Old Town (23 page)

Second Son didn’t believe in God, but he did believe that Pastor Chen wouldn’t deceive him. When the sky grew light again, he got the pastor to hire him a carry-chair and he went back to Nanjing to look for Baohua. Second Son’s woman was still angry and said fiercely that she wanted to make a clean break from him. “If I never see him again, I’ll shed no tears at my death.” But the moment they lifted the carry-chair, she chased after him.

2.

B
AOHUA WAS LED
off by her future “mother-in-law.” Second Uncle had said, “This auntie is a relative of ours. Your ma is visiting at her house.” The county town was a peaceful place of little streets and alleys amid the surrounding hills and streams. After passing through town, they got onto a mountain road. Now Baohua began to feel afraid and said she wanted to go home. “Mother-in-law” tightly gripped her by the hand and humored her, “We’re almost there. Your ma is waiting for you.” After going a few more steps, at the foot of the mountain a big and burly fellow leapt up, and in one swoop took up frail little Baohua into the crook of his arm. Then, with vigorous strides, he hurried toward the mountains, as if on wings.

The only resistance that Baohua could make was to cry. For two days and nights, she neither ate nor drank as she squatted in a corner and wept incessantly. The landlord’s whole family “knelt down and paid homage,” as the expression goes, to this young miss from the high official’s family, and took more pain in caring for her than they ever did in attending their own ancestors. Day and night, the several women of the house took turns keeping Baohua company. They took out cured meat, salted fish, and bright white rice, things they normally couldn’t bear to eat as being too extravagant, and brought these all steaming hot to her. The little serving maid who brought the food smelled the tantalizing aroma and salivated mightily. The staple food of folk in the mountain districts is sweet potatoes and several years might pass before they could eat a bowl of white rice. The serving maid forced down her saliva and coaxed Baohua to eat. “Such delicious rice, such nice cured meat and salted fish. In the master’s house, it’s only during the New Year that we get to eat this kind of food. On New Year’s Eve we servants are able to eat just a small mouthful of rice. So why aren’t you eating? In whose home are you the thousand-gold-pieces young lady to make our master treat you so well?” Baohua, like a little dog, loyal and faithful to its own home, but now unfortunately gone astray, curled up into the corner silently shedding her tears. These flowed inexhaustibly. Her eyes were so swollen she couldn’t open them, but her tears still gushed out endlessly.

By the time I came forth into this world, my mother’s kidnapping was an incident long past. But I can imagine her all curled up in a corner weeping. My mother was the biggest crybaby I’ve ever known. She rarely cried out loud but always just bowed her head and silently let loose with her tears. My deepest impression of Mother was of her going back to her old home holding a bag embroidered with flowers. Each time she had no sooner entered and before saying even one word, she began to cry. That affecting and pathetic style inevitably made people think of Lin Daiyu in “Dream of the Red Chamber,” so I’ve never liked Lin Daiyu. Maybe it’s a case of “excess leads to reaction.” Mother’s tears nurtured my own hard-as-nails temperament. I rarely cry. I treasure tears like gold.

Throughout her life, my mother always made the wrong choices in marriage. This was the secret anguish that my grandpa and grandma harbored and were never able to dispel. Before my grandfather passed on, he called me to his sickbed. Stretching forth his thin, almost transparent hand and feebly drawing me to him, he said, “You must show concern and love for your mother. Later on, when you’re able to, be sure to bring her into your home.” After she turned ninety, Grandma grew more and more confused. Sometimes she would awake with a fright from some dream, put on her shoes, and rush outdoors, mumbling and muttering that she had to find Baohua.

Mother would mostly return to her old home in some snit over her husband. Her second one was a fierce-tempered northern cadre who stayed fierce-tempered right into old age. He would overturn tables at the drop of a hat. Just let him hear one word he didn’t like and he’d grab whatever was near at hand and dash it to the floor. When Grandma and Grandpa were no longer alive, Mother would take a little bundle of her things and seek refuge with Baoqing. Both my uncles would try to persuade her to leave that volatile man. No matter how many times Baohua would swear never to see her old man again, after no more than a few days she couldn’t stand up to his nice words and would again return to washing his clothes and preparing his meals.

When Mother was young, the experience of divorcing my father gave her a sense of inferiority and shame that stayed with her throughout her life. In those times divorce was extremely rare and furthermore something to be extremely ashamed of. Now with everything changed, divorce is no big thing. But she never emerged from the shadow of that divorce. Without holding fast to the slightest principle she would make excuses and overlook my stepfather’s bad temper, which was growing all the more heedless of any propriety. My grandmother always said that her pretty face is what did Mother in. She was exquisite, a good-looking, pocket-sized babe. If it hadn’t been for her pretty looks she certainly would never have married either my natural father or my stepfather. These two were both high-level cadres who did whatever they said would. When they met her, they just had to marry her.

