Across a Green Ocean (23 page)

“Ganbei,”
he says.

The liquor sears Michael’s throat like firelight and doesn’t taste like anything, it’s so strong. But Michael nods when Liao lifts the bottle again. After a few rounds, everyone’s tongues seem to be loosened, if not burned.

“Sometimes I think I’ll try to work in America,” Ben confides. “Do they need tour guides there?”

“Sure,” Michael says, thinking of the people who work the tour buses in the city, although it is more likely, despite Ben’s command of English, that he would end up one of those vendors in Chinatown hawking knock-off designer bags.

“It is very hard to go to America without a sponsor,” Liao says. “Maybe you can sponsor my son?”

“Maybe,” Michael replied vaguely.

Ben waves away his father’s suggestion. “Sometimes I think there’s no reason to go to America. I can make plenty of money here. There are more and more tourists every year. Look!” He extends his wrist. “A Rolex, made in China. You can get everything here.”

Michael makes an agreeable sound.

“Besides, if I go to America,” Ben continues, “I will have to be away from my family. Or maybe Mary can come, but we will leave Rong Rong here, and he will be raised by my parents. I’ve seen it happen. Your son grows up without you and does not know you.”

“Things are different now,” Liao says. “Back then, it was considered a good opportunity, even if it didn’t always work out. It worked out for your father,” he says to Michael, “but then he was lucky.”

Lucky?
Michael wonders. He isn’t sure if his father was lucky or just worked hard. And then working hard became the purpose of his life, and sacrifice was all that he knew. But Michael doesn’t know how to say this to his host. He suspects this kind of personal talk is more taboo than asking how much money you made.

“How did you find my father’s address?” he asks Liao.

“My wife and I visited Beijing about a year and a half ago. We wanted to ever since I retired. I had not been back since I had left as a teenager. No one from my family is left there, but I wanted to see my old house, which I told you about before. Sometimes, you know, the place is more important than the people.”

Michael nods.

“I found it is divided into many apartments, each around this size.” Liao gestures around the room they are sitting in. “All the families are new to Beijing and do not follow the old customs. They throw trash everywhere and ruin the place. While I was there, I ran into a neighbor. Of course, now he is very old. He is the only person left there from before. He told me what happened to all the other neighbors, and that your father had gone to the States. Like I said before, he is lucky.”

Michael thinks that immigrating to America must have been the hardest thing his father ever had to do in his life. And for what, to find a wife? To become a lab technician and buy a house in New Jersey? To send his two ungrateful children to college?

“This neighbor, he has a very old address for your father, but I thought I would take a chance and write a letter.” Liao leans forward and pats Michael’s arm. “I wondered why I had not heard from your father. I thought the address is too old. Now I know what happened. I was very sad to hear about your father passing away. But I am also glad that the letter brought you here, so that you can see Qinghai Province for yourself. Did you enjoy the monastery and the lake?”

“Yes, but most of all I enjoyed hearing about my father’s childhood.” Michael pauses. “Can you tell me more? What happened after you discovered that my grandfather was a Christian?”

Liao refills his cup as if to fortify himself for what’s to come next.

In the fall of 1966, everything changed. The schools were in a disarray. The classrooms had been taken over for political meetings, the schoolyards for public displays of humiliation, where people were made to wear dunce caps and kneel on broken glass. We weren’t students anymore, we were Red Guards. You might have thought this would be an awful time to be a teenager. Actually, it felt like being on top of the world, to be sixteen years old and the most powerful beings around. Wherever we went, we were supposed to be able to knock on anyone’s door and be given a place to stay and food to eat. In the beginning, people were hospitable and eager to do this, saying that the youth were the future of our country. Then, when the youth became more arrogant, grabbing whatever they wanted and making accusations if you tried to stop them, they became distrustful and afraid of us.

In groups of four or five boys, we went on raids through large houses abandoned by the bourgeoisie, smashing antique vases, paintings, figurines; things that would be considered quite valuable today. Back then, though, people believed you had to get rid of the old in order to make way for the new. These destructive acts were an attempt to obliterate our old selves, so that we could become new model citizens.

Han was in his element. He was a natural leader, charismatic and resourceful. He knew exactly when to draw back, when there was no point anymore to our wildness. Somehow, the destruction didn’t seem so bad with him around. In addition to myself, our group usually included two other former classmates: Zhao, who had always been a bit of a bully, and Xiao Peng, who was quiet and bookish. Han was the sun around which we orbited, drawn in by his confidence, his surety that what we were doing was right.

Once, accompanied by Min—a girl whose revolutionary fervor scared us boys a little—we came upon a house that had already been ransacked to its very bones. It had belonged to a foreigner, judging by the English titles on the books that had been pulled from the shelves and half ripped apart:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Great Expectations.
In a different place and time, I would have taken those books for my own, although then it would have been stealing. But here I dared not show that the foreign words on the spines meant anything to me.

I think we were all impressed by the thoroughness of the Red Guards who had come before us. Sofa cushions had been slashed, the stuffing strewn around the floor like snow. Tables were missing legs and chairs, arms. Several picture frames had been ripped from the walls and dashed on the floor. Behind the broken glass of one I saw the image of a lady in Western dress. Irrationally, I thought about Mr. Frazier and wondered whether he had been reunited with his wife and children in the Ohio River Valley.

“This
yang guizi
got what he deserved,” Han announced.

“I’ll bet he had servants that he underpaid and exploited,” Min chimed in.

“They should have strung him up—”

“—like the imperialistic pig he is!”

Xiao Peng and I just looked at each other as Han and Min took turns going on about the “foreign devil.” I could tell that Xiao Peng felt uneasy about their ramblings but could do nothing but nod in agreement, like me. From somewhere upstairs came a crash; Zhao on a rampage, probably.

Then Zhao came down with a bottle of amber liquid. We all knew it was some kind of spirits, and that we should try it. Min found some glasses and did the honors of pouring.

“To the great Mao,” Han said.

“To Jiang Qing,” Min said, referring to Mao’s actress wife.

“No!” Zhao yelled. “Her face is like the back of a horse!”

After a while, Zhao turned to Xiao Peng. “Little Peng,” he said. “I’ve been watching you for a long time. I think there is something strange about you.”

Xiao Peng smiled weakly. “What is that?”

Zhao went over and plucked the photograph of the lady in Western dress from the floor, swearing when he nicked his finger on a shard of glass. He shoved it in front of Xiao Peng’s face. “Do you find this woman attractive?”

“Of course he doesn’t,” I said. “She’s a foreigner.” I turned to Xiao Peng. “Right?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Aha,” Zhao said as if this was some kind of proof. “I knew it. You don’t like women.”

“I do too,” Xiao Peng protested.

“Then prove it”—Zhao looked around the room—“by kissing Min!”

Min squealed in protest and almost fell off her chair.

“Otherwise, you’ll have to kiss old Liao here.” Zhao laughed and pointed at me.

I scowled at him and looked toward Han to see if he would intervene, but he leaned forward, appearing interested. I doubted if any of us boys in the room had ever kissed a girl, but to me, Min was not a great prospect. She had rabbitty front teeth and slightly bulging eyes, which, when she was in the middle of a political tirade, seemed to threaten to pop from her head. But Han’s eyes were fixed on her.

“Go on,” he said.

Min giggled and minced up to Xiao Peng. She put her hands on his shoulders and touched her lips to his for barely a second. It was just a peck, but Xiao Peng looked like he was going to be ill.

“I
knew
it,” Zhao said. The look he gave Xiao Peng was full of disgust and loathing. “You’re nothing but a—”

“That’s enough!” Han roared. “We’re done here. Let’s go.”

As we quietly obeyed and filed out of the house, the glow gone from our adventure, I glanced at Han. He looked furious. I couldn’t tell whether he was angry with Zhao for baiting Xiao Peng, or himself for letting things go too far. Or maybe, I thought, he liked Min and wished he had been on the receiving end of her thin, chapped lips. I started to look at my old friend in a new light. He was beginning to grow apart from me, desiring things that were beyond my comprehension.

As if he sensed our increasing distance, Han tried to include me more in the favorite activities of himself, Zhao, and the others, including struggle sessions. This was when people were put on trial for their crimes against the state and subsequently ridiculed, beaten, and stoned, because they were always found guilty. There were rumors that some people had even died afterward, although they had been old and had weak hearts, and by that time they had been dragged away, so no one saw their bodies anyhow. I didn’t like such bloodthirsty spectacles and did my best to avoid them. I knew that if you did not go, you were considered weak by the other boys and that this might somehow make its way up to the authorities, but until that winter I managed to worm my way out of attendance.

Then one chilly day Han sought me out with a glint in his eyes. “There’s a special struggle session tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

“Will you come?”

I tried to think of any excuse—that my mother needed me to help her with the washing, that I had promised my father to go to the store. Finally, I decided to be honest.

“I don’t like attending those things,” I told him.

He regarded me closely. “Those people are being punished for breaking the law, you know.”

“But why do they have to be punished in public?”

“So that the people they have wronged can have the satisfaction of seeing justice done. If someone had cheated you, wouldn’t you want to see them get what was coming to them?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Han sighed with impatience. “Just come tomorrow. You won’t want to miss it.”

I knew I had to go. If I didn’t, Zhao and the other boys would never let me live it down. I had to go or else forever lose face.

So the next day, Han and I went to our old school, where many of the struggle sessions took place since it wasn’t being used to teach students anymore. The yard had been transformed by big-letter posters denouncing the victim. When we got there, we could barely see what was going on because of the number of kids, all shouting and getting worked up. In earlier times, this crowd might have gathered because two boys were fist fighting. Now, it was a living, seething, mass of anger. To my surprise, the person that the fuss was being made over was our old teacher, Mu. She was kneeling in the middle of a circle, a board around her neck upon which the characters for “thief” had been painted. Apparently she had been caught stealing grain from a storehouse. It was obvious that she had done it because she was starving.

Teacher Mu had never been fat, but now she looked positively gaunt. Her glasses had been knocked from her face, so that you could see how sunken her eyes and hollow her cheeks were. Although she hadn’t even been middle-aged when we had been her students, now she looked as old as a grandmother. For a moment I felt sorry for her. She probably hadn’t held the position of teacher for years. Without a husband, children, any family members, she had likely suffered more than most. She was here now because she had no one to defend or protect her.

People were calling her names, from a thief to a whore to a capitalist roader, which didn’t even make sense, because she was being punished for stealing like an ordinary criminal, not because of her ideology. Next to me, Han was starting to get worked up. He looked in my direction, and, when he sensed my discomfort, frowned. Then, as if giving up, he joined in with everyone else, hurling insults as if they were rocks.

Then a real rock flew out of nowhere and hit Teacher Mu on the forehead. Blood trickled down her face and into her eyes, making her look even more skeletal and ghastly. Another rock hit her on the back, propelling her forward and onto her face. This was a signal that the stoning could begin, since it was easier when the person couldn’t look you in the eyes and reproach you for what you were about to do.