My mother died of that illness. Perhaps you didn’t know – it happened the year before you arrived, that would’ve been 1972. Thinking back, her symptoms developed quite early on, during the Spring Festival of that year. Without warning, her stomach would cause her terrible pain. At the time, we didn’t think much of it, nor did she – I guess she thought it was just a passing problem. She’d drink a bowl of warm, sweet water and take a couple of aspirin. Once the pain subsided she’d forget about it; it would be business as usual and she’d head off to work. I heard that her career had begun in some provincial office or other. Then, once she married Father, she transferred to this work unit … but it wasn’t Unit 701 proper, it was somewhere else, several kilometres away. She would ride her bicycle back and forth every day. She also took us to and from school, cooked our meals, washed our clothes – for years it was the same. To be honest, the way I saw it, Mum was the only person that kept the family together. Father did nothing. You know, our house was only about two or three kilometres away from the red-walled compound, about thirty minutes on foot, but Father rarely came home; at most once a month, and even then it would be late at night when he’d arrive and he would leave early the next morning. I remember one evening – we hadn’t seen Father for ages, and we were at the table having dinner … My mother’s ears were like her eyes. Father was still some distance away, and we didn’t hear anything, but Mum’s ears were sensitive to his approach. She turned to us and said, ‘Your Dad’s back.’ As she spoke she put down her bowl and chopsticks and went into the kitchen to prepare for his arrival. We thought she was imagining things – hallucinating – but as she came out of the kitchen with a bowl of warmed water for him to wash his face, Father’s heavy footsteps sounded at the door …