Old Town (42 page)

Maybe he doesn’t know about Ninth Brother yet, otherwise he wouldn’t be this polite to me.

“Oh. Please keep helping him. Well, you’re busy, so I won’t bother you.”

Raising her hand in farewell, she turned around and walked away.

“Aunt!” Deputy District Head Bai called after her. “I know about Uncle’s matter. I will definitely look into this. You must believe that our party would not treat a good person unjustly.”

A good person? Did the district head say that Ninth Brother is a good person? Does that mean he doesn’t see him as a counterrevolutionary?

O God! O Lord! This is surely someone you have sent to comfort me. You know I am weak. You know I can no longer hold myself up. Stretch forth your hand and support me and don’t let me fall
.

Second Sister ran into the thicket beside her and knelt down with her eyes raised to heaven. “O Lord, I love you!”

She wept the whole way home and wept again at the Eight Immortals table right in front of Elder Sister. Elder Sister kept handing her hot towels and never stopped sighing. “You think you know a person, but you really don’t. I expected Ninth Brother would have forgotten Shanghai by now. Does he think about that child there? You’re to blame for sending the child away.”

In the midst of her sobbing, Second Sister began to titter and giggle.

Elder Sister thought, “Our Second Sister is done for!” Dropping a towel that had just been used she embraced Second Sister. “Oh, my wretched, unlucky sister!”

4.

M
ANY, MANY YEARS
later, the secrets of the “Eliminate Counterrevolutionaries” period were no longer secret. My grandmother could take an audience’s perspective and relate from every possible angle the details of the play. Of course the tickets to this particular play were far too expensive. They almost “caused her spirit to depart on the execution ground,” and they deprived my mother and two uncles of their bright career prospects. To dispel the fog enveloping the Lin family, my two uncles worked like Sherlock Holmes for over ten years searching everywhere for “spider threads and horse hoofmarks.” But after endless complications and setbacks they were still unable to detect the chief culprit in all this.

Grandma wept tears of gratitude as she thanked heaven and earth for the deputy district head’s calling my grandfather a good man. Still, she didn’t dare entertain any extravagant hopes that this chance meeting could bring Ninth Brother back from the dead.

The deputy district head had heard Dr. Lin was suspected of being a special agent, but he let this go in one ear and out the other without paying it any mind. At noon on this day, he had taken some spare time to go home to see his mother, with whom he never had the chance to share a meal, being so busy with the current movement. However, after running into Aunt Lin on the way, he didn’t go home but pedaled to the district government building and went right into the “Eliminate Counterrevolutionaries” office. There he took out Dr. Lin’s file. The doctor had already been reported to the city government as an entry on the list of those to be shot. His crimes were his having been a Guomindang army officer and now a hidden special agent. In his file was a letter anonymously signed by “The Revolutionary Masses” that stated, “Previously Dr. Lin secretly slipped back to Old Town from the army with a special commission from the secret police organ in Chongqing. In Old Town he developed an underground anticommunist organization and, like a spider’s web, this organization has already spread to every corner of Old Town. On the surface he runs a medical clinic and treats patients, but in reality this is where he draws people into his organization. He has even managed to get his children inside the Communist Party.”

Before Liberation, Deputy District Head Bai had dealings with the Lin family and he concluded these accusations were pure fabrications. He took this file right to the city government and sought out the leader of the local “Eliminate Counterrevolutionaries” movement. The deputy district head didn’t dare say that he himself could prove that Dr. Lin wasn’t a special agent, only that this case was “complicated.” If what the anonymous letter said was true, this man could not be shot, at least not right away, but should be handed over to the national security organ so they could uncover his underground organization.

When the movement leader took a glance at the file, his eyeballs looked like they had been scorched, though he immediately regained control of himself and carefully read the details of the material.

This man’s name was Li, and, in fact, he was the Young Li who had been with Dr. Lin so many years before up north with the army.

While Dr. Lin was meandering his way back south, Young Li had sought refuge with the communists’ New Fourth Army. Now, not too long ago, he had transferred out of the army to civilian work and returned to Old Town where he held a double position as head of the Organization Department and director of the “Eliminate Counterrevolutionaries” office.

