My Name is Number 4 (24 page)

On my home visit the following winter I met Number 5 at the train station. Both of us were at a low point of our lives: trapped on our respective farms, watching in helpless frustration as our farm-mates left for city jobs and gained a city
hu-kou
through connections or “earned” it through good political background. Nevertheless, we agreed that we would try to make our two-week visit a cheerful event, especially since Number 1 was to be married. It was to be our first gathering as a family since I had been sent into exile four years before.

Number 1’s marriage was the fruit of matchmaking and the postal service. I was sad to see my eldest brother give up his belief in love. I remembered, during his first year at university, his conversation with Mother when he found out she had been
secretly arranging a marriage for him. Number 1 had told her that times had changed, that the government encouraged the abandonment of feudal customs like arranged marriages. He would choose his own wife, he vowed, and marry her for love.

But in the meantime Number 1, a deeply intelligent man with a once-promising future, had been stripped of his Shanghai
hu-kou
and sent to a remote and backward mountainous area in Guizhou Province to work in a tool repair shop. There he had been confronted with reality. If he married a local woman, he would have to spend the rest of his life there, and so would his children. He would not see us again because the home-visit policy would no longer apply. So he agreed to exchange letters and photos with a young woman named Yu-qin, who lived in Shanghai. The whole arrangement was a gamble. No one knew when the young couple would be able to live together, if ever. But marrying a Shanghai resident was Number 1’s only hope.

In China it is the groom’s responsibility to pay for and host the wedding. The ceremony was held at home, with the two families having dinner together. I couldn’t remember the last time there had been so much food on our table in Purple Sunshine Lane. There was chicken stewed in soup, duck simmered in soybean sauce, steamed fish and braised pig’s legs, along with stir-fried vegetables—much of it bought by Number 3 in the Songjiang black market. The duck and chicken must be cooked and served whole, Great-Aunt had insisted, to symbolize the unity of the new family. It was a happy moment, but my heart was heavy with sorrow and
contradiction. Number 1 had given up his dream and, like most people, married for practical reasons. What advantage was there for Yu-qin, his new wife? I wondered. She seemed pleasant enough, but was also loud and brash.

It seemed that history was repeating itself. Father and Mother had lived apart for a long time after their marriage. Looking at my smiling brother, I was overwhelmed with sadness. I found Great-Aunt in the kitchen and told her I was going for a walk to get some fresh air. My face must have signalled my thought, for she didn’t argue. It was dark and cold outside and the streets were almost deserted. Probably everyone was feasting, I thought, the main activity of the New Year celebrations. With nowhere to go, no friends to visit, I wandered the streets for hours.

A couple of months later Number 1 wrote to me with good and bad news. Yu-qin was pregnant, but she had been listed as one of those to be sent to work in a small town in Anhui Province, northwest of Shanghai, another undeveloped area of the country.

As with so many people in those days, Fate had played a trick on my new sister-in-law. Both Yu-qin’s parents were workers. When she had graduated from junior middle school, she had chosen to enroll in a trade school attached to a factory. Such a choice was a last resort, made by those who couldn’t get into a normal middle school, and involved a major loss of face for both the student and the family. But subsequently the humiliation was paid back when Yu-qin saw her contemporaries who had made it into good schools sent to the
countryside, while she, a worker, and therefore exalted, remained in Shanghai.

But the blessing was short-lived. Now married and pregnant, and with her husband in faraway Guizhou, she was transferred. She was able to postpone her departure until her baby was born, then she left for Anhui, taking her son, Ye Xiang, with her. Ten months later, after he had been weaned, she brought him back to Shanghai and left him in Great-Aunt’s care. Number 1 still had not seen his son.

And so Great-Aunt, at sixty-three, suffering from high blood pressure, began to care for the fourth generation of the Ye family, who had taken her in and given her a place to live more than forty years before. But now the Ye family was scattered, and she cared for the baby alone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I
n March 1973, Deng Xiao-ping was brought back to power as vice-premier of China, after years of disgrace. Within a month the “Suggestions for University Enrollment” was issued by the Party’s Central Committee. Deng realized the need for educated people after years of turmoil throughout the school system. Until then, a person who had worked in a unit for at least two years and had a recommendation from his or her unit leaders and co-workers could get into university without taking entrance exams. These were the “Worker-Peasant-Soldier” students. Deng’s declaration stated that Worker-Peasant-Soldier candidates must sit for exams, although their scores would not be the sole criteria; for university entrance political correctness would also count.

I took this as a sign that things might be returning to normal and was encouraged in my English study, though I dared
not hope that I would ever get a chance at university. Just a couple of weeks before, my application to be a taxi driver in Shanghai had been refused. The farm’s new civilian leader, Sun, told me that as the youngest of the experienced hands in the brigade I should let the older men and women go back to the city first. Instead I was assigned as “elder sister” to a batch of newly arrived seventeen-year-old girls, to show them the ropes. For days and nights I was like a firefighter, running out one door and in another, except that I put out tears instead of flames. My heart went out to the miserable teenagers. They were about the same age as I had been when I first came to the farm and they were depressed, scared and homesick. I did the best I could to teach them everything, from the differences between rice seedlings and grass to the best way to hang their laundry to avoid insect contamination. I was an old hand now, I realized without joy, a veteran with calluses on my palms and on the soles of my feet—and, I sometimes thought, on my soul. But using my five years of experience to help them gave me great satisfaction.

