I Did Not Kill My Husband

by Liu Zhenyun

  “How did you get so skinny, Ma?” he said with a look of surprise.

  “Have they brought you here in custody, Youcai?” she asked, ignoring the question about her appearance.

  “No,” he said. “I just came to tell you, Ma, not to protest.”

  “If that’s what you came to do, then you might as well go back home right now. I might have listened to you if you’d done this in the past, but everything’s different this year, and I’ll die before I give up.”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t protest, I’m saying you can’t do it this year.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  Without warning, Youcai burst into tears as he crouched down and wrapped his arms around his head.

  “My dad’s dead.”

  Xuelian did not understand him at first. But then the words “my dad” got through. He meant Qin Yuhe, and the news that he had died nearly made her head explode. She wasted no concern over Qin himself, but over the fact that with him dead she lost her reason to protest. The sham divorce had somehow become real and was the core of her action. That had spawned talk that she was Pan Jinlian and subsequent encounters with a range of officials. His death broke all those links in the chain. Where does the hair go when the skin no longer exists? In past years, he had been the target of her protest; this year was to be different—the targets were to be those officials, and Qin had faded into the background. But his death ruined everything, and the officials would be off the hook. Big Head Zhao had teamed up with them to trick her into his bed with his lies, thus actually turning her into a Pan Jinlian. She’d nearly died on the road to Beijing, but had made it somehow, only to see everything fall apart. Two wasted weeks. The officials were no longer in danger, and she had become a Pan Jinlian for nothing. All this was too much for her.

  “How did he die?” was all she could ask. “I didn’t know he was sick.”

  Youcai stood up.

  “A traffic accident. Five days ago. He and my stepmother had argued that night, so he stormed off to deliver a load of fertilizer. On the Yangtze River Bridge, he tried to avoid a passing car and slammed into a bridge pier. The truck flipped over into the river, him in it.” He began crying again. “At his age, with failing vision, he shouldn’t have been driving when he was angry.”

  The fullness of the news sunk in. Qin Yuhe died while she was lying unconscious in a hospital bed.

  “Qin Yuhe, you son of a bitch!” she cursed. “After ruining my life, you won’t even let go in death. Just like that, you’re gone, but what about me? You never told the truth about you and me. Not only that, you son of a bitch,” she ranted on, “nothing else will ever be resolved.”

  She began to howl, tears and mucus rolling down her face. She didn’t even try to wipe it away. She was crying harder over Qin Yuhe, her most bitter enemy, than she ever would over a loved one.

  An eighty-six-story commercial high rise rose up across the street from the Yuegezhuang farmer’s market. A gigantic video screen affixed to its wall was at that moment showing scenes of the ceremonial closing of the National People’s Congress. That morning, all the resolutions had been approved by unanimous consent, greeted by a round of thunderous applause.

  14

  Qin Yuhe’s death went unremarked the first two days, but on the third it came to the attention of County Chief Zheng Zhong, who learned of its connection to Li Xuelian’s failure to protest. On his return from a meeting in the city he passed by the county fertilizer plant and spotted a clutch of people at the entrance in front of a stand with a large funeral wreath. A middle-aged woman and a child in funeral sackcloth were kneeling in front of the wreath; she was holding a cardboard sign on which was written: QIN YUHE, YOU DIED FOR NOTHING

  At first the name meant nothing to Zheng, who wondered what the apparent dispute was all about.

  “Stop the car,” he said to his driver.

  The driver pulled to the side of the road, where Zheng said to his secretary, who was sitting in the front passenger seat:

  “Go find out what this is all about. We can’t have something like that at the western entrance to the county seat, where cars and pedestrians stream past.”

  His secretary returned five minutes later to report that the family of the deceased was arguing with the plant foreman over compensation offered for the traffic death of one of its drivers. That’s an internal affair at the plant, Zheng said to himself. The chief of a county has no business getting involved. All that would accomplish is to stir things up even more. Better to let them hash it out over a couple of weeks, with a little give and take by both sides, until the matter is resolved. This sort of dispute requires a cooling off period. With that, Zheng told his driver to drive on. But when the car drove into the county government compound, a vague memory surfaced in Zheng’s mind.

