Лю Цысинь - Hold Up the Sky

“Stereo sound,” came the careless reply.

Two other inmates sprang up from the bunks and grabbed Song Cheng by the ankles, dangling him upside down. They held him over the toilet and slowly lowered him until his head was largely inside.

“Sing a song,” Skinny Guy commanded. “That’s what stereo sound means. Give us a comrade song like ‘Left Hand, Right Hand’!”

Song Cheng didn’t sing. The inmates let go, and his head pitched all the way into the toilet.

Struggling, Song Cheng pulled his head out. He immediately began to vomit. Now he realized that the story designed by those who had framed him would make him the target of all his fellow inmates’ contempt.

The delighted prisoners around him suddenly scattered and dashed back to their bunks. The door opened; the police guard from earlier came in. He looked with disgust at Song Cheng, still crouched in front of the toilet. “Wash off your head at the tap. You have a visitor.”

Once Song Cheng rinsed off, he followed the guard into a spacious office where his visitor awaited. He was very young, thin-faced with messy hair and thick glasses. He carried an enormous briefcase.

Song Cheng sat down coldly without looking at the visitor. He had been permitted a visit at this time, and here, not in a visitation room with a glass partition; from that, Song Cheng had a good guess as to who sent him. But the first words out of his visitor’s mouth made Song lift his head in surprise.

“My name’s Bai Bing. I’m an engineer at the Center for Meteorological Modeling. They’re coming after me for the same reason they came after you.”

Song Cheng looked at the visitor. His tone of voice seemed odd: this was a subject that should have been discussed in whispers, but Bai Bing spoke at a normal volume, as if he wasn’t talking about anything that needed hiding.

Bai Bing seemed to have noticed his confusion. “I called the Senior Official two hours ago. He wanted to talk face-to-face with me, but I turned him down. After that, they got on my trail, followed me all the way to the detention center doors. They haven’t seized me because they’re curious about our meeting. They want to know what I’ll tell you. They’re listening in to our conversation right now.”

Song Cheng shifted his gaze from Bai Bing to the ceiling. He found it hard to trust this person, and regardless, he wasn’t interested in the matter. The law might have spared him the death penalty, but it had sentenced and executed his spirit all the same. His heart was dead. He could no longer muster interest in anything.

“I know the truth, all of it,” Bai Bing said.

A smirk flickered at the corner of Song Cheng’s mouth. No one knows the truth but them, but he didn’t bother to say that out loud.

“You began working for the provincial-level Commission for Discipline Inspection seven years ago. You were promoted to this rank just last year.”

Song Cheng remained silent. He was angry now. Bai Bing’s words had dragged him back into the memories he’d worked so hard to escape.

THE BIG CASE

At the beginning of the century, the Zhengzhou Municipal Government began a policy of setting aside a number of deputy-level positions for holders of Ph.D.s. Many other cities followed its example, and later, provincial governments began to adopt the same practice, even removing graduation-year requirements and offering higher starting positions. It was an excellent way to demonstrate the recruiters’ magnanimity and vision to the world, but in reality, the attractive concept amounted to little more than political record engineering. The recruiters were farsighted indeed—they knew perfectly well that these book-smart, well-educated young people lacked any sort of political experience. When they entered the unfamiliar and vicious political sphere, they found themselves swallowed whole in labyrinthine bureaucracy, unable to gain any foothold. The whole business was no big loss in job vacancies, while substantially padding the recruiters’ political résumés.

An opportunity like this led Song Cheng, already a law professor at the time, to leave his peaceful campus study for the world of politics. His peers who chose the same road didn’t last a year before they left in utter despair, beaten men and women, their only achievement being the destruction of their dreams. But Song Cheng was an exception. He not only stayed in politics, but did exceptionally well.

The credit belonged to two people. One was his college classmate Lu Wenming. In their last year as undergraduates, he’d placed in the civil service even as Song Cheng tested into grad school. With his advantageous family background and his own dedicated effort, ten years later he’d become the youngest provincial secretary of discipline inspection in the nation, head of the organization in charge of maintaining discipline within the provincial-level Party. He was the one who’d advised Song Cheng to give up his books for governance.

When the simple scholar first began, Lu didn’t lead him by the hand so much as he toddled him along by the feet, hand-placing Song’s every step as he taught him how to walk. He’d steered Song Cheng around traps and treachery that the latter could never have spotted himself, allowing him to progress up the road that had led to today. The other person he should thank was the Senior Official… on that thought, Song Cheng’s heart gave a spasm.

“You have to admit, you chose this for yourself. You can’t say they didn’t give you a way out.”

Song Cheng nodded. Yes, they’d given him a way out, a boulevard with his name in lights at that.

Bai Bing continued, “The Senior Official met with you a few months ago. I’m sure you remember it well. It was in a villa out in the exurbs, by the Yang River. The Senior Official doesn’t normally see outsiders there.

“Once you were out of the car, you found him waiting for you at the gate, a very high honor. He clasped your hand warmly and led you into the drawing room.

“The décor would’ve given off a first impression of unassuming simplicity, but you’d be wrong there. That aged-looking mahogany furniture is worth millions. The one plain scroll painting hanging on the wall looks even older, and there’s insect damage if you look closely, but that’s Dangheqizi by the Ming Dynasty painter Wu Bin, bought at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong for eight million HKD. And the cup of tea the Senior Official personally steeped for you? The leaves were ranked five stars at the International Tea Competition. It goes for nine hundred thousand yuan per half kilo.”

Song Cheng really could recall the tea Bai Bing spoke of. The liquid had sparkled the green of a jewel, a few delicate leaves drifting in its clarity like the languid notes from a mountain saint’s zither…. He even recalled how he’d felt: If only the outside world could be this lovely and pure. The tarp of apathy was torn from Song Cheng’s stifled thoughts, his blurred mind snapping back into focus. He stared at Bai Bing, eyes wide with shock.

How could he know all this? The whole affair had been dispatched to the deepest oubliettes, a secret among secrets. No more than four people in all the world knew, and that was counting himself.

“Who are you?!” He opened his mouth for the first time.

Bai Bing smiled. “I introduced myself earlier. I’m an ordinary person. But I’ll tell you straight off, not only do I know a lot, I know everything, or at least have the means to know everything. That’s why they want to get rid of me like they got rid of you.”

Bai Bing continued his account. “The Senior Official sat close, one hand on your shoulder. That benevolent gaze he turned on you would have moved anyone from the junior ranks. From what I know (and remember, I know everything), he’d never shown anyone else the same intimacy. He told you, Don’t worry, young man, we’re all comrades here. Whatever the matter, just speak honestly and trust that you’ll get honesty in return. We can always come to a solution… you have ideas, you’re capable, you have a sense of duty and a sense of mission. Those last two in particular are as precious as an oasis in a desert among young cadres nowadays. This is why I think so highly of you. In you, I see the reflection of what I was once like.