I Did Not Kill My Husband

by Liu Zhenyun

  “Not just someone,” Ma said, “but someone with political savvy.”

  Zheng couldn’t believe his ears, and since he could not predict what Ma might say next, he didn’t dare open his mouth.

  “He approached the Li Xuelian affair with a clear mind. While we were all caught up in her divorce, he focused on getting her married.”

  Zheng was happy to hear Ma Wenbin’s praise, even if it wasn’t for him.

  “I agree. Like sealing off the enemy’s path of retreat in war,” he said obsequiously.

  “That’s not what I was referring to,” Ma corrected him. “What I meant was, in cases like this, for the past twenty years, if it was a headache, we treated the head, if it was sore feet, we treated the feet. Year after year, the same thing, taking one year at a time. It’s what we call ‘step on a watermelon rind and you go where your feet take you.’ But this fellow went to the cause, not the symptom, and figured out how to get Li Xuelian married. Our problem was solved.”

  “I agree,” Zheng replied. “Once she’s married, she’s out of our hair for good.”

  “What’s the fellow’s name?”

  Zheng knew this was no casual question; the star of this individual’s political future was getting brighter. Ma had asked a similar question about Zheng himself when he’d successfully dealt with the crowd that had besieged the office in the county where he served as deputy county chief. Now he wanted to know the name of the man who had earned his gratitude by arranging for Li Xuelian to get married. Zheng would have preferred not to give it, but he knew that Ma had other means of finding out; where cadre affairs were involved, Ma’s word was law, one no one dared to violate.

  “The man’s name is Jia Congming.”

  “A clever man indeed,” Ma said with a sigh of appreciation. “Not phony smart, as indicated by his name.”

  “We’re gearing up to promote him to the position of deputy chief justice.”

  With that, Ma hung up.

  The entire incident ended happily for all concerned.

  But while things had worked out on his end, Jia Congming had not counted on receiving a message from Big Head Zhao, saying that his son was still waiting to hear about the job at the Bureau of Animal Husbandry. Concerned only about his promotion to deputy chief justice, Jia had not mentioned Big Head’s son in his report to County Chief Zheng, figuring he’d wait till the job was his before taking action. Feeling sheepish when he received the latest text message, he first responded with a pompous “soon.” When Big Head had asked him just how “soon”—three days? Five? Jia had stalled Big Head, who angrily phoned Jia, a call that led to the argument that messed up everything for them when Li Xuelian overheard Zhao’s end of the conversation.

  “Who were you talking to just now, Big Head?” she demanded when he shut his cell phone.

  Seeing the anger in her eyes, Big Head feared that the game was up. He tried his best to paint over the truth.

  “It was Old Chu, a donkey butcher in the county. We had words over the two thousand yuan he owes me.”

  Li Xuelian slapped him across both cheeks.

  “You damned liar. I heard every word you said. I thought you were serious about marrying me, Big Head. Now I know it was all a pack of lies. And if that weren’t bad enough, you decided to enlist a bunch of corrupt officials to scheme against me behind my back.”

  She was so worked up she took off one of her shoes and hit Zhao with it—face, head, body—until he wrapped his arms around his head and scooted under the bed.

  “I wasn’t lying, and I wasn’t scheming,” he defended himself from his hiding place. “I meant it when I said we should get married. I’m telling you, these are two different matters.”

  Xuelian was having none of it. She began slapping her own face.

  “I’m a dumb cunt,” she said through her tears. “I’m getting exactly what I deserve. Twenty years of protests only to wind up lied to and taken to bed! There was nothing shameful about those twenty years, but how am I going to live now that the whole world knows I was cheated and tricked into a man’s bed?” Her tears turned to wails of sadness.

  Big Head crawled out from under the bed, but didn’t know what to do. If he tried to explain things, even lie, she wouldn’t believe a word. It was time for self-criticism:

  “I was forced to do it. My son was hoping to get a full-time job at the Bureau of Animal Husbandry. It was Judicial Committee Member Jia Congming’s idea, not mine. Don’t be so unhappy,” he said impulsively. “To hell with my son, you and I will get married.”

