Country Driving [127]
“Afterward we’re going to take him back home, right?” I asked.
“Yes,” Wei Ziqi said. “He just needs a government identity card. That’s the only reason we’re going.”
It had been nearly four years since Mimi and I had last driven the Idiot down into the valley. During that period the man’s life had changed dramatically, like everything else in the village, and I often wondered how he interpreted these shifting routines. He had been given his own room at the end of the guesthouse—because the family was wealthier, with more space, they were able to segregate him. In the past, on winter evenings, the Idiot sat on the kang with everybody else; now he stayed in his own room. On weekends, when the family hosted customers, they often dressed the Idiot in new clothes, to make a better impression. One day, when Wei Ziqi and Cao Chunmei both had to leave in order to take care of business responsibilities, the Idiot panicked and ran down the village road. In the past he had never been left alone and the sudden solitude unnerved him. They found him at the signpost for Tianhua Cave, a couple of miles from Sancha. Apart from that brief flight, the man hadn’t left the village since our adventure of 2002.
Today I found him waiting silently beside Wei Ziqi in the parking lot. I opened the back door to my rented Jetta, and the Idiot calmly entered. On the drive down he pressed his face close to the window, watching the scenery as we descended into the valley. Wei Ziqi explained that he still lacked an official identity card, which was necessary if the family continued with the government support program. Ever since the first incident, the Party Secretary had made sure that the Weis received their monthly payments. Each year at the Spring Festival holiday, they were given an extra twelve dollars, along with a jug of cooking oil and a bag of rice or flour.
At the Shayu police station, a young woman led the Idiot to a stool in front of a white backdrop. He sat on his hands like a nervous child, tucking his legs behind the stool. He looked worried while the woman fiddled with a digital camera. The machine flashed and hummed, and the moment after the picture was taken, the Idiot finally relaxed into a toothless grin.
In another room a policeman prepared an official note for Wei Ziqi. “He’s a longya, right?” the man asked. The word means “deaf-mute.”
“That’s right.”
The officer wrote quickly onto police stationery; he handed the paper to Wei Ziqi. “Give this to the Party Secretary,” he said. “She’ll give it to the township. He should get his ID card in about a month.”
The Idiot watched intently on the drive back, as if savoring the journey. The next time I appeared in the village, he greeted me warmly, pointing to the Jetta in the parking lot. But I never saw him enter an automobile again. Now that he was officially registered, there was no need for him to go anywhere. Those two journeys, the ones I had witnessed, represented the farthest he had ever traveled in his life.
Exactly a month later the Idiot received a twenty-one-inch Hisense brand color television. It was part of a new government program for the disabled, and now I realized why it had been so important to register that afternoon, although Wei Ziqi hadn’t mentioned the TV. The family already had a bigger set, so they gave the government television to one of Wei Ziqi’s relatives. The Idiot never watched TV anyway; he couldn’t hear the programs and in the evenings he sat alone in his room. The family didn’t accept money for the set, but I was sure that somehow, someday, it would be repaid through the complicated world of village guanxi. That’s also the way of the countryside: no wasted gestures.
The Idiot’s new ID card listed his birth date and given name, and for the first time I saw who he really was. He was born on December 11, 1948, and his name is Wei Zonglou. On the ID, Wei Zonglou looks very old and very worried. He’s hunched forward, and his eyes appear almost