"All of you here are representatives of people's organizations. Comrades, I hope all of you will rid yourselves of any capitalist-class factional feelings, and purge any bad elements who have infiltrated your organizations. We can have only one standpoint, and that is the standpoint of the proletariat. Factional standpoints are not allowed! We will discuss each of these cases, decide whom to put in the first list and whom to put in the second list. Of course, there is also a third list, and whether they are dealt with leniently or harshly depends on whether those persons take the initiative to admit their crimes, and on how they conduct themselves in confessions and disclosures!"
Officer Zhang had a wide face and a square jaw. His eyes swept over the representatives of the various people's organizations as he jabbed a thick finger at the big pile of documents. Then, removing the cover on his cup, he began to drink his tea and to smoke.
He cautiously raised some questions, but only because Officer Zhang had said discussions were allowed. He asked what problems Liu, his former superior and department chief, had apart from a landlord family background? Also, there was a woman bureau chief who, back in those times, had been an underground Party member and organizer of student movements. According to the findings of his group, she had never been arrested, and there were no suspicions of her having been anti-Party or having capitulated to the enemy. Why had she also been listed for special investigation? Officer Zhang turned to him, raised the hand holding the cigarette, and gave him a look. That was when the former lieutenant colonel had rebuked him: "You clown!"
Several decades later, you were able to read a number of memoirs that gradually shed light on the internal struggles within the Chinese Communist Party. At the Political Bureau meetings, Mao Zedong probably gave his generals a look like this if they so much as offered the slightest dissent, then went on smoking and drinking his tea. Other generals would come forth to rebuke them. It was not necessary for the old man to say anything.
You, of course, were not a general. The former lieutenant colonel also yelled at him, "You insect!" Quite right, you were a very small insect. What was your ant's life worth anyway?
After work, he went to get his bicycle from the shed downstairs and ran into Liang Qin, who worked in his office. When he had rebelled two years earlier, it was Liang Qin who had taken over his work. But his life as a rebel had ended. Seeing no one around, he said to Liang, "Go on ahead, but after the intersection slow down. There's something I want to talk to you about."
Liang went off on his bicycle and, afterwards, he caught up.
"Come to my home for a drink," Liang said.
"Who else will be there?" he asked.
"My wife and son!"
"No, it wouldn't be convenient. Let's just cycle and talk like this."
"What is it?" Liang had immediately sensed that something was wrong.
"Do you have any problems in your background?" He didn't look at Liang and asked the question as if it was nothing of importance.
"No!" Liang almost fell off his bicycle.
"Have you ever contacted anyone abroad?"
"I don't have any relatives abroad!"
"Have you ever written letters to anyone abroad?"
"Wait! Let me think____________________"
There was another red light, and they each put a foot on the ground and stopped their bicycles.
"Yes, I have. People at the workplace asked me about it, it was many years ago…" Liang was on the verge of tears as he said this.
"Don't cry, don't cry! You're out on the road…" he said.
At that point, the green light came on, and the tide of bicycles started surging ahead.
"Tell me what else there is to this, I won't implicate you!" Liang had pulled himself together.
"There is talk that you could be a spy, you will need to be careful."
"Where did you hear this?"
He said he didn't know.
"I did, in fact, write a letter to Hong Kong, to a neighbor of mine. We had grown up together, but, later on, one of his paternal aunts got him to go to Hong Kong. I did, in fact, write him a letter asking him to get me a dictionary of English idioms, that was all, and it was many lifetimes ago! It was during the war in Korea, when I had just graduated, I was in the army as an interpreter in a prisoner-of-war camp…"
"Did you receive the dictionary?" he asked.
"No! You're saying… the letter was never sent? Was it intercepted?" Liang went on to ask.
"Who knows?"
"I'm suspected… of having communicated with a foreign country?"
"It was you who said this."
"And do you suspect me?" Liang turned to ask him.
"I'm not going into that with you. Just be careful!"
As a long, two-carriage, electric trolleybus passed close by, Liang swerved and almost collided with it.
"No wonder they transferred me out of the army…" For Liang, everything had suddenly become clear.
"All this is not so important."
"What else is there? Tell me everything, I won't bring you into it, even if they beat me to death!" Liang's bicycle swerved again.
"Don't get yourself killed in the process!" he warned.
"I won't stupidly kill myself! I've got a wife and a son!"
"Just be careful!"
He cycled around the corner. What he didn't say was that Liang's name was on the second list.
Some years later… How many years was it? Ten… no, twenty-eight years later, in Hong Kong, you answered a telephone call in your hotel. It was Liang Qin, who had read in the papers about your play. You didn't instantly recognize the name, and thought it was someone you had once met, and that the person wanted to see your play but couldn't get tickets, so you quickly apologized that it had already closed. He said he was your old colleague and wanted to take you out for a meal. You said you were flying out the next morning and that there wasn't time, maybe next time. He said, in that case, he would drive over right away to the hotel to see you. It was awkward to put him off, and it was only after putting down the receiver that you remembered him and your last conversation on your bicycles.
Half an hour later, he came into your room. He was dressed in a suit, leather shoes, linen shirt, and a dark-gray tie, but he was not flashy like the new rich from the Mainland. When you shook his hand, there was no gold Rolex watch, thick gold bracelet, or heavy gold ring. However, his hair was black, and, at his age, it would have been dyed. He said he had settled in Hong Kong many years ago. That neighbor from his youth, to whom he had written for the dictionary, found out how much he had suffered because of that letter, and felt so bad that he arranged for him to come out. He now had his own company, and his wife and son had moved to Canada on visas they had purchased. He told you frankly, "During these years, I have earned some money. I'm not wealthy, but I have enough to live out my old age in relative comfort. My son has a Ph.D. from a Canadian university, so I don't have anything to worry about. I commute, and if I can't stay in Hong Kong, I can pull out anytime." He also said he was grateful for the words you said to him back then.
"What words?" You couldn't remember.
" 'Don't get yourself killed in the process!' But for those words of yours, I wouldn't have been able to keep watching what was happening."
"My father couldn't keep watching," you said.
"He killed himself?" he asked.
"Luckily, he was discovered by an old neighbor who called an ambulance, and he was rushed to a hospital and saved. He was sent to a reform-through-labor farm for several years. Then, less than three months after being exonerated, he became ill and died."