—
Late that night, a sealed envelope was slipped through the front gate. It was addressed to “Mrs. Song of the People” and Mr. and Mrs. Ma had accidentally trampled it as they passed to the east wing. Mr. Ma gave it to Big Mother Knife who tore it open but, unable to make out the words with her good eye, thrust it at Ba Lute. The letter said that Swirl and Wen the Dreamer were guilty of counter-revolutionary crimes and sentenced to eight years of hard labour. They had already been transported to separate re-education camps in the Northwest. No matter how many times Big Mother heard the words, the letter made no sense. The letter continued: “The mother of Comrade Wen has died of illness. As there is no one in Bingpai with whom to entrust the child, I have taken the liberty of bringing her here. You will find the necessary paperwork and residence permits enclosed. Long live our motherland! Long live Chairman Mao!” There was a crushed, melted White Rabbit candy in the envelope.
“You know how it is,” Ba Lute said at last. “Sometimes the local revolutionary committee gets carried away. I’ll take care of it. A sentence like this won’t get carried out immediately. Swirl and Wen must still be in Bingpai.” But he wouldn’t look her in the face, examining instead the empty cigarette pack in his hand.
All night, Ba Lute tossed and turned. The more Big Mother tried to see the room’s outlines, the more the walls seemed to fold around her. Her husband cried out in his sleep, and she whacked his arm until he quieted. In Big Mother’s own fevered dreams, her sister appeared, but Swirl was a small child again. They were fleeing Shanghai, trying to outrun the Japanese army.
When Big Mother next woke, Zhuli was asleep beside her.
They remained in bed while Ba Lute and the boys got up. They listened as schoolbags rustled open and closed, loudspeakers bellowed the national anthem, and bells and clappers rattled through the laneways. When Big Mother opened her eyes again, she was momentarily confused and thought that she and Swirl were lying in their parents’ bed, her sister’s gleaming hair flowing across the pillows. Her sister was the great love of her life. When their husbands had disappeared into the war, she and Swirl had survived together, and Big Mother had never let her sister down. She swiped at her tears, but she could not make them stop falling.
She had a vague sense, a disturbance, of people struggling up, people rushing over one another, and on and on these people climbed and fell and pulled each other down, in a large and sickening silence. But for what crime? In the re-education camps of the Northwest, her sister and Wen the Dreamer would undoubtedly be separated from one another. Surely they would be released soon, any crimes they had committed must certainly be small mistakes. But what was a small counter-revolutionary crime? Big Mother had never yet heard of one. The little girl sat up. As if her aunt’s tears scalded her, Zhuli crawled out from under the covers and walked out of the room.
—
That night, Ba Lute boarded the bus for Bingpai. He drowsed, thinking of gamblers and the smoke at Swirl’s wedding, of birds and music, and of the slow churning of Chairman Mao’s newly formed wartime orchestra, and when he woke, the bus was tilting over a mountain pass, attacking a hairpin curve. He gripped the seat in front of him. It was miserable outside. Within and without, Ba Lute felt an enveloping sense of danger and deception. This foreboding was so strong that, when dawn came, he was taken aback to find the bus rolling across a delicate landscape. The green-gold fragility of the surrounding fields, the silvery bicycles and low lines of birds rising and lifting as one confused him. Banners proclaimed, “Serve the People!” and “Dare to think, dare to act!” The early summer had been unbearable, with bouts of thunder and unrelenting heat. His shirt felt glued permanently to his back.
Arriving in Bingpai, Ba Lute walked to the Party office, a meek little building with a very short door.
Inside, he was surprised to see an electric fan wobbling from the ceiling, funnelling the warm air down. The office had its own generator. Once Ba Lute had made himself known, he was welcomed by the village head with a very large piece of cake. Banishing his anxiety, he stretched himself out so that he was lordly and unassailable, and spoke in a bellowing voice. When Ba Lute mentioned Swirl and Wen the Dreamer’s names, the grinning official in his over-warm jacket turned pink and damp. The fan pushed droplets of sweat across his bald head.
“One moment please, Comrade,” the man said, and fled the room.
More cake appeared. A worker entered, singing, “Good day, Comrade!” He presented a cup of tea, wiped the already clean surface of the table and hobbled out. “Long live our Great Leader!”
“Well?” Ba Lute said, when the village head returned. “Where are they? I’m very eager to see them.”
The dishevelled man looked as if he had been to Moscow and back. “Well, of course,” he began, “they’re registered here—”
“Yes, yes.”
“—but, this morning, or, more accurately, at the present hour—”
“Comrade Wen is a greatly admired lyricist, a book of songs, as the saying goes. We can have no other for our concert. General Chen Yi himself insists!”
The man looked up, startled. “Respects to Chen Yi! A brave general and faithful servant to Chairman Mao himself. A twelve-barrel hero! Long may he—”
Ba Lute took a gulp of tea and slapped the cup on the table. “Comrade Wen and his wife must present themselves immediately. I’m ready to press on.”
“Brother Comrade, life goes in unexpected spirals. That is to say, there are many unexpected places to which a man returns—”
“Your poetry confuses me, Comrade.”
The man blushed. “Let me begin again. Elder brother, the truth of the matter is, they are not here.” The man shifted uncomfortably.
“Speak freely, please.”
The man poured tea and bade him drink.
Ba Lute waited. The fan turned faster now, as if trying to take flight.
“We do our utmost to keep order,” the man said, “but as a leading light such as yourself knows, the People cannot move in half-steps: they would only fall down, wouldn’t they? To traverse so great a divide, they must leap and sometimes overleap. And it could be that, in the case of Comrade Wen, they have, perhaps, overleapt. However, we live in a time in which the revolutionary dream must run its course, don’t you agree?”
Ba Lute said nothing. The cake tasted old in his mouth.
“It appears,” the man said, “that Comrade Wen and his wife had a hidden cellar on his family’s ancestral land.”
Ba Lute drank the remaining tea in his cup and looked thoughtfully at the pot. “That is no crime, Comrade.”
The man waited and let silence stand in for contradiction. “Of course,” he continued, “the contraband always surfaces. We confiscated everything. Books, records, some valuable heirlooms. He had the Book of Songs and the Book of History. He also possessed books from America. I am surprised,” he said, allowing a brief pause, “that you did not know.”
Ba Lute looked at the wall behind the man. There was no mistaking the sudden change in tone, all that confused poetry, that shiny sweat, suddenly vanishing like a mist.
“I did not know,” Ba Lute said evenly.
“Mmmm.”
The man stood up, reached up to a long string and stopped the fan. It slowed to a halt, and left the room confined and utterly still. “As cadres, we, of course, can only serve the People and follow the Party line. We turned him over to the revolutionary committee and they passed judgment. He was found to be a dangerous element.”
Big Lute’s throat was dry, but no more tea was offered.