Grandma and Grandpa both dearly loved Pastor Chen’s son, Enchun. While Baohua was still a child, they had imagined a match between the two of them. Baohua was so delicate and high-strung that giving her to honest, good-natured Enchun would relieve them of all their cares and concerns. God never brought this match to pass, but through many strange twists and odd turns, their own children were marked down in the marriage book of heaven. My union with Chaofan pleasantly surprised the old folks of both families. But they would never know what an absurd life we led. If Grandma really were my guardian angel, encircling and closing round me, she certainly would have wept a tear in sadness.

By the third day, Baohua was clinging to life with breath as slight as gossamer. Only her tears were still flowing copiously. “Father-in-law” worried that his future daughter-in-law was ill-starred. If something untoward happened, her father might later come with troops to remove his head. So he changed into clothes he wore only at the New Year and rushed to the county town to find out where Old Lady Guo’s younger brother lived. Second Son had once told him that Master Huang, the county official, was his dear uncle on his mother’s side. Dangling a lively hen, “Father-in-law” knocked on the door of the Huang residence. Ah Cui heard that someone had come calling for “Great-Uncle,” and “Great-Auntie.” Seeing the oafish-looking fellow, she concluded that it was one of her husband’s poor relatives and told him in no uncertain terms that he had knocked at the wrong door. She then called a servant to relieve him of the chicken and send him on his way. Right there and then, “Father-in-law” decided that he had been tricked. He had spent four silver dollars to buy a girl who would be completely useless as a servant. It was for these four silver dollars that he stood there on the street beating his breast and stamping his feet, spit flying all over the place as he cursed and called names. China was poor then. The small landlords who were able to accumulate a few
mu
²⁶
of barren fields all got to where they were by abstemious living. As head of a household, this fellow could eat white rice only twice a year. Four silver dollars could buy many, many
dan
of rice.
²⁷

“Father-in-law” returned home, crestfallen and indignant. Seeing “Mother-in-law” just then spooning rice porridge into Baohua’s mouth, he rushed forward and snatched away the earthenware bowl and flung it to the floor. “Let her die! Let her die!” he screamed.

“Mother-in-law” was kind-hearted. She was afraid that this girl, insubstantial as a bean sprout, would get slapped to death by “Father-in-law,” so she put Baohua in the hay shed next to the pigpen and left with her some of the sweet potatoes cooked on the previous few nights.

That night, “Father-in-law” tossed and turned, unable to get to sleep, so he woke up his old lady and the two of them sat discussing how to deal with Baohua. Since neither of them could bring themselves to use a lamp, they held their meeting bumping about in the dark. The husband said they had to sell the girl and get back what money they could out of it. His old lady said, “Keep her for a few more years and then decide. This delicate and fine-skinned girl looks city-bred. Maybe she really
is
some big official’s “thousand gold pieces” after all.”

Suddenly, the barking of dogs sounded in this lonely mountain village. Since they wouldn’t pay for dog food, they didn’t raise dogs. It was the barking of other people’s dogs that put them on the alert. Who would be barging into the village at the third watch past midnight? They both puzzled over this. Then they heard footsteps coming close on the other side of the courtyard wall. Next came the voice of their great-nephew from some distant branch of the family calling out, “Great-Uncle! Great-Aunt! There’s someone from town here to see you!”

“Mother-in-law” lit a small oil lamp and asked who it was. Hearing that it was the man from town who had sold the child, she pressed up close to the crack in the door and looked outside. There she saw quite a few people standing in the moonlight. She supposed that it had to be the relatives of the big official. Not daring to open the door, she returned to the room and told her husband, “Uh-oh, the relatives have come to see the girl!” The landlord was so terrified he trembled all over, and it took him the longest time to get his shoes on.

When the pastor and his wife entered the house, Baohua had already been shifted from the hay shed to the big bed in the main chamber. They could scarcely believe that this straw-plastered bag of skin and bones was Baohua. The pastor gave the landlord four silver dollars and without awaiting his reaction, Enchun took up Baohua on his back and disappeared into the darkness of night.

Second Sister was still at her embroidery. Four full days had gone by and she kept on embroidering. She heard her son shout, “Ma! Ma! They’ve found Big Sister! Big Sister has returned!” She glanced up and looked distractedly at Baosheng, as if just awakening from some great dream. “Where have you been? Up to your tricks again? Why are you so covered with dirt? And where are your shoes?”

Baosheng stared at his filthy feet. The night before last, he had lost his shoes fighting with Second Uncle’s woman. These two days he had gone about thirty miles in bare feet,
but why would Ma start asking me about my shoes at this time?
From over beside the stove Old Lady Guo gave him a wink, but he still couldn’t understand what was wrong with Ma.

“Ma, Big Sister’s been found. Uncle and Aunt Pastor and Enchun are all here now!”