  Xuelian’s tears stopped as abruptly as they’d started. Ignoring him, she began packing her things, stuffing her clothes and water bottle into her satchel; then she kicked the door open and stormed out. Knowing how badly he’d screwed up, Big Head ran after her.

  “Don’t leave,” he said, “let’s talk about this.”

  As if he weren’t there, she strode out of the inn, Big Head hard on her heels.

  “I was wrong,” he pleaded, “wrong to work with them to cheat you. If it’ll make you feel better, together you and I can turn the tables on them, what do you say?”

  That had no effect on Xuelian, who walked to the end of the lane and turned into a market that was swarming with peddlers and customers for the fresh produce. She walked from one end of the market to the other, where Big Head caught up and grabbed her by the arm.

  “If you’re still angry, hit me as much as you want.”

  Xuelian walked up to a butcher’s stand, where she picked up a knife.

  “I think I could kill you, you know that?”

  She thrust the knife at Zhao’s chest; he broke out in a cold sweat and backed up in fright. The butcher and everyone in sight was as frightened as Zhao. But, thinking it was a domestic fight, they tried their best to make peace.

  “Go ahead, leave if you want,” Zhao shouted in the midst of the crowd. “But tell me, where do you plan to go, not knowing anyone in a strange place?”

  Xuelian responded the same way.

  “If all this hadn’t happened, Big Head Zhao,” she said, “there’d be no need for me to protest. But it did, so I will. If you’d forced me not to go to my face, I wouldn’t have gone ahead, but you went behind my back, so I’ll expose every one of you. Go make your phone calls and tell on me. This time either the fish dies or the net breaks, or my name isn’t Li Xuelian!”

  10

  Chaos reigned back home while Li Xuelian was fleeing from Shandong’s Tai’an city. The county had been able to mobilize a large contingent of police to chase her down once. Doing the same this time would have created too great a drain on time and resources to pursue her in Shandong, something they would have failed at anyway. Besides, she had no interest in staying there for long, and would surely be on her way to protest in Beijing, where everything had changed over the past few days: the curtain had been raised on the National People’s Congress, and if she managed to break into the Congress this time, the impact would be far greater than it had been twenty years before. Then she had been labeled a modern-day Little Cabbage. This time, if the same woman managed to storm the Congress, she would gain notoriety on a scale of international terrorist Bin Laden, and many county and city officials would suffer the same fate as their predecessors.

  Chaos reigned in County Chief Zheng’s mind as well. Without a thought for Li Xuelian, he summoned Chief Justice Wang Gongdao and Judicial Committee Member Jia Congming to his office, where he demanded angrily:

  “How the hell did this happen?”

  This was the last thing Jia had expected, and he shook in his boots. Wang reacted differently: he was incensed, not because of Li Xuelian’s second escape, but because his subordinate, Jia Congming, had stuck his hand into this pile of dog shit on his own. The police had been responsible for Li Xuelian’s earlier escape; the responsibility for her escape from Shandong, on the other hand, would be laid at his doorstep. His anger mushroomed over the knowledge that Jia had done this in order to be promoted t
o deputy chief justice. Selfish motives could be forgiven; what sparked Wang’s anger was how Jia had gone over his head to report a successful resolution, an attempt to take the credit as well as implied criticism of Wang as incompetent. To his surprise, the pot broke after the rice was ready, and a cooked duck flew into the air. Wang could be forgiven for gloating over Jia’s distress. But that was no concern of Chief Zheng’s, since he had been drawn into the mess when Jia reported to him instead of to his immediate superior. Zheng was ready to explode, so Wang knew this was no time to argue about any fine distinctions in defending himself. So he held his tongue for the time being. As for Jia, he knew how badly he had screwed up, and that Chief Justice Wang was choking with resentment. His options were limited to one: sputter the truth, from start to finish, ending with Li Xuelian overhearing the argument between him and Big Head Zhao over finding a job for Big Head’s son in payment for tricking Li Xuelian into marrying Big Head. She had run off for the second time. County Chief Zheng listened to how the debacle had unfolded.

