Howard Goldblatt (Editor) - Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today

What trouble? What was this all about? It seemed someone had passed the word that my train had been delayed by a flash flood in the mountains, which is normally no big deal. This comrade, though, for some reason couldn't believe that I had managed to arrive in one piece. He gave me a good firm handshake but left me stuck with a grim thought: somehow I'd made it through safe and trouble free!

The conference was to open the following day, and we were going to drive out there bright and early in the morning. The plan, meanwhile, was to take the afternoon to do some sightseeing. I got a clear idea of the arrangements and checked my watch: still just a bit past ten in the morning. A van hauled us from the train station to the hostel, where we were to spend the night before heading off to Luxian and the conference. I went over to the check-in desk to make a phone call.

I gave her a call. Xiao Tong.

As soon as I began thinking of Xiao Tong, that summer three years ago drifted back into view. I was separated from my wife, feeling low and foul, as if she and I were involved in some sort of warfare. (I had no heart for fighting it out. We could have been happy together-if only, that is, I hadn't become what I am now.) It was in a gray fifties-era building that I had first met Xiao Tong. I was there with some journalist friends at a get-together called the Journalists' Trust, as we were all in the same line of work. But since each of us was either already divorced or in the process, it might have been better named the Singles' Club. I think it might have been I who came up with that Singles' Club tagline while proposing a toast. As for a good journalistic subheading to go with it, no one ever came up with anything. The opening speech was called "The Independent Woman." The speaker was Xiao Tong. She had recently got a divorce from a husband dead set against splitting up. Originally an athlete, she was powerfully built, proud, and bursting with an unreasoning drive to go out and take on her new life. (I have to admit that for me, it wasn't like that at the time.) She had prepared the lunch: fried sausages, ham, pickles, even cheese, and a ginger nutcake she herself had baked. And then that magnificent chicken. Even the way she carried it out to the table: unforgettable. She knew how to live and live well. The talk she gave, delivered in a strongly speculative vein, left a lasting impression, too. I remember only one phrase from it, when she said, "If a woman can love only one man, then she's not affirming the emotion of love but the man; only if a woman loves continually does she give affirmation to love in and of itself."

At the end of the get-together, our friends left Xiao Tong and me behind on our own; each one of them shook our hands as if wishing the two of us well in some unstated sort of way. I can't remember what she and I talked about then, except that she seemed to want me to stay for dinner (the get-together had been a lunch party), and I felt that wasn't really necessary. We met several times after that. She told me how she wrote compositions in English and how she spoke French in her sleep. She was the one who recommended that I read some of the world's most abstruse books. (I think I still have two that I bought after consulting the list she wrote out for me.) Later on, mutual friends were always filling me in on the latest about Xiao Tong: Xiao Tong's in love again, or Xiao Tong's gone through another breakup. The explanations of why she went to Xi'an conflicted. I tended to believe the one I could accept most readily: that she switched job assignments with a teacher who wanted to get back to her husband and child in Beijing. Then, of course, there were other factors in the background: after another frenetic breakup, Xiao Tong, in a huff, had stopped talking with her family.

This was where it stood when I arrived in Xi'an and gave her a call.

She would be happy to have me over for a visit but made it clear that she had nothing to offer me as her guest.

So after lunch at the hostel, I started out. The medical academy would be easy to find, I was given to understand, but even so I kept trying to talk myself out of going there right away: should I rush to get a quick look at the sights of Xi'an first, or should I spend the entire afternoon seeing Xiao Tong? Then again, we could take in the sights together. I decided on the latter.

Walking alongside a muddy road, at last I spotted the sign at the gate to the medical academy, and then I saw Xiao Tong.

A half month later, I'd finished the conference report and gone to see the terra-cotta soldiers, Empress Wu Zetian's Tomb, and the Tomb of the Yellow Emperor. Getting ready to leave on my return flight to Beijing, I wondered if perhaps I ought to make another trip to Wild Goose Pagoda or perhaps see Xiao Tong again. I decided on the former. No-I went to Xiao Tong's place first and then to Wild Goose Pagoda, because at her dormitory I saw a big padlock on the door. I knocked at the next-door neighbor's, but no one even knew who she was. When I said I'd been here a half month ago to see her, the neighbors suggested I go to the dean's office to check the personnel files. Check the files, or trust my memory? I decided on the latter.

When I got back to Beijing, would I tell my friends about Xiao Tong, or keep it to myself? I decided on the former. So I told a friend about what happened with Xiao Tong. He smiled. Xiao Tong had been back in Beijing for over three months, he said; he saw her almost every day. He could take me to her right away, too, since she was still around. Really? Terrific. It looked as if I'd really done a good turn-I'd deceived my own memory, or maybe my memory had deceived me. In any case, I didn't care to talk about it anymore. I started in telling my friend about my experience on the trip back from Xi'an, how I had had to stand up on the train for twelve hours straight. He interrupted-which number train had I taken? "Number one twenty-six, of course." He smiled again, almost laughed this time: "Then you've come from Nanjing." He was right. I must have taken the plane back to Beijing!

But that sensation of standing on the train still lingered in my legs.

As soon as the train pulled up to the platform, I used my usual trick of flashing a journalist's ID and an interview-approval letter until I located the head conductor. To get a sleeper, you have to move in fast-you can't wait until after you've claimed a hard seat in third class. Unless you've made reservations four days ahead of time or waited five hours in line, this is the only chance there is to get some sleep on the trip. The head conductor very civilly led me to the dining-car corridor, pointed to a ten-centimeter-wide ledge along the wall, and said, "Sorry, but that's the best I can do-the sleepers are full. How about the third-class seats?…" I looked over and realized that I had no choice but to sit on the little ledge. The adjacent hard-seat car was impassable-this train was more of a city bus, what with people pressed up against one another so tightly that even turning around was impossible. The head conductor took me toward the door leading into the next car and, after making me promise three times not to let anyone into the dining car from the hard-seat section, let me have the spot. I promised and sat down. It felt like sitting on the rim of a toilet. I'd boarded the train at ten in the evening. It was due in Beijing at seven-thirty the following morning. For nine and a half hours, I would have to sit here, stuck in the position of someone taking a crap.

Half an hour after the train started moving, I went to see the head conductor again. He let me know that he'd already explained how things stood, that sleepers were out of the question that night, although something might be available tomorrow morning (which would be two hours before reaching Beijing). I said, "Then how about giving me a hard seat?" He said that would be more difficult than getting a sleeper. ("We can't pull someone out of his seat to make room for you. Take a look around, and if you see one, take it.") The third time I went to talk to the head conductor, he guided me out of the dining car, took his keys, and "clack," locked the dining-car door. I was left for good with the people standing in the hard-seat car.