A Map for the Missing(49)
These political questions had always given Yitian trouble. All throughout school, he’d never paid much attention during their mandatory politics classes, but he wouldn’t pass the gaokao without finally taking in the material. In the previous few weeks, he’d read, really truly read, The Communist Manifesto and all of Mao’s writing for the first time. He’d found the books as inscrutable as ever, and resigned himself to simply memorizing the important parts.
“Is this really what you spend your time trying to learn?” Yishou mimicked the military cadence of Mao: “The masses! The army! The cadres are the three pillars!” He didn’t even finish the recitation before he burst out in laughter.
Their family had gone through too much hardship to take the Party’s claims to righteousness very seriously. Yitian had been raised on tales of how the Party had caused thousands of deaths in their villages during the Great Famine years. Not even his father, serving in the country’s army, believed the boastful words. When the Chairman’s death was announced over the loudspeakers, his mother had closed the door of their home so they could whoop secretly. They took down the poster of Chairman Mao, which every family had to hang in their home, and secretly burned it that night in their courtyard, along with the vegetable peels. “Chairman Mao is dead! Chairman Mao is dead!” they chanted in whispers, and the words took on a new, hopeful meaning. When their team leader visited the next day, Yitian forced himself into crying by poking his pencil so forcefully into his leg that the lead snapped in half.
For the rest of the night, Yishou murmured questions in a slow and unsteady cadence, and Yitian responded rapidly with an answer he’d memorized down to the last word. They continued until ten o’clock, and then both climbed into the pallet their host had made for them on the floor. Yitian and Yishou lay head to toe in hopes of sleeping better, but Yitian’s nerves were too poor. He kept waking at half-hour intervals, sure it was already daytime and he’d accidentally missed the exam. He finally gave up on sleeping right before dawn and dressed for the day. The old woman had made them a breakfast of porridge, but he found that, upon lifting the bowl, he could hardly stomach more than a few sips.
* * *
—
The line to enter the exam room rose and dipped with students of all ages, from sent-down youth to young farmers like Yishou and old men like his grandfather. The site was a repurposed gymnasium of a city high school. Everyone seemed to be in various states of panic. They shoved buns into their mouths, kneaded hot-water bottles in their hands against the cold of the gymnasium, and muttered their notes under their breath. Yitian reached into his pocket and fingered the two pens to make sure the ink hadn’t frozen. The previous night, he’d slept with the inkwell pressed to his chest to keep it warm.
Farther up in line, he recognized one of his teachers. Yitian went to meet him, ignoring the annoyed protests of the other students he passed.
“I didn’t sleep all night,” Teacher Li said. His short figure—when he’d taught Yitian in middle school, many of the students were already taller than him—was slouched over his crossed arms.
“I hardly slept either,” Yitian said.
“It can’t be good for us.” He lifted a fingernail to his mouth and chewed the surface. Yitian swatted his hand away. Teacher Li’s fingernails were so destroyed by his biting and the cold that there were bits of dried blood around the ashen cuticles.
“I can’t help it,” Teacher Li said. His eyes were completely bloodshot and ringed with plum-colored circles. His face, normally plump, appeared sallow and thinner. Yitian’s teacher had been waiting for the opportunity much longer than he had. He was twenty-seven, and his parents had treated the local cadres to dinner year after year in hopes of currying favor for the college recommendation system. Their efforts hadn’t ever worked. His parents were giving him this last chance: if he could not get into college this year, they would force him to find a wife and start his married life in the village. Yitian felt sympathetic to him; of all his teachers in middle school, Teacher Li was the only one who’d been any good.
They were allowed into the gymnasium one by one. The room was stuffed so fully with desks that Yitian could only navigate the aisles by positioning his body sideways. It would have been easy to cheat by looking at nearby desks, if he’d wanted to. In later years, he would learn that there were indeed some who’d cheated that day, the well-off children of cadres who arranged for them to have answer sheets swapped or be generously graded. He could understand why they might be driven to such means—he’d read in the newspaper that there would be six million students taking the gaokao and only two hundred thousand spots in the universities, odds so narrow he hardly dared to calculate them.
Then suddenly the proctor was scratching his long beard and reading the instructions of the exam . . . he was passing out the booklets and scolding students who tried to turn them over before time began . . . he was checking his watch and chalking the finish time on the board.
Teacher Li reached across the tiny gap of space between their desks and tapped on Yitian’s.
“Here we go,” he mouthed.
Yitian saw students near him rubbing their hands together and vaguely registered that the air must have been cold, but he didn’t notice any feeling in his own fingers, which had gone numb. He shook them furiously and then lifted the pen to ink his name on the first line in the booklet: