Chapter 3

Chapter 3: A reversal of fate

Zhang Ke was still shaken when he got home. He changed out of his bloodstained T-shirt and shorts and stuffed them into the washing machine. The old Little Swan twin-tub washer rattled and clacked as it spun.

Although he did not know what had happened, there was no question that he was in the real world. In terms of time, he had returned fourteen years into the past, to the summer of 1994.

Zhang Ke remembered that he had been only sixteen then.

Zhang Ke curled up on the sofa. His memories of being sixteen were somewhat hazy. Before I came down with that high fever, I should have received my high school entrance exam results. They were pretty good-third in the West District in 1994. The day the results came out had coincided with the provincial inspection team's arrival to investigate Tang Xueqian, so his family had scarcely felt any joy over his scores.

Zhang Ke's mind was a mess. He did not even know what expression he should wear to face what was about to happen.

The sky gradually darkened, but neither of his parents had returned.

The fever symptoms had all subsided. He was ravenous, yet had no desire to eat. Zhang Ke looked up at the quartz clock hanging high on the opposite wall. It was nearly time for the evening news. He turned on the television, which was showing Zhang Manyu's Lux shampoo commercial. By 2008, Lux had fallen into decline, and many people had even forgotten the brand. But in Zhang Ke's memory, besides Zhang Manyu's version, there had also been Lux shampoo commercials featuring Liu Jialing, Zhong Chuhong, MAGGIE, and Li Ruotong. Zhang Ke liked MAGGIE's version best. In the commercial, MAGGIE was utterly enchanting, like a secluded orchid, with an air that blended East and West. Even women could not help being drawn to her. Supposedly, after the commercial aired, Lux sales tripled. Many women in supermarkets looked exceptionally happy as they held Lux bottles with MAGGIE's picture on the packaging, as though using it would make them as beautiful as her. Of course, that was a very lovely wish.

Zhang Ke bent a finger and tapped his temple. He remembered that Chen Ning had switched to Lux shampoo after seeing MAGGIE's commercial. Thinking of Chen Ning brought a stab of pain to his heart. Right now, Chen Ning has no memories of me. We might not meet in that other city until four years from now.

At present, his memories with Chen Ning belonged to a past that had yet to happen.

The corners of Zhang Ke's mouth lifted slightly, but he did not smile. His thinking had yet to adjust.

As Zhang Ke recalled that past which had not yet happened, the Haizhou evening news began. It covered meetings and inspection visits that had left little impression on him. There was no mention at all of matters such as the Bell Tower Square incident or the provincial inspection team's investigation into Tang Xueqian. Zhang Ke did not care about those omissions. He only wanted to see how the local news reported the accident on North Street.

"... At approximately 4:15 this afternoon, a major traffic accident occurred east of the Daijia Bridge bus stop on North Street in the West District. Four people have died, and three others were injured, two seriously. The accident took place at the Daijia Bridge bus stop on North Street in the West District. A dump truck carrying construction waste, license plate Hai A48854, suddenly went out of control while turning from Dongsheng Road onto North Street. It hurtled onto the sidewalk, snapping a poplar as thick as the mouth of a bowl and striking four men playing cards beneath the roadside trees. A young man watching nearby was also struck. According to eyewitnesses, the young man's daughter had fallen directly in front of the truck, but a teenage boy bravely rushed over and rescued her. Witnesses recalled that the truck passed almost against the boy's body as it veered off the sidewalk and collided with a Jetta traveling west along North Street. It has been confirmed that the truck driver was driving under the influence and had been speeding ever since entering the city from Beiguan. He has now been detained by police in accordance with the law..."

To reach North Street from Beiguan, the driver had to pass several major intersections. Drunk and speeding, he would normally have been stopped by traffic police. But that day, nearly a hundred employees from the Xinguang Paper Mill had caused a disturbance at Bell Tower Square, and most of the West District's traffic and patrol officers had been reassigned there to maintain order. That was probably another factor behind the accident.

The screen showed the devastation afterward: the snapped poplar, the Jetta with its roof almost torn off, the shattered little square table, playing cards scattered over the ground, congealed blood... Compared with the accident Zhang Ke had seen on the news fourteen years earlier, everything was the same, except that the little girl had escaped the wheels.

The news did not show a photograph of the little girl. Zhang Ke recalled her delicate face and thought what a pity it would have been if such a pretty little girl had really died in the accident.

