Remembering 1942

by Liu Zhenyun

  When Sun was first promoted, they still treated each other like brothers, since they had started out together, but the distance between them grew over time. Seeing how He had grown diffident, Sun began ordering him around.

  “Copy this document for me, Lao He.”

  “Lao He, get the stuff at the general manager’s office.”

  One time, when they were all given tickets for a movie, Lao He went with his wife and Lao Sun went with his. They were sitting together. Sun pointed at He and said to his wife when they met, “This is Lao He from our section.”

  Lao He should have introduced Sun to his wife as “our deputy section head, Lao Sun,” but the man’s tone of voice irked him. They’d come to the office at the same time, and He didn’t mind if Sun acted like the boss at the office, but why must he do that in front of their wives? He said nothing. But even without her husband’s introduction, his wife knew who Sun was. On their way home after the movie, his wife said angrily, “See how well he’s done, a deputy section head? Then look at you. You’re still a foot soldier. I have no idea what you’ve been doing these twenty years.”

  To be sure, Sun was not the one who’d done the very best. Lao Zhang had also lived in the dorm, but he’d obviously fared better than Sun. That gave He a reason to rebuff his wife: “What’s so great about him? He has to act like a grandson around ‘Grandpa’ Zhang.”

  “Then what about you, his great-grandson?” his wife retorted.

  He went silent. Damn it all. How did this happen? We came at the same time, so what happened to divide us into grandfather, grandson, and great-grandson? What’s wrong with the world? He sighed.

  Sun did not normally have an airing-out with He; there was no need, since he was He’s boss. So He felt anxious. What does Sun want to talk to me about?

  Nothing special, it turned out. Sun began by shooting the breeze.

  “Are you still living on Niujie?” he asked.

  “Where else would I be living?” He tilted his glasses to glare at Sun. “I’d like to move to the leaders’ compound at Zhongnanhai, but they won’t let me.”

  Instead of getting upset, Sun smiled good-naturedly.

  “Does the roof still leak?”

  Lao He’s temper flared at the mention of the leaky roof.

  “You should have seen what happened on April fifteenth after that rainstorm. We even laid out the rinsing cups, and my wife and I got into a fistfight over it.”

  “Whose fault is it that your rank’s so low?” Sun said unsympathetically. “You’d have moved out long ago if you were a section head.”

  Naturally that only made He angrier. “I’d like to be, but you won’t recommend me.”

  Sun chortled. When he managed to control himself, he took out a cigarette, lit it, and continued, “Let’s talk about something serous, Lao He. About the office. Lao Zhang has left, you know that.”

  What does that have to do with me? Lao He wondered.

  “Lao Zhang is outrageous,” Sun said as he looked at He. “Remember back when we were living in the dorm and how he got a two-room unit? He’s a deputy bureau chief now, so they say … Lao He, I don’t want to be section chief, but normally it’s clear who should take over. But I heard something yesterday. The bureau wants an opinion poll on who should be the next section head. What kind of lousy idea is that? I suspect it was Lao Zhang’s idea.”

  “But isn’t that what the Central Government has been advocating lately?”

  “You believe bullshit like that? Who was polled for Zhang’s promotion? He should be doing something good after taking over as deputy bureau chief, but instead he tries to put people down. What a prick. You know that he and I had issues before.”

  Lao He stared at Lao Sun.

  “Here’s what I think, Lao He. Zhang is being difficult and obviously doesn’t like me. I’m not afraid of him, and we shouldn’t wait for other people to decide our fate. How’s this? We’ll work on those running the bureau and the ministry. We’ll spend whatever is necessary, and if it works out we’ll take over the section. You’ll be my deputy section head.”

  Confused by what he was hearing, Lao He was quiet for a while before stammering, “That, um—can we do that?”

  “You’re so damned naïve. Who doesn’t get promoted that way these days? I’m suggesting this because we once lived in the same dormitory. Let’s stop pretending, all right? Let me ask you this. Do you want to move into a better place? Do you want to be the deputy section chief?”

