Shenzheners

by Xue Yiwei

  My father shook his head helplessly. “To think that we used to be a model family,” he said. “How could we end up this way?” It sounded like he blamed the family crisis on Mother’s departure.

  The next day at three o’clock I rushed to my father’s place. I wasn’t in a hurry to hear what my father wanted to tell me, I just didn’t want him to worry himself unnecessarily if I were late. As I had reckoned, Father was up after his midday nap. His state of mind seemed a lot steadier than the day before. But before I sat down, he had already started to blame himself. He said that his outburst at the end of the funeral was unacceptable. He said he felt he had ruined the entire ceremony.

  I did not agree with him. I said I felt just the opposite. I felt that, in expressing his true emotion, he had brought the entire process to its proper climax.

  Father disagreed. He said my eulogy was the high point. Three people had been asked to speak. The first was the leader of my mother’s work unit, a young man with a gut. He had actually never been my mother’s colleague, because my mother had retired fifteen years before. And his eulogy, delivered in officialese, went on and on for thirty minutes. Father thought it was the most vapid eulogy. When the young man mentioned that Mother had served in the same work unit her whole working life, that she was a model of dedication, he used concrete figures to illustrate. He said that in her thirty-two years of work, Mother had never taken a day off, except for maternity leave. She only took three days off of sick leave, and every time she got sick she only took half a day off. Even the two postpartum leaves of absence she took were five days shorter than normal. These facts made the audience at the funeral click their tongues in amazement.

  My father thought little of my uncle’s eulogy. It was emotionally charged, but to him it sounded like a middle school student’s composition. There were too many adjectives and too few facts. What my father was least impressed with was that, in addition to praising my mother as a good big sister, he also said she was a good wife and mother. My father did not think the little brother should be the one to declare that she was a good wife. And the only ones that should be able to say that she was a good mother were her own children.

  My father thought that my own eulogy was a lot better than the first two. He said it was full of fine feelings and ample facts. In my eulogy I had discussed the last conversation I had with my mother before she passed away. My mother, strong-minded as always, said that she was satisfied with her life, mainly because she had a decent husband and two filial sons. She made a point of urging me to take good care of my father. She described herself as a workaholic, not as a good mother. She said that the honour of model family which the city had conferred upon us many times was a credit to my father’s sacrifices and contributions. This part of my eulogy moved my father, who hadn’t thought that at the very end, my mother would still care so much for him.

  My father had never been a talkative guy; taciturnity had always been his style. He did not like to speak much in his work unit or at home. When my brother and I were in elementary and junior high school, he was always the parent at the parent-teacher day who spoke the least. His sudden loquaciousness surprised me. What was more, he had never talked about other people behind their backs, but now he started doing just that. I was shocked.

  When he had finished assessing my eulogy, he looked at me solemnly. “Do you really think your mother was so perfect?” he asked.

  Only then did I realize that my father was not completely satisfied with my eulogy. “Of course, she had her faults,” I said.

  “For instance?” Father asked, his tone and expression serious.

  “Well, she always had to do everything herself. Just like she said, she was not a good mother,” I said. “But she’s not with us anymore. What’s the point of saying these things now?”

  “But there are some things that you can only say when someone has departed,” my father said earnestly.

  Now I wasn’t just surprised at what my father had said, I was alarmed. Was he going to getting “important things” off his chest when some things are better left unsaid?

  As expected, Father changed tack. “I only hit you guys one time. Do you still remember?” he asked.

  Of course I remembered. It happened during summer vacation when I was nine years old. It was a Thursday afternoon. My brother asked me nervously whether I would go swimming with him. He told me he was going to turn thirteen in a few days. He wanted to go into the water once before his birthday and see what swimming was like, because he really hated that classmate of his for saying that anyone who had not been swimming by thirteen would suffer stunted growth. He did not need me to go into the water with him, or rather he needed me not to go into the water, in case something happened to him. If there was any danger, I could call for help on shore.

  I understood my brother’s trepidation, because in our family swimming was taboo. My father had always strictly forbidden us from going swimming, or even from mentioning swimming. He said it was too dangerous. He claimed he himself had never even thought about going swimming. I agreed to go with my big brother, out of curiosity but also for his own safety. But I reminded him to think about how to deal with Father. Because if Father found out …

  My brother guaranteed that he would not find out. He rode his bicycle with me on the back, past the well-known psychiatric hospital. Soon we arrived at a fairly large pond. My brother walked down the stone steps, obviously extremely timid and nervous.

  “If Father finds out” and “If anything happens to him” echoed a duet in my head. I saw my brother standing on the final step. He made me turn away, and when he permitted me to look at him again, he was already in the water. I saw he had left his shorts on the final step. I don’t know how long he stayed in the pond. I was worried about him the whole time, worrying about those two possibilities.

  On the way home, my brother seemed extremely frustrated. He said that swimming was too difficult and that he might never learn.

  I remember all of this very clearly.

