by Jack Livings
Zhou despaired for his workers, and for his failure to lead them to victory. He stalked the workshop, standing sentry at the oxyhydrogen furnaces like a condemned man, sweat rolling down his face, his lab coat a palette of stains and burns. He stared into the blue-white flame, yet nothing came to him. He’d stripped his mind bare.
Like everyone, he looked like hell. His eyes had sunk deep into his face, which had the texture of a rotten apple, the skin slack, waxen. To be heard over the noise, the workers shouted, the effort igniting epic coughing fits. They were going deaf, anyway, and had come to communicate largely by resigned shakes of the head, mournful twists of the mouth. Zhou’s exit through the workshop door to make his weekly report at Office Nine had become a ritual of hopelessness, the workers watching him go, cursing themselves for their failure to invent the groundbreaking methods that would save Zhou’s skin.
Toward the end of February, the winds came hurtling down from the north, bashing Zhou as he made his way across town. By the time he arrived at the Office Nine building, his body would be numb, and he’d huddle by the boiler for ten minutes while his coughing subsided. When he entered the room to deliver his report, Vice Mayor Li Quan would sit motionless, his hands flat on the table, and, when the report was done, offer him nothing more than a perfunctory farewell. Zhou expected to be removed from his post any day, the workshop disbanded and everyone sent back to their home factories.
Lan Baiyu’s health was declining, and Zhou’s visits to her hospital room had become rituals of their own. These were final days. They were tender with each other, speaking only of their past together, the odd patchwork of their marriage. When she asked about Task One, he dropped his eyes and listed the latest failures. Though she knew it was embarrassing for him, she never failed to ask, and she listened with great attention, her head ticked to the side of the pillow, recording every failed test, every miscarried theoretical approach. Every once in a while she’d ask a question—something like, Were the bubbles silver or white? Zhou would think, answer, then go back to the catalogue, still fresh in his mind from his report to Office Nine. She’d urge him on, reminding him of his great successes in the past, the reasons the motherland had entrusted Task One to his leadership. After he left, she closed her eyes and moaned into the sweat-soaked pillow. Radiation treatments had fried her skin. Her thirst was unquenchable, yet she vomited out anything she drank. Her bones ached as if some horrible device were bending every one just shy of breaking. Her tongue was a salted slug, her eyelids sand. She clutched at the sheet. She knew she would die. That would be the way out of her predicament. But she couldn’t imagine how Zhou Yuqing would find a way out of his.
Through the end of winter, Comrade Zhou continued to deliver his weekly reports to Office Nine: minimal progress. Did the workers notice a change in him then? No, of course not. They were ghosts all, haunting the workshop and rattling the furnaces. Morale was a dry husk. Zhou lost his wife without a word of complaint to his comrades at the workshop. Only a week later did he tell Gu Yasheng.
* * *
The annual sandstorms came in late March, spitting against the workshop windows and clogging the mainframe’s cooling unit. It was in April that Office Nine dispatched Comrades Zhou and Gu to the Shanghai 133 to exchange methods and information. The 133 had been testing a special induction furnace, and reports had been positive.
Their orders came through in the morning, and Zhou and Gu had just enough time to collect their personal effects before catching the train to Shanghai. As it rolled south, the air became warmer, thicker, and at every stop along the way the food handed up by vendors got spicier. Zhou was quiet. He rarely turned his face away from the window. Gu had fallen asleep instantly, and his head rested on Zhou’s shoulder. The heartbeat rhythm of the telegraph wire rising and falling, the plowed fields whipping by, walls, slogans, low adobe houses, pigs and chickens. The train creaked and swayed farther southward, revolutionary songs crackling through the speakers over the doors.
Zhou felt as if long-dead nerve endings were reanimating, coming alive to his grief. His seatmates, provincial cadres returning to Hangzhou, south of Shanghai, gossiped about enemies in their danwei. They were speaking standard Chinese, but their Shanghainese would break through from time to time, the sounds indecipherable, an echo of Lan Baiyu’s childhood language. She’d learned perfect Beijing Chinese at university, but when she was tired she’d swap a sound here and there, a hint of who she’d been decades before, a skinny girl pulling her father’s fishing net out of the greasy Hangzhou Bay.
