24.
PHONE CALLS FROM THE GULAG

THE INSIDE DOOR suddenly opened. The warden came out of the adjacent room, yawning and stretching her arms. “Time to work,” she announced as she walked over to her desk and sat down.

Nina glanced up at the clock on the wall. It read two p.m. She had forgotten the routine and daily schedules of the two-hour lunch break in China.

The warden asked for Nina’s name and workplace and jotted all the information down in a notebook. “Your work unit should send us a referral letter to prove you are whom you say you are.”

“But, we have to return to Hohhot this afternoon,” Liya said with panic. “We’re supposed to catch tomorrow morning’s train from there.”

The woman looked at her. “Well, you are free to go. But this is your friend. We don’t mind if you wish to stay with her.” She turned to face Nina. “Now, tell me why you came here. Your plan was to sightsee, yes? So, you should have had no trouble locating the Tomb of Zhaojun.

“After seeing the tomb, we were on our way to Wulanbatu to visit a herdsman there. We took a wrong turn and ended up here instead.” Nina pulled a packet and a slip of paper out of her satchel. “Look at the name on this letter: Temur. A friend of mine asked me to bring this packet with medicine to Temur who has arthritis.”

The woman stretched out her hand and grabbed the package, turned it around to scrutinize the instructions on how to use the rheumatism plaster. “Okay. We’ll find out about Temur later. First, write down the phone number of your workplace here.” She tapped the notebook on the table with her finger. Without hesitation, Nina picked up the pen and wrote down the phone number of Ahua’s workshop.

After dialling the operator, the warden asked for a connection to Guangdong Province. About ten minutes later, she got through and handed the phone receiver to Nina. “Direct them to send us a letter,” she said.

Taking a deep breath, Nina said into the phone, “May I talk to Forewoman Ahua Tang?”

“Speaking.”

It was Ahua’s voice. Nina drew in a breath. “It’s Nina calling. I lost my referral letter. Can you please write one to prove I work in your workshop? Please send it to me as soon as possible.”

In a confused voice, Ahua asked, “What letter? Where are you now?”

“I need a referral letter with the stamp of our Red Star Plastic Factory. I’m being kept in a camp. I’ll try to be back at work before Monday. Please help me. I need this letter right away.”

Then Nina asked for the address of the gulag from the warden and repeated it to Ahua.

After talking to Ahua, Nina felt some relief; she expected Ahua to immediately tell Rei. Rei would then contact her mother. If she was unable to get back on time, her mother would cancel her plane ticket. If everything went well, a stamped letter would reach here in a few days. Imagining different scenarios, she tried her luck. “Can we leave now, Warden?” She turned to the warden. “You know what I have told you is true,” she added politely.

“I don’t doubt it. However, according to our policy, you can’t leave until we receive the letter from your forewoman.”

“That’ll take a couple of days.” Liya interrupted her. “In that case, can I make a call to a friend?”

“Whom do you intend to call?” asked the warden. Sitting back in her chair, she adjusted herself into a more comfortable position, crossing one of her legs over the other.

“A friend in Hohhot. May I?”

“If I let you make a call, can you do me a favour in return?”

“What kind of favour?”

“Can you help me with some textbooks? We’ll pay for your food during your stay here.”

“Does the policy allow that?” asked Liya.

“As an acting warden, I know how to implement policy.” Her voice was firm. “What’s the phone number of your friend?”

“She doesn’t have a phone, but I will be able to pass a message to her,” Liya answered and opened her notepad. She found the emergency number Jing had given her, which was the switchboard of Inner Mongolia Daily, and read it out loud to the warden.

After the phone was connected, Liya asked the operator to pass the message to Editor Li that his daughter’s friends could not return to Hohhot that day because they had encountered a small problem. Nina thought Liya’s message would not cause any trouble for Jing’s father, but at least Jing would glean that they were in trouble because she knew when Nina intended flight back to Canada was scheduled to leave from Guangzhou.

The warden pulled her desk drawer open and retrieved two books. “Here they are.” She laid them on the desk and looked at Liya. “I am certain this will be a piece of cake for you,” she said.

Liya took a look at the titles. One was The Modern Chinese Language, and the other, The History of the Chinese Communist Party. She wondered why the warden aspired to study these books, but she did not ask.

