Paths. Chapter Eight

The photographs arrived by email soundlessly, like ghosts.

Desheng opened the file, and the past emerged on his computer screen — faded, black and white, inhabited by strange faces. Group photos of classes, rows of identical smiles, identical red scarves. A sea of faces in which it was impossible to drown because it was too shallow, too uniform.

And amidst this sea — one island.

In the photograph of the teaching staff, she stood slightly apart. Tall, with a straight back, in a simple dark dress that seemed alien among the gray tunics and strict suits. Her gaze was directed not into the lens, but through it, into some invisible distance of her own. There was no smile on her face, only a quiet, almost transparent sadness. She was like a character from another language accidentally fallen into this text.

Desheng looked at her, but his thoughts tangled and blurred. The quiet, senile voice from the cassette still sounded in his head. The red river. The pit in the earth. The silent brother. The photograph superimposed itself on this voice, and the woman’s face on the screen began to tremble, like a reflection in water rippled by a breeze.

His stupor was interrupted by the short buzz of his phone. A message from Wenbo. “I found something. Can’t send it. Meet at Xiangliu’s.”

It was quiet in the restaurant. Xiangliu sat at a far table, hunched over her phone. She was examining the photos Desheng had forwarded to her, and zooming in on the image, she held her finger on the face of the woman “from another world.”

“Maybe it’s her? Mei Lin?” Xiangliu asked, looking up at him.

“Maybe,” Desheng replied. His voice was alien, as if he were speaking from behind a door. “I don’t know.”

Wenbo arrived. He didn’t sit down.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Not here.”

They went out into the small square behind the restaurant and sat on a bench under an old acacia tree. Wenbo offered no explanations. He silently took a piece of paper folded in four from his pocket and handed it to them. It was a photocopy of a typewritten text, official, faceless.

MEMORANDUM
To: Secretary of the Xicheng District Party Committee, Comrade Liu Jian
From: Head of the Peking University Working Group, Comrade Wang
Date: 17.08.1966
Subject: On holding a rally to combat “monsters and demons.”

I bring to your attention that on August 17 of this year, a public condemnation action against counter-revolutionary elements from among the university teaching staff was carried out by the “Red Banner” Red Guard detachment. Mei Muheng, Professor of Philosophy, and his wife, Mei Su, Professor of Literature, were brought out to the square in front of the main building.

Dunce caps and placards with the inscriptions “I am an enemy of the people” and “I am a poisonous snake” were placed on the aforementioned individuals. During the rally, they were subjected to public censure, including being doused with slops. They were forced to publicly repent for their crimes aimed at denigrating the ideas of the Great Helmsman and promoting bourgeois culture.

Their daughter, Citizen Mei Lin, was not present at this event. According to verbal instructions received from the City Party Committee, it is ordered not to touch Citizen Mei Lin, as she is currently carrying out an important state assignment, working as a translator for the Soviet military specialist Morozov Sergei Petrovich at the Beijing Automobile Works.

Xiangliu finished reading and slowly lowered the sheet.

“Where did you get this?” she whispered.

“Can’t say,” Wenbo replied without looking at her.

“Do you think something can be found at the factory?”

“Unlikely. All archives from those years were either destroyed or classified. But I learned something else. In the late nineties, a diplomat worked in Beijing for some time. Sergei Petrovich Morozov. Perhaps it is him. That means I can find something about him.”

Desheng remained silent all this time, his gaze riveted to the soulless lines of the report. The shock from the cassette receded, replaced by a cold, clear rage. The ghosts had acquired names, dates, and addresses.

“Let’s find him,” he finally said. “Or his relatives. They must have answers. I will write to them.”

The words sounded simple, almost mundane, but they held a determination that hadn’t been there before.

He looked up at his friends. And for the first time in recent days, he was here again, with them. Pain had turned into a purpose.

Chapter Nine →
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