Safely Home, page 11
“Just point the way. Listen, Quan, I need to make a quick flight up to Beijing Tuesday. Could you come with me? I’ve got lots of mileage saved up, and I can get you free airfare, no problem. We could leave early and come back late, so you’d miss just one day of classes.”
“We will see.”
As they neared Pushan, they saw more sidewalk entrepreneurs who’d set up shop wherever they could find a spot. Suddenly, kiosks and makeshift buildings were all around them.
“Park there, in the mud.”
They crossed the street toward a dirty gray building with three doors. The one on the left opened into a tiny market, with fruits and vegetables on the outside. Next to it was a used-bicycle shop. On the right was a closed door and a small window covered with cardboard. The words on a sign were faded and illegible.
Quan walked to the door and opened it. Ben followed him in.
“Ni hao,” Quan called.
An old man looked back at him. “Ni hao.”
“This is my friend Ben Fielding,” Quan said in Mandarin. “The one I spoke to you about. From America.”
The old man bowed his head. “Zhou Jin.” The man extended his right hand. Ben noticed red, callous scars on his wrist.
Quan stepped behind the counter, gazed at a row of uncut keys on the wall, and fingered a few of them, matching them up in his line of sight. He chose one, then put it to a milling cutter on a tracing lathe.
A self-serve key-making shop? Okay . . .
Quan clamped the uncut key in place, then guided a tracing bar over the original. He cut the pattern swiftly, never taking his eyes off it. He brushed away stray bits of metal and held the new key up to the original, examining it for any defect. Finally he smiled.
Ben expected him to pay for the key and leave. Instead, Quan put the new key and the old into an envelope and wrote on it, then stayed behind the counter.
“You may sit down, Ben.” Quan pointed to an ugly molded plastic chair that looked like it had been rescued from a dump.
“I don’t mind standing.”
A few customers came in the door and spoke with Zhou Jin and Quan as if they were old friends. Quan made two more keys and handed them to an old man in worn work clothes.
Ben looked at his watch, wondering what time Quan’s first class was. “How many keys are you making?”
“I do not know. It depends on how many customers we have.”
Ben stared at him blankly. “Quan, am I missing something?”
“I will make as many keys as our customers order.”
“Are you saying you work here?”
“Yes.”
“But when do you teach at the university?”
Quan looked first at Ben’s shoes, then his belt, then his collar, then his eyes. “I do not teach at a university. I never have.”
12
“WHAT ARE YOU TELLING ME, Quan? You said you taught at the university!”
“No. I never said that. Not twenty years ago and not since you e-mailed me. You assumed it. Every time you mentioned it, I wanted to correct you. But the timing was never good. And perhaps . . . I was ashamed.”
“What happened? How did you lose your job?”
“You must first have a job before you can lose it.”
A customer came in at that moment, a short man with a too-long cane. He asked Quan a question that Ben didn’t understand. Quan pointed to a case with a stainless steel latch and dead bolt.
“This mechanism has only five springs to operate the linkage,” he told the customer. “It has a non-handed guard bolt and a one-piece retractor hub. The stopwork is reversible.” Quan quickly translated for Ben, as these were not the kinds of words studied in Mandarin class. Apparently Quan had picked up English locksmith terminology from somewhere.
“The latch bolt can be fully retracted with only thirty-five degrees of lever rotation,” Quan said to the customer. Zhou Jin uttered an affirming word, as if this baby were the Michael Jordan of locks. “This makes it last very long.”
Quan went on about cylinders and cams and latch bolt heads and mortise lock bodies. Finally Ben suggested he stop translating, since he wasn’t understanding half the translation anyway. Ben sat there trying to assimilate his friend’s admission.
“Very high quality,” Quan said. “The finest workmanship. Far better than anything they make in Shanghai.” The customer laughed knowingly. He put out some paper yuan and a coin on the heavily nicked plywood counter, then went out the door, smiling as if he’d won the lottery.
“Quan, what’s going on? Talk to me.”
Another customer walked in the door, but Ben reached across the counter and grabbed Quan’s arm. Zhou Jin stepped forward to greet the customer, and the two embarked on an animated discussion, freeing Ben and Quan to step to the back of the tiny shop.
“When you left Harvard, the job was all lined up in Beijing, right? You could have taught in any university in China, isn’t that what you said? What happened?”
Quan sighed. “Before coming to America, I joined the Communist Party. It seemed the only way to get into college. Chinese college, I mean. But I dreamed of going to America to become a great scholar. And you know by a miracle God brought me to Harvard and to my friend Ben Fielding. When I returned to China, I knew the fact I’d become a Christian would make it difficult to advance as a professor. I knew I would never be allowed to be a department head or a college president. But I thought they would be so impressed with my credentials they would overlook my faith and let me teach.”
“So what happened at your job interview?”