  Lao He gave the question some thought and said, “Of course I do.”

  “Well, that’s it, then.” Sun clapped his hands. “We don’t have to be afraid of Lao Zhang if we join forces. He doesn’t have any sway in the bureau party committee. They won’t take him too seriously since he’s just been promoted.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Sun laughed. He knew that what Lao He really meant was he’d go home and talk it over with his wife; he also knew that Lao He’s wife would definitely tell him to work with Lao Sun. That put Sun’s mind at ease.

  “That’s all for today,” he said. “Let’s go back for lunch. I imagine the poll won’t take place for a while yet, so we still have time. But this is just between us, so don’t tell anyone else.”

  Lao He gave him a look of “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  “After working in the same office for so long, Lao Zhang is a jerk to act the way he is,” Sun added as they headed back inside.

  So they had lunch together that day. Not knowing what kind of airing out Sun had with He, the others didn’t give it much thought, and instead focused on the food and drinks, creating a festive air. What puzzled Lao He was that after badmouthing Lao Zhang, Sun had gone up to the second floor to invite Zhang to the luncheon. He even went so far as to suggest “a toast to our esteemed leader.” Lao He realized that Sun was also a jerk.

  The luncheon ended at two o’clock. They were given the afternoon off to hold a dance. Every one’s face was bright red by then, though no one was drunk, no one but Lao Qiao, who had been feeling down recently and obviously had a bit too much to drink. But it seemed to help her get over whatever was bothering her and she felt good enough to go with her younger colleagues to dance in the second floor conference room.

  Lao He did not join in. They really were out of coal briquettes, so he asked Lao Sun for leave and went looking for a three-wheeler to carry coal home.

  4

  Xiao Lin was twenty-nine. He had been working in the same office for four years after graduating from college. He felt he’d learned more in four years at the office than in college. When he first arrived, he still looked like a college student and, like most youngsters, didn’t care much about anything. He was often late to work and knocked off early; he came to work in sandals; he never took the initiative in office cleaning; he frequently had parties with classmates who worked in other offices, and didn’t bother to clean up after they left.

  “Do you think you’re still in college?” Lao Zhang reprimanded him. “Do you think you can just come and go as you please?”

  The comment irritated Xiao Lin, who argued with Zhang.

  Lin had another problem—he was careless with his words. For example, when he got together with college friends, they’d ask each other about work and the workplace. Lin’s response to “how’s your office” was,

  “Our office suffers an imbalance of yin and yang, with four men and two women.”

  Somehow the comment made it back to the office and enraged everyone there.

  Another case in point: back when he’d sat at the desk across from Lao Qiao, who had yet to suffer any female problems, she kindly helped him with things. Being the party’s office leader, she had an airing-out with him to get him to apply for membership. Out of kindness, she let on that Lao He was also applying.

  “Lao He may have been here for twenty years, but you can get in before him if you align yourself with the party.”

  She had issues with Lao He, but her
advice to Lin was well intentioned, so it came as a surprise when he said, “Right now I’m not particularly interested in your illustrious party, so I’ll let Lao He in first.”

  Later, when he’d come to his senses and wanted to join, it was too late, since the party organization had already begun grooming Lao He. Xiao Lin was told he needed more education and testing to raise his consciousness. Since then he’d been told to turn in monthly reports on his personal ideology, focusing on his understanding of the “illustrious party.”