“If you like, you can help me, too,” said the warden, fixing her gaze on Nina’s upturned face. “It’s simple. Copy documents for me.”

“Why not? I used to copy documents in my factory,” answered Nina. Curiosity arose in her: What documents? It might be something confidential. Maybe inside information! Her worry about missing the flight lessened as the hope of discovering something useful for her book flickered inside her.

The warden opened a filing cabinet, she took out a thick book and a stack of lined paper. “Here you go.” She turned to the page with a bookmark. “I’ve done some already. You can continue from this page. First, find out who arrived here at the gulag between the years 1957 and 1960. Then copy their basic information onto this sheet.” She pointed to a pad of lined paper. “Fill in the blank under each column here: name, date of birth, birthplace, and so on. Understood?”

“Yes, of course,” answered Nina, who caught her breath, trying not to reveal her excitement. Liya had mentioned that Hu Yaobang, head of the Central Organization Department of the Communist Party of China, was working on cases of wrongful convictions of rightists during the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Might this be a sign of the start of reparations, she wondered.

“I’ll be back soon.” The warden went out.

When she returned, she led them to a one-storey building next to the office, and stood by the open door, waving them inside. “This is where you will sleep. It’s near the staff latrine at the end of this hallway. Someone will bring you food and water here. You’d better not go anywhere except to the office and latrine. It’s for your own safety.” Her gaze shifted back and forth between the two girls. “I’m trusting you and letting you stay in the staff dorm room. If you have any problem, you can talk to any guard in the office.” She pointed at the watch on her wrist. “But bedtime is nine o’clock. No lights are allowed after that.”

Nina surveyed the room. Two beds, each made of a wooden board over two benches, were pushed against the back wall. A small folding table flanked by two folding chairs stood in the middle of the room. A double-tier stand held two enamel basins. The upper one was for the face, and the lower one, for the feet. Several worn-out towels hung on the top rack of the stand. Nina thought the room was much better than her dorm in the military farm, but she was undeniably dismayed by the loss of their freedom.

“It’s up to you to stay here or go back in the office. I have some other errands to run. But you can start to work with me at four o’clock,” the warden said to Liya and left. Looking at each other, Nina and Liya noticed the other’s facial expressions. They were both exhausted, and worried. They did not know when they might be freed, but they were hopeful for a positive outcome.

Ahua was terrified when she got Nina’s long-distance call. She wondered how Nina had wound up being held in that camp, but she could not ask any more questions because there were co-workers around her during her phone conversation. She understood she needed a letter with a stamp of her factory to help Nina out of there. Can I get one through a normal channel? No. Can I get one for myself? Maybe, but for what reason? Many ideas preoccupied her, and she could not focus on her simple job: to inspect the packages of plastic basins. Suddenly, she had an idea and she marched into the director’s office. The door was open, and on the wall across from the door was a large portrait of Chairman Mao. Beneath the image of Mao, sat the director, a cigarette in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

“Director Hong, I need your help,” she said.

Hong lifted his head. “Come in, Ahua. Is there a problem in your workshop?”

“No, everything is fine. But I need a requisition to see a specialist in the hospital.”

“What’s the matter?” he asked. Cigarette smoke came out of his nose; his face was blurred amidst the smoke. He looked at Ahua, the forewoman of quality control, with concern in his eyes.

“I have a backache. A friend recommended me to a specialist, but the doctor only sees patients who have referral forms stamped from their work unit.”

“When are you going?”

“I’ll go as soon as I get referred by you. I have trouble bending now.” When she lied, she felt her face flush. It was a good thing that the director had started writing on a sheet. When Ahua saw the official red stamp on the lower part of the written letter, she felt like a drowning person who had been tossed a branch. Now she was clutching it with all her might.

Ahua went straight home to speak to Rei. Knowing that Nina wasn’t alone, that she was with Liya, made him feel a little bit better. He looked at the letter and wondered if he could find a way to erase the writing and then be able to craft the kind of letter Nina needed. At the same time, he had trouble shaking off the knowledge that it was illegal to fake a government document. But another voice sounded in his heart: It’s not right to retain a person who just wanted to visit a labour camp. Things are terribly wrong with the present legal system. He had to do something to help Nina out even if it was illegal.

