Old Town (64 page)

The doctor sat there. His mind was replaying back his childhood. There were whispering sounds of Mr. Qiao’s gentle voice:
Child, it was God who sent me to find you…O Lord, my life then was worth even less than a wild dog. If it hadn’t been for your love, I never would have seen eight years. I wouldn’t have survived the gunfire of the War, the butchery outside the walls of Nanjing. How could I have doubted you? But, Lord, if today you still love me, please receive me back at your side. I am not afraid of war and I refuse to go destitute and homeless if I am evacuated and have to become a refugee. Doesn’t a person have the right to decide whether or not to be evacuated and to flee danger?

The deadline arrived. Second Sister finally bestirred herself and set to organizing their travel things. The very first thing she thought of was to bring the old family cat, so she located a basket and tried putting Pussycat into it. “On the way, you take care of Pussycat, and I’ll keep an eye on Hong’er,” she said to Ninth Brother.

Ninth Brother raised his eyelids to look, but he didn’t reply one way or the other.

Second Sister pressed the Bible into his hand. “You haven’t read the Bible in a long time. When we reach there, let’s read it together.”

Ninth Brother again opened his eyes. “Second Sister, are you really so attached to this world?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t want to go. If an artillery shell landed on my head, it would be because it had been fated to do so.”

“Oh, you! Right up to now you still don’t know that this isn’t us fleeing. This is an evacuation. The government’s issued the order. And obeying the government is Christian duty.”

She also wanted to say.
If you don’t go, you’ll be staying here at West Gate all alone. I certainly don’t want the government to send soldiers to arrest you at home tomorrow
. Heat roiled up within her and she really wanted to let fly with her temper, but all she could do was to clench her teeth and hold it in check as best she could.

At home the several hardwood boxes and crates were stacked up as high as a person. The sweat rolled down Second Sister’s back as she moved these from this place to that. She had one last box to organize when suddenly everything went black before her eyes and she could see nothing at all. She felt her chest being all mangled and crumpled up as if by a steel claw. Then pain hit her like a typhoon and engulfed her like a tidal wave. Faintly she heard someone far, far off calling her name. In an eye-piercing ray of light she saw herself lying on the floor of the inner room. Two boxes were overturned and clothes scattered around. And Ninth Brother stood beside her, his face looking drained of all its blood.

Ninth Brother saw his wife, eyes closed and spitting out white foam as she lay on the floor, and was so terrified that he forgot that he himself was a doctor. The doctor who had gone through the gore and fire of war now stood there completely helpless. He had never expected that Second Sister would ever collapse like that. He thought that with her iron will she would keep a tiny safe haven for this family. But now she had fallen. It was only then that he realized that there were times when Second Sister couldn’t bear the load. He thought of the worst possible situation, that they might be forever separated. Ninth Brother hadn’t any recollection of his mother’s death. He didn’t know that his own misery and terror at this time was like that of a child bereft of its mother.

Second Sister saw Ninth Brother’s two legs slowly bend down to kneel by the bed. She heard his heartbroken voice. “Lord, why are you punishing me this way? You can’t have saved me time after time simply to make me suffer these blows.”

She said, “Ninth Brother, I didn’t die. I wouldn’t abandon you.” Second Sister felt she was like a cloud of smoke or mist swirling around Ninth Brother and speaking comforting words to him.

Ninth Brother couldn’t hear her, and kept on praying. “Lord, I don’t know how I will go on living. Since you’ve taken Second Sister, please take me, too…”

“Ninth Brother, help me up.”

Ninth Brother turned around and his eyes met Second Sister’s tender gaze. He excitedly hugged her, “Second Sister, Second Sister, you can’t go off without me, you can’t.”

“I’m thinking of just getting this all over with. The day will soon be light and the trucks will be here. I’ll be going, but you just stay here at home.”

Ninth Brother’s eyes reddened and he laughed sheepishly at Second Sister. “Just now you scared me to death, I can’t be without you…”

This was the Ninth Brother she knew so well, the Ninth Brother she hadn’t seen in so long. This very scene made her think of that late summer night in 1943. She was right beside the well, washing clothes when all of a sudden she picked up the sound of Ninth Brother’s voice behind her. She didn’t dare turn around but stared hypnotized straight ahead at the moon through the tree branches. She was filled with doubt.
Am I dreaming?
Ninth Brother had walked over in front of her and taken her in his arms, laughing sheepishly.

“Second Sister, I’m sorry, I know this is more difficult for you than for anyone else. These years I have not felt the existence of God, nor have I felt your existence. There’s a lot of things I really don’t understand, nor do I want to understand. But so long as we can be together, that is my greatest happiness.”

Second Sister reached out her hand and stroked Ninth Brother’s wildly tousled hair. “It’s late. Go get your own things organized.”

