Brother Wei

An insistent melancholy,
Weeps over the pale sheet of paper,
Blurring the written words.
If you want to adorn your loneliness,
Then take it with you,
For I do not care.

By Xiao-zi

I

I first met Brother Wei at an evening birthday party for one of our classmates. Everybody else was dancing to that kind of self-consciously melancholy modern music. But Brother Wei was on his own, leaning against the wall in a corner of the room. He came across as an unsociable individual. While one hand stuck in his pocket betrayed his awkwardness and uneasiness, in the other he held a glass of wine, as if to demonstrate the arrogance and self-sufficiency of the lonely soul. Nonetheless, his pale slender fingers and wandering gaze seemed to remind me of many of my own dreams.

Some time later I was to read about these dreams in his poems. For he was also a poet.

Brother Wei, however, was actually a physics major, which was much less romantic. He knew I had difficulty with scientific concepts and he would often argue with me about Christianity from the point of view of science.

"How many years has evolutionism been around? And you still believe in God!" he would scoff.

"Evolutionism can prove nothing. It completely fails to explain the ultimate origins of the universe." I could go on the attack too.

"You don't have enough faith in human beings. One day, as science progresses it will provide us with all the answers," he laughed.

"True, scientific development will eventually prove that human beings will never be able to provide all the answers." I refused to back down.

He stared at me as if my brain was made of wood.

The next time he came to see me, he brought along a thick book full of attractive pictures illustrating the evolutionary process.

"That still doesn't prove anything," I said. "Even if evolutionism demonstrates some natural laws, that still does not mean God was not the Creator." I mentioned the names of some famous Christian scientists to try to prove my point.

"How do you explain the ape-man, then?" he demanded, launching a new attack.

"Even if man evolved from the monkeys, so what? You still can't prove that there was no creator." I was getting more and more worked up.

Brother Wei sighed, "OK, I won't argue with you."

And he did stop arguing with me and began to talk about poetry. His poems seemed very familiar to me; somehow they reminded me of the pale ceiling in our narrow campus dorm. Our youthful dreams were reflected in the smoke stains on the ceiling. I also shared with him some of my own early writings and some of them he really liked, like this one :

An insistent melancholy,
Weeps over the pale sheet,
Blurring the written words.
If you want to adorn your loneliness,
Then take it with you,
For I do not care.

"I never thought you could be so pessimistic," he murmured.

"I can't write poems like that now," I replied. "I'm not disappointed any more."

His luminous eyes scanned me sharply; then a wry smile crept around his mouth.

"I'm different. I will never believe in God," he said proudly. "I was born a wandering prodigal son!"

That word wandering used to be among the favorites in my vocabulary.

Late one evening he came to see me. He was stinking of alcohol. Apparently his girl-friend had left him.

I sat with him on the balcony in the chilly evening wind.

"I have decided to let her go with him," he said. "Love her and bless her." He lit a cigarette.

"You know," I said abruptly. "God's love to you is just as deep, and just as vulnerable."

He looked at me with astonishment. "Do you really believe in God that much? " he asked.

"He first loved me," I said. "I have no other choice."

II

I did not see Brother Wei again for a long time. The next time I met him, he had already earned his master's degree, found a job, quit the job and become a self-employed businessman.

A couple of wrinkles had been added to his face. His hair had a shiny waxy look, which I did not like.

"What about your physics?" I knew he had been involved in research.

"Marx said that economic foundations are very important," he fumbled for a witty excuse.

Looking at him, I found myself getting angry. Because of his unbelief, a once fine young man of talent and sensibility had now started to value his own life in worldly terms, compromising his courage to be creative and compromising himself too. What a tragedy it was!

Brother Wei sensed my disappointment. So he produced another humorous defense, "You see, I am not like you. I have not been able to find an escape from this mortal world."

A year later Brother Wei came to see me to say goodbye. He was tired of being a businessman. Now he was wanting to study abroad. He was looking for a change of scenery.

Brother Wei had done quite well in his business and had also got himself quite a nice girl friend. I thought he would be crazy to give up all this and go to a foreign country to study something he had no interest in and to wash dishes.

"What else can I do?" he sighed. "I'm sick of it here. I want to make a new beginning."

"True satisfaction comes from the heart," I said to myself.

"May your God bless me." He patted my shoulder.

Now it was my turn to sigh, "I simply can't understand it."

"What?"

"I don't understand why it is so much easier for you to believe in something that is imperfect than to believe in perfection," I said.

III

Brother Wei found that life in England was tough, with all the discomfort which goes with being in a foreign land. But he had no choice; he had to stay on there.

