Remembering 1942

by Liu Zhenyun

“Who with?”

  “Guess.”

  Lin went through the list of women who might be involved in affairs. “Zhang Xiaoli?”

  Hu shook his head.

  “Wang Hong?”

  Hu shook his head again.

  “Sun Yuling?”

  More head shaking.

  “That’s it then. I knew he didn’t have a problem. Even if he did, it would never be something you say. With that pig’s neck of his, he couldn’t find anyone to be involved with if he wanted to.”

  “But he did,” Hu said with a broad grin. “I’ll narrow the possibilities for you. It’s someone in your office.”

  “Our office?” Lin was confounded. “Xiao Peng?”

  “No.”

  “That was it.” Lin clapped his hands. “There’s no one else, unless we’re talking about a homosexual liaison.”

  “You forgot the other woman.” Hu giggled as he continued. “I won’t make you guess any more. It’s Lao Qiao.”

  “Lao Qiao? How is that possible?” Lin was so stunned he nearly bounced off the ceiling. “They’re old. Besides, how in the world did they get together? Impossible.”

  “What do you know? So what if they’re old? Old age translates into experience. Want to know where they did it? In Lao Zhang’s office. I hear they were trying something new and were caught in the act. You see, older people know lots of tricks.”

  Lin stood there blankly while Hu walked off with his vacuum bottle, but turned back when he reached the door.

  “Want to know who caught them? It was none other than his wife. I heard she’d been on his track for several days.”

  Lin was too amazed to move. This is crazy. How could that be possible? Lao Zhang and Lao Qiao both seem so upright. How come I didn’t notice anything? As Lin thought about it, he realized that Lao Qiao had been absent for two days, but no one knew why. At noon the previous day, he also saw Sun and He whispering animatedly, but they clammed up the moment they saw him. They pretended to be talking about something else, so something must have happened. He recalled seeing Zhang’s wife walk out of Chief Xiong’s office, her eyes red. Lin had wondered why she hadn’t bothered to say hello, after he’d helped them move. Ingrate, he thought. Now it all made sense. Something had happened to Zhang. Damn!

  He shook his head and sighed his way back to the office. Unlike the day before, when Zhang’s incident had been secret, no one at the office felt the need to suppress the news and guard against each other. Now an open discussion took over the office. Sun cheered visibly, with a reddish glow on his face. When Lin came in with the water, it meant everyone was present, so Sun announced, as if relaying documents from the central government, “I have something to say before we start work today. You may feel as unprepared for the news as you were years ago when Lin Biao defected and people were shocked, wondering how Chairman Mao’s closest comrade in arms could defect. But he did. So I’m going to tell you something, and you’ll be just as shocked. I won’t blame you if you are. But you won’t be any longer, once we analyze the situation. I too was shocked when I heard, but I soon recovered from the shock. Nothing happens overnight; there is always a process. We were too careless and insensitive to notice the process. It’s not a major incident, but neither is it trivial. It’s like this: Lao Zhang, originally from our office, and Lao Qiao, currently from our office, have committed a lifestyle problem. They were caught in the act. In theory, our section does not deal with sordid issues like this. Comrade Zhang’s wife caught the adulterers in the act and filed a complaint with the bureau. Some of you may ask why I’m telling you this, since it’s not our concern. Well, after some thought, it seemed necessary, since it could involve our work. That is why I’m bringing it up today. After he was found out, Comrade Zhang was put on leave to write a self-criticism. He was in charge of our section, along with Sections 6 and 7, wasn’t he? Well, we’ve been notified by the bureau that Deputy Bureau Chief Xu will take over Sections 6 and 7, while Bureau Chief Xiong himself will be in charge of our section.”

  When he was finished, the office was abuzz over what had happened; the talk would likely continue for some time. Xiao Lin took the opportunity to make a quick tour of the building; everyone in the other sections was talking about the same thing, supplementing details that he hadn’t heard, such as how Zhang and Qiao first got hooked up, how many times they had done it, what the room looked like, how his wife found out about it, how she stormed the door, how they were stark naked, but she would not let them get dressed before calling Chief Xiong over to have a good look, and so on. The matter occupied everyone’s mind and time, from morning to afternoon, from the time they boarded the bus till they got off. Naturally, they relayed what they’d heard to their spouses.

