The Child's Past Life

by Cai Jun

  CHAPTER 67

  The Lunar New Year came later than usual in 2013.

  Lu Jizong was eighteen years old. He’d graduated junior high two years ago and gone on to a private trade school. He was going to work on the assembly line at a Japanese-funded car factory and make at least 3,000 yuan a month. But during winter break it was announced that the principal had run off after embezzling money. The school closed down.

  The small southern town where he lived was cold and damp every winter. The narrow streets were littered with trash and it was muddy whenever it rained. Songs like “You Sold My Love” and “Best Culture Show” played endlessly everywhere. Motels with hourly rates, Internet cafés, and hot pot restaurants lined the street near his home. He knew every shop owner’s name. He never left town. The only trip he’d taken to a bigger city was when he was eleven.

  For the first time, he saw skyscrapers, busy overpasses, and Mercedes and BMWs leaving mansions. His mom told him, “Jizong, your dad lives here, he’ll give us a good life.”

  He had never seen his dad.

  From the day he was born, his family had been his mother and her parents. He only became curious when he saw other kids’ dads. When he’d ask about him the answer was, “Your dad lives far away and is an evil man who abandoned you and your mom. You’ll never, ever meet him.”

  Seven years later, Lu Jizong found a photocopy of his father’s registration card and learned his dad’s name. He and his mother went to the address. But the lavish house was empty. Only a young woman was there.

  She was his father’s younger cousin. Her face was beautiful but a bit cold. His dad was already missing and the house had new owners. No one could help them, even though the woman gave his mother some money.

  Disappointed, they returned home.

  For years, Lu Jizong’s mother ran a food cart on the street. She managed to raise a healthy young man who had a pale birthmark on his forehead.

  Now, a middle-aged man watched him from the Guilin Rice Noodles shop across the street. Neither the man’s common haircut nor his pale, clean-shaven face was memorable. He would have faded into the crowd if not for the birthmark on his forehead.

  The man finished eating his spicy beef-tripe noodles and lit up a cigarette, keeping an eye on the teenager staring at a computer screen inside the Internet café.

  Two days ago, the man had taken a long-distance bus to this dirty little city. It was his first time here. He’d hidden among the crowds heading home for the New Year. In the last seven years, he’d not taken a single flight, or a train since the rail companies had started requiring residency registration cards to match the tickets. Every once in a while, he would buy identity cards lost by people who were close to his age and resembled him. He used them to stay at motels and cheap rental apartments. He had seen his wanted poster everywhere; he would get nervous whenever a cop walked by. At least it was easy to keep his forehead covered.

  He didn’t stay long in any place. What cash he had was now long gone. He’d worked odd jobs and ate only occasionally. He tried to go back to his city, and even ran a small DVD store for a while, but it was just a front for other illegal ventures. Three years ago, a man came in—he recognized the man, Huang Hai. He ran like crazy and when he got to an unfinished building, he saw that the cop had taken out his gun, so he jumped. Being dead was better than being caught. He made it across but Huang Hai fell to his death.

  He had another person’s blood on his hands.

  His name and photograph reappeared on wanted posters in train stations and banks. Years of living on the run had made him as sly as a fox. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  The one time he took a bus a strange teenager spotted him. They both recognized one another.

  It had been a close call. If he hadn’t been able to get off the crowded bus, Si Wang would have caught him.

  It was Si Wang’s fault he was in this predicament.

  Si Wang had scared him, ever since first meeting him eight years ago. After he met the boy’s mom, nightmares woke him up every night. He never thought the boy would become his adopted son.

  Before he turned thirty he’d been an energetic man who could get women pregnant. He didn’t know when he’d become a lesser man, until he found out about his wife chemically castrating him.

  He’d wanted her dead and had no choice but to follow Ma Li’s plan. Together they bankrupted his wife’s family business, embezzling tens of millions in assets. Just as he was celebrating becoming rich—he’d even made plans for a corrective operation in Japan—he fell into a lethal trap.