Ninth Brother nodded his head obediently.

3.

Y
OU STILL REMEMBER
that boss-lady of the rice shop who in one night lost both her sons? She was still an unchanging part of the West Gate crossroads. Somehow people all believed that the old woman set into the window like inlay was quietly mad. It was for just this reason that she had been able to avoid all the political movements. And so she also escaped this evacuation in preparation for war.

The boss-lady clearly recalled the last time that Huang Shuyi came to West Gate. It was two and a half years to this day. It was when Mrs. Chen talked with the vagabond woman under her window and so she found out that Huang Shuyi was Mrs. Chen’s daughter-in-law. Her dried-up and numb eyes moistened as she recalled when Shuyi was the lively and attractive eldest miss of the Huang family and she didn’t understand how Huang Shuyi could have fallen to such a state. All she knew was that Huang Shuyi came to West Gate to see her little son and so she sympathized with her as a fellow sufferer. After the pastor’s wife moved out of the church with her grandson, every time the boss-lady saw the ragged woman appear at the West Gate street crossing, she would hurriedly call her husband. “Quick! Quick! Go out and tell Miss Huang that her son has moved to the side of the moat!” Her husband always obeyed her every word, but time and again he would fail to find the woman.

The doctor and Mrs. Chen came to say good-bye to the boss and the boss-lady. In over twenty years, these two were the only people ever to go to the upper floor of the rice shop. The doctor had treated the boss-lady and the pastor’s wife had prayed for her, though the boss-lady still did not believe in God. Obstinately she told Mrs. Chen that if there were a God, why hadn’t He returned her two sons to her? The boss-lady told Mrs. Chen to leave her address with her. Nothing on earth is more heartbreaking and tragic than a mother unable to see her own son. She would keep her eyes peeled and when Miss Huang reappeared, give the address to her.

On this day, a misty rain fell outside the window and a woman in a peasant’s conical bamboo hat was loitering by the wooden fence around the church. The boss-lady grew excited and called to her husband, “Quick! Quick! Miss Huang is here! Go stop her! Her son is going away tomorrow!”

The boss squinted at the main street. He felt this woman didn’t look like Miss Huang, but still he submitted to his wife’s will and so he ran outside.

The woman in the conical hat was dressed simply and neatly. The boss decided that his wife had “faulty intelligence” and he was just about to turn back when the woman stopped him.

“Uncle, previously the Chen family lived here. Their daughter-in-law’s surname was Huang. Do you know where they have moved to?”

Someone else was looking for Miss Huang too? I guess I didn’t run out for nothing today
.

“Who are you?” the boss asked.

“Do you know her whereabouts?”

“First you tell me, what is your relationship to her?”

“It’s a long story. I was her brother’s war comrade. I have a very important matter to tell her.”

The boss was bewildered.
What important matter could be related to that crazed Miss Huang?
Those were incredible times when everybody looked crazy to everyone else.

“Her mind has gone bad. She has no fixed place to stay and has wandered about everywhere for a very, very long time now.”

“Uncle, there’s nothing wrong with her. I know what she’s doing and I can help her.”

Up at the window, the boss-lady saw her husband taking the woman in the conical hat in the direction of the city moat. She thought it was Miss Huang, so after feeling a great sense of relief, she immediately sank into self-pity. To date, her two sons had been away twenty years, nine months, and seven days. She had counted every day as she looked out.

After this, she went on counting for nine years, two months, and twenty-three days. Right when the count reached exactly thirty years, the boss and the boss-lady drank poison and their lives departed for the Yellow Springs. The West Gate folk never again saw the white-haired old lady who seemed a part of the window. However, their story didn’t end with their lives, for just that year at autumn two travelers who had been away for almost thirty-one years returned to Old Town by way of Hong Kong. They got out of a car at the West Gate crossroads and threw themselves on the ground right in front of the rice shop. Old people of the neighborhood recognized them as the sons of the rice shop owner’s family.

Huang Shuyi’s luck was truly terrible. Heaven seemed bent on playing blind man’s bluff with her, for every time she stretched out her hand within reach of her target and could just about grasp the historical truth, it would shift her line of vision elsewhere. In the 1950s, she found the Zhang family in the South Town district of Old Town. If she could have chatted just a bit with Great-Auntie, she would have found out the connection between the Zhang family and the Lin family at West Gate. Perhaps Great-Auntie could have stood up and borne witness on behalf of Huang Shuyi’s brother. But she had been confused by the evasive replies of Old Rotten Egg Zhang, and let the opportunity pass by.

