Ocean of Words

OCEAN OF WORDS

Zhou Wen’s last year in the People’s Army was not easy. All his comrades pestered him, because in their eyes he was a bookworm, a scholar of sorts. Whenever they played poker, or chatted, or cracked jokes, he would sneak out to a place where he could read alone. This habit annoyed not only his fellow soldiers but also the chief of the Radio-telegram Station, Huang Peng, whose rank was equal to a platoon commander’s. Chief Huang would say to his men, “This is not college. If you want to be a college student, you’d better go home first.” Everybody knew he referred to Zhou.

The only thing they liked about Zhou was that he would work the shift they hated most, from 1:00 A.M. to 8:00 A.M. During the small hours Zhou read novels and middle school textbooks instead of the writings by Chairman Mao, Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. Often in the early morning he watched the eastern sky turn gray, pale, pink, and bright. The dawn was driving the night away from Longmen City bit by bit until, all of a sudden, a fresh daybreak descended, shining upon thousands of red roofs.

If not for the help of Director Liang Ming of the Divisional Logistics Department, Zhou’s last year in the army would have been disastrous. Liang and his family lived in a grand church built by nineteenth-century Russian missionaries, which was at the southern corner of the Divisional Headquarters compound. A large red star stood atop the steeple. Within the church many walls had been knocked down to create a large auditorium, which served as the division’s conference hall, movie house, and theater. All the fancy bourgeois pews had been pulled out and replaced by long proletarian benches, and Chairman Mao’s majestic portrait had driven off the superstitious altarpiece.

The Liangs lived in the back of the church, as did the soldiers of the Radio-telegram Station. Because the antennas needed height, the radiomen occupied the attic, while the director’s family had for themselves the three floors underneath. Whenever there was a movie on, the men at the station would steal into the auditorium through the rear door and sit against the wall, watching the screen from the back stage. They never bothered to get tickets. But except for those evenings when there were movies shown or plays performed, the back door would be locked. Very often Zhou dreamed of studying alone in the spacious front hall. Unable to enter it, he had to go outside to read in the open air.

One evening in October he was reading under a road lamp near the church. It was cloudy and a snow was gathering, just as the loudspeaker had announced that morning. Zhou was so engrossed he didn’t notice somebody approaching until a deep voice startled him. “What are you doing here, little comrade?” Director Liang stood in front of Zhou, smiling kindly. His left sleeve, without an arm inside, hung listlessly from his shoulder, the cuff lodged in his pocket. His baggy eyes were fixed on Zhou’s face.

“Reading,” Zhou managed to say, closing the book and reluctantly showing him the title. He tried to smile but only twitched his lips, his eyes dim with fear.

“The Three Kingdoms!” Liang cried. He pointed at the other book under Zhou’s arm. “How about this one?”

“Ocean of Words, a dictionary.” Zhou regretted having taken the big book out with him.

“Can I have a look?”

Zhou handed it to the old man, who began flicking through the pages between the green covers. “It looks like a good book,” Liang said and gave it back to Zhou. “Tell me, what’s your name?”

“Zhou Wen.”

“You’re in the Radio Station upstairs, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you often read old books?”

“Yes.” Zhou was afraid the officer would confiscate the novel, which he had borrowed from a friend in the Telephone Company.

“Why don’t you read inside?” Liang asked.

“It’s noisy upstairs. They won’t let me read in peace.”

“Tickle their grandmothers!” Liang shook his gray head. “Follow me.”

Unsure what was going on, Zhou didn’t follow him. Instead he watched Liang’s stout back moving away.

“I order you to come in,” the director said loudly, opening the door to his home.

Zhou followed Liang to the second floor. The home was so spacious that the first floor alone had five or six rooms. Down the hall the red floor was shiny under the chandelier; the brown windowsill at the stairway was large enough to be a bed. Liang opened a door and said, “You use this room. Whenever you want to study, come here and study inside.”

