Deep down, Zhu Shiqing was somewhat unsure. Even at the most conservative estimate, Uncle was more than capable of handling this trouble—but when it came down to it, the trouble had nothing to do with the two of them.
As far as friendship went, Xu Gang and Uncle were indeed on good terms, but matters of national defense were all too easily blown up into a matter of principle. Handle it badly, and a man could lose his head.
So Zhu Shiqing was afraid of really dragging Sun Beifeng into trouble. At a time like this, a man had to stay calm.
"Section Chief Xu, you and my uncle are on excellent terms. I'm a junior—I doubt anything I say would count for much. If Uncle really does have some way to handle this, I'm afraid you're the one who should go."
"Hey, are you genuinely dumb, or just playing dumb? Put everyone in this room together, and would Old Smoker value us above you?" Xu Gang took on a mocking tone and curled his lip.
Diao Yuxiu seized the chance to add fuel to the fire: "That's right. If only for your sake, Old Smoker won't stand by and let our county go under. If the higher-ups really start investigating, forget the people in this room—not one official in the whole county will come out of it clean!"
Hearing this, Zhu Shiqing slowly lowered his head. The truth was, from the very start there had been no jumping off this pirate ship of his—unless he were like that clever county secretary, who had spotted his chance and leapt to the central government. It was certainly too late to leave now.
The trouble had broken in the county. One man falls, the whole county suffers. Sitting in a position like this, it was hard to say anyone could keep himself safely out of it—unless he had connections reaching to the heavens. Did he? And asking for help had its own knack: was it better to ingratiate yourself before trouble struck, or go begging after it had? The answer was obvious.
After a moment's hesitation, with every eye on him, Zhu Shiqing ground his teeth and said, "Tomorrow I'll go into the city and look him up."
Only then did the others let the matter drop, and the smiles returned to their faces. Zhu Shiqing had to save himself. With a blunder like this, if he did not move fast, no one could say what would happen next.
……
When he first came to follow Sun Beifeng, Zhu Shiqing had been a mere little kid.
Frankly speaking, Zhu Shiqing knew very little about Uncle.
In a tottering age, in surroundings where he had not a single relative, Zhu Shiqing often felt lonely. Uncle was his only support.
Years earlier, when Sun Beifeng first brought Zhu Shiqing to Nanjing, on the day they entered the city Sun Beifeng hoisted the boy onto his back, his tobacco pipe clamped in his mouth, and trudged into Nanjing, one footfall heavy after the other; on the strength of friendships from the first half of his life, the two of them borrowed lodging in a courtyard house.
At that time the Nanjing government had not yet been established, and the vast country was still in turmoil.
Sun Beifeng often bragged to young Zhu Shiqing about how formidable he had been in his day—Japanese devils, Western devils, he cut them down with a blade like slicing melons and chopping vegetables—and every time he could keep Zhu Shiqing laughing for a good long while.
Once the boy grew up, Uncle stopped bringing it up. He began to talk about home and country instead.
Much of what he said, Zhu Shiqing had forgotten, and so had Sun Beifeng.
But there was one sentence neither of them had forgotten. Sun Beifeng, facing the young Zhu Shiqing, had said: "Jiuru, you were born for the revolution. You must work hard and make something of yourself."
Those words were not false. Zhu Shiqing had been born in the shadow of the Second Revolution's failure. In that era many patriots had lost their lives, but new hope was pushing up through the soil as well, and carrying the hopes of the older generation, it took root and sprouted in a wider world.
Jiuru comes from "Tian Bao" in the Lu Ming section of the Minor Odes in the Book of Songs: like a mountain, like a hill, like a ridge, like a peak, like a river just arriving, like the waxing moon, like the rising sun, like the shade of pine and cypress, like the long life of the southern mountain.
His father's intent lay in all of it.
To pay for Zhu Shiqing's schooling at the traditional private school, Sun Beifeng had pulled a rickshaw, and he had also done a fair amount of robbing and raiding.