The world was not simply repeating itself. The accident had happened, but the little girl had escaped the wheels. The thought made Zhang Ke feel somewhat better. Since he had been able to save her from the truck, he could also reverse the fate awaiting his entire family.

The more Zhang Ke thought about it, the more excited he became. He had returned to his sixteen-year-old body, but his mind held experiences no one else had yet lived through. He also knew the truth about the Tang Xueqian case, which almost no one knew at present. It was that case that had changed his family's future.

This considerably lessened the shock of the accident. Zhang Ke felt so hungry that he had no energy to consider anything more complicated. There was nothing ready to eat in the kitchen, so he boiled a pot of water and put in half a packet of noodles once it came to a boil.

Zhang Ke ladled the noodles into a bowl and returned to the living room sofa. Just as he was about to fill his stomach, his parents opened the door and came in.

Seeing her son sitting on the sofa with a bowl of noodles, Liang Gezhen momentarily forgot her troubles outside and asked delightedly, "Has your fever gone?"

Facing his father and mother again, both more than ten years younger, felt somewhat awkward. Swallowing his noodles, Zhang Ke answered indistinctly, "It's gone. I'm hungry."

"It's good that you're hungry..." Zhang Zhixing said. He tossed his briefcase onto the sofa, his brow still creased with helpless worry, and sank heavily into the cushions. His thin body settled into the sofa, and one could almost see his eyes brimming with despair.

"How are things with Uncle Tang?" Zhang Ke asked tentatively.

"Oh..." Zhang Zhixing made that one sound, but said nothing more and did not even turn to look at him.

Zhang Ke knew that in his father's eyes, he was still an ignorant sixteen-year-old, not someone with whom he could discuss problems. He put his bowl on the glass coffee table and stood up. "I didn't know when you'd be back, so I didn't cook noodles for you. I'll go make you some now..."

"Let me..." Liang Gezhen rubbed her hands and started toward the kitchen.

Zhang Ke pressed his mother's shoulders, settling her onto the sofa. "Cooking noodles isn't difficult."

He sprinkled chopped scallions over the noodles and even fried eggs to put on top. When he brought out the two bowls, Zhang Ke found that his parents had scarcely moved from the sofa. They were worrying about Tang Xueqian.

Seeing his son bring out the noodles, Zhang Zhixing took a bowl and wolfed them down despite the heat. He pushed the bowl away and leaned back, closing his eyes to think, but his mind was a tangled mess. He could find no starting point and think of nothing. He fetched a box of Go stones from the study and set it on the living room's glass coffee table, then brought out a book of game records to work through. Whenever his thinking reached a dead end, Zhang Zhixing habitually found someone to play a game with, to give his mind a change of pace. Under the present circumstances, probably no one would be willing to visit. Replaying recorded games could also help quiet his mind.

Zhang Ke had learned Go from childhood, until his mother, Liang Gezhen, stopped him in fifth grade. She said that learning Go interfered with his studies, and that people who learned it tended to be rather withdrawn. It was after the upheaval in his family, during high school, that Zhang Ke took up Go again. His current skill was quite good.

Zhang Ke helped unfold the board. After watching his father place a dozen or so black and white stones, he knew he was replaying a famous game Seo Bong-soo had played in 1983. Zhang Ke knew the book in his father's hands very well. It was the one he had studied when he took up Go again in high school. Several of Seo Bong-soo's games had left such a deep impression on him that he could almost reproduce them without consulting the records. After his father placed a black stone, Zhang Ke picked up a white stone and played the response.

Zhang Zhixing looked up at his son, then back at the game record. Without speaking, he placed another black stone. When his son again responded with precisely the right move, he asked in puzzlement, "Have you played through this record before?"

"Yes. I remember some of this game of Seo Bong-soo's..."

"Didn't your mother forbid you to play Go..."

"I played in secret..."

"Oh." Zhang Zhixing did not doubt him. After all, his son's formal lessons had only stopped in fifth grade. He gathered the stones back into their boxes. "Since you haven't given it up, play a game with me..."

Liang Gezhen did not object. She gathered the bowls and chopsticks and took them to the kitchen to wash.

In another world, Zhang Ke had even considered becoming a Go teacher after graduating from university. His father, on the other hand, had rarely had time for Go after joining the municipal government. His father's great improvement had come only after he was dismissed from public service. But in this present world, none of those things had happened yet.

