashed in that instant. And now hope was gone, he had become a brave hero.

  A group of orioles dropped onto the tree, calling out to each other. On their assignations Duohe would lie in his arms, as they listened to the songs of all kinds of different birds. There would never again be a time to listen to birdsong with her in this life.

  The interrogation room was temporary too. There was a ping-pong table turned on one end resting against the far wall. They were discovering enemies everywhere, day and night; the population outside was shrinking, while the population inside was increasing.

  The interrogator was thirty or so. When Zhang Jian came in he was reading his file, and said, ‘Sit there,’ pointing to a long bench on the opposite side of his table, without even bothering to look up.

  ‘When asked questions, you must reply honestly,’ said the man. ‘Because we already know your circumstances like the palm of our hands.’

  Zhang Jian did not utter a word. Half his life was behind him, but he had only done a few things, did it really warrant such diligent reading?

  The questioner finally raised his face. It was actually rather like Xiao Shi, but larger. You felt that he was sitting behind this table for his own amusement. There was no air of stern impartiality about him, no sense that the law was mightier than a mountain and should be vigorously enforced. Perversely, this caused Zhang Jian to lose the sense of self that he had just grasped hold of. This couldn’t be an amateur interrogation, could it? These days there were many amateur roles: amateur factory heads, amateur workshop directors, amateur soldiers, amateur performance troupes, all people from outside the profession doing things they had always dreamed of doing. Zhang Jian felt that this amateurism was rather an alarming thing: in its attempt to make up for its own deficiencies everything was taken to still greater extremes, and for this reason was even more amateurish.

  ‘Where were you born?’

  ‘Heilongjiang province, Hutou township.’

  ‘… and that’s it?’

  Zhang Jian waited in silence for him to enlighten him. What did he mean by ‘and that’s it’?

  ‘Just “Hutou township” counts as a full confession?’

  He continued to wait in silence for the man to explain himself. Was that not clear? Is it the number on our door plate you want? The name of our district?

  ‘Hutou township was a township where there were more Jap devils than Chinese. Why did you not confess this voluntarily?’

  He felt even less inclined to speak. Firstly, he had not counted the Japanese population against the Chinese population of Hutou township. Secondly, he had been barely two when his father was transferred to Anping. If the interrogator had read the file attentively, he should have known this.

  ‘Your father was an employee of the puppet regime in Manchuria?’

  ‘My father –’

  ‘Just answer yes or no!’

  Zhang Jian made up his mind to ignore him.

  ‘So your much-vaunted working-class status is fraudulent!’

  ‘There were several thousand railway workers in old Manchuria, are you saying they were all fake working class?’ Zhang Jian discovered that he had an extremely glib tongue when he needed one.

  ‘You could say that.’ The investigator had not been thrown by Zhang Jian’s comment – in fact, he was very happy to have an opponent who would quibble with him.

  ‘Then what about Li Yuhe?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Li Yuhe, the hero in The Red Lantern.’

  ‘He was an underground Party worker. It’s different for underground Party members; they were even among the high officials in the Kuomintang.’

  Zhang Jian was silent. It looked like his interrogator was starting to attack Zhang Jian from Stationmaster Zhang’s generation. Indeed, he might posthumously confirm Stationmaster Zhang as a traitor, a Japanese running dog.

  ‘After you moved to Anping, did you have close dealings with Japanese people?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can demonstrate at once that you’re lying.’

  Zhang Jian thought, sure enough, he’s an amateur.

  ‘Is not Zhunei Duohe, concealed by your father after the War of Liberation from Japan, a Japanese woman? She was hidden in your home for more than twenty years. Does your relationship count as close or doesn’t it?’

  ‘She was only sixteen years old at the time –’

  ‘Just reply “yes” or “no”! I’ll ask you again, is this woman you concealed in your home Japanese or isn’t she? Well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the twenty years and more she has been here, exactly what things did she do to harm Chinese people?’

  ‘She hasn’t done anything to hurt anyone.’

  ‘Then why did you conceal her identity? We’ve made inquiries in the North-east, and there are genuinely a few peasants – peasants with a low level of awareness – who rescued Japanese women, or married Japanese women and had children by them. But they did not conceal the truth of the matter. In those years when the North-east was liberated, there were purges, and organisations responsible for the punishment of traitors and Japanese spies. Only a handful of individuals never went on file. Not going on record only demonstrates that you harboured evil intentions. Why did you bring Zhunei Duohe to Anshan, and then here, always concealing her identity?’

