I had bought him a bottle of bamboo-leaf wine, his favourite, but I didn’t dare give it him yet, because the Director was returning. I watched happily as he took big mouthfuls of food. It felt like we had regressed ten years. In those days, whenever he came home from his travels, even if only after a few months, I had felt the same joy when we sat down together to eat. He used to say he often ate banquets when he was away from home, but it never tasted as good as my vegetables and beancurd.
I let him go for a nap. I told him, ‘I have to go out. I’ll lock the door from the outside. If anyone knocks, don’t open it.’ I added, ‘I want to buy you a toothbrush. Also some nice tea, so if anyone comes, we’ve got something other than boiled water to offer. And some cigarettes.’
He told me he hadn’t smoked for ten years and had given up, that was his reunion gift to me.
I went to buy the toothbrush and some other things, and I also bought him a razor. When I got home, he was sleeping. I was afraid they would soon turn up, so I woke him. Just at that moment, there was a knock at the back door.
The first thing the Director said on entering, with a big smile on his face, was ‘Why did you lock him in? And such a useless lock!’
How did he know the lock was useless, and that you could open it without a key?
He said, ‘It doesn’t matter, if there’s a crime, we can easily solve it. But don’t use that sort of lock, don’t cause us unnecessary trouble.’
F was baffled and I was ill at ease, so I left to make tea. I thought it best to leave them to chat with him.
Comrade Huang took out a list of five or six rules. The gist was that he shouldn’t talk with strangers or meet foreigners, go out by himself, or leave the neighbourhood.
Director Wu added, ‘This is for your safety, you must cooperate. I’ll introduce you to two comrades who are coming to help you. If you need anything, ask them.’
All I could do was nod earnestly, to show I supported the measures they proposed.
Comrade Huang went onto the balcony and shouted across at two men, who then entered the building. The thin tall one was Old Chen and the short sturdy one was Little Zhang. He introduced Hu Feng to them, as Old Zhang.
Liu from the police station also turned up, and shook hands with Hu Feng. Then, the two other comrades went to find accommodation.
Hu Feng had spent ten and a half years in prison. Director Wu formally announced he was being allowed to serve his sentence outside prison as an act of leniency, but his movements would be controlled by the public security organs.
Director Wu and the others left. One thing worried me: how F would deal with meeting his younger son. He was applying to join the Young Communist League, and had been asked repeatedly to draw a clear class line with his father.
I heard him pushing his bike up the steps. His father opened the door. Our son looked awkward, and went into his room.
I said, ‘You recognised him?’
‘He’s become a young man. I couldn’t resist kissing him on the forehead. I can’t stop seeing him as a child.’
The child reappeared and called out to his father, ‘I hope you’re all right. I’ve made you a cup of tea.’
I cheered up. I still had a close and harmonious family.
When the two of us retreated to what was now our bedroom, I felt a bit at a loss. He was no longer the same man. In some ways, he had become a stranger. More than once he said, ‘I’ve let you down, I’ve harmed you, I’ve treated no one else as badly as I’ve treated you, I can never repay my debt to you. I ruined the second half of my life, but I also ruined yours, I dragged my whole family into it.’
He put his head on my shoulder and wept.
‘Don’t say any more, I know all that, I’m never going to blame you.’ I lifted his big, heavy head and wiped away the tears.
He pulled me to the bedside and held my hand tight.
‘You can forgive me, but I can’t forgive myself. Whenever I thought of you and the children, I suffered agonising pain. I also felt guilty about the friends I implicated, but they had their own ideas and ideals. But in your case, you were innocent. What I most fear is that they will drag you out and expose you to the masses.’
‘Yes, I’ve also feared that.’
‘When I think of the friends I implicated, how they were locked up all those years, how they had to bear witness against me to my face to gain their freedom, I feel anguish. I haven’t seen them for ten years. They must have gone grey. Some have started wearing glasses, some have become fat and can no longer button up their clothes. A flogging by the masses would be easier to accept. How could I know it would continue for more than a decade, that they too would waste their finest years? They were so talented. I would rather go to the gallows than see them wrongly punished. But did I have a choice? It was like a drama, with me as the tragedian. I hope they can put their sufferings behind them.
‘In the interval between judgment and pronouncing judgment, they gave me soup and two dishes with two bowls of rice. That counts as special treatment. But a comrade from the Ministry of Public Security sat watching me, to observe whether I was afraid, whether I was heartbroken, whether I had lost my appetite. I gulped it down as always, to show they couldn’t defeat me. They had too simple a view if they thought they could damage a person’s spirit by such means.
‘Later, the prison authorities asked me to write down how I felt about the sentence. I said, “My heart is at ease but reason has not prevailed.” This surprised them. They moved me to an unheated cell. It was not until a few days ago that they moved me back to a big cell. But I ignored their petty measures.’
‘So, the food was not so bad?’
‘Each morning I received a cup of powdered milk and a steamed bun with jam. The food was sufficient in quantity. Sometimes I got boiled meat. But sometimes someone had put a lump of soil or an insect on it. I ignored them. I fished it out and ate the meat as usual.’
‘Do you know why that happened?’
‘The people who brought the food were in a bad mood. During the period of natural disasters we didn’t get meat for months on end. Sometimes we only got vegetables and steamed corn-bread, and on one occasion we got onion skins. Even that cost 20 yuan a month. You were lucky to be an official prisoner, for I wouldn’t have been able to pay for your provisions. You don’t know how lucky you were.’
We laughed.
There were no words to describe what had happened. We needed sleep, but there was one question I had to ask him. ‘When I got out of gaol, I heard rumours that you wanted to kill yourself. I thought maybe you could no longer bear it, because I also had the same idea.’
‘Do you remember what we talked about that night, when Shu Wu* published the private letters I had written to him before Liberation? You said that if the freedom of correspondence laid down by the Constitution couldn’t be safeguarded, what is left? You yourself mentioned suicide. I thought about it and said people might think we killed ourselves because we feared punishment, that we had alienated ourselves from the masses, who would dare to speak up for us after that? You also thought of mother, who was nearly 80, and our son, who was eight. You could only weep. So we decided to grit our teeth and suffer all attacks. That oath kept me going. However, I did waver. In 1957, after reading Chairman Mao’s On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, I said I hoped I could have a down-to-earth discussion about my case, that I wouldn’t just be left in the dark. I was always being told to confess, but I had nothing to confess. No one listened, so I went on hunger strike. Obviously, they couldn’t let me starve to death. I won’t go