I Did Not Kill My Husband

by Liu Zhenyun

  “Is this about going home again? I already said no.”

  “Chief Wang,” Hou said, “I’ve found Li Xuelian.”

  All the alcohol remaining in Wang’s body emerged from pores as cold sweat. His mind was suddenly clear, and his tone changed.

  “Where are you?” he demanded.

  “At the Songjiazhuang subway entrance.”

  “What the fuck are you waiting for? Arrest her.”

  “I’m all by myself here,” Hou complained, “and the station is packed with people. If she starts a fight, I won’t be able to stop her.”

  “Where are the other two?”

  “At lunch. I’ve got kind of a bad stomach, so I came out looking for a toilet when I spotted her.”

  Wang was in no mood to continue the conversation.

  “Don’t do anything to scare her off,” he said. “And don’t let her out of your sight. I’ll send help.”

  His headache gone, he told his men to put down their bowls and follow him outside, where he had them phone the other two teams and tell them to get to Songjiazhuang as fast as possible; then they were to take a taxi to the subway station.

  Half an hour later Wang and his men arrived at the station, just as one of the other teams came up in a taxi. Hou’s teammates were back on duty with him. He told Wang he’d lost her.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to let her out of your sight?” Wang sputtered.

  Hou pointed to the people streaming in and out of the entrance.

  “That’s easy for you to say. How was I supposed to do that with all those people? One second she was there, the next she wasn’t.”

  “Split up, and hurry,” Wang said to his men, not wanting to waste time fixing blame. “Turn this station inside out until you find her.”

  The men spread out, some inside, others outside, joined by the fourth team, which had just arrived. But from noon till late in the afternoon, the twelve men combed the station and its surroundings seven or eight times and found no trace of Li Xuelian. She could have taken the subway anywhere; after all, that’s what people do in subway stations. So the searchers boarded subway cars to search for her at other stations. But with a dozen subway lines and more than two hundred stations, it was hopeless. You could search subway cars and stations on the same line and be heading one way while she was heading the other. Line after line, station after station, they rode the subway till midnight, skipping dinner, and not a trace of Li Xuelian. At one in the morning the subway stopped running and the stations closed. The four teams met up outside the Songjiazhuang subway entrance. They would not have been so disheartened if it had been a case of not finding her. But finding and then losing her, not knowing what she had in mind, was a different matter. They’d been hoping that the Congress would close in a few days without incident. But now they knew she was in Beijing, and that spelled trouble. It could happen tomorrow, it could happen the day after. The events of that day so distressed Wang Gongdao that his lips began to blister. But that didn’t stop him from raking Hou over the coals:

  “The minute you spotted her you should have rushed her. A fat guy like you could easily overwhelm a woman, couldn’t you?”

  “I thought you told me not to scare her off,” Hou defended himself. “I wasn’t in uniform, and I was afraid that if I rushed her and she screamed, I might get the shit kicked out of me.”

  The others laughed, but not Wang.

  “Are you sure it was her?” Wang asked.

  He wasn’t. “I just saw her back. She didn’t turn around, so I never got a good look at her face.”

  “Then how can you be so sure it was her?”

  He’d been sure then, not so sure anymore.

  “It looked like her.”

  “You’re seeing things,” one of the others complained. “And for that we searched from noon till the middle of the night, not even breaking for dinner.”

  That mirrored Wang Gongdao’s sentiments. Hou had seen someone who “looked like her,” but could not be sure. Which meant one of two things: it probably was Li Xuelian, or it probably wasn’t. If it wasn’t, it was a false alarm. But if it was? That meant big trouble. Wang did not dare relax. The next day he had three of his teams concentrate on the subway system, while the fourth focused on the streets, and train and bus stations. That went on for two more days, with no success. But Li still had not made an appearance, and Wang was leaning toward the opinion that the woman Hou had spotted at Songjiazhuang was not Li Xuelian. It was a comforting thought. The Congress would ring down the curtain in five days, and if Li remained out of sight all that time, Wang could raise a prayer to Buddha, whether she was caught or not.

