Brothers (19 page)

Song Fanping walked out with his dangling arm. The boys spotted their savior and cried out, "Papa, come quickly!"

Song Fanping walked over to the boys, and Baldy Li and Song Gang hid behind him. Relieved, they raised their bowls of shrimp and wine and offered them to him. Song Gang said, "Papa, we made you fried shrimp, and we got you two ounces of rice wine to go with it."

Song Fanping's left hand dangled there uselessly, so he accepted Baldy Li's bowl of shrimp with his right. He didn't eat any, however, but instead politely passed it along to those red-armbanded people. He then accepted Song Gang's wine and also extended it to them. They were all still busy munching on the shrimp, so he waited politely with the bowl of wine. There were as many hands on the shrimp as branches on a tree, and in the blink of an eye they were all gone. The red-armbanders then noticed Song Fanping standing to the side waiting politely with the bowl of wine, and so took the wine and passed it around, each one of them downing a big gulp and finishing it off in no time.

Baldy Li and Song Gang wiped at their tears. Their shrimp and wine had been for Song Fanping, but he didn't get a taste of either. Song Gang said, "We were imagining how you would laugh while enjoying our shrimp and wine."

Song Fanping knelt down and, without a word, wiped away their tears. When he smiled, the boys noticed that he too had tears streaming from his eyes.

After finishing the shrimp and wine, the red-armbanders kicked at Song Fanping and bellowed, "Get up, scram! Get back in the warehouse!"

Song Fanping wiped away his tears and patted first Baldy Li's face, then Song Gang's, and said gently, "Now go on home."

Song Fanping stood up, no longer crying. He smiled contentedly at the red-armbanders, then walked heroically toward the front gate.
When he reached the gate he turned around and, his dislocated left elbow still dangling at his side, waved to Baldy Li and Song Gang with his right hand. With that wave he looked so confident and magnanimous, like Chairman Mao waving at the parading masses from atop Tiananmen Square.

CHAPTER 15

Y
EARS LATER
, whenever Baldy Li spoke of his stepfather, he only had one thing to say. Raising his thumb, he would sigh and say, "What a real man."

In that warehouse that was in fact a prison, Song Fanping suffered every torment and abuse imaginable. Yet he never uttered a word of complaint, even as his dislocated left arm became increasingly swollen. He also never stopped writing Li Lan. He had written his first letter on the day of his flag-waving atop the bridge. This was the most glorious moment of his life, so his letter was filled with passion and energy. This was the first time Li Lan, sitting in a hospital bed in Shanghai, had ever received a letter from a man, and what a letter it was! Reading it made her feel as though she had been given a shot of adrenaline. Baldy Li's biological father, who had drowned in the public latrine, had never written her, and for him the height of romance consisted of knocking on her window in the middle of the night, hoping to lure her out to the fields for a romp. So when she received her first letter from Song Fanping, she blushed bright red. And as Song Fanping's letters continued coming one after another, her pulse would race each time she received a new one.

By this point, Song Fanping had been thoroughly beaten down, but in order for Li Lan to feel at ease while receiving her treatment in Shanghai, he continued filling his letters with passion and energy. He didn't tell her what had actually happened but instead described how things were getting better and better, so she believed that he was riding the crest of the red waves of the Cultural Revolution. Even after Song Fanping had his left elbow dislocated, he nevertheless continued, using his right hand to embroider his glorious exploits for her, and Baldy Li and Song Gang would mail the letters off for him. The boys would come to the front gate of the warehouse, and long-haired Sun Wei's father would hand them the letters, which they would then take to the post office. When Song Fanping mailed his own letters, he always pasted the stamp in the top right corner of the envelope. But when Baldy Li and Song Gang mailed them, they didn't know where to
put the stamp. Once they saw someone else place it on the back of the envelope, so Baldy Li did the same. The next time, when it was Song Gangs turn, he saw that someone had pasted it over the opening, and did the same.

By that point Li Lan was no longer able to continue her treatment in peace. There were struggle sessions every day at the hospital, and one after another every doctor she knew was brought down. Anxious and worried, she was desperate to get home. But Song Fanping tried to dissuade her, urging her to stay in Shanghai to treat her migraines. Each day Li Lan spent in Shanghai seemed like an eternity, and she had read Song Fanpings letters over so many times she knew them by heart— they were her only source of solace during this period.