  But he realized his mistake too late. It took him three years to rid himself of his childish attitude, something that occurred not as a result of self-reflection, but was imposed by others. It became a recurring issue every time he tried to join the party. Some of his college pals had already become party members; he had not. Some had been promoted to deputy principal section chief, some were even principal section chiefs; he was still a clerk. Now when they got together, they no longer felt at ease with each other, so no more joking around or acting childish. As for housing assignments, some received two-room units, some one-room units, while he, even as a married man, had to share an apartment with another family, all because of his low rank. The mere mention of apartment sharing had him on edge, for it was truly sharing—two newlywed couples lived in a two-room unit, sharing the living room, the kitchen, and the toilet. When he was first married, it hadn’t bothered him; he was happy just to have a place for the two of them. As time went on, the families began fighting over the public spaces. Such as the kitchen. When they got off work, they were all hungry, so who got to cook dinner first? Or the living room. Whose stuff should be out there? Or the toilet. Every one needed to use it, but who would clean it? Who would empty the trash can? They all tried to be nice at first, but their patience began to wear thin. The men dealt with it better than their wives, who scowled when they met. In the end, each day was characterized by bad moods, from dinnertime to bedtime. Little by little, it affected them physically, as every few days a conflict—open or veiled—erupted over something trivial.

  The other couple’s wife was particularly hard to deal with; a shrew with a doughy face and fuzzy hair, she’d never let go of an issue if she didn’t have to. Both families’ coal briquettes were stored in the kitchen, and Lin’s wife once accidently used one of theirs. Who knew that the wife kept track of hers? When she counted and realized that one was missing, she cursed the so-called thief, throwing things around, even tossing Lin’s suit coat, which was drying on the balcony, into a muddy puddle on the ground.

  Then there was the toilet. At first they agreed to take turns cleaning it, but at some point they lost track of the schedule. After a while, filth began to pile up. No one wanted to scrub the toilet either, and the seat and cover were often wet. Xiao Lin said, “It’s okay. It won’t kill us to clean the toilet. I’ll do it if they won’t.”

  But his wife grabbed his collar to stop him.

  “Don’t. We have to hold out. We can’t let her intimidate us.”

  The toilet got dirtier as time went by. Once the blocked drain sent filth out to flood the floor, and neither family would clean it up even though they had to live with it for three days.

  If anything, this was just the beginning of their troubles. After a lapse in birth control the previous year, Lin and his wife had a baby, which ushered in more trouble. Lin brought his mother out from the countryside to help care for the baby. She spent only one night in the living room, when the other couple came to talk to him, saying it was a public space that could not be used by one family alone. They were right, of course. So Lin moved his mother into his bedroom, where she shared the bed with his wife. A different kind of clash arose after that. The other woman could not have a child of her own and could not stand a baby’s cries. Whenever Lin’s child cried at night, she turned on their cassette player with the volume so high it was impossible for the baby to go back to sleep and made life a living hell for Lin and his family. They had to walk around the room with the baby in their arms.

  “She’s not human,” Lin’s wife said. “She’s an animal.”

  Human or animal, either way they had to share the apartment. So Lin often said, “If we could get our own place, even a single room would be okay.”

  But he had to be a principal staff member for that. Who would promote him after he’d been so slapdash and carefree? And who would assign him a place of his own if he was still a clerk?

  If that weren’t bad enough, he had to deal with inflation. He had no idea why the damned prices kept going up. His and his wife’s combined salaries were insufficient to support a family of four, so they could only afford discarded sweet peppers and cabbages, never meat or fish. Back when he was single, he could spend his money however he wanted, but now he had to line up with old women to buy discarded vegetables. They could eat discards or forgo fresh vegetables entirely, but what about the baby? Could he live without his baby formula, eggs, or meat? Once his wife picked up the baby and began to cry the moment she came home. He asked her what was wrong.

  “When I talk to people in my office, I learn that their babies eat shrimp,” his wife said. “And us? We’re not doing the right thing for our baby. He’s going to have shrimp even if I have to sell my sweater tomorrow. Look at his dull, yellow hair and the blotches on his head. That’s a sign of calcium deficiency.”

  That brought tears to Lin’s eyes. He sobbed as he said he’d let them down, and it was all because of his low salary. He had to be promoted to get more pay and to do that, he could not act as if he could not care less about his job.

