by Gao Xingjian
“Beating up people is not allowed! It is futile to repress revolutionary mass movements!” He was worked up and could not help shouting out.
“Let’s go!” Big Li waved an arm as he gave a yell and, leaping over the backs of seats, charged up to the dais. Their group had also surged onto the dais.
The two groups confronted one another, each shouting slogans and on the brink of fighting. The meeting was a total shambles.
“Comrades, Red Guard comrades, Red Guard comrades on both sides, please go back to your seats—”
Wu was tapping the microphone but nobody took notice, and the cadres of the political department were too afraid to intervene. Everyone at the meeting was standing up and feverish with excitement. He was on the dais and somehow had grabbed the microphone from Wu’s hand and was shouting into it, “If Wu Tao won’t capitulate then let him be destroyed!”
The meeting instantly responded in agreement, and he took the opportunity to declare, “The Party committee no longer has authority to hold such meetings to intimidate the masses; if meetings are to be held, they must be convened by us, the revolutionary masses!”
Below the dais everyone was clapping. He had ended the stalemate in the confrontation between the Red Guards and seemed to have become the leader needed by the unruly masses.
The Party secretary who had been deprived of his power to terrorize had become the target of the masses. To protect himself, the senior cadre of the Party Center had dissociated himself from Wu Tao and could not be contacted by telephone. Comrade Wu Tao who had given “wrong instructions,” too, had thus become a pawn in the gamble at a higher level of politics.
22
And how is Margarethe? She had dragged you into a quagmire with writing this damn book. It is hard going forward or backward, but there is no stopping. People are no longer interested in those worn-out stories, and you yourself are fed up with being tormented. Each of her letters to you is signed with a yellow star of David. She never forgets that she is a Jew, but you want to erase the imprints of your suffering.
You phoned her seven, eight, or even ten times but the tape always repeated the same string of long convoluted sentences. You could only make out one German word, bitte . . . no doubt it was asking you to leave a message, but she didn’t ever phone back. In her last letter, she said find yourself a happy woman, she can’t live with you. It would be too painful, doubly painful, because she wants a secure family, a child, to be a mother. Can a Jewish child of a Chinese father be happy? The Chinese in her letters was odd, and the characters with strokes missing gave an unfamiliar feeling that was unlike her fluent spoken Chinese, which was intimate and sensual, even in the choice of words. When she talked about the body and sex, she was so natural you could feel her warmth, her moistness. However, her letters were cold and pushed you away from her flesh and her feelings; they were sarcastic and you couldn’t help feeling hurt. As far as you could understand, she was over thirty and couldn’t drift through the world not knowing if you would meet next in Paris or in New York, while you, an eternal Ulysses, were on your modern odyssey. Just treat it as a beautiful chance encounter, a beautiful encounter among many. She had given you everything you wanted, so let it stop there, she can not be your woman. Like friends, you simply parted, and maybe it’s possible for you to remain friends for a long time, but she doesn’t want to be your lover. So, find yourself a French filly to play sex games that will gratify your fantasies, someone who will give you inspiration without adding to your suffering. It won’t be hard for you to find such a woman, a prostitute, who takes your fancy. But what she wants is peace and security, a home that can give her warmth and love. She is not searching for suffering, but she can’t get rid of it, because she lacks security, and it is this, which you can’t provide for her.
But you can’t find a woman like her, who will listen to you talk about the hells of the world. People don’t want to listen to those rotten old truths and would prefer watching made-up disaster and horror films produced in Hollywood. If you were writing a story about sadistic sex, the lovemaking would excite, and you would enjoy a climax, even if there were no one to talk to and you were just talking to yourself. So you may as well continue by yourself in this observation, analysis, reminiscence, or dialogue.
You must find a detached voice, scrape off the thick residue of resentment and anger deep in your heart, then unhurriedly and calmly proceed to articulate your various impressions, your flood of confused memories, and your tangled thoughts. But you find this is very difficult.
What you seek is a pure form of narration. You are striving to describe in simple language the terrible contamination of life by politics, but it is very difficult. You want to expunge the pervasive politics that penetrated every pore, clung to daily life, became fused in speech and action, and from which no one at that time could escape. You want to tell about an individual who was contaminated by politics, without having to discuss the sordid politics itself. Nevertheless, you must return to his state of mind at that time, and to describe this accurately is even more difficult. The many layers of accreted, intersecting happenings in memory can be easily made to capture the attention of readers, but you want to avoid impurities, because it is not your intention to write stories of suffering. You seek only to narrate your impressions and psychological state of that time, and to do this, you must carefully excise the insights that you possess at this instant and in this place, as well as put aside your present thoughts.
His experiences have silted up in the creases of your memory. How can they be stripped off in layers, coherently arranged and scanned, so that a pair of detached eyes can observe what he had experienced? You are you and he is he. It is difficult for you to return to how it was in his mind in those times, he has already become so unfamiliar. Don’t repaint him with your present arrogance and complacency, but ensure that you maintain a distance that will allow for sober observation and examination. You must not confuse his fervor with his vanity and stupidity, or hide his fear and cowardice, and to do this is excruciatingly difficult. Also, you must not become debauched by his self-love and his self-mutilation, you are merely observing and listening, and are not there to relish his sensory experiences.
It is he that you must allow to emerge from your memory, that child, that youth, that immature man, that daydreaming survivor, that arrogant fellow, and that scoundrel who gradually became crafty. That you of the past had a conscience, and, while vestiges of kindness remained, he was wicked, and you must not make excuses or repent for him. As you observe and listