Not quite seven in the evening, and the mouth of Tongfu Lane was already thick with smoke from firecrackers being set off.
Chen Qianyuan and Dong Huiwen turned into the lane carrying a box of wuren rice cakes. Every household was preparing its New Year’s Eve dinner; the clinic too had set up a round table. Qin Chuan’an had ordered dishes from Xiao Dexing Restaurant across the street, cutting a few of the fancier dishes from the set banquet menu—but then, thinking of how the comrades had just suffered in detention, added back oil-fried shrimp and a jar of pickled offal stew.
The round table was set up in the front parlor downstairs. Qin Chuan’an closed the front door, which usually stayed open for coming and going, and left the back door facing the lane only half-closed. People trickled in gradually. Yi Junnian and Ling Wen arrived by rickshaw, bringing along a jar of Shaoxing wine. By seven, firecrackers were exploding outside like thunder, and the households throughout the lane had already begun their meals. Qin Chuan’an saw that only Cui Wentai had yet to arrive, and guessed he was likely still out driving passengers, unable to get away—no telling when he’d show up—so he told everyone to sit down and eat.
Yi Junnian raised his wine cup, somewhat moved, and said in a low voice: “Some of us didn’t even know each other a month ago, and now we’ve become fellow sufferers—no, you’re right, comrades-in-arms. Cut off from the organization, then suddenly reconnected—this stretch of time really has been extraordinary. Come, comrades, let’s all drink a toast, and hope the organization completes its internal investigation soon, so we can get back to work.”
Everyone raised their cups except Lin Shi, who had a bullet wound.
Liang Shichao said stubbornly, as always: “All I want right now is to go back to the Soviet base, back to the ranks, fighting for real. Real guns, real fighting, quick and clean.”
Tian Fei asked Yi Junnian: “What exactly did the higher-ups tell you?”
“Wait patiently.”
“What’s there to wait for? We’ve already found the traitor.” Tian Fei glared at Lin Shi.
“Don’t stir up trouble on New Year’s, of all times,” Yi Junnian glared back at him. He had once been Tian Fei’s superior; later Tian Fei had transferred to another line of work, and usually, even if they crossed paths on the street, they’d pretend not to know each other.
Ling Wen served a piece of fried fish to both Lin Shi and Tian Fei, and said to Tian Fei: “We’ve already been over this, the other day, right here.”
Seeing Lin Shi say nothing at all, even smiling faintly at him as if to say, you’re being so childish I won’t bother arguing, Tian Fei flung the piece of fish he’d been holding back into his bowl. “Of everyone here, I think Lin Shi looks the most like a spy. Never says a word, sneaking off to make phone calls behind our backs, and what’s this about a bank safety-deposit box. Revolutionary comrades are honest and aboveboard—I don’t think you’re a good person at all.”
“Shut up!” Yi Junnian was getting worked up too. He set his empty cup down hard on the table. “Just by suspecting people wildly like this, you think you can find a traitor? I don’t see anything wrong with what you’ve described—some people like to talk, some don’t.”
“That’s true,” Wei Dafu nodded, still eating.
“Besides, did you really get a good look at everyone at that meeting in the market?”
“There was one other person who wasn’t arrested, and who never made contact with us afterward either,” Ling Wen cut in.
“The problem could be somewhere else entirely—everyone must submit to organizational review, including Old Fang—”
“Old Fang’s been missing for so many days now,” Qin Chuan’an said, signaling for quiet. “Nothing’s happened to him, has it?”
“Comrade Old Fang died a martyr’s death,” Yi Junnian said quietly.
The air in the room seemed to freeze. Several of them had kept single-line contact with Old Fang for years, long accustomed to him bringing word from the higher-ups, accustomed to his gentle, steady manner. These past days, though they had heard nothing from the leadership, it was only upon hearing of Old Fang’s death that they truly felt, deep down, a sense of isolation from the organization.
“Where did you hear this?” Wei Dafu asked urgently.
Yi Junnian was silent a moment. “The organization has an inside source.”
“Is this reliable?” Wei Dafu had just filled a bowl of pickled vegetable and bamboo soup, but now he couldn’t even swallow his favorite salted pork. He didn’t want to believe the news of Old Fang’s death. “What’s been happening lately is truly baffling. And that special envoy, too—there’s something mysterious about how he operates, popping up in front of you like he sprang from a rock.”
“This comrade, too, indeed—” Yi Junnian thought for a moment, “—since joining the revolution, I’ve never felt the situation as grave as I have these past days. The secret meeting place was discovered by the enemy, then after we were released Old Fang went missing, then the special envoy suddenly arrived—he seems to know all our contact methods, our passwords, meeting us one by one, yet saying nothing about what the higher-ups intend. We mustn’t suspect a comrade rashly, but we can’t afford to be careless either.”
A gust of cold wind—Cui Wentai pushed the door open and came in. He stopped Qin Chuan’an, who was about to rise. “I’ve shut the back door. You have to close the door for New Year’s Eve dinner.”
