Old Town (66 page)

Five minutes later, I saw on my computer a deeply affectionate love letter. In it were things that Chaofan and I had experienced together in the past. My nose twitched, a sure sign of coming tears, and all the feelings of injustice and anger that filled me softly faded away.

Maybe subconsciously I did want to write such a letter. Only I understood Chaofan and what sort of feelings he would have. His reactions are more intense than I can imagine. His hatreds are more, much more, than I know about. I believe that he hates not just me, but the whole world. This world owes him. All the people in the world who are connected to him owe him.

How could such a person have gotten to be so sad and lonely?

I won’t explain to him that I didn’t write that e-mail, because I still ache for him. I’m just sad that I don’t have the strength to go and warm his ice-cold lump of a heart.

When I met with Chrysanthemum again she looked at me with a worried expression. “Don’t tell me that there’s not the slightest hope now? He still hasn’t fallen in love with anyone else, has he? Your luck is as tough as mine. Something always seems to cross us up…”

I kept a grim look as I complained about how she thought she was so clever but had made such a mess of things. In the end, though, I couldn’t hold my laughter back any longer.

“Hey, people from Taiwan have been coming back to the mainland looking for relatives from as far back as the 1980s. How come your husband has only gotten money over these past two years?”

My husband? Who is my husband? What a strange term.

2.

W
HEN SHE SAW
the “Seeking Relatives” message in the newspaper, Huang Shuyi was then on the train headed for Beijing. She read: “Father and Mother’s mounting grief from missing their son and daughter left behind on the mainland became an illness, and both passed away three years ago.” For an instant there leapt before her eyes the long-ago scene of her mother and the serving girls kneeling before her. She felt a twinge of grief and sadness and her vision grew misty. Afraid that the two young people beside her would see her in this weak and teary state, she quickly got up and went into the washroom.

The train setting out from Old Town was going to cross the Yangzi River. The trip took more than twenty hours. Huang Shuyi talked about the greater part of her life spent in the Revolution. Her two young traveling companions were literature enthusiasts and said they wanted to make a movie of this marvelous tale of the female guerrilla fighter. Huang Shuyi really let herself go and, without knowing it, fashioned all kinds of embellishments and mixed in many fictitious details. For example, she said the other guerrillas had called her “Dujuan,” and that she could fire a gun in each hand. When the local Old Ridge bandits and bullies heard the name “Old Ridge Dujuan,” they just collapsed in terror.

She hadn’t cried for years. At her brother Huang Jian’s memorial ceremony many of her old comrades from those years had wept, and the real Old Ridge Dujuan had wept until she fainted. Enchun was there, supporting himself with a cane in one hand and wiping his tears with a tissue held by the other. Along with Huang Jian’s rehabilitation, his party membership had been restored. Huang Shuyi looked at him and thought:
For thirty years I fought a war single-handed and today you sit there reaping what you never sowed. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
There were also several other war comrades present who likewise made her angry. They had distanced themselves from her campaign to safeguard the truth. She felt if only she could weep and wail now that the gross injustice done to her brother had been righted, but her eyes held only the flames of her anger.

Huang Shuyi looked in the washroom mirror at the two lines of tears on her face.
What are you crying for? Don’t tell me you’re sorry for having chosen the path of the Revolution? No, even though it’s been tough and winding, I’ve never regretted my choice. When I entered the party, I took an oath to struggle for communism all my life. If I regretted that, wouldn’t that make me a traitor? The day that my brother and I joined the Revolution, we completely broke off relations with our bourgeois family
.

At that time, the brother and sister were persecuted by their father. To stop her from joining the student movements, the father had locked her up at home and threatened Huang Jian. “If you let your sister join the communists I’ll report you to the police. When the day comes that your head hangs from the city wall, don’t blame me for being cruel.”
They were counterrevolutionaries to the bone. To think that I lost my correct stance by shedding a tear over them!

Huang Shuyi crumpled the newspaper up into a ball and threw it into the garbage pail. She turned on the faucet and gave her face a good washing, then returned to her seat. There she asked the two young people, “Where did I leave off just now?”

“On the eve of Liberation you were in a small coastal town doing underground work,” someone prompted her.

“Ah. When I saw so many rich people chartering boats to escape from the mainland, I knew that the Revolution was just about to succeed, and that was real happiness. My father too had chartered a boat and on his way stopped by that little seaside town to fetch me. My mother brought the serving maids and they all kneeled down in front of me…”

“
Wah
!” exclaimed one of the youths. “Your family was really rich!”

“Oh, yes. You can’t choose your background, but you can choose the path of the Revolution.”

“You ought to put a notice in the paper to find them. A portion of your family’s property is yours,” said the other one.

How could these two kids think like this? Could they write a proper revolutionary story?
she wondered.