  “Why the hell didn’t you report this earlier!” Zheng roared. “This is what’s known as a cover-up, a case of saving a little only to lose a lot.”

  The same idiom Mayor Ma Wenbin had used on previous occasions. Seeing an opportunity to make Jia look bad, Wang added fuel to the flames:

  “By engaging in a cover-up, he wasn’t saving a little to lose a lot, he was selfishly scheming for a promotion to deputy chief justice. His selfish desire created chaos at all levels of government over what should have been a positive result.”

  Wang indeed stoked the fire in County Chief Zheng’s anger.

  “Where has Li Xuelian run to this time?” he asked Wang.

  “I don’t know,” Wang said, seeing the anger in Zheng’s eyes, “but I’ll bet she’s off to Beijing again to protest.”

  “So you do know. Then why are you hanging around here? Get your ass to Beijing and arrest her for me!”

  “A … arrest her?” Wang stammered. “Isn’t that a job for the police, County Chief? That isn’t the court’s business.”

  “Not your business? It’s you people who handed down the court decision that started this twenty years ago. Besides, you and she are related, aren’t you?”

  “Related? We’re not even shirttail cousins.”

  “You listen close,” Zheng said pointedly, “this case isn’t going away. If anything more happens, they’ll be looking for a new county chief and a new chief justice.” He glared at Wang. “Don’t try to lie to me. I know the court has sent people to Beijing to find Li Xuelian in the past.”

  By now Wang was sweating profusely.

  “You don’t have to say any more, Chief Zheng, I’ll take some people to Beijing right away.”

  “Just going there isn’t enough. I want you to comb the streets of the city until you have Li Xuelian in custody.”

  So a fearful Wang Gongdao, with Jia Congming in tow, left for Beijing. Once they were gone, Zheng decided to phone Mayor Ma, who was in Beijing for the Congress. During his previous call he had informed Ma that everything had been taken care of, that Li Xuelian was getting married. He had only two days to bathe in the praise he’d received when the hen flew the nest and the egg broke. Faced with the question of whether or not he should make a second call now that it had all fallen apart, he didn’t dare hold back, as he had the first time Xuelian had vanished. When Ma found out on his own, Zheng had been thrown on the defensive, forced to listen to Ma saying he was “a little disappointed” in him. Xuelian’s latest escape was more serious, far more serious. That other time, she’d only run to Beijing to petition the government over an injustice. But all the unpleasantness with Big Head Zhao had filled her with anger. The NPC hadn’t begun the first time she staged her protest; now it was in full swing. If he held back from reporting, and Ma found out about it, “a little disappointed” would become “deeply disappointed,” and there would be no salvation—not for Li Xuelian’s protest, but for Zheng Zhong’s political career. Still, his heart was racing as he picked up the telephone. In two days, a triumph had suffered a complete reversal, and calling now to make a report would do nothing to lessen Ma Wenbin’s anger when he received the news, anger that replicated his own, directed at Wang Gongdao and Jia Congming. He put the handset back, but then picked it up and laid it back down three times. Finally, he decided to phone the secretary-general of the municipal government instead of Ma Wenbin, for now. Both Ma and the secretary-general were in Beijing, so he’d sound out the latter before considering whether or not to inform the mayor. Zheng heaved an emotional sigh. A once fearless official who had deftly defused a dangerous situation soon after his transfer to a new county, he had encountered Li Xuelian and turned into a man who feared the wolf in front and the tiger behind. What puzzled him was why people at all levels of government had gotten involved in a citizen’s domestic affair, deeper and deeper each year, for twenty years. How had Li Xuelian, an ordinary village woman, succeeded in leading all those people by the nose? How had it all come about? What were they all afraid of? Zheng hadn’t the foggiest idea. But emotional sighs accomplished nothing; needed now was an urgent resolution of this twisted state of affairs. When his call went through, he described the latest developments of the Li Xuelian affair to the secretary-general, who received the news with alarm.

