1980s - Chapter 7

Previous | Table Of Contents | Next

 The train smelled of coal, steel, and something new: freedom with conditions.

Zhao Rui watched the landscape change from the gray of factories to a patchwork of fields stitched together by water channels. He and Li Ming sat shoulder to shoulder, notebooks balanced on their knees, pretending to review blueprints that both already knew by heart.

Officially, they were travelling to supervise the installation of their irrigation system. Unofficially, they were travelling to see whether a life could exist past secrecy.

The countryside slid by slowly, every field a mirror catching the sky. The pump they had designed was crated in the freight car behind them—an ungainly beast of iron and belief.

Li Ming leaned back, eyes closed.
“Do you hear it?” he asked.
“The train?”
“No. The rhythm. Every bolt holding on for dear life. It’s honest work.”

Zhao Rui smiled. “You say that about everything with gears.”
“And about everyone who keeps going,” Li Ming replied without opening his eyes.

They spoke little after that. The wheels filled the silence, a constant metallic heartbeat. Outside, children waved at the train; an old man on a bridge tipped his hat. The world, for once, didn’t stare too closely.

The station was little more than a wooden platform and a sign half-eaten by rust. A tractor waited to carry them to the cooperative. The driver, a man missing two teeth and half his patience, helped load the crate with a grunt.

“Engineers, eh? They said city folk were coming to make the river behave. Hope you brought miracles.”

Li Ming laughed. “Only plumbing.”

The road wound through rice fields bright as mirrors. Waterbirds stepped delicately among the stalks. Zhao Rui breathed in the smell of mud and growing things; after years of metal and smoke, it felt almost like forgiveness.

They reached a cluster of low buildings near the river bend. A small crowd waited: farmers, children, a few cadres with clipboards. The head of the cooperative, a woman with sun-creased eyes, greeted them warmly.

“You’re the inventors? Good. The last pump coughed itself to death before spring planting. Show us what yours can do.”

They set up by the river’s edge. The crate opened with a hiss of straw and oil. Pieces gleamed in the sunlight.

Zhao Rui organized the tools; Li Ming knelt by the inlet pipe, explaining to the villagers how pressure would build, how the water would rise even against slope. His voice carried clear and calm, like the river deciding to listen.

For two days they worked from dawn to dusk—digging trenches, bolting frames, guiding curious children away from sharp edges. Zhao Rui slept little, ate when reminded. Each night, they returned to a borrowed room above the grain store: two narrow beds, one lamp, the comfort of quiet breathing in the dark.

On the third morning, the pump came alive. Water surged through the pipe, climbed the bank, and spilled into the new channel in a shining arc. The crowd cheered; Li Ming grinned like a man watching sunrise for the first time.

Zhao Rui turned the last valve, wiped his hands, and let himself look—not at the machine, but at the man beside it. The expression on Li Ming’s face was worth every disguise they had ever worn.

Success travels faster than truth. Two days later, a jeep arrived carrying a district inspector and a photographer from the provincial newspaper.

“An example of collective innovation,” the inspector declared. “Comrades, you have done the people proud!”

He ordered a photograph: the pump, the farmers, and the two engineers front and center. Zhao Rui felt the camera’s gaze like heat. Every instinct screamed to step back into shadow.

Li Ming caught the flicker in his eyes and whispered, “Let them see the machine, not us.”

They posed, metal gleaming between them, smiles measured. The shutter clicked. The moment was captured—history on paper, but truth safely hidden behind the shine of steel.

After the visitors left, they sat by the water where it turned gold under the lowering sun. The fields whispered around them; frogs tuned up for night.

Li Ming skipped a stone. It leapt twice, sank.
“Do you ever think about leaving the country entirely?” he asked.
Zhao Rui watched the ripples fade. “And go where?”
“Someplace that doesn’t ask questions about who shares a roof.”
“Every place asks, just in different words.”

Li Ming smiled faintly. “You always answer like an engineer—find the flaw before the plan.”
“And you always dream like one—blueprints first, foundations later.”

He laughed softly, then grew quiet. “Still, I’d like to build something that doesn’t have to hide.”

Zhao Rui looked at the horizon, where the rails vanished into haze. “Maybe we already did. The pump, the fields. People will remember the work, not the names.”
“But I will,” Li Ming said.

The wind lifted, carrying the scent of wet rice and distant smoke. Zhao Rui reached out, brushed a grain of mud from Li Ming’s sleeve—a gesture small enough to pass for nothing, yet full of everything unsaid. The world was large and busy; no one noticed.

That night the sky split open. Rain drummed on the tin roof, poured through the eaves, turned the yard into a lake. The villagers cheered—the first good rain in months—but Zhao Rui lay awake listening to thunder and to his own thoughts.

When the worst passed, Li Ming spoke from the other bed.
“When we go back, they’ll want us in separate departments. Promotions, travel. Easier to use us apart.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want apart.”

Zhao Rui turned toward the dark outline across the room. “Then we choose something else.”
“Resign?”
“No. Redirect. If we stay in the countryside a while, teach maintenance, it will look like duty, not defiance.”
Li Ming chuckled softly. “You plan survival like circuitry.”
“Because it works.”
He hesitated, then added, “And because I want you where I can still hear you curse at bolts.”

Silence stretched, warm despite the damp air. In that moment, they weren’t fugitives from rumor or time; they were simply two men listening to rain wash a clean path forward.

The fields gleamed under sunrise, flooded but alive. The pump still hummed steadily, water cutting new veins through the terraces. Villagers called them heroes.

They spent the day teaching maintenance, sketching diagrams in the mud, handing over wrenches like passing torches. By evening, every farmer could name the parts of the machine as if it were a new animal they’d tamed together.

When the train whistle sounded in the distance—home calling—they didn’t rush. They stood by the tracks instead, watching steam coil into the sky.

Li Ming said quietly, “This is the place I dreamed of when I talked about going where no one asks.”
Zhao Rui nodded. “Then maybe this is where we stay a while.”
“Until when?”
“Until the water forgets it ever had to climb.”

They smiled at that—the engineer’s version of a promise.

Weeks later, when they finally returned to the city, the newspaper with their photograph was already fading on the bulletin board. No one looked twice. The caption read:
“Local Engineers Bring Water to the Hills.”
No names, just a small note—Innovation from the People.

They passed it on their way to the factory, side by side, anonymous and visible all at once.

That evening, Zhao Rui placed the newspaper clipping behind the mirror with the other hidden photographs. Li Ming watched the gesture, then said, “We’ve built a house out of reflections.”

“And yet,” Zhao Rui answered, “it holds.”

He turned off the lamp. The room filled with the quiet rhythm of machines cooling, of the city exhaling. Somewhere far away, the railway hummed like a memory returning home.

They stood by the window a long time, watching the night trains trace thin lines of light across the dark—proof that movement could exist without noise, that love could, too.

Previous | Table Of Contents | Next