The Crazed (12 page)

15

On my way to the hospital for my afternoon shift, I was stopped by a traffic jam at May First Square. About six hundred students from the Yellow Plain Mining College, the City Institute of Industrial Arts and Crafts, the Teachers College, and our school—Shanning University—were demonstrating there. They held up large banners with slogans written on them, such as PUNISH CORRUPT OFFICIALS! DOWN WITH PARASITES! SAVE OUR COUNTRY! LONG LIVE DEMOCRACY! GIVE ME FREEDOM OR DEATH! Some of them wore white headbands as if they belonged to a dare-to-die team, though they were all empty-handed except a thickset fellow toting a lumpy bullhorn. As they marched, drums and gongs thundered between rounds of shouted slogans.

On the eastern fringe of the square, near the Second Department Store, stretched a line of workers, three or four deep, all in white Bakelite helmets, which had the name STEEL PLANT printed on them. Every one of these men carried a wooden cudgel across his back. They looked lighthearted and once in a while cursed the demonstrators loudly. Despite their role as law enforcers, they seemed spoiling for a fight, waiting to wreak mayhem. I had heard that the Mayor’s office had sent them over to keep order, and that they were paid double for this kind of “work.” Some of them smoked self-rolled cigarettes and some sucked hard candies, laughing in whoops as they swapped wisecracks and insults with one another. Meanwhile, thousands of onlookers gathered along the sidewalks; some gave the students the thumbs-up, and a few even joined the procession moving northeast. With both hands raised above her head, an old woman displayed a white neckerchief bearing the word WRONGED! Apparently she was seizing this opportunity to air her grievances.

“Down with the privileged class!” a short girl shouted in a sharp voice. People followed her, flourishing their fists or tiny flags.

“Give us democracy!” cried a boy. Again hundreds of voices roared together.

“All are equal before the law!” a male voice immediately shouted through a megaphone, but the timing was out of sync and few people responded.

To my surprise, I saw Kailing Wang among the students. She held up a small rectangle of cardboard displaying the slogan UPHOLD HUMAN RIGHTS! Her face was sweaty and tan, but she looked spirited, her abundant hair hanging down over her shoulders. As I wondered how she had gotten mixed up with these demonstrators, she caught sight of me and stepped out of the procession. She came over, saying in a fluty voice, “Hi, Jian Wan, want to join us?”

“No. I’m going to the hospital.”

“How’s Mr. Yang doing?” Her voice turned earnest, and her smile revealed her even teeth.

“Improving, but not a whole lot. How many students here are from our school?”

“About one hundred and sixty,” she said, jutting her chin forward a little. “We tried so hard to mobilize the kids, but most of them wouldn’t come, especially the graduating seniors.”

“I don’t blame them. The school has threatened to give them a bad job assignment if they get involved.”

“Still, this isn’t bad, is it?” She pointed to the demonstrators.

“No at all. Actually I’m impressed. I didn’t know you were such a revolutionary.”

“Or a counterrevolutionary.” She giggled nervously and seemed uneasy about her own quip. She wore a white tank top and coffee-colored culottes, which had just come into fashion.

I told her, “I showed Mr. Yang the Brecht play you translated.”

“Did you?” Her face lit up. “What did he say?”

“He said it smelled good.”

She laughed. “Tell him I’ll come to see him soon.”

“I will.”

Without further delay she said good-bye and hurried away to catch up with her group. She seemed to play some organizing role in the demonstration, but not a major one. In a way I was perplexed by her interest in this kind of activity, but at the same time impressed by her audacity. Even most of the undergraduates remained uninvolved. Unlike the students, Kailing had a teenage son. Wasn’t she risking the boy’s future as well? After this turmoil, the school would at least demand she make self-criticism. She’d be lucky if they didn’t demote her or brand her with a criminal name.

I had to skirt a huge jam of onlookers to get through to Cloud Bridge Road, which led to the hospital. The air reeked of sweat, diesel oil, vinegar, soy sauce, fried garlic and scallion, roast chicken, and braised pig’s feet. Dismounted cyclists kept cranking the bells on their handlebars, some yelling at one another. Fifty yards away in the west a tractor loaded with black bricks was put-putting clamorously, but had to mark time. As I pushed my bicycle past the front of an ice cream stand, a tall simian man in dark glasses, who looked like an official or an entrepreneur, said loudly to an old woman about the students, “These nitwits must’ve been overstuffed and have too much energy to spare. If we starved them just for a week, I bet none of them would come here to make such a fuss. We should ship them all to the vegetable farms in the suburbs and make them work the fields twelve hours a day.”

“Tut-tut-tut, these brats are real spoiled,” said the woman, shaking her puckered face and waving a horsehaired fly whisk. She stretched her neck and called out, “Ice brick, half a yuan apiece.”

“Damn, it’s so hot,” cursed the man. “I screw their mothers for giving birth to these bastards!” He spat on the ground, scraping the phlegm with his boot.

