by Peter May
Finally, when he heard all the shouting, he came out in his dressing gown and asked them what they wanted. He was quite angry with them for shouting at me, and they seemed quite taken aback. I don’t think they knew how to deal with him. They still remembered him as their teacher and I think were still a little afraid of him.
The girl that the others called Pauper was the boldest. She told your father that as a teacher of English, he was a lover of things foreign, and all foreigners were opposed to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. His interests, therefore, were ‘black’, she said, and he must give up all his ‘black’ materials. I do not think they knew what these materials were, but your father was clever. He said that of course he would give them anything they considered ‘black’, as he wanted to do everything he could to help the revolution. He went into our front room and took all his old magazines from England and America that he has been collecting for years and told them to take them away. They were undoubtedly ‘black’, he said, because they were all in English.
The one they called Zero, whose name your father says is Bai Qiyu, took your bicycle. He said that you had betrayed the revolution by going to study abroad, and that your bicycle must be confiscated. I did try to stop him, but there was nothing I could do. Your father said to let them go.
When they were gone, I asked him if it did not break his heart to lose his prized collection of magazines. But he said they were just paper and ink, and that flesh and blood were more important.
I am so sorry about your bicycle.
February 2nd, 1967
Tao, do you remember Mrs Gu, my friend Gu Yi from the kindergarten? She is dead. When she finished mourning the death of her husband she tried to find herself another man, because she still had two children, and her job at the kindergarten did not pay much. She wore pretty clothes and make-up to make herself attractive. But all she did was attract the fury of the hung wei ping.
Last week they came to her door in a procession, banging drums and gongs and carrying scarlet banners. They made her paste a da-zi-bao on her door, denouncing herself as a capitalist whore. They dragged her into the street and forced her to ‘confess’ and promise to remould herself conscientiously. They hung two torn shoes around her neck, which is a sign of immorality, and made her wash her face publicly, and tore off her ‘black’ bourgeois dress.
Last night she hanged herself.
April 15th, 1967
Your father’s condition continues to deteriorate. He has been in his bed for several days. Still, I am glad he is safe here at home instead of at the school. We hear terrible stories. Your old headmaster and some of the senior teachers have been made to do manual labour. They are supervised by the Red Guards of the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade, who are all former pupils at the school. I think they were all in your year.
We hear that Headmaster Jiang and the others were forced to demolish the school’s lovely old stone gateway with sledgehammers provided by a group of construction workers. And then they had to parade around the square wearing pointed paper dunce hats, just like the landlords during the Land Reform Campaign in 1951. They were made to wear signs around their necks branding them ‘cow-headed ghosts’ and ‘snake spirits’. The schoolchildren, apparently, took delight in calling them ‘monsters’.
I was surprised that Headmaster Jiang was treated in this way, because he is a member of the Communist Party. But your father says many of the people targeted are Party members. They are seen as the persons in authority who have taken the capitalist road. He says he is glad now that he never joined the Party.
April 29th, 1967
They came again today. Oh, Tao. I am so afraid. They have found out that I attended the American university in Beijing before the Liberation, and that my father owned a little land in the north.
They are horrible, these children. Their faces are twisted by anger and hatred. They screamed and shouted at me in our own house. They made Gau Huan, the slow-witted boy they call Tortoise, tear up our family photo album. I don’t think he really knew what he was doing, but he is like a hungry devil who feeds on destruction. I pleaded with them not to do it, and when I tried to stop Gau Huan, the girl, Pauper, struck me with her hand across my face. She hit me so hard I saw stars and black spots in front of my eyes. One of the others, a clever boy called Yue Shi, shouted in my face that I did not have a good class status. I was the daughter of a landlord. I could not choose my class status, but I could choose my future. I was to denounce my family and destroy their ‘black’ history.
They asked about you, Tao. They wanted to know when the ‘black whelp’ was coming home. I screamed at them. I told them you would not be back because you were smarter than they were. I told them they were stupid, and all they could do was destroy things. The girl, Pauper, hit me again.