  Of course, the next memory was even clearer. That day, Father came home early from work because he knew we had gone out in the afternoon. As soon as he got in the door, he took down the feather duster—a murder weapon that mother would use to discipline us—from the back of the door. Father had always been much more patient than Mother. He had never been abusive. Naturally, we were shocked by his threat of physical punishment.

  Father ordered us to stand in front of him. He asked my brother where he had taken me on his bike that afternoon. On the way home, we had run into a colleague of my father’s. It must have been he who ratted us out.

  My brother gave the explanation he had prepared, saying we’d gone to a classmate’s home near the psychiatric hospital.

  Father turned to stare at me.

  I was trembling head to toe, nervous that the first “what if” would come true. Instinctively, I nodded.

  Father suddenly lost control. The duster smacked down on my arm. And then it smacked down on brother’s back, over and over again. We had never seen Father get so angry before. As he hit my brother, he berated us for breaking the rule against swimming, and even worse for lying to him about it.

  Protecting his head with his hands, my brother quoted from Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, saying that Father had not sought truth from facts, and that “he who makes no investigation and study has no right to speak.”

  Then Father said something we did not understand. After he said it he gave my brother another couple of hard lashes on the back.

  “What did I say?” my father asked, curious. I did not expect that he had forgotten the strange, confusing, and scary words he had uttered. Father gave me a sincere look, obviously wanting to know what he exactly he had said in the heat of anger that day.

  “You said that you smelled death on us,” I told Father. “You said that this was seeking truth from facts.”

&nbs
p; My father laughed wryly, as if he was making fun of his own memory.

  Then I told Father that my brother and I had often discussed it afterwards, but had never been able to figure out what he’d meant, or what that had to do with our secret swimming outing.

  My father adjusted his sitting posture. “That’s what I have to tell you about now,” he said solemnly.

  Father’s tone of voice intimated the importance of what he had to say. I leaned forward a bit, as if to get closer to my father’s memory. I anticipated that my father’s narration would set off a chain reaction. It might change our relationship.

  “I was not always a person who, as your mother put it, knew my place. I used to be lively and talkative. I only changed a few days after I got married,” he said. “Your mother actually fell in love with me because I had a rebellious streak. Just like all the other girls that liked me.”

  “I knew that you were the college champion in the hundred-and-ten-metre hurdles. And that for a lot of female classmates you were a heartthrob,” I said. Mother had mentioned lots of times that Father had been pursued by many girls at university.

  “But I bet you don’t know that I was also on the varsity swimming team,” Father said. “Track and field came later on, because the director of athletics thought that I had more potential to make the school proud in track and field.”

  I was shocked. “Didn’t you always tell us that you never even thought about learning to swim?” I asked.

  Father did not reply to my question. “At seventeen, I attended a municipal swimming competition,” he said. “I came fifth in the hundred-metre freestyle.”

  I could not accept the appearance of a different father from the one I had always known. It was as hard to accept as Mother’s departure. I didn’t know why my life had suddenly turned into a total farce. “What’s going on?” I said, aggravated. “You told us that you never ever thought about learning to swim.”

  My father was obviously prepared for my question. “Everything changed at noon that day,” he said calmly.

  I saw the same look in his eyes as he had had on the way back from the cemetery. He seemed to be gazing at scenes from an inescapable past.

  “It was the fifth day of our married life,” he said. “We were on our honeymoon, which we spent in your mother’s hometown. That day at noon, your mother took me to see that famous reservoir, and we went for a walk on the path around it. Your mother told me anecdotes from her childhood, one after another. She had an elementary school teacher who went on to marry a war hero. Her father was bitten by a poisonous snake one time when he was trying to catch mudfish, and to save himself, he scooped away a hunk of flesh from around the wound. And when the postman knew her father was not at home, he would stay and chat with her mother; he seemed always to have more to say to her.”

  “The beautiful scenery around the reservoir, and your mother’s wonderful stories, made me feel that life in a country village would be simple and agreeable, and that life in the good old days was so much less complicated. An honest sense of belonging arose in my heart. It was an even better feeling than the one I’d had on my wedding night, when I held your mother tight as we went to sleep. I couldn’t help myself—I held your mother’s hand. You should know that in our day and age, for a man and a woman to hold hands in public was considered uncouth. It was in bad taste, something the petty bourgeois would do. But at that specific moment, I felt that holding her hand was very natural. And very innocent. I believed the feeling would be mutual.”

  Father and Mother had never expressed affection for one another in front of us. I could not imagine them walking hand in hand.

  “That feeling gave me an intense desire for intimacy. To have such an urge in broad daylight gave me an anguished sense of guilt, like I was breaking the law. In that day and age, such a desire wasn’t just low class, but also dirty. It was for hooligans. But I couldn’t help myself. I turned and embraced your mother, and placed my lips upon hers,” Father said. “Right then, we heard the sound of someone calling for help. It’s a sound that I can still hear today. It was the sound of two children. It came from our right-hand side, from the shore, not far away from where we stood. The two children had a companion who was struggling for his life in the reservoir, about a hundred-and-fifty metres from shore. I would have needed just over a minute to swim to his side. I released your mother and prepared to dive in.”