  In early 2006, he also went bankrupt.

  His ex-father-in-law found him. He won the fight and left the old man in a pool of blood.

  Lu Zhongyue started his life on the run.

  In his darker moments, he thought back on his life: his girlfriend when he was a teenager; his high school roommates; and the shame, jealousy, and hatred from 1995.

  He had considered suicide. He’d stood on roofs and next to rivers, wanting to end it all. So what if he turned to mush and was tossed into a cremation chamber? Maybe the police would know who he was and report the death as a fugitive’s suicide.

  He would be another warrior in twenty years.

  At moments like this, he thought of Si Wang, who’d been renamed Gu Wang. He was probably back to Si Wang now. He would be eighteen.

  Lu Zhongyue decided he couldn’t die. It wasn’t that he lacked courage, but things couldn’t end like this.

  He had to learn the truth and Si Wang was his only hope. This was the primary reason he decided to keep living.

  There was a second reason.

  Living in borrowed spaces, losing everything, running here and there, even being caught by the police. None of it mattered. His biggest regret was not having an heir.

  He remembered his girlfriend from eighteen years ago. He’d sent her away with a big belly and money for an abortion.

  Thinking of it now made him want to stab himself.

  If he hadn’t kept her address, he never would have come to this small, freezing town. He found their shabby apartment building. The gorgeous young woman he’d adored nineteen years earlier had turned into a plump middle-aged woman. He had to think hard to remember her name: Chen Xiangtian.

  Yesterday, the forty-year-old woman had left her apartment with a tall, lanky teenager. The young man looked seventeen or eighteen; his face and features looked a bit familiar, but his eyes were flat and showed no spark. He had a birthmark on his forehead.

  He broke into their mailbox and found the teenager’s name: Lu Jizong.

  CHAPTER 68

  Lunar New Year’s Eve 2013.

  The apartment felt like an igloo. Thankfully the electric cooker was adding some steam to the tiny space. Lu Jizong and his mother had a simple but nourishing holiday dinner while watching the boring New Year’s Eve Gala show. A few days ago their mailbox had been tampered with and a letter from the school had been opened. Chen Xiangtian wondered which one of the local bastards had done it.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Who would visit on Lunar New Year’s Eve?

  Chen Xiangtian’s face tightened and she mumbled, “Is it him?”

  She stood up in a rush, touched her son’s face, and quickly checked herself in the mirror, embarrassed for the way she looked. The knocking continued until Lu Jizong opened the door.

  An attractive woman in her thirties stood in the dark hallway, wearing a coat and shivering.

  The teenager sneezed. He backed up a few steps. “I know you.”

  “I can’t believe how tall you’ve gotten.”

  “Jizong!” His mom said anxiously from behind him. “Who is it?”

  Chen Xiangtian recognized the woman, too. Her excitement turned to doubt and disappointment. “And you are—”

  “I see my ne
phew still remembers me.” The woman walked into the apartment and looked at the second-hand furniture and electronics.

  “You’re Lu Zhongyue’s cousin?”

  The woman smiled warmly. “How are you? We met seven years ago.”

  “Why did you come here on Lunar New Year’s Eve?” Chen Xiangtian asked. “Where is Lu Zhongyue? Where did he go?”

  “There is still no news of my cousin. I came here to work recently and wanted to see Jizong. I sent you a text. You gave me the address.”

  “Oh, right. Please make yourself at home. If you don’t mind the simple food, we can eat together. You can call me sister-in-law.”

  “Call me Xiaozhi.” She sat down casually, pulling out gifts from her jacket pockets—including a red envelope for Jizong. “How is Jizong lately?”

  “This kid is still playing around. His trade school closed down. He’s just playing computer games all day.”

  Lu Jizong stayed silent, picking out dumplings from the hot pot. He looked up at his aunt and said, “I want to go out and work.”

  “It’s just as well, your aunt will help you.”

  “You’ll let me?”