  His men returned to the guesthouse to sleep after another fruitless day of searching; fruitless for them, but not for the Beijing police, who had in fact apprehended her. Wang had barely dressed for bed when his cell phone rang. The call was from a precinct station in Beijing’s Xicheng District. Ten days earlier, soon after arriving in Beijing, Wang’s team had searched a basement hostel in Xicheng, where Li Xuelian had stayed on earlier trips to the city. Finding no trace of her, Wang had left his card and phone number with the precinct station. The voice on the phone told him that during their patrol around the Zhongnanhai Central Government compound that evening, they’d come across a countrywoman who looked to them to be a petitioner. Back at the stationhouse, she refused to answer their questions, but didn’t appear to be a mute, since most mutes are also deaf, and she obviously heard what they were saying. On further examination, she resembled the description Wang had given them of the woman they were looking for. Wang could barely contain his excitement.

  “How old is she?”

  “Appears to be in her fifties,” the policeman replied.

  “What does she look like?”

  “Medium height, short hair.”

  “Heavy or thin?”

  “Neither, I’d say.”

  “It has to be her!” Wang exclaimed. “We’ll be right there.”

  Wang hurriedly woke up his men. They rushed out of the guesthouse, hailed three taxis, and headed at full speed to the precinct station. A weight had been lifted off of Wang’s shoulders. Li Xuelian had come to Beijing, after all. Whether or not she’d done what she’d come to do at the Congress, having her in custody was a lot better than going home to face his superiors empty handed. He had shed a heavy responsibility, and the three men who shared his cab could barely contain their excitement.

  “We’re no match for the Beijing police,” one of them said. “We looked for more than ten days and found neither hide nor hair of her. They caught her in one night.”

  “Who cares who caught her,” another commented.“As long as we take her back home, we’ll get the credit.”

  Even Jia Congming, who hadn’t raised his head the whole time, snatched the moment to sidle up to Wang.

  “Now that we’ve got her,” he said, “I guess you’ll be hosting a celebratory dinner, Chief.”

  Unable to contain his excitement, Wang decided to let Jia off this time. He slapped his thigh.

  “Host a dinner? You bet I will. We’ve all put in many hard days, so we’ll enjoy some Peking duck tomorrow for lunch.”

  With that they arrived at the station entrance, where they climbed out of their taxis and went inside. After greeting them, the duty officer went out back and returned in two minutes with a countrywoman. One look—they were dumbfounded. It wasn’t Li Xuelian. She was the right age and appearance, but she didn’t have Li Xuelian’s face.

  “We spotted her right off as a sly old petitioner,” the policeman said.

  Wang Gongdao was appalled. He just shook his head, looking like a common fool.

  Early the next morning they were back out on the streets of Beijing searching for Li Xuelian.

  12

  The National People’s Congress had been in session for twelve days, and Li Xuelian still had not made an appearance in Beijing. While Chief Justice Wang Gongdao and his team of men were searching for her, do
zens of county police had formed a dragnet around the Great Hall of the People beyond the web formed by Beijing police, all in vain. She hadn’t changed her mind about coming to Beijing to protest; she had fallen ill. Knowing that county officials would send people to stop her from entering the city, she’d avoided Beijing bound trains and long-distance buses and instead traveled from one town to the next, where she’d switch to another local bus for another town, zigzagging her way into the Capital. Twenty-years of traveling to Beijing had taught her that was the best way to elude the police. Constantly stopping to change buses was exhausting and expensive, but she preferred forgoing an ease of journey over getting nabbed by the police. While her travel style had consumed great chunks of time, she knew that she’d manage to carry out her protest so long as she made it to Beijing during the two weeks the Congress was in session.

