One Man Read online

  "Where did you hear this?"

  He said he didn't know.

  "I did, in fact, write a letter to Hong Kong, to a neighbor of mine. We had grown up together, but, later on, one of his paternal aunts got him to go to Hong Kong. I did, in fact, write him a letter asking him to get me a dictionary of English idioms, that was all, and it was many lifetimes ago! It was during the war in Korea, when I had just graduated, I was in the army as an interpreter in a prisoner-of-war camp…"

  "Did you receive the dictionary?" he asked.

  "No! You're saying… the letter was never sent? Was it intercepted?" Liang went on to ask.

  "Who knows?"

  "I'm suspected… of having communicated with a foreign country?"

  "It was you who said this."

  "And do you suspect me?" Liang turned to ask him.

  "I'm not going into that with you. Just be careful!"

  As a long, two-carriage, electric trolleybus passed close by, Liang swerved and almost collided with it.

  "No wonder they transferred me out of the army…" For Liang, everything had suddenly become clear.

  "All this is not so important."

  "What else is there? Tell me everything, I won't bring you into it, even if they beat me to death!" Liang's bicycle swerved again.

  "Don't get yourself killed in the process!" he warned.

  "I won't stupidly kill myself! I've got a wife and a son!"

  "Just be careful!"

  He cycled around the corner. What he didn't say was that Liang's name was on the second list.

  Some years later… How many years was it? Ten… no, twenty-eight years later, in Hong Kong, you answered a telephone call in your hotel. It was Liang Qin, who had read in the papers about your play. You didn't instantly recognize the name, and thought it was someone you had once met, and that the person wanted to see your play but couldn't get tickets, so you quickly apologized that it had already closed. He said he was your old colleague and wanted to take you out for a meal. You said you were flying out the next morning and that there wasn't time, maybe next time. He said, in that case, he would drive over right away to the hotel to see you. It was awkward to put him off, and it was only after putting down the receiver that you remembered him and your last conversation on your bicycles.

  Half an hour later, he came into your room. He was dressed in a suit, leather shoes, linen shirt, and a dark-gray tie, but he was not flashy like the new rich from the Mainland. When you shook his hand, there was no gold Rolex watch, thick gold bracelet, or heavy gold ring. However, his hair was black, and, at his age, it would have been dyed. He said he had settled in Hong Kong many years ago. That neighbor from his youth, to whom he had written for the dictionary, found out how much he had suffered because of that letter, and felt so bad that he arranged for him to come out. He now had his own company, and his wife and son had moved to Canada on visas they had purchased. He told you frankly, "During these years, I have earned some money. I'm not wealthy, but I have enough to live out my old age in relative comfort. My son has a Ph.D. from a Canadian university, so I don't have anything to worry about. I commute, and if I can't stay in Hong Kong, I can pull out anytime." He also said he was grateful for the words you said to him back then.

  "What words?" You couldn't remember.

  " 'Don't get yourself killed in the process!' But for those words of yours, I wouldn't have been able to keep watching what was happening."

  "My father couldn't keep watching," you said.

  "He killed himself?" he asked.

  "Luckily, he was discovered by an old neighbor who called an ambulance, and he was rushed to a hospital and saved. He was sent to a reform-through-labor farm for several years. Then, less than three months after being exonerated, he became ill and died."

  "Why didn't you alert him at the time?" Liang asked.

  "How could I dare write at that time? If they found out, my own life would also have been in jeopardy."

  "That's right, but what sort of problem did he have?"

  "Talk about yours, what sort of problem did you have?"

  "Hey, let's not talk about all that!" He sighed, and, after a pause, asked, "How's your life?"

  "What are you referring to?"

  "I'm just asking, I know you're a writer, I'm asking how you are financially. You understand… what I mean, don't you?" Liang was unsure how to put it.

  "I understand," you said. "I'm managing."

  "I know that it's hard to make a living as a writer in the West, especially for Chinese. It's not like in business."

  "Freedom," you said. What you want is freedom, the freedom to write the things you want to write.