“This, this —”

“I order you to use it. We have lots of rooms. From now on, if I see you reading outside again, I will kick all of you out of this building.”

“No, no, they may want me at any time. What should I say if they can’t find me?”

“Tell them I want you. I want you to study and work for me here.” Liang closed the door, and his leather boots thumped away downstairs.

Outside, snowflakes suddenly began fluttering to the ground. Through the window Zhou saw the backyard of the small grocery that was run by some officers’ wives. A few naked branches were tossing, almost touching the panes. Inside, green curtains covered the corners of the large window. Though bright and clean, the room seemed to be used as a repository for old furniture. On the floor was a large desk, a stool, a chair, a wooden bed standing on its head against the wall, and a rickety sofa. But for Zhou this was heaven. Full of joy, he read three chapters that evening.

Soon the downstairs room became Zhou’s haven. In the Radio Company he could hardly get along with anybody; there was a lot of ill feeling between him and his leaders and comrades. He tried forgetting all the unhappy things by making himself study hard downstairs, but that didn’t always help. His biggest headache was his imminent discharge from the army: not the demobilization itself so much as his non-Party status. It was obvious that without Communist Party membership he wouldn’t be assigned a good job once he returned home. Thinking him bookish, the Party members in the Radio Company were reluctant to consider his application seriously. Chief Huang would never help him; neither would Party Secretary Si Ma Lin. Zhou had once been on good terms with the secretary; he had from time to time helped Si Ma write articles on current political topics and chalked up slogans and short poems on the large blackboard in front of the Company Headquarters. That broad piece of wood was the company’s face, because it was the first thing a visitor would see and what was on it displayed the men’s sincere political attitudes and lofty aspirations. The secretary had praised Zhou three times for the poems and calligraphy on the blackboard, but things had gone bad between Zhou and Si Ma because of Ocean of Words.

The dictionary was a rare book, which Zhou’s father had bought in the early 1950s. It was compiled in 1929, was seven by thirteen inches in size and over three thousand pages thick, and had Chinese, Latin, and English indexes. Its original price was eighty silver dollars, but Zhou’s father had paid a mere one yuan for it at a salvage station, where all things were sold by weight. The book weighed almost three jin. Having grown up with the small New China Dictionary, which had only a few thousand entries, Secretary Si Ma had never imagined there was such a big book in the world. When he saw it for the first time, he browsed through the pages for two hours, pacing up and down in his office with the book in his arms as if cradling a baby. He told Zhou, “I love this book. What a treasure. It’s a gold mine, an armory!”

One day at the Company Headquarters the secretary asked Zhou, “Can I have that great book, Young Zhou?”

“It’s my family’s heirloom. I can’t give it to anybody.” Zhou regretted having shown him the dictionary and having even told him that his father had spent only one yuan for it.

“I won’t take it for free. Give me a price. I’ll pay you a good sum.”

“Secretary Si Ma, I can’t sell it. It’s my father’s book.”

“How about fifty yuan?”

“If it were mine I would give it to you free.”

“A hundred?”

“No, I won’t sell.”

“Two hundred?”

“No.”

“You are a stubborn, Young Zhou, you know.” The secretary looked at Zhou with a meaningful smile.

From that moment on, Zhou knew that as long as Si Ma was the Party secretary in the company, there would be no hope of his joining the Party. Sometimes he did think of giving him the dictionary, but he could not bear to part with it. After he had refused Si Ma’s request for the second time, his mind could no longer remain at ease; he was afraid somebody would steal the book the moment he didn’t have it with him. There was no safe place to hide it at the station; his comrades might make off with it if they knew the secretary would pay a quarter of his yearly salary for it. Fortunately, Zhou had his own room now, so he kept the dictionary downstairs in a drawer of the desk.

One evening as Zhou was reading in the room, Director Liang came in, followed by his wife carrying two cups. “Have some tea, Little Zhou?” Liang said. He took a cup and sat down on the sofa, which began squeaking under him.