“They were excited to have me teach history. The interview was just a formality—they said so. Then they backed up and took me through the paperwork. The file was thick. It showed my parents had been Christians, that my father was even a pastor with a long police record. But it also showed I had denied my parents’ faith. They assured me they would not punish me for my parents’ views. They asked if I was still an atheist. I told them no, that I had become a Christian. They looked at each other. At that moment I knew it was over. I would not be allowed to teach.”
“Just because you were a Christian?”
“For them, that was reason enough. ‘The minds of the young must not be poisoned by foreign beliefs.’ That is what they think. That is what they have been taught.”
“Well, I can see why they want to preserve their culture and not have it westernized by Christianity, but—”
“Westernized by Christianity? You sound like them, Ben Fielding! You should know better. Christianity is not Western. Communism is far more foreign to China than Christianity!”
“What do you mean?”
“You do not know Chinese history? The church in China goes back at least thirteen hundred years. We had Christian monasteries in the eighth century. Beijing had a bishop eight hundred years ago. The church is one of the oldest institutions in all China. The real ‘foreign influence’ is the Communist Party. Only a hundred years ago the philosophy of Marx and Lenin crawled into China like a silent wolf.” Quan raised his hands in exasperation. “My great-grandfather Li Manchu and my great-grandmother, also a martyr for Yesu, were Christians before anyone in China was a Communist! Yet they teach the devil’s lie that Communism is domestic while Christianity is foreign. And they teach people like you to believe this lie!”
“Quan, look, I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I am only explaining why they would not let me teach.”
“What happened then?”
“I thought it meant only that I wouldn’t be allowed to teach at the best universities. I went to another university, then another. It became obvious that each had been warned. No one would hire me. Several would not even talk with me. I contacted two smaller universities in Shanghai. Finally one told me I should stop wasting everyone’s time with all my applications.”
“You were never one to give up. I’ll bet you kept looking anyway.”
“Yes. I even saved up money and traveled to Tibet, thinking I might get hired at the university there, for low pay, far from the eyes of the Party. I was wrong.”
“What did you do?”
“What I had to do. Find a job to feed Ming. I worked a few years in a tool shop. My employer kept a file on me. One day a man was weeping because his son was dying. I put my arm around him and told him about Yesu. The man became a Christian. He came back the next day and thanked me. My boss overheard him. He was very angry, and he wrote notes about me in a file. The file grew larger and larger.”
“The file was for PSB?”
“Sometimes police ask employers for files. Some blackmail their employees, telling them they will turn them in if they do not work for lower pay. They say, ‘If we report you, no one will let you work at all.’ If they hear any complaints from other workers about their being Christians, they write this down. They can fire them. That is what happened to me, even though I was a good worker. Coming from America, I’m sure you cannot imagine that an employer would keep a file on an employee to keep track of words and actions that come from his Christian beliefs. But in a Communist country such things happen. Can you believe such things happen, Ben Fielding?”
“Well, uh,” Ben said. “Yeah, I guess that is pretty hard to believe. But . . .”
“When I decided to leave Harvard, I told you China was my home, not America. I was only half right. I was right that America was not my home but wrong in thinking that China was.”
“What do you mean?”
“China is my place of service. It is the battlefield where Li Quan has been dispatched as Yesu’s soldier. But this is not my home. Heaven is my home, my true country. I know that now. But it was a hard lesson to learn.”
“Couldn’t you have gotten a job teaching if you’d exercised a little more . . . discretion about your faith?”
“Discretion? Do you mean denial? There is an old proverb, ‘He who sacrifices his conscience to ambition burns a picture to obtain the ashes.’”
While Zhou Jin continued his energetic conversation about keys and locks with his customer, Quan stepped behind the counter and opened a drawer. He pulled out a paper and handed it to Ben. “This is a memo that came to the locksmith shop.”
Ben struggled with the translation. “‘Those who . . . go to unregistered churches are lawbreakers. They are not permitted to work in . . . government-controlled businesses.’ What does that mean? Which businesses are government controlled?”
“In one way or another, all of them.”
“But your employer didn’t turn you in?”
“No. Zhou Jin would not do that.”
“Why not?”
“Do you remember the history course we took together?”
“Vaguely. What was that prof’s name?”
“Dr. Franklin. For two weeks we studied Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.”
“Of course. You loved King. Put his picture up in our room. You did a term paper on him, right? Got an A plus, no doubt. Business as usual for the professor . . . oh, sorry.”
“You can still call me professor. I do not mind. And I still have that paper. I also have this quote from it, which I keep here.” He took Ben over behind a workbench that appeared to double as a lunch table. He pointed at a yellowed piece of paper tacked to the wall. Ben was surprised to see the words in English. He read aloud:
“Dr. Martin Luther King said, ‘If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare composed poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “Here lived a great street sweeper, who did his job well.”’”
Ben’s and Quan’s eyes met.
“My dream was to be a college professor and to write books. Yesu, maker of men and God of providence, had different plans. Li Quan is an assistant locksmith. If I am still here when Zhou Jin dies, I will be the master locksmith. Shen shall become my assistant. One day, perhaps, my only son will be the master locksmith of Pushan. I had him memorize what Dr. King said. It is a holy truth. One I had to learn through many tears. Ming helped me. She told me she was proud of me, that she did not care about money. She said if I never wrote a book, it was alright. She said all that mattered was that we please Father.” Quan’s eyes watered.
