I Did Not Kill My Husband

by Liu Zhenyun

  “There’s only one other place in China as well guarded as this.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Zhongnan hai, where the national leaders live.”

  They went out and sat under the jujube tree.

  “Have you been thinking about what I said last time?” Zhao asked.

  “What was that?”

  “About you and me getting married.”

  “No matter what I might think about that, Big Head, it’ll have to wait.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have to protest first.”

  “Didn’t you say the cow told you not to? And forget the cow, do what I said.”

  She told him what had happened at the Lamb Stew Diner with the Mayor, how the gathering had ended in rancor. “They were bullies,” she said angrily. “I hadn’t planned to protest this year, and I said so, but they wouldn’t believe me. So I told them what the cow had said, and they thought I was being insolent. You understood me when I told you about the cow, why couldn’t they? And why do they think the worst of me, no matter what I say? They wouldn’t have police out there if they didn’t think I was a troublemaker. Little by little they’re driving me to despair. I decided not to protest for my own sake, but now, if I don’t do it, I’m pathetic. They’ll think the police surveillance worked. In the beginning, my target was Qin Yuhe. Now it’s all those corrupt officials. Since they think I’m a troublemaker, I won’t let them have a moment’s peace. Can you believe it? Inferior to a mere cow.”

  Big Head had to agree that by distrusting her vow not to protest, the mayor and his crowd had made things worse. And worst of all, they’d put a crimp in his plan. He scratched his head.

  “Instead of lowering yourself, do as we talked about. Put aside your plan to protest and live a peaceful life with me.”

  “No,” she insisted. “They’ve backed me up against a wall, and I won’t take it. Even if we got married, I couldn’t be happy as long as I had this anger inside.”

  Worried that there was no way to save the situation, Big Head carped:

  “Everything seemed to be going so well, and then it changed.”

  “Big Head,” Xuelian said, “there’s something I’d like you to do for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There are four men out there keeping an eye on me. If I’m going to lodge my protest, I need to slip out of the house, but I can’t do that alone. Can you help me?”

  He hadn’t expected that.

  “You want me to get physical with them?”

  “That’s one way. I don’t care how you do it, just help me get away.”

  But Big Head saw a daunting downside.

  “It’d be me against four of them, and I wouldn’t stand a chance. Besides, I’d be going up against the government, and the consequences would be severe.”

  “I’ve gone up against the government for twenty years,” she replied indignantly, “and here you are refusing to square off against them even once. And you want me to marry you. If we can’t be together on this, there’s no way we could live together!”

  “Now hold on, I’m thinking. Can’t I even think it over?”

  Li Xuelian was still angry, but she had to laugh.

  “Big Head, this is a test, and we’ll see if you’re up to it. Twenty years ago, I tested butcher Hu in town. He failed the test. Don’t be like him.”

  “I’m no butcher Hu, I just haven’t figured out how we can do it.”

  “Then go home and see what you can come up with. The NPC starts in a week. Come back in three days and help me slip away.”

  Three days later, no Big Head, and Xuelian knew that he too had failed the test, just like butcher Hu. He wanted her for the good times, but wouldn’t stick around for the bad. He’d run at the first sign of trouble. But she was going to get away, with or without him. And it had to be at night. Unfortunately, it was the fifteenth day of the lunar month, with a full moon lighting up the ground all around. The first watch, the third, the fifth, Xuelian looked over the latrine wall and spotted the four policemen, smoking as they patrolled the area; no chance. If she made a break for it, they’d catch her for sure, a forty-nine-year-old woman on her own trying to outrun four twenty-or thirty-year-olds. If she tried and failed, they’d be even more vigilant. They might increase the number to seven or eight the next time, making escape impossible. She had suffered her share of setbacks over the years, and learned from the experiences. She put off trying until the sun came up, after which escaping was out of the question.

  That day passed uneventfully, and night began to fall. Xuelian had hoped it would be a dark night, but the full moon ended that. Even the heavens are against me, she cursed inwardly. Then came a knock at the gate. She assumed it was one of the policemen wanting a drink of water. But, no, it was Big Head, who walked in with his bicycle, a big cardboard box on the rear rack.