Zhou stood up, receiving the cup with both hands from Mrs. Liang. “Please don’t do this for me.”

“Have some tea, Little Zhou,” she said with a smile. She looked very kind, her face covered with wrinkles. “We are neighbors, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Sit down, and you two talk. I have things to do downstairs.” She turned and walked away.

“Don’t be so polite. If you want tea, just take it,” Liang said, blowing away the tea leaves in his cup. Zhou took a sip.

“Little Zhou,” Liang said again, “you know I like young people who study hard.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Tell me, why do you want to study?”

“I don’t know for sure. My grandfather was a scholar, but my father didn’t finish middle school. He joined the Communist Army to fight the Japanese. He always wants me to study hard and says we are a family of scholars and must carry on the tradition. Besides, I like reading and writing.”

“Your father is a good father,” Liang announced, as if they were at a meeting. “I’m from a poor peasant’s family. If a carrying pole stood up on the ground, my father couldn’t tell it means ‘one.’ But I always say the same thing to my kids like your father says. You see, nowadays schools are closed. Young people don’t study but make revolution outside school. They don’t know a fart about the revolution. For the revolutionary cause I lost my arm and these fingers.” He raised his only hand, whose little and ring fingers were missing. The stumps quivered in the fluorescent light.

Zhou nerved himself for the question. “Can I ask how you lost your arm?”

“All right, I’m going to tell you the story, so that you will study harder.” Liang lifted the cup and took a gulp. The tea gargled in his mouth for a few seconds and then went down. “In the fall of 1938, I was a commander of a machine-gun company in the Red Army, and we fought against Chiang Kai-shek’s troops in a mountain area in Gansu. My company’s task was to hold a hilltop. From there you could control two roads with machine guns. We took the hill and held it to protect our retreating army. The first day we fought a battle with two enemy battalions that attempted to take the hill from us. They left about three hundred bodies on the slopes, but our Party secretary and sixteen other men were killed. Another twenty were badly wounded. Night came, and we had no idea if all of our army had passed and how long we had to stay on the hill. At about ten o’clock, an orderly came from the Regimental Staff and delivered a message. It had only two words penciled on a scrap of paper. I could tell it was Regimental Commander Hsiao Hsiong’s bold handwriting.

“I turned the paper up and down, left and right, but couldn’t figure out the meaning. I shouted to the whole company, ‘Who can read?’ Nobody answered. In fact, only the Party secretary could read, but we had lost him. You can imagine how outraged I was. We were all blind with good eyes! I beat my head with my fists and couldn’t stop cursing. Grabbing the messenger’s throat, I yelled, ‘If you don’t tell me what the message is, I’ll shoot you in the eye!’

“The platoon leaders saved the boy’s life. They told me it wasn’t his fault; he couldn’t read either. And a messenger never knew the contents of a message, because if he was caught by the enemy they could make him tell them what he knew. Usually, he was ordered to swallow the message before it fell into the enemy’s hands.

“What should we do now? We had no idea where our army was, although we had been told that if we retreated we should go to Maliang Village. That was twenty li away in the north. Racking our brains together, we figured there could be only two meanings in the message; one was to stay and the other to retreat, but we couldn’t decide which was the one. If the message said to stay but we retreated, then the next day, when our troops passed the mountain without covering fire, there would be heavy casualties and I would be shot by the higher-ups. If the message said to retreat but we stayed, we merely took a risk. That meant to fight more battles or perhaps lose contact with our army for some time afterwards. After weighing the advantages and disadvantages, I decided to stay and told my men to sleep so we could fight the next day. Tired out, we all slept like dead pigs.”