  In the twenty times she’d set out in the past, she’d actually made it to Beijing on five occasions, each time with police hot on her heels. From her cat-and-mouse experiences with them, she’d learned that they were on highest alert during the early days of the Congress, when the chances of getting caught were greatest. By entering the city later, when police vigilance had flagged, it was far easier to find a way past them.

  She set out from Tai’an and traveled five days, stopping when necessary; the trip was tiring, but she made it to Gu’an in Hebei province without incident. Two bus trips from Gu’an would put her in Beijing, a stimulating prospect. Arriving at night, she found an inn down a small lane and went straight to bed to get a good night’s sleep in preparation for the final leg of her journey—to Beijing. The night passed quickly, but when she awoke in the morning she did not feel well. She touched her forehead; it was burning up. Oh, no! she said to herself, traveling is no time to get sick. Her body had to hold up; if it didn’t, besides the obvious dangers to her health, it could spell disaster for her protest. But she’d made it to Gu’an, a stone’s throw from Beijing, while the Congress was entering its final days and she could not allow herself to rest just because she’d taken sick. So she got out of bed, washed up, left the inn, and walked down the lane to the main road. She managed to make it to the bus station, where she bought a bowl of porridge at an outdoor stall, hoping the fever would break from a good sweat. But when she ate the first spoonful of porridge, her stomach sent it right back up. She put down the bowl, determined to leave Gu’an, and bought a bus ticket to a place called Daxing. Once aboard, she reflected on her trip from Tai’an, during which she’d taken a dozen or more exhausting bus rides and economized by subsisting on flatbreads and pickled vegetables, going three days without fresh greens or a mouthful of hot soup. Regret set in, as she recalled the saying “Scrimp at home, spend on the road.” She knew she should not have treated herself so shabbily on the road, but she could not let a bad spell of health hold up her entrance into the city; that would be too great a sacrifice. As she reflected on why her travel over the past several days had been so wearying, she determined two causes: scrimping on food and rest, and, more importantly, her anger at Big Head Zhao. He’d put her up during her first visit to Beijing. Now, twenty years later, he’d initiated a romantic relationship and had helped her escape her virtual house arrest. She’d let him talk her out of continuing the protests and travel instead to Mt. Tai. It had all been a trap that he had worked out with county officials. But while Zhao and the officials could not escape her loathing, she reserved most of it for herself. For a forty-nine-year-old woman who had traipsed all over the place to stage protests for twenty years, there was little she hadn’t seen. She’d forded rivers, only to have her boat capsize in a sewer and throw her into Zhao’s hands. Being tricked was bad enough, but then she’d let Zhao have his way with her. Tricks were easily avenged, but how could she cleanse a sullied body? A soiled bowl can be washed, but not a besmirched body. One of her reasons for staging protests had been to disprove the label of a Pan Jinlian. Now, after twenty years, that’s exactly what she was, thanks to Big Head Zhao. She entertained thoughts of killing him, but all that would solve is to end her life as well. Sparing the officials involved in the matter would be a sort of exoneration for them. No, the protest came before everything, including killing Big Head Zhao; there’d be plenty of time for that later. This year her protest was going to be different. Actually, the only difference was that instead of targeting Qin Yuhe, she’d expose the officials who had conspired with Zhao, for it was they who had driven her to this juncture. She’d boarded buses seething with flames of anger, overheating her body, and then cooling off by opening windows. Though it was early spring, the wind carried a chill, turning heat into a fever, which had then spiked. So from Gu’an to Daxing she kept the window tightly shut, but leaning against her head it only resulted in more heat. She’d gotten up in the morning with a fever, and now her whole body felt like it was burning up. All that heat clouded her mind. When the bus arrived at the Daxing county line she saw that the way ahead was blocked by police cars with flashing lights and policemen with batons signaling all vehicles to pull over for inspection. Tourist buses, trucks, minivans, and sedans were lined up waiting to be checked. Li Xuelian broke out in a cold sweat. In addition to shunning the Shanghai-Beijing rail line, she had chosen not to take a bus directly from Tai’an to Beijing and to make her way on country buses in order to avoid an inspection. That had been a waste of time and effort and had brought on a bad cold in the process. A cold sweat actually made her feel better. The line crept forward for an hour before a pair of policemen boarded her bus. One by one they checked passengers’ papers, asking their reasons for coming to Beijing, and demanding to see authorization letters from home. It was a repeat of the inspection Xuelian had encountered twenty years earlier, when she’d tried to enter the city from Hebei. But this time she was prepared, experiencing no sense of dread as she watched the policeman make their way toward her. Some of the passengers passed inspection, others were taken off the bus in silent dejection. Eventually, one of them came up to Li Xuelian. He asked for her papers. She handed him a false set she’d spent two hundred yuan for three years before in a lane in Beijing’s Haidian District specifically to avoid interrogations. They were so authentic looking they fooled the police, then and now. He handed them back.