  He nodded, then again worked up the courage to say, "If you… Look, I'll be frank. For a time, I was financially constrained and didn't have the money, but you need only to say. I'm not some big tycoon but…"

  "If you were a big tycoon you wouldn't be talking like this." You laughed. "A big tycoon would donate the money to carry out some fancy bit of engineering that would enable him to do more trade with the homeland."

  Liang Qin took out a business card from his suit pocket, added an address and telephone number, and gave it to you, saying, "That's my mobile number. I've bought the house, so that address in Canada won't be changing."

  You thanked him, said you didn't have a problem, and that if you had to rely on writing for a living, you would have stopped writing a long time ago.

  He was deeply moved and blurted, "You're really writing for the people of China!"

  You said you were writing only for yourself.

  "I know, I know, write all about it!" he said. "I hope you'll write all about it, really write all about those times that were not fit for human beings!"

  Write about all that suffering? you asked yourself after he had left. But you were already weary of all that.

  However, you did think about your father. When he was exonerated and came back from the reform-through-labor farm, he was restored to both his former job and salary, but he insisted on retiring and came to Beijing to see you, this son of his. He planned to do some traveling after that, to drive away his cares and to spend his last years peacefully. You couldn't have known that the very night after you had spent the day with him at the Summer Palace, he was to cough blood. The next day, he went for a hospital examination and they found a shadow on his lung. It was diagnosed as full-blown lung cancer in its final stage. One night, his illness suddenly got worse, and he was admitted to a hospital. Early the next morning, he was dead. When he was alive, you asked him why he had attempted suicide. He simply said he really no longer wanted to live at the time. However, when he had just been able to live again, and, moreover, wanted to live, he suddenly died.

  When those who had been exonerated died, their work units had to hold memorial services to offer some sort of commiseration to the families. At the memorial service, the son, who was a writer, of course, had to say something. Not to do so would have been disrespectful to his deceased father and also to the leadership of the comrades at the workplace, who had arranged the memorial service. He had been pushed to the microphone in the memorial hall and could not refuse before his father's ashes. He could not say that his father had been a revolutionary, although he had never opposed the revolution, and it was not appropriate to call him a comrade. All he could say was this: "My father was a weak man. May his soul be at peace in Heaven." That is, if there was a Heaven.

  36

  "Haul out before the people that evil scum of the Nationalist Party, the reactionary soldier-hooligan Zhao Baozhong!" the former lieutenant colonel loudly announced into the microphone on the dais. Officer Zhang, head of the Army Control Commission, wearing badges on his collar and cap, sat majestically alongside, showing no signs of emotion.

  "Long live Chairman Mao!" The meeting suddenly erupted into a unified shout.

  A fat old man in the back row of seats was dragged to his feet by two youths. The old man pulled his arms free and put up one arm to
frantically shout, "Long live Chairman-Mao! Chairman-Chairman…"

  The old man's voice was hoarse, but he struggled on. Two retired army personnel came forward. They had learned how to make an arrest in the army: they twisted the man's arm behind his back and immediately forced him to his knees, so that his shouts were stifled in his throat. Four burly youths then seized the fat old man and proceeded to drag him, but, like a pig refusing to be trussed up for slaughter, he pushed and stamped his feet against the floor as everyone watched in silence. While the old man was dragged along the passageway from his seat to the dais, a placard strung with barbed wire was forced around his neck, but even with his ears pinned back, he kept trying to shout. His face was swollen and had turned purple, and mucus ran from his eyes and nose. This old worker looked after the book warehouse and was once a soldier who had given his loyalty to the Liberation Army after escaping three times when conscripted by the Nationalists. He was eventually forced to bow his head and kneel on the ground. He was the last of the Ox Demons and Snake Spirits to be dragged out.

  "If the enemy refuses to capitulate, it must be destroyed!" This slogan resounded through the meeting hall. However, the old man had capitulated to the Party over thirty years ago.

  "Fight resolutely to the end, there's just one road to death!"

