Old Town (55 page)

The doctor opened his eyes. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“Dad, you can’t be reading this book anymore. It’s dangerous.” The doctor’s eyes bulged in fury. “Put it down. You aren’t worthy of destroying it. I really never thought I would raise such dirty swine like you. That you would actually take pleasure in another person’s terror…I don’t know you!”

Baosheng said, “Dad, really, you can’t leave this book around the house. If you don’t want to burn it, just keep it at Ah Ming’s home.”

“Right, put it in our place, our home is the safest.”

The doctor cut off Ah Ming. “Ah Ming, paste up a big character poster for me. I am breaking off relations with them. From now on, I want nothing to do with them!”

Baoqing handed the Bible to Ah Ming, who held it close as he stood there stunned for a moment, and then said, “I don’t know what book this is, Uncle Lin, but whenever you want to read it, just come over to our home.”

The doctor closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the chair. He raised a hand and weakly waved it. The two Lin brothers knew that this meant that their dad had come to terms with them.

Second Sister was holding her breath as she stood at the passageway to the kitchen. In her hand was a jar of white sugar from which she was about to give Baoqing another spoonful, for Baoqing loved to eat sweet things.
How had a storm again so suddenly erupted?
She stood frozen on the spot, but when she saw Ninth Brother wave his hand as an end to hostilities, she let her breath out as if a weight had been lifted from her. She understood her husband. If he felt cornered or pressed, he really would break off relations with his sons. If that happened, she could have no other choice but to stand beside him. But she loved her children. “The hearts of a mother and son were linked in the womb…”

The Lin family was lucky. Several days later, a real rebel faction came to their home. They raided the reactionary army officer’s house, but all they seized were two old
qipao
.

3.

T
HE DAY SCHOOL
suspended classes was dazzling with sunshine. Old Town tends to be fairly rainy, but after rain the skies are especially clear and bright. We still arranged to go to school together. On the main gate of the school was posted a “Classes Suspended—Stir Up Revolution!” notice and the school principal’s struggle session was just getting under way on the athletic field.

With nothing to do, we roamed about the school grounds for a while. Rongmei said that today being so sunny we should go out and pick mulberry leaves, because if the silkworm babies ate the leaves on rainy days, they would poo a lot. In those days we all raised silkworms. There wasn’t a kid in Old Town who didn’t have them. We walked up the hill behind the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery. The mulberry trees in the vicinity were always bare-limbed. The leaves that had just budded were picked clean. Every time we went to pick mulberry leaves it meant a springtime hike through the countryside. We crossed hills and ridges and went farther and farther on.

Chaofan’s eyes suddenly lit up and he shouted, “Look!” On the hillside ahead of us was a mulberry tree luxuriant with leaves! In an instant, he was sitting in the crotch of the tree and the leaves were falling in wild profusion. Rongmei and I squatted on the ground, picking them all up. Our happiness and excitement of that moment was just like the Red Guards meeting Chairman Mao in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace.

We threw all our texts and assignment books out on the hillside and returned in grand procession to our own homes, book bags crammed full of mulberry leaves. When we got to the West Gate intersection, Chaofan made us hook our little fingers and swear not to tell anyone—including my own cousin Su’er—about our secret treasure. He said that if one day Su’er had nothing to feed his silkworms, he’d have to trade his marbles for our leaves.

On this very day, on the very day when we had been so happy picking mulberry leaves, something occurred at West Gate, at my home. Something big.

The headquarters of Old Town’s rebel factions carried out a unified deployment of their entire forces throughout the city in a thorough revolutionary operation. West Gate’s faction was sent to East Gate. North Gate’s faction came to West Gate. There was a “Big Changing of the Guard” in the north, south, east, and west. When Ah Ming received his orders, he had no time to tell his father and mother that he wouldn’t be coming home for the noon meal, but just took his troops and set out.

Pastor and Mrs. Chen were the first to feel the brunt of all this and they were dragged out into the street. Dressed in heavy fur robes under the blazing sun they were then struggled. The rebel faction cut their hair in front of everybody. On their scalps were patches of white where they had been shorn bare and clumps of black where there was still some hair. It was horrible to see. They bowed their heads and kept admitting, “I am guilty.” The rebel faction then took a print of Jesus confiscated from the Chen home and tried to get them to confess to the crime of having illicit relations with foreign countries. Pastor Chen said, “That is Jesus.” “Who is Jesus?” the rebel faction asked. “The son of God,” he replied. Then the rebel faction pressed him to yell “Overthrow Jesus! Pull Jesus off his high horse!” But Pastor Chen, biting his lower lip, would not open his mouth, and ten broad leather belts with brass eye rings fell on him like a typhoon. Almost instantly he was a welter of blood and torn flesh.

At noon, the mass of onlookers broke up and went away and the tired rebel faction sat in the shade of trees, drinking water and resting. Abruptly, the bloody man lying on the ground crawled to his feet and made his way over to the church. His wife thought he was thirsty and was going home for some water. She herself was so giddy from being out in the sun so long she saw spots before her eyes. Stumbling and staggering, she followed after him. But when she got to the curb in front of the main gate of the church, the pastor was nowhere to be seen. Not giving this much thought, she continued on into the house where she filled a cup with green bean soup she had made the evening before and brought it outside. She saw the rebel faction standing around the well and looking down into it. Right up to that point she was still looking this way and that for her husband.

Nor did the Lin family escape this catastrophe. The rebel faction from North Gate hadn’t been able to seize any proof of guilt, so they just started smashing things. All the furniture in the Lin home was overturned. The doctor was dragged to West Street and struggled at a public clinic. Other doctors who ran private clinics in the West Gate area were struggled along with him. It didn’t matter if they had practiced traditional Chinese or Western medicine, all had placards saying “black reactionary doctors” hung on them. Dr. Lin wasn’t only a black reactionary doctor; he had been an officer in the reactionary army too.