Zhou almost laughed, but he restrained himself. Liang went on, “At about five in the morning, the enemy began shelling us. We hadn’t expected they would use heavy artillery. The day before they had only launched some mortar shells. Within a minute, rocks, machine guns, arms and legs, branches and trunks of trees were flying everywhere. I heard bugles buzzing on all sides below. I knew the enemy had surrounded us and was charging. At least two thirds of my men were already wiped out by the artillery — there was no way to fight such a battle. I shouted, ‘Run for your lives, brothers!’ and led my orderly and a dozen men running away from the hilltop. The enemy was climbing all around. Machine guns were cracking. We had only a few pistols with us — no way to fight back. We were just scrambling for our lives. A shell exploded at our rear and killed seven of the men following me. My left arm was smashed. These two fingers were cut off by a piece of shrapnel from that shell.” Liang raised his crippled hand to the level of his collarbone. “Our regiment was at Maliang Village when we arrived. Regimental Commander Hsiao came and slapped my face while the medical staff were preparing to saw my arm off. I didn’t feel anything; I almost blacked out. Later I was told that the words in the message were ‘Retreat immediately.’ If I hadn’t lost this arm, Commander Hsiao would’ve finished me off on the spot. The whole company and twenty-two heavy machine guns, half the machine guns our regiment had, were all gone. Commander Hsiao punished me by making me a groom for the Regimental Staff. I took care of horses for six years. You see, Little Zhou, just two small words, each of them cost sixty lives. Sixty lives! It’s a bloody lesson, a bloody lesson!” Liang shook his gray head and drank up the tea.

“Director Liang, I will always remember this lesson.” Zhou was moved. “I understand now why you want us to study hard.”

“Yes, you’re a good young man, and you know the value of books and knowledge. To carry out the revolution we must have literacy and knowledge first.”

“Yes, we must.”

“All right, it’s getting late. I must go. Stay as long as you want. Remember, come and study every day. Never give up. A young man must have a high aspiration and then pursue it.”

From then on, Zhou spent more time studying in the room. In the morning, when he was supposed to sleep, he would doze for only an hour and then read for three hours downstairs. His comrades wondered why his bed was empty every morning. When they asked where he had been, he said that Director Liang had work for him to do and that if they needed him, just give the Liangs a ring. Of course, none of them dared go down to check or call the director’s home.

Now the “study” was clean and more furnished. The floor was mopped every day. On the desk sat a cup and a thermos bottle always filled with boiled water. Liang’s orderly took care of that. Occasionally, the director would come and join Zhou in the evenings. He wanted Zhou to tell him the stories in The Three Kingdoms, which in fact Liang knew quite well, for he had heard them time and again for decades. Among the five generals in the classic, he adored Guan Yu, because Guan had both bravery and strategy. After The Three Kingdoms, they talked of All Men Are Brothers. Liang had Zhou tell him the stories of those outlaw heroes, which Liang actually knew by heart; he was just fond of listening to them. Whenever a battle took a sudden turn, he would give a hearty laugh. Somehow Zhou felt the old man looked younger during these evenings — pink patches would appear on his sallow cheeks after they had sat together for an hour.

Naturally Zhou became an enigma to his comrades, who were eager to figure out what he did downstairs. One afternoon Chief Huang had a talk with Zhou. He asked, “Why do you go to Director Liang’s home so often, Young Zhou?”

“I work for him.” Zhou would never reveal that he studied downstairs, because the chief could easily find a way to keep him busy at the station.

“What work exactly?”

“Sometimes little chores, and sometimes he wants me to read out Chairman Mao’s works and newspaper to him.”

“Really? He studies every day?”

“Yes, he studies hard.”

“How can you make me believe you?”

“Chief Huang, if you don’t believe me, go ask him yourself.” Zhou knew the chief dared not make a peep before the director. Huang had better keep himself away from Liang, or the old man would curse his ancestors of eight generations.

“No, it’s unnecessary. Zhou Wen, you know I’m not interested in what you do downstairs. It’s Secretary Si Ma Lin who asked me about what’s going on. I have no idea how he came to know you often stay in Director Liang’s home.”

“Thanks for telling me that, Chief Huang. Please tell Secretary Si Ma that Director Liang wants me to work for him.”