  It was also at this venue, four years earlier, that former Party secretary Wu Tao (now among those lined up, head bowed, bent at the waist) had designated this old man to serve as a model for studying Mao's Selected Works. As representative of the working class that had suffered in the past, the old man had railed against his hardships under the old society and sung sweet praises to the new society. The old man also wept and sniveled back then while educating the literary men of the workplace who were not reforming themselves.

  "Haul out that dog of a spy Zhang Weiliang who has been communicating with foreign countries!"

  Another person was pulled from his seat and dragged before the dais.

  "Down with Zhang Weiliang!"

  Without being struck, the man collapsed, and, paralyzed with fear, could not stand up. Every person at the meeting kept shouting, for any single person could suddenly become the enemy and could also be struck down.

  "Confess all and be treated leniently, resist and be treated harshly!"

  These were all Old Man Mao's illustrious policies.

  "Long live-Chairman-Mao!"

  At the time, there were so many denunciation meetings and so many slogans to shout, but one had to be careful not to make mistakes when shouting the slogans. The meetings were usually at night, when people were weary and tense. However, making a mistake in shouting a slogan instantly made a person an active counter-revolutionary. Parents had to repeatedly instruct their children not to draw anything carelessly, and not to tear up newspapers. The front page of newspapers always had the Leader's portrait on it, so it couldn't get torn, soiled, trodden on, or be hastily grabbed to wipe one's bottom if one was in a hurry to take a shit. You didn't have any children, and it was best that people did not. You only had to control your own mouth, ensure that what you said was always perfectly clear. And, especially when shouting slogans, you had to be vigilant and under no circumstances stumble over the words.

  In the very early hours of the morning, on his way home, he cycled past the north gate of Zhongnanhai. Going up the white, arched, stone bridge, he held his breath as he glanced down at the mass of shadows cast by the trees in the hazy streetlights inside Zhongnanhai. Then, coming down the other side of the bridge, he released the gears and coasted down as he breathed out. He had managed to get through today. But what would happen tomorrow?

  He got up early and went to work. At the bottom of the big work-place building was a corpse. It had been covered with an old straw mat taken from one of the beds in the living quarters of the building security personnel. The foot of the building and the cement ground were splattered with gray-white brain matter and purplish-black blood from the corpse.

  "Who is it?"

  "Probably someone from the editorial office…"

  The head was covered with the mat. Was there a face?

  "Which floor was it?"

  "Who can tell what window it was?"

  Up to a thousand people worked in the building, and there were several hundred windows; it could have been from any of the windows.

  "When did it happen?"

  "It must have been just before daybreak."

  They couldn't say that it was late at night after the ferret-out meeting.

  "Didn't anyone hear it?"

  "Stop your babbling."

  People paused for a moment but went straight into the building to start work on time. In each of their offices, they looked at the wall with the portrait of the Leader, or else looked at the backs of the heads of the people who had arrived before them. Exactly at eight o'clock, loudspeakers in all the rooms sounded, and the whole building reverberated with the loud singing of "Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman." This big beehive was more disciplined than it used to be.

  On his desk was an envelope with his name on it. He gave a start. It had been a long time since he had received any correspondence, and nothing was ever sent to his workplace. He stuffed it into his pocket without reading it, but spent the whole morning trying to work out who had written the letter. Was it from someone who didn't know his address? The handwriting was unfamiliar, could it be a warning? If someone wanted to expose him, it wasn't necessary to send him a letter, could it be an anonymous letter of warning? But there was an eighty-fen stamp on it, and local postage was only forty fen, so it had to be from somewhere farther off. Of course, the eighty-fen stamp could be a camouflage. The person must be very kind, maybe it was someone from his own work unit who couldn't contact him directly and had thought up this way of doing it. He thought of Old Tan from whom he had not heard for a long time. But would Old Tan be allowed to write letters? Maybe it was a trap, a snare set for him by someone in an opposition faction, and his actions were being observed right then. He felt he was being spied on, for sure he would be on that third list, still without names, that the army officer had spoken about at the meeting of the ferret-out teams. He became disoriented and started wondering if the people walking in the corridor were watching for abnormal behavior in hidden enemies after that big ferret-out meeting. That was exactly what the army officer had ordered at the meeting the previous night to rally people into battle: "Make sweeping accusations, make sweeping exposures, dig out every single one of those active counterrevolutionaries who are still operating!"