As we each returned to our own homes, the streets around West Gate were all buzzing with excitement. Such excitement was common in those days. I was both thirsty and hungry and was also afraid Grandma would scold me. Not coming home on time for the noon meal was really breaking heaven’s commandments, so I hardly felt like seeing what all the uproar was about this time. I thought that Grandma would be waiting under the oleander searching for me with her worried eyes, but there was no Grandma there under the tree. Looking around I saw a big character poster on the gate, its ink still dripping wet. Suddenly my two legs felt like they were giving way. The characters I was able to recognize were Grandpa’s name and “Guomindang Army Officer.” I didn’t understand how these words were connected.

Grandma was all by herself in the main hall, setting the tables and the benches back in order. As I stood there on the steps of the sky well, Grandma was straightening up the aftermath and ignoring me, as if I didn’t even exist.

All the ferment in the street boiled over into our own home. The playhouse audience was being pulled up onto the stage to take the lead roles of the play. All kinds of calamities might happen to me. Grandma might be pulled out into the street and have her hair shorn. Grandpa might be flogged by the leather belts used by the Red Guards. Chaofan’s stamps and my candy wrappers all might be burned to ashes.

Scene after scene played right before my eyes, vivid and pulsating with life. I bowed my head against the doorframe and cried. Grandma came over and took my hand. “It’s nothing, it’s nothing. The rebel faction came to check whether we had any of the Four Olds. They were going door to door. Even Rongmei’s home, where they’ve all been workers for several generations, they checked there too.” She said all this with a forced laugh.

Somebody had informed on Rongmei’s granny for having taken some silverware from a Four Olds bonfire, so the rebel faction raided her home as well.

“Who was a Guomindang army officer?” I asked Grandma.

Grandma’s reply came firm and clear. “I don’t know. That is definitely a mistake. Our family is a revolutionary family.”

I believed Grandma’s explanation and, feeling relieved, I went into the kitchen to find something to eat.

We didn’t know that Pastor Chen was now dead. His body was being hauled out of the well near the West Gate intersection. Row upon row of onlookers stood around the edge of the well. Chaofan, his book bag filled with mulberry leaves, squeezed through. Wide-eyed, he saw people using iron hooks to grapple his grandpa’s corpse out of the well, then throw it on a flatbed cart and haul it away. Mrs. Chen was overcome with grief and pain. The only thing she could do was pray, and time after time she would faint dead away in the midst of her prayers.

Late at night she remembered her grandson and found him in a corner upstairs. He was using a scissors to cut up and mash all his live silkworms. He looked totally at peace, as if he were just an incorrigibly naughty boy doing his usual practical jokes. His granny came forward and took him back to his room to go to sleep. She told him that his grandpa had gone to a far-off place to do thought reform and it would be a long time before he came back home.

The sun was now far to the west. The North Gate rebel faction withdrew their troops and departed the battlefield. The black reactionary doctors still stood by the entrance of the West Gate clinic. They were smeared with black ink from their hands right up to their shoulders, their heads had been shorn, and on the placards that hung on their chests were written each person’s name and crime. Dr. Lin had kept his eyes closed from start to finish, just as he normally did at home when he was recharging his spirit. Today had been the most painful day of his life, but not because he had been struggled or because his hair had been cut. He actually didn’t know what he looked like at that moment. He shut his eyes and took refuge within his own world. Somebody else seeing him would have thought he was just a shell without a soul. Let the rebel faction wreak havoc upon him, they still wouldn’t be able to hurt his inner self. What pained him, though, was that his belief in God was wavering. He couldn’t keep from having this one thought:
O God, O Jesus. I have followed you most all my life. Do you really exist? If you are the almighty God why do you not stop all the things that are happening in this world?

This thought flitted by lightly and was gone. It toppled the whole of his existence like collapsing dominoes. This kind of feeling was just too frightening. He did all he could to recall testaments to God’s presence over the past decades.
It was God who sent Mr. Qiao to find me so long before on that wet, deep night. It was God who brought Second Sister into my life. It was God who let me escape with my life from under the barrels of the Japanese rifles…how could I still doubt God’s existence?
But then another voice said:
Perhaps that was all just chance. Don’t people who don’t believe in God also have experiences that could be explained as pure coincidences?

He tried to draw close to God, to recover the sense of being in God’s bosom, but some force repulsed him and cast him out into the dark and stormy sea of night, all alone and helpless like a small boat which has lost its way. He was a mere bookworm, too weak to truss the proverbial chicken, but very rarely did he have feelings of fear and terror. That time when the bandit Division Commander Hu leveled the gun at his head, he hadn’t shown the least bit of cowardice. During the Eliminate Counterrevolutionaries period when he had been taken to the execution ground with those who were really about to be killed, he had maintained a similar calm and composure. But today he knew terror and fear.

The black reactionary doctors all went home, each with his placard. Only Dr. Lin still stood there. A middle-aged man came over, bearing a cup of tea. The doctor had once treated him and his family. Today, on the way to work, the man had noticed Dr. Lin being struggled and so he parked his bicycle and lingered there right up to this point in time. At his work unit he also was a small leader of a rebel faction so it was easy for him to pal with his brothers of the same level in the North Gate rebel faction. Rather cryptically he let on that this scrawny Lin geezer was related to a leader at the top who was then very much in favor, and that his sons and daughter were all exceptional people. So, showing mercy would be the wise course of action. The person in charge of hair shearing was a female rebel. When she got to Dr. Lin’s head she may have reflected on that leader at the top who was then very much in favor. Her hand weakened, the scissors fell to the ground, and she didn’t bother to pick them up. They were still there under the doctor’s foot.