  “Wasn’t she getting married?” he asked Zheng. “Then why is she coming back to protest?”

  He was unwilling to lay the blame on Jia Congming’s selfishly motivated scheme, which had backfired, since reporting subordinate incompetence always reflected badly upon the person reporting, a complication he did not need.

  “That was the plan,” he said, “but they quarreled when they were out of town, and the woman ran off.”

  He placed the blame squarely on Big Head Zhao and Li Xuelian.

  “This is a problem,” the man said.

  “You’re absolutely right,” Zheng hastened to agree. “But there was no way we could anticipate what the two of them would do.”

  “When I said this is not good news, that’s not what I meant. Last night Mayor Ma had dinner with the governor, who asked him about the ‘Little Cabbage’ affair. The mayor treated her marriage as a joke. Well, the governor laughed, and so did the other bigwigs. But now a day later, the joke is on him. How is he going to explain this to the governor?”

  Zheng Zhong broke out in a cold sweat, for he knew that this was worse than he’d feared, now that the governor was involved. Not wanting to explain things to the mayor was one thing, making it necessary for the mayor to explain things to the governor was something else again. It would be hard for the mayor, who would be “a little disappointed” in him, but making it necessary for the mayor to then explain things to the governor would result in more than “a little” or even “deeply disappointed.” Handing everything over to the Organization Department would very likely be his immediate action. Ma Wenbin was always speedy and resolute in his dealings with subordinates, and even though he had been responsible for Zheng’s promotion, that was then, this was now; there was success, and there was failure. By now Zheng’s clothing was damp.

  “Secretary-general, I fell down on the job and have caused much trouble for you. But now that events have reached this point, what should I do? As my long-time superior, you can’t abandon someone who has served you faithfully.”

  The secretary-general, a man with a heart, thought for a moment, wanting to help Zheng Zhong.

  “Given the state of affairs, we’ll have to do it the cumbersome way.”

  “The cumbersome way? What’s that?”

  “Send a team of plainclothes policemen from your county to Beijing ahead of Li Xuelian, where they will throw up a dragnet around the People’s Hall. Now we know that Beijing police are already ringing the hall, so you set yours up outside theirs. That way, if she’s planning to break into the hall again, you’ll nab her before the Beijing police can. If she causes an incident somewhere other than the People’s Hall,
it’s no big deal. Treat this as protecting the Hall.”

  Zheng saw something bright ahead when the secretary-general finished with what Zheng considered a brilliant plan.

  “On behalf of the million-plus residents of the county,” he said excitedly, “I thank the secretary-general for his kindness, his big heart. I’ll get to work immediately. One more favor. Would it be possible not to say anything to the mayor yet? We can handle this internally. You know how he gets.” He quickly added, “Obviously, you will be shouldering much of the responsibility.”

  “I’ll do my best,” the secretary-general said. “But you are the key here. You need to throw up a steel curtain, something no one can get through.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Zheng said confidently. “We’ve screwed up too often already. There won’t be any slipups this time. We’ll make the net so tight not even a moth could get through.”

  As soon as he hung up, the county chief summoned his police chief and told him to send several dozen of his men, all in civilian clothes, to Beijing, where they were to throw up a dragnet outside the Beijing police perimeter and catch Li Xuelian when she tried to get to the Great Hall of the People.

  “You lost her the first time,” he said. “This is your last chance. If you slip up, losing your job will be the least of your worries. You’ll be the Li Xuelian who gets arrested!”

  Li Xuelian’s earlier flight from home had made the police chief as fearful as a bird from the bow. He had breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing that she was going to be married and abandon her protest. That lasted only until he learned that she’d run off a second time. And even though the police were not responsible in this new complication, if she hadn’t gotten free the first time, there would have been no second time. Seeing the stern look on Zheng Zhong’s face, he said:

  “Leave it to me, County Chief, I’ll mobilize the men immediately and put them on a train to Beijing.”

  That really set Zheng off.

  “With a fire on your ass, who takes a fucking train! What about airplanes? Time is more than money, it’s your life!”