The cadres paid Zhou no attention, which suited him fine. On his lap he held a cedar box with ornate brass hinges. He’d made it himself years ago, planing the wood from a gnarled hunk he’d found on a visit to Anhui. In the light from the window, the lacquer deepened and the wood glowed. It was a simple box that bore no inscription.
He watched the landscape in Shandong Province with unusual attention. Lan Baiyu had been sent to May 7 Cadre School there, and he took care to recall her descriptions, aligning them with what he saw now: endless fields converging in the distance, the impossible expanse of flatness. Flatness after flatness, perspective lines converging in mist. The land of a good people, she’d said. She’d been away then for eight months, and every week a letter had come bearing stamps depicting Iron Man Wang Jinxi, vanguard fighter of the Chinese working class. She’d never been shy with him, and the stamp was a private joke, after she’d one night in bed called Zhou an iron man. Political monitors read everything, so they filled their letters with revolutionary prose glorifying the workers and praising the wisdom of the peasants. Some of her letters were nothing more than long excerpts of the Chairman’s poetry or admonitions to wage revolution with all his vigor. Neither Comrade Zhou Yuqing nor Lan Baiyu existed in those letters. The stamps carried all their passion and longing, more than they’d have been able to confess to each other had they been face-to-face.
When Comrade Zhou one day received a letter bearing the image of a giant panda, his heart plunged. He tore open the envelope, but was unable to focus on its contents. He held it crumpled in his hand and fell against the wooden table in his spare living quarters. He looked again. “Comrade Zhou,” the letter read, “aren’t these lovely Giant Panda stamps the postal service has issued? I do miss the proud face of revolutionary hero Wang Jinxi, but do not fear: the Iron Man’s red heat will burn inside me forever.” Like a man breaking through the surface of the water, Zhou gasped, his body rejoicing in the sunlight and the air searing his lungs. He became aroused, almost painfully so, and he loosed his pants and brought himself off in a hitching convulsion.
Eventually she returned home to Beijing, but within a month he was sent away to May 7 Cadre School in Guangdong. He never questioned why they hadn’t been sent away at the same time, but Lan Baiyu wasn’t content to sit quietly by, and she lodged complaint upon complaint with the Commune Committee until they gave way to the Revolutionary Committee, which wanted no trouble, and kicked her right up to the section secretary.
For Lan Baiyu’s troubles, the section secretary had her assigned to teach at the newly established Nanjing Technical University, a thousand kilometers away. By the time Comrade Zhou’s reeducation in the countryside was complete and he’d returned to Beijing, she’d been in Nanjing for three months. They wrote yet more letters, though the Iron Man was by then out of print. She came back to Beijing for National Day, the Spring Festival, and he went to Nanjing for New Year’s. In total, they saw each other thirteen days that year. Seven the next. Eight the next. When he was made director of the Glass Institute, Zhou began lobbying to have her transferred back to Beijing. It took another two years, but finally in 1975 she was assigned a post at the Academy of Sciences.
By then they’d given up hope of having a child. They shared meals, spoke kindly to each other, tended to the household, and at night they lay down to bed.
They’d had two years together before Zhou was assigned to Task One. Since Lan Baiyu had been admit
ted to the hospital he’d missed only one Monday, and on the last morning, after he’d left, she mustered her strength and shuffled to the window, where she put her hands on the cold sill to steady herself. She looked down five stories, a satellite view of her husband walking his bicycle out to the street. He pushed off, threw his leg over the seat, and rode away. She would have recognized him in a crowd of thousands. He had an unusually formal posture on the bicycle, as though astride a stallion in a parade, his legs working up and down in a controlled, martial rhythm. She laughed. Ridiculous man, out in the freezing weather on a bicycle when, given the importance of his task, he could have had a private car ferry him to his meeting, the hospital, anywhere. But that was her husband. He adhered to his routines. He’d ridden his Flying Pigeon to the first meeting at Office Nine. Therefore, he’d ride it to every meeting. As he turned onto the street, she craned her neck to see him through the veiny tree branches, and then lost him as he rode south, beyond the window frame. She wished she’d been able to come up with a solution to his problem, but by then it was difficult for her to remember her own name.