  “Qin Yuhe, why does that name sound so familiar?”

  His secretary, who hadn’t made the connection either, took out his phone and punched in the number of the fertilizer plant’s manager. He followed his boss into the building, and when they were in the Chief’s office, he said:

  “I’ve got your answer. The dead man, Qin Yuhe, was the ex of our ‘Little Cabbage.’”

  The news that Qin was Li Xuelian’s ex-husband meant little to Zheng until he was sitting at his desk, when he finally made the connection between Qin Yuhe’s death and Li Xuelian’s protests. He banged his hand down on the desk excitedly.

  “This is no run-of-the-mill incident,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” his secretary asked. “It’s just a traffic accident.”

  “If it was anyone else, it would be an ordinary traffic accident. But not with Li Xuelian’s ex-husband. Their marriage is what her protest is all about. Now that he’s dead, the marriage issue is settled, so what reason does she have? None.”

  His secretary got the picture. “The accident was a godsend,” he said.

  Having no interest in discussing the virtues of the accident, Zheng snatched up his phone and placed a call to Chief Justice Wang Gongdao in Beijing, where he was conducting the search for Li. He told him about Qin Yuhe’s death. Wang was shocked. But the significance of the news quickly became clear.

  “That’s wonderful news. With him dead, Li has no reason to protest. It’s over.” After a moment, he continued: “We can head home.”

  But Zheng surprised him:

  “You missed my meaning. This turn of events makes taking Li into custody more urgent than ever.”

  “Why? If she doesn’t have a case, won’t we be wasting our time?”

  “Li might not know that Qin is dead, and still plans to disrupt the Congress.”

  “There’s no reason for her to do that now,” Wang replied. “If she does, she’ll be guilty of deliberate provocation. We’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

  “You just don’t get it, do you? It’s critical to stop her now. If she crashes the Congress, when the high-ranking people investigate, they won’t concern themselves with why she protested, but with the political fallout from having someone crash the Congress. If her protest succeeds, we deserve to be censured. But if it doesn’t and we still suffer the consequences, wouldn’t we be the losers?”

  Zheng’s explanation made things clear to Wang. But he and his team of a dozen or more men had searched the streets and byways of Beijing, above and underground, for over a week without finding a trace of Li Xuelian. Zheng was unsympathetic to the claim that finding someone in a city as big as Beijing was next to impossible.

  “Go find her,” he insisted, “and tell her that her ex is dead. Then and only then will this be over.”

  “Even if we find her,” Wang protested, “how do you know she’ll believe us when we say Qin Yuhe is dead? She could consider it a ruse.”

  The logic was convincing, and that is when Zheng came up with the plan to send her son to Beijing. She’d surely believe him. After ending the call with Wang, Zheng placed a call to the county police chief, who was in Beijing, informing them
of Qin’s death and stressing the importance of tightening the cordon around the Great Hall of the People during the final days of the Congress to keep Li Xuelian from crashing the show. He reminded him that people tend to slack off as time passes, and that is when incidents normally occur. Two months earlier, Li had escaped because of a lull by those assigned to watch her. That was back in the village. Beijing was a whole different matter. There could be no lapses now. Yes, yes, the police chief said compliantly.

  To save time, the court sent Xuelian’s son, Qin Youcai, to Beijing in a police car, straight through the night. Wang Gongdao said nothing to him when they met, but a deputy chief justice, who had accompanied him to Beijing, surprised Wang by telling him that while he and his men were looking for Li Xuelian, County Chief Zheng had also sent his security chief and dozens of police to Beijing to search for her. That damned Zheng Zhong had sent two teams to Beijing without telling him, proof that he did not trust him or anyone else associated with the court. On the other hand, it was comforting news, in that if Li was not caught before she crashed the Congress, the blame would not fall only on the court system; the security people would get their share, which ought to be greater than Wang’s, since they had sent so many more people. Feeding and boarding a phalanx of security personnel added up to several times that expended by Wang in Beijing.

