The Seventh Day (19 page)

Mouse Girl and I walked forward together. I looked around me as I went, and it felt as though the leaves were beckoning, the stones were smiling, the river was saying hello.

Skeletal people approached us from the river, from the grassy slopes, and from the woods. They nodded to us gently, and though they brushed past without stopping, I could see their attitude was friendly. Some greeted us warmly, one asking if Mouse Girl had found her boyfriend, another asking if I had just arrived. It was as though their voices had meandered about before coming to my ears, bringing with them the moisture of the river, the freshness of the grass, and the swaying of the leaves.

Now once more we heard an argument erupt between the chess players. It exploded in the air like a firecracker, but it sounded empty, like a quarrel and nothing more.

Mouse Girl told me they were both unreasonable when playing chess, constantly retracting their moves as they played, then getting into a row. Over and over again they would vow to abandon the game, go off to get cremated, go off to their respective graves, but neither of them had ever once stood up when saying this.

“They have burial places?”

“Yes, they both do,” Mouse Girl said.

“Why don’t they go?”

All Mouse Girl knew was that they had been here for at least ten years. The one surnamed Zhang had been a policeman. He wouldn’t get cremated, and wouldn’t go to his burial place, because he was waiting for his parents over there to secure the title of “martyr” for him. The other one, surnamed Li, wouldn’t get cremated or be buried either, because he wanted to keep Zhang company. Li said that once Zhang got approved to be a martyr, then the two of them together—close as brothers, since they were—would proceed to the crematorium oven and each would move on to his own resting place.

“I heard that one of them killed the other,” Mouse Girl said.

“I know their story,” I said.

More than ten years earlier, after my birth parents arrived from that northern city to claim me and the tale of “the boy a train gave birth to” had come to a satisfying conclusion, another story had begun. During “Operation Thunderclap,” a police-led crackdown on vice in my city, one of the prostitutes caught in the net proved to be a man. Surnamed Li, he had dressed up as a woman to troll for customers.

A young policeman named Zhang Gang, just graduated from police academy, took part in “Operation Thunderclap”; he conducted the questioning the night when Li was brought in. Li showed not the slightest remorse over either his cross-dressing or his flesh-peddling and even showed a fulsome pride in his ingenious technique. According to him, he was a past master at handling those clients of his, and if the police hadn’t caught him not a single john would ever have discovered that he was a man. Unfortunately, he had focused too much of his energy on attending to his clients and not taken enough steps to guard against the police. That was how he ended up tumbling into the sewer, he said.

In this, his first-ever interrogation, Zhang Gang was in no mood to be lenient. This fake prostitute was not only failing to be humble and meek, but even had the gall to display the supercilious pride Zhang Gang had thought only instructors at the police academy possessed. Zhang Gang was already seething with righteous indignation, and now, when police custody was compared to a sewer, his patience was pushed beyond its limits. He raised his boot and planted a vicious kick in Li’s groin. Li clutched his groin and screamed in pain, rolling around on the floor for minutes on end. “My balls!” he cried. “You’ve crushed my balls!”

Zhang Gang was unimpressed. “What do you need your balls for, in the first place?”

Li was held in custody for fifteen days, and after his release he began what was to become three years of protests. At the start he would appear at the main entrance to the public security bureau every day without fail, rain or shine, gripping a handwritten sign that read “Give me back that pair of balls!” To make clear that these appendages were not just ornamental but had practical application, he would emphasize to passersby that he used his earnings to sleep with call girls.

Someone pointed out that it was rather crude to write the word “balls” on the sign. He cheerfully accepted this correction, changing it to read “Give me back that pair of testicles!”

“See, I’m using cultured language,” he explained to passersby.

Li’s prolonged protest created an enormous headache for the public security bureau director and his deputies. It was a real nuisance to see Li holding his sign up outside the front gate every day, especially when their superiors dropped in for an inspection and inquired, “What’s all this about testicles?”

After holding a meeting to discuss what to do, the director and his deputies transferred Zhang Gang out of the bureau and into a local police station. Li and his testicular complaint followed him there. A year later, it was the police station commander and deputy commanders’ turn to squeal, and they got into the habit of running over to the public security bureau at least a couple of times a week to pour out their woes and present gifts to the bureau chief and his deputies, claiming that it was impossible for their station to operate normally. The chief and his deputies showed due solicitude for their subordinates’ predicament, transferring Zhang Gang to the detention center, where he was soon followed by Li and his “pair of testicles.” After two years of tearing their hair out, the detention center’s chief and deputies brought their story before the bureau chief and his deputies, reporting that every day that pair of testicles was hanging around outside their office, destroying all semblance of legal dignity. They had put up with this for a full two years, they said, and it was high time the “pair of testicles” were moved somewhere else. The bureau chief and his deputies agreed that the detention center had really had a hard time of it and that Li and his “pair of testicles” indeed ought to find an alternative home. But there wasn’t a single police station that was willing to accept Zhang Gang, for everyone was aware that the minute he arrived, so would his unsightly shadow.

Zhang Gang knew that the detention center wanted to get rid of him and that no police station would take him. For his part he was not keen on staying in the detention center, so he went to see the public security bureau chief and applied to transfer back to the bureau. After hearing him out, the bureau chief found that one scene kept coming back to haunt him—that of a “pair of testicles” hanging around there at all hours. He thought things over briefly and asked Zhang Gang if he’d considered changing his profession. Zhang Gang asked what he had in mind. The chief proposed that he resign and open a little shop or something. Once he was no longer a policeman, the chief suggested, that “pair of testicles” might well get off his back. Zhang Gang smiled thinly and told the chief he had only two choices ahead of him: one was to kill Li and be done with it; the other was to stand outside the front door, next to the other protestor, and hold up a sign demanding he be allowed to return to the public security bureau. Tears welled up in his eyes as he spoke. The chief sympathized with Zhang Gang’s situation and in any case was about to retire, and once retired he wouldn’t care in the least if that “pair of testicles” loitered outside the entrance. He rose to his feet, walked up to Zhang Gang, and patted him on the shoulder. “Come on back,” he said.

