The Fat Years (6 page)

I never imagined he would respond the way he did. “At night, I drive myself, I like to drive. Sometimes I drive around until morning; if I’m tired, I take a nap in the car.” He seemed to think that he had said too much, muttered, “I’m going,” and then left.

I sort of regretted not letting He Dongsheng drive me home. I really didn’t live that close. In the daytime, I would have walked it, but so late at night, I had to take a cab. It was Jian Lin who really lived close, on the top floor of a building in the same neighborhood.

“We hadn’t seen each other for a long time,” Jian Lin explained, “when I saw him recently at a memorial service for my aunt, and so I thought I’d invite him over.”

“You’re cousins on your father’s side,” I said, “but your last name is Jian and his is He. Why is that?”

“My father had two younger brothers who both joined the Revolution and changed their last names. Dongsheng’s last name was originally Jian.”

Apparently, it was quite common for second cousins in old revolutionary families to have different surnames.

“What about your other uncle?” I asked.

“I don’t have much contact with that side of the family,” Jian Lin answered.

I was uncomfortable delving any further into Jian’s family, so I said, “I never imagined that you and He Dongsheng were related. How high up is he now?”

“How high?” exclaimed Jian Lin. “Right now he is a member of the
Politburo—a veteran of
three Party Congresses. That’s no mean achievement.”

“Does that make him a national leader?” I asked.

“Strictly speaking, they should be called ‘Party and national leaders,’ ” Jian Lin said. “On the Party side, everyone from the secretaries in the
Party Secretariat on up should be regarded as Party and national leaders. That would, of course, include members of the Politburo.”

Most national leaders I had seen had well-groomed black pompadours and ruddy complexions, and they were always in high spirits. I’d never imagined I would run into a pale, balding, insomniac national leader.

Standing on the pavement waiting for a cab on that early-spring morning after watching an old film and drinking so much wine, I had lost all desire for sleep. I phoned a friend of mine and went over to her place. I’d first met her over ten years ago when she was still working at the Paradise Club—a popular Beijing nightclub and disco famous for its beautiful and cultured escorts. I am a man of modest appetites, but sometimes I have my desires, and so I looked her up. I figured it was over two years since I’d last seen her, and I hadn’t even thought of her, not until that morning … 

When I returned home from my visit, I still couldn’t get to sleep. I had only one question on my mind: should I send an e-mail to Little Xi?

Big Sister Song had said Little Xi often changed her e-mail address. So there was no point writing one—her address had probably already changed. And if I did write, I might be inviting trouble. She’d always been the type of woman I like. When she was running the restaurant, I was strongly attracted to her, but there were always too many customers after her. Although we’d known each other for twenty years and could be considered old friends, there’d never been anything sexual between us, not even flirting. She was always surrounded by a circle of men—some of them were her friends and some were suitors; there were also some unsuccessful suitors who then joined her gang of friends. She was one of those women who had only male friends and, at the same time, seemed quite unaware of the fascination she held for men. She actually believed that all her male friends were just mates. I never pursued her romantically, and she never showed any interest in me, either. Later on I thought she had married a foreigner and moved to England, but now it looked like that had fallen through. Anyway, it had been seven or eight years since I’d had any real contact with her.

I’d been worried about her being a troublemaker. She wasn’t one of those intellectual-style dissidents, but political trouble had been dogging her for decades, all because she was too outspoken and too stubborn. She hated injustice and thus easily offended people. In the past, many people had been willing to help her, including some foreigners. But today foreigners like that have disappeared—none of them want to upset the Chinese Communist Party. Foreigners willing to risk offending the CCP don’t get a visa. Everybody around her was living the good life and couldn’t be bothered with her. They were all avoiding her, and that’s why she’d told me last time that everyone around her had changed.

After talking to Big Sister Song and Little Xi, I’d felt that Little Xi must be in trouble again. Now I was convinced that she’d been under surveillance there in the park next to the National Art Museum.