  Zhang Jian had thought that, in truth, this single act of concealment would make people suspicious. In the beginning his mother and father had just wanted to appease Xiaohuan, to conceal the fact that the Zhang household consisted of a man and two women, thereby setting in train a series of huge and glaring lies. Once Duohe had borne three children to the Zhang family, their relationship had relied even more heavily on lies to keep itself hidden. How had Zhang Jian, a new worker in the New Society, avoided being found out as a bigamist? Not to mention that the three adults and children had been living together for so long that each had become a part of the other. You can break the bones but the tendons are still connected. If they had concealed nothing, Duohe would certainly have suffered the most, no matter how she was plucked from the Zhang family, because she would have been forced to leave her own children. And if she was separated from the three children, she would have been cut off from everything in her world.

  ‘When Zhunei Duohe went to the steel factory to cut serial numbers, were you the one who introduced her?’ the interrogator asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Impersonating a Chinese woman, and sneaking i
nto a key site of Chinese national defence, is surely the reason why this Japanese endured all those hardships, concealed her true name and hid for over twenty years?’

  Maybe they should not have tried to get away with the deception. Not have hidden anything, right from the start. By making her have children, while at the same time wanting to make these children his own with no tinge of Japanese blood in them, Zhang Jian had deceived all the people in Anping village. Could it be that when they had dragged Duohe along with them to Anshan, and then to Ma’anshan, they had not wanted her to continue to bear and raise children, because they wanted a concealment that was so effective that they would never need do it again? They had dragged Duohe along with them on their journey south because of an uneasy conscience, because they did not want this Japanese woman whose fate was already so bitter to have an even more bitter fate thanks to them. He should be grateful to that interrogator, he had made Zhang Jian interrogate himself, and brought him clarity. Where Duohe was concerned, he was guilty.

  ‘In fact a few people had their suspicions of Zhunei Duohe. Shi Huicai was one of them. Did he ever confront Zhunei Duohe directly?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I have cast-iron proof that he did.’

  Zhang Jian knew who the proof came from. It could only be from one of two people: Xiao Peng or Dahai. Xiao Shi must have mentioned something to Xiao Peng in the past. Dahai might have figured out a rough version of the truth from quarrels between his parents.

  ‘In any case, resistance is useless. I have proof. Shi Huicai did privately confront Zhunei Duohe. By asking you now, I’m giving you an opportunity, don’t bring down destruction on yourself.’

  ‘When the two of them had their confrontation, was I present?’

  The interrogator gave a start. After a while he came out of his trance, and said: ‘According to reports, you were not present.’

  ‘If I wasn’t there, how would I know the two of them had had a confrontation?’

  The interrogator paused again. Then he said: ‘You are much more cunning than we had supposed. Zhunei Duohe told you after the fact. She is your mistress, what could she not tell you while you were sharing a pillow?’

  Zhang Jian thought that it was people like this who had forced him into his persistent silence. This kind of person kept on talking and talking in a completely outrageous fashion, with no sense of decency at all.

  ‘And thus you determined to commit murder, to silence the witness.’

  Zhang Jian did not make a sound. Whether he debated or not, it would make no difference at all.

  ‘You made up your mind to murder Shi Huicai when you were working the night shift together – is that not the case?’ Zhang Jian did not react. If the interrogator couldn’t get him into an argument then there would be no fun in it, and he would give up in annoyance. It would be just like diarrhoea after a laxative, with none of the writhing and struggles of the intestines which could culminate in spasms of pleasant sensation. ‘You picked the perfect time, waiting until most people were eating – isn’t that right?’

  This was an age when wrongful accusations could come back to life. Debating would bring on such a wrongful accusation, while refusing to engage would lead to the same result with a lot less effort. In this instant Zhang Jian understood how the people who had jumped off the chimneys or gone up the mountain to hang themselves had reconciled themselves. They had endured a succession of fleshly and spiritual troubles and distress. And yet Zhang Jian had reconciled himself to this logic so quickly. Save them the trouble, and save himself too. The most important thing was saving himself the trouble. Take a look at that ping-pong table: if you have one person hit the ball over, a vicious blow with the whole strength of his arm, if there is nobody to hit it back the table must be put aside and propped up vertically, for the game is at an end.

  ‘You must answer my question!’ The interrogator pounded viciously on the table. A vicious swipe at a ball with no one to return it.

  Zhang Jian was gazing into the far distances of his heart.

  ‘So by your silence, you’re admitting to your criminal act?’

  ‘What criminal act?’

  ‘The criminal act of killing Shi Huicai in order to silence his testimony.’

  ‘I have not killed anyone.’

  ‘But was not Shi Huicai killed by you?’

  ‘Of course he wasn’t.’

  ‘You faked an accident, correct?’

  He retreated once more into silence.

  ‘You calculated the time well, so that you happened to be on the same night shift as Shi Huicai, correct?’