When Zhou and Gu’s train arrived in Shanghai, they were met by representatives of the 133 factory. Zhou was eager to see the induction furnace, but the 133 director was evasive. He insisted they tour the facility before there be any discussion of progress on Task One.
It was, Zhou thought, an impressive facility, full of cutting-edge technology. A vascular system of pipes clogged the rafters and delivered silicon tetrachloride, hydrogen, and oxygen to every part of the factory. Almost the entire working floor had been given over to Task One. The walls were plastered with “Learn from Daqing” posters depicting square-jawed peasants with glaring white teeth and broad shoulders, model oil-field workers. Zhou complimented the director on his factory’s political orientation, and received a shrug in reply. “We serve the people,” the director said.
“They’ve still got the revolutionary spirit down here,” Zhou whispered to Gu.
“They haven’t been failing as long as we have,” Gu said.
After a look at the ventilation system, the director clapped his hands and said, “That’s it. We have a banquet prepared in your honor.”
“Where’s the induction furnace?” Zhou said.
“Perhaps we can speak about that after the banquet,” the director said.
“Better to confront obstacles ceaselessly,” Zhou said.
The director tugged on the hem of his coat, straightening the fabric. He stood tall, as if delivering a message to Mao himself. “We have retired the induction furnace.”
Zhou nodded. Whatever schadenfreude Zhou might have felt was eclipsed by the knowledge that if the 133, clearly a more advanced facility, hadn’t been able to improve on the work done at the 505, there was little hope for Task One.
“If the experiments were conducted according to protocols and didn’t achieve the expected outcome, that was no fault of yours. This is a task unlike any we’ve ever confronted,” Zhou said.
“Yes, comrade. Our tests produced substandard synthetic crystal. I had hoped to give you better news.”
“Testing continues,” Zhou said.
“Tomorrow we’ll visit the brickworks,” the director said. “Our comrades there have attacked the problem with great force, but their success has been limited.”
“Who?” Zhou said.
“The Shaseng Brickworks,” the director said. “They were experimenting with a modified furnace and managed to make some nice little pieces of glass before the whole thing blew up.”
“The brickworks?”
“The furnace. We’ll have a full tour tomorrow. Many members of the municipal government are eager to meet you tonight, comrades.”
“They produced good crystal at the brickworks?” Zhou asked.
“Small samples.”
“Comrades,” said Gu, “perhaps our food could be allowed to go cold in the name of Task One?”
The director winced and looked at his watch. “Fine, fine. Let’s go. I envy your revolutionary spirit, comrade.”
The director of the 133 called for his car to come around and meet them. It was a short ride to the brickworks, a sprawling gray building overlooking a stagnant canal overgrown with algae. Pylons of brick were stacked around the perimeter, and clusters of chimneys chugged out white smoke. The director led Zhou and Gu through the arched front doors and across the floor to a corner of the factory where some workers were tinkering with a tangle of pipes, canisters, and blackened, shredded metal.
“Comrades,” the director said. “This is the modified casting furnace I mentioned.”
Only one of the workers looked up to acknowledge them.
“Comrade,” the director said in Shanghainese, “here are Comrade Zhou Yuqing and Gu Yasheng from the Beijing 505. They’re interested in your experiment.”
The worker wiped his brow with his forearm, leaving behind a greasy brown streak. “They interested in explosions?”
“They’re interested in the product of your experiments,” the director said.
“Then they must be from a bomb-making unit,” the worker said. He was smiling crookedly at them. He didn’t have many teeth, though he looked to be only about twenty-five years old.
“Comrade, they have traveled from Beijing in service of the motherland,” said the director.