If I hooked up with her, wouldn’t she bring me trouble? My life was so good now; everything was going along smoothly and I felt extremely happy. Why should I risk it? If I saw her and she expressed the least bit of interest in me, I wouldn’t be able to control myself. I found her sexually very attractive, which scared me. I hadn’t felt like this about someone for a long time. If I took an emotional leap and we really got together, I could guarantee that we would not be able to get along. She still imagined me the way I’d been ten years ago, when I’d agreed with her on everything. But I’d become one of those people she said had changed. Our present frames of mind were as different as our understandings of China’s current situation. I was certain that we would never be able to agree on anything. I remembered when Chen Shuibian had run for reelection in Taiwan—many of my male friends supported the Nationalist Party while their wives supported the Democratic Progressive Party, and they split up over this.

I sat there in front of my computer staring blankly at the piece of paper Big Sister Song had given me. Suddenly it dawned on me that I had not been able to write a really good novel. Perhaps my life was too peaceful, I just felt too happy. I felt no pressure. Who was it that could tear me away from this excessive feeling of happiness and good fortune? Little Xi, obviously.

Written on the scrap of paper was the yahoo.com e-mail address
feichengwuraook.
Next to it were the words “If you’re not sincere, don’t bother, okay?”

I
am Wei Xihong. Everyone calls me Little Xi.

I don’t know where to start; I don’t know how the world has become what it is. I’m just afraid that many things may be forgotten later, so I want to write them all down and store them in this Google file.

Somebody is following me. But I haven’t done anything wrong. So why are they on my tail?

Maybe I’m just too nervous. Maybe there is nobody following me at all, and I’m just overly suspicious.

If somebody is following me, it’s bound to have something to do with Wei Guo. How did I ever give birth to such a monster?

Ever since he was born, he has frightened me. He had a face like a little angel, but he lied, ingratiated himself with his teachers, ingratiated himself with anyone who could do him any good, and bullied anyone weaker than he was. His character was just naturally cruel. Okay, so he was like that from childhood. Now he writes letters informing on his classmates, getting them into trouble with the authorities, and persecuting them. He is always spouting empty slogans, pretending to embrace a wonderful idealistic morality.

Does he have his father’s genes, or my genes, or has he inherited his character from my father? Or is he just the result of the worst possible combination of bloodlines?

He blames me for not telling him who his father is, and I can understand that. He actually curses my friends using the Cultural Revolution term
“monsters and demons”! He says they are dubious characters who could have a bad influence on his future. He laughs at me for resigning my position as a judge and says that I’m too stupid to be his mother.

If that
1983 crackdown on “spiritual pollution” and crime had not made me understand clearly that I was not suited to be a judge, I would still be part of the Public Security system today. I think I’m constitutionally unable to adapt to this political system. I studied law only to please my father.

My father can probably be considered one of the first judges in the New China. In the 1950s, he participated in the drafting of the new Constitution. I remember when I was a child and my father came home, Mother would tell us not to make any noise. We were all afraid of my father. He never once gave me a hug. My mother was probably more afraid of him than anyone else. I remember my mother never smiled if he was around. After he died, she became another person. She was reborn, and even her voice seemed louder. My mother didn’t say much about the things my father did, but no doubt he must have persecuted and ruined quite a few people.

My father himself was persecuted and put in prison during the Cultural Revolution. He was released only when he became ill. In 1979, after the college entrance examinations had been reinstated, I graduated from Number 101 Secondary School. Fully aware of my father’s wishes, I listed the Peking College of Political Science and Law as my first university choice. I wanted nothing more than to become a judge after graduation. I thought that, like my father, I was a prime candidate for being a judge in our republic.

My mother had told me in private that my personality was not suited to studying law. She told me to study science and engineering, and keep out of trouble. At the time I didn’t agree and felt furious with her. I wanted only to make my father happy and figured that my mother was a housewife with no practical experience or understanding. People are so strange. When people treat us badly, we do what they want us to do; when people treat us well, we pay no attention to them at all.

During
the trial of the Gang of Four, I watched the televised proceedings with my father. Father’s temper had grown even worse after the Cultural Revolution; he was very hard to get on with and he often swore at us. He didn’t achieve the success he longed for in his later years and he took his hatred to the grave.