Hearing the raised voices and my sobbing, your father came out from the bedroom. His face was grey. He had your grandfather’s big, stout walking stick in his hand and he bellowed at the little bastards and told them if they raised a hand to me again he’d beat them to within an inch of their lives.
I think they were startled by his appearance and his anger and the threat of violence. They left, then, but said they would be back. I cried for nearly an hour after they had gone, and your father just sat in the chair by the window and gazed out in silence. I could not get him to speak for the rest of the day.
Oh, Tao, much as I would love to see you again, whatever you do, never come back here.
May 1st, 1967
I went to the square today to see Chairman Mao. There were hundreds of thousands of students there, most of them Red Guards. I have never seen so many people in Tiananmen before. On the guan bo public address system, they were playing ‘The Helmsman’ and ‘The Eight Disciplines’, then ‘The East is Red’ just before the great man appeared on the rostrum in front of the Forbidden City. Then everyone was chanting ‘Long live Chairman Mao’. The atmosphere was extraordinary, like some fanatical religious gathering. I did not know what to feel. It is hard not to be swept up in the emotion of it all. But all I really wanted to do was weep. I do not think anyone noticed my tears.
June 5th, 1967
This was what I had been dreading. Yue Shi came to the house this morning and sneered as he told us your father must attend the school today. I told him he was not well enough. But the boy just said that if your father did not turn up, others would be sent to fetch him. He would be forced to go on his knees, if necessary.
Oh, Tao, I am so glad you are not here to see this. But I miss you so much. You are so clever, I am sure you would have known what to do. I wish I could just talk to you and hold your hand for comfort.
Li paused. There were three small round blisters on the paper, yellow and raised, and a fourth that had blurred the ink on the character of Tao’s name. Tears, Li realised, spilled more than thirty years ago. A simple statement of the hopelessness felt by Yuan Tao’s mother as she wept for the son that she knew she would never see again. More eloquent than any words she could have written. And then, with a slight shock, Li realised that they might not be her tears after all. And he thought of Yuan Tao reading his mother’s words all those years later. Of the pain and the guilt that he must have felt. It was more than possible that they were the tears of a son spilled for his parents. He read on.
Although it was hot, your father was shivering, and I dressed him warmly for the walk to the school. He had your grandfather’s stick in his right hand, and I held his left arm, but he could hardly walk, and we had to stop every ten metres for him to catch his breath. It is a terrible thing to see the strong, young man you married reduced to this.
When we got there, there was a big crowd in the square, gathered around a small wooden stage they had built alongside the basketball net. The geography teacher, Teacher Gu, was standing on the stage, bent over with his hands on his knees and his head down. There was a sign hanging around his neck with his name painted on it upside down in red and scored through.
; The students and the Red Guards were roaring, ‘Down with Teacher Gu.’ Every time he tried to lift his head one of the Red Guards would push it back down. They kept screaming questions at him but wouldn’t let him answer. And then they screamed at him again for refusing to speak.
When they saw us arrive, some of the Red Guards – Pauper and Yue Shi and Pigsy and Tortoise – came and grabbed your father from me. They hung a sign around his neck like Teacher Gu’s and pushed him through the jeering crowds to the stage. I tried to go after him, but children swarmed all around me like bees, calling me a ‘landlord’s daughter’ and the ‘mother of a black whelp’. I saw your father trying to get on the stage, and when he couldn’t, the big boy, Ge Yan, hit him on the back of the neck with a long cane and he dropped to his knees.
Eventually they lifted him on to the stage and Teacher Gu was pushed aside. Your father became the centre of attention. I could see the tears in his sad, dark eyes, but there was nothing he or I could do about it. One of the girls who used to come to our house for extra tuition took my arm and led me away to a classroom. She wore a red arm band, but I think she was only pretending to be one of them. She got me some water and told me I should not look. But I could not leave my husband to face this alone.
