Old Town (58 page)

Baoqing tilted his head in surprise as he looked at his father. From when he was small until now his father had never personally served him food. Furthermore, of late his father had been paying no attention to him at all. Such tremendous warmth was hard for Baoqing to bear. He stood up, quelling the storm of emotions within him behind a fit of dry coughing.

“Dad, you eat too.”

His father directed at him a friendly hand gesture and a glance filled with tender love and affection.

Second Sister was also so surprised that she forgot all about pursuing the question of the envelope full of loose change and small banknotes.

Under his father’s gaze, Baoqing gulped down the pudding and wondered what this was all about today. He still couldn’t get over receiving such sudden fatherly love.

Ninth Brother drew the money-filled envelope from Second Sister’s hand and said to his son, “Your ma and I still have something left over from our inheritance, so use this money to buy something nutritious for Wei’er.”

Baoqing looked down, not daring to move. His tears fell pinging into the bowl.

Ninth Brother stuffed the envelope into Baoqing’s pocket. Then he went back to his rocker, closed his eyes and engaged in his spiritual recuperation.

Baoqing looked at his ma and then at his dad. Suddenly he recalled the old saying that before the bird dies it lets out a mournful cry. There had been a woman in their organization who committed suicide. Before she died she patched up and fixed the clothes her husband and children would wear for all the four seasons of the year.

He moved close to his father’s ear and said loudly, “Dad, our home is more peaceful than most of the others. If you want to read your Bible, just go ahead over to Ah Ming’s place. We won’t object.”

Ninth Brother, his eyes shut, was considering Baoqing’s many good qualities. He would have loved to take his son in his arms but all he did was open his eyes and say rather flatly, “Just go on home. It’s getting dark, so be careful riding your bicycle.”

Baoqing didn’t know whether his dad had heard what he said to him. He took out a piece of paper and pen and wrote, “Dad, I don’t feel right about you. You can go to Ah Ming’s and read the book you want to read.”

Ninth Brother glanced at the slip of paper. “West Gate is peaceful and calm. Take care of yourself. And look after Wei’er. Feed him his three meals at fixed times and in regulated amounts,” he said.

Baoqing still gave money to his mother. Second Sister caught sight of a five
mao
banknote
⁵⁵
out of a pile of small change. Last year when she had given her grandson his New Year’s Eve money present, someone had used a pen to mark the back of this bill with a small flower. She remembered it clearly.
Here’s Fangzi embarrassing Baoqing again for sure. That Fangzi! From the day she went into the bridal chamber, she put on a new face. In every way, she makes things difficult for Baoqing.
As she thought of her beloved son swallowing these insults for the sake of his responsibilities and living in a marriage that was far from ideal, she became so sad that she felt her heart would break.
Why did Ninth Brother refuse to accept Baoqing’s money? Is it that he knows something?

At this moment, as he pedaled his bicycle back home, Baoqing thought and thought about his father’s warm and affectionate gaze. And then this fellow who had served so meritoriously in Korea burst out sobbing.

2.

A
RMED CLASHES NOW
began in the streets as the two rebel factions started fighting with real guns and bullets. Whether in broad daylight or the dark of night, you could hear the bullets as they whizzed through the air. The ordinary citizens of Old Town, as always, showed great ingenuity in stocking away sufficient provisions and hiding behind locked doors and bolted windows.

The Lin family pussycat was above such mundane matters. As always, it pursued its lusty love life, every night crossing over the top of the wall to gang together with its male friends. The doctor was also above such mundane matters. Heart and mind, all he wanted was to go the thirty miles or more to P Town district office to visit his daughter and son-in-law. Capable, virtuous, and docile Second Sister spared no one’s feelings as she exceeded her authority in handling matters. Locking the front gate and back door from the inside and gripping the keys tightly in her hand, she kept a vigilant watch over her husband. At night when they were sleeping she kept an ear pricked to monitor him. Every so often she would open the back door to let the doctor out for some air by the side of the city moat. And she stood behind, not too closely but not too far away either, as she kept her eye on him. The slums on both sides of this water were Old Town’s dead space. It was a corner forgotten by the times, and always safe and secure.

