In the Pond (11 page)

At dinner Ma told his wife of the news. Mrs. Ma was amazed and upset at the same time, because two days ago they had been informed that their daughter was thirty points below the admission standard. This meant they would have to send her to the preparatory school in Gold County again the next year.

“How come it was so easy for him?” she asked her husband, chewing spinach.

“Beats me.”

“You know, this will be big news in town. Are you going to let him go?” Her bulbous nose was wet with beads of perspiration.

“I don’t know. Liu Shu and I haven’t talked about it yet.”

“I think you should let him go this time. If you don’t, he’ll remember you for the rest of his life. He’ll take more revenge. Who wouldn’t?” She thrust a spoon of stewed potatoes into the mouth of their two-year-old grandson, who was sitting in her lap.

Ma didn’t say another word and kept eating his corn porridge. It was his principle that his wife shouldn’t interfere with his work. He picked up a fried loach with his chopsticks and sipped the sorghum liquor from his cup. Though he tried not to think of the admission for the moment, his wife’s words were sinking in. He had five
children and a grandson and two granddaughters; for them he had better accumulate some virtuous deeds, so that people would treat them well after he left this world. Shao Bin would ruin them if he hurt him too much.

The moment the Mas finished dinner, Bin and Meilan arrived. Mrs. Ma poured them each a cup of jasmine tea and then went to the kitchen to do the dishes. Bin was shocked that the leaders had heard of the admission. Ma told him the letter hadn’t been discussed yet. Bin begged him to raise his noble hands just this once and let him go; Ma said that he was not inclined to keep him here and that the admission was also an honor to the plant.

To a certain extent Ma felt for Bin, because he had hit his crotch in the theater, even though Bin thought it was Liu who had done that. “I’ll talk with Secretary Liu,” said Ma. “We’ll let you know of our decision soon.” He waved his cigarette, a skein of smoke encircling his hairy wrist.

“Thank you, Director Ma,” the couple said in unison.

“Young Shao, let me give you a piece of advice. You should learn to be modest and prudent. One always loses by being proud and gains by being modest.” Ma was referring to an instruction from Chairman Mao.

“Yes, I will remember that,” Bin said and grinned.

Ma then asked him what textbooks were more useful for the exams. Hesitating for a second, Bin told him he had used the set published by Jilin University. Ma made a mental note to tell his daughter to look into those books.

As Mrs. Ma stepped in, wiping her hands on a towel, Meilan opened her handbag and took out four green apples. “These’re for the kid,” she said, shyly avoiding Mrs. Ma’s eyes. She handed one of them to the baby boy, who was playing with a toy tank on the floor. He looked at the apple but didn’t touch it.

“No, we have a lot of fruit,” Mrs. Ma said, trying to put the apples back into the handbag.

Meilan stuck the bag under her own arm and said, “Just for the kid, Aunt. They’re Indian Green.”

Bin didn’t want to stay long, he was afraid of being seen by others, so the Shaos took their leave.

After they left, Ma’s face sank; he was not pleased with the apples. “What a bookworm,” he said to his wife when the young couple were out of earshot. “He doesn’t even know how to give a gift. Just four apples, crazy.” He tapped his cigarette on the rim of an empty honey jar he used as an ashtray.

He got to his feet and stretched his hands, yawning. With the apples in his jacket pockets, two on each side, he left for Liu’s to discuss the college admission.

Bin was working at a welding machine the next morning when Hsiao tapped his shoulder and told him that the plant’s leaders wanted him to attend a family-planning meeting in the union office at four in the afternoon. Bin was puzzled, because Meilan and he hadn’t done anything violating the one-child policy. He guessed that perhaps
he was being invited to help enforce the policy. If so, this wasn’t a good sign; in the normal course of events, if he was going to leave the plant soon he shouldn’t be assigned any official role. Another thought unnerved him a great deal, namely that the leaders might know his exam results and meant to use this opportunity to ridicule him.

At four, in the union office, all the heads of the workshops and offices were present, in addition to the women representatives and the four workers who had second-born babies. In total, about thirty people sat around six long desks grouped together. Bin took a seat at a corner of a desk.