  Despite the addition of Qin Youcai to the search, Wang held out little hope that they would be successful. If they managed to get through the three remaining days of the Congress with no incident, even if they did not find her, they could breathe easy. But Wang said nothing of this to his subordinates. Like Zheng Zhong, he demanded that his men keep up the search. He had started out with fourteen men ten days earlier. Two had taken ill eight days ago, but were back on the job. To this was added a deputy chief justice and a driver, making a total of seventeen, including Wang himself, a significant force. Zheng Zhong had commanded them to take Li into custody before the closing ceremony of the Congress, and he would not treat them lightly if she managed to cause an incident in the remaining three days. He’d sack every last one of them before he himself was shown the door. The force with which he said this made believers out of everyone, even though he did not really mean it. They searched for Li as never before. In three days it would all be over, they reflected, so this was no time to let down their guard, not after ten incident free days. Wang held out little hope that they’d actually catch Li, but since extra vigilance was ordered, he had his men make sweeps of certain locales twice a day instead of once every three days. Which made it even more surprising that two days later, Li was taken into custody at the Yuegezhuang farmer’s market.

  In strictest terms, she wasn’t so much taken into custody as she fell into her pursuers’ hands by accident. Wang Gongdao and his men played no role in the occurrence; they had the young Anjing, from the Bullhead Hospital to thank for that. If not for his persistent demand to be paid, she’d still be free. But that now meant nothing, and Wang Gongdao reveled in a sense of joyful relief. Hateful though Chief Zheng remained for his duplicity, it was Wang’s people who had Li Xuelian in custody, which earned him richly deserved credit. Moreover, Wang’s success meant those from the Security Bureau had wasted manpower, effort, and money with nothing to show for it.

  While Li wept over her dashed hopes, Wang took out his phone and called County Chief Zheng to tell him that Li was in custody.

  “We finally got her, Chief Zheng, after ten excruciating days. She’s been told that Qin was killed in a truck accident. Can you hear her crying over the news? Her plans are useless now and she will never again crash the National People’s Congress.”

  The news came as a relief to Zheng, though not in the same way it had come to Wang, who viewed the situation on its own merits, figuring whoever was involved in the capture deserved credit, and now everyone could return home. What pleased Zheng was that finding her was different this time. Now Qin Yuehe was dead and there would be no more trouble with Li in Beijing, not now, not ever. Qin himself had inadvertently seen to that. Li had gained fame as a modern-day Little Cabbage. Now the cabbage had turned to mush in the pot.

  Never had someone’s death brought a man so much joyful release. And because of that, Zheng was able to overlook Chief Justice Wang’s mistakes. He said over the phone:

  “Tell everyone I appreciate their hard work. When you’re back home, I’ll treat you all to a celebratory dinner.”

  Seeing how happy Zheng was, Wang knew that his disputes with the county chief had vanished like a puff of smoke.

  “On behalf of the entire team,” Wang said happily, “I thank Chief Zheng. We’ll bring Li Xuelian back to the county as soon as she stops crying.”

  After hanging up, Zheng called to tell Mayor Ma that the matter was closed. His report differed from Wang’s report to him, in that he mainly wanted to bring relief to Ma, whereas Wang had wanted to bring laurels onto himself. Zheng had not forgotten that Ma had been “somewhat disappointed” in him, and this was his chance to rescue his political reputation. In the Li Xuelian affair, this was his first opportunity to bring good news to his superior, who was still in Beijing taking part in the Congress, which would wrap up the next day.

  When his call went through, he almost breathlessly explained how Li Xuelian’s ex-husband had died in a traffic accident, bringing to an end any need for her to protest ever again. Ma Wenbin’s relief was palpable, but his response lacked Zheng’s excitement and jubilation when he heard the news.

  “This is totally unexpected,” he said.

  Zheng assumed that he was referring to Qin’s accidental death.

  “It was to me, too,” he said. “His truck went right into the river.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Ma said. “This affair was brought to a successful conclusion through unexpected events, not by anything we did. In other words, an inconclusive conclusion. That’s what’s unexpected.”

