Naked Earth (36 page)

“Which unit are you from? And how are you related to Comrade Su? How long have you known her?” she asked him all these questions before she would answer his tumbling ones. No, they did not know what illness it was that had caused Su Nan’s death. She had died on the way to the hospital. She had been feeling poorly for a day or two before that and had been in bed resting but she had insisted it was nothing serious. When they finally sent her to the hospital, it had been too late.

Liu could not think of anything to say, so the woman plied him with more questions. But before he left he remembered to ask where she was buried. It was somewhere very far in the Old City. He would go as soon as he could—as if it would prove anything, to see a newly made mound.

That evening when everybody came back to the hostel, he saw Chang Li. The meeting turned out to be no more embarrassing than when Chang had been released after his detention at the very start of the Three Antis. Chang congratulated him and asked about his health. He said little else, being excused from the customary comradely effusiveness by the fact that Liu was still under surveillance. Of course nobody really took it very seriously. It was generally understood that he had been released because there wasn’t any real evidence against him. The surveillance was just the usual face-saving device of the government after keeping a man in prison for several months and then not proving anything.

So his homecoming went off smoothly. And if there was anything at all constrained or guilty-looking in Chang’s manner he did not care enough to notice it, engrossed as he was in trying to understand that Su Nan was really dead.

It could not have been a sudden illness since she had known of it beforehand—because he definitely knew now she had come to say goodbye the last time he saw her. Suddenly it seemed to him that it would be almost bearable if only he knew the real cause. For the time being this seemed to be all that mattered, even if he knew that it would not change things any.

Back at his office the next day his new superior sent to him an opened envelope which had evidently been around for some time. At the lower lefthand corner where the sender’s surname was usually written it said “Mailed by Su, Peking.” Liu’s heart thumped madly and his head swam when he tried to identify the handwriting. A person’s writing looked so different when it was done with a brush instead of a pen. He realized that he had never believed for a moment that she was dead. But how had she gone back to Peking? He got the flimsy yellowish, red-lined letter paper out, trying not to tear it.

“Nephew Ch’üan,” the letter said. “Forgive me for addressing you in such an impolite manner. But I feel as if I know you well enough for that, for my child Nan has often spoken of you in her letters. I trust that you are well and happy and busy serving the People. Nan wrote home some time ago saying that she had to go to the hospital for an appendicitis operation. I expect she has received the JMP 800,00 I sent her for the operation but I got a little worried wondering how it went and if she is out of hospital by now. In case she is not yet well enough to write, I will appreciate it very much if you will drop me a line when you are not too rushed.”

It was signed “Slow-Witted Su Wong Mei-chu.” “Slow-Witted” is the standard adjective that elders apply to themselves when they wish to be modest, probably because it is taken for granted that they are superior in every other respect.

Su Nan had told Liu that she had mentioned him in her letters home. But he had never quite persuaded her to tell him how much she had told her mother, and in what terms. It was one of the little things that had come to be a standing joke between them. Judging from the tone of this letter her mother knew all about it. She would never have called him nephew if she did not already regard him as a son-in-law.

The letter finished him. He knew that he could no longer live with himself until he found out what really had happened to Su Nan. He went again to her office that day armed with the letter, claiming that he was making inquiries on behalf of her family. One good thing about Chinese life in general and their present Group life in particular, he reflected, was that there could be no secrets. Truth might be distorted but never completely hidden. But the man at the
Wen Hui Pao
stuck to his story of the day before. This was the first he had heard of the appendicitis operation, he said.

Liu called again at her hostel at a time when everybody was there. He asked to see the things she had left and got to talking to some of the girls there. The young proofreader seemed inclined to be informative. So he singled her out and when she went to work the next day he was waiting around outside to walk her to the tram stop.

“She died of bleeding,” she told him in a whisper. “Don’t know whether it had anything to do with her jumping down the stairs. She didn’t break any bones or anything. But there could have been some injury inside the doctor couldn’t see—Nobody knew why she’d want to do a thing like that. Of course there’s been a lot of tal
k...
She disappeared for two whole weeks, you know just after the Chinese New Year.”