When I went to the door of the classroom, I could see him on his knees on the stage, his head bowed, the sign swinging from his neck. They were shouting, ‘Down with Teacher Yuan.’ They demanded to know why he had neglected his students, why he refused to work. Did he think he was too good to serve the people? What could he say? Even if he were capable of answering, how could he answer such questions? He was ill, so very, very ill.
But each time he failed to answer, they would take it in turns to hit him across the back of his neck with the cane. I could hear the sound of it. I could feel his pain with every stroke. Then Ge Yan pulled his head back by the hair, and the one called Zero forced him to drink a pot of ink. He gagged and was sick, but still they forced it down his throat.
I screamed at them to stop, but no one could hear me over the noise, and the girl who had taken me to the classroom stopped me from trying to reach him. I have the bruises of her fingers on my arms as I write.
It was just their revenge. Because he had shouted at them and threatened them with his father’s stick if they hit me again. I feel so guilty, Tao. It is my fault they did this to him. If I had not tried to stop them tearing up our family photographs, if I had just accepted there was nothing I could do, perhaps they would have let him be.
When he fell over, at first they tried to get him back to his knees, but he was quite unconscious and I think they thought then that he was dead.
It was strange, because suddenly the whole square went quiet, as if somehow the game had all gone terribly wrong. Just children. They had no idea what they were doing.
I ran to the stage, and they all moved aside to let me past. No one stopped me as I got up and removed the sign from around your father’s neck. His mouth and face were black from the ink, and there was vomit all down his tunic. But I could hear him breathing. Short, shallow breaths.
I kneeled down and drew him up into my arms, but he was too heavy for me to lift on my own. I called out, ‘Will anybody help me?’ But no one moved. And then Ge Yan, the bird boy, ordered some of the children to give me a hand to take away this ‘black revisionist’.
When, eventually, I got him home and into bed, I went to get the doctor. But when I told him what had happened he did not want to come, and so I have sat here alone with your father for hours now, keeping him cool with cold compresses, tipping his head forward to make him take some water.
It is dark. I don’t know what time it is. Sometime after two. Outside it is very quiet, and the house is very still. And yet I can barely hear your father breathing. I don’t know what he has done to deserve this. You know what a kind and gentle man he is. Oh, Tao, I am so, so weary.
June 6th, 1967
Tao, your father is dead. Sometime after four this morning, I fell asleep in the chair by the bed, and when I awoke he was quite cold. He died alone, while I slept. I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself. I am so sorry, my son. Please know that I love you. I hope you will make a better life for yourself than this.
It was the last entry, although there were many blank pages after.
Li sat with tears filling his eyes, and saw that the first grey light of dawn had appeared in the sky. As a young boy he had been devastated by his mother’s death in prison, shocked and distressed to see his father reduced to the palest shadow of his former self. But he could not imagine how Yuan Tao must have felt, nearly thirty years on, reading his mother’s harrowing account of his father’s death. Of the sickening humiliation and brutality meted out by barbarous, ignorant youths whom his own father had taught. He could picture tears, and anger, and knew that in reading those lines the seeds of revenge had been sewn deep in Yuan Tao’s heart.
And he also knew now who had killed Zero and Monkey and Pigsy. And why.
He swivelled his chair and sat for a long time staring out of the window at a grey sky shot with streaks of pink. Li felt inestimably sad. How empty Yuan Tao’s life must have been for it to have been consumed so quickly by hate and revenge. A failed marriage. No children. An undistinguished academic career that was going nowhere. How often, Li wondered, had he regretted leaving his home country, destined always to be a stranger in a strange land? What guilt must he have felt, on reading his mother’s diary, to realise that what he had escaped had cost his father’s life? That while he was safe on the far-off campus of an American university, his father had been persecuted and hounded to his death by Yuan’s own classmates. And so hate had filled his emotional void. And revenge had given his life a purpose.