After that, the chief never bothered Zhou again, but Zhou’s fellow comrades didn’t stop showing their curiosity. They even searched through his suitcase and turned up his mattress to see what he had hidden from them. Zhou realized how lucky it was that he had put his Ocean of Words downstairs beforehand. They kept asking him questions. One would ask, “How did you get so close to Director Liang?” Another, “Does he pay you as his secretary?” Another would sigh and say, “What a pity Old Liang doesn’t have a daughter!”

It was true Director Liang had only three sons. The eldest son was an officer in Nanjing Military Region; the second worked as an engineer at an ordnance factory in Harbin; his youngest son, Liang Bin, was a middle school student at home. The boy, tall and burly, was a wonderful soccer player. One afternoon during their break from the telegraphic training, Zhou Wen, Zhang Jun, and Gu Wan were playing soccer in the yard behind the church when Liang Bin came by. Bin put down his satchel, hooked up the ball with his instep, and began juggling it on his feet, then on his head, on his shoulders, on his knees — every part of his body seemed to have a spring. He went on doing this for a good three minutes without letting the ball touch the ground. The soldiers were all impressed and asked the boy why he didn’t play for the Provincial Juvenile Team.

“They’ve asked me many times,” Bin said, “but I never dare play for them.”

“Why?” Gu asked.

“If I did, my dad would break my legs. He wants me to study.” He picked up his satchel and hurried home.

Both Zhang and Gu said Director Liang was a fool and shouldn’t ruin his son’s future that way. Zhou understood why, but he didn’t tell them, uncertain if Director Liang would like other soldiers to know his story, which was profound indeed but not very glorious.

Every day the boy had to return home immediately after school, to study. One evening Zhou overheard Director Liang criticizing his son. “Zhou Wen read The Three Kingdoms under the road lamp. You have everything here, your own lamp, your own books, your own desk, and your own room. What you lack is your own strong will. Your mother has spoiled you. Come on, work on the geometry problems. I’ll give you a big gift at the Spring Festival if you study hard.”

“Will you allow me to join the soccer team?”

“No, you study.”

A few days later, Director Liang asked Zhou to teach his son, saying that Zhou was the most knowledgeable man he had ever met and that he trusted him as a young scholar. Zhou agreed to try his best. Then Liang pulled a dog-eared book out of his pocket. “Teach him this,” he said. It was a copy of The Three-Character Scripture.

Zhou was surprised, not having expected the officer wanted him to teach his son classical Chinese, which Zhou had merely taught himself a little. Where did Liang get this small book? Zhou had heard of the scripture but never seen a copy. Why did a revolutionary officer like Liang want his son to study such a feudal book? Zhou dared not ask and kept the question to himself. Neither did he ever mention the scripture to his comrades. Instead he told them that Director Liang ordered him to teach his son Chairman Mao’s On Practice, a booklet Zhou knew well enough to talk about in their political studies. Since none of his comrades understood the Chairman’s theory, they believed what Zhou told them, and they were impressed by his comments when they studied together.

As his demobilization drew near, Zhou worried desperately and kept asking himself, What will you do now? Without the Party membership you won’t get a good job at home, but how can you join the Party before leaving the army? There are only five weeks left. If you can’t make it by the New Year, you’ll never be able to in the future. Even if you give the dictionary to Secretary Si Ma now, it’s already too late. Too late to do anything. But you can’t simply sit back waiting for the end; you must do something. There must be a way to bring him around. How?

After thinking of the matter for three days, he decided to talk to Director Liang. One evening, as soon as Zhou sat down in the room, the old man rushed in with snowflakes on his felt hat. “Little Zhou,” he said in a thick voice, “I came to you for help.”

“How can I help?” Zhou stood up.

“Here, here is Marx’s book.” Liang put his fur mitten on the desk and pulled a copy of Manifesto of the Communist Party out of it. “This winter we divisional leaders are studying this little book. Vice Commissar Hou gave the first lecture this afternoon. I don’t understand what he said at all. It wasn’t a good lecture. Maybe he doesn’t understand Marx either.”