“Have you ever regretted coming back to China?”
Quan nodded. “First, when I could not become a professor and writer. Then later when they forced Ming to . . . when they made it so she could never have another child.” Quan looked away. “Still, I kept believing Father had called me to be something besides an assistant locksmith. I wanted to be a great scholar. I dreamed of teaching at university. I dreamed of writing books. I even dreamed of building for Ming a big, beautiful house, like one in America. It is hard to give up your dreams.”
Ben gazed at the quivering softness of his friend’s face. He remembered his jealousy of Li Quan and hated himself for it. This must be what Quan had felt so often . . . shame.
“For many years I thought God might be punishing me because I was once ashamed of my father, because I was so unworthy of my heritage. Ming said it was not so.”
“You said your father was a pastor and he died in jail. That’s all you’d ever tell me.”
“Yes, he was a pastor. But he was not paid for that. He made his living doing something else. Something I never told you in college, something I did not want you to know.”
“What?”
“He was a street sweeper,” Quan said. “It was the best job a pastor could get.” He smiled widely, nodding toward the words on the wall. He spoke loudly, so that Zhou Jin and his customer turned their heads.
“Li Quan’s father, Li Tong, did his job well. He was the greatest street sweeper who ever lived.”
* * *
The King nodded, then smiled and said to the short, broad-shouldered man next to him, “Yes, Li Tong. You did your job very well.”
13
“I WAS AFRAID you’d make me do this,” Ben said.
“We must do it.”
They’d ridden home from the locksmith shop in silence. But dinner talk had turned to old times in college. Now, with Ming watching, the two men stood facing each other. Quan started singing, belting out the school song, “Fair Harvard.” Ben, self-consciously, tried to stay with him:
“Farewell! be thy destinies onward and bright!
To thy children the lesson still give,
With freedom to think, and with patience to bear,
And for right ever bravely to live.
Let not moss-covered error move thee at its side,
As the world on truth’s current glides by.
Be the herald of light, and the bearer of love,
Till the stock of the Puritans die.”
Ming laughed and clapped. “What does it mean?”
“Let the history professor tell us,” Ben said.
“I think it no longer means what it once did.”
“I suppose not. Times change.”
“But does truth change? I wonder what those Puritans would think of our alma mater now? Or even when we went there?”
Ben sat back down and sipped his green tea. Shen came in the door, leaning forward and hauling on his shoulders a dirty gunnysack of coal.
“Is that Li Shen beneath the coal?” Ben asked, hoping once again to redirect the conversation.
Shen smiled, set down his load, then proudly began to feed coal into the stove, its once-black exterior now an ashen gray.
“Would you snap beans while I resole Ming’s shoe?” Quan asked Ben.
“Sure.”
They sat on the floor, hands busy, minds free. A thin throw rug buffered the cold cement, but to Ben it was still uncomfortable.
“Question,” Li Quan said. “Do you discuss with your university students Six Four?”
“What?”
“The massacre.”
“You mean Tiananmen Square?”
“Our students call it Six Four.”
“Why?”
“Sixth month, fourth day, 1989.”
“We talk about it, sure. It’s still a pretty big issue for some Chinese, isn’t it?”
Quan put down his hammer and stared at Ben. “The day is so big it defines our modern history.” Thirty seconds of cold silence followed. “When you spoke of Six Four, did you tell them your old roommate was there?”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I was visiting Beijing, one of only two visits in the last twenty years. Can you believe June 4, 1989, was one of them? There were millions of us watching the pro-democracy demonstrators. My nephew, Li Yue, was one of the protesters. Ming’s niece, Chan Bi, was killed. I didn’t see her in the crowd, of course. She had been missing three weeks before we found out from another protester. The government never admitted she died there.”
“I’m sorry.” Ben looked at Ming sympathetically. She bowed her head.
“The Party first said no one was killed, then admitted to a few, then a few dozen. I do not know what they admit to now. But we know there were at least hundreds, maybe thousands, killed.”
“It was terrible, of course. But . . . wasn’t it a blip on the screen?”
“Blip on the screen?”
“Sorry—I mean . . . an uncharacteristic occurrence. It was a throwback to the old oppression, but it wasn’t typical of the new government.”
“It is hard to console a mother who loses her child by telling her the killers have not acted typically.”
“I’m not trivializing it, Quan. I’m just saying it was an aberration, a jerky phase of adjustment. It wasn’t what the new China is about; you have to admit that.”
“Or was it exactly what it is about, only it is done each day in private, with small numbers, rather than in public with large numbers where the world can see?”
“You sound so cynical.”
“I am not cynical. I am simply saying what many of us know to be true. But forgive me. It grows late. I should not talk politics to an old friend. You say you must travel to Shanghai tomorrow?”