But Sun Beifeng was clever. Nanjing was where the two of them made their home, so he never did that work there. When times got so hard the pot truly went empty, he would go down to southern Jiangsu, pose as a bandit, and rob the convoys carrying gifts for the government troops.
The take was a strange assortment: silver dollars, small gold bars, now and then some opium; and when his ancestors were really smiling on him, he could even haul back a whole cartload of rifles.
Over time he made a few bandit friends, and raising a band of his own was no great difficulty. He had come out of the revolution to begin with; apart from the fact that he no longer moved so nimbly, he had not lost a single skill, and he soon became the leader.
But back in Nanjing, Sun Beifeng went right on being a rickshaw man, switching roles with perfect ease.
Then the Nanjing government was formally established, and the lands of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Suzhou and Shanghai were more or less unified. Robbing and raiding were no longer possible, and Sun Beifeng, seeing his chance had come, simply "returned" to the organization.
On the strength of his old-revolutionary credentials, he soon held a post in the government offices. Sun Beifeng was a shrewd operator; in only two years he had his seven or eight former bandit friends put on the payroll as well, eating the emperor's grain—and that was why Sun Beifeng's information was so good.
Yet even now, all Zhu Shiqing knew was that Old Smoker held a post in Nanjing; Uncle had never explained in any detail just what work he was responsible for.
He only knew that Uncle came and went like a ghost, free as he pleased, and that tidbits of gossip came in one crop after another.
Twenty years had passed; seas had turned to mulberry fields. Sun Beifeng's back was bent lower now, his temples going white, and the name "Old Smoker" had spread.
In Zhu Shiqing's memory, once Uncle became an official his catchphrase changed. He began to say:
How big does an official have to get before he counts as big?
And so he often warned Zhu Shiqing not to chase vanity: official rank, fame and merit—they were nothing but dung, dung not worth a copper in troubled times.
Uncle might say so, but his career only went smoother and smoother. No one knew what rank he had reached, but his power and prestige climbed straight up—so much so that he was the first to learn of Jiangning County's administrative restructuring plan and hurried to recommend his own nephew for a place on the payroll.
And yet, three years ago, Zhu Shiqing had genuinely believed it was all the doing of his own destiny.
Little did he know that so-called destiny lies mostly in human effort, and that behind so-called fortune there is always a hand pushing.
Sun Beifeng had his own philosophy in doing this. As for Zhu Shiqing's upbringing, he understood this little kid far better than the boy's own father had.
Strictly speaking, Zhu Shiqing had been raised along the lines of a traditional Confucian scholar-official, which gave him a natural middle-of-the-road temperament. That was not a complimentary word.
What does middle-of-the-road mean? Neither high nor low, neither left nor right.
From Zhu Shiqing's words and deeds, Sun Beifeng had long since formed his judgment: the Zhu Shiqing of this moment carried in his bones a heroic spirit that wanted to rise above the crowd and serve the country and its people, and yet was caught up in the restraints and dragging currents of a disorderly world. Facing a matter, even when he hated wrongdoing with all his heart, he might still abandon his principles over society's rules and conventions; deep down he might think of selfless devotion to the public good, and still let injustice and hypocrisy go on unchecked.
Some people think themselves clever and worldly; in fact they are the most foolish and flighty of all.
In that era such people were not few.
And in such circumstances a man easily loses himself: is he in it to be an official, or to serve the country by being an official? Down the long river of history, many have taken the effect for the cause and sunk into ruin.
But in the end, Zhu Shiqing could afford to make mistakes—and besides, only by seeing the world clearly early could he be reborn from the fire sooner.
A person's worldview and way of doing things are, after all, rebuilt over and over on the ruins of an age.
After midnight the wind picked up. The gusts swept up fine sand with a whistling, swishing sound, and Zhu Shiqing lay on his side in bed, turning over how he would tell Uncle about this business.
Chapter 5