Old Town (57 page)

They were moving closer toward him and Fangzi’s voice resounded from the main road. “I really had bad luck when I married into you Lins. Your father is a suspected foreign agent as well as having been a Guomindang army officer. Then there’s your ma. Your ma’s a real old witch. You’ve got to break off relations with the Lins!”

Baoqing’s two feet came together and stopped. He gave his wife a look. He wanted to say something but didn’t. He just continued walking.

The doctor read in his son’s face an inexpressible grief and desolation. All along he had been prejudiced against his two sons for always lacking a certain spunk or grit in their dealings in the world. Now he felt remorse. As their father, he hadn’t really shown concern and love for his two sons. When they were babies he had abandoned them. Dimly he saw in the big Lin courtyard three children, their mouths drooling as they stared at a pan of soy sauce-braised pork, but never daring to move their chopsticks. Second Sister often related this scene to him, her tone of voice revealing the joy that arises when bitterness has run its course and sweetness replaces it. It was only at this moment, as he ruminated over the past, that he sensed the bitterness in it.
I was never with the children when they were young. Now here I am again interfering with their futures.
The doctor’s eyes glistened. He felt the impulse to go over to his son and say, “I’m sorry.”

Fangzi turned her volume up louder and louder. “I won’t let you go to West Gate! And I am not going to let you give our money to them. If you don’t break off relations with them totally, then let’s just divorce!”

Baoqing once again stopped dead in his tracks. His head now hung even lower. “Your background is good but now you’re implicated in my life. Maybe getting divorced would be the best choice.”

Fangzi’s mouth dropped in stupefaction. A moment or so later, with a look on her face as if she had just lost her parents, she burst into tears. “Divorce! All right! For your reactionary parents you’d be willing to divorce me!”

Baoqing moved on, pushing the bicycle along slowly. Fangzi followed, crying, reproaching, hitting.

Gazing at this scene now steadily moving away from him, the doctor couldn’t help but heave a deep sigh as he reflected on all of this. Baoqing and Fangzi’s marriage was something he and Second Sister had pushed all by themselves. After Baoqing joined the army, a plain-looking girl student claiming to be his classmate would often show up at the Lin home. Every time she walked in she would roll up her sleeves and help Second Sister with the housework. Although she was nothing remarkable to look at, she spoke sweetly and was diligent. Ninth Brother and Second Sister liked her. The doctor wrote to his son that a classmate of his named Fangzi often came to the house to comfort his parents in their lonely empty nest. When Baoqing replied, he “put Zhang’s hat on Li’s head,” mistaking Fangzi for quite a different classmate. Baoqing once sent home a photograph of a female soldier from the army song and dance ensemble. Second Sister was afraid that if her son married a northerner he would never get back to Old Town and she quickly obtained from Fangzi a picture to send to him. She hoped he would not let down a hometown girl. From then on, they often had Fangzi reply to his letters on their behalf.

It seems as if all that happened just yesterday. How could Fangzi have turned into such a cunning shrew?

He didn’t know that Baoqing’s marriage had been unhappy from the start. Occasionally, Second Sister had some veiled criticism to say to Fangzi, but Ninth Brother would always stop her. Fangzi was an extremely possessive and controlling woman. She brooded on that first abortive love Baoqing had in the army and she bore a grudge against Baoqing’s attachment and obedience to his mother. She actually did love Baoqing but she longed to possess him totally. For many years now she had tested and tormented him every day.

The commerce bureau was also split into two factions, and Fangzi and Baoqing joined one of these, where she was a backbone element in it. Today the rival faction had stuck up a big character poster exposing Baoqing’s reactionary lineage. Fangzi and the other leaders could but “flick away their tears and decapitate Ma Su”
⁵⁴
—they posted a notice announcing Baoqing’s expulsion. This calamity was Fangzi’s golden battlefield opportunity to set about uprooting her husband’s social relationships, and her mother-in-law was the number one enemy target for uprooting. That always elegant and poised woman was a disease in her vital organs. Because Baoqing always so deeply venerated his mother—for him there was no one in this world more pretty and capable than she—Fangzi had gnashed her teeth in hatred early on. She never expected to have to face this choice. To her surprise, Baoqing preferred divorce and to stick with his West Gate family no matter what its fate might be. How could this have not driven her crazy?