  In fact, it wasn’t as complicated as everyone thought. Here is how it happened: one day, Zhang was picking his teeth after finishing his lunch (rice with stir-fried celery and a small dish of pork belly) and was about to lie down on the sofa for a nap when Qiao pushed open the door and entered with a work report. He was displeased that she’d come at naptime, but, reminded that he was a deputy bureau chief, he decided to take the high road. So, patting the sofa, he invited her to sit down. Using the work report as a pretense to request a promotion to associate research investigator, Qiao talked a blue streak; asking him to consider her case. She reminded him that she was about to retire and would not come see him again after this. Zhang wanted to get rid of her quickly, so he said, “Sure, all right. I’ll bring it up at our next meeting.”

  Unexpectedly worked up by his quick agreement, like a young girl, she patted the back of his hand, which was as thick as a toad’s belly.

  “You are, after all, from our section, Lao Zhang. You’re the only one who cares about me, when every one else bullies me.”

  She began to sob, even wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. When she first put her hand on his, Zhang felt his heart stirring; no one except his wife ever showed any interest in him, a man in his fifties with a pig’s neck. Now seeing her cry, he was somewhat aroused. He turned and saw she was sobbing like a girl. They had come to the section at about the same time, when she had been quite a looker, prettier even than Xiao Peng. So he patted her on the shoulder and said, “Don’t cry, Xiao Qiao. You can count on me.”

  The term, “Young” Qiao, for a young woman, gave her the illusion that she had returned to her younger self, and a momentary lapse of judgment had her press her shoulder in his arms. Zhang, too, suffered a momentary lapse of judgment, and began to grope her, clumsily. His wife pushed open the door right at that moment. She rarely showed up at the office, so it was just his luck that she wasn’t feeling well and had asked for a sick leave, but then forgot her key. She could not believe her eyes when she walked in on them. Being in a bad mood from her physical discomfort to begin with, she flew into a jealous rage at witnessing her husband fooling around with another woman in his office. Leaping into action, first she gave Qiao two vicious slaps and then wailed her way out and into Chief Xiong’s office next door. Go take a look. Go see what Lao Zhang is doing. In the meantime, Zhang was stupefied. He and Qiao had always acted properly, yet after several decades of proper behavior, they did what they did, and when they were old, no less! He could not get over his puzzlement, which was why his hand remained between her legs (outside her pants) when Xiong walked in.

  “Look at you, Lao Zhang. What do you think you’re doing?”

  Once things calmed down and everyone—Qiao, Zhang’s wife, and Xiong—had left, Zhang went limp, as it finally dawned on him what he had done that day. Regret set in. Damn it all! It was like trying to shoot a fox but getting only the foul odor. He stayed in his office all afternoon, not even going out when his bladder was so full it hurt. Naturally he couldn’t come to work the next day, and the bureau told him to stay home and write a self-criticism. Qiao decided to stay away also, even without notification from the bureau. Separately in their respective homes, Zhang and Qiao calmed down and, as regret welled up, found faul
t with the other.

  “You’re no good, Lao Zhang, you sneaky old man. How dare you take advantage of me in a moment of weakness!”

  “What a bitch, that Lao Qiao. How could she not know that her seduction could ruin me?”

  But Zhang was, after all, in a leadership position, a better person than Qiao, who blamed Zhang as if she were faultless. She cried her eyes out.

  “No doubt about it, she was wrong, but I’m not totally blameless.” Zhang was able to admit that to himself at least.

  When he stopped going to work, so did his wife, who pushed a sofa up against their front door to keep him from going out. She wanted an explanation from him before she’d let him write his self-criticism; she wanted to know how many times they’d done it, how many others there were before Qiao, and how many times he had done it with each, and so on. Being in the wrong, Zhang had to control his temper and could only repeat himself, “I told you we did not do it. Honest, we didn’t do anything. Why wouldn’t we lock the door if we had?”