He seemed not to notice the heavy mood in the room; the moment he sat down he spotted the pot of pickled offal stew on the table and reached for it, saying “I love pig offal the most,” ladling a big spoonful into the small bowl before him and stuffing a large mouthful in. “I’m really starving—dropped a passenger off at Dongjiadu, waited forever, cold and hungry. Ate a whole bowl of noodles and it still wasn’t enough. What’s wrong—”
Seeing that no one was speaking, he asked again.
“Old Fang died a martyr’s death,” Tian Fei said, his eyes reddening.
Cui Wentai’s expression stiffened; his spoon clattered into the bowl, though his chopsticks stayed gripped in his other hand. He tried to squeeze a look of grief onto his face.
“What happened?” His voice came out rather dry.
No one answered him.
“What happened?” he asked again, his voice turning hoarse.
Tian Fei held back for a long moment, then finally broke into tears, choking out to Cui Wentai: “You were his liaison, you two were the closest.”
“That’s right—” Cui Wentai tried to force out a sob too, but he found himself unable to, mumbling instead.
Yi Junnian watched him closely. “Have you seen Old Fang recently?”
Cui Wentai didn’t answer, instead turning to look at Tian Fei: “What exactly happened?”
Tian Fei shook his head, looking at Yi Junnian.
It would be hard to say Cui Wentai felt no trace of remorse at all—especially having to put on this performance. Old Fang had been more than just a superior; he’d been like an older brother to him. He hadn’t expected Old Fang would be shot dead. He’d even thought that once things were over, maybe he could persuade Old Fang, help him climb out of “the pit” too. These past days he’d kept thinking about what he might say to make Old Fang reconsider. Tell him the revolution had no future left? He guessed that probably wouldn’t work. Old Fang had once told him: underground work was like a light in the darkness—to run toward that light, he’d dare leap into the abyss itself.
“Old Fang’s son was arrested too, badly hurt,” Yi Junnian said heavily.
Lin Shi quietly poured himself some wine and drained it in one gulp.
Yi Junnian raised his own cup and said, “To—Old Fang!”
The whole table raised their cups and drained them.
“When did you start following Old Fang?” Tian Fei asked Cui Wentai.
Cui Wentai took a big mouthful of the now-cooled pig offal. “The year the Northern Expedition Army came, I think. I joined the workers’ picket corps, and just kept following Old Fang after that. First it was labor organizing, then I went underground, became Old Fang’s liaison.”
The year the Northern Expedition drew near Shanghai, Cui Wentai had been saddled with gambling debts—something Old Fang had never known about. Creditors had chased him from his home to his workplace, the public bus company, where he’d been a driver at the time. Just when he’d run out of road, the Northern Expedition had practically handed him a way out. Suddenly the whole of Shanghai had erupted into turmoil.
In February, the bus workers’ union declared a strike, and he’d joined the picket corps without a second thought. With one or two hundred picketers standing behind him, the creditors couldn’t get near him.
Not daring to go home, he stayed at the parking lot on duty every day; with a mountain of gambling debt hanging over him, he feared nothing—foreign taipans, constables, gang bosses, none of it mattered—not a single car would he let out of the lot. Before long, the others in the picket corps had come to see him as a leader; every day he swaggered in and out with a few of his brothers, no longer worried about creditors coming after him.
By March, a rent-reduction movement for tenants had sprung up too, and he’d hastily joined the tenants’ league, which solved another major headache he was facing. All this together, he’d gotten a taste of what revolution could do for him, and threw himself ever more actively into the revolutionary high tide on the eve of the Northern Expedition’s entry into Shanghai. It was around then that Old Fang first took notice of him.
“I hadn’t been following Old Fang long,” Tian Fei said, taking several big gulps of wine, his face flushed, “tell us about Old Fang.”
“Old Fang saved my life. April of the sixteenth year of the Republic, the Twenty-Sixth Army surrounded the bus company, demanded the picket corps hand over their weapons and disband on the spot. First they fired two warning shots into the sky, then came the machine guns—the walls were riddled with bullet holes—then they charged in. We fought back for a while, but couldn’t hold, had only a few Mauser pistols and a few dozen old rifles between us. Later they agreed to only take our weapons and not arrest anyone, so we laid down our guns. But they’d lied to us—the moment we disarmed, they seized a few of us who led the picket corps and locked us in a shed by the gatehouse, saying they’d execute us on the spot. Old Fang led some men in, and while the soldiers were charging inside to search and loot, he broke through and pulled us out to safety.”
Cui Wentai’s tears fell as he spoke. While the military police were combing the city by list for the picket corps leaders, Old Fang had hidden Cui Wentai in his own home. “He explained to me all sorts of principles about how the capitalists and reactionary warlords oppress the people—he said, in the darkest times, we need to stand together all the more. From that moment on, I truly set foot on the road of revolution.”
Was that really so? Cui Wentai secretly asked himself. He’d never been the type to reflect on or examine himself, but for the first time in his life, he felt startled to find there seemed to be two different little men inside him, endlessly mocking each other.
“—I went underground and became Old Fang’s liaison. He told me, when the chance came, I could be sent off to study, but for now I had to train myself, learn quickly to become a seasoned underground worker. He’d take me out on the streets, point things out to me—how to use the terrain to check for a tail behind you, how to shake one off, how to quickly change your appearance with whatever was on hand. He found a police training manual and taught me combat techniques.