The doctor did not negotiate directly with Second Sister but just quietly made his preparations to leave. He approached Ah Ming for a travel pass, but Ah Ming had already been reached by Second Sister. Ah Ming told him that the communications between Old Town and the outside world had been sealed off, and that, furthermore, he was the object of control. Therefore, never mind leaving Old Town; he wouldn’t even be allowed to leave West Gate. But this didn’t make the doctor give up his idea of going to see his daughter.

He continued to get ready for the journey. Looking in the mirror, he cut his hair short like Shuiguan, changing the style he had kept for decades, and now made it fall messily over his forehead. He also got Shuiguan to think up a way to buy a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of hard liquor. Within the family, people called the Public Security bureau chief “Big Zhang.” Big Zhang’s smoking and drinking hard stuff had been his most obnoxious habits. Now the doctor wanted to bring him cigarettes and liquor to restore the father-in-law-son-in-law relationship. Big Zhang had been in the cowshed for several months already, and these days the only news he could get about Baohua and Big Zhang came from their local rebel faction. Among the investigating personnel from P Town was a northerner who acted as a double agent. That agent would not appear for days on end and the doctor would just go crazy thinking about his daughter.

In a change from his fixed posture of sitting in the chair recharging his spirit, now all day long he stood in the main hall or the sky well looking up at the top of the wall. The cat jumped in and out of the house from the top of that wall. Sometimes it lay there with its head erect, and the two of them would look long at each other, as if each were guessing the other’s thoughts.

One night, the doctor told his wife that he wanted to go off on a long trip early the next day, and if she didn’t open the gate he would just have to pry open the lock. Husband and wife sat stiffly upright at the Eight Immortals table like two rival negotiators. Second Sister opened her mouth to dissuade him but she saw on his face the expression of thirty years before, when he was about to abandon wife and home in his single big roll of the dice. The Ninth Brother of this moment looked like both a willful, unreasonable child and a heroic martyr fervidly prepared to die. Words of dissuasion would have been superfluous, so she slowly closed her mouth. If I had not been there, Grandma would have gone with him to brave the dangers together. She thought it over, then untied the key to the main gate from her waist and thrust it into Ninth Brother’s hand. He then got up and went out through the back door to get a travel pass from Ah Ming.

Just at that time, an unexpected visitor barged into the Lin home.

Department Head Li, Young Li in those early years, had a hidden personal history that was growing like a tumor in his body. Luckily both the tumor and he had passed safely through all the earlier political movements. With the Cultural Revolution now under way, batch after batch of city government cadres had been overthrown. Department Head Li was still teetering on the high wire. When one faction gave him a red armband to wear, the other faction “climbed to the heavens and burrowed into the earth” in search of some incriminating evidence on him. They concentrated their fire on him as a way of attacking the rival faction. The Li family’s son and daughter wore their parents’ old army uniforms when they went out to make revolution. His wife also wore her old uniform as she made revolution at the organization where she worked. Relying on Old Li (as he was now called) having been a meritorious official of the Revolution, they made revolution more vigorously than anyone. Only he himself knew how dangerous a situation his family was really in. Every minute of the day a feeling of treading on thin ice gripped his heart.

He had awakened his wife in the depths of many a sleepless night to persuade her to hang up her armor and go back to the countryside with him. Her own home place was a farming village amid the clear mountains and limpid waters of southern China. If they went there as a family and led a life free from outside strife, even if they worked the land as peasants generation after generation, it would still be better than this state of anxiety and fear. His wife would just laugh. “Before you go back to your old home place, we ought to first send you to a mental hospital for a checkup.” As she saw it, all the cadres on earth could be overthrown, but Old Li’s turn would never come. He was an orphan who had joined the Revolution before he was even eighteen years old. From squad leader, to platoon leader, all the way up to regimental commander—who could bring down this cadre who was Red, through and through?

This morning the four members of the Li family had the rare opportunity of getting together at the breakfast table and eating the rice gruel and fritters cooked by the housekeeper. Old Li said, “My mother used to say that you shouldn’t laugh at the cripples you saw on the streets, that sort of thing. One day your own legs might become crippled. You are now smashing other people’s revolution. It’s very possible the day will come when people will smash yours.”