So Zhang Gang returned to the bureau, but Li, strangely, failed to follow him. Even after Zhang Gang had been working in the bureau for a month, people in other departments still assumed he was just visiting. Why was he always coming by the bureau, they wondered—what had happened over at the detention center? He had been transferred back, Zhang Gang told them. They were amazed, asking why they hadn’t seen that “pair of testicles” at the entrance. The bureau chief and his deputies found this startling too, for that matter, and once during a meeting a deputy chief blurted out, “How come those testicles are not there at the entrance any more?”

Even in their absence, Zhang Gang remained on tenterhooks, and at the beginning and end of every workday his eyes were inevitably drawn to the entrance. Only when he was certain that Li had not appeared was his mind put at rest. At first he was concerned that Li might simply be ill, and that as soon as he recovered he would again come and loiter outside the building. But three months passed, then six, and there was still no sign of that “pair of testicles.” Zhang Gang breathed a sigh of relief, feeling at last he could focus on work and resume normal life once more.

It was over a year before Li reappeared, by which time everyone in the bureau had completely forgotten about him. This time he no longer held up a sign that read “Give me back that pair of testicles!” but strode in with a black bag on his back. The guard at the entrance noticed a figure brush past as a van was leaving the compound, and he barked out a challenge. The visitor answered without turning his head, “I’ve got business.”

“Come and sign in,” the guard called.

But by then Li was already inside the main building. In the hallway he asked a policeman where he’d find Zhang Gang. After answering his inquiry, the policeman began to sense there was something familiar about this visitor, but didn’t make the connection to the notorious “pair of testicles” of four years earlier. Li didn’t take the elevator, fearing he might be recognized, and took the stairs up to the fifth floor. When he entered room 503, there were four policemen sitting there. Li recognized Zhang Gang immediately and opened his black bag as he approached. “Zhang Gang,” he said.

Zhang Gang raised his head from the file he was writing in and recognized Li. As he looked at him in confusion, Li pulled out a long knife from his bag and slashed Zhang Gang’s neck. A jet of blood spurted out, and Zhang Gang put a hand to the wound, leaning back weakly into his seat. He hardly had time to groan before Li plunged the knife into his chest. Only now did the other three policemen react, charging at Li, who pulled the knife out of Zhang Gang’s chest and flailed out at his attackers. They could only use their arms to defend themselves and were soon gashed and bleeding heavily. Fleeing to the corridor, they cried, “Help! There’s a killer!”

The fifth floor of the public security bureau was thrown into chaos. Swathed in blood and panting heavily, Li slashed away at anyone within reach. Policemen rushed to the scene from other floors, and it was only when twenty of them set on Li with electric cattle prods that they managed to subdue him. By that time he was leaning against a wall and too weak to put up further resistance.

Zhang Gang died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Li was executed six months later.

This case immediately made headline news. Everyone was talking about it, saying how the police like to throw their weight around, but when it comes down to it they are all useless, even a man who’s got no balls can slash one of them to death so easily and wound another nine, two seriously. If it had been a crowd of men with balls, they could surely have massacred the entire public security bureau. Hearing these comments, the policemen refused to concede they were at fault, arguing that had they known Li planned to kill people they would have overwhelmed him from the start. People who arrive at the public security bureau with backpacks are normally there to deliver bribes, one policeman pointed out—who could have known that this guy would pull out a knife, rather than a gift?

For over ten years Zhang Gang’s parents made efforts to see that their son was awarded the title of “martyr.” The city public security bureau objected to this, on the grounds that Zhang Gang did not die in the line of duty. His parents then embarked on a long petitioning effort, appealing first to the provincial public security bureau, then taking things up to the public security ministry in Beijing. The city public security bureau was driven to distraction by the parents’ campaign. One year, as China’s two major political congresses were being held in Beijing, Zhang Gang’s parents unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square, demanding that their son be recognized posthumously as a martyr. The authorities in Beijing were infuriated, and they subjected their colleagues in the provincial and city public security bureaus to scathing criticism. The city public security bureau changed its tack, submitting a request that Zhang Gang be awarded martyr status. The provincial authorities passed this request on to Beijing, but were stonewalled. Zhang Gang’s parents persisted in their appeals, making a particular point of boarding a train to Beijing when the two big meetings of the Communist Party Congress were in session, but they would always be intercepted en route, then held in custody in one small hotel or another and not released until the meetings were over. Once the story of Zhang Gang’s parents’ petitioning campaign was publicized on the Internet, the city stopped sending agents to intercept and detain them, and changed its tactics. During every sensitive period when the meetings were in session or the Party Congress was on, they would send people to escort Zhang Gang’s parents on sightseeing excursions instead. Every year, the parents ended up enjoying the kind of expense account tourism that only Party leaders normally get to enjoy. After all this fruitless petitioning, their despair gave way to a taste for novelty, and every time a sensitive date approached, they would make a point of asking what famous scenic spot remained to be seen, meaning they would like to go and see it. The city government was at its wits’ end—it was said that it must have spent a million yuan on Zhang Gang’s parents during these ten years.