  My father kept staring ahead, as if he had not left the scene. I anxiously waited for him to relate how he had saved the child.

  “I did not expect that your mother would react as she did. She held me tight. She would not let me go. ‘What happens if something happens to you?’ she asked severely,” Father said. “She must’ve known that nothing would happen to me. I was a very good swimmer and had adequate life-saving skills. There was no way anything could happen to me. But if I did not take action immediately, something was certain to happen to the child. I slipped out of your mother’s grasp.”

  I was on edge. I wished he would hurry up and get to the end of it.

  “But before I had managed to walk a step, your mother had knelt down on the ground and wrapped her arms around my legs,” Father said. “‘You’re so irresponsible,’ she said. ‘We’ve only been married for five days and now you’re going to abandon me.’ And then she started hitting the ground with her head, as if she was in such agony that she did not want to live.”

  I couldn’t connect my mother in my father’s story to the mother I had known at all.

  “The sound of the cries for help made me frantic. I begged your mother to let me go. I told her that it was my urgent duty to go and save that child. Surprisingly, your mother suddenly did as I had asked. She stood up, brushed the dirt off her pants, and said with icy calm, ‘You go. I won’t stop you. I won’t stand in your way. If you think that that stranger in the reservoir is more important than your own wife, then go.’ This was obviously not a change in her attitude, but a change in tactics. I couldn’t stand it. I realized that if I took action, leapt in to save the boy, I might have to sacrifice our marriage. I started shaking all over. I felt weak and craven. I did not even have the courage and energy to move my feet. Your mother continued with her reverse psychology. ‘Go on, then. I’m not stopping you or anything,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter whether you care about me or not.’ Her calmness, or should I say coldness, horrified me. Suddenly I felt totally blocked, emotionally,” Father said. “When I had recovered, your mother was already a long way off, walking towards the bus stop. I glanced at the reservoir, then at the two children who were still calling for help. My heart was full of fear. Eventually, in despair, I ran to your mother.”

  This dramatic ending made my heart sink. I did not know how to comfort my father, still less how to comfort myself.

  “Do you know how I made it through that night? That was the first sleepless night of my marriage, the first night on which I felt no sense of security. Your mother and I took the same public bus, but she refused to talk to me. She refused to talk to me even after we got home. She turned her back on me the entire evening,” Father said. “I was shivering in the night, hearing the cries for help of those two children in counterpoint with the calculatingly indifferent tone in your mother’s voice. We’d been married five days, and marriage had already caused me incredible shame. I already sensed that I would live with the shame for the rest of my life. In just five days, marriage had already filled me with dread.”

  My father’s words made me feel that Mother’s funeral had not ended. Father should have delivered a eulogy. And his eulogy would have been the grand finale.

  “The next day at dawn, I returned alone to the reservoir. Only a dozen hours before, I had felt a powerful longing for intimacy there, but after my first sleepless night of marriage, your mother was now a stranger. Dazed, I looked at the quiet and cold surface of the reservoir. I had a sudden urge to wade in,” Father said. �
��Before I was in up to my knees, a farmer carrying a load of manure walked by on the path. He shouted that it was very deep in the middle. ‘People drown in the reservoir every year,’ he said. ‘Just yesterday a middle school student died there.’”

  I couldn’t help calculating that if Father had saved him, that child would already have reached the age of retirement.

  “People say that everyone has an experience in their life that is the most important to them. And for me, this is it. From then on I became reticent. I became a person who knew his place. And from then on I shouldered almost all domestic duties,” Father said. “Your mother never mentioned the episode again. Had she not predeceased me, you would never have known about it. And I don’t know whether you should know about it. I don’t know what, if anything, it has to do with you.”

  I thought about the last thing Father had said. It seemed to me that even though it had happened before we were born, before we were even conceived, it still had something to do with us. No doubt about it. It had not only complicated our conception and birth, but also affected us as we were growing up, shaping the taboos of our childhood. It was part of our lives, or our lives were a part of it.

  “People may have different opinions about my loss of control at your mother’s grave. But nobody could know that I was in fact crying for another person, who’s been dead for nearly fifty years. I think he might be the first person your mother met in the underworld,” Father said. “I think he has already forgiven her. I even think that they might become soul mates.”

  I was certain, however, that Father had not forgiven her. Otherwise, why would he tell me about a trauma that had brought shame upon his marriage? I don’t know whether he’d ever had a moment during his married life when he thought that he might have died trying to rescue that boy. Might such a realization have made him grateful to my mother for holding him back? I did not want to ask him. Nor did I dare.

  “Now you know why you had such a sheltered upbringing, why I always kept such a close eye on you,” Father said. “In getting married, your mother and I had tied the knot with death. I have spent every moment of our marriage worrying about karmic retribution, and I think that this is reflected in your mother predeceasing me. I believe it is fate for you and your brother to know about what happened. Maybe, in time, other people will learn.”