She also examined the envelopes many times and noticed that from a certain day onward, the placement of the stamps kept shifting. One time it would be on the back of the envelope, and the next it would be over the opening. And every time she received a letter with a stamp on the back, she told herself that on the next letter the stamp would be over the opening.

Baldy Li and Song Gang took turns placing the stamp on the envelopes and putting the letters in the mailbox. They never went out of turn. This was the source of Li Lan s uneasiness, and this uneasiness increased daily. She started to imagine all sorts of scenarios and to suffer from insomnia, and her migraines became more severe. Li Lan, who typically listened to Song Fanping in all things, for the first time wrote him a firm letter. She told him that because of the Cultural Revolution there were no longer any doctors around, and therefore she had resolved to return home.

When Li Lan had taken the bus to Shanghai to get treatment, Song Fanping had told her that after she was cured, he would come in person to pick her up. To assuage her uneasiness, Li Lan decided to test the waters by asking Song Fanping whether he could come meet her now.

This time Li Lan had to wait more than half a month for a response. Song Fanping had just been whipped with a belt for more than an hour, but even in his imprisonment this good man was determined to keep his word, so without hesitation he promised his wife that he would go to Shanghai to pick her up. He even set a date and asked her to wait for him at noon at the front gate of the hospital.

This was the last letter Song Fanping wrote to his wife. It allowed Li Lan to weep tears of relief. And once it was dark, she was able to fall into a deep slumber.

That night Song Fanping escaped from the warehouse. He waited until Sun Wei's father was in the toilet, then quietly slipped out the front gate. By the time he reached home, it was about one in the morning, and Baldy Li and Song Gang had long since fallen asleep. They felt a hand caressing them and a light shining on them. Song Gang woke up first and rubbed his eyes. When he saw Song Fanping sitting by the bed, he let out a cry of delight. Then Baldy Li also woke up, rubbing his eyes. Song Fanping told the boys, "Li Lan is coming home." His wife, their mother, was coming home. Song Fanping said that he was going to catch the first bus to Shanghai to pick her up, and then they would take the afternoon bus back. Song Fanping pointed at the pitch-black darkness outside, saying, "By the time the sun sets tomorrow, well be home."

Baldy Li and Song Gang bounced on the bed like two overjoyed monkeys. With a wave, Song Fanping told them to quiet down, pointing in the direction of the neighbors on either side and reminding the boys not to wake them up. Baldy Li and Song Gang immediately covered their mouths and crept down from their bed. Song Fanping looked around at the overturned armoire and the clothes strewn all over the floor. Frowning, he said to the boys, "What if your mother comes home and finds the place looking like a dump and decides to return to Shanghai?"

Baldy Li and Song Gang thought it over and exclaimed, "Cleanup time!"

"Right!" agreed Song Fanping.

Song Fanping walked over to the overturned armoire, squatted down, and raised it with his right arm, then transferred the weight on his shoulder. When he stood up, the armoire was righted. Baldy Li and Song Fanping watched in astonishment. Song Fanping raised up such a huge armoire with just one arm—he hadn't even needed his left arm, which was still dangling there. The boys followed behind Song Fanping or, rather, they followed behind his right arm and tidied up the rest of the house. They helped his right arm pick up all the clothes on the ground; when his right arm swept, they held the dustpan; when his right arm mopped the floor, they took up some rags and wiped down
the dust from the tables and chairs. By the time they finished tidying up the house, they heard the cocks crow and saw that the sky had turned as pale as a fish's belly. The boys then sat on the front stoop, watching Song Fanping raise a bucket of well water to bathe himself. As Song Fanping walked back into the house they watched him change into a clean set of clothes using just his right arm. He put on a red sleeveless shirt that had a row of characters across the chest. They couldn't read what it said, but Song Fanping explained that this was his old college basketball uniform. He also put on a pair of beige plastic sandals. These were a present from Li Lan, and he had worn them only once before, on his wedding day.

The boys noticed that Song Fanping's left elbow had thickened, and his left hand was puffy, as if he were wearing a cotton glove. They didn't understand that it was swollen, so they asked him why his left hand was now fatter than his right. Song Fanping replied that it was because his left hand had been resting all this time. "It's just been eating and lazing about, so it's gotten chubby."