Zhang Ke knew his Go skills were a cut above his father's at this point. Throughout the game, his advantage was quite clear, whether in the opening, middle game, or endgame. Zhang Ke licked his lips and glanced at his father. "Shall we count the points?"

"You little rascal..." Zhang Zhixing reached over and gave the back of Zhang Ke's head a tap. Surprised at his skill, he nevertheless laughed. "When did you get this good? You could play Xu Hongbo now!"

Although Xu Hongbo was only an amateur fifth dan, he was known as the godfather of Go in Haizhou City and had founded the Haizhou Chess Institute single-handedly. After his father was dismissed from public service, he had resumed studying Go under Xu Hongbo. Later, when he could no longer get by at Haizhou University, it was Xu Hongbo who took him in.

Zhang Ke smiled. "Shall I give you a three-stone handicap?"

"Start with two. Even Xu Hongbo only gives me two..."

Time passed almost unnoticed. When the second game ended, the quartz clock had just struck eleven.

"It's this late already..." Zhang Zhixing glanced at the window. "I still lost to you by half a point. You're no worse than the players at the Haizhou Chess Institute. At least I don't have to worry about whether you'll amount to anything. If nothing else works out, you could become a professional Go player. Professional players start training when they're young..."

Zhang Ke also looked toward the window. The streetlights outside were dim, and dark silhouettes of treetops were reflected in the glass. His father probably said this because he feared that the present affair would adversely affect his son's future.

Zhang Ke had never really known what his father was thinking during the incident in 1994. He had been young then, and only many years later had he gradually learned the truth about the Tang Xueqian case.

Of course, given the chance to live his life over, Zhang Ke had no desire to become a professional Go player. "Uncle Tang plays pretty well too. Last time the municipal government and the institute organized a tournament, I heard he even beat one of the institute's professional players..."

"Tang Xueqian is a deputy mayor, after all, and the honorary head of the Haizhou Chess Institute. His actual skill isn't even as good as mine. He just likes playing Go..." Zhang Zhixing sighed. "I'm afraid he isn't in the mood for Go now..."

Zhang Ke considered how to steer the conversation toward Tang Xueqian's case. If he simply told his father that he had lived through the next fourteen years, and that the truth about the case would come out in about another five, his father probably would not accept it. He might even send him to a psychiatric hospital.

"I heard Secretary Ye say Uncle Tang wanted you to go away for a while. Why did he want you to do that?" Zhang Ke asked, feigning ignorance.

"Oh, you weren't asleep then?"

"I heard a sentence or two through the haze," Zhang Ke said. "I didn't open my eyes to see who it was, but it sounded like Secretary Ye..."

"Nothing's happened. You don't need to worry..." Heavyhearted, Zhang Zhixing stroked his son's head and sighed, but then asked, "Zhang Ke, what do you think of Uncle Tang as a person?"

"Why aren't you in bed yet?" Liang Gezhen came out of the bedroom and walked over to put away the board. "Don't you know what sort of person Tang Xueqian is? Why ask your son? Surely you understand organizational procedures. The provincial inspection team couldn't have placed Tang Xueqian under isolated investigation without substantive evidence. They're just collecting more evidence of his crimes now. It's all over town. That personnel manager at the Xinfeng Group-is her name Xu Si? She's Tang Xueqian's mistress. Jiang Mingcheng funneled money to Tang Xueqian through that vixen. She only got her job at the Xinfeng Group because Tang Xueqian put in a word for her... People are telling these stories in such convincing detail. Do you really think they're completely groundless?"

Jiang Mingcheng was the general manager of the Xinfeng Group. Both he and the Xu Si his mother mentioned were key figures in the Tang Xueqian case. Before the case, Xu Si had been deputy manager of the Xinfeng Group's personnel department. She was also the woman whom later rumors claimed Tang Xueqian and Ding Xiangshan had fought over. In 1994, Xu Si told the provincial inspection team that Tang Xueqian had accepted bribes from Jiang Mingcheng through her, sending Tang Xueqian to prison. She had been exempted from criminal punishment in his case, but in 1999, she went to prison along with Ding Xiangshan. A year into her sentence, news came that she had killed herself in prison. Zhang Ke had first seen Xu Si during the trial of Ding Xiangshan's case in 1999. By then, she had already spent several months in detention. What remained in Zhang Ke's memory was her utterly haggard face, still bearing the remnants of a shattered beauty.