  He became aware of the window behind him. Suddenly, realizing how someone could jump just like that, he broke into a cold sweat. He struggled to calm down and to look unperturbed. Those in the office, who had not jumped, all looked unperturbed. Surely, they were also pretending? Those who were not able to pretend, lost control, and had jumped out of windows.

  He held out until it was time for lunch. Even people more revolutionary than him had to eat, he thought. Instantly, he realized he had just had a reactionary thought. He had to obliterate such reactionary thoughts, and it was not a question of a single sentence. All that accumulated anger in his heart could foment disaster for him. Indeed: "Disaster springs from the mouth." This famous saying, the epitome of rationality, was the essence of human intelligence in ancient times. What truth do you still want? This truth is absolute, don't think about anything else! Don't even try thinking. But you are a spontaneous being, your affliction is precisely that you always want to be the initiator of your actions, and this is at the root of your endless disasters.

  All right, now let's go back to him. That spontaneous being lingered about until everyone had left the office, then went to the lavatory. It was quite normal to relieve oneself before going to eat. He latched the door of the lavatory cubicle and took out the letter. It turned out that the letter was from Xu Qian. "We of this generation that has been sacrificed do not deserve any other fate…" As soon as his eyes fell on these words, he
immediately tore up the letter, but, changing his mind, he put the pieces back into the envelope. He noisily flushed the toilet, inspected the cubicle for any stray pieces of the letter, came out, washed his hands, scrubbed his face with water to steady his nerves, then went to the dining room.

  Back in his room at night, he latched the door and pieced together the letter. He read it over and over. It was a voice of grief that spoke of despair, but said nothing of the night they had spent in the little inn, or of what had happened after she was intercepted at the wharf. In the letter, she said that this was her only and last letter to him, and that he would never see her again. It was a suicide letter. "We of this generation that has been sacrificed do not deserve any other fate" was how the letter began. She said she'd been assigned work as a primary-school teacher in some remote place in the big mountains of northern Shanxi province, but had refused to go and would not budge from the hostel in the county town. Before her, an overseas Chinese student had been sent to a school in the big mountains, where she was the only teacher. The woman had taken with her by donkey six boxes of trousseau prepared for her in advance by her parents in Singapore. Within a week, she was dead, and no one was able to give the cause of death. If she went, he would never see her again. Qian was crying for help. He was her last link to a bit of hope. It seemed that her parents and her aunt had not been able to do anything to save her.

  In the middle of the night, he rode his bicycle to the post and telecommunications building in Xidan. There was a telephone number printed on the county hostel letterhead, and he asked to make an urgent telephone call. An unfriendly woman's voice speaking in a drawl asked for the name of the person he wanted. He explained that he was making a long-distance call from Beijing and that he wanted to speak to Xu Qian, the university student waiting to be assigned work. He was put on hold. The receiver buzzed for a long time before an equally unfriendly voice asked, "Who is it?" He repeated the name of the person he wanted to talk to, and the other party said, "That's me." He couldn't recognize her voice, because that night they spent together, neither dared speak aloud. Hearing this unfamiliar voice, he didn't know how to respond. The receiver kept giving a hollow buzz, and he mumbled, "It's good to know you're alive." Qian said, "You gave me a terrible fright! I'm in shock from being woken in the middle of the night!" He wanted to say that he loved her, that she must go on living no matter what, but he found it impossible to say all the things he had thought up while he was cycling. The switchboard operator in this small county town would certainly be listening to the urgent long-distance call from Beijing so late at night. The telephone was still making a hollow buzz, and he told her he'd received her letter. The telephone was buzzing again, and he didn't know what to say. She said coldly, "If you have to, phone during the day." He said, "I'm sorry, go back to bed." She hung up.