His wife and two children looked at Old Li in amusement. They suspected he really did have a mental condition, after all. He tried to warn his family like this, lest the sudden descent of adversity upon them might prove too great a blow. He had an ominous presentiment that the tumor within him was going to burst out during this great Revolution. His daughter went round behind him and put her arms around his neck. “Daddy! How could you compare revolution to a cripple? If you go outside and say this, they’d arrest you. Besides, who could smash our revolution?” His daughter was the closest of all to him.
Oh, my precious daughter! If you knew Daddy’s historical problems, would you still be this affectionate and loving with him?
At this thought, Department Head Li’s eyes moistened. His wife put down her chopsticks. “Old Li, you’re an old revolutionary who’s come through thickets of rifles and storms of bullets. You’ve got to hold firm to the class stand.” Old Li wanted so hard to make a clean breast of his painful secret, but looking at the complacency in his family’s expressions, how could he make them believe that the heavens above this home were about to fall? How would he begin?

Old Li walked out the main gate of their group living quarters. Looking down, he drew from his pocket a red armband and was just slipping it over his hand when suddenly someone shouted out his full name. All these years, back to when he was a squad leader, his job was what people addressed him by and no one in public had ever yelled at him like this before. He felt the thin ice breaking up beneath his feet. The disaster of disasters had fallen upon him. At the same time, he discovered to his surprise a sudden calm coming over him and he felt quieter and more at peace than ever before. He pulled down the red armband that was half-on and gripped it his hand. But he didn’t even have time to look up when the rebel faction knocked him down. More than ten big fellows laid into him with fists and boots. He closed his eyes. He didn’t struggle. He didn’t resist.

Beaten almost to a pulp, Old Li was dragged to the struggle session. The rebel faction that had originally protected him thrashed him even more fiercely than the other one had. Again and again he was beaten to the ground. Again and again he was pulled back up again. Deafening slogans bombarded his ears: “Down with the Guomindang reactionary faction!” He did not intend to survive this calamity. Just like during the war, every time he reached the battlefield he had been prepared to go to his death.

The slogan shouting grew more distant. A kind of lightness and release he had never before experienced washed over him like refreshing spring waters. He felt like he was sleeping, sleeping soundly and sweetly. When he came to, he found himself lying in ice-cold mud and the sky above was already pitch black. He dragged himself up to a sitting position and began to think. In this life, how many times had he brushed shoulders with death? This time, though, he surely couldn’t avoid it, and he intended not to try. But no matter what, now that he was so near to death, he should go home and see his wife and children and apologize to them. The rebel faction had thought he couldn’t move anymore and so didn’t assign anyone to guard him. Being very familiar with the layout of the large compound of the municipal party committee, he knew which wall had a gap in it and he easily slipped out of the cowshed.

The home had been raided. No one felt like cleaning things up. The wife and daughter were crying in each other’s arms. When Old Li, his body covered with the wounds from his beating, appeared in front of them, they never even looked up. He could hear their complaints and grievances against him, their grief-stricken laments over lost glories, power, and influence. His son sat in a daze on the sofa. When Old Li walked over toward him, the son stood up in a flash and went into his own room and slammed the door shut. Nothing need be said. He silently turned around and left. He walked to the doorway and stopped for a moment. It was as if he was hoping for something that wasn’t clear to him, but from inside he heard his wife hurl abuse at him. “You still have the face to come home? You not only tricked the party and the people, you even tricked me and the children!”

Returning to the wall around the municipal Party committee compound, Old Li hesitated. If he now crawled back through the wall would he be able to survive? He had never feared dying. Many times death would have been much easier than survival. His feelings kept their unusual calm. He thought of Tongpan District where he had been born and the hill behind this village where his father and mother were buried. To cover up his history he had never gone back.
The unfilial son is finally getting the retribution he deserves
. He decided to surrender his life to his home place…to sleep forever with his parents on the hillside. Suddenly though, he remembered that in this town there still was one person worth missing—Dr. Lin.
I wonder how he is now.
For ten years, from his hidden place, he had looked with concern after the doctor. Today, he could come forth into the open and say to him: “Sir, Young Li has never once forgotten you.”

When the doctor heard the knock on the gate it was a very soft sound, as if it were a secret contact no one could know about. Rather fearfully, he went out to greet whoever it was.

“Who’s there?”

“Sir, sir, it’s me, Young Li.”

People in Old Town who knew him well called him Dr. Lin or Mr. Lin. Only in those long gone years had Division Commander Zhang and Young Li called him “sir.” The doctor felt as if in a trance and suspected he was hallucinating. Placing his ear up against the gate, he again asked, “Who are you?”