  “I thought you weren’t coming,” Xuelian said unkindly. “What changed your mind?”

  Big Head dragged her into the yard and began emptying the box of its three barbecued chickens, four cooked pigs’ feet, and five stewed rabbit heads. Next out were six bottles of strong liquor. Puzzled at first, she quickly caught on to his plan and planted a kiss on his big head.

  “Good old Big Head. I thought you’d lost your nerve, while all along you were working up a scheme. A man I thought was wooden-headed actually has a devilish mind.”

  “Get a fire going,” he said, waving off her compliment, “and cook some food.”

  When the table was set in the house, Big Head invited the police inside. Though it was early spring, the nights were cold, and the watchers were huddled around a bonfire to keep warm.

  “You’re going to freeze out here, Old Xing,” Big Head called out. “Come inside to warm up with a drink.”

  Xing stood up and smiled. “We’re on duty,” he said. “That means no booze.”

  “You’re supposed to watch her, aren’t you?” Big Head said. “Well, she’s inside, and if you’ve got eyes, you can do your job. Better, even, than outside.” The four men exchanged looks.

  “Besides,” Big Head continued, “there’s really no need to watch her.”

  “Meaning?” Xing asked.

  “What’s been your goal all along, if not to keep her from lodging her protest? Well, she doesn’t plan to do that this year.”

  Xing showed his surprise before saying with a sarcastic laugh:

  “Who do you expect to believe that?”

  “Li Xuelian has agreed to marry me. That’s what tonight is all about, an engagement party. Why would she be out protesting about a divorce if she’s going to marry me?”

  The four exchanged more looks.

  “Is that true?”

  “Would I joke about something as serious as that? Even if I wanted to, the prim and proper woman inside would not let me. You’re wasting your time here this year.”

  Xing scratched his head.

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” he said. “But if the station chief knew we’d been drinking, he’d give us hell when we got back.”

  To everyone’s astonishment, butcher Hu’s son stood up and walked from the bonfire into the yard. “We’re crazy to keep freezing out here while they’re inside about to get hitched.”

  The other three exchanged doubtful glances, but got up and followed him into the yard.

  The men feasted from eight at night till three in the morning. At first they were withdrawn, and Xing was wary of the wisdom of what they were doing. But they were treated to the sight of Li Xuelian happily cooking at the stove, then placing food on the table, and sitting down beside Big Head Zhao, leaning up against him to let him place a morsel of pig’s foot tendon into her mouth. That convinced them that everything was on the up and up. They started toasting one another and moved from there to drinking games. Before anyone knew it, the three chickens, four pigs’ feet, and five rabbit heads had been consumed, as had all the side dishes Xuelian had prepared for them, wetted down wi
th six bottles of strong white liquor. Thanks to a lifetime of kitchen work, Big Head was able to drink as much as the others with no effect. Xing and Hu’s son passed out, heads on the table. One of the other men went to the latrine and fell down next to it, out like a light. The fourth man needed to answer nature’s call, but couldn’t get his legs working. So, with no need to rush, Xuelian and Big Head packed up her things, collected the policemen’s cell phones, put them into a sack, and tossed it onto the roof. They pushed his bicycle out the gate, locked it behind them, and got on the moonlit road. Back inside, the only policeman who had not passed out realized what had just happened and tried to get up and go after them; his legs still weren’t working. So he crawled out the door and up to the gate, pounding on it and shouting at the top of his lungs:

  “Come back here, get back here right now!”

  By that time Big Head and Xuelian had ridden a couple of li, him in front and her in back, her arms around his waist.

  7

  Li Xuelian’s escape threw first the county and then the city administration into pandemonium. On the morning after she disappeared, County Chief Zheng Zhong received the news with horror. Hoping to fix the problem locally and keep the news from spreading to the city, he sent county law enforcement teams to look for her and bring her back. Since she had to be on her way to Beijing to protest, he sent teams to all the bus stops and the one and only county train station, where local, but not express trains stopped. He also set up roadblocks on all roads heading north—large, medium, and small. By the time news of the escape reached Mayor Ma in the city, a mobilized force of more than four hundred had turned up nothing. Ma immediately phoned Zheng.