The worker’s smile dried up. He looked at Zhou and Gu, then reached over to a table stacked with tools and shards of red and yellow brick, plunged his hand into a sack, and pulled out a clear lump of unpolished crystal, which he handed to Zhou. It was substantial, slightly bigger than his fist.
“Have you tested this for purity?” Zhou asked the director, who relayed his question in Shanghainese.
“Didn’t need to,” the worker said. “The special filter was cooking silicon dust pure to six nines.”
“It’s pure to six nines,” the director said to Zhou.
“Why didn’t anyone report this to Office Nine?” Zhou said.
“It’s not even big enough to qualify as a test blank,” the director said. “You’ve made blanks twice this size. Why would we bother Beijing with something so insignificant? You might also note that the furnace blew up.”
“You know why it exploded?” Zhou asked.
“A weak valve,” said the director. “They built the furnace from spare parts.”
“We’ve never once achieved six nines,” Comrade Zhou said. “Not even at this size. We can’t defeat the annealing problems.”
Gu had drifted over to a slab of glass, about knee height, leaning against a wall.
“Comrade,” Gu called out. “Who produced this?”
“That thing’s a disaster,” the director said. “Don’t bother with that.”
Gu waved Zhou over. “Look at what these clever brickworkers have done.”
The two men crouched down to examine the slab. It was made up of about twenty smaller cubes of quartz, each welded to the other by a seam of molten quartz, a glass quilt. The welding was a mess, and it was still radiating enough heat to cook a pig.
“If the cubes are cast small enough, they won’t need much time in the annealing furnace,” Zhou said. “You can make the welds clean?”
Gu grunted. “Am I not a proud worker of the 505 special crystal workshop?”
“When did you make this?” Zhou said.
The director turned to the worker and spoke to him quietly. “Last week,” the director said. “But no one could stay at it for very long. It was just too hot. Plus, it’s impossible to lay down clean welds. They had their best welders going at it but, without intending any disrespect to them, look at it. A terrible disaster.”
Gu was inspecting the slab, his nose so close he could smell the heat. He rose slowly, bracing himself on Zhou’s shoulder, and walked back to the worktable, where he picked up the lump of raw crystal. He spat on it, rubbed it against his pant leg, and held it up to a dangling lightbulb. Perfect clarity.
“How did you do thi
s?” Gu said.
“Wei Lun there designed the filter,” the director said, pointing at a pair of legs sticking out from beneath the blackened hulk of the furnace.
“Can he build another one?” Zhou said.
“If he has materials.”
“Can he build twenty?”
The director of the Shanghai 133 looked at the exploded furnace. “Yes, comrade,” he said.
“You’ll need to rebuild that thing, as well,” Zhou said.
* * *
Before leaving Shanghai, Zhou found a fishing boat willing to take him out to Big Gold Mountain Island, a journey of about an hour. Gu went along without asking what Zhou had in his satchel, just as he hadn’t asked what was in the box Zhou had kept on his lap the entire train ride from Beijing.
When they reached the island, the fisherman barely registered surprise when his passengers declined his offer to slide up on the beach so they could walk around. There was no point in trying to understand what went on inside the heads of northerners, and he silently swung the bow around and headed back to Shanghai. The mast creaked as the sail filled with wind, and the hull slapped at the waves. As the island receded, Zhou pulled the wooden box from his satchel and opened it. Gu spoke softly to the fisherman, and they both trained their eyes on the shore, affording Zhou a moment’s peace. Lan Baiyu’s ashes swirled out and lay down on the choppy water where as a girl she’d dived from the gunwales of her father’s fishing boat.
* * *
When they returned to Beijing, Comrade Zhou immediately reported the breakthrough to Office Nine.
“The problem has been solved?” Vice Mayor Li said, his eyes wide.
“We are near to a solution, comrade,” Zhou said.
“Near?”
“Variables remain,” Zhou said.
“How did brickworkers achieve victory where our country’s best glassworkers failed?” Li said.
“I do not know, Comrade Vice Mayor.”
“Brickworkers.”
“Yes, comrade.”