  One hour later, Xiaozhi left. Chen Xiangtian and Lu Jizong walked her downstairs. She gave them her new phone number and said she’d check in on them soon.

  Xiaozhi spent the rest of Lunar New Year’s Eve alone in a nearby motel. Firecrackers crackled around her.

  A month earlier, Nanming High had announced that Ouyang Xiaozhi was leaving voluntarily and transferring to teach in a rural southern school.

  She left abruptly. Before Si Wang could catch up to her, she had gotten into a taxi. Under the dreary sky, Nanming Road was windy. She was afraid to turn around to look.

  She got on a train the next day.

  She sent a text: “Shen Ming? If you really are Shen Ming, then you’re the world’s luckiest person. Please treasure everything you have now. Forget me. Let’s never meet again! I really am very grateful to you. Ouyang Xiaozhi, sent from a faraway place.”

  She took that number out of service after sending the message.

  Ouyang Xiaozhi decided on this town because it was a mountain away in an impoverished Miao village where she would teach at the middle school.

  She’d saved Chen Xiangtian and Lu Jizong’s contact information from years ago because she needed to find Lu Zhongyue.

  Another seven years had passed, and the monster was still hiding. It seemed obvious that Lu Zhongyue had plotted against his good friend to get everything Shen Ming once had, and that he had killed Shen Ming on June 19, 1995, in the Demon Girl Zone.

  Xiaozhi realized that only one person could make Lu Zhongyue come out of hiding, his son, Lu Jizong. He was eighteen, just like Si Wang. They had similar personalities, too.

  By early spring, Xiaozhi was teaching in the Miao village. Surrounded by impoverished kids, she could finally put her past behind her, though she could never escape it.

  Every night when it got quiet, she would sit in her tent and look out at the crystal clear valley, thinking of the spring of 1995.

  Eighteen years ago, Mr. Shen had stood by the oleander trees near the sports field, reading, “In ‘The Waste Land,’ T. S. Eliot said that April was the cruelest month.”

  Xiaozhi spoke from behind the fence. “Teacher, is living cruel or is death cruel?”

  She surprised him. He shook his head and answered, “Death, of course.”

  “Yeah, living is great, so great.” She realized he was wearing earphones. “What are you listening to?”

  Shen Ming put one earbud into her ear, and in a clear Cantonese voice she heard: “Endless seasons, time passing so fast. Finding it and losing it again, never wanting it but having it. Did I ever find it? I can’t explain my mistakes. I don’t know who to blame. What do we look for in life? Giving up and owning wasted my life. Not getting close before it got away. Can’t figure out life in my confusion. Everything I lost was everything I owned . . .”

  It was Danny Chan’s “What I Wanted”—the theme song for her favorite TVB drama, Looking Back in Anger.

  “Do you still have the gift I gave you?”

  “Yes,” he said, sounding mortified.

  “Please hold on to it.”

  “I’m sorry, Xiaozhi, we shouldn’t talk like this. I’m your homeroom teacher. We can’t meet in private anymore. Other students will get the wrong impression.” Shen Ming retreated two steps, as if he didn’t want to smell her hair. “You have to give it your all to get into Teachers’ College.”

  “Is it because you’re getting married?”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “Your fiancée must be very pretty.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I wish you a lot of happiness. We will all go to your wedding, and we’ll give the bride a crystal necklace.” Xiaozhi was smiling, but her heart was a different matter. She now knew the meaning of faking happiness.

  “Yes, Qiusha is a good woman.” Shen Ming was troubled. Looking directly into her eyes, he said, “Xiaozhi, you’ll get married one day, too.”

  “No, I never want to marry.”

  The teacher turned to leave. Xiaozhi shouted after him, “Hope you guys have a baby soon!”

  “Who would remember me after I die?” Shen Ming mumbled to himself as he got to the teachers’ building.

  About two months later, he was dead.

  CHAPTER 69

  Lunar New Year’s Eve.

  He Qingying couldn’t sleep because of the loud firecrackers. She heard soft crying. It sounded like it came from underground, but it was coming from her son’s bed. He was crying under the comforter.