I stared at him and he glared back. His dull eyes, reminding me of cooked oysters, were so ruthless that I ducked my head. Before stepping away, I caught a glimpse of the muzzle of a pistol that stuck out of the ribbing waistband of his jacket. Evidently he was a plainclothes agent. As I walked along, I noticed that among the spectators about a dozen men and women wore the same kind of dark glasses as that man’s. Raising my eyes, I saw two men in white shirts and blue pants working a video camera on the rooftop of the department store. The machine panned down to follow the demonstrators. Despite the hustle and bustle, few of the vendors, sitting on their haunches or on canvas stools, had stopped crying for customers. Some people were still haggling over prices.

When I reached the corner of Swift Horse Road, a middle-aged jaundiced man appeared, waving a miniature flag made of orange paper. “Down with the Communist Party!” he yelled. No one repeated his shout, but immediately a crowd, about twenty people thick, gathered around him. He fluttered the triangular flag again and screamed, “Down with socialism!” Still, the crowd was silent, watching him in horror and confusion.

Before he could shout more, three plainclothes agents, two men and one woman, rushed over, grabbed his hair and arms, and handcuffed him from behind. “Help! Save me!” he hollered, his eyes bulging and flashing, sinews drawn tight in his neck. His mouth went agape, dripping saliva. “Don’t be slaves anymore!” he shouted at us over his shoulder.

Nobody interfered. Instead, a bowlegged locksmith walked over, and wielding his long pipe, he struck the man’s crown three times with its brass bowl. “Damn you, how dare you call me a slave?” he barked.

“Ow, don’t hit me, Uncle!” the man screeched. At once a thread of blood trickled down his forehead. A few bystanders laughed.

“Serves you right, such an unreformable reactionary!” the old locksmith said through his teeth, and bent down to pick up his own flat cap from the ground.

“What a moron!” said a young herb peddler. “He can’t see that cops are everywhere.”

The three agents dragged the man away despite his blustering resistance. From time to time his legs stretched straight, his feet unyielding, yet they hauled him along. One of the agents kept thrashing his shoulders with the buckle end of a leather belt while the woman kicked the backs of his knees. Within a minute they disappeared past a barbershop door. Throughout the commotion, a gray-browed cobbler, sitting next to a toy stand, his lips clamping a few tiny nails, hadn’t even once stopped hammering the sole of a leather shoe mounted on his last. All around, people talked about the arrested man, calling him a fool and saying that at least one of his family members had been executed by the Communists.

The students seemed aware of the odds against them, so they behaved guardedly, marching in good order. Now and then they shouted “Salute to the workers!” as a way to appease the hirelings from the steel plant. Slowly they headed toward the City Hall, which was a few blocks away in the northeast. Once I had threaded my way through the square, I leaped on my bicycle and pedaled away to the hospital at full speed.

16

Professor Song came to see Mr. Yang the next afternoon. As soon as he stepped into the room, I retreated to the window and sat on the sill. Seated in the wicker chair, he took his jujube-wood pipe out of a chamois pouch and absently tamped down tobacco into its bowl. He looked haggard, with dark patches under his lower lids, and his breath smelled of alcohol. Although he was given to drink, I have to admit that I had never seen him drunk. He bicycled around all the time, but somehow always eluded accidents.

“Shenmin, how are you doing these days?” he asked Mr. Yang in a hearty voice, addressing him by his first name.

My teacher raised his eyes. “I’m doing poorly, going to die in a couple of weeks.”

“Come, I still need you to quarrel with me. Our graduate program depends on your guidance. You can’t leave us so soon.”

“No more bickering, I forgive you,” mumbled Mr. Yang.

“I miss sparring with you. To tell the truth, I miss your gibes.”

“It’s all over between us.”

A lull set in. Professor Song glanced at me, then asked Mr. Yang, “How’s your appetite?”

“I still eat something.”

“Try to eat more.”

“I’m neither a glutton nor a gourmet.”

Professor Song put the stout pipe between his teeth, about to thumb his lighter, but he paused to look at me inquiringly. Before I could say go ahead, he removed the pipe from his mouth, unloaded the tobacco into the pouch, tied the kit up, and stuffed it back into his pocket. He said again, “Shenmin, don’t worry about anything and just concentrate on your recuperation, okay?” He sounded quite sincere.

“I have thought of nothing these days but how to save my soul.”

“All right, don’t worry about your classes and the journal. I’ve made arrangements, and you’re still the editor in chief. I assigned a few young hands to help you with the editorial work. Everything’s fine.”

“You can suit yourself. I’m not interested in that sort of clerical work anymore. From this day on I shall think only my own original thoughts and shall write for nobody but posterity.”

A shock crossed Mr. Song’s face, but he managed to reply, “Okay, you should write like that. I also mean to tell you that our department has submitted your name for a full professorship. I’m sure there will be no problem this time. You deserve a promotion, it’s long overdue.”

“Give it to anyone you want. I have no need for that.”

“Why?” Professor Song looked puzzled.

“I don’t want to be a clerk anymore. I have quit.”

“What are you talking about? Are you not our best scholar?”

