It's hard to give a clear account of how things worked out, partly because there were so few parties involved and because they weren't willing to talk, but also because what little the parties involved did manage to say was so dubious, in so many places, and differed so enormously from one version to the next. Some said that Bandit Ma's old enemy Donkey Peng had also surrendered and gotten himself an official position higher than Bandit Ma's. Keen to make a show of loyalty to the new regime, Peng found the easiest method was to denounce lots of people for having falsely surrendered. There were also those who said that Section B and Section H in the GMD had never gotten along; when the Japanese devils had been there, each had played the Japanese against their opponent; now that the CCP had come, they were making use of the CCP to elbow out their adversaries. Seeing as Section B had used Bandit Ma to contain the H section, Section H could, of course, make use of the CCP to deal with Bandit Ma. How could Bandit Ma, a local yokel, possibly keep up with all these underhanded dealings and secret summonses?

Of course, there were also those who said this wasn't how things were. They believed that a lot of bandits only surrendered half-heartedly, that Bandit Ma was an incorrigible brigand and had secretly planned several defections and rebellions, that he was guilty of the most heinous crimes. It was only because he was already dead that the government later forgave him his past.

I have no way of distinguishing the true from the false amongst these accounts, so I'll have to sidestep them all and just tell briefly how the story ended. I can't necessarily even give a proper account of how it ended, all I can do is try my best to piece together the fragmented sources available. It would probably have been one day a couple of months later, when Ma Wenjie was on his way back home from a meeting at the prefectural commissioner's office, and he heard a terrible commotion of weeping coming from inside his house. When he pushed open the door, he was confronted by a gang of women who threw themselves upon him at this very same instant, their eyes glittering with tears, their mouths open wide. The sound of crying came to an abrupt halt. But it stopped only for a moment, before violently re-erupting. The few children present followed suit, their faces twisting with sobs.

He couldn't believe his eyes.

Director Ma! County Leader Ma! General! Third Master! Third Uncle… The women cried out every imaginable name, as they jostled frenziedly to reach the front to make their kowtows, thumping out a terrible din with their heads.

"Our lives are over!"

"Our lives are in your hands!"

"Give me back my precious love!"

"We only surrendered because of what you said! You're responsible!"

"His dad said he had to go, but what about the family, there's seven, eight of them, they all need feeding, what am I going to do…"

One woman rushed forward, grabbed hold of his lapels, smacked him right in the face, and yelled out, as if crazed: "It's all your fault! Give us back our men, give them back-"

By the time Ma Wenjie's wife had come forward to coax the madwoman away, Ma Wenjie's jacket lapels were torn and his assailant had clawed two bleeding scratches across his hand.

Ma Wenjie slowly worked out what had happened. While he'd been having a meeting with his superiors, the "Advisory Gang" had risen up in rebellion, killing first of all three members of the work team in Baoluo Township; they'd planned a rebellion of even greater dimensions, but failed to anticipate the government intercepting and seizing a secret missive; all the government then had to do was strike first, and hardest, executing the ringleaders of the rebellion as soon as possible-the husbands of these women numbering among them. They'd not seen their husbands return from a meeting called several days ago. In the end, the government informed them they should go to a place called Bramble Street to pick up their effects; that's how simply things were managed.

As he listened, Ma Wenjie once more went into a cold sweat, pacing up and down the room with his hands behind his back, staring up at the heavens, his tears pouring out. He clasped the hands of every single woman gathered in the room: "Your brother's let you down," he said, "he's let you down."

Crying all the while, he pulled open some cases, took out all the shiny silver dollars they contained-only fifty-odd coins altogether-and stuffed them into the hands of his petitioners. His wife, wiping her eyes, also produced her private savings, made up of the scattered coins that Ma Wenjie normally left at his pillowside, on tables, in drawers, in the stable or toilet. He was usually careless with his money, but luckily his wife followed behind him, scooping it all up.

The two of them finally managed to send their weeping and wailing guests home.

Ma Wenjie didn't close his eyes once all night; when he rose the next day and saw that the cockerel at the gate stretching its neck but producing no noise, he sensed something a little odd had happened. When, tapping the table absent-mindedly, he realized that still there was no noise, something, he felt, was even odder. Finding himself at an old Daoist temple, at the front of whose hall was an old bell, he walked up to the bell, tried to sound it and discovered there was still no sound; now unable to control his mounting anxiety, he swung the hammer and rang the bell with all his might; hearing its deafening chimes, everyone from roundabout ran over, staring at him with huge, terrified eyes. It was only then that he realized it wasn't the bell that was failing to make a noise- he had gone deaf. He put the bell hammer down without a word.

Having drunk a bowl of gruel that his wife had prepared for him, he heaved a sigh and got ready to go and see the doctor, but just as he reached the mouth of the lane, he collided with a flood of people on the streets, taking part in another demonstration march for the suppression of counterrevolutionary elements, a memorial meeting for the three revolutionary martyrs of Baoluo Township. Headed in the direction of the county prison, the people's militia and primary school students were shouting out slogans. What they were shouting with their mouths so wide open, he didn't know.

He stopped and, using the wall for support, slowly turned and went back home.

From his house to the mouth of the lane, it was fifty-one steps, from the mouth of the lane to his house it was also fifty-one steps, no more, no less; this happened to be his age exactly.

"How come it's exactly fifty-one steps?" It surprised him.

His wife handed him an umbrella, urging him to go and see the doctor.

"Tell me, how come it's exactly fifty-one steps?"

He couldn't hear whatever his wife had to say.

"What did you say?"

His wife's mouth once more opened and closed noiselessly.

He remembered again that he was deaf and didn't repeat his question, just shook his head. "Strange. Very strange."

That afternoon, a doctor friend came to have a look at his hearing problem. He asked his guest for a little coarse opium. You practice Daoist rituals and breathing every day, his friend gestured at him, aren't you supposed not to smoke? He tapped his forehead, meaning that he'd caught a slight chill, that he was feeling the cold badly, and that he needed something to smoke to drive out the cold, bring on a sweat. His friend gave him a pouchful.

It rained that night. After he'd performed his last ritual, he committed suicide by swallowing opium. He'd changed into a clean, neat set of clothes, shaved off his beard, even carefully cut his fingernails.

Going by what most people said, he hadn't needed to die. He was in no particular danger. Even though he was implicated in a few felonies- such as deciding to surrender to the GMD and allowing his followers to kill a few ordinary people on the take-he was, in the end, a big cheese and the arrow-tokens of his Advisory Committee had, in the end, achieved a great deal for the new regime. When he'd studied carpentry, moreover, he'd been apprenticed alongside some important senior officer in the Communist Party, whose family he'd protected, sending over rice to help them through. The day after he killed himself, a section chief arrived posthaste on a special trip across the province to deliver a letter written by the senior officer himself. At the end of the letter, the senior officer invited him, at his convenience, to come as his guest to the provincial capital to talk about old times.