Old Town (27 page)

1.

T
HE MAN FROM
the special investigation team had come again. He was a dark, thin, bald fellow in a plain uniform and he glowered fiercely as he sat at the Eight Immortals table. He was now a frequent visitor at our home and would always sit himself at the place of honor, usually reserved for my grandfather at mealtimes.

When I was seven or eight years old, my two uncles, my stepfather, and quite a few other relatives were put under surveillance and control by “special-case investigation teams” of the various rebel factions. They were all locked up in the “cowshed” to make an accounting of their crimes. All kinds of these teams had come to make my grandfather and grandmother verify certain aspects of their personal histories. My grandfather also went into a cowshed.
³⁴
The mother of the neighborhood revolutionary committee director had once been his patient—when the old dame was young she had caught tuberculosis. If it hadn’t been for Dr. Lin, she wouldn’t have survived to get married and have children. So Dr. Lin had been her savior and benefactor. After she asked her son to give his mother’s savior and benefactor special treatment, Grandpa spent less than a week locked up in the cowshed, and then returned home to write out his “confession” there.

Yesterday we received a visit from the team investigating my stepfather; it included a very fat northerner who had long been my stepfather’s subordinate. He would always go to the kitchen to pour some boiled water or pretend to use the toilet in order to get away from his colleagues, and would quietly say to Grandma, “Don’t worry. He’s out herding the cows. He’s very happy.” My grandmother would stuff into his satchel the cigarettes and grain spirits she had collected in advance. When the team members were wearing themselves out in all the places they had to go to investigate my stepfather, he himself would be sitting carefree and relaxed on a hilltop, smoking and having a drink of liquor as he kept an eye on the equally carefree and relaxed cows.

But this dark and thin baldy was in charge of the team investigating Enchun. From his stern attitude and the frequency of his visits, you could get a sense of how serious Enchun’s problems were.

During the War of Resistance, Pastor Chen’s son, Enchun, was active in the communist underground, and he transmitted his communist beliefs to the three young Lin children. If he hadn’t done this, when the Guomindang government withdrew from the mainland, these children would surely have gone with their school across to Taiwan and joined the thousands and tens of thousands of students in exile. Enchun’s beliefs even convinced my grandfather that communism was the beacon of hope for China and Jesus’ plan for saving its suffering people. In the summer of 1949, the Lins had a nephew, a government official, who sent his ninth uncle and his family five boat tickets to Taiwan. Grandpa refused these without the slightest hesitation.

Who could have foreseen the so-called Great Cultural Revolution in the 1960s? Or that not one of the former underground party members would have the good luck to escape being “secret agents”?

Ferreting out “Secret Agent” Enchun was like taking hold of a single grape and dragging out the whole cluster. The group of underground party members he had developed was made up entirely of supposed secret agents. And tracking each one of these was a special investigation team. Sometimes those other teams as well would appear at our house. That was because on the eve of Liberation, Enchun had used the West Gate church to mask his involvement in the underground revolutionary movement. A good number of these “secret agents” had been sworn into the Communist Party Youth League at the West Gate church.

The special investigation teams were masters at composing detective fiction. They suspected Enchun of developing an organization of secret agents to infiltrate the Communist Party for the Guomindang. Lying on firewood and tasting gall, as the saying goes, these “secret agents” had strictly disciplined themselves and wormed into low-and high-level positions within the Communist Party—and doing all this while coordinating plans for the Guomindang counterattack against the mainland. Thereafter, they would reemerge in a trice as distinguished and meritorious officials of the Guomindang.

What an absolutely hair-raising suspense novel this would have made!

My grandfather sat on that patched-up, old rattan chair, eyes half-open, occasionally pointing to his ear to show that he couldn’t hear. During that period, we all supposed that he had gone deaf. All he could do was pretend to be deaf and dumb in responding to those special investigation teams coming in from everywhere, for he was historically “stained.” If he were to say anything at all, he might make things even worse for family members already locked up in the cowsheds.

Grandma sat behind the rattan chair, and whenever a person on the team asked something, she would shout it into Grandpa’s ear.

“Did Guomindang people ever go looking for Enchun at the church?”

“Enchun caught pneumonia.”

“We didn’t say anything about pneumonia.”

“It was pneumonia!”

That’s how he would answer the questions no one had asked him.