  “I hear you’ve been busy today, Chief Zheng,” he said to open the conversation.

  Zheng did not have to be told that paper cannot contain a fire, that the cat, as they say, was out of the bag.

  “I was just about to make my report,” Zheng sputtered.

  “What the hell good would a report do?” Ma replied. “What I want to know is, have you managed to catch her in your dragnet or haven’t you?”

  “Not yet.” What good would it do to lie?

  “How many times do I have to remind you,” Ma said as his anger rose, “that ‘a tiny ant hole can ruin a dike’? You must ‘nip things in the bud,’ do not ‘save a little to lose a lot.’ Time after time it’s been the little things that have gotten you into trouble. Why is that? With all the police you have there, how does a single woman get away? They may be the ones who lost her, but where are the seeds of their failure? I’m looking at the leading cadres for that. Was it a problem of underestimating the importance of the matter or the lack of a sense of responsibility? Whatever it was, I’m a little disappointed.”

  As we have already seen, Ma Wenbin’s use of the word “disappointed” in regard to a Party cadre usually spelled the end of a career. Even the words “a little” had no effect on Zheng’s cold-sweat fears, perhaps because of the existence of the phrase a “lack of a sense of responsibility.”

  “We did fail to carry out our responsibility, we came up short there,” Zheng admitted. “But don’t worry, Mayor Ma, we’ve learned our lesson this time. I guarantee you we’ll find her within two days.”

  Two days, the amount of time remaining before the opening of the NPC. Ma Wenbin laughed. A cynical laugh.

  “What you’re guaranteeing is the one thing you cannot guarantee. That woman isn’t a rock waiting for you to move it down the mountain. She’s got a pair of feet at the bottom of two usable legs, and you have no idea where those legs have taken her. So how do you expect to find her in two days?”

  Zheng had no answer. He’d said his piece to show a positive attitude. When an official catches an inferior in a misstatement, it’s like a snake being struck in the heart. That was Zheng Zhong at that moment: standing open-mouthed, holding the phone to his ear, no answer forthcoming. For Ma Wenbin, the conversation had reached its end.

  “I’m off to Beijing the day after tomorrow to attend the Congress. I do not want to run into Little Cabbage there. Whether or not the city or Yours Truly are humiliated is all up to Chief Zheng. Help me out here, please, Chief Zheng.”

  Ma hung up, leaving Zheng holding the handset, clueless as to what to do next. He discovered that his underwear was sweat-soaked. The sarcasm in Mayor Ma’s final comment constituted very bad news. He smashed his teacup on the floor, then picked up his phone and summoned his police chief, who had been so busy he’d missed lunch and dinner.

  Chief Zheng did not mince words:

  “Have you located that woman after a day of running around?”

  About the same question Mayor Ma had asked him.

  “Not yet,” the police chief stammered.

  The exact same answer he’d given Mayor Ma. Zheng’s anger finally found an outlet. Flames seemed to shoot from his eyes as he glared at his police chief.

  “Raising a dog is easier than training the likes of you people. You can’t even keep tabs on one person. I want you to find her by tomorrow and bring her to me. If you can’t manage that, bring me your resignation letter.”

  Not a peep from the police chief, who immediately ran off to beef up the search team. He summoned the four policemen who’d been assigned to watch Li Xuelian—Xing, Hu, and the others—and the township station chief, to send them to jail, not as criminals, since losing a detainee is not a crime, but as guards for the real prisoners, considered by all to be the worst job possible.

  “Raising a dog is easier than training the likes of you people. You can’t even keep tabs on one person,” he berated them, word for word what Zheng had said to him. “Since you’ve forgotten how to keep tabs on people, you can start all over by guarding prisoners. Ten years ought to be enough to help you remember how.”

  It was then the aggrieved township station chief’s turn to rail, ripping the four policemen up one side and down the other. All the time the chief was sounding off, Xing and his men bemoaned their fate, though it would have been worse if they hadn’t been able to hide the fact that they’d been drunk. They confessed to sloppy police work and concealed the far more serious charge of neglecting their duty.