“I hope I can help.”

“For example,” Liang said, putting the book on the desk and turning a few pages, “here, listen: ‘An apparition — an apparition of Communism — has wandered throughout Europe.’ Old Hou said an apparition is a ‘spook.’ Europe was full of spooks. I wonder if it’s true. What’s an ‘apparition,’ do you know?”

“Let’s see what it means exactly.” Zhou took his Ocean of Words out of the drawer and began to turn the pages.

“This must be a treasure book, having all the rare characters in it,” Liang said, standing closer to watch Zhou searching for the word.

“Here it is.” Zhou lifted the dictionary and read out the definition: “ ‘Apparition — specter, ghost, spiritual appearance.’ ”

“See, no ‘spook’ at all.”

“ ‘Spook’ may not be completely wrong for ‘apparition,’ but it’s too low a word.”

“You’re right. Good. Tomorrow I’ll tell Old Hou to drop his ‘spook.’ By the way, I still don’t understand why Marx calls Communism ‘an operation.’ Isn’t Communism a good ideal?”

Zhou almost laughed out loud at Liang’s mispronunciation, but controlled himself and said, “Marx must be ironic here, because the bourgeoisie takes the Communists as poisonous snakes and wild beasts — something like an apparition.”

“That’s right.” Liang slapped his paunch, smiling and shaking his head. “You see, Little Zhou, my mind always goes straight and never makes turns. You’re a smart young man. I regret I didn’t meet you earlier.”

Here came Zhou’s chance. He said, “But we can’t be together for long, because I’ll leave for home soon. I’m sure I will miss you and this room.”

“What? You mean you’ll be discharged?”

“Yes.”

“Why do they want a good soldier like you to go?”

Zhou told the truth. “I want to leave the army myself, because my old father is in poor health.”

“Oh, I’m sorry you can’t stay longer.”

“I will always be grateful to you.”

“Anything I can do for you before you leave?”

“One thing, though I don’t know if it’s right to mention.”

“Just say it. I hate men who mince words. Speak up. Let’s see if this old man can be helpful.” Liang sat down on the sofa.

Zhou pulled over the chair and sat on it. “I’m not a Party member yet. It’s shameful.”

“Why? Do you know why they haven’t taken you into the Party?”

“Yes, because my comrades think I have read too much and I am different from them.”

“What?” The thick eyebrows stood up on Liang’s forehead. “Does Secretary Si Ma Lin have the same opinion?”

“Yes, he said I had some stinking airs of a petty intellectual. You know I didn’t even finish middle school.”

“The bastard, I’ll talk to him right now. Come with me.” Liang went out to the corridor, where a telephone hung on the wall. Zhou was scared but had to follow him. He regretted having blurted out what the secretary had said and was afraid Director Liang would ask Si Ma what he meant by “stinking airs of a petty intellectual.”

“Give me Radio Company,” Liang grunted into the phone.

“Hello, who’s this?… I want to speak to Si Ma Lin.” Liang turned to Zhou. “I must teach this ass a lesson.”

“Hello,” he said into the phone again. “Is that you, Little Si Ma?… Sure, you can tell my voice. Listen, I have a serious matter to discuss with you.… It’s about Zhou Wen’s Party membership. He is a young friend of mine. I have known him for a while and he is a good soldier, a brilliant young man. For what reason haven’t you accepted him as a Party member? Isn’t he going to leave soon?”

He listened to the receiver. Then he said out loud, “What? The devil take you! That’s exactly why he can be a good Party member. What time are we in now? — the seventies of the twentieth century — and you are still so hostile to a knowledgeable man. You still have a peasant’s mind. Why does he have to stand the test longer than others? Only because he’s learned more? You have a problem in your brain, you know. Tell me, how did we Communists defeat Chiang Kai-shek? With guns? Didn’t he have American airplanes and tanks? How come our army, with only rifles plus millet, beat his eight million troops equipped with modern weapons?”

