Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Past life, present life

When he regained consciousness, Zhang Ke tried desperately to recall the car accident, only to find that his memories were like fragments left behind after time and space had warped, lacking any tangible sense of reality.

Only then did Zhang Ke slowly begin to wake. A gray haze clouded his eyes. The pale yellow ceiling was slightly mottled and did not look like a hospital ward. The color was familiar. Before his family moved out of the municipal government compound, their ceiling had been this color. Back then, his father had been deputy secretary-general of the municipal government, his mother an ordinary official at the municipal petitions bureau, and he himself had still been a good student...

People were talking quietly beside him.

"Mayor Tang wants you to go away for a while, lie low..." After that one sentence, silence fell. He could not tell how many people were standing beside him.

Both the words and the tone felt intensely familiar to Zhang Ke. Someone must have said those exact words in that tone somewhere, at some point.

He felt no pain anywhere in his body, but the back of his head hurt as though someone were wrenching it open. The pain was so severe that he had no strength to turn and see who was standing beside him. This headache was familiar to Zhang Ke too. He remembered running a high fever during the summer after he graduated from junior high. His head had hurt just as badly then, as though someone had driven a wooden wedge into the back of his skull.

That had been in 1994, the year Tang Xueqian, then executive vice mayor of Haizhou City, had been falsely accused and imprisoned. As someone Tang Xueqian had promoted, his father had been heavily implicated. His whole family had been in a panic, and no one had been in any frame of mind to think of taking him to the hospital.

It was this familiar headache that made Zhang Ke suspect he was running a high fever again, rather than having been in a car accident.

"Think over what Mayor Tang said..." the man said again. Then Zhang Ke heard someone open the door and leave. No one came back in, and the door was closed from outside.

Hearing the man mention "Mayor Tang" again, Zhang Ke thought, Who is this Mayor Tang? The only mayor named Tang I know is Tang Xueqian. But Tang Xueqian was falsely accused of taking bribes and imprisoned in 1994. His conviction was overturned and he was released in Year 1999, but his mental state was very poor by then. Even after several years of recuperation, he was unable to return to a leadership position. Now he's just a worn-out old man. What other mayor is named Tang?

Thinking of Tang Xueqian inevitably brought to mind the hardships his father had suffered over the past dozen years or so, his fortunes rising and falling with Tang Xueqian's.

After finishing graduate school in the early eighties, his father had returned to work at Haizhou Teachers College. Later, when Tang Xueqian, the college president, was transferred to the municipal government as vice mayor, his father had followed him there and become deputy director of the Second Secretary Office of the municipal government office. He had stayed there for five or six years. Tang Xueqian became executive vice mayor, and his father gradually climbed to the position of deputy secretary-general of the municipal government. In 1994, while overseeing the restructuring of Xinfeng Group, Tang Xueqian came under investigation on suspicion of accepting bribes, and the provincial authorities sent an inspection team to investigate. While being held in isolation for questioning, Tang Xueqian had someone tell his father to leave town and lie low. His father took the opportunity to leave Haizhou to arrange his great-uncle's funeral. Not long afterward, the provincial inspection team obtained crucial evidence that Tang Xueqian had accepted bribes. What was rather strange was that, at this point, rumors were circulating that his father had provided the leads that allowed the inspection team to find evidence against Tang Xueqian.

After Tang Xueqian was imprisoned, his father was dismissed from public office and returned to teaching at Haizhou University. By then, Haizhou Teachers College had merged with several other colleges to form Haizhou University.

Only in Year 1999, after Haizhou City Party Committee Secretary Ding Xiangshan was arrested for accepting bribes, did the court overturn Tang Xueqian's conviction and declare him innocent. Only then did people learn that Ding Xiangshan had framed Tang Xueqian and sent him to prison for bribery in 1994. As for why a municipal Party secretary would frame a vice mayor who ranked below him, the court's judgment was vague, leaving people plenty of room for speculation. Some said Ding Xiangshan and Tang Xueqian had been fighting over a woman named Xu Si. Others said Tang Xueqian had long possessed evidence of Ding Xiangshan's bribe-taking and wanted to use it to bring him down, only for Ding Xiangshan to strike first. There seemed to be no definite conclusion as to the truth. But after Tang Xueqian left prison, his mental state was poor, and he could not remember having sent someone to relay a message to Zhang Ke's father. People recalled the circumstances and rumors of that year. His father had left Haizhou while Tang Xueqian was under investigation. In their eyes, he was suspected not only of betrayal but also of conspiring with Ding Xiangshan to frame Tang Xueqian.

The court gave no clear ruling concerning his father, who could no longer find a place for himself at Haizhou University either. With help from former colleagues, he transferred to the Haizhou Chess Institute to work as a gatekeeper and muddle through life. Clever all his life, his father had been undone by the messenger and could never recover. Embittered and miserable, his hair had turned completely white before he was fifty.