“Maybe we can use vinegar to erase the ink.” He grabbed a test piece of paper and scribbled a few words with a pen. Then in the kitchen, he took a bottle of white vinegar from a cupboard and tried erasing the ink on the page. Ahua remembered she had once used cooked rice to discolour an ink stain on her white blouse. She tried that as well. They both worked on test paper for an hour, but they were unsuccessful. The best that Rei had been able to do was remove the ink by scratching it off with a razor blade, but the spot on the paper where they had scratched was visibly thinner and in places slight torn. He decided to go to visit a former co-worker for some help.

He came home at midnight. In their bedroom, out of a manila envelope he had brought back with him, he pulled out a round bar of soap with some carved words on it, and a square metal box that had a red ink pad inside of it. He opened the box and pressed the bar of soap onto the ink pad. Carefully, he stamped the bar of soap, now covered in red ink, onto a sheet of paper. “Oh my,” Ahua lowered her thrilled voice. “It looks like a real stamp!”

The following day, Rei mailed out a letter with a fake stamp to the Peach Blossom Camp whose address his wife had received from Nina’s phone call. Two days elapsed, and they had heard no further news. Nina and Liya had been detained in the gulag for three days now. Rei started acting on his plan. He needed to see his aunt, Nina’s mother, on her lunch break in the hospital. Nina’s flight home needed to be cancelled.

Rei found her in the staff lounge. “Aunt, can I speak to you in private?”

“Why are you here?” Nina’s mother stood up from an armchair and walked over to Rei. “Follow me,” she said and quickly led the way to a window at the end of the hallway. “Is something wrong?” she asked, her voice filled with anxiety.

“Not really,” Reid said, taking a breath. “Nina has changed her plans. She wants to stay in Beijing a little longer. She won’t be coming home, and she has asked me to bring her ticket and suitcase to Beijing.”

“But she’s supposed to take the plane here in Guangzhou. What’s really happened, Rei?” Nina’s mother looked into Rei’s eyes.

“Her schedule changed so she arranged to fly from Beijing instead,” Rei said carefully, as he did not want to distress his aunt.

“As long as she’s okay,” Nina’s mother sighed with relief. “I’ll see her another time. Do you need her stuff right away? Should we go back to the house now?”

“No. I’ll meet you at your house after you finish work. That will be fine,” Rei said. They chatted a bit more and then he left.

In the late afternoon, he went to the post office and made a long-distance call to the office of Air Canada in Hong Kong to cancel Nina’s flight due to a personal emergency. Then he placed a call to the Inner Mongolia Daily, and asked for Editor Li. The operator said there was no phone in his office, but she could pass a message to him. Hesitating for a second, he decided not to leave any message. Even if Jing got his message, she would not be able to reach him.

The final step for him was to get on a train to Beijing and then transfer to another train to Hohhot.

The Tuesday evening that Nina and Liya were detained, Jing had prepared a dinner of cornmeal porridge, pancakes, and buns stuffed with lamb. She waited till about eight p.m., but Nina and Liya did not show up. The long-distance bus should have arrived at seven-twenty. She was about to leave for the hospital when one of her father’s colleagues passed along a message from the switchboard. It was then that she realized that her friends could not return. Jing wondered where they were and what had happened. It worried her that they had not been able to provide any details with the message they sent. There was nothing she could do and she needed to get to the hospital to replace her father who was taking care her mother and then would go home.

When Jing entered the room, her mother immediately noticed the worry on her face. “Is everything all right?”

Jing told her about the phone message from Nina and Liya. Her mother smiled encouragingly. “Don’t worry too much. Your friends probably called from some town’s post office. It means they are somewhere safe. Don’t you think so?”

Jing nodded, feeling somewhat better. “I’m going to get you some warm water.” She took a basin with her to the water boiler and returned with it filled. Her mother had casts on both of her legs, so Jing helped her to sit up in bed and then she gave her a sponge bath.

“Soon, I’ll get rid of my cast and be able to do things myself,” her mother said as Jing washed her back. “These days, you’ve wasted a lot of time because of my accident.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve had the chance to read a lot of books in here,” Jing said to allay her mother’s concern. “And, besides, I’m very glad I’m able to take care of you.”

At night, most of the patients fell asleep; some patients’ family members also dozed off. Jing sank into a chair by her mother’s bed. Her eyes were closed, but her mind was wide awake. Where are they? If they don’t return tomorrow, I’ll talk to Weimin and see what can be done.