The Shadow Knows

by Kenneth Rosen

  ***

  On May 1 Ma informed us that our participants would be attending a ‘political re-education’ program at the university the following week and we would therefore have no teaching responsibilities during that time. Noah and Larry were in the midst of a wu-shu course taught every other night at the Youyi by a martial arts master so they decided to stay around, but Talya asked Ma if he could arrange exit and re-entry visas for herself and Mrs. Chu to spend a few days in Hong Kong. She explained that she felt in need of a brief infusion of capitalistic shopping and hoped her good friend Mrs. Chu would be allowed to accompany her to make sure she travelled without mishap. It was very short notice but Ma was an expert at the art of hou-men and he had all the arrangements made in less than seventy-two hours, explaining to us that it was Mrs. Chu’s exit document that had caused the only real problem and that it had been solved by a friend of Ma’s who was the deputy director of the television station, Mrs. Chu’s danwei. Ma had suggested that he and I spend a few days climbing Huan Shan so after Talya and Mrs. Chu left we took a train into Anhui Province and began my first ascent of one of China’s five sacred mountains.

  The weather was almost perfect, sunny and warm in the early afternoon and clear and cool in the mornings and later in the day, and if we started out early enough – as we did on two mornings—Ma even had some of his beloved mist in which to climb. Much of the mountain was just a vigorous walk-up and on these parts we took our time, enjoying the scenery around us and staring in silence at the breathtaking views down into the valleys below. When a particular stretch would become more challenging it was always Ma who took the lead, picking his way carefully along a ledge or up over a narrow saddle, making sure he kept me in sight as much as possible and always checking our single safety line when he couldn’t see me. He climbed with an enviable feel for the terrain, as if he and the mountain were somehow parts of the same whole, linked to one another by some invisible but very durable thread. When he dug in a boot or scraped out a handhold he did it slowly, methodically, always appearing to treat the earth with a strange kind of respect rather than as an adversary that had to be conquered -- even when haste might have made our progress a little easier. He seemed to enjoy the few physical challenges we encountered – at the height of his exertions he invariably smiled or laughed out loud – and yet he also seemed able to enjoy the more frequent periods of relative inactivity, those times when we were simply hiking over fairly level ground or walking easily up a well-worn path. At these times, if we could walk side-by-side and if there was no particularly impressive view at which to look, he would talk quietly, his voice hardly disturbing the high thin air.

  “When I was a boy I climbed Yellow Mountain with the girl who would become my wife. Ever since then I thought about the time I would climb up here with my first son and he would see what I had seen that first time. My first son died as an infant during the bad times and I have been up here several times since then, but even now I think about how it might have been. Not often – but always when the weather is good and the mountain reveals her beauty.

  “I have another son now. He lives with his mother and my parents in Tsingtao. He is a fine boy and we have gone climbing twice, but it is not the same. He likes motorcycles and car engines; he is very talented with engines and he laughs very easily. He is not a very good student in middle school but he is a good boy and we love him very much.”

  We were walking slowly now, each of us breathing easily. He wasn’t expecting polite conversation and I had no intention of making any. He continued in the same low voice.

  “We fought very hard for Liberation in those early days. We believed in the need for sacrifice and discipline and we were young and very strong and we all knew what we were fighting for. The Nationalists were completely corrupt and there were people starving to death in every large town and city we entered, people who had done nothing wrong, nothing evil, but they had been born poor and the Nationalists were happy to see them die.”

  We had to cross a narrow wash strewn with boulders and it required some concentration. He continued when we rejoined the trail on the other side.

  “The Cultural Revolution was a time of many excesses in our country. We lost our balance and many people lost their lives. They wanted us to say that to be an intellectual was evil, that only the peasants knew how to be good communists. It was an understandable overreaction to the failure of some of Mao’s economic policies, but it wasn’t true and I couldn’t say it was. They believed that such confessions would create harmony and order again where there was then only chaos, but there were those of us who knew this to be a self-deception. In struggle-session after struggle-session I was encouraged to recant; finally they beat me with bamboo rods, many of my neighbors joining in to show the Red Guards how loyal they were, and then I was imprisoned. It wasn’t a regular prison because there were too many people who were considered counter-revolutionary and middle-roaders and there was not enough room for all of us. I was locked in a basement room in one of the university buildings – all the schools and universities had been attacked and then officially closed – and I was given food and water through a hole in the door. Sometimes once a day, sometimes every other day. There was no window and I saw nobody for a very long time. But I was more fortunate than many others; my wife was not informed of my imprisonment and when she was taken away our son died. Nobody fed him. My wife was released in less than a year, but she behaves very strangely now. She must stay in the house of my parents and she often cries for many hours and sometimes she talks to our dead son.

  “I was imprisoned for seven years. When I was released and reinstated in the Party I knew that some of those who had persecuted me were still in positions of authority. I decided to continue to work for my country in spite of this apparent contradiction. I have never believed that isolation from the Western countries, specifically from America, is the wisest course for China to follow. I was imprisoned because I believed this then and I still believe it today. Deng Xiaoping can do good things for China, but he has many powerful enemies among the leaders. When I was allowed to come back to work I decided to do what little I could to insure that these people do not create another Cultural Revolution.”

  We were nearing the summit and the trail was surprisingly clear and well-worn, as if many people regularly climbed Huang Shan by this route. Ma indicated that we should rest before going on to the top. We sat in silence for a few minutes, looking at a range of dark hills in the distance and a thin layer of cloud hovering just above us, before Ma spoke again.

  “I’m sorry about your friend Professor Sleeper.”

  The transition seemed rather abrupt; I was still thinking of Ma’s single-minded dedication to his country, even after his government had allowed him to be so cruelly abused.

