One Man`s Bible

34

Beyond the pass at Shanhaiguan it got cold early, and he had run into chilly winds blowing down from the northwest. The bicycle, hired in the county town, was impossible to ride against the wind, and even pushing it was hard. At four o'clock in the afternoon it was already dark, when he reached the place where the commune was located, but the village he was going to was a further ten kilometers away. He decided to stay the night in the cart station, where the peasants stopped for a break with their donkey- and horse-carts. He forced himself to eat a bowl of hard sorghum along with the two strips of salted turnip that had gone bitter, then stretched out on the woven rush mat on the earthen kang. In weather like this, the villagers didn't take their carts out, so he had to himself a communal kang that could accommodate seven or eight people. His letter of introduction from the nation's capital seemed to have made an impression, because a special effort had been made to heat the kang for him. However, as the night wore on, it got so hot that the lice on him were probably oozing oil. Even after he had taken off everything except his underpants, he was still sweating, so he got up, sat on the edge of the kang, and smoked, as he pondered the real possibility of seeking refuge somewhere in a village during these chaotic times.

He was up early. There was still a strong north wind, so, leaving the clumsy, heavy-duty bicycle at the cart station, he set off on foot against the wind, and, after three hours, arrived at the village. He asked from house to house whether there was an elderly woman with such-and-such a surname who was a primary school teacher. People all shook their heads. There was a primary school in the village with one teacher, a man, but his wife had given birth and he had gone home to look after her.

"Who else is at the school?" he asked.

"There hasn't been a class for more than two years. It wasn't really a school, so the production brigade converted it into a store-house. It's piled high with sweet potatoes!" the villagers said.

At this point, he asked for the Party secretary of die production brigade, to get someone in charge.

"The old one or the young one?"

He said he wanted a villager who was in charge, so, naturally, the old one was better, he would be sure to know about things. He was taken there. The old man, a bamboo pipe clamped in his teeth, was weaving a rattan basket. Without letting him explain why he had come, the old man mumbled, "I'm not in charge, I'm not in charge!"

It was only after he said that he had come specially from Beijing to carry out an investigation, that the old man became respectful and put down his work. Holding the bronze bowl of his pipe and exposing his brown-black teeth, his eyes narrowed as he listened to him explain the situation.

"Oh, yes, there is such a person, the wife of old man Liang. She taught at the primary school, but she retired because of illness, a long time ago. People have been here to investigate her, but her husband is a shadow-play singer with a poor-peasant family background, so there weren't any problems!"

He explained that he was looking for this old man's wife because he was doing an investigation on another person, that it didn't actually concern the woman herself. At this, the old man took him to a house on the outskirts of the village. At the front door, he shouted out, "Old man Liang, your wife!"

There was no answer. The old man pushed open the door. No one was there, so, turning to the village children who had followed behind, he said, "Go quickly and fetch her, a comrade from Beijing is waiting for her in the house!"

The children dashed off, shouting as they ran. The old man also left.

The walls of the main room were gray-black from smoke, just like the square table and two wooden benches, the only furniture in the room. The kitchen adjoined, but the fire was not burning, so, feeling extremely cold, he sat down. It was gloomy outside, although the wind had died down. He stamped his feet trying to get warm, but, after a long wait, there was still no sign of anyone.

He thought about his waiting in this destitute, faraway village for the former wife of a high official. What could have made her settle in this village? Why had she become the wife of a poor peasant, a shadow-play singer? But what did this have to do with him? It was simply to delay his return to Beijing.

After almost two hours, an old woman appeared. Seeing him inside the house, she hesitated, stopped, but finally came in. The old woman wore a gray scarf around her head, a dark-gray padded jacket, an old pair of padded crotchless overtrousers that puffed out because they were tied at the ankles, and a pair of grimy black padded shoes. Could this genuine old peasant woman be the revolutionary hero of those times, who had been educated at a prestigious university and had worked in intelligence? He got to his feet and asked if she was Comrade Such-and-Such.

"No such person!" the old woman instantly said with a dismissive wave.

This gave him a shock, but he went on to ask, "Are you also known as…?" He repeated the name.

"My surname is the same as my husband's, Liang!"

"Is your husband a shadow-play singer?" he asked.

"He's very old and stopped singing a long time ago."

"Is he here?" he asked cautiously.

"He's out. Who, in fact, are you looking for?" the old woman retorted, as she took off her scarf and put it on the table.

"Forty years ago, did you stay in Sichuan? Did you know someone called…?" He said the name of the high official.

The woman's eyes lit up, but her sagging eyelids immediately drooped again. Those were not the eyes of an ignorant village woman.

"You even had a child by him!" Having blurted this out, he had to calm the woman.

"The child died a long time ago," the woman said, as she rested her hands on the table and sat down on the bench.