Department Head Li kept Dr. Lin’s file. He didn’t mention his own relationship with Dr. Lin to the deputy district head and in an official tone of voice said, “This is a phenomenon well worth our serious attention. We ought to be on guard against those enemies who in their evil intent confuse our line of vision. I will be investigating this case myself.”

The next day, Department Head Li saw Dr. Lin at the detention center. Although the doctor’s hair and beard was all one big clump and he had turned thin almost beyond recognition, still, in one glance he could recognize the Dr. Lin of long ago in that man by the courtyard wall pulling up weeds. The doctor was squatting on the ground conscientiously pulling up weeds and piling them up all very neatly beside him. This was just how Young Li would watch the figure of Dr. Lin in the battleground first aid station. So many old things welled up in his heart. He held back both his tears and the impulse to step forward and identify himself to the doctor.

Ten days later, my grandfather was released from the lockup. He didn’t know why he had been arrested or why he had been released. As he stood on the street corner at West Gate in the middle of the night as if in a trance, he supposed this had all been a dream.

What happened next was my Great-Auntie thinking she was looking at a ghost standing at the gate and my grandma just then coming out with a lamp and so frightened she started shivering all over.

Grandpa had once again mysteriously dodged a calamity, but the Lin family’s bad luck had by no means run its course. That anonymous letter writer went on writing letters. He sent one to Uncle Baosheng’s work organ and another to Uncle Baoqing’s army unit. Nor did my mother in far-off Xinjiang have the good luck to avoid all this. Uncle Baosheng’s position at that time was section chief. He never got promoted any higher. Younger uncle returned to China from Korea, was discharged, and sent back to his home in Old Town. And because of this, my mother was abandoned by her husband who had ambitions of becoming an officer.

Who in the world had the Lin family offended so badly as to put us in mortal danger? Every holiday, the two Lin brothers would come home to West Gate and convene a meeting. They each found a lot of clues, but overall it was as ineffective as dredging for a needle at the bottom of the ocean. The impact of these anonymous letters on the Lins was deep and far reaching. They were a sword hanging over every family member. Every time there was a political movement that sword would descend to claim their lives. This went on right up to the early 1970s when my cousin registered for military service. He hadn’t been in uniform for three days when he was discharged. The reason given was that his grandfather and father were suspected secret agents.

Grandma had suspected it was her brother-in-law Zhang. If the Lin family had any enemy at all it could only have been him from the time when she had dashed the bucket of cold water at him. She arranged to have her sister bring over some of his handwriting and Baosheng submitted this to the leader. But the answer they received was negative. So who else could it have been?

With the catastrophe of the “Great Cultural Revolution,” my two uncles no longer held any hopes of political advancement. They grew used to the burden of “suspicion.” Because it was only suspicion, they were still fortunate enough to survive, and, in fact, not do all that badly. Since they were unqualified to join those who were “making revolution” during that period, and the rebel factions had their hands full over those two years, Baosheng and Baoqing each stayed at his own home and raised chickens. Every Sunday the two brothers would return to West Gate, each holding a handsome rooster which they would release to fight under the sky well, with the loser ending up in the cooking pot.

One day at the end of the 1970s, when I was returning home from school, I could see far off a number of people crowding around our gateway. Grandpa had departed this world not too long before and I was feeling extremely vulnerable. Immediately I thought the worst—
Grandma had died! O heaven, I can’t lose my grandma!
Like a crazy person I squeezed through, pushing aside people, but what I saw was Grandma sitting calmly at the Eight Immortals table. Then I turned my head and saw a crazy person, a real one, standing under the sky well hurling curses and abuse at our Lin family, his frothy spit sputtering all over the place.

“Lin Bingkun was a counterrevolutionary special agent. He received a special commission from Chen Lifu in Chongqing.
⁴⁷
They bought out the doctor and shut me up in the nuthouse because of what I knew…”

I was just about to open my mouth to chase that crazy person away when my grandmother called me, “Hong’er, get a glass of water for your elder cousin, Ah Chang.”