  Zheng hadn’t expected that.

  “The Li Xuelian affair may have ended,” Ma said, his tone increasingly stern, “but we have not changed the way we think about things, and our leadership prowess has not been elevated. The quality of our mastery and guidance of events is stalled. We’ve struggled with his Li Xuelian business for twenty years, and why is that? If it had been caused by something major I wouldn’t have minded. But as I’ve said time and again, it arose out of something very small. Take my advice, Zheng, and do not relax your vigilance. The Li Xuelian affair is not over. It will be over only when we have learned a profound lesson from the experience. If not, while this time it was a Li Xuelian, the next time it will be a Wang Xuelian.”

  Once again, Zheng Zhong’s report had backfired. What had started out as good news only brought him a reprimand. He broke out in a cold sweat.

  “Don’t worry, Mayor Ma, we will take a profound lesson from this Li Xuelian affair, starting from the tiniest detail in order to make our work more thoroughgoing and down to earth.”

  “One more thing. Even though the woman did not carry out her plan, be sure to take her back home. The Congress runs one more day, and the last thing we want is for her to introduce any more complications in Beijing. That is another detail.”

  “Don’t worry, Mayor Ma. She is with court personnel at this very moment, and I will tell them to bring her back without delay.”

  15

  Ma Wenbin told Zheng Zhong to deliver Li Xuelian back home, an order that was passed on to Wang Gongdao, who did nothing of the kind. Not because he and his people did not want to or that she said she would die first and was unyielding in her desire to raise a stink, but because she’d passed out as a result of her incessant crying at the farmer’s market. After forcing herself to travel to Beijing from Bullhead town when she was still in the grip of a serious illness, she remained in delicate physical condition. Already deeply troubled by the pressure to pay for her hospital stay and her inability to carry out her protest, plus the unexpected news of Qin Yuhe’s death, she realized that
she had endured the last ten bitter days and, for that matter, the hardships of the past twenty years, for nothing. Everything got under her skin; every new incident was worse than the one before.

  Her collapse unnerved Wang. Her son, Qin Youcai, picked her up just as Yue Xiaoyi returned from the bank. Frantically, they carried her into the room Yue rented behind the market. The unconscious Xuelian immediately spiked a fever, a clear indication that she was in no shape to travel. Naturally, since she was unconscious, they could, if they wanted to, simply transport her without her knowledge. But that struck Wang as too risky. What if she died on the road? There had been no complications with Qin’s death, a self-triggered traffic accident, but the possibility of her death spelled trouble for Wang, who would be seen as the cause. Faced with a dilemma, he phoned Zheng Zhong, who was not about to take the responsibility for moving Li back to the county.

  “This is not good,” he said after a thoughtful pause.

  “Tell you what,” he continued, “since the Congress only runs one more day and she’s not up to traveling, assign someone the sole job of watching her till it’s over. After that, you’re free to leave.”

  At this point, that was about the only thing they could do. So Wang Gongdao summoned all seventeen courthouse personnel to Yuegezhuang and formed them into three-man squads to patrol the area around Yue Xiaoyi’s room in four-hour shifts. They were to look in on Li Xuelian every half hour. Wang and his deputy were in charge of the operation, also on a four-hour rotating basis, though they spent their shifts in a police car outside, rejoicing over the fact that Xuelian remained unconscious for a full twenty-four hours, from noon one day to noon the next, at which time the gigantic TV screen on the building across the street from the farmer’s market showed the closing ceremony of the National People’s Congress; a new government administration was formally in place. Wang’s shouts for joy echoed the thunderous applause from the Great Hall of the People. Nearly two weeks of hard work by all, from top to bottom, had been amply rewarded; their work, for this year and for the previous twenty, was done. A full stop had been placed at the end of Xuelian’s protests, and all seventeen men, led by Wang Gongdao, began heading home from the Yuegezhuang farmer’s market. After a discussion with Wang, Youcai stayed behind to care for his still unconscious mother.