Baldy Li and Song Gang now felt that their father was really a deity. He could do all his chores with one arm and let the other one rest to the point that it even grew fat. They asked him, "When will you let your right arm grow fat?"

Song Fanping chuckled. "Oh, it will."

As the sun rose Song Fanping, who had spent a sleepless night, let out a few yawns. He told the boys to get to bed, but they shook their heads and remained seated on the stoop. So Song Fanping simply stepped over them. He was off to catch the early bus in order to meet his wife in Shanghai. As his tall figure passed over the boys’ heads they noticed that the morning sun had bathed the room in a red glow. The house was gleaming in its cleanliness, like a newly polished mirror, leading the boys to exclaim, "It's so clean!"

Song Gang turned around and hailed his departing father, "Papa! Come back!"

Song Fanping walked back, his footsteps ringing. Song Gang asked him, "What will Mama say when she sees the place so clean?"

Song Fanping replied, "She'll say, ‘I'm not going back to Shanghai.'"

Baldy Li and Song Gang both giggled, and Song Fanping also let out a loud chuckle. He walked toward the morning sun, his feet hitting the ground like hammers paving a road. Once he was a dozen yards away,
Baldy Li and Song Gang saw him pause, reach for his dangling left hand, and place it into his pants pocket. He then continued walking forward, his left arm no longer dangling. With one hand in his pocket and the other swinging freely, he looked like a dashing movie star walking into the rising sun.

CHAPTER 16

W
HEN SONG FANPING
arrived at the bus depot on the east side of town, he saw a man with a red armband and a wooden bat standing on the platform. When the man saw Song Fanping coming down the bridge, he immediately turned and shouted into the depot waiting room, and five armband-wearing men instantly swarmed out. Song Fanping knew they were there to seize him, but after a moments hesitation, he walked right up to them. At first he wanted to show them Li Lans letter, but then he decided to forget it. The armband-wearing men stood on the platform, each holding a wooden bat. Song Fanping removed his left hand from his pocket and walked up to the platform, about to explain that he wasn't running away but, rather, was going to Shanghai to pick up his wife. Several bats rained down on him, and he instinctively raised his right arm to shield himself. A bat smashed down on his right elbow, and he felt a bone-shattering pain. Yet he still waved his right arm to block the bats beating down on him. He walked into the waiting room and up to the ticket window. His right elbow, which he had used to block the wooden bats, felt as if it were about to explode in pain. His shoulders had also suffered countless blows, and one of his ears had been half ripped off. Despite the bats raining down on him and trailing him like a cloud of dust, he finally made it to the ticket counter, where he saw that the eyes of the female ticket seller were bugged out in fear. Miraculously, his dislocated left elbow now rose to block the bats as he thrust his right hand into his pocket and found his bus fare, which he then pushed through the ticket window, telling the ticket seller, "One ticket to Shanghai."

The ticket seller toppled over, passing out in fright. This new development suddenly flummoxed Song Fanping, and his dislocated left arm also dropped. He forgot that his arm had been shielding him from the blows, and in an instant a flurry of bats smashed down on his head. Bleeding and broken, Song Fanping collapsed against the wall as six wooden bats crazily smashed down on him, until one after another they shattered. They were then followed by the red-armbanders’ twelve feet, which stomped and kicked him for more than ten minutes, until
finally he lay there motionless. Only then did the six men, all out of breath from their exertions, pause to rub their arms and legs and wipe the sweat from their faces. They walked over to the bench under the ceiling fan, completely wiped out. Cocking their heads, they looked at Song Fanping slumped over by the wall and cursed, "Fuck."

It was around daybreak that these red-armbanders from the warehouse that was actually a prison had noticed that Song Fanping was missing. They had immediately split into two groups, with one guarding the bus depot and the other assigned to the docks. The red-armbanders’ savage beating of Song Fanping that day terrified everyone, and those who had been in the waiting room all ran outside to the platform. Children wailed and women stood with their mouths hanging open in terror. Everyone stood outside the waiting room door peering in, no one daring to go back inside. Only when the tickets for the Shanghai bus were being collected did people carefully reenter, looking with trepidation at the six red-armbanders resting under the ceiling fan.