  His eyelids closed a little more. Let this world slip away into unreality, let all the facts vanish into darkness. The reason he had got into the habit of drooping his eyelids since he was small was that he wanted to make the world unreal. That way was best: to let all these restless, mischief-making people dissolve into a patch of grey. Many years ago, one day in August, Duohe had gone with him to the side of a pond near the cemetery to celebrate the Japanese festival of ‘Obon’, lighting paper lanterns to call her father, mother, brothers and sister back home for the festival. But she could not bring them home to the Zhang family, so she set up a home beside the pond: a grass awning stuck with water lilies and with wine and rice balls set out. The awning was made from reed mats bought from the peasants. Perhaps next year, Zhang Jian would be among the relatives she called back home. He had already successfully missed the next string of questions. By now it must be time to end this game of amateur interrogations.

  13

  THEY HAD LAST had any news of Zhang Jian at the end of November. A notification had arrived, ordering Xiaohuan to prepare cotton padded clothing and bring it to the factory. They also wanted a pair of knee protectors. Xiaohuan and Duohe discussed this. ‘What does he want knee protectors for? He doesn’t have rheumatism.’

  In fact Xiaohuan had not been particularly despairing. Once she had cried a little, she had done her best to console Duohe, who was shuddering all over, unable to weep: What family doesn’t have someone locked up these days? There are two people in this building alone who got put away and then let out again. She had noticed that the people who got taken away were generally a bit kinder than those who locked other people up; she had also found that the people who had been locked up and then let go had all improved somewhat, in personal character, and in attitude.

  Xiaohuan fluffed up a bed’s worth of cotton wadding, and made a lovely, warm overcoat for Zhang Jian. The outside was dark blue, with Zhang Jian’s name embroidered on the collar, and ‘Chunmei’, ‘Erhai’, ‘Xiaohuan’ and ‘Duohe’ embroidered inside in small characters. She bundled up the big coat with a dozen or so salted duck eggs inside, and pushed it to the factory security office on Zhang Jian’s bicycle.

  She dropped off the coat, and found Dahai, at work on his stencils.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  Without another word, Xiaohuan grabbed his arm and dragged him off the chair. He cried out ‘Ow, ow, ow!’, as Xiaohuan’s fists and feet shot out. Every time she came with things for Zhang Jian, she would tell Dahai to take her to Xiao Peng, and Dahai always refused. This time it was going to be different; if she got into a fight there was a good chance it would bring out that man Peng. To the people who came to pull her away, it felt as if this woman had more than one pair of hands and feet; they were holding her back from the left and from the right, but blows continued to rain down on her son’s shoulders and bottom.

  Sure enough, Xiao Peng appeared, brought out by the sound of a beating.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, beating people up in the offices of the Revolutionary Committee?’ Xiao Peng asked drily.

  ‘I’m beating my son! Wait till I get my breath back, I’ve got a grandson to beat as well – are you ready?!’

  ‘If you’ve got something to say, let’s talk,’ Xiao Peng said blandly.

  Xiaohuan fluffed up her hair and pulled out an iron cigarette box, which she
opened to reveal shreds of tobacco, charred at one end. You could tell at a glance that they had come from cigarette ends. She had gone back to smoking a pipe again. As she stuffed tobacco into the bowl, she announced: ‘Listen, all you low-down riff-raff who wrongly accused that good man Zhang Jian. The night of the accident, Xiao Shi had been down for the afternoon shift, he swapped to the night shift at the last minute. How could my husband have plotted in advance? That night, the factory was producing its own electricity, there wasn’t enough power and they turned off two of the big lamps, how could he see clearly whether it was a dog or a cat walking about down there? Don’t assume that we of the common people are idiots, we know how to make inquiries of our own, and we can find witnesses too!’

  Xiao Peng watched Xiaohuan. She was smiling flirtatiously one minute, smiling grimly the next, then sneering coldly, the tip of her gold tooth flashing bright then darkening; every sentence addressed her full audience, but the full stops always landed on the tip of Xiao Peng’s nose, his forehead, lips and his great Adam’s apple. Everyone immediately understood that a glare from Xiaohuan’s little eyes would hit home, right on the pressure point.

  ‘If I can’t cry out for justice here, I’ll do it before the city government, or take it to the province! I’ll go and let Chairman Mao hear me shouting out my wrongs!’ As Xiaohuan was speaking, she knocked the pipe onto the already filthy corridor floor. She knew that now they were carrying out the mighty Revolution, the cleaners had a Command Centre of their own too, so people had to sweep their own floors, just like they had to carry their own dishes in small restaurants.

  ‘Exposing people’s pasts is all the rage. We can set up an Exposing Command Centre too!’ Xiaohuan said to the crowd of faces, while still allowing the full stops to land heavily on Xiao Peng’s face. ‘There are people, aren’t there, who fancied a traitor-to-the-Han-race love affair, chasing after a Jap woman like their lives depended on it? Well, he didn’t catch her, and got himself in such a state that his eyes turned red, so off he went to make revolution, and then he came here to become a chief of staff!’