Enchun arrived early on the day of the memorial service and saw an old woman, withered and bent over as a hunchback, arranging the place. He made no connection at all between her and Huang Shuyi. When he heard someone call out, “Shuyi,” the old woman responded and went over to shake hands and catch up on old times. Enchun asked an old comrade-in-arms beside him, “Is that Huang Jian’s younger sister, Huang Shuyi?” This other person sadly nodded his head. Enchun went forward and, putting out his hand, said in a choking voice, “Shuyi, you have suffered much.” Huang Shuyi pushed aside his hand, her eyes bulging in rage. “You don’t deserve to stand before a revolutionary martyr!”

Now that her brother had been rehabilitated and her Party membership restored, Huang Shuyi had no plans of settling down in Old Town. Her decades of pursuing this litigation had now become a way of life for her. Having won her own lawsuit, she also wanted to help other people do the same. She now had her hands full with twenty or thirty lawsuits. One of these was an appeal for redress which she helped put together for a peasant woman in Hubei who had been persecuted by a township cadre. There was also a case of a certain department store in Beijing that had sold her a package of past-date biscuits. Her written complaint had been sent to the Ministry of Commerce but there had been no reply yet. She had already bought the train ticket and was ready to set out once again.

Enchun paid no mind to Huang Shuyi’s harsh words. After the service concluded he followed her out. He said that the school had given him a three-room apartment in line with his full professor’s salary. He could think of how to convert this arrangement into two small, one-room apartments and asked Huang Shuyi to stay and spend her final years in peace and comfort here. Huang Shuyi was scornful. “Chen Enchun! A full professor’s salary, and three rooms, and now you can be pleased with yourself. I despise you. Losing the revolutionary will to fight is the same as losing your life. Though you’re alive, you’re no different from being dead.”

This shut Enchun up. He stood there and watched Huang Shuyi’s departing figure moving farther and farther away. The thought that this may well have been their last meeting filled him with a deep sorrow.

In the mid-1990s, the Huang family brothers on Taiwan, after much searching, finally located Enchun, and with the information provided by him, arrived in Beijing. For the next few days, the television program for seeking relatives broadcast the Huang Happy Family portrait and a photograph of Huang Shuyi at the memorial service.

A service attendant at a basement hotel realized that the person the television was looking for was that wretched old lady who had lodged there the whole year. She was so surprised she started yelling and shouting. The guests had no idea of what was happening and thought the hotel had caught on fire. When Huang Shuyi returned from traveling outside the city, she was mobbed and informed of the wonderful news. But Huang Shuyi calmly said, “From the day I joined the Revolution, I broke off relations with my family.” The attendant chased after her to her room, a little windowless nook of about thirteen square feet in area. “Auntie Huang, you’re going to be
rich
! Later, when you’re living in a grand hotel and I come to take you out for some fun, will you still know me?” Huang Shuyi sat her down and gave her some ideological education. The girl went running off, giggling. Huang Shuyi then made her decision and placed a telephone call to the number provided by the television station.

She was true to her word. She insisted on living in this basement and no one could make her move. She stayed there right until that old building was demolished and only then did she move into a room with a window.

In order to improve their elder sister’s life, the Huang brothers located Chaofan in America and sent her money through him. She accepted the money from her son, but used all of it for lawsuits and to help poor people pay for their medical treatment.

These years, her younger brothers take turns coming to Beijing to visit her. One of these has a very big business. When he had the time to spare he flew over to find her and discovered that she wasn’t as forbidding as he had imagined. Sometimes he even envies and admires her. At least she has a life in which she never spends an idle moment and she is always so full of fight and high morale.

3.

S
U’ER WAS GOOD
at making money. He was the paragon for our third generation of Lins. He was also very lavish and generous. We all accepted his contributions with an easy mind and clear conscience. When my cash flow got tight, Su’er would help me. Even Big Aunt Fangzi, she of the revolutionary mind-set, began to “clothe in gold and dress in silver,” as they say. People see wealth as something just like the big red flower that Grandma wore on her breast the year that she sent Baoqing to join the army. When Su’er first plunged into the sea of business, there was still some dissent about this among family members. Big Uncle Baosheng was very disappointed when Su’er dropped out of the university entrance exams, but gradually came around in his thinking.

Only my grandmother felt very uneasy about this. But who would take any notice of the views of a muddle-headed ninety-year-old woman?

Nowadays, my once very smug older cousin Su’er is serving eight years in prison for running private-channel goods. He’s been in the clink for more than three years now.

How many times when I returned to Old Town did I want to see Su’er? I just never had the courage to do so. Once I dreamed I saw him locked up behind bars, his head shaven clean, and dressed in convict’s wear. I woke up crying, and I went on crying after I was awake. He was such a vivid and dramatic person. For how many years had I grown used to seeing him in his big-name car with beautiful women and throwing money around like dirt? How could I face such brutal reality?