“The two of us drove out together to the Fourth Regiment of the Fifteenth Precinct in Fengxian—there was a huge stretch of reed marsh by the sea, and we practiced shooting there. Old Fang was a dead shot—a sparrow on a tree dozens of paces away, he’d raise his hand and drop it with one shot.
“In the twentieth year of the Republic there was a great flood, cholera everywhere—my wife and child both caught it, and within a few days both were dead. During that time Old Fang, disregarding underground work discipline, even had me stay at his house, sleeping in his son’s room—his son was learning the trade at a barbershop then.”
Cui Wentai grew more and more animated as he spoke, as if trying to cover up for something.
In truth, he’d long since wanted to quit. When the Twenty-Sixth Army’s machine guns had opened fire, he’d been terrified. If not for Old Fang, he could never have held on all these years. He’d been on the military police’s list, had joined the strike, had been a minor leader of the picket corps—he’d never have found work otherwise. Old Fang had gotten him to go underground, and through connections had arranged for him to work as a driver at a car-rental company—decent wages, too. That being the case, he could hardly say he wanted out. Even his shop guarantor had been arranged by the organization—how could he just up and run? But underground work grew more dangerous by the day, and he felt it was Old Fang’s bonds of loyalty holding him there—which, he supposed, made him something of a man of feeling and loyalty after all, when he thought about it that way.
In the end, it all came down to Little Five—though, of course, it was he himself who’d climbed into that bed. What could he do? His wife was already dead. This woman was something else entirely. If it had been a different woman, perhaps he’d have found a way to leave Old Fang, slipped away quietly after a while. But this woman had utterly turned his head.
That day, he’d delivered a letter to a secret Party organization office, and coming out, discovered someone tailing him. He didn’t know quite how it happened—he’d simply decided, all at once. He kept returning to that moment in his memory—was it because of the night before? That night he’d been in a daze, the lights off, feeling around in the dark, lifting the covers to gaze at Little Five for a long while—she’d lain there like a stick of glutinous rice cake.
Perhaps because he was simply born to be a man who loved gripping a steering wheel—sitting in the driver’s seat, a whole carload of people at his mercy, he could go wherever he wanted, as fast as he wanted. He looked at the gaudy billboards along the street, thought of how he might run into danger at any moment, how he’d never had a single truly good day in half a lifetime—and, throwing caution to the wind, he’d suddenly cut the engine, opened the door, and walked up to the young agent tailing him. “I have important intelligence,” he told him. “I’m willing to defect to your side, but I must see your highest-ranking officer.”
He was passed from one place to another, and finally brought before Ye Qinian. Ye Qinian told him: “We plan to send you back right away—time is short, you’ve already been with us nearly two days, stay any longer and you won’t be able to go back at all. From now on, your code name is ‘Xi Shi.'”
Yi Junnian suddenly asked him: “Did you see Old Fang before he died?”
Cui Wentai froze for a long moment, caught off guard by the interruption, as if he’d been just entering some emotionally charged moment in his recollection of Old Fang and couldn’t understand why others weren’t moved by his story.
“Only once. I picked up a letter from the secret mailbox and handed it to him.”
“What letter?” Tian Fei asked, unable to wait.
Dong Huiwen glanced at Ling Wen, seeming about to say something, then stopping herself.
“I don’t know,” Cui Wentai said, head lowered. “Old Fang only had me responsible for passing along the letters.”
He had sold information before, sold out comrades before, and each time received a sum of money for it. This was what Ye Qinian had promised him beforehand. He felt no unease over those betrayals—if anything, he felt rather pleased with himself. Now he was driving his own car again, no longer having to take orders from anyone else, not even Old Fang. Until the moment he betrayed Old Fang—yes, he admitted honestly to himself.
Cui Wentai knew where Old Fang’s son was learning his trade—all he had to do was go there and ask the master about it to find out where the apprentice’s shop was. You knew all along where Old Fang was hiding. You took the letter from the mailbox, handed it to him, and knew exactly where he’d go next. Director Ye had handed him over to Captain You; Captain You had told him to hand Old Fang over to him—but that time, he hadn’t had the heart, and had let Old Fang get away without telling Captain You in time. He hadn’t expected Captain You to know he’d gone to fetch the letter, to know he’d met with Old Fang. Captain You had flown into a rage, saying he was playing both sides, being two-faced—if he didn’t hand Old Fang over within three hours, he’d have him hauled straight to Longhua and treated as a Communist himself.
The street was ablaze with lights, and every household in the lane had its lamps on too. Only under the passage-building at the mouth of Tongfu Lane was there a stretch of darkness. Two men were hidden there—everyone else was in a bright, lit place, offering sacrifices to ancestors and eating New Year’s Eve dinner, while these two crouched in the shadows, the cold wind seeping ceaselessly into their clothes. One leaned against the corner wall smoking; the other pulled a handful of melon seeds from his pocket and cracked them, the shells piling up on the ground, growing hungrier by the minute.