The Five Brothers' Dream

Lide was not a man without feeling.
He had affection for Yaoyao; this even he himself admitted. Yaoyao was beautiful, bright, well-born, and carried a little of a young lady’s pride and fragility. Her father, Zhang Jianqiang, had once been a resounding figure in the locality. When Shenmoon Appliances Group was in its glory, so many cadres, banks, media people, and suppliers had circled around him. When Lide first came to know Yaoyao, he too had once felt that if such a woman entered the Ma family, it would not only be a matter of affection, but also an elevation of family standing.
Yet human feeling has depths and shallows, and the world has warmth and coldness.
Once Zhang Jianqiang fell ill, the light of Shenmoon Appliances also dimmed considerably. The bustle at banquet tables, the photographs on the office wall, the streams of trucks once lining up at the factory gate to haul goods—suddenly all seemed to yellow like old pictures. Once an enterprise lost its main pillar, debts, markets, equity, relatives, subordinates—each might become trouble. Lide saw this with his own eyes, and in his heart he could not help calculating. He liked Yaoyao, yet he also knew that marrying the daughter of a boss whose fortunes were declining might not mean merely marrying one person. It might also mean taking on a pile of old accounts, old grievances, and old relationships that could not be clearly explained.
Sometimes he despised himself for thinking this way.
Yet he could not avoid thinking it.
People in officialdom fear most that the ground beneath their own feet is not clean, and also fear most that trouble may be drawn out from those around them. Lide had entered the court only three years earlier, yet he had already become a deputy-section-level presiding judge, rising very quickly. Some said he was capable. Some said he was steady. Some said he had noble people behind him. Others were secretly unconvinced, saying that at such a young age, his path had been too smooth. When Lide heard these words, he never explained. He knew that in a government office, explanation was not as good as silence, and silence was not as good as position. As long as you were still moving upward, much gossip would naturally become courtesy. If one day you fell, all the courtesy of the past would become testimony.
It was at just this time that Luo Yongping, secretary of the municipal Political and Legal Affairs Committee, summoned him for a talk.
That morning, the sky over Ruizhou was overcast. Lide was called to the Political and Legal Affairs Committee office building. The corridor was long, the floor polished bright, and on the walls hung slogans such as “Maintain Stability,” “Be Strict and Swift,” and “Handle Cases According to Law.” Luo Yongping sat in his office. He was in his fifties, his hair combed backward, his eyes not large, yet very penetrating. He did not begin by speaking of a transfer, but first asked Lide how he was doing in the criminal court, whether the pressure of cases was heavy, and whether his body could bear it.
Lide answered very cautiously. “Wherever the organization assigns me, I will work there. The criminal court has heavy cases and great responsibility, and it also trains a person.”
Luo Yongping lifted his teacup and smiled. “Those words sound like a court work report.”
Lide smiled too. “After being in the court for some time, one’s speech inevitably takes on a format.”
Luo Yongping set down the cup and looked at him. “You are young, your education is good, and your ability in handling cases is strong. Remaining in the criminal court all the time may not necessarily be the most suitable position. On the Political and Legal Affairs Committee side, the political-legal office lacks a director. It is a full section-level post. I want to hear your thoughts.”
The words full section-level were not spoken heavily, yet they were like a stone falling into water.
Lide’s heart stirred.
From deputy section to full section seemed only one rank, but in truth it was a step. The presiding judge of a criminal court held power inside case files and courtrooms; the director of a political-legal office stood amid coordination, synthesis, reporting, and organization, with a broader range of contact and a position closer to leadership. One was the sharp edge inside the machinery of case handling; the other was a hub within the political-legal system. Lide knew this was a relocation, and also a test. Luo Yongping was not speaking casually. If the Political and Legal Affairs Committee had taken notice of him, it meant his name had already been placed on a certain table.
But he also knew that the higher the position, the more eyes there would be. Yaoyao, Zhang Jianqiang, Shenmoon Appliances Group—these relationships would all be weighed again.
After leaving the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, Lide did not immediately return to the court. He walked alone along the streets for a long time. The wind of Ruizhou carried dampness. Motorcycles roared past by the roadside. Small shops on the street opened as usual—meat stalls, teahouses, hardware stores, video halls—the smoke and fire of ordinary life lively and warm. Yet in Lide’s heart there was a coldness.
During his years in the criminal court, he had seen too many human evils.
Some killed for a few hundred yuan. Some gave birth to hatred through love. Some trafficked women and children. Some robbed and raped. Some pushed their own kin into an abyss. Some knelt in the courtroom, weeping and begging to live. Every case file was like a well; looking down into it, one could see the blackness of human beings. At first, Lide would still be unable to sleep at night. Later, he slowly learned to close the file, and also close his heart. Yet some things did not pass simply because the file was closed.
The criminal court was like a room heavy with yin energy.
The presiding judge sat on the bench, seemingly solemn, yet often he felt like Zhan Zhao beside the ancient Judge Bao, standing between law and violence. He did not hold a blade in his hand, but he participated in deciding life and death. Once the death sentence was handed down, the prisoner was taken away, the case archived, and the courtroom returned to silence. Yet Lide knew that what followed was not always clean. Once the gunshot sounded and life ended, there also came certain unclear, shameful chains of interest. Some people talked of the organs of death-row prisoners in a tone as though speaking of goods. Some understood one another without words behind the procedures. Some dismantled a human body into usable parts, stripping away even the last dignity.