The doctor walked along aimlessly, like a withered leaf blown about by the wind this way and that. He had now arrived at the hospital, but he had forgotten why he had come in the first place. Uneasily he stood at the outpatient main gate. From his pallor he looked like someone needing to register as a patient himself.

It was the rightist nurse, just then sweeping the floor, who first noticed him. Coming up to him, she asked, “Dr. Lin, are you ill?”

“Don’t take it to heart. Right! Don’t take it to heart, couldn’t it…”

The rightist nurse lowered her voice. “Dr. Lin, your Heavenly Father will be by your side.”

In those years past, he had tried to get this same person to believe that there was an Almighty Father in heaven. That one would surely be blessed by relying on Him. But the rightist nurse to this day had not accepted any kind of religious belief. Right now she was just comforting the doctor by offering medicine when the disease was at its most critical stage. The look of despair on his face made her uneasy.

Heavenly Father?
Dr. Lin trembled inside. It had been many days since he had prayed in earnest. He had not only closed his eyes and ears from the people around him, he did this to God too. He truly couldn’t understand why, if people were learning from Lei Feng’s wonderful millennium, all of a sudden the beacon fires had blazed forth on all sides and the entire world descended into insane chaos.
Pastor Chen had said that everything that happened was permitted by God. O God! Why did you permit all this?

“Dr. Lin, you wanted me to go on living. Now I want
you
to go on living.”

“Go on living, of course…”

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. The rightist nurse rushed off, broom in hand.

The doctor went to Old Town University where Enchun worked as a furnace stoker in the school’s heating plant. The doctor by now had come here more than a few times to rendezvous with Enchun. In the most recent struggle session, the Red Guards had shorn Enchun’s head. Today the doctor brought with him a pair of little scissors to trim what remained of Enchun’s hair.

“Enchun, come, have a seat. I’ll tidy up your hair a bit.”

Enchun laughed good-naturedly and pulled over a broken wooden crate and sat down. “Actually, it doesn’t matter. Nobody sees me, and I can’t see me either.”

The doctor stood behind Enchun and worked on his hair practically strand by strand. Until this point in time he still hadn’t told him that Pastor Chen was no longer in this world. Enchun supposed that West Gate remained peaceful under Ah Ming’s protective influence.

“Uncle Lin, after this, don’t come and see me anymore. Don’t leave West Gate. I am doing all right. Physical labor is the best rest for mental labor. Please convey to my daddy and ma to take good care of themselves and to look after little Chaofan.”

“Mmmh.”

“I’m studying socialist economics. Here I can continue my research. There are a lot of specialized subjects that have been denied right across the board. The professors have all burned their books. Compared to them, I count myself very fortunate.”

Enchun had long been reading a tome thicker than the Bible called
Capital
. It was written by Karl Marx. The volume was inside the broken crate, and each time he added coal to the furnace he would then wash his hands clean with soap, take out the book, and continue reading.

“Enchun, way back then you described to me the beautiful vistas of communism. That truly attracted me to it. I really embraced communist…”

“Uncle Lin, don’t be too pessimistic. Setbacks are inevitable. Our China is a backward, agricultural society. Ideological problems will definitely appear.”

“
Setbacks are inevitable.” Enchun is always saying that.
The doctor was profoundly moved by the persistence of Enchun’s faith.

He always came to see Enchun out of deep compassion and pity. It was just like bringing a present, but one that was never handed over. Enchun did not need compassion and pity. The doctor thought of Baoqing.
My poor sons
. He had the impression that they never had a boyhood. It was as if from the beginning both sons were the men of the Lin family. He couldn’t even remember ever having embraced Baosheng and Baoqing. What leaped before his eyes across the decades were scenes of Baohua wearing a little dress and little leather shoes, pouting prettily in his arms. “I should show my sons some love and concern,” he thought.

This month Baoqing was a few days late in giving his parents the allowance for their living expenses. Ninth Brother noticed that when his son passed a heavy envelope to his mother his eyes appeared confused and shy. Second Sister dumped a pile of tiny denomination bills and a handful of coins out of the envelope. “How come it’s all in small change?” she asked, puzzled. Baoqing didn’t reply. He had stolen some of it from Wei’er’s savings jar. He also sold old books and newspapers behind his old lady’s back before being able to put together fifteen
yuan
.

Ninth Brother walked into the kitchen and brought out the Eight Treasures rice pudding, then warmed it in the stove, and placed it before his son and said, “Eat it while it’s hot.”