She mentioned Shen K’ai-fu. Oddly shaped, foreign thoughts forced themselves on Liu’s unwilling, unreceptive mind.

“Of course I don’t really know,” the girl said. “She never told anybody anything.”

Liu finally thought of asking, making a great effort to concentrate: “Have you ever seen her around with a Comrade Ko, a woman editor at the
Liberation Daily News
?”

“Comrade Ko? No—Oh, the name’s Ko Shan, isn’t it? I remember hearing Su Nan asking around for her address the other day.”

“When was that?”

She paused to think. “Couldn’t have been more than a few days before her death.”

It had occurred to Liu before that Ko Shan might be able to tell him something. When he saw Su Nan in prison, she had told him that Ko Shan had helped make the meeting possible. So she must have been in close contact with Ko Shan, though Liu could not quite imagine the two of them together. He felt a strange reluctance to go and ask Ko Shan, perhaps because he was unwilling to take her word for whatever she had to tell him about Su Nan.

But he went to see her that evening and with expert timing caught her just as she was locking her door before going to office.

She greeted him coolly, breezily. “Congratulations! When did you get out?”

“Only a few days ago.” They stood talking in the brown gloom of the badly lit hallway. It appeared that she was not going to ask him in. “If you’re not in too much of a hurry,” he said, “can I speak to you for a few minutes?”

“Frankly, I’d rather not. I’m not cleared yet, you know, even if you are. At least I hope you are.”

But when he insisted, she unlocked the door and he followed her into the room.

“I came to thank you,” he said.

“What—again? Whatever for?”

“Su Nan told me that you did a lot to help me.”

“No! Now where did she get that idea? Why, what did I do this time? Don’t tell me it’s me who got you out of there.”

“I don’t know about that. But she said you helped her to get permission to see me in jail.”

She stared at him, then said half laughing, “I’m sorry to disillusion you. But I’m not as influential as all that.”

“But why would she say it was you, if it had nothing to do with you?”

In spite of themselves, the note of irritation that had always been there since their breakup returned to their voices. “How should I know?” Ko Shan answered. “Ask her.”

“She’s dead.”

After a slight pause, Ko Shan said, “Oh. Why, how did it happen? So sudden!”

Liu was silent while he reached into his pocket for the letter from Su Nan’s mother. “It says here that she’d written home for money for an appendicitis operation. But according to the people here she certainly didn’t die from appendicitis.”

He made her read it. Frowning perplexedly, impatiently, she was about to speak, letter in hand, but he stopped her by saying. “Now I’m not interested in where that money went. I just want to know—just for the peace of my mind and for no other purpose—and I really mean that, you know you can trust me—all I want to know is whether she used that money to get me out of jail and if—if that’s got anything to do with her death.”

“What are you insinuating?” Ko Shan cried indignantly.

“You made the right contacts for her, didn’t you? Introduced her to the right people.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You better be careful what you say. I may not be able to get you out of jail but it doesn’t take much to get you re-arrested, you know.”

“All right, go ahead.”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t. It’s just that I feel a bit sorry for you, under the circumstances.” She looked at her watch. “Now I’ve got to be going.”

“Not yet.” He stood with his back to the closed door.

“What do you think you’re doing? Surely you ought to know me by now—
wo ch’ih juan pu ch’ih ying
, I eat soft things, not hard things. Don’t try to get tough with me.”

“You introduced her to Shen Ka’i-fu, didn’t you?”

“What? Are you out of your head? Get out of here.”

“I know all about it.”

“You do? Then why did you come to ask me?”

“Maybe I’m not here to ask questions.”

“Came to kill me, huh?” In spite of her exasperated little laugh he knew she was getting frightened. And he was very angry with her for that brief moment of wavering that showed on her face, confirming everything. He did not really want to know.