  “I don’t give a damn about the door. Why would she let you touch her that way if you weren’t doing anything?” his wife cried. “I might as well electrocute myself or drink pesticide.”

  He had to keep an eye on her so she wouldn’t do that.

  The office building was alive with excitement. Zhang’s promotion had been a compromise in a fight between the ministry and the bureau. When he fell from favor, each side blamed the other for promoting such a despicable person. While condemning the other side, they ganged up on Zhang to prove they hadn’t been the ones who had promoted him. They reached an agreement in the end: Zhang was to stay home to write a self-criticism, he was relieved of his duties, and the administrative affairs office would conduct an investigation at his previous office.

  Sun was elated at the news, so happy he nearly danced a jig. He worked day and night, even sacrificing his Sunday, to prepare his own version.

  Fuck you, Lao Zhang. You probably never thought this day would come. You’ve been screwing me for over twenty years and now it’s my turn to return the favor, Sun said to himself. Then he went to see Lao He.

  “The administrative affairs office is investigating Lao Zhang, so you need to be prepared.”

  “But he worked with us.” Lao He wasn’t conflicted. “It doesn’t seem right to me.”

  “Why are you so spineless? Yes, we worked together, but what has he done for us, his former colleagues, following his promotion? I wouldn’t mind if he didn’t want to help us out, but he went all out to make things hard for us. Why has neither of us has been promoted yet? He was messing with us. Now he’s on his way down. If you don’t help push him all the way, he could come back up again, and we’d be the losers. You’re not getting any younger, and yet you don’t know a thing.”

  Lao He finally figured it out.

  “You’re right, Lao Sun. You’re absolutely right. I’ll follow your advice and put some materials together. Back when he was working here, he loved to flirt with Wang Hong, from Section 7.”

  “Now you’re talking! Go see Xiao Lin and get him moving on it too.”

  Lao He went to see Xiao Lin, who had lost interest in the incident. In his view, the office was a mess, and even Lao Zhang and Lao Qiao were having an affair. He had helped Zhang move, given them his reflections, sent Qiao gifts on Labor Day, and acted obsequiously around them. What could he do now that they were mired in a sexual scandal? His former actions seemed utterly absurd, and he decided to go passive. He wanted to return to his old self, unafraid of anyone, so he began coming to work late and stopped fetching water and sweeping the floor. He frequently sneaked out to play Ping-Pong after spending a few minutes at his desk. Owing to the recent excitement in the office, Sun and He failed to notice anything different about Lin. When they found the vacuum bottle empty, they just thought they’d finished the water; it never occurred to them that Lin hadn’t brought in hot water that day. When Lao He came to ask Lin to help expose Zhang, Lin had just finished playing Ping-Pong. He was getting dressed to go home and see his daughter.

  “You go ahead and expose him,” he said in an offhanded manner. “It’s got nothing to do with me. I’m not even a party member.”

  His response confounded He, who didn’t quite understand what the younger man meant.

  “How could it have nothing to do with you, Xiao Lin? Isn’t it because of Qiao that you’re not a party member? You’ll be able to join now that she’s been taken down. It’s as simple as that. Why can’t you see that?” Lao He instructed Lin the same way Sun had talked to him.

  Lin saw the light. He’d come close to missing an opportunity, with no one to blame but himself. Lao He was right about Qiao being the stumbling block. With the obstacle gone, he would likely make it, wouldn’t he? At a moment like this, he mustn’t lose confidence; if he did, he’d be a complete fool, wasting years of hard work. Due to a momentary lapse in mental clarity, he had foolishly been about to give it all up. He had to become proactive and not throw everything to the wind. Slapping himself on the forehead, he said to Lao He, “You’re right, Lao He. I’ll take your advice.”

  He got into action immediately, sweeping the floor and getting the water.

  “I didn’t mean for you to sweep the floor or get the water,” Lao He said from behind him. “We want you to help expose Lao Qiao and Lao Zhang.”

  “Right, that’s what I’ll do,” said a sweaty Lin.

  He came to work on time the next day. After finishing his chores, he got together with others in the office to gather information on Zhang and Qiao.