One morning, Pussycat, who had been lost for days, suddenly appeared on the top of the sky well, its whole body badly mangled. It must have just barely escaped ending up as something tasty in a family’s cooking pan. After this narrow brush with death, Pussycat had made it to the top of the wall of its own home, but hadn’t the strength to jump down. My grandfather was the first one to hear its weak mewing, and we brought out a ladder and rescued it.

I quietly said to Grandma, “There’s nothing wrong with Grandpa’s ears.”

Grandma made a tense shushing sound and ordered me never, ever to tell anyone this.

During that period, my grandfather wished he
were
deaf and blind. He never stopped praying for God to take away his eyes and ears, and even his life.

His good friend, Pastor Chen, could not wait for God’s call. He ended his own life, dying in the well that he himself had dug in front of the church door. Twenty years earlier, when the young pastor first arrived at West Gate, he saw poor people along the city moat eating, drinking, washing, and brushing their teeth in the water from that stinking ditch, so he appealed to his fellow believers to donate funds to dig a well. Not long after Pastor Chen was no more, the well dried up. My grandfather kept wondering what that could have meant. He also wondered whether the Heavenly Father had forgiven Pastor Chen and had opened the gates of heaven for him.

Whenever the teams did not come visiting, Grandpa just sat on that patched-up, old rattan chair. He would sit there all day long, day after day, his eyes closed and his body completely motionless. He just couldn’t comprehend the revolutions occurring in the world. Everything was upside down…everything was in a complete mess.

How could Enchun have become a secret agent of the Guomindang? And why, when they were catching secret agents, did all the calligraphy and books have to be burnt up? And why did the shops and taverns have to completely change their names? Those names had lasted for over a hundred years and now were turned into things that were “red” or revolutionary.

The name of the city moat behind our house was changed from City-Protecting River to Redness-Protecting River. The family’s grandchildren also clamored to change their names. Su’er became Fanxiu—short for Oppose Revisionists—since the Soviet Union (Sulian) was revisionist and the betrayer of communism. My name, Hong’er—Little Rainbow—was still all right though. You just had to rewrite the “insect” part of the written character as “twisted silk” to change Rainbow to Red. The sound stayed the same. Grandpa had chosen the names of his grandsons and granddaughters but he never told anyone that all of these came from the Bible. Su’er commemorated Jesus (Yesu). Hong’er referred to Noah’s covenant under the rainbow in the Old Testament. One day, Su’er, the eldest grandson, came home and my grandfather called to him, “Su’er…” The grandson replied, “Gramps, I’m not called ‘Su’er.’ I’m called ‘Fanxiu.’” To Grandpa this sounded like a simple announcement: “I’m not your grandson. I’m another family’s grandson.” Grandpa no longer paid any attention to him. Fanxiu called him “Gramps,” and my grandfather just shut his ears and didn’t hear it.

He secretly read the Bible, hoping to find answers there, but he could get no explanation. Neither Moses nor Jesus told him why Enchun became a secret agent. Was it because the channel of communication between him and God was blocked?

This was all extremely painful for him.

2.

H
E WAS
A
LREADY
a white-haired old fellow. As always, he wore glasses for his severe nearsightedness and buried himself in that room piled high with books and magazines, continuing his research on socialist economic theory. If you paid a call on him, he would receive you from afar with great feeling and excitement. He would sit you down on the room’s single high-back chair and, dragging that leg of his that had been broken in the Cultural Revolution, he would dig up a long-unused glass from out of the piles of books and papers, and after disinfecting it with alcohol, brew some tea for you. Then he would sit on the side of the bed—also piled high with books—and you’d have a long chat with him. His words outnumbered his books, so you’d have to be patient. He was so very alone. Many saw him as an eccentric freak or some worthless piece of junk from an archeological dig, and nobody wanted to have anything to do with him. In all these years, his only son had been unwilling to give Enchun even a telephone call.

Holding the alcohol-tinged tea, I sit in this landscape of books and papers. How many years has it been? That copy of
Capital
, crammed with his own handwritten notes, is still on top of the desk. At the corner of the table, an old-fashioned alarm clock is still stopped at five-fifteen. If it weren’t for his facial appearance that showed the passing years, I’d think it was only yesterday that I had last come to see him. Actually, we see each other every four or five years at least. But in the four-or five-year intervals, the world goes through titanic changes and our lives do too. Only he himself has kept a small place where he lived in solitude, stuck outside of time.

