He rushed back to the city by early afternoon, went home to get his bankbook, cycled to withdraw money before the bank closed, then went to Qianmen Railway Station to buy a ticket for that night. He returned home to lock his bicycle in his room, and, carrying the satchel he normally took to work, he boarded the express train south at eleven o'clock.
Father and son had not seen one another for two years, and, when he suddenly turned up, his father was overjoyed. His father went off to the free market and bought fresh fish and live shrimp, and went to the kitchen to gut the fish. When his mother died, his father became morose and seldom spoke, but now he was a different person, doing the cooking, cheerful and talking a lot. Then came his father's concerns about politics, and he kept asking questions about the Party and the national leaders who had vanished from the papers. Not wanting to upset his father straight away, he sat at the table, drinking, and talked about things that couldn't be read in the newspapers. He told his father there was an internal struggle going on in the highest echelons of the Party, but that it was something about which ordinary people would not be able to find out anything. His father said he knew, he knew; in the provinces and the cities, it was the same. His father also said that he had joined the rebels and that the head of the personnel department, who had denounced a string of people, had been overthrown. He held back for a while but felt he had to warn his father.
"Father, you mustn't forget the lesson of the anti-rightist period-"
"I did not oppose the Party! I only raised some views about a particular person's work!"
His father became agitated. His hand began to shake, and he spilled the liquor from his cup onto the table.
"You're not young, and you have problems with your personal history, you can't join such groups! You don't have the right to take part in such campaigns!" He was also very agitated. He had never spoken in that tone of voice to his father before.
"Why can't I?" His father slammed his cup on the table. "There's nothing wrong with my history, I didn't join with reactionaries, I have no political problems! That year, the Party called upon people to speak out, and I simply said that the wall between the masses should be torn down. I was referring to that person's work style. I did not say a word against the Party. It was his revenge! I said this at the meeting, and many people were present, they all heard and can testify to this! That blackboard document of mine with more than a hundred characters had been requested by their Party branch!"
"Father, you're too naive-" he went to argue, but his father cut him short.
"I don't need you to lecture to me! Just because you've done a bit of study! Your mother overindulged you, she spoiled you rotten!"
After his father had calmed down, he had to ask him. "Father, did you ever have any guns?"
His father was stunned. It was as if he had been struck on the head. Slowly his head drooped, and he stopped talking.
"Someone has divulged that my file has this problem," he explained. "I made this trip to see if you were all right. Is there any truth in the matter?"
"Your mother was too honest…" his father mumbled.
In other words, it was true. His heart went cold.
"It was a year or two after Liberation. Census forms were issued for people to fill out, and there was a column for weapons. It was your mother's fault, she was asking for trouble, she insisted that I honestly write down that I had sold a gun to a friend…"
"What year was this?" he asked, glaring. His father had become the object of his interrogation.
"It was a long time ago, during the War of Resistance. It was still the Republican Period, before you were even born…"
People all testified like this, they had to, he thought. However, the matter of the gun was already an incontestable fact, and he had to struggle to pull himself together and to curb his anger. He could not interrogate his father, so he said quietly, "Father, I'm not blaming you, but where is this gun?"
"I passed it on to a colleague at the bank. Your mother said she couldn't understand why I was keeping the thing, but I had it for protection, because of the social unrest in those times. She said I wouldn't know where to aim it, and what if it went off by accident? So, I sold it to a colleague at the bank!" His father laughed.
But this was not a laughing matter, and he said sternly, "But it is recorded in my file that you had hidden a gun."
These were Lin's exact words, and he could not have heard them wrongly.
His father shook and almost shouted, "That's impossible! It happened more than thirty years ago!"
Father and son looked at one another. He believed his father more than the file, but he had to say, "Father, they are sure to investigate."
"In other words…" His father was wretched.
"In other words, who would now admit to having bought the gun?" He, too, despaired.
His father covered his face with both hands. He had finally realized the implications, and was weeping. The food on the table, hardly touched, had gone cold.
He said he did not blame his father, and, whatever happened, he was still his son, there was no question of his not acknowledging him as his father. During the great famine in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward period, his mother had also been naive. She responded to the call of the Party and went to a farm to be reformed through labor; excessive fatigue led to her drowning in the river. He and his father were left to depend upon each other, and he knew his father loved him very much. When he came home from university swollen from malnutrition, his father used two months of meat-ration coupons to buy pork fat to make lard for him to take back with him. His father said it was cold up north and impossible to get hold of anything nutritious, whereas here carrots could be bought from the peasants. He could never forget his father pouring the boiling fat into a plastic jar, which immediately shriveled up and melted; the fat ran from the table to the floor. In silence, they got on their haunches to scrape up the solidified lard, bit by bit, with a spoon from the floor.
He went on to say, "Father, I've come back to clear up this business about the gun, for your sake and for mine."
It was only then that his father said, "I sold the gun to an old colleague at the bank more than thirty years ago. After Liberation, I have only had one letter from him. If he is still alive, he will be working at the bank. Do you remember him? You used to call him Uncle Fang. He was very fond of you and would never betray you. He didn't have any children and said he wanted to have you as his godchild, but your mother refused."
There was an old photograph at home, if he hadn't burned it, he recalled. This Uncle Fang was bald and had a fat round face. He was like a Buddha, but in a suit and tie. The child in a knitted pullover who sat on the lap of this living Buddha in a suit was holding a gold Parker fountain pen and wouldn't let go of it. The pen was later given to him, and he treasured it as a child.
After spending a day at home, he continued south by train another day and night. When he found the local bank and made inquiries, the youth at reception turned out to be a member of a rebel group. Then, after asking die cadre in charge of personnel, he found out that a certain Fang had been transferred twenty years earlier to a savings office in the suburbs. This was probably because old personnel who had been retained were not trusted.
He rented a bicycle and found the savings office. They told him that Fang had retired, and gave him his address.
At the end of a passageway of a simple two-story building, was an old woman in an apron washing vegetables at the communal tub. She gave a start at his inquiry, and asked instead, "What do you want him for?"
"I was passing through on a business trip and came to pay a visit," he said.