While I was in college, people had their
Rightist status removed and many who had suffered miscarriages of justice during the Cultural Revolution received political rehabilitation. Even the Gang of Four were given a trial, and state-appointed lawyers to defend them. I was full of hope for the future and utterly confident that the Communist Party intended to create a society governed by the rule of law.

I graduated in 1983 and was assigned to a county-level court under the Beijing jurisdiction to serve as a legal clerk-secretary. That was when my nightmare began.

I was twenty-two years old when I arrived at my work unit in August. Everyone else there had just finished studying Party Central’s August 25 document “Decision on Severely Cracking Down on Criminal Activity.” They briefly explained the “spirit” of the document to me and then they let me get to work. I’d always hated to see the guilty prosper and the innocent suffer, and so I was naturally very much in favor of the Party and government’s policy of severely and rapidly punishing criminal activity according to the law. I was certain I would not be soft on criminals. What I didn’t know, however, was that the “severely and rapidly” that I had in mind was not the “severely” or “rapidly” that they practiced. Maybe I hadn’t had enough psychological preparation, and perhaps my idea of the rule of law was too far removed from reality. In any case, the problems began as soon as I started work.

The correct procedure in criminal cases was for the
Public Security Bureau to arrest people, the prosecutor’s office to bring charges, and the judges to decide the verdict and the sentence. In order to process cases rapidly the Public Security Bureau, the prosecutor’s office, and the legal division each assigned two people. All of us worked in an office of the Public Security Bureau. The arrest, investigation, decision, and the sentencing all took place practically at the same time. In those days, nobody much understood the function of a prosecutor. Our judicial unit assigned two people of the lowest secretarial rank—a retired army officer who was politically reliable but who had had no legal training and me, someone who had just graduated from law school and who was also a young woman. In this way, the chief and deputy chief of the local Public Security Bureau basically controlled everything.

I was ready to fall apart by the end of the very first day. In every case, big or small, the accused was given the death sentence, and not one of the crimes involved murder. Robbery received a death sentence, petty theft received a death sentence, swindling received a death sentence, and no one paid any attention at all when the accused produced solid exculpatory evidence.

There was one case in which a young man had sexual relations with a young woman, her family came after him, the two sides had a fight, and they all received minor injuries. The girl’s family went to the Public Security Bureau and had the boy arrested. The boy’s family knew that this was potentially a very serious situation for him during this crackdown period. The whole family went over and knelt down in front of the girl’s house to beg them to withdraw the charge, but the girl’s family refused. When the case came to our six-person group, the Public Security chief asked us, “What is the sentence for the crime of hooliganism?” “This crime does not merit the death penalty!” I exclaimed as soon as I could. The other five group members stared at me in silent rebuke. In the end the boy was given an indefinite sentence of labor reform in far-off Xinjiang Province.

After court that day, the deputy chief of Public Security came over to us clutching a report and said, “Other places are all executing ten or more people by firing squad … Just look at Henan Province. Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, and Luoyang all executed forty or fifty people at the same time. Even a place like Jiaozuo executed thirty at the same time. But we haven’t even reached double figures. What do you say we should do about it?” Everybody felt under great pressure.

At that point the retired army officer who had been assigned with me said, “The hooligan intentionally injured others. His sentence was too light and out of step with the spirit of Party Central.”

“Then we’ll just change the sentence to execution and say he made it onto the list.” Turning to me the deputy chief added, “Female comrade, you should not be so kindhearted.” His reprimand really knocked me back—that’s how weak I was.

That weekend we shot ten people in the back of the head. I was ashamed of my cowardice and felt so angry about my compromise. What good is the law? Is this a society that practices the rule of law? I debated with myself. When I returned from the execution grounds that day, I set out on a path from which there could be no return.

In the next round, the court secretaries went together with the district police officers to various locations to investigate cases and arrest people. Then we took the accused to the Public Security Bureau in the county seat for trial. I had already made up my mind: for any crime that didn’t deserve capital punishment, I would say so outright. Since there would be a record that one of the two judicial representatives was opposed to the death sentence, the others in the group would be unable to insist on it and would have to change the sentence. But in this way there would be fewer death sentences, and everybody would be afraid of criticism from higher up. Members of my work unit phoned me and tried to dissuade me from acting the way I was, but I just ignored them.