Was this Great-Auntie’s son, Ah Chang?
I knew that Ah Chang had been in the nuthouse for over ten years.

“What you said is very important and you should report it to the government right away. Sit down and drink some water while I go get some paper and a pen. You write it down and Second Auntie will be sure to give it to them,” said Grandma to Ah Chang.

Ah Chang drew out from his breast a much wrinkled letter. “I wrote it all down in the beginning. The doctor was bought out so I couldn’t send it.”

“Give it here to Second Auntie. Second Auntie supports you and will help you send it.”

“No, you’re the secret agent’s old lady! I can’t give to you. I want to arrest you all myself and hand you over to the police!”

Grandma told me to go to the substation and call over a policeman.

Grandma, are you so angry you’ve taken leave of your senses? After all, this is a crazy person you’re playing games with!
I didn’t know the story of the anonymous letters and my two uncles had long ago given up their detective work. I was hopelessly confused by all of this.

This was the way that the case, which had been suspended for over twenty years, was solved. When Uncle Baosheng rushed back home upon hearing the news, the police had already put Ah Chang back into the asylum. Though my uncle had lived at peace with this “suspicion” and had been a steady and reliable minor section chief, now he just blew up and cursed, using a crude term he had never used before. Threatening to knock that crazy man flat, he turned to go after his cousin in the insane asylum but Grandma stopped him with a rap of her hand on the table. “You don’t think he has suffered enough retribution? Or that he isn’t more miserable and wretched than you?” Uncle Baosheng sat down and lit up a cigarette with hands that were trembling violently.

Grandma poured Uncle a glass of water and sat down next to him. “Don’t just think how he hurt our family. You want to reflect on how we benefited in all this disaster. If it hadn’t been for that anonymous letter, the three of you might be scattered to the four corners of the earth to this very day. Three generations of our family are able to gather together and we can thank him that you and Baoqing never became big officials. What happened to all the big officials? Weren’t the ones who were ‘struggled’ to their deaths all big officials?”

When Ah Chang was little he fought with Baosheng after getting hit by my uncle’s slingshot, so he remembered the Lin family. As for Zhang, Second Sister had once thrown a bucket of cold water on this rotten-egg brother-in-law because of his foul mouth and that event had rankled within him for years. After Liberation, Second Sister’s fame caused him no end of teeth-gnashing. Though he would often vilify the whole Lin family, he really never thought of doing them any actual violence. He just said this to satisfy his craving for such empty talk. He didn’t know that Ah Chang, then in junior high school, was already insane. But Ah Chang remembered each and every bit of these slanderous stories his father made up. Later when his madness became something terrible and he was tied up and committed to the asylum, he thought he was being persecuted by an organization of special agents. Late at night he would frequently burrow under his cot in the ward to write anonymous letters.

After more time had passed, my Great-Auntie’s husband became terminally ill. After lying in bed for more than two years, he was covered with sores. Again and again he would seem to die but would always manage to recover, and each time he came to, he would say to his wife, “I will be a good person in my next life. I will never hit you. I won’t raise even a finger against you.” When people are about to die, their words are kind and good. Although Great-Auntie’s heart had softened, she truly feared remarrying this man in the next life. Panic-stricken, she waved her hand at her husband. “Don’t wait for me. Whatever you do, don’t wait for me. In the next life I am going to be a nun and follow the Buddha. I’m not marrying anyone.” She was secretly determined to live another twenty or thirty years, by which time he would have returned to earth, gotten married, and had children, lest in a moment of carelessness she bump into him again. In the moments before his death, Great-Auntie’s husband would often mumble, “Ninth Brother was no counterrevolutionary secret agent.” These words astounded her, as she had been in the dark about this all along. Although she often fled to West Gate, my grandmother had never divulged this family secret to her. After Zhang was laid to rest, Great-Auntie came to West Gate and mimicked him, making a joke of all this. Grandma laughed it off.

When I left Old Town and went north to study, the West Gate home once again became an empty nest. Grandma was the only person there. Reminiscences about the past became her daily nourishment.