  “I wasn’t aware that you knew him – or that you knew that he was a friend of mine.”

  “Yes, I knew him as I know you, although maybe not quite as well. I assisted him when he needed to use the Beida library and I introduced him to the Party secretary of the university, a very intelligent woman who comes from Kunming, when he asked to meet her. He is, I think, a very wise man who understands a great deal about my country. He speaks Chinese so well it was often difficult to believe that he wasn’t born here. I was very sad that he had to leave China.”

  He rose and started up the trail again and I fell into step beside him. The wind had picked up and the cloud layer was moving off; the afternoon sun was behind us, throwing our shadows ahead of us as we hiked the last few yards to the top.

  “Do you think he was really a spy, Ma?” I didn’t break my stride and I didn’t look at him when I spoke. He answered so quickly, though, that I stumbled briefly in my surprise; it was almost as if he had been expecting the question for some time.

  “If he was, I am sure that what he was doing was never meant to harm my country. He is a man who understands the absurdity of viewing China as a
monolithic nation. There are powerful factions in constant conflict at the highest levels and he would know that some are more worthy of support than others. If I were to give my assistance to someone like Professor Sleeper I believe I would most certainly be aiding my own country eventually. Don’t you agree?”

  The trail had ended. We were at the top of the mountain, or at least as high as it was possible to go without technical equipment, and the view was a fitting reward. The valleys were now dark, stretching away to the north and east, and the slanting sun revealed the green corrugated surface of a nearby range of hills, below us and to the south, and brightened the fleecy clouds that hung in the distance to the west. The dark shadows far below only heightened the white and green and bright orange and yellow that predominated above. It was the kind of sight that made you ask yourself why you spent so much of your life being hemmed in at the lower elevations, the kind of view that made you breathe deeply and think noble thoughts and yearn to be free of all the petty and pragmatic constraints. It was, when you finally turned away and again faced the reality of the mountain upon which you stood, both an uplifting and a profoundly frustrating experience.

  “I would hope so, Ma, I would very much hope so – but I guess I am no longer quite so sure of such things as I might once have been.”

  We turned and moved back down the trail toward a small base camp we had established earlier and Ma tried to ease what he must have seen as my burden.

  “Such things are not always helpful, of course, but I have heard it said that a man who cannot decide between Yin and Yang is a man who has lost sight of the inherent balance of the universe, a man who has forgotten that his only duty is to be in harmony with those forces that exist already in everything around him.”

  “A fine ideal, but how does a man accomplish such a thing?”

  The light was beginning to fade as he stepped off briskly in front of me and his gentle laugh floated back over his shoulder.

  “Ah, to that question I have never heard of anyone, not even Confucius, who can give a truly satisfactory answer.”

  Talya returned from Hong Kong with several old Canton plates and an enthusiasm for the Crown Colony that was catching. I told her about our climb up Huang Shan and as she talked about her own trip it was clear that she had thoroughly enjoyed herself. She had decided to splurge so she took a double room at the Peninsula, on Noah’s recommendation, for the three nights that she and Mrs. Chu were there and the two of them were out in the shops along Nathan Road ten minutes after they’d checked in and unpacked. The stores and streets were mobbed and as they moved away from the central district and into some of the sidestreets they got the definite impression that anything and everything was for sale; shiny new Porsches discharged dapper young men at the entrances to modest-looking shops advertising ‘Relaxation and Personal Service’ and Rolls Royces stood at the curb in front of a bamboo-curtained restaurant that smelled sweetly of opium. They had a delicious meal at a fancy Sichuan restaurant facing the busy harbor, but Talya admitted that an earlier lunch of Big Macs and fries at a crowded MacDonald’s had been almost as satisfying for her and Mrs. Chu had even ordered a second hamburger after she had finished her first. The next day they had shopped some more and then taken the steep funicular ride up to the top of the Peak for lunch and then followed that with a bus ride out to Repulse Bay for even more shopping. Back at the hotel that second night they had been having a drink in the lobby when Mrs. Chu met an Englishman she knew who often came to Shanghai and Peking as part of the small import-export business he owned in Hong Kong. He had dinner with them in the hotel and in the course of their conversation it turned out that he had been in Urumqi at the same time that Ted had been there – as a matter of fact, they had been staying at the same hotel – and he had had some dealings with the officials of the same industrial brigade that Ted was supposed to have compromised. According to him, the American’s trouble with the Chinese was more complicated than most people thought. The man was friendly enough and he seemed to like Mrs. Chu, but he drank steadily all through dinner and he seemed to be depressed about something; when Talya asked him if he could be more specific about Ted’s trouble he just smiled and shook his head in the negative and went on drinking. When they parted after dinner he got into one of the elevators as if he too had a room in the hotel, but they never saw him again while they were there.

  The next day they spent half their time on Hong Kong island and the other half on the Kowloon side, Talya searching for items to add to her collection and Mrs. Chu looking for small gifts she could bring back for her family, both of them marveling at the efficiency with which the Star Ferry moved tens of thousands of people each day back and forth across one of the world’s busiest harbors. To celebrate their last night they took a hydrofoil ride to Macao and treated themselves to a steak dinner at one of the casino restaurants; they both enjoyed the hydrofoil but Mrs. Chu thought her Big Macs had been a better meal. When they landed back in Peking the next day Mrs. Chu tried to give Talya some yuan – Talya had invited her to go as her guest and had paid for everything except her air fare, which her danwei had supplied – but Talya explained that she would not have been able to see anywhere near as much as she had seen if she had been on her own and she certainly would never have understood half of what she saw. In the end, Talya said, she accepted a necklace of orange and black coral from Mrs. Chu (one she had admired aloud when Mrs. Chu bought it in a small shop in Kowloon) so that nobody would lose face.