Later on, I came to know that even if I had not had an “accident,” my work unit was already planning to transfer me. One night in the county seat, an army vehicle ran into me. This was a common occurrence. In rural areas, army vehicles sped around like crazy and often ran into people. If civilians were killed or injured, they just had to accept their fate. But even though it was a common occurrence, usually if an army vehicle ran into a member of the Public Security authorities, there would be endless wranglings back and forth between these and the military. In my case, however, the army took me straight to Number 301 Hospital, and afterward my work unit didn’t inquire further into the incident.

After leaving the hospital, I handed in my resignation and became a person without a work unit. And my mother didn’t have a bad thing to say about it.

I became a privately self-employed person by opening a small restaurant with my mother. We mostly served her Guizhou-style goose. In the 1980s, Beijing was a fascinating place, the heart of an era full of promise. Our first regular customers were natives of Guizhou, especially scholars and writers who had moved to Beijing. They brought other Beijing writers, artists, and scientists and foreigners to eat and to talk. My mother loved to entertain guests and I loved the excitement. Everybody called me Little Xi. We expanded our restaurant and renamed it The Five Flavors. In the autumn of 1988, I met Shi Ping and fell in love.

He was a poet. There is nothing at all poetic about me, but we both cherished genuine sentiment. Shi Ping said that someday he would certainly receive the Nobel Prize for literature, and I said I would certainly accompany him to Sweden to attend the award ceremony. That was the happiest time in my entire life.

We didn’t really have too much time alone together, though, because Shi Ping liked to spend time with his poet and artist mates. There were quite a few women around him, but, surprisingly, I didn’t mind.

Every night The Five Flavors was full of our intellectual and artistic friends debating issues, drafting and signing manifestos, competing jealously for each other’s affections, getting drunk and throwing up. The police visited us frequently, but my mother was very adept at getting rid of them.

In the spring of 1989 Shi Ping and a group of his friends went to Lake Baiyangdian and stayed a few days—they had been “sent down” there during the Cultural Revolution. I came back to Beijing early. I had the feeling Shi Ping was seeing one of the other women, so I found an excuse to leave. I guess I didn’t want a direct confrontation. That night the authorities closed our restaurant down. They said a group of academics had issued some sort of political statement there a few days earlier, with foreigners present.

I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but I actually went to see Ban Cuntou. He was in my class at university. He grew up in this big courtyard and could be considered a member of China’s Red aristocracy. His whole demeanor implied that this world had been created through his force of arms and therefore it all belonged to him. There were many people like him living in Beijing’s big, old-fashioned courtyards. I’d heard that he was the highest-ranking official among my former classmates, so I went over to ask his advice. When we were in school, he often hinted that I ought to become his girlfriend. He thought that every woman should like him, but I couldn’t stomach his attitude. This time I was really stupid to think that I could take advantage of my “old flame” status to see if he could save my restaurant.

I was in a rotten mood in the first place, and I was overconfident about the drinking capacity I thought I’d built up at the restaurant. That night we didn’t drink Chinese rice wine, but we had something called Rémy Martin. I drank too fast, wasn’t used to foreign liquor, and before I knew it I was plastered … I remember Ban Cuntou pointing at the TV reporting on Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit and asking me, “What do you think about Gorbachev?”

When I woke up, I was in bed and he was sitting on the sofa in his underwear reading the paper. I realized I had slept with him. To get even with Shi Ping? I don’t think I’d have done it for that. Ban Cuntou had deliberately got me drunk. “Well, this time you finally got to me,” he said when he saw I was awake.

“Ban Cuntou, you’ve gone too far this time!” I said angrily.

“Well, you’re no St. Joan the virgin martyr either,” he retorted.

Ever since college, I’d always known that guys like him were smooth-talking and insincere, so I shut up. With a terrible headache, I went to the bathroom, had a quick shower, got dressed, and left without saying another word.

In the days after that, everybody was busy going to Tiananmen Square. Shi Ping wrote a new poem in support of the students. I was still furious with Shi Ping, and we were both busy with our own activities on the Square.