“How did you manage to see the letter?” he asked.
“Liu Yue told me to go to the study, and there it was, on the floor.”
“I put a paperweight on it, so even a wind could not have blown the pages to the floor.”
“I saw it first,” Liu Yue said smugly. “I didn’t want him to do something foolish, so I left it on the floor for Dajie to see.”
“Liu Yue did the right thing,” Niu Yueqing said. “You have to tell me about such things in the future.”
“So we’ve got a spy.” Zhuang was furious.
Liu Yue, remorseful over being too clever and for overstepping the bounds of what was expected of her, offered to deliver the letter, but Niu Yueqing said she’d do it on her way to work.
Deeply angry with the young maid, Zhuang gave her the cold shoulder all morning. He complained about the unfriendly tone she used when answering the phone.
“You said no phone calls for you this morning.”
“But you should have asked who the caller was and what it concerned. Instead, you picked up the phone and said, ‘He’s not in.’ You sounded angry.”
There was a knock at the door. She went to let the visitors in. It was three aspiring writers coming to ask Zhuang for advice.
“Would you please tell us how to write a novel, Zhuang Laoshi?”
“What can I say? Keep writing, and you’ll know at some point.”
“You’re being too modest. You must have some secret methods, Laoshi.”
“No, I really don’t.”
But they would have none of it and left unhappily an hour later. The moment they were gone, Zhuang lectured Liu Yue for not saying he wasn’t home and costing him valuable time.
“How was I supposed to know they were unimportant?” She shed private tears in the kitchen. A few hours later, there was another knock. It was Zhou Min.
“Laoshi isn’t home,” Liu Yue said.
“Yes, I am,” Zhuang called out from the study when he heard who it was. “Come on in.”
Zhou Min was upset with Liu Yue for lying to him, which led to more tears.
Zhou was no sooner in the study than he began grumbling to Zhuang as he handed him the letter. He had run around for three days and never managed to see the secretary-general, who, as Zhou found out only when he went to the man’s house that morning, was at a meeting at the Lanniao Hotel. Zhou had gone to the hotel, where the meeting was in session and the man was at the rostrum. Naturally he couldn’t ask for the man to come down to talk to him, so he waited, thinking that nature would call at some point. It took two hours of waiting, but the man came down, and Zhou followed him into the toilet, where the secretary-general squatted down over one hole and Zhou took the one next to him. Not knowing how to begin, Zhou hemmed and hawed for a while before finally asking, “Are you the secretary-general?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve seen you before.”
“Oh.”
“Have you ever seen a tiger?” Zhou asked.
“No, I haven’t.”
“I haven’t, either.”
The secretary-general wiped himself, got to his feet, and pulled his pants up.
“I need to speak with you, sir,” Zhou said when he saw that the man was about to leave.
“Who are you? I don’t know you.”
“No, you don’t. But here’s a letter. You’ll know what this is about when you read it.”
The man took the letter with one hand to read as he adjusted his crotch with the other. “What’s our writer friend been up to lately?” He handed the letter back.
“Writing, of course.” Zhou replied.
“That’s good. Writers must write.”
“Zhuang Laoshi does nothing but write.”
“That’s what everyone says. I believe it. I never expected him to be interested in politics.”
“He knows nothing about politics,” Zhou said.
“Is that right? I seem to recall that he spent a night at a newspaper in order to get an article published. You’re a friend of his, so tell him not to become someone’s weapon. We all have our ups and downs, like the Yellow River changing its course every thirty years. Other people can pack up and leave if things aren’t going well, but not him. He’s a fixture in Xijing.”
They walked out together. The secretary-general made no more mention of the letter.
“How about the deputy governor in charge of cultural affairs?”
“Are you suggesting that I commit the error of using a back door?”
. . .
When he heard Zhou’s story, Zhuang felt as if he’d been smacked in the head. He tore the letter to shreds and cursed: “What kind of goddamned leader is he? I went to the paper, so what! How did I wind up offending the chair of the People’s Congress? By not realizing the extent of their network, that’s how. Am I playing politics? No, but if I were, I wouldn’t take any shit from him. The Yellow River changes its course every thirty years. Is the chairman of the People’s Congress staying within the bounds of his authority? The secretary-general is in the same camp, and when his boss loses power, he’ll go after the mayor. What kind of secretary-general is he to dump it all on me? I’m not interested in an official position, I just want to make a living with my writing. Is he powerful enough to snap my pen in two?” Zhuang furiously shoved his ashtray away, sending it gliding across the glass tabletop; it fell on top of a vase under the bookcase and smashed it. Alerted by the noise, the old lady rushed in and began scolding when she thought they were arguing. Unable to defend himself, Zhou Min walked out silently. Liu Yue came in to pick up the pieces.
“Keep your anger in check,” she said to Zhuang. “Aunty thought Zhou Min was at fault, and he’s crying in the living room.”
“You stay out of this, and keep your mouth shut.”
She slammed the door shut behind her.
After sobbing for a while, Zhou Min decided to go back into the study to cheer Zhuang up.
“Please open the door, Zhuang Laoshi,” he said. “We can talk about what to do next.”
“I’m not going to take all that abuse. What is a secretary-general, anyway? I’m going to write to the mayor.”
“Then write to the deputy governor, too, and I’ll go see him.”
“No, we won’t see anyone. We will wait for instructions from high up. What are you afraid of? I stand to lose more than you do.”
Not daring to say more, Zhou stayed a while longer before leaving for home in dejection.
When she came home that evening, Niu Yueqing walked in to find her mother burning incense in the bedroom, Liu Yue sobbing in the living room, and Zhuang playing his mournful music on the cassette player. The study door was shut, and he would not come out when she called him. She asked Liu Yue what had happened, and after hearing the explanation, she went to knock on the study door again. When the door opened, she launched into a litany of complaints about being kept in the dark about such an important matter. He was a writer, after all, and had been told by the mayor to go to the paper. The politicians were scheming, so what did that mean for her family? She shifted her vilification to the mayor, reasoning that he must have sold them out. Otherwise, how could their adversary know so much? Or could it have been Huang Defu? She ended her tirade by cursing the secretary-general, calling the man a pig and a dog, someone who would wind up in front of a firing squad sooner or later. But she wasn’t quite finished. She lamented how appalling the world had become. You never knew when you might offend someone, she said. It was like carrying a basket of eggs onto the street — you’re afraid of people bumping into you, but they don’t care. She went on and on, calling Jing Xueyin a horrible woman, and railing at her husband for grandstanding. Well, he had gotten more than he’d bargained for.