A Single Tear by Wu Ningkun

Author:Wu Ningkun
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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WHEN I WAS HIRED BY THE DEPARTMENT IN THE SUMMER OF 1962, a young English teacher named Feng Xiangchun, a party member and a former army lieutenant, was assigned to do advanced study with me and supervise my thought reform at the same time. He would write book reports for me and I would hand him a biweekly report on my progress in thought reform. Presumably I was always making some progress, but there was still much to be desired before my rightist label could be removed. An amiable man by nature, Feng would usually say a few words of encouragement upon reading my reports, but if the “bowstring of class struggle” happened to be a bit tight at the moment, he would stop smiling and deliver a short lecture on my easygoing attitude. When he came to my room for tutoring on readings I had assigned him, he was as a rule all respect and admiration. And when he returned from his home in Nanjing or his wife's home in Shanghai after a vacation, he never failed to bring my children chocolate bars or toffees, which they loved. I often wondered how he felt constantly switching roles with me throughout those two years.

Feng’s role as my political confessor ended the day my rightist label was removed. On July 4, 1964, as if to mark the third anniversary of my homecoming on parole, a faculty-staff meeting of the foreign languages department was held in a lecture room in the seven-story main building. After recounting my rightist crimes, a personnel officer announced my ‘‘decapping’’ by reading a decision to that effect made by the university party committee. As advised beforehand, I made a short speech, acknowledging my guilt once again and thanking the party for "giving me a new political life.” My voice became choked with uncontrollable tears, as if all the dammed-up anguish of seven tortured years had burst open the flood-gates. A few colleagues shook my hand to congratulate me on my ‘‘return to the ranks of the people.” The department leaders assured me I would be put back on the English faculty with a substantial raise in pay.

The same night, before we could take comfort in our new prospects, an urgent wire came from Yikai's family with the terrible message that her mother was critically ill. Rushing off the next day, Yikai arrived in Tianjin on the sixth to find her mother rapidly failing after futile surgery for cancer of the liver. When her dying mother asked after me, Yikai told her about my “decapping," which had been her fervent wish all these years. She also comforted her mother with the white lie that I had been reinstated as a professor with my previous pay. What other comfort could a grieved daughter have given her dying mother, who had given her and me and our children so much of her love and understanding? How could I ever forget the message she had sent me on Yikai's three prison

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