When I went to England I paid him a visit. He took me to his lodgings. It was a low-ceilinged room with just a few pictures stuck on the walls. Somehow, it reminded me of his student dorm in China.

Brother Wei seemed to know what I was thinking.

"After all this wandering around, I'm back exactly where I started from, aren't I?" He scratched his head. "Just like the writer says, we're all children. We see a blue bird flying in the sky, but when we catch it, we discover it is not blue after all."

"Why does the blue bird change its color?" I asked.

He was silent and went into the kitchen to make tea.

"A few days ago I saw an old man preaching the gospel in the supermarket," he said, handing me the cup of tea. "He was shouting, 'All have sinned and all must repent!'" He waved his hands in an exaggerated way, mimicking the old man.

"And I said to myself, 'You're just a worker in a bath house. People have got to be dirty, or you will be out of a job'." He laughed.

I said nothing, but kept listening.

"But as I thought about it a bit more, I realized that this is the beauty of religion. A person can commit a sin, then he repents and so restores the balance of his conscience. That way he feels better. I can quite understand that."

"That's great!" I responded. " Your starting point and your conclusion both show that you are a lot wiser than many believers."

Now it was his turn to smile and listen.

" Now, take this example," I said. "A father in a fit of anger punishes his favourite son and accidentally kills him. He feels terrible about it. According to your theory, all he has to do is to go to the pastor and repent. Then he will have peace of mind, won't he?"

"That would probably be very difficult," Brother Wei admitted.

"Exactly. If a man truly realizes he is a sinner, he will find it very hard to forgive himself. As a matter of fact, the more you try to be good, the more you find out how bad you are."

Brother Wei's eyes were getting more serious now.

"Let's come back to my example for a moment. Suppose a wonderful doctor were to come along and bring the boy back to life again. The father will continue to feel bad about his action, but his heart will have been greatly comforted. Right? It's the same with Christianity. The guy in the bath house does all he can to get more customers; but if there is no clean water in the tub, how can he carry on his business? If the peace and joy of God are real, then He must have wonderful power to forgive sins."

"That's most interesting," Brother Wei clapped his hands. "But how can I know it is true?"

I couldn't think of an answer. I turned and looked out the window. A strong cold wind was beating against the thick glass panes, creating a flute-like sound.

"The wind blows at will, but you do not know what it is," I started to quote Jesus' words. Then I turned round and said, "One day when you lose all you have to boast about and you are willing to open up your heart, then the Holy Spirit like a wind blowing, will clear up all the questions in your mind."

IV

Gradually Brother Wei began to change, far more than he had ever believed possible.

When the new semester began, he had a new roommate, a Christian from Taiwan. His roommate was so persistent in inviting him to church that he couldn't refuse. So he went along a couple of times.

At his second visit, the message was about the crucifixion. Brother Wei had not meant to pay much attention, but the message had a strange attraction for him. When the speaker wept in his closing prayer, Wei's eyes were moist too.

When he realized that he was crying he felt quite embarassed, so he simply fled without saying goodbye to his roommate. After he got back to his lodging, he was still feeling convicted. After a struggle he decided to pray an honest prayer.

"Oh God," he wrote in his diary, "I'm not sure if you really exist. But if you are real, you must know that I am a lazy person with lots of insecurities. I hate discipline. I have a lot of weird ideas. If you believe I am not worth anything, then please leave me alone. But if you think I might be of some value, then please bear with me. My questions are not meant to cause offense. Maybe I can become a believer like them ?"

Brother Wei began to come to Bible study from that day on. Once confusing scripture verses now became full of meaning for him. More and more of his friends were Christians and he often joined in their activities.

Another six months passed. Then one day as he was meditating at his desk he suddenly felt as if he had reached a stop and a new beginning too.

He called me.

"Xiao-zi," he said, "I have thought about it. Your God is real."

It was nearly midnight. When I realized what he was talking about, I was so moved that I couldn't find any words. I started to cry.

So did he at the other end of the line. So we both held our phones and wept like a couple of madmen.

"There, there," I finally calmed down. "Congratulations! Now I should really call you Brother Wei, for we are true brother and sister."

"I want to change my name," he exclaimed, "The word Wei means reed. Their roots are too shallow, and I don't want to be a wanderer any more."

The following spring I received a photograph of Wei's baptism. In the picture, he was surrounded by happy though unfamiliar faces. But what I did not see was the lonely youth I had met at that dinner party ten years earlier.

The author is from Shanghai. She was an English teacher in college and has earned a master's degree in English literature. She now lives in England.