Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

that he’s twenty-six years
old and he’s hei jen —it translates as being one of the ‘black persons,’
living without registration and without a ration card or employment. He lives
off friends or steals and sells things in the black market.”
    ”Good heavens,” she murmured with a glance at Sheng.
    ”He says that you and I must have very good identification papers to
have dared to go out tonight dressed as natives. He wants either my ID papers
or yours. He says he can pay. He wants to use them to escape to Hong Kong .”
    Mrs. Pollifax considered this with interest. ”So he won’t betray us
then,” she said with some relief. ”Not if he wants something from us.” The word betray struck her forcibly and she thought, Carstairs has in effect
been betrayed by his double-agent, his counterspy, hasn’t he! and doesn’t know
this either. Aloud she said, ”But how did he come to live under a bridge
and be hei jen ? He looks very intelligent, I’m curious.”
    She had to wait again for the reply, watching Peter’s gestures and the
changes in expression on his face as he listened: surprise, thoughtfulness, a
frown, a nod, until at last he resumed. ”He says it began for him with shang-shan
xia-xiang — what they call ‘up to the mountains and down to the villages’...
the many young people sent down to the country to learn hard physical labor.
Sheng was cheng-fen bu hao —bad background, meaning his family used to be
rich peasants, landlords. Because of this he had no hope of school or a job in
the city. He was sent to a commune in central China where the farmers hated
these city youngsters foisted on them... this was ten years ago, when he was
sixteen; he felt lonely and ostracized. He stood it for three years and then he
ran away. For this he was given shou-liu —detention—and then he was sent
to a commune near Urumchi where they work on the roads. Here he acquired more
bad records— tan, or a dossier. What it amounts to—to sum up—is that he
couldn’t conform.”
    ”I’m not sure I could have either,” commented Mrs. Pollifax thoughtfully.
”But how on earth does he survive?”
    Peter said in a level voice, ”He steals. People sometimes give him food.
Once he stole a cartload of melons and set up a stall in the bazaar and sold
them. With the profit he bought pumpkin-seeds and nuts and sold them, and then
jars of honey . .
    ”Sounds a promising businessman,” said Mrs. Pollifax, giving him a
smile.
    ”He saved up money for a Flying Pigeon bicycle—one of the best—but being
without a unit and without coupons he had to go to the black market to buy it.
The man took his money but never produced the bicycle and since then he says
his anger has given him much despair, he sleeps too much and has gone back to
stealing.”
    Mrs. Pollifax said impulsively, ”But there’s such sensitivity in his
face, and look at those eyes. He shouldn’t be an outcast.”
    Peter said, ”I’ve told him his country is changing now that Mao’s dead,
and that mistakes of the past are being corrected. If he just waits a little
longer—”
    ”What does he say to that?”
    ”He asks how these changes can reach him. They are very slow, and even
slower this far away from Peking . He says he
has nobody to speak for him, nobody to say he is not bad, he says he is now an
invisible person.” Peter shook his head. ”We could never sell ID papers to
someone like him, not with his background, he’s not reliable.”
    Mrs. Pollifax looked at Sheng, an idea occurring to her that she liked
very much. He returned her glance, a sudden flash of anger illuminating those
black eyes. ”I do not beg,” he said, thrusting out his jaw.
    ”If you should leave your country,” she asked him gently, ”what would
you do, what would you want?”
    He scowled at her. ”To go to school. To work.”
    She nodded and turned back to Peter. ”Well?”
    ”What do you mean ‘well’?” he said indignantly. ”As I just said, with a
background like that he’s scarcely reliable, he’d blow it. He’d be picked up
and he’d blow the whole thing.”
    ”Not if he left the country with you and Wang,” she told him.
    ”If he what?”
    She said slowly, ”It’s true there would be three of you if he joined
you, and three are harder to hide in the countryside, but he’s a master of
hiding, isn’t he?” And if there is danger ahead, she added silently, three
can fight better than two.
    Peter grinned. ”Hearing you cracks me up,