The family's fortunes had taken many twists and turns along with his father's. Soon after his father left the municipal government, his mother was transferred out of the municipal petitions bureau. The enterprise she was sent to was doing poorly, and she was laid off in 1998. For a time, the family had also struggled badly financially. Their finances only improved after Zhang Ke graduated from university, became a department head at Haizhou Longyu Group, and then became the manager of one of its subsidiaries.

What date was it now? Zhang Ke remembered that the accident had happened on April 28-April 28, 2008. He had left the residential complex and was walking toward the bus stop when a car suddenly shot out and sent him flying. He had lost consciousness while still in the air. It felt as though he had been unconscious for a long time, probably three or four days. Perhaps the May Day holiday was already over.

Though the splitting headache would not go away, Zhang Ke thought it was enough to be alive, and drifted back to sleep...

"His fever still hasn't broken..." A cool hand pressed against his forehead. Zhang Ke opened his eyes and saw a face that was both familiar and unfamiliar. Familiar because he had looked at it for thirty years; unfamiliar because there was no way it could be this young. It looked more or less as it had over a decade ago, when his father, Zhang Zhixing, had still been deputy secretary-general of the municipal government. His mother, Liang Gezhen, an ordinary official at the municipal petitions bureau, had looked much younger than other women her age, even with crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes.

Puzzled, Zhang Ke looked again. Even with the wrinkles gone from her forehead, the lines at the corners of her eyes shallower, and her skin regaining its elasticity as though infused with water, the person before him was undoubtedly his mother, Liang Gezhen. But... why had his mother become younger?

...Looking at his mother, who appeared more than a decade younger, Zhang Ke suddenly remembered: hadn't he been lying at home in the summer fourteen years ago, running such a high fever that his head felt ready to split even while he slept?

I must be dreaming!

Zhang Ke closed his eyes and let the terrible headache wedged into the back of his skull swallow his consciousness. Even waking up with broken arms or legs would be better than never waking up at all.

He had no idea how much longer he remained unconscious. When Zhang Ke woke again, he opened his eyes to find his mother sitting beside the bed, her face full of concern. A silicone IV tube was wrapped around his left arm. The violent headache had eased somewhat. He stretched his arms and legs, feeling weak, but he did not feel as though any limbs were broken or missing...

Still dreaming. Just reliving what happened fourteen years ago...

Seeing her son Zhang Ke awake, some of the worry faded from Liang Gezhen's face. She reached over and felt his forehead, then held her hand against her own, comparing their temperatures. "His fever's broken. Zhixing, Ke's fever has broken..."

Zhang Ke was full of questions, yet the sensation of his mother's slightly cool palm against his forehead felt unmistakably like being alive. His father opened the door and came in from the outer room. He wore a short-sleeved stand-collar shirt washed snowy white. His eyes were sunken, his hair disheveled, and he had not shaved for several days. This was exactly how his father had looked fourteen years ago, when the provincial authorities sent an inspection team to investigate Tang Xueqian's alleged bribe-taking.

I must still be dreaming?

Zhang Ke now remembered the voice he had heard when he first woke. It belonged to Ye Xinming, Tang Xueqian's personal secretary before he was detained for Party disciplinary questioning. If this dream was repeating the events of fourteen years ago, Ye Xinming must have falsely invoked Tang Xueqian's name to trick his father into leaving Haizhou.

The dream was repeating what had happened fourteen years ago. It was truly pathetic to think about. His father would leave Haizhou, Tang Xueqian would be imprisoned for bribery, rumors would fly, and his father would become the traitor who had framed Tang Xueqian and sent him to prison. His family's fortunes were about to undergo a shocking reversal. The world around him would suddenly become cold and cruel. After suffering the pain of his first setback in life, Zhang Ke had grown cynical. Before sixteen, however, Zhang Ke had been, in his own words, an innocent boy whose hands had never even had any sexual experience.

A doctor in a white coat came in after his father. Zhang Ke remembered only that his surname was Lu. Dr. Lu reached out and felt Zhang Ke's forehead, then said with certainty, "The fever has broken. Take the medicine on time. I'll come by again tomorrow. If there are no problems, everything will be fine..."

Zhang Ke's gaze fell on his hands and his body beneath the sheet. These were indeed different from his thirty-year-old hands, and his body had the thin build of his teenage years.

If this is a dream, why is it so real? Maybe I really have gone back fourteen years.

Looking at his parents standing before him, Zhang Ke truly did not know what to say. A patient always had a reason not to speak.

He drifted off to sleep. Even though it all felt so real, Zhang Ke would rather believe this was a dream. That wrongful imprisonment fourteen years ago had been a nightmare for both Tang Xueqian and Zhang Ke's family. Who would want to go through it again?