The union chairman, Bao, started by reporting on the situation of family planning in the plant. He was almost illiterate and couldn’t speak well, so in a halting tone he was reading out the report prepared for him by his assistant. He declared that the plant had intended to become a model of implementing the family-planning policy, but four second-born babies this year had spoiled the plan. The Third Workshop alone had three second-borns.

After Bao was done with the report, Secretary Liu stood up and announced that all those with second-born babies would lose a whole year’s bonus and wouldn’t get a raise for two years. Groans came from around the table.

“I’m not coldhearted, comrades,” Liu said. “The punishment for a second-born is clearly written in the most recent document. We have no choice but to implement
it, unless you can prove that your firstborn is retarded or from a previous marriage” He stretched out his right hand, wiggling his fingers, as though inviting somebody to stand up and argue with him. No one moved except Ma.

Ma rose to his feet and waved to Nina, who was sitting in the next room. She came in, carrying a large string bag of National Glory apples with both hands, and put the fruit on the desk in front of Liu; then she went and sat down on a chair by the door. She gave Bin a contemptuous stare, her lips in a pout. At the sight of the red apples, Bin’s heart began kicking; he knew something was wrong. Liu squinted at him and smiled with his mustache twitching.

“Comrades,” Liu said loudly, “let me announce another decision here. Yesterday afternoon we received a letter from the Provincial Teachers University. It says they might admit Shao Bin to their Fine Arts Department and asks us, the plant’s leaders, to give an evaluation of him and the permission for him to leave. Before we reached a decision, yesterday evening Shao Bin and his wife went to Director Ma’s home with this gift.” Liu lifted the thirty-odd apples and dropped them on the desk with a thump. “And he begged Director Ma to give him the permission to go. Too late, I say. You can’t embrace the Buddha’s feet only in your hour of need, when for years you’ve never bothered to burn a joss stick or kowtow to him.”

Liu turned to Bin and kept on. “Shao Bin, you’ve painted cartoons about us and made us look like corrupt officials. But why do
you
practice corruption shamelessly, bribing a revolutionary cadre? Let me tell you this now: We’re not that cheap; a bag of apples won’t buy us off.” He lifted the string bag again. Before he put it down, a camera flashed at him; as arranged, Dongfang had brought his camera to the meeting.

Some people smirked, while a few sighed, shaking their heads. “Comrades,” Liu resumed, “three weeks ago Shao Bin bit my butt. Now he’s tried to bribe Director Ma. I used to think he was merely a lunatic, suffering from schizophrenia or something, but the bribe has made me change my mind. He must have a moral problem too. Therefore this morning our Party Committee sent out a letter, together with the photos of my wound and these apples as two samples of his ‘work,’ to the university and informed them that we wouldn’t agree about their decision and wouldn’t provide Shao Bin’s file for them. In short, he’s not qualified to go to college, neither mentally nor morally.”

Bin broke out wailing, which scared the people around him. He yelled, “I screw your ancestors! You wait and see, I’ll dump your grandsons into a well!”

The last sentence horrified Liu and Ma, because each had only one grandson, a single seedling of the entire family, and Bin had said clearly, “grandsons,” meaning both of theirs. Though he might be bluffing, a desperate
madman like him could do anything. If he did that, their family lines would be cut. Now they doubted whether they had done a wise thing by sending out the letter of refusal so soon. It seemed they had pressed Bin too hard without giving him a way out. Naturally he had exploded. Ma couldn’t help glaring at Liu, who had convinced him that they had best hold Bin back; the night before, Ma had been inclined to let him leave.

For a good two minutes neither Liu nor Ma knew what to do; they stood there whispering to each other and scratching their scalps and necks, while Bin was weeping and sniffling, his face buried in his arms on the desk. The meeting turned chaotic. Some people said the leaders should let Bin go; they could deduct his bonus and even beat him, but stopping him from entering college was way too much; by doing so, they ruined his whole life. If there was no hope left, who wouldn’t go berserk? Some said the leaders had promised to support whoever took the entrance exams, and now Bin was admitted, which was an event that should be celebrated in the plant, why didn’t they keep their word? Who would try again the next year? Who would believe them in the future? Liu and Ma as leaders were too nearsighted and narrow-minded. As for the bag of apples, Bin must have done it in desperation; it was perfectly understandable if you were utterly confused and frightened and had no idea what to do. However, those who had always hated this pseudo-scholar remained silent, smirking.