Enchun entered, still carrying Baohua on his back. “Auntie Lin, don’t worry. Baohua’s safe and sound.”

The moment Baohua started to cry, Second Sister came fully to her senses. Throwing down the sewing in her hand, she embraced the girl, crying tears of grief and joy all mixed together. Baoqing and Baosheng clustered round them, and all four of them held each other tightly. And Baosheng, who hated crying the most, for the first time cried as if his heart would break.

3.

B
AOHUA BIT THE
end of the lead pencil. Her eyes, fringed with long lashes, gazed intently downward at the table before her. She was concentrating on a coarse bamboo paper workbook containing neatly written arithmetic problems. Having been out of school for so long, she found even second-year arithmetic problems beyond her.

Enchun sat beside her. The pastor and his wife had left him in Nanjing Town to tutor the three Lin children. Enchun was a second-year student in the lower-middle school and was fully up to the task of being a home teacher of young students.

“If you give it some more thought and take it slowly, surely you can figure it out.” The inspiration of Enchun and the misty breeze outside spurred Baohua on.

Off to the side, Second Sister was ironing clothes. Although they had fallen to the level of refugees, she was still unwilling to wear clothes that were even the slightest wrinkled. Even if they were the old clothes worn at home, they had to be neatly ironed. She paused in her work and gazed at Enchun, saying to herself with a sigh,
Oh, what a good fellow. Even long ago, when he was little, Ninth Brother had his eye on him. If only Baohua could marry him someday, what a stroke of good fortune that would be
.

Abruptly, a feeling of desolation arose within her. She realized how long it had been since she had last thought of Ninth Brother. Ever since Baohua had been lost and then recovered, her zest for living had almost burned out. Now it was with fear and terror that she watched over and guarded her three children as if they were the wildest hope she could have, as if her happy lot in life might incur Satan’s jealousy. Day and night, she expressed ardent feelings of gratitude to her Heavenly Father in every word of praise she could think of. Only in this way could she avert disaster.

Baosheng and Baoqing came in, each carrying on his back a bamboo wicker basket filled with melons and other vegetables. A family on the mountain behind them had opened up some wild land for planting and now the harvest was ready. The two boys were just back from buying vegetables in the market and loudly gabbling and yak-king away about something Second Sister couldn’t understand in the slightest—then realized to her surprise that they were speaking the local dialect! She took another look at her two children in their bare feet and rolled-up trouser legs. They looked just like real buffalo boys. She recalled how they had previously looked in Old Town with their polished shoes and hair combed neatly at the part. Of what people called the twists and turns of life, nothing could be greater than this.

Is it possible that I’ve grown so old I’ll die in these “long story” gullies and ravines? That my children have taken new root here?
The mental balance that she had sought in fear and trembling over the past few months was now undone. As she thought of Old Town, of her life during the peaceful years, a powerful longing swept through her in all its turbulence, like floodwaters bursting the breach in a levee. She lifted her eyes to gaze into the distance, letting the iron she unconsciously gripped in her hand drift back and forth over a piece of clothing.

I want to go home. I want to go back to Old Town, and even if I die, I want to die in the place I was raised. I want to take my children with me and look for my husband just like Meng Jiangnu did in those ancient times.
²⁸
Rather than just muddling through a shameful life here, she would face artillery fire and rifle bullets to search for her husband across ten thousand leagues. She thought of looking for the provincial government when she returned to Old Town and demanding her husband from the governor. If he couldn’t give her an answer she would take her children with her and find Chiang Kai-shek! At this point, she was so agitated that her whole body shook.
O heaven, I should have thought of doing this a long time ago!

Fourth Brother pointed to the iron in Second Sister’s hand and stammered, “Sec-Second Sister…bu-burning…!”

She dropped the iron and called her children over to her. “Do you miss Old Town?”

“Yes!”

“Do you miss Daddy?”

“Yes!”

Old Lady Guo quietly took away the smoking iron and thought, “Has this Second Sister fallen sick again?”

“Your ma wants to take you to find Daddy. We’ll leave this place for good!”

The three children cheered and hopped about like sparrows. That night, Second Sister ordered her highly excited children to go to sleep early. Then she went by herself to the side of the mountain and spoke to her angel.
I know you are watching over me. I’m not asking you if you approve of my decision. I only want to ask you to help me do what I want to do. If this is the road to my death, I just ask you to let the children and me die at the same moment.

Whenever I’m at a low point in my life, my mind turns to Grandma during the War of Resistance. The picture that emerges in my memory is not the hardships she fled; rather, how she brought her old mother, children, and brothers back to Old Town after its catastrophe. I see her entering through East Gate, entering an Old Town now changed beyond all recognition, destroyed buildings everywhere, the banyan trees withered and charred. She mentally prepares for the worst: they would go first to the Lin residence in the middle of town. She visualizes the dilapidation of that home. The kitchen in the rear courtyard and the living wings at the front had originally not been solidly built and so very possibly these had collapsed. The scores of glass windows and roof tiles may have been shattered in the explosions. Rebuilding the gardens would take months and months of time, and maybe even longer.