  Money, housing, food, sleep, the toilet, and everything else hinged on how well he fared at the office. He had to do better to provide for his wife and baby. So he developed the habit of staring blankly at Lao He, seeing his future self in He’s gaunt, lusterless face. What would he say to his family if he ended up like him, still a clerk at fifty, with his kind of salary and living quarters? He shuddered each time he thought about it. What would he say if someone asked:

  “What have you been doing all these years?”

  That was how he turned a new leaf. He came to work on time, exchanging his sandals for cloth shoes; he stopped making jokes and got active in cleaning up the office and fetching hot water for everyone; he showed respect to the old-timers. When the pears came, he offered to bring them in and divide them up. He gathered up the skins when everyone was done eating; he got the desks ready before the luncheon without being told to. What was interesting was how the others viewed him. Back when he was an indifferent slacker, the others thought it was natural for him to be a slacker. Now that he’d turned over a new leaf, they took the change for granted. When the office needed cleaning or the vacuum bottle needed a refill of hot water, they’d say:

  “What is it with Xiao Lin?”

  Besides taking the initiative at work, Lin also turned proactive in other areas. He filled out an application to join the party, he wrote an ideological report once a month, and he had frequent chats with party members like Lao Qiao, Lao Zhang, and Lao He. Slowly he came to a new understanding: the world was big and China had a huge population, but what demanded one’s immediate attention were simply the few people around you. That went for everyone, including the minister, the bureau chief, the section head, and Xiao Lin himself, of course, whether you were ambitious or not. He started by cleaning the office, bringing in hot water, and gathering fruit peels, in order to move up the ladder. Joining the party, like cleaning up, was a prerequisite for moving up. How could you be a deputy section head if you didn’t join the “illustrious party”? But to do that, he had to fill out an application and write ideological reports to re-examine why it had been “your illustrious party” to him then and was now the party he wanted to join. Come clean, Xiao Lin. Otherwise, you’ll never be a party member, and that means you’ll never do well enough to move up and never eat, sleep, and shit well! And don’t be naïve. Do you honestly believe that what you’ve done is all you need to do to become a party me
mber? Wrong. That only represents the first step in a long march, to be followed by more important steps—working on relationships with party members, who will then become backers.

  Everyone wanted to be a party member, so what would make Xiao Lin their first choice? Take Lao Qiao for example. She was the section’s party leader, so he had to be on good terms with her, even though she was his least favorite officemate. In her fifties and nearing retirement, she was a nag who smelled bad. Back when he’d just arrived, with his devil-may-care attitude, he’d declared, “There should be a rule against anyone with BO working here, so as not to affect other people’s mental balance.”

  When she heard his comment, she complained to Lao Zhang, saying the new college grad had launched a personal attack on her. Now Lin had to get to know her and her body odor, enduring both even in the hottest month; he had to sit next to her once a month when he gave his report and poured his heart out.

  But even that wasn’t enough. He made a few gestures at certain moments in the hope that she would lend him her support. Once, during a reunion with his college pals, someone brought up the number of young, single women who had slept with officials of various ranks. The others were saying that Chinese women had no moral integrity.

  “Not true,” Lin disagreed. “They are the epitome of that.”

  And so, on May 2, still a work holiday, he took the subway to call on Lao Qiao with two bags of preserved fruit and a bottle of sesame oil (brought back by his mother from her hometown), as well as a sack of walnuts (a gift for his son’s one-month ceremony) and several soft drinks. His wife objected at first, saying they needed to save the money for milk for the baby. He explained to her that he was going to see Lao Qiao when they needed the money for milk precisely so that the baby could have more in the future. They went back and forth until he ran out of patience and called her “nearsighted,” afflicted with peasant consciousness, before she let him go. He spent half an hour at Qiao’s house, ate two apples, and was told that he had been doing well lately. The party group had deliberated his application, which would likely be approved during the first half of the year.