Finally Director Ma clapped his hands and declared the meeting was over.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Meilan moaned after Bin told her what the leaders had done. “I thought the Mas didn’t have Indian apples. I didn’t mean to bribe him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me beforehand?” He was angry and had planned to slap her.

“I’m sorry. I thought you’d be too stubborn to allow me.” She began weeping, blaming herself for having ruined his future. Her tears softened him.

Instead of questioning her further, he handed her a wet towel. He felt that in a way he himself was to blame too. He had seen her handbag bulging strangely but hadn’t asked what was inside; he had been too careless, knowing she was a sort of oddball. Yet all in all, it was neither her fault nor his. Those hoodlums just wanted to do him in and had made a pond out of a pee puddle. It doesn’t matter if something bad has happened; what matters is the person who takes advantage of it. Wicked people will create misfortune for you.

That night he wrote to Yen and told him that everything was gone. The university would surely accept the official statement from the plant and drop him. He swore he would avenge this injustice someday, but for the time being he had to get out of here. Obviously the leaders were set on broiling him alive. He felt as though his heart would explode with rage at any moment. “A bomb,” he
wrote, “my heart is like an atomic bomb, eager to blast everything.” He knew he might grab hold of Liu’s and Ma’s grandsons and hurt the children badly if more pressure was put on him. At the end of the letter, he begged Yen, “Help your older brother, please!”

It was a long letter, six pages written with a pen. After completing it, he was too exhausted to climb onto the bed; he remained at the desk and let his head rest in the crook of his arm. In no time a thread of saliva began dribbling from the corner of his mouth. As he was snoring away, a soft sound whistled in his nose.

He slept this way until daybreak.

O
N THURSDAY EVENING
a young man came to visit Bin. He introduced himself as Song Zhi, a reporter and a colleague of Yen’s at the newspaper
Environment.
He was bareheaded and wore an old army uniform; one of the knees of his pants was covered with a rectangular patch that looked brand new. He said Yen had told Bin’s story to the editorial staff, and everybody had felt outraged by Liu’s and Ma’s abuse of power. So the editor in chief, Jiang Ping, sent him over to investigate and report on the case.

Bin was impressed by Song, who not only had good manners but also looked handsome, with a square face, a straight nose, large, sparkling eyes, and broad shoulders. He felt Song was a trustworthy man who seemed to exude compassion.

They talked over tea and melons. Outside the window, the moon was wavering above the aspen crowns like a silver sickle slicing strips of clouds. Katydids were chirping
away, and a young male voice was singing Peking opera in a neighboring courtyard.

Bin was talking about how evil Liu and Ma were while Song was writing down his words in a notebook. He went on for about twenty minutes; then he stopped to declare loudly, “They’re both thugs and bandits without any Communist conscience. I often wonder if they are from reactionary families; otherwise, where on earth could they have got such wicked minds? One night I dreamed Liu Shu was a fat landlord who died of thousands of cuts, hacked to pieces by revolutionary masses. In any case, we must have these vermin kicked out of the Party.” He kept slapping his thigh.

“Don’t be too emotional, Comrade Old Shao. Just tell me the facts,” said Song.

At that, Bin swallowed a gulp of tea to calm himself down. He remembered he himself wasn’t a Party member yet, though he had applied for membership many times. So he had better not discuss how the Party should punish the two leaders.

“Say everything clearly to Young Song,” Meilan told Bin, “or how can he expose them?”

Patiently Song was writing. Having controlled his anger, Bin continued to talk about the injustice in the housing assignment, and then about the leaders’ persecuting him for the works of art he had published. He took out the cartoons about housing and holiday bribery and gave Song a copy of each to take back as evidence.
After that, he described Secretary Yang’s role in these incidents, asserting that it was because Yang was behind the scenes that Liu and Ma dared to torture him so flagrantly. They always served Yang as though he were their grandfather; in return, Yang would cover up for them whatever crimes they committed. Their control was so tight that this commune was simply an independent empire, into which even a needle couldn’t find its way. To conclude, Bin said, “All the officials here are rotten. There isn’t a clean, honest one to whom you can report your thoughts.”