“That’s enough!” Secretary Zhang cried and rose to his feet. “Empathetic understanding! No wonder I’ve had so many complaints about your teaching.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a pile of papers. “These are all from your class. See this: ‘Professor Ruan seems to want us to believe that there is no clear-cut difference between good and evil …’ And this: ‘Chairman Mao says: love or hate is decided by your class division. But there is no division in Professor Ruan’s literary characters and they all seem to be reasonable’.” He put the papers down. “You’re too out of touch. Fortunately, our students have great political sensitivity.”
Ruan Qiling was speechless. She remained sitting bolt upright and continued wearing her respectful look as sweat streamed down her back.
Secretary Zhang sat back down, lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. After a few seconds, he exhaled with a loud sigh. “Professor Ruan.” He shook his head. “People are watching and they are listening. Anyway, let’s stop here. I hope you will go home and think things over.”
He stood up to indicate the meeting was over. Ruan Qiling also rose. “Thank you, I will think carefully.”
“It is not enough just to think,” Secretary Zhang said, annoyed. “You should forget about Henry James. Choose O. Henry or Mark Twain. Some of their short stories are very good in revealing the darkness of Western society.” He noticed Ruan Qiling’s surprise. “Look, literature serves political causes. If Henry James’s work is not suitable to our cause, it doesn’t matter how wonderful it is. It’s worthless.”
He walked Ruan Qiling to the door and paused, his hand on the handle. “I’ve heard that your late husband divorced you because you sympathised with the Communist cause. Is this true?”
Ruan Qiling tensed. “Yes,” she replied softly.
“Well, then, even a Kuomintang reactionary could understand class lines. You should certainly do better. Unless,” he stopped, staring at her, “unless the whole thing was a farce – I hope not.” He opened the door and saw her out.
Ruan Qiling went directly home. An hour later, her house looked as if a bomb had hit it. She had turned it upside down, searching for anything that could expose the “farce”. “Stupid, stupid,” she cursed, not damning Secretary Zhang or the political campaign, but herself. All these years, she believed she had been immune to persecution by the claim that her husband had divorced her because of her “Communist political inclinations”. As the saying went, “A repeated lie can even make its creator believe it.”
It had started more than two decades earlier when nineteen-year-old Ruan Qiling was being pursued with passion by the tall and handsome thirty-year-old Major Chen Zuojun. Unable to resist, she married him in 1943. Not long after their honeymoon, she realised the marriage had been a mistake. One of a long line of scholars, Ruan Qiling was a university graduate with a love of world literature. Chen Zuojun, on the other hand, was the son of a soldier family and had trained at Huangpu Military Academy. All he was interested in was strategy and tactics. Although he adored her and indulged her every whim, she regretted her choice. In the army, promotion involved endless transfers, which meant enduring dislocations and separation. Initially, her husband had urged her to try camp life, but after six months, Ruan Qiling had nearly been driven mad by the life of a camp wife – mahjong, shopping and gossip. In the end, Chen Zuojun gave in and bought her a place in Beijing, where she had lived ever since, in No. 10.
Ruan Qiling’s house was located in the far corner of No. 10, and only her living room window was visible from the rear courtyard. To get to her house, you had to go along a tiny laneway in the corner of the yard that twisted around for about ten metres before reaching her door. The house had many unique features: a front room, timber floor, living room and a small cellar. Above all, it was the only house in the entire compound with its own bathroom, drain and water tap. Ruan Qiling did not have to share the public toilet or engage in small talk with her neighbours.
Chen Zuojun visited her every month. Through his connections he bought her many volumes of world-classics from Hong Kong. Every visit, he presented her with a book as a gift. Each book would be wrapped in exquisite silk ribbons. He himself had no interest at all in these books but he kept hoping that once his wife, this delicate perpetual student, matured, she would appreciate his love.
His last visit was in January 1949, a few days after New Year. Beijing – then called Peiping – had been filled with the anxiety of regime change for months. It was snowing that particular day. Chen Zuojun arrived at dinner time. “I can only stay for a couple of hours. Can you cook something for me please?” He looked haggard so Ruan Qiling quickly brought him a hot towel and a cup of tea and then went off to cook.
“The Kuomintang is finished,” he told her bluntly after putting the chopsticks down. “I had to see you one more time.”
Ruan Qiling wanted to say, “Can’t you just not go back?” But she knew that was out of the question. She quietly cleaned the table and moved everything into the kitchen. When she returned, he had spread some things out on the table: a wrapped box, a bundle of notes and a sealed envelope. “These are for you.” He picked up the box, then said apologetically, “It’s not a book but I hope you like it.”
Ruan Qiling untied the ribbon and put it into a drawer filled with all kinds of silk ribbons before unwrapping the gift. It was a crystal snow dome. Thousands of tiny white flakes formed a snowfield at the bottom of the dome. Miniature houses and human figures were scattered here and there in the field below a dark blue background. Chen Zuojun took it from her hand and gently shook it. The flakes danced around in a blizzard. Seeing the surprise and joy in her face, he smiled and handed it back to her.
He glanced at his watch and continued, “Here is some money for you, and –” he picked up the envelope and hesitated. “These are divorce papers. I’ve already signed them. I’m sorry we have to end like this.”
She froze.
Chen Zuojun put the envelop on the table and stood up. “I have to go now.” He moved quickly to the door, throwing on his scarf and overcoat. Holding the door knob, he turned to her with shining eyes. “Farewell, my little bookworm.” It was at that moment that Ruan Qiling understood this would be their final parting. She took his hand from the door knob and buried her face in it.
It was snowing heavily, with large flakes swirling around. As she watched the red rear lights of her husband’s car vanish into the dark, she realised how false the snow scene in the crystal dome was. When it snowed, there was no blue background; the world was murky.
Chen Zuojun had fallen in battle. The divorce papers had been backdated one year; the reason given was to make a clear break with a wife who “foolishly sympathised with the Communists and obstinately stuck to her wrong ideas”. Ruan Qiling realised what a loss she had suffered. But there was no time to repent as Beijing was taken over by the Communists. She signed the papers and carefully kept them as her amulet. She also kept some old photos, including their wedding picture, his official colonel’s portrait, the crystal snow dome and all the silk ribbons.
Secretary Zhang’s warning, or perhaps threats, had woken her up. She must destroy all mementoes except the divorce papers.
After days of rummaging through chests, cupboards and photo albums, she found what she had been looking for, but her pain and the memories had also returned. Having become the mature woman her husband had anticipated she would, it was all the harder to destroy all traces of his existence.
When Sun Lanfen come to collect the monthly bills, she was shocked by the mess in Ruan Qiling’s house. “Have you been broken into?”
“No, I’ve had too many books. It’s very hard to find anything.”
When it