As he stood looking at her, the murmur of street noises and sounds in the alley and the rooming house came to him like the slow wash of the sea up a beach. Listening, he seemed almost to be estimating how long it would take for people to come to her rescue if she yelled. He really did not know what he was going to do next. And it was probably this uncertainty she saw in his face that really frightened her.

“You’ve really gone crazy,” she said quickly. “You see? That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you wouldn’t be able to take it. It’s much better for you to think that she died of some illness. But maybe I’d better tell you instead of letting you hear it from other people and getting it all twisted.”

He had no way of telling whether her version was twisted or not. Except that it did have that disagreeable, slightly queer taste of facts suddenly uncovered.

“I just couldn’t get rid of her, so I thought of Shen K’ai-fu. They do say that he speaks to Chairman Mao over the phone every night.”

He had never seen Shen K’ai-fu. Couldn’t remember ever seeing his picture in the papers either. He did not want to ask Ko Shan what he looked like, though it hurt terribly either way—to picture him as fiendishly ugly or handsome.

“I didn’t think it would be any use though—Shen wouldn’t do things for just anybody. If I’d thought it would help, maybe I’d have gone to him myself. I don’t know—I might be just enough of a fool to do tha
t..
.”

He had puzzled over this for so long and had thought of every angle, that by comparison what had actually happened seemed flimsy and over-simple. Anyway, it was inconceivable that all this had taken place while he had been sitting in prison. The long days and months of ignorance and inactivity were still with him, drugging him so that all these things he was hearing were like dreams muddied up in the thick stream of sleep.

“If she had listened to a single word I said! I told her she wouldn’t be able to get a doctor to do it for her.—Must have got a quack or an old-fashioned midwife. That would account for the money she got from her family.”

Why did she have to do that? Anything—anything, but don’t slam the finality of death in my face, he thought. But of course he knew why she had done it. His own imagination balked at the idea of a child, as hers must have done. They were young and their love was young and touchy. It made them both too cowardly and too brave. It had been the same with him when he had turned and walked away from her quickly for fear that the guards would drag him out of the room.

Now he felt he was beyond all that. Maybe this is what it feels like to be middle-aged, when you have learned to live, happily even, with a lot of ills and pain and awkwardness, things you would rather not think about. But what had she left him to grow old on? She had scooped the meat out of his life and made him a gift of the empty shell, presenting it to him with a dumb ceremoniousness that was almost mocking. She could have it back.

The shame of not being able to do anything about it had not burst upon him yet, the sense of deprivation had so filled his mind. It was there though, and that was what made him so angry.

Ko Shan was still speaking. “Well, I did all I could for both of you, against my better judgment. And I’m pretty sick of it. Imagine your coming here threatening me!—after all that. Really I’d throw you out if I weren’t sorry for you!”

She was at the table with two glasses and a bottle of
wu chia p’i
. “Have a drink. After all, you’re out. That’s something.”

“Yes,” he said. “Ought to celebrate. You don’t get out of jail every day.”

“Don’t get drunk though. You might talk too much when you get back and start telling people what I just told you.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to drink up all your liquor.”

They were having one of the last cold spells of spring. The window was filmed over with steam, making curtains unnecessary. The neon lights outside tinted the misty glass a glistening, perspiring pink that faded into pale green. A pair of pink silk panties was hung up to dry on a hanger hooked to the top of the window. They looked pale and washy in the yellow wanness of the room light. But high up there they were as proclamatory as a flag.

All this steam on the window. Liu could not imagine how it could be so much warmer here than outside. The room was so drab and cold in spite of the heat of the strong drink funneling down inside him. He wished the room was brighter and gayer. And he wished Ko Shan was some other woman. He could do with a much plainer one, so long as it wasn’t a woman who had just shamed him with this story.

“I’m going in a minute,” he told her when she came and put her arms around his neck from behind and bent down to rub faces. This damn room was so large and cold that his voice sounded startlingly loud.