In May of the following year I learned that our farm had been allotted ten slots for university enrollment. One of them was for an English major.

My heart leapt. Was this my chance? Or was it nonsense to even consider that I would get the support of the brigade to take the exam, even though I had been studying English alone
for two years? The summer before, I had applied to go to Fudan University to study Spanish, but the unit had turned me down, once again citing seniority.

But this seemed to be a more auspicious time. I had now been on the farm for almost six years and, according to the regulations, if I was successful I could take my salary with me to university. I would not need to ask my family for support. I filled out the application.

The votes of the young women to whom I had acted as an elder sister tipped the count in my direction. My unexpected success at getting over this first hurdle gave me sleepless nights. The next obstacle was another selection: the farm was made up of thirty brigades, and each had elected a candidate. Now the administration would select fifteen from the thirty to take the medical exam. Those who passed it would sit the entrance exam.

I was encouraged that Representative Huang, who had quashed my attempt to return to Shanghai as a teacher—probably because he found out I had written something about him in my confession—had nothing to do with the present selection process.

So I waited, trying not to think about it as I laboured, bent double, in the paddies. One afternoon, as I washed the mud from my legs and feet, I heard that the medical team had arrived at the sub-farm. I entered the dorm and sat on my bed, afraid to move, and asked someone to bring back my supper from the canteen: I didn’t want to be away from my dorm in case I was sent for. Hours passed by and no one came. The village got
darker and quieter, and my heartbeat soared each time I heard approaching footsteps. But there was no news.

I woke up in the morning fully clothed, with a severe headache. I had failed again. I tried to put it out of my mind, but it was hard. I dragged myself out of bed and to the canteen.

I was lugging bundles of seedlings on my shoulder-pole, heading to the paddy, when I was hailed by a man out of breath from running.

“Xiao Ye, someone has telephoned from the sub-farm,” he blurted, stopping to gulp down some air. “They’re asking why you didn’t show up for your medical checkup. The doctors are about to leave and—”

I threw down my shoulder-pole, scattering the green seedlings on the dike, and ran toward the paddy where brigade leader Sun was working. As soon as he caught sight of me he shrieked.

“Ai yah!
I forgot to tell you—”

“How could you forget such a thing? How could you!” I cried.

Sun and I rushed back to his office, where he snatched up the phone and frantically wound the handle. He spoke to the operator and asked her to tell the doctors to wait.

“We’re on our way,” he said, hanging up. “Come on, Xiao Ye, we’ll take my bike!”

After bumping along the dirt roads, sidesaddle on the rat-trap carrier of Sun’s bike, I found myself in the clinic, feet, legs and hands still caked with paddy mud, talking to a group of white-clothed doctors. They did their best to calm me down, then conducted the examination.

The next day I was to have a blood test for hepatitis. This was another hurdle. Hepatitis was widespread throughout the country and our farm was no exception. The number of cases had climbed in the past few years because of contaminated water and poor and crowded living conditions. When I got up early the next morning, having eaten or drunk nothing overnight as ordered, I was showered with advice.

“My mother said sugar makes the liver softer,” said Xiao Jiang, one of the newer girls. “That’s why hepatitis patients get extra sugar coupons.”

I drank the proffered cup of sugar-water and immediately felt guilty for cheating. Later, as the doctor drew my blood, I confessed.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I have two daughters and one of them is your age. She is working on a farm in Heilongjiang Province. I hope someday she will get a chance like yours.” He didn’t tell me, though, whether the sugar-water would help me or not. My health was pronounced excellent.

So, more waiting. I was anxious about the coming exam. I felt confident I could pass, given all my studying of textbooks and the English lessons on the radio; but nothing was ever simple or clear.

One afternoon in August I was called from the paddies once more and told to go to the sub-farm administration office. This time I remembered to wash off the mud in a ditch. Xiao Zhao, a young man who worked in the canteen, took me on his bike. All I had with me was a ballpoint pen.

The sub-farm was quiet, a usual weekday afternoon, with everyone in the paddies. I hopped down from the bike, thanked Xiao Zhao, and went to the office. There I was directed to a room down the hall. I remembered the day of my middle-school entrance exams. There were flags snapping in the breeze outside the buildings, hundreds of students and their families milling around on the sidewalks, row upon row of desks in the sultry classroom. Mother had been alive then, and the most important issue challenging my young mind had been which middle school I would go to. Now, at twenty-two, I faced the most important test of my life. Success meant a brighter future. Failure would bring more of the same misery.

I stepped into the small room, where two middle-aged women, with their hair cut plainly at earlobe length, sat behind desks, fanning themselves. It was hot and stuffy. An armchair sat forlornly in a corner; a single desk and chair had been placed before the two women; the bamboo window curtains were drawn against the afternoon sun. I looked around, wondering where the other candidates were. The examiners rose.