looked distressed. Suddenly, he seemed much older. I stumbled on. The duty officer put his head round the door. I thought, it’s getting late, I should go. After I had delivered a few more exhortations, he gripped my hand and went.
September arrived. I thought maybe he needed some clothes, so I requested another visit, but no reply came.
Nie visited me. He was wearing a navy blue serge suit and carrying a bundle wrapped in newspaper. He looked debonair. He asked:
‘Any news about Hu?’
‘None. I haven’t seen him in more than a month. The authorities haven’t replied to my letter.’
I told him about F’s most recent letter and showed him the book list he had enclosed. He said in a low voice:
‘So he’s still doing literary research. So many books, it’s not easy.’ He added, ‘I bumped into Pan Hannian.* He’s living at the Organisation Department. He gets a hundred yuan a month pocket money. It seems Hu’s problem will soon be resolved.’
I thought, perhaps the reason they’ve not let me see him for so long is because a change is in the offing. He told me some other things. I was much more optimistic after hearing him.
I asked about Big Sister Ying. He said, ‘She goes to work every day at the People’s Political Consultative Conference. I told her to retire, but she doesn’t want to. Her morale is low. I don’t dare tell her about you two. I’m afraid she’ll become an insomniac.’
As he was getting ready to go, I noticed his newspaper wrapping had broken, so I gave him some extra sheets. I saw its contents: a poorly produced lithographic edition of Zhuangzi, on glazed paper. I couldn’t help asking, ‘Can you understand that? The ink smell gets up my nose.’
‘This edition is hard to get.’
‘We have a large-character edition engraved on wood.’
He asked me to find it, for an article he was writing. It was in a wooden box on top of the bookshelf. He steadied the table and I put a stool on it and climbed up and got the box. It contained several volumes of Zhuangzi, as well as Guanzi and Han Feizi. He wanted them all.
F had picked them up by chance in Shanghai at the end of the war. It seemed unlikely F would study them. ‘A precious sword for a person of high endeavour’ seemed a worthy end.
As he was about to leave, I said:
‘Give Big Sister Ying my address. I would love to see her.’
‘I will. I’ll tell her when she’s feeling a bit better, physically and mentally.’
Not long after that, I wrote to her. So she would know it was an old friend, I addressed it to Zhiqin, the name she used at school.
Three days later, one wet afternoon, she turned up under an umbrella. As soon as I opened the door, she rushed towards me without even pausing to put the umbrella down. ‘My dear Tu, so this is where you live!’ I flung myself at her, and the two of us stood exclaiming and laughing in the corridor. When we eventually made our way into the lighted room, I saw she was drenched. I poured her some water so she could wash, and told her to take off her coat. She paid me no attention, but simply told me to sit down so we could talk.
I had never been close to her. She was F’s friend. There was a certain sympathy between us, but that was all. But now we were like the oldest of friends. I needed her forthrightness and lack of inhibition, typical of a northern woman.
In her loud voice, she told me:
‘Tu, I almost missed your letter! When the old man in the reception office saw it, he said ‘‘Zhiqin? That’s a girl in my village, there’s no one of that name here.’’ I thought that can’t be me, but then I saw it was. A near miss! How’s Old Hu? Is he all right?’
‘He looks all right, but he’s gone bald.’
‘That’s a small sacrifice. He never had much hair anyway.’
We burst out laughing, and our distress ebbed away.
We sat there side by side. Even though her voice and smile hadn’t changed, nine years of hardship were etched onto her brow. She was an activist who loved her work and social activities, and suddenly she was consigned to a job of no consequence, with a daily pile of silent documents her only contact. How could she be calm and happy? But her hearty voice and resolute manner remained. She had not been defeated: she was still doing things she was good at.
We talked about many people and subjects, and I took inspiration from her stories. Many people had been entered into the ‘other’ register, for disreputable people, including some who previously had been powerful. Where did we stand in the scale of things? I was low-level and had never sought fame or wealth, I had never requested anything, and now I was even less likely to have grand hopes. I only wanted what any wife or mother would, to let our family live together.
Xiaoshan was home for the holidays. He recognised Ying and called her ‘auntie’.
Ying couldn’t hide her delight. ‘How big Xiaoshan has grown, he’s like an adult.’ They chatted about his school. I could see there was nothing that didn’t interest her, so I left them talking and went to cook dinner.
After dinner, we again sat for a while. Before we knew it, it was eight. She said she had to go. I tried to stop her, but she had to work the next day. She said she would come again. I took her to the tram stop. She had to cross Beijing, from the eastern outskirts to the western outskirts. This made me anxious, for she was no longer the Big Sister Ying of ten years ago. That made me treasure her visit even more.
* A leader of Chinese Communist intelligence in the 1930s, accused of treason in 1955 and posthumously rehabilitated.
It was deep autumn. The Ministry of Public Security wrote asking me to visit F. The letter arrived in the afternoon and I had to go the next morning, so I had no time for shopping. I took some books I had bought and some apples, and I popped into the food shop to buy some chilli oil. When I reached Shahe it was eleven. I ate a bowl of noodles and caught the bus to Qincheng. I didn’t have to wait long. The person on duty led him out and left us alone.
F had changed his clothes. He was wearing a dark blue long-sleeved jacket and trousers, both unlined, with a pullover peeping out from underneath. It was my cream jumper. It turned out that after his arrest he’d written home to ask for clothes and my mother and our son had got my jumper mixed up with his woollen underclothes.
Seeing me shake my head, he chuckled self-deprecatingly and said:
‘It’s good, it means I can always be with you. I use it as the lowest layer.’
I explained why I hadn’t come recently. He turned the criticism on himself. He was too thoughtless, too ignorant of the outside world.
This time everything seemed more natural. He started off by saying:
‘Tell me about your lives over the last few