One time I went back to Old Town when it was Grandma’s ninetieth birthday and the old home at West Gate had not yet been torn down. Su’er held a sumptuous banquet for her at Old Town’s best hotel. The Guo and Lin family members gathered there. All the relatives who were working in other places flew into Old Town at Su’er’s expense to offer their birthday congratulations. I received even more favorable treatment: I flew first class. Su’er was afraid I couldn’t bear spending the money and bought tickets for me in Old Town and had them couriered to Beijing.

Every time the waiter would bring a new course of food, Grandma would murmur, “
Zuiguo! Zuiguo!
” Now, this is a conventional way of saying something like “Thank you, but I don’t deserve all this” for such occasions, but it literally means “sin” and “fault.” Very satisfied with himself, Su’er patted his prosperous belly and laughed. “This is nothing! There’s even more
zuiguo
to come!”

We drank and sang in praise of our beautiful and happy lives. Every one of the relatives and friends came over and toasted Su’er. He was the present-day hero of our Lin family.

In the middle of the night, I discovered that the lights were on in the main hall, so I got up to turn them off. Suddenly I saw a figure in the cane chair, and coming totally loose in space and time, I thought it was Grandpa.

Grandma was holding the Bible that Grandpa had kept and was praying there. “O Lord, I beseech you to forgive Su’er. Forgive him for not being aware of his
zuiguo
. Lord, I place him in your hands. Let him know that money is nothing. Let him understand that only you are the truth and that knowing you is the only true happiness. Su’er’s
zuiguo
are also my own
zuiguo
…”

I never, ever expected Grandma to be so alarmed. In an instant the effects of the alcohol in me vanished, and for a long while I stood there behind Grandma, listening to her confess her sins and pray to Jesus. I didn’t know how I ought to comfort and help her see what was right and sensible.

Grandma’s last years were spent in that patched and re-patched rattan chair. Her hair which had turned all silver-white was now quite sparse. Her hands, covered with old-age spots, never stopped trembling. Day after day, year after year, she sat there reading the Bible. To her old-age glasses was now added a magnifying glass, and she read tirelessly with a hunger and a thirst that seemed never satisfied. But I don’t believe she could understand what she read. After Grandpa passed on, she actually read it more than ten times—an old person over the waning years, nibbling away at an incomprehensible book from heaven. Obviously, she felt so alone and lonely. But Grandma put it differently. “If I am not a devout believer, how will I go to heaven and see your grandpa?”

I went over and crouched down by her side. “Ah Ma, go to sleep now. You’ve worked a lifetime for the Lins and the Guos. This birthday celebration was something you deserved. There was nothing sinful about it. You Christians talk of universal love. I can accept that, but everywhere you turn, there’s sin. That’s what I don’t understand.”

Grandma looked at me and there was worry in that gaze. “I don’t feel good about Su’er. His squandering wealth like that makes me think that it wasn’t proper to begin with. I’m old now, and nobody wants to hear my nagging and chattering. You’ll have to convince him.”

“The times have changed, Grandma.” I pointed to that picture on the wall, the one of her sending her son into the army. “In those days, joining the army was something glorious. Now it’s glorious to become a millionaire.”

Grandma shook her head. “It’s not right. I feel that’s not right. Sooner or later, something is going to happen to Su’er.”

All I could do was nod my head. People in our family said that Grandma had become like Grandpa, more and more stubborn and ignorant, and they found this both amusing and annoying.

Afterward, Grandma got even older and more scatterbrained. She didn’t recognize money or Su’er. He again held several grand birthday banquets. When Grandma went, Su’er arranged a funeral ceremony that was lavish in the extreme. Nobody thought there was anything wrong with this and right up until that thing happened to Su’er, no one, old or young, in the Lin family mentioned Grandma’s foresight.

Late one night, when Su’er was sleeping in the arms of who knows which one of his pretty confidantes, he was arrested and taken away by the Public Security Bureau. That woman then sold the apartment and the car, and then beat it out of there. To rescue her husband, my cousin’s wife liquidated everything she could and took her daughter to live in a little courtyard place. Over the past three years, she has visited him in jail every month.

Deprived of his liberty, Su’er likes to write letters. At the start of the Cultural Revolution he was in the third grade at primary school, and after that he never seriously read or wrote anything. His character strokes are still at the primary school level, but between the unsophisticated lines an incongruous maturity and depth shows through.

In one letter he wrote, “Actually, a person doesn’t need more than a three-foot-wide bed to sleep on, or eat more than half a
jin
of rice, so how could I have been so discontented? Be content, this is my advice to you. I don’t complain about anything. The calamity of eight years in prison was really retribution for my wrongdoings. Every time I see my wife, I feel I really don’t deserve to live in this world. Such a good wife, and yet for so long a time I just ignored her at home. I can hardly look her in the face. Later I just have to compensate her for all this. Although I won’t be able to buy her an apartment or car again, just as long as we can be together as husband and wife, eating rice gruel and salted vegetables, that would be happiness…”