Ha Jin - A Map of Betrayal - A Novel

“Can you show me where he lives?”

“Sure thing, let’s go.”

Mai stood and we followed him out. Without extinguishing his cigarette butt, he dropped it on a manure pile in his yard. He said we could leave the car behind because we were going to walk just a few steps. I was unsure about that, but Minmin felt it was all right. “It’s an old car anyway,” she said. Together we headed toward the southern side of the village. It was quiet everywhere, and on the way all I saw were two dogs slinking around; they were so underfed that their ribs showed and their fur was patchy. The street was muddy, dotted with puddles of rainwater, some of them steaming and bubbling a little as if about to boil. There was trash scattered everywhere — instant noodle containers, glass bits, shattered pottery, rotten cabbage roots, candy wrappers, walnut shells, paper flecks from firecrackers that looked like the remnants of a wedding or funeral. A whiff of burning wood or grass was in the air and a few chimneys were spewing smoke.

We stopped at a black brick house behind an iron-barred gate, which Mai, without announcement, pushed open and led us in. The instant we entered, two bronze-colored chickens took off. One landed on a straw stack while the other caught a top rail of the pigpen, both clucking and fluttering their feathers. An old man was weaving a mat with the skins of sorghum stalks in the cement-paved yard. At the sight of us he tottered to his feet, his gray beard scanty but almost six inches long. Mai explained that I was Weimin Shang’s daughter from Beijing. At that, the old man’s eyes lit up and his mouth hung open. He turned away and whispered something to his wife, a large-framed woman with a knot of hair at the back of her head. He then said to me, “This is my wife, Ning.”

“Very glad to meet you, Aunt Ning. I’m Lilian.” I held out my hand, but she drew back a bit, then gingerly shook my hand, her palm rough and callused.

“Welcome,” she mumbled.

“Come on, Weiren,” Mai said to the old man. “Don’t keep us standing like this.”

So the host led us into the sitting room, which was also a bedroom. A large brick bed, a kang , took up almost half the space. On the whitewashed wall hung a glossy calendar that displayed the Golden Gate Bridge, and next to the picture was a garland of dried chilies, a few of them fissured, revealing the yellow seeds. Minmin went over to the picture of the bridge and blurted out, “Wow, this is gorgeous. Do you know where this is?” As soon as she said that, she bit the corner of her lips as if to admit a gaffe in assuming the host’s ignorance.

Mai laughed while Uncle Weiren smiled, showing that only three or four teeth were left in his mouth. “Sure I know,” the host said. “It’s in the American city called Old Gold Mountain.” That’s the Chinese name for San Francisco.

Aunt Ning came in holding a kettle and served tea while Uncle Weiren offered us Red Plum cigarettes. Mai took one; Minmin and I declined. I lifted the mug and sipped the tea, which had a grassy flavor. The old man told me that his name, Weiren, meant he and my father were cousins. In other words, he was a real uncle of mine. All the males of their generation in the Shang clan had the same character, wei , in their personal names.

“I’m your grandpa’s nephew,” he added. “Your father and I are cousins.”

“Do you remember my dad, Uncle Weiren?” I asked.

“You bet. He taught me how to dog-paddle when I was a little kid. I knew your first mother pretty well too. She was a kindhearted woman and once gave me a full pocket of roasted sunflower seeds.” He was referring to Yufeng. Traditionally a man’s children by his second and third wives also belonged to his first wife, who was the younger generation’s “first mother.”

“Where is Yufeng now? Do you know?” I said.

“In the northeast. Your sister used to write me at the Spring Festival, but her letters stopped coming after a couple of years.”

“Why did they have to leave?” I asked. I had been plagued by the question for a long time. “Didn’t the government provide for them?”

Uncle Weiren sighed, then took a deep drag on his cigarette. “They used to send her your dad’s pay every month, but money became worthless during the famine. Rich or poor, folks all starved, and only the powerful had enough food.”

“By docking others’ rations,” Mai said.

I asked Uncle Weiren, “But didn’t my grandparents leave Yufeng some farmland?”

“Their land was taken away long ago, in the Land Reform Movement in the early fifties. Since then, all land belongs to the country.”

“I see. So there was no way Yufeng could raise her kids here?”

Uncle Weiren stared at me, his bulging eyes a little bleary. He cleared his throat and said, “It was hard for her indeed. Your brother died of brain inflammation, but it was also believed he starved to death. All the Shangs in the village got angry at Yufeng, because the boy was the single seedling in your father’s family. The old feudalistic mind-set, you know, that doesn’t allow girls to carry on the bloodline. It wasn’t fair to Yufeng really. She was an unfortunate woman, alone without a man in her home. How could she raise the kids by herself? To make things worse, your brother was weak from the day he was born. The Shangs here were all upset about his death, and some blamed Yufeng for it, but every family was too desperate to give her any help. It was not like nowadays, when we can afford to spare some food or cash.”

“About a third of our village died in the famine,” Mai said. “I remember wild dogs and wolves got fat and sleek feeding on corpses.”

“That’s awful,” Minmin put in.

“So you drove Yufeng out of the village?” I asked Uncle Weiren, bristling with sudden anger.

“It didn’t happen like that,” the old man said. “She had a younger brother who was a foreman or something on a state-owned farm in the northeast. He wrote and said there was food in the Jiamusi area, so he wanted her to come join his family there. It was generous of him to do that. Also good for Yufeng.”

“Especially when she was of no use to the Shangs anymore,” I said.

“That’s not what I mean. Lots of bachelors would eye her up and down whenever they ran into her. Many would whistle and let out catcalls. Even some married men wanted to make it with her. She was a fine woman, good-looking and healthy enough to draw a whole lot of attention. Some wicked men even tried to sneak into her house at night. Your father hadn’t been around for such a long time, we didn’t know whether he was dead or alive, so the village treated her more or less like a widow.”

“Did she marry again in the northeast?” I asked.

“That I don’t know. Truth to tell, I respected her. She was a good woman and had a sad, sad life.”

Mai broke in, “My mom used to say that any man should feel blessed if he could have a wife like Yufeng. Folks really looked up to her. She had dexterous hands and made the thinnest noodles in the village. She could embroider gorgeous creatures like a phoenix, mandarin ducks, peacocks, and unicorns. Lots of girls went to her house to learn embroidery from her.”

“Do you still have her address, Uncle Weiren?” I asked.

“I might’ve kept a letter from her daughter. Let me go check.” He stood, pushed aside a cloth door curtain, and shuffled into the inner room.

I turned to Mai. “Doesn’t Uncle Weiren have children?”

“He has a son and a daughter. Both are in Dezhou City and doing pretty well. The daughter teaches college there.”

“So most of the Shangs are doing all right?”

“You bet. Yours is a clan that always valued education and books and has produced a good many officials and scholars. The Shangs have been respected in this area for hundreds of years.”