The smart secretary was babbling his answer at the other end. Zhou felt a little relieved, because the director hadn’t mentioned what he had told him.

“That’s rubbish!” Liang said. “We defeated him by having the Pen. Old Chiang only had the Gun, but we had both the Gun and the Pen. As Chairman Mao has taught us: The Gun and the Pen, we depend on both of them to make revolution and cannot afford to lose either. Are you not a Party secretary? Can’t you understand this simple truth? You have a problem here, don’t you?”

The clever secretary seemed to be admitting his fault, because the old man sounded less scathing now. “Listen, I don’t mean to give you a hard time. I’m an older soldier, and my Party membership is longer than your age, so I know what kind of people our Party really needs. We can recruit men who carry guns by the millions, easily. What we want badly is those who carry pens. My friend Zhou Wen is one of them, don’t you think?… Comrade Si Ma Lin, don’t limit your field of vision to your own yard. Our revolutionary cause is a matter of the entire world. Zhou Wen may not be good in your eyes, but to our revolutionary cause, he is good and needed. Therefore, I suggest you consider his application seriously.… Good, I’m pleased you understood it so quickly.… Good-bye now.” Liang hung up and said to Zhou, “The ass, he’s so dense.” Zhou was sweating, his heart thumping.

Director Liang’s call cleared away all obstacles. Within two weeks Zhou joined the Party. Neither Secretary Si Ma nor Chief Huang said a word alluding to the call. It seemed the secretary had not divulged to anybody the lesson he had received on the telephone. Certainly Zhou’s comrades were amazed by the sudden breakthrough, and he became more mysterious in their eyes. It was rumored that Zhou wouldn’t be discharged and instead would be promoted to officer’s rank and do propaganda work in the Divisional Political Department. But that never materialized.

The day before he left the army, Zhou went downstairs to fetch his things and say good-bye to Director Liang. No sooner had he entered the room than the old man came in holding something in his hand. It was a small rectangular box covered with purple satin. Liang placed it on the desk and said, “Take this as a keepsake.”

Zhou picked it up and opened the lid — a brown Hero pen perched in the white cotton groove. On its chunky body was a vigorous inscription carved in golden color: “For Comrade Zhou Wen — May You Forever Hold Tight the Revolutionary Pen, Liang Ming Present.”

“I appreciate your helping my son,” the old man said.

Too touched to say a word, Zhou put the pen into his pocket. Though he had taught the boy The Three-Character Scripture, Liang had helped him join the Party, which was an important event in anyone’s life, like marriage or rebirth. Even without this gift, Zhou was the one who was indebted, so now he had to give something in return. But he didn’t have any valuables with him. At this moment it dawned on him that his Ocean of Words was in the drawer. He took it out and presented it to Liang with both hands. “You may find this useful, Director Liang.”

“Oh, I don’t want to rob you of your inheritance. You told me it’s your father’s book.” Liang was rubbing his hand on his leg.

“Please keep it. My father will be glad if he knows it’s in your hands.”

“All right, it’s a priceless treasure.” Liang’s three fingers were caressing the solid spine of the tome. “I’ll cherish it and make my son read ten pages of this good book every day.”

Zhou was ready to leave. Liang held out his hand; for the first time Zhou shook that crippled hand, which was ice cold.

“Good-bye,” Liang said, looking him in the eye. “May you have a bright future, Little Zhou. Study hard and never give up. You will be a great man, a tremendous scholar. I just know that in my heart.”

“I will study hard. Take good care of yourself, Director Liang. I’ll write to you. Good-bye.”

The old man heaved a feeble sigh and waved his hand. Zhou walked out, overwhelmed by the confidence and resolution surging up in his chest. Outside, the air seemed to be gleaming, and the sky was blue and high. Up there, in the distance, two Chinese jet fighters were soaring noiselessly, ready to knock down any intruder. It was at this moment that Zhou made up his mind to become a socialist man of letters, fighting with the Revolutionary Pen for the rest of his life.