The reality, however, far exceeded my grandma’s powers of imagination. The Lin residence and the two homes on either side of it were simply no longer there. The Japanese bombs fell indiscriminately on the roof beams of the Lin residence and the buildings caught fire. All those deep halls and spacious gardens, which had lasted almost one hundred years, were totally destroyed. The well, which had nourished generations of the Lin family, was like a mirror inlaid on blackened ruination.

Baosheng bent over and as he sifted through all the rubble found a shoe that Baohua had worn when she was little. He also found a stethoscope and medicine bottles that his daddy had left behind. From time to time, he would whoop in excitement. He was still too little. He couldn’t take in what this scene really meant.

My grandmother stood there, one hand holding Baohua, the other holding Baoqing. Beside them was the well with its eight-foot-wide mouth. A family jumping hand in hand into it would not have hit the sides of the well. I don’t know whether or not at that moment she was thinking of this.

Grandma would describe this scene in a very calm voice. At that time, I had flunked my university entrance exam and my future stretched out bleakly before me. I really thought of dying. Grandma said that heaven won’t totally block someone’s purpose in life. She said, “At the time I returned from Nanjing together with my three children, my house was gone and I had nothing. I thought that heaven wanted our family line to end. This year you didn’t pass, next year you can test again. If you can’t get into the university, it would be quite all right to study at the polytech. Staying in Old Town and becoming a primary school teacher or a nurse and leading an easy life would be even better.”

When I returned from Lompoc to Beijing, I reckoned I could still go back to my job at the newspaper. I was informed, however, that I had been unenrolled there. There were new students living in my 110-square-foot room at the staff dormitory so I found a small hotel where I could stay. Entering that semi-basement with its pervasive odor of mildew, I sat down hunched over my unopened baggage and broke down in tears. When I had had enough of crying, I got up and tried hard to remember Grandma’s stories. As I thought about every detail of her and her whole family standing in the midst of the ruins, my tears stopped flowing. I was so many times better off than Grandma had been then. My bank account held more than three thousand U.S. dollars saved up from my salary. On the strength of that money, the idea of becoming my own boss first sprouted in my head. Later on, I really did become a boss and at one time had assets worth several million. Then, when I had no choice but to declare bankruptcy, I also thought of Grandma’s stories. In very Ah-Q fashion,
²⁹
I told my friends that I now finally had time to exercise and work on my looks, even though all the time I was dreaming of making a comeback.

You probably don’t know who Ah-Q is. It’s not important. But, in short, I rejoice that I possess the genes Grandma bequeathed to me. I have persistence in abundance.

Baosheng was still treasure-hunting: a whole porcelain bowl, an inlaid picture frame with the family portrait. When he found a silver necklace with little bells, he went running over, all excited, to claim a reward. “Ma, look, wouldn’t this be worth money?”

Ninth Brother had a silversmith make this when Baohua completed her first full month of life. That day he shook the bells all the way home, his complete joy so plain to see. Grandma felt more like weeping over the gardens that had been destroyed and for the happy life that had now vanished, but she didn’t shed another single tear over them again.

The Guo compound at West Gate was still intact and Old Lady Guo cried in joy for this. She stood at the doorway and, clasping her hands together, thanked heaven and earth and all the various spirits and Bodhisattvas for the virtues of the Guo family ancestors that brought lives of ease and comfort to their descendents.

The gateway was unlatched. They supposed that Eldest Son and his wife were inside. Gan’er pushed the door open and rushed in. In the sky well sat a strange woman sorting vegetables. Old Lady Guo wondered:
So Eldest Son and his wife have money enough to hire a servant woman?
The woman asked who they were looking for. Fifth Brother said, “This is our home.” The woman craned her neck around and shouted, “Mr. Fan, Mrs. Fan, your relatives have come!”

This family has changed its name to Fan?

Mr. Fan walked out. Second Sister recognized him as the owner of a local tea company. This fellow, Boss Fan, didn’t extend a single word in conventional greeting, but just turned around and went back inside. Then he came right out again, now bearing a title deed in his hand.

Second Son had sold the house! “This is impossible, absolutely impossible!” Old Lady Guo pulled open her jacket and snatched out her stomach bib, an item of clothing that had never before left her body. “I haven’t even told Second Sister, so how could that have flown into your rotten-egg hands?” But what the trembling old lady had gropingly reached for turned out to be nothing more than two sheets of coarse straw paper! She gaped, unable to make a sound. Then, lifting one three-inch foot, she stamped the ground and fell with a crash on the steps by the sky well. At once blood began to drip from her.