“No, I’ve been a clerk all my life, so have you. We’re all chattels of the state.”

Professor Song looked at him in alarm. He said, “I don’t understand this, Shenmin. Why should we look down on ourselves so? We’re both intellectuals, aren’t we?”

“No, we’re not. Who is an intellectual in China? Ridiculous, anyone with a college education is called an intellectual. The truth is that all people in the humanities are clerks and all people in the sciences are technicians. Tell me, who is a really independent intellectual, has original ideas and speaks the truth? None that I know of. We’re all dumb laborers kept by the state—a retrograde species.”

“So you’re not a scholar?”

“I told you, I’m just a clerk, a screw in the machine of the revolution. You’re the same, neither worse nor better. We are of the same ilk and have the same fate, all having relapsed into savagery and cowardice. Now this screw is worn out and has to be replaced, so write me off as a loss.”

Mr. Song bowed his head. The room was so quiet that you could hear sparrows twittering outside, one of them drumming its wings.

A moment later Professor Song said rather timidly to Mr. Yang, “Don’t be so pessimistic. There’s still hope.”

“What hope?”

“For instance, the new generation of scholars, like Jian, will make improvements. Indeed, our lives were mostly wasted, but they’ll learn from our mistakes and losses and will live a better life than ours.”

“False. At most he’ll become a senior clerk.”

Professor Song looked at me as my heart tightened. He said again, “Shenmin, don’t be so harsh on young people. You’re not yourself today. I know you love them, or you wouldn’t want Jian to go to Beijing University.”

“Yes, I want him to do that. What else can I expect of him? He flunked TOEFL, so he blew the opportunity to study comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin. He let me down.” Mr. Yang exhaled a sigh and resumed: “He’d better leave this iron house soon so that he won’t end up a mere scribe here. In our country no scholars can live a life different from a clerk’s. We’re all automatons without a soul. You too should go before it’s too late. Don’t get trapped here.”

“Shenmin, maybe we shouldn’t continue like this—you’re talking in circles. In any case, take it easy and get well soon. We all want you back in the department.”

“Nobody can use me anymore.”

Professor Song gave me a nod that indicated it was time for him to leave. He rose to his feet and said good-bye to my teacher. I went out of the room with him. In the hall I begged him, “Please don’t take to heart what Mr. Yang said. He’s not himself today.”

“I know. Actually I liked our talk and will think about what he said. Your teacher has suffered a lot. Don’t distress yourself about his opinion of you. He didn’t mean it.”

“I don’t mind that.” I grimaced.

As he walked away with measured steps, he fished out his tobacco pouch and began loading his pipe again.

I felt relieved that he wasn’t offended. Although Mr. Yang’s drivel often sickened me, there was one virtue in it which I did like, namely that he spoke his mind now. Never had I imagined that he didn’t see any meaning in my effort to enter the Ph.D. program. He had obviously been disappointed by my low TOEFL score. Without question he wanted me to go abroad so that I wouldn’t end up a clerk here and his daughter could avoid the fate of a technician.

I didn’t return to the sickroom immediately, and instead sat on a bench in the corridor for a while. Nurse Chen came along the hall, holding an empty cream-colored pail. She stopped in front of me and smiled, saying she had just been assigned to attend Mr. Yang at night, from 6:00 P.M. to 1:00 A.M. After her shift, Nurse Jiang would take over until morning. “So we’re on the same team now,” Mali Chen said. “He’s a well-learned man, I mean your teacher. Sometimes I like listening to him.” She smiled again, fluttering her eyes.

I said, “Well, we count on your help.”

“Don’t say that. We help each other. By the way, did you read the book Mr. Yang translated?”

“Which one?”

“The Good Woman of Szechwan.”

“Oh yes, I read it a while ago.”

“Why are all the people so nasty and so greedy in the play except Shen Te?”

“You mean the prostitute?”

“Yes. What a bizarre world the play shows.”

“Not like ours?”

“Of course not. Doesn’t the foreign playwright understand China at all?”

“He didn’t mean to present China. He wanted to express his understanding of the world.”

“I know, his philosophy. Still, what a world it is! Where nobody but a streetwalker is a good person.”

“Perhaps it’s like ours, don’t you think? Tell me, where can we find a good woman or a good man?”

“That depends on how you define a good person.”

“I mean someone you can absolutely trust.”

“Your mother or father.”

“You really think so?”

“Don’t you trust your parents? My, you’re such a misanthrope.”

“No, I’m not, only grim.”

“Like teacher, like student. Just joking.” She tittered, waving her thin hand.

Somebody called to her from the stairwell, and she left in haste, the handle of the pail in her hand making rhythmic creaks.

I was still preoccupied with what Mr. Yang had said about me a moment before. Unhappy as I was about his reproach, I had to admit that he did have a point. The more I thought about some professors and lecturers at Shanning University, the more they resembled clerks and technicians. Even if someday I became a scholar as erudite as my teacher, I would have to remain in the clerical ranks. Then why should I bother so much about it all?