It was her. He felt he should try to console her, "You did much work for the Party, but old revolutionaries-"

The woman cut him short, "I didn't do anything, I just cared for my husband and gave birth to a daughter."

"Your husband of that time was secretary of a special zone of the underground Party, surely you were aware of this?"

"I wasn't a member of the Communist Party!"

"But your husband, your husband at the time, was involved in the secret activities of the Party. Surely you knew about this?"

"I didn't," she insisted.

"It was you who covered his escape and, by giving a secret signal, also helped his contact to escape and not get arrested. You were very brave!"

"I don't know anything about this, I didn't do anything," she adamantly denied.

"Do I need to provide you with details to help you remember?

You lived on the first floor, and there was a rattan fan hanging at the window overlooking the street. At the time, you went to the window and took down the fan, you were holding a baby in your arms…" He waited for her response.

"I don't remember any of that." The old woman closed her eyes and ignored him.

He went on coaxing her, "There are testimonies from the people involved, written documents. Your husband, your former husband, escaped by climbing from the clothes-drying porch at the back. He has written a statement on this, it was a meritorious act that you carried out for the revolution."

The woman snorted and gave a little laugh.

"You covered your husband's escape, but you yourself were arrested by undercover spies lying in ambush!" he exclaimed with a sigh. This was a ploy often used in investigations.

Her eyes wide-open, the woman suddenly asked in a loud voice, "If you know everything, why are you carrying out this investigation?"

At this he explained, "Don't get upset, you're not under investigation and neither is your former husband. You covered his escape, so he wasn't arrested, all that is clearly documented. What I want to find out about is the other underground Party member. He was later arrested, had nothing to do with you, but was put in the same prison. How did he get out? According to his statement, the Party organization saved him. Could you tell me something about the situation?"

"I've already told you, I was not a Party member, so don't ask me whether or not the Party saved him."

"I'm asking about the situation in the prison. For example, when a person was released, were certain procedures adopted?"

"Why don't you go and ask the guards at the prison? Go and ask the Nationalist Party! I was a woman locked in a big prison while still nursing a baby at my breast!"

The woman lost her temper and started banging the table like an old village woman in a fit of rage.

Of course, he, too, could have lost his temper. At the time, the relationship between an investigator and a person being investigated was like an interrogation: like between a judge and the accused, or even between a warden and the prisoner. However, he forced himself to say calmly that he had not come to investigate how she came to be released. He was asking her to provide information on general procedures at the prison. For example, were there special procedures for the release of political prisoners?

"I was not a political prisoner!" the woman said categorically.

He said he was willing to believe that she was not a member of the Party and that she had been implicated because of her husband, he believed all this. But he did not want to, and there was no need for him to, have difficulties with her. However, since he had come to carry out an investigation, he asked her to make a statement.

"If you don't know anything about it, then just write that you don't know. I'm sorry I've disturbed you, and the investigation will finish here." He first made this quite clear.

"I can't write anything," the woman said.

"Weren't you a teacher? And, it seems, that you also went to university."

"There's nothing to write." She refused.

In other words, she was not willing to leave any documentation about that part of her life. It was because she did not want people to know her background that she had hidden herself in this village to spend the rest of her days with a peasant shadow-play singer, he thought.

"Have you ever tried to see him?" He was asking about her former husband, the high official.

The woman declined to comment.

"Does he know you're still alive?"

The woman remained silent and made no response. He could do nothing more, so he capped his pen and put it into his pocket.

"When did your child die?" he asked as a matter of course, as he got up.

"In prison, it was just one month old…" The old woman abruptly stopped and also got up from the bench.

He did not pursue the matter, and put on his padded gloves. The old woman silently escorted him out the door. He nodded his head to her in farewell.

When he got to the dirt road with two deep wheel ruts and looked back, the old woman was still standing at the door, without her scarf. Seeing him turn, she went back inside the house.

On his way back, the wind changed; this time it blew in from the northeast. It began snowing more and more heavily, so that, with the grain harvested, everything became a vast bare plain. The snowflakes filling the sky came straight at him, and it was hard to keep his eyes open, but he got back to the cart station before dark and collected the rented bicycle he had left there. Although he didn't have to get back to the county town that night, for some reason, he quickly got on the bicycle. The dirt road and the fields were blanketed in thick snow, and he could barely make out the road. The wind blew from behind, sweeping the snow in all directions, but, at least, it was blowing in the right direction. Gripping the handlebars tightly, he bounced up and down in the snow-covered ruts of the road. From time to time, the bicycle and the rider would fall into the snow, but he would pick himself up and get back on the bicycle to continue on, unsteadily. Lashed up by the wind, it was all swirling snow before him, everything was a vast expanse of gray…