  While all was in disarray, Chief Justice Wang was the picture of calmness. Li Xuelian’s case had been his, but her escape had not. That was a police matter. Public security and court were two different systems.

  8

  After escaping on bicycle, instead of heading north to Beijing to protest, Xuelian and Big Head went east, a long detour to throw the police off her trail. After twenty years of battling the local police, she knew she would be safe from their clutches only when she was out of the village. And the shortest route out was to head east. They started out in an upbeat mood, but before too long that gave way to nerves, worried that the drunken policemen would sober up enough to report to their superiors; once they were informed, a dragnet would spread throughout the county. Big Head pedaled hard, working up a sweat by the time they’d gone twenty li. Xuelian offered to spell him, but he would have none of it, so she jumped off the bicycle, forcing him to stop. Then, with him on the back, she rode the next fifteen li so he could regain his strength. After that it was his turn again, and by sunrise they had made it past the county line. They stopped after another five or six li to rest beside a bridge.

  “Amita Buddha,” Xuelian exclaimed. “We made it this far.”

  “Thanks to your quick thinking, Xuelian, heading east instead of north. We’ll still make it to Beijing in plenty of time.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without your help, Big Head,” she said. “You can go back now. I’ll continue on alone.”

  “No, I’m not going back.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I can’t go back. By now the county officials know I helped you escape by getting the policemen drunk. They’ll grab me as soon as I get home and throw the book at me.”

  That hadn’t occurred to Li Xuelian.

  “I planned all along to bu
rn my bridges behind me,” Big Head said, with a smile. “And don’t forget, you can take your protest to Beijing, but I lived there for thirty years and know the city a lot better than you do.”

  What he said was beyond Xuelian’s expectations. She was moved to throw her arms around him.

  “I’ll marry you, Big Head, as soon as we get home after this year’s protest.”

  The embrace roused Big Head to exclaim:

  “I’m in this all the way. Once we’re married, if you want to do this every year, I’ll be right with you.”

  Fully rested, they got back on the road, reaching the county seat by noon. They were exhausted after traveling through the night and all morning. They were also afraid that the police back home would expand their search into neighboring counties. Since they’d be easy to spot in broad daylight, they found a restaurant on the edge of town, where they shared a meal, after which they checked into a small, out-of-the-way inn, planning to stay until nighttime, when they’d set out again. Both for the sake of economy and because they were far from being strangers, they took one room. Intimacy had not been the plan, but the moment they were in the room, Big Head grabbed her in a bear hug. On the road, it had been Xuelian who’d thrown her arms around him, but Big Head’s embrace wound up on the bed, where he began clawing at Xuelian’s clothes. She shoved him away and sat up.

  “Not so fast, Big Head. Take it easy, don’t get me mad.”

  “I’ve waited thirty years for this,” he said, undaunted. He pressed her down onto the bed again and continued taking off her clothes.

  All that travel had exhausted Xuelian, who hadn’t the strength to fight him. But he’d traveled all night and morning, too; where had he gotten all that vigor? she wondered. Since he was accompanying her to Beijing and they had, after all, decided to get married, after a bit of symbolic struggling, she stopped and let him strip her naked, after which he took off his clothes. Big Head Zhao then steamed right into the harbor. After twenty-one celibate years, Xuelian was understandably nervous, but he was barely in the harbor when she discovered to her surprise that he was an experienced sailor, and she relaxed. Once there, he didn’t move, except to kiss her on the ears, the eyebrows, the mouth, and finally the breasts. Then the movement began, unhurriedly, fast and slow, this way and that, a technique that aroused Xuelian, something she hadn’t felt in all those years. Faster and faster, and rougher, and stronger until, all of a sudden—climax! While she shouted and moaned, Big Head Zhao kept at it, never slowing, and—another climax! More shouts. Never once, while she was married to Qin Yuhe, had she experienced anything like this. Big Head Zhao might have looked like a big lummox, but he had a bagful of tricks in bed, and not even a day and a half of travel could quench his fire. When it was over and the shouting had died out, they lay on the bed, naked.