Once all the fuss of receiving a visitor is over and done with, he sits down and discusses Marx’s economic theory, and the fixed law of the inevitable destruction of capitalism. He never complains about the terrible things that have happened to him. Tolerantly and optimistically, he’d say that all this was normal. Christianity had a two-thousand-year-old history and, if you added the period of the Old Testament, it was closer to four thousand years. And how many upheavals from heresies and rebellions had there been? China’s socialism was only a few decades old, still in its infancy. So, traveling a few winding roads was normal.

He is playing his lute to the cows, for my thoughts are like those cows meandering about in some far-off place. I stare at him, trying to find Chaofan in his face. Father and son look extremely alike in their noses, chins, and ears. I grieve for him. He still doesn’t know that his son just up and left the orchestra during his first performance abroad and doesn’t want to come back. After so many years, he thinks his son is still in Beijing composing music. Becoming another Chopin had been his own ideal and he bought a transistor radio so he could hear his son’s music. Every evening he falls asleep listening to symphonies. He never asks his son to come home to see him. One’s pursuits are demanding and his son’s pursuits are as important as his own. He wants to devote every bit of energy left in his life to writing a book on China’s socialistic economy. He wants to do this to prove the correctness of his beliefs.

I wonder if Chaofan would also devote his life to proving that going to far distant lands and living freely with no beliefs at all had been the correct thing to do. He doesn’t read any news from his native land and he has never stepped a foot back in China. I still think about Pastor Chen, already a misty figure in my memory. Pastor Chen had watched the people in that rebel faction at the West Gate church all grow up. They had tried to help him survive under false principles: if only he would declare at the general meeting that, from that day on, he no longer believed in God. But that he couldn’t do, and went right out to throw himself down the well in front of the church.

The inflexibility of the men of the Chen family runs down a direct line.

On the Winter Solstice in 1947, Enchun, a student of the Old Town College of Commerce, turned eighteen. Early that morning, just as he was walking out the door on his way to school, his mother said, “Today is your birthday, so after classes come right home. Dad and Ma have a present for you, something we’ve prepared for eighteen years.”

Enchun stopped right there and gazed at his mother. He wanted to tell her not to celebrate his birthday, but he was also afraid of going against their good intentions. Hesitantly he nodded his head.

He had in his book bag a rice ball for lunch. The school was not far from West Gate, and previously he had always gone home for his noon meal. Now with food supplies so scarce, his father made him stay in the classroom and read. In this way he could conserve his energy and cut back on food consumption.

There were quite a few beggars with their children waiting for him at the school gate. They knew he would divide up his lunch and give it to them, so seeing him coming, they immediately swarmed around him. Enchun had just taken out the rice roll when a small girl, beating all the rest to the prize, snatched it away and in one quick move stuffed it into her mouth, her two cheeks swelling up like balloons. Several small boys tried to pry open the girl’s mouth with their filthy hands.

Enchun couldn’t bear to watch any more of this scene. He gritted his teeth and, extricating himself from the crowd of beggars with difficulty, walked away. Every day he wanted to bring a little more food, but things were very tight at home. His father always relied on the congregants’ donations to live, but these days they all were having a hard time too. Sometimes what he received in a whole month wouldn’t even buy a few
jin
of hulled rice. One day there really was nothing at all in the cooking pot. His mother sat in front of the organ and prayed:
O Lord, we have nothing to eat now. Our family of three can only boil water to drink. Even so, our faith will not waver. We know that you see us from heaven and that you will not forsake us
.

Just then by chance Baohua ran over to ask about something in arithmetic. When she saw there were only three glasses of water on the table, she turned right around and ran back home, a place across from the church the Lins had now rented after the war. A little while later, Baohua returned with a huge “sea” bowl of hulled rice. Mrs. Chen was beside herself with happiness and, her eyes brimming with tears, sang a hymn as she played the organ. She gave thanks to Jesus the Lord for hearing her prayers and sending Baohua over with the rice. Enchun felt pity and sadness for his mother.

He walked with his head down, avoiding the stares of the beggars who came at him for food. Suddenly, someone patted his shoulder. It was the math professor, Teacher Zhao. Teacher Zhao was just the person he wanted most to see today.

“Good morning, Teacher Zhao.”

“You feel bad about not being able to help more people, am I right?”

Enchun nodded.