The first time Lide heard of such things, his stomach churned.
He once asked an old judge, “What does this count as?”
The old judge looked at him and said in a low voice, “Young man, do not ask everything. Once the case is judged, the court’s matter is finished.”
“But the person is not finished.”
The old judge sighed. “Once a person becomes a death-row prisoner, in many people’s eyes, he is no longer a complete person.”
That sentence troubled Lide for a long time.
He was not a sage. After handling criminal cases for a long time, he too grew numb. He too would call criminals “subjects,” “offenders,” “death-row prisoners.” He too would use procedure to protect himself, refusing to think about the mother, child, fear, and remorse behind that face. Yet no matter how numb he became, he could still feel that certain things crossed the human bottom line. The law could punish evil, but it should not allow another kind of hidden evil to grow while wearing the cloak of procedure. The most frightening thing was not bad people doing evil, but that everyone seemed to know something was wrong, and yet everyone lowered his head and busied himself with his own affairs.
Lide wanted to change environments.
This thought had not formed in a single day. The shadow of the criminal court had long pressed upon his heart. Each time he judged a serious case, it was as though another stone were added inside him. Among those executed, some had committed crimes so monstrous that death did not seem excessive. Yet there were also cases with complicated circumstances, where the evidence was not an iron plate, and where the winds of the time and the pressure of case handling pushed for swift and heavy sentencing. Sometimes Lide would wonder whether there were also wronged souls and wandering ghosts beneath his own hand. Would they, at some midnight, stand up from between the seams of the case files and ask him: Presiding Judge Ma, did you truly see clearly at the time?
He did not want to think further.
The position of political-legal office director was, to him, like a door. Behind the door it might not be clean; there might even be more coordination, compromise, human feeling, and exchanges of power. But at least he would no longer face death every day, no longer watch people be pushed step by step toward the end in court. More importantly, full section level was a seal on the road of officialdom. Only when a person moved upward could he have choices. If a person remained where he was, he could only be arranged by others.
That night, Lide invited Xinde to drink tea at a small teahouse in Ruizhou.
The teahouse stood by the street. Outside the window, traffic noise continued without pause, while inside, an old-fashioned ceiling fan turned slowly. Xinde had come from Canton, wearing his Foreign Trade Administration uniform, carrying the plain freshness of a young government-office man. Lide told him about Luo Yongping’s conversation.
After listening, Xinde asked, “Third Brother, do you want to go?”
Holding his teacup, Lide was silent for a while. “I want to. And I do not want to.”
“Why?”
“I want to because this is an opportunity. I do not want to because I know there is also a net behind this opportunity.”
Xinde understood what he meant. “And Yaoyao?”
Lide gave a bitter smile. “See? Even you thought of that.”
Xinde did not deny it.
Lide looked down at the water in his teacup, his voice lowering. “Her father is ill like that. If I step back now, it will seem heartless. But if I continue forward, will Shenmoon Appliances’s affairs hold me back in the future? I do not know. Human feeling and interest are sometimes like two ropes: one ties the heart, the other ties the feet.”
Xinde said softly, “Third Brother, you used to laugh at me for studying philosophy. In truth, what you are thinking about now is harder than philosophy.”
Lide lifted his head and suddenly smiled. “Philosophy can still be explained clearly. This of mine cannot.”
Both men fell silent.
Outside the window, night had descended. The lights inside the teahouse were dim yellow. At the next table, someone was talking business in a loud voice, as though the world were still lively. Yet Lide felt that he was standing at a fork in the road: on one side were Yaoyao and her family, now dimming; on the other was the step Luo Yongping had handed him. On one side were the shadows of the dead in the criminal court; on the other, the broader and deeper corridors of power inside the Political and Legal Affairs Committee.
The evil of the human world sometimes appears at the scene of a killing, sometimes beside a sickbed, sometimes after a gunshot, and sometimes right in that little place inside a person’s heart where, while weighing advantage and harm, something gradually hardens.
Lide knew he was not innocent.
He had seen evil, and had also participated in the system. He sympathized with Yaoyao, and also calculated her. He detested the bloodiness of the criminal court, yet cherished the qualifications it had given him. He wanted to leave darkness, but he was not necessarily walking toward light—only toward another place where measure was more carefully observed.
Before Xinde left, he said to him, “Third Brother, no matter where you go, do not hand yourself over completely.”
Lide asked, “Hand myself over to whom?”
“To official position, to relationships, to fear.”
Lide stood at the entrance of the teahouse and watched his younger brother ride away on his bicycle. For a long while, he did not speak.
Night wind blew over, carrying the smoke and fire of Ruizhou’s streets, and also the coldness that would not disperse from the court’s case files. He knew that Luo Yongping’s conversation would not remain merely a conversation; the next step would come very soon. And he, Yaoyao, the Zhang family, the criminal court, and his own official career had all arrived at the moment when the next piece had to be placed on the board.