This woman in the conical bamboo hat held important proof in her hand. She was resolved to stand witness and prove that Huang Jian had been innocent and had died unjustly. But no one could locate Huang Shuyi. The only person who was concerned about her was Mrs. Chen. Sometimes in a fit of pessimism the pastor’s wife supposed that Huang Shuyi may have become a wandering spirit and she felt very bad that she had not been able to save her.

The woman in the conical hat entered a dim little hut by the side of the moat. Before saying a word she wept quietly for some time. Mrs. Chen, thinking that she had come with bad news about Huang Shuyi, lowered her head and joined her in silent tears. In her heart she said, “Lord, all my life I have brought multitudes into your embrace, but I have been unable to bring my own offspring to turn to you. I don’t understand why this should have been so.”

“Aunt, I have met you. Twenty years ago we used the church for cover and held our meetings there. I never imagined that I would bring a life of calamity to Enchun and Huang Shuyi.”

Where to begin with all of this?
The pastor’s wife stopped her tears and looked at this unknown woman who had suddenly paid her a visit.

The woman smiled ruefully. “It’s a long story. Originally, I was to have been Huang Shuyi’s sister-in-law. Her older brother, Huang Jian, was my teacher. It was he who brought me to join the guerrillas on Old Ridge.”

She was an attractive woman. With all the wrinkles of a complex and event-filled life crisscrossing her face, traces of the beauty she once had still showed. The Old Ridge guerrillas and the locals had all called her “Dujuan,” which means both “azalea” and “cuckoo,” for they said she looked like this flower and like the bird.

Before that thing happened to Huang Jian, Dujuan had been assigned to the newly established liberated area to give literacy classes to the peasants. The two of them hadn’t seen each other for several months. One day, one of the guerrillas, a Deputy Commissar Cao, crossed over the hills and mountains in search of her. He told her that Huang Jian had been a traitor and enemy agent, and had already been executed on the spot. Later, she married Deputy Commissar Cao and lived a peaceful ten years or more as an official’s wife. During the Cultural Revolution neither of them was able to escape that unfolding catastrophe, and both husband and wife went into many cowsheds.

She was still suspected of being a traitor. Two months previously, her husband had been accurately diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer and the state of his disease worsened rapidly. When he was near death, he tearfully said to his wife, “I apologize to you. And I apologize to Huang Jian.” As he said this, he kept pointing to underneath his pillow, but then sank into a coma which he never came out of. Under the pillow, she found a letter written to the organization department of the provincial party committee, and in it Deputy Commissar Cao stated the historical truth—“Huang Jian was killed by my hand. At the time there was no evidence at all proving that he was a traitor. This was a tragedy I created completely out of personal selfishness.”

Dujuan, as she was known on Old Ridge, took care of her husband’s funeral matters and then immediately began her efforts on behalf of Huang Jian’s rehabilitation. She located the remaining few guerrilla leaders and, giving them Deputy Commissar Cao’s letter to read, requested them to sign in testimony to the truth of its contents. She went to the provincial revolutionary committee, but in such chaotic times all the former guerrillas were suspected of being traitors, so who would take the trouble to distinguish between the real traitors and the ones who were not? She knew that over the past twenty years, Huang Shuyi was always going here and there crying out the injustice done to her brother. She had seen her standing at the gate of the provincial party committee bearing her written petition and calling out her claim of injustice. She too thought this younger sister of Huang Jian was insane and wiped the tears from her eyes quietly as she sidestepped by her. Today she was going to find Huang Shuyi and carry on the battle shoulder-to-shoulder with her.

Mrs. Chen took a packet of written materials from the other woman’s hand and placed them in safekeeping upstairs at the rice shop. The boss-lady leaned on the windowsill looking out for three more years before she saw the form of Huang Shuyi.

After I married Chaofan I had the opportunity to read Huang Shuyi’s letters. By that time Huang Jian was already at rest in the Martyrs’ Cemetery. In her letters she recalled the endless road to rehabilitate her brother, and between the lines there radiated pride and happiness. On the address portion of each envelope she inscribed the single slogan: “Truth Shall Triumph!” She told her son that during the Cultural Revolution she had never ceased fighting for the truth and that she had wanted to go to Beijing to find Chairman Mao. Again and again she would be arrested on board some train and then escorted back to Old Town. In the end she decided to follow the train tracks to Beijing on foot. It took over two years for this broken journey, for she had to stop and earn money to keep herself going and for what she would have to spend on lodgings in Beijing. All along the railroad line many women earned money by breaking up rocks. They used iron hammers to break big rocks into small ones for use in road surfacing and after breaking up a cubic meter of rock they could earn a few
mao
. Huang Shuyi mingled with local women, making up a story of how her son had been lost playing by the railway and that she wanted to follow the tracks to find him. This story was the best way to get the women’s sympathy and shield her from harm along the way to Beijing.