Teacher Zhao was from Beiping. Enchun’s family came from there too, and Pastor Chen and his wife had once paid a call on this fellow from their hometown. They invited him to hear the pastor preach the Word at the church, hoping that the teacher could receive Jesus’ saving grace. The teacher and his student had become quite close from this time on, and Enchun also became the head of the study group that Teacher Zhao had launched. This little group professed to be tutoring in mathematics, and math books and workbooks were displayed on the table, but what Teacher Zhao talked about was the Soviet Revolution, communism, and the leader of all those making “an about-face for liberation” in North China, Mao Zedong. Teacher Zhao had never said he himself was a communist, but Enchun believed he was. It was said that over the past two years, not a few of the people taken to be shot on that piece of barren land outside of West Gate were communists. Clearly, the Communist Party was in Old Town. Eighteen-year-old Enchun made a big decision: he was going to join the Communist Party. If he couldn’t find the party in Old Town, he would leave home and go up north to look for it. Today he wanted to tell Teacher Zhao of his decision.

As they walked into the school grounds, Enchun stopped and with a grim look on his face said, “Teacher Zhao, today is my eighteenth birthday.”

Teacher Zhao warmly shook his hand. “Happy birthday! Let me invite you to lunch.”

“Teacher Zhao, I couldn’t sleep all last night. I have made a decision that involves the rest of my life.”

“Oh?”

“Please introduce me into the Communist Party.”

“I…Let me think about how to do this. I have a friend who may be a communist.”

“This society is like a boat lost in the darkness and it could run aground and sink at any moment. I can’t wait any longer!”

“You know it’s very dangerous. You could be caught and shot at any time.”

“Rather than being tormented in all this darkness, I would prefer to die opposing it. Teacher Zhao, if you can’t help me, in ten days I’m going to disappear from this sealed jar of a little town.

“You can’t go, Enchun. Old Town needs young people like you who are attracted to the light.”

Around dusk, Enchun met again with Teacher Zhao. Teacher Zhao said that he had now been with that “friend” and the “friend” had agreed to accept his application. So from this day on, Enchun was a probationary Party member.

Evening at Winter Solstice comes early. The teacher and the student strolled about Little West Lake. Neither could see the other’s face clearly, but at this moment Enchun felt a ray of light come pouring out of the clouds and enveloping him fully. He saw his own heart throbbing in the light.

Today, Pastor and Mrs. Chen wanted to give their eighteen-year-old son to the embrace of Jesus. They had completed the preparations for Enchun’s baptism, and in the very center of the church was a big wooden barrel filled to the brim with clear water on which had been sprinkled flower petals. Naturally they couldn’t do without all five of Dr. Lin’s family to share in the blessings and happiness. Enchun was very close to the three Lin children and after today they would also become brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Enchun sought out the candlelight as he entered the church. Mrs. Chen immediately began playing the organ and the three Lin children sang the hymn “Jesus, Lead Me,” which they had just learned. “Lead me, Jesus. Lead me, Jesus. Jesus, lead me by your hand day by day…”

Mrs. Chen led her son by the hand. “Enchun, today is your eighteenth birthday. You’re now a grown-up. We know that from the time you were little you have loved the Lord. Surely you are willing to tell Jesus with your own voice that you long to be his child, and with your own voice will ask the Lord Jesus to forgive you your sins.”

Enchun had never expected that the gift his mother had spoken of would be his baptism, and for several moments he was at a total loss. Stiffly he went with his father to the side of the barrel.

The pastor asked: “Are you willing to accept Jesus as your eternal savior?”

Everyone being baptized would hear the same question and, fervently nodding, answer “Yes.” He then asked Enchun: “Do you admit that you are a sinner?”

Enchun silently shook his head.

Pastor Chen hadn’t noticed his son’s expression. Just as he was about to ask the third question, Baosheng yelled out, “Uncle Chen, Big Brother Enchun doesn’t want to!”

Abruptly Mrs. Chen stopped playing the organ. Her hand was raised in midair.
What’s the matter with my son? Has he been attacked by Satan?

Enchun really wanted to tell his parents that starting today he was a completely new person and that his heart belonged to something else. He wanted to struggle for his beliefs his whole life.

“Dad, Ma, I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

“Son, are you ill?”

“Ma, I am fine…better than ever.”

“If you are in your right mind, you must tell us the reason for this. From when you were little you knew Jesus. Why don’t you accept his redemption?”

Enchun drew himself very erect. “Ma, I can’t tell you why now. But in the future, even in the not so very distant future, you will certainly understand. And, not only that, you will support me.”

Holding the Bible to his breast, Pastor Chen leaned against the pulpit. Over the past decades the number of people he led to Christian baptism was uncountable. How was it he couldn’t lead his own son? He felt heartbroken and defeated.