  Xiao Peng joined them out of spite for Qiao, but would only go halfway, stopping at attacking Zhang. Lao He wiped his glasses while trying to enlighten her. “Have you forgotten that Lao Zhang once said your thoughts were chaotic?”

  “I haven’t, but I’ll only focus on Lao Qiao, because I’m sure he was blameless. It was all Qiao’s fault. That old fox, I knew all along she was up to no good. Back when she refused to come to work, Lao Sun was so cowed by her he even went to her house and begged her to come back. See what happened? If he hadn’t gone to her, we wouldn’t have this incident to deal with. I’m going to expose her and Lao Sun. He’s partially responsible for this.”

  “All right, all right.” Sun spoke up. “Go ahead, expose anyone you want, or just Lao Qiao if it suits you.”

  That afternoon someone came from the administrative affairs office, accompanied by the section head, who had recovered from his hemorrhoid surgery. Everyone in the section spoke up eagerly, to the satisfaction of the administrators.

  10

  Lao Qiao’s husband came to the office to apply for her early retirement. Rumor had it that she had raised hell at home for several days, which affected her health. She’d vented her anger on the maid, who vowed to quit. Lao Qiao slapped her and ran her out of the house, then turned her wrath on her husband.

  “What do you plan to do now? Separate or divorce?” She was forcing him too choose. A diminutive fair-skinned man, he’d been henpecked all their married life. He wasn’t happy about what had happened, but had to force himself to comfort her, with her acting up the way she was.

  “Don’t worry. I believe you.” That wasn’t good enough for her.

  “I can’t keep going like this. What do I do?”

  “Don’t go back to the office. That place is bad for you. We’ll apply for early retirement. I’ll go take care of the paperwork.”

  So he went to the administrative affairs office, wrapped up his business, and then came to the office to get her things. To everyone’s amusement, the fair-skinned old man did not seem embarrassed by Lao Qiao’s incident. Instead, he acted like an interoffice liaison, politely nodding at everyone before gathering up her things. After denouncing the disliked Qiao a few days before, they felt compelled to be nice to her husband, so they nodded in return. Lao He and Xiao Lin even went over to help him bundle up the contents of Qiao’s drawers. Xiao Peng was the exception, turning away when he greeted her. W
hen he left, the others criticized her pettiness.

  “Disgusting!” she retorted, before taking out of a mirror to check her face.

  Lao Zhang returned to work after ten days. The ministry and the bureau had originally wanted him to stay away a bit longer, while they reconsidered his job assignment, but Deputy Bureau Chief Xu was hospitalized after another bout of heart trouble. Lao Zhang was told to come back to pick up the slack. After the incident Zhang should have been demoted, since the bureau and the ministry wanted him out, but they got into another fight over his replacement. When the minister heard about it he was naturally displeased.

  “Does this even look like a government office?” he fumed. “Why do you people fight all the time? I’m going to give the job to someone who isn’t fighting.”

  With an upcoming trip abroad before the National Holiday, he decided to act quickly and decisively by keeping Lao Zhang on as a deputy bureau chief. Zhang and Qiao hadn’t gone that far, so the situation wasn’t particularly serious, and punishment by the party would suffice. So Zhang once again benefited from the internal struggle, with a warning from the party, but no disciplinary action against him. Understandably grateful to the minister for getting his old job back, Zhang decided to turn over a new leaf and work especially hard. His determination notwithstanding, the incident still cost him the respect of other bureau chiefs, who stopped considering him their equal. Being cognizant of the situation, Zhang knew he had to act cautiously and humbly. Whenever he ran into neighbors in the building, they would continue to greet him, “Have you eaten yet, Lao Zhang?”

  But he no longer returned the greeting casually; instead, he bowed and said, for instance, “Have you eaten yet, Mr. Kong?”

  And he stopped rivaling others in banging the car door shut when he was picked up. Now he shut it softly and fell in behind the other cars. He also stopped looking around and adopted an amiable attitude toward his chauffeur. Instead of visiting friends at various offices, he stayed at his desk and worked all day. After a while people were saying, “That incident was a blessing in disguise for Lao Zhang. He’s more cautious and humbler now.”