And for five years he had planned his revenge. Engineered his return to Beijing, and methodically set about the execution of his father’s tormentors, in a ritual that closely replicated the manner of his father’s final humiliation.
Although the diary in no way provided conclusive evidence, it made perfect sense. Li had no doubts. But it still left one deeply puzzling question unanswered. Who killed Yuan? And why?
There was a knock at the door and Qian poked his head in. He seemed surprised to see Li. ‘Someone said you were in.’ This, as if he hadn’t believed it. ‘You’re early today, boss.’ And then he noticed the fog of cigarette smoke that filled the room, and the deep lines etched under Li’s eyes. He frowned. ‘Have you been here all night?’
Li nodded and slipped the diary into its plastic bag and held it out to Qian. ‘Get this checked for fingerprints, Qian. Then get copies made for everyone on the team.’
Qian took it and looked at it with curiosity. ‘What is it, boss?’
‘A motive for murder.’
IV
Yang Shouqian lived in a crumbling apartment block just south of Guang’anmen Railway Station. He was, Li reckoned, somewhere in his middle fifties, with thinning hair and a long, lugubrious face. His wife was a short, round-faced woman with a pleasant smile who invited Li into their kitchen. They were just having breakfast, she said, before Yang went to work at the nearby Ministry of Hydroelectricity. She was steaming some lotus paste and red bean buns. Would Li like some? Li accepted the offer and sat with them at their table, trains rattling past every few minutes on the southbound line, which they overlooked from the rear of the apartment. He was grateful for the hot green tea and the sweet buns, and felt the fatigue of a night without sleep sweep over him. The burden of his news weighed heavily.
Yang looked at him curiously. ‘My wife says you have word of my Cousin Tao.’
Li nodded. ‘Have you seen him in the last few months?’
Yang was astonished. ‘Seen him? You mean he is in Beijing?’
‘For about six months.’
Yang’s initial delight turned quickly to confusion, and then to hurt. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have not seen him. He has not been in touch.’ His wife put a concerned hand over his.
&nbs
p; She looked at Li, sensing immediately that something was wrong. Why else would he be here? ‘What has happened?’ she asked.
‘I’m afraid he has been murdered,’ Li said.
Yang went quite pale, and his wife squeezed his hand. ‘I don’t understand,’ Yang said. ‘Murdered? Here in Beijing?’ It seemed extraordinary to him that such a thing was possible. ‘Who by?’
‘We do not know,’ Li said. ‘Was he in touch with you at all? At any time over the last few years?’
Yang shook his head. ‘Never. I have never heard from him in all this time. He was a spotty teenager when I last saw him, shortly before he left for America.’
‘But you wrote to him?’
Yang looked up quickly, surprised. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I have the letter you sent him in 1995.’
‘I didn’t know you’d written to Cousin Tao, Shouqian,’ his wife said.
He nodded. ‘You remember, when I sent him the diary?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She looked at Li and shook her head sadly. ‘Such a tragedy.’
‘You read it?’ Li asked.
‘Not all of it. Shouqian showed me it before he sent it.’
Li said, ‘You told him that you were keeping the letter Tao’s mother had written to your mother.’ He paused. ‘Why?’
‘Because, as you say, it was written to my mother,’ Yang said. ‘It belonged to her, and therefore to me, not Cousin Tao.’ He examined his nails for a moment in studied silence. ‘Besides,’ he said eventually, ‘it was probably better that he never saw it.’
‘Why?’
‘On top of the diary …’ He shrugged. ‘It would have been too much.’
Li said, ‘May I see it?’
Yang darted him a quick look, and Li saw something that was almost like shame in his eyes. He nodded and got up and crossed to a dresser against the far wall. He opened a drawer and began searching through a bundle of papers.
‘Did you know any of the Red Guards who hounded Tao’s father?’ Li asked.