  “Your reason for coming to Beijing?”

  “Medical.” The same answer she’d given twenty years before.

  “Which hospital?”

  “Beijing Hospital.” Again, the same answer.

  “What illness?”

  “Feel my forehead.”

  He hesitated, then reached out and felt Xuelian’s forehead. Though she’d broken out in a cold sweat only moments before, her forehead felt like hot coals. The policeman jerked his hand back.

  “Your county authorization letter?”

  “Sick as I am, good brother, when did I have time to wait for one of those?”

  “Sorry, but you’ll have to get off the bus.”

  “I can barely think straight. Will you take the responsibility if I get off and keel over dead?”

  “That’s a separate matter,” he said impatiently. “Have local doctors see you. You can come back to Beijing after the Congress closes.”

  She’d heard that before, twenty years before, to be exact.

  She leaned her head against the window. “I have asthma, and I’ll die if I can’t breathe. I’m too far from home, and I’m not getting off.”

  “Now you’re being unreasonable. Without authorization, you have to get off.” They scuffled until an elderly man sitting next to Li Xuelian stood up. Wearing a travel worn military uniform, he appeared to be a Party cadre.

  “If it’s proof you want,” he said, pointing at the policeman, “the state of her health ought to be all you need. I’ve been sitting next to her since she boarded the bus, and she’s been burning up the whole time. Would you be so uncaring if she were your sister?”

  Xuelian was moved by the man’s remarks; they were the first kind words she’d heard in days. S
omeone she’d never met ignited a range of emotions, and as she thought back over the hardships she’d endured for a week or more, that reminded her of what she’d suffered for twenty years; she began to wail, and the stunned policeman could only wave his hand defensively.

  “I don’t want to keep her from entering the city,” he said, “but the Congress is in session.”

  “So what?” the old man responded. “Aren’t the people permitted to go in to see a doctor? Doesn’t that include her?”

  Xuelian’s crying elicited expressions of anger from her fellow passengers. Many stood up and added their criticisms of the policeman’s behavior.

  “Who do you think you are?”

  “What happened to your humanity?”

  A young man with a crew cut shouted:

  “We’re not going to take it anymore. Let’s torch this bus!”

  In the face of all that anger, the flustered policeman could only say:

  “Don’t think I like doing this, but I have my orders.”

  He turned and got off the bus.

  With him gone, the bus proceeded on to Daxing. Li Xuelian thanked the elderly man and the other passengers; she stopped crying. But all that crying had weakened an already frail body. Before her tearful outburst she had been burning up; now she was so cold her teeth chattered and she couldn’t stop shivering. But she said nothing; getting into Beijing was all that mattered. Cold one minute, hot the next, but no more sweating. Cold and hot, back and forth, till she passed out and slumped against her fellow passenger.

  The man called out to stop the bus. The driver came back to look at Xuelian, and the sight of her lying there unconscious, added to the comment he’d overheard about asthma, alarmed him. He was less worried about his sick passenger than about the possibility of her dying on his bus. That was the sort of involvement he did not need.