  She pulled back the comforter and slid her svelte body into the warmth of the bed. “Wang Er, no one can find Ms. Ouyang now. You can blame me if you want. When I was your age, I also cried in bed—even harder than you’re crying now.”

  Si Wang turned around, his pillow and face drenched. “Mom, do you still miss Dad?”

  “Sometimes.”

  In the eleven years since Si Mingyuan had left, many men had pursued He Qingying. Some had money, some were handsome, and some were divorced or widowed. She turned down all of them, including Huang Hai.

  Ever since Huang Hai’s death, running Wilderness Books became harder than ever. Kids today didn’t read anymore. If not for the reference books she sold from her Taobao store, she would barely make ends meet. Si Wang didn’t want to see his mom suffer. He helped out whenever he could and offered to get another job. His mom said they had enough savings for him to finish high school.

  There were strange calls every weekend, either at dawn or midnight. He Qingying always picked up first and the person would hang up. Si Wang asked Policeman Ye Xiao to track the call. It belonged to an unregistered cell phone from out of the province. He told Si Wang not to worry about it. He thought it was probably someone involved with the forced move; it was a common tactic the developers used to get residents to move out faster.

  For He Qingying and Si Wang, coming home every day was like entering a war zone. Some of the neighbors fought, but most of them just gave up. It only took two meetings and a low-ball financial settlement for He Qingying to agree to move. That was the end of their family home.

  “Mom, why did you say yes to those assholes?”

  Si Wang missed Huang Hai. If he were alive, the demolition crews wouldn’t dare hassle them.

  “Wang Er, they’re powerful and connected. We’re just a widow and a kid. I don’t want to fight them.”

  “A widow and a kid?” He frowned. “Is Dad really dead?”

  Si Mingyuan had become little more than a blur in Si Wang’s memory.

  “Sorry,” she said, stroking her son’s cheeks. She hadn’t aged well over the past couple of years. “You have no idea what they could do. I don�
�t want you getting hurt.”

  “What’s there to be afraid of?” Si Wang backed away a few steps, punching the air a couple of times and doing a Thai boxing kick. “If those bastards bother us, I’ll break their legs!”

  “Shut up!” She gripped his hand and felt his muscles clench. “Wang Er, I don’t want you to become a thug. That’s not the life for you. I just want you to live a peaceful life.”

  “I won’t hurt anyone who doesn’t hurt me!”

  “You’re more mature than other kids. Why don’t you understand me? I’ve had enough of this house anyway. It’s drafty in the winter and hot in the summer. You never have friends over. I haven’t given you a good life. I don’t even take you on vacations.”

  “It’s OK, I’ve been to tons of places!”

  “I didn’t do a good job. I never could afford to buy a place with the money I make now. I’ll rent an apartment near the bookstore so you can have a comfy home. I’ve wanted that for you for years. The compensation for the move is going to pay for your college tuition.”

  Si Wang lowered his head. He leaned against his mom and listened to the sound of her blood pumping. In early spring, He Qingying got paid for the forced move. Their place would be taken down just like the others, and in its place would stand a high-end condominium. Si Wang had a hard time letting go of their old place. He loved the cherry blossoms he’d drawn on the walls and the poems he’d carved into the windowsill. Would the locust tree be cut down? The memories of his father were still in this apartment.

  By their last day in the place, there wasn’t much left to move. He Qingying had thrown out most of their stuff—a lot of it had been her husband’s. Si Wang helped the movers and worked tirelessly. Neighbors said he looked more and more like a young Si Mingyuan.

  That evening they moved into their new apartment, a two-bedroom near Wilderness Books. It was in good shape and had nice furniture; the bathroom and kitchen were satisfactory, too. It was their dream home. Si Wang had his own bedroom, and his mom got him a new single bed.

  A few days later, He Qingying organized clothes in her son’s bedroom. Si Wang suddenly said, “Mom, let me comb your hair.”