Seeing that Chen Fan refused to cooperate, Captain Yang became angry. He slammed his hand on the table and shouted to the crowd outside, "Lao San, go get Constable Zhu here."
Chen Fan shrank his neck, feeling guilty and helpless. What a mess!
Captain Yang then remained silent, staring at him with a stern look, hoping to break his psychological defenses and make him confess his identity.
Twenty minutes later, a bicycle bell rang. The villagers who had been crowding around the doorway gossiping quickly cleared a path. A man wearing a cap and a navy blue police uniform walked in.
Before he even entered the room, his voice reached them, "Captain Yang, what's going on?"
Captain Yang stood up, took out a cigarette and offered him one, then used a match to light it for him. He also lit one for himself, then motioned for the man to sit at the table before pointing at Chen Fan and saying, "Yesterday, while we were going to the river to fetch water, we found this person lying by the riverbank, half his body submerged. He was only wearing a set of undershirt..."
Chen Fan silently corrected in his heart, "It's pajamas, not undershirt."
As Captain Yang explained, Chen Fan finally understood what had happened to him.
In short, yesterday, Captain Yang and the others were fetching water by the river when they found a man lying by the water's edge, half his body submerged in the water, wearing only a set of undershirt.
At the time, they found that he was still breathing, so they rescued him. They wiped his body, fed him ginger sugar water, and even invited Doctor Zhang, the village barefoot doctor, to prescribe him two doses of medicine. They then settled him in the educated youth dormitory, which was the room Chen Fan was in now.
As for who had taken his clothes off and wiped him down, Captain Yang didn't say, and Chen Fan didn't dare ask.
Captain Yang explained the whole story and then pointed at Chen Fan, saying, "Today, this kid woke up, and I asked him where he came from, but he just pretended not to know anything and gave me the runaround. So I asked Lao San to call you here to interrogate him."
Constable Zhu sat down in a chair, smoking a cigarette, his eyes scanning Chen Fan back and forth. After a while, he finished his cigarette, then asked with a stern face, "Where are you from?"
Chen Fan shrank his neck, "I don't remember."
Constable Zhu asked again, "What's your name."
"Chen Fan."
Constable Zhu sneered, "You remember your name, but you don't remember where you're from? You have selective amnesia?"
He then slammed his hand on the table, "Come clean!"
Chen Fan looked miserable, "Officer, I really don't remember. You can't just have me make something up, and then you check, and there's nothing, what would I become then?"
Whether it was the 50s, 60s, or 70s, before people started moving around a lot, household registration was both the most rigorous and the most lenient.
It was rigorous in that as long as you investigated, you could always find something, at least a trail to follow. Anyone who couldn't be traced definitely had a problem.
But it was also lenient in that all the records were managed by people, so as long as someone made a stroke of the pen, they could create a person out of thin air, and with a few more people to act as cover, the person would take root and blossom.
Chen Fan had just arrived, who would create a cover for him?
So the safest thing to do was to honestly say he didn't know, so he would have room to maneuver.
Constable Zhu looked to be in his forties or fifties, tall and straight, probably a demobilized veteran. His sharp eyes scanned Chen Fan back and forth. After a moment, he said suddenly, "Stand up and walk a few steps."
Although he didn't know what he wanted, Chen Fan obediently stood up and walked around the passage in the room.
When he reached Constable Zhu, he was suddenly stopped. "Hold out your hands," he said.
Chen Fan held out both hands, and thoughtfully asked, "Do you want to see the back?"
Constable Zhu gave him a strange look, "Yes."
Chen Fan immediately turned his hands over. He only then noticed that his hands seemed to be much softer and whiter than before, and all the small wounds he had gotten before had disappeared.
But right now, there was a guillotine hanging over his head, so he didn't have the heart to think about anything else. He just had to get through this ordeal.
Constable Zhu said nothing, taking a small notebook and a pen from his pocket and placing them on the table. "Write your name."
Chen Fan did as instructed.
Constable Zhu picked up the notebook, looked at it, then looked at Chen Fan, and finally nodded to Captain Yang, "Let's go outside."
Captain Yang glanced at Chen Fan and followed Constable Zhu out.
Chen Fan watched them squeeze through the crowd, and then the doorway was filled with "concerned citizens" again. He couldn't help but give a wry smile, nodding politely to show his good intentions.
The front row of onlookers didn't speak or respond, but they stared at him without blinking.
It was rare to have nothing to do in the winter, and suddenly a drowned stranger appeared, naturally everyone would come to watch the spectacle.
The people in front couldn't talk in front of Chen Fan, but the crowd behind wasn't so quiet. They were all whispering among themselves.
"Could he be a spy?"
"Who's a spy would be so stupid as to go into the water to carry out a mission? Catching fish?"
"I say he must be an educated youth."
"Why would an educated youth jump into the river?"
"He doesn't want to go to the countryside."
"Is going to the countryside worse than jumping into the river? Look at all the educated youth in our team, who has jumped into the river?"
"Maybe he's a rightist."
"A rightist wouldn't jump into the river here."
"Hey, hey, look at how delicate and tender he is. Could he be someone's kid from the cadres' families?"
"Who knows, it's freezing cold, and he's only wearing an undershirt. He fell in the water and didn't drown. He must have been drifting down from somewhere not too far away."
"But there are only a few production teams upstream, where did the cadre come from?"
"I didn't say he was a cadre."
"In my opinion, he's an educated youth. Someone robbed him halfway, even took his clothes, knocked him unconscious, and threw him in the water to fend for himself."
"Nonsense, all the bandits have been wiped out by the militia, where would there be any robbers?"
"It's hard to say. In those remote areas, out in the wilds, far from any villages, they could knock you out with a stick, who knows?"
"Hey, Lao San, you're quite familiar with this. Have you ever done it?"
"Get lost, you're talking about robbers, why are you dragging me into this?"
...
On the other side, Constable Zhu dragged Captain Yang into another room, closed the door, and sat down. "I've checked, this kid hasn't been in the army, hasn't done any manual labor. His palms and backs are smooth, without even a callus. He's more tender than my grandson. The characters he writes are simplified Chinese, and his speech is local. He shouldn't be a spy."
He then chuckled, "If he really was a spy, he would have definitely spun a lie that sounded like the truth, he wouldn't be so easily found out."
Captain Yang looked at him, "Even if he is not a spy, he must be up to something. Otherwise, why wouldn't he reveal his identity?"
Constable Zhu took out a cigarette and offered one to him. Captain Yang quickly took out his own cigarettes, "Take mine, take mine."
(End of Chapter)
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