A Map for the Missing(16)
From where he sat on the stool, his father’s towering figure stood over him. Behind his father, he saw Yishou shaking his head, warning him not to say more.
“Time to go home,” Second Uncle muttered. Second Uncle gave Old Seven a look of knowing across the table. It was not the first time Yitian had noticed how others perceived his father when he drank. It embarrassed him.
“No, no, stay,” his father slurred at them. “Let’s all see what the boy has to say. So you think you work enough, is that right? You think what your grandfather taught you was enough? As for me, I was smart enough to know that wouldn’t work.” He leaned against the wall to support himself as his voice gathered energy. “Do you know where all your grandfather’s knowledge eventually got him?”
Yitian was surprised to hear Yishou’s voice, interrupting from behind. “Things are changing in the world outside. It might not be that way for Yitian.”
“You don’t need to protect him,” his father said, without looking back.
“The gaokao has been reinstated . . .” Yitian searched for words. “Do you think that’s just random? There’s a reason for that.” He felt as he had so many times, the child that his father made him, but alongside that there was a new emotion. There was a new bravery before his father, the sense that a destiny was gathering behind him.
“What kind of good reason could there be? It’s all a waste of time. All of your grandfather’s studying got him nothing. When they had the campaign against the counterrevolutionaries, they came for him. Oh, everyone in the village pretends to be respectful to him, but they had no problem fingering him and letting the Party take away our land. He, he’s the one who has all the books, who used to help the nationalists. The intellectual,” his father imitated in a high-pitched whine. “They shamed him in the village square and took away everything we had.
“Then he tried to stop me from joining the army, even though everyone else said it was the smartest thing anyone could do at the time. His head was filled with so much of the past, he could never understand what we needed to do for the future. Why do you think Yishou is so strong? Why he’s lived to this age, even? Haven’t you noticed, there are no other boys his age in the village? I was able to get your mother food from the barracks when she was pregnant, unlike the other villagers. Figuring things out like that is real intelligence, not whatever your grandfather has taught you.”
The room was silent now. Yitian wondered if the others were thinking, too, that the words had crossed a line, even for his father. His grandfather had only been put in the ground a week ago.
“No . . .” His father shook his head. “You won’t waste time by going to university. It’s time you contributed something to this family.”
Yitian panicked. He clasped his hands together and opened them to find they were smeared with stained ink and sweat.
“Did you hear that?” his father said. “Put your books away.”
His father snatched up the notebook, held it to the lamplight. For an instant, Yitian hoped that he was only examining the cover. Then, in the next moment, he threw it across the room. The paper hit the wall with a slap.
“Useless thing.”
* * *
—
Soon after he’d gotten into bed, Yitian felt his brother’s hand on his back, patting him uncertainly. Yitian scooted away from him, pretending to be asleep. He did not want Yishou’s comfort at that moment—Yishou, to whom his father never would have done such a thing.
Yitian missed his grandfather’s presence in the bed. He, his father, and his grandfather were all men from the same jiapu, but Yitian couldn’t find any similarity to his father. He could understand if his father felt a sense of difference from his grandfather—Yitian often had the same feeling himself with the villagers—but the hatred that consumed his father was something else entirely, extravagant in size and shameful for a son to hold. He’d imagined that he would one day ask his grandfather what had happened between their generations, but now that his grandfather was dead, he would never get the chance to unravel the cocoons that these two men had entered in private. For the rest of his life, he would only ever see glimpses of the two of them in the shapes they formed after an exit.
* * *
—
The next day, he heard his father shuffling through the items he and Yishou kept in the drawers of their shared wardrobe. He must have pushed aside a comb, slid their clothes toward the back, and lurched to the deepest point of the drawer to find the thin booklet whose cardboard face was pressed flat under a book.
“You won’t need this anymore,” his father told Yitian at breakfast. He held up the hukou booklet that Yitian would need to register for the gaokao. And then, with a wave of his hand, it disappeared into the dark breast pocket of his coat.
Seven
GAOKAO PREPARATION SCHEDULE
Hanwen had written across the top of the papers. Underneath that, the words
TEST DATE—DECEMBER XX?
They still hadn’t heard when the exact date would be, so she made preparations based on the first week of the month. Against the defining edge of a ruler, she’d drawn rows for each week until the exam, then columns spanning the top for each subject. She created Yitian’s copy first, then took out a fresh sheet of paper for her own. This was the gift she would leave him with. She wanted to study engineering, and he history, so the exam subjects they took would be slightly different, but there was enough in common that re-creating the schedule wasn’t difficult. On his own, he would never have come up with such a plan, for he was the type of person for whom knowledge came easily and naturally, his wishes for himself matching his ability. She, instead, relied on effort and endurance to learn the subjects she loved. Hard work and judiciousness could bring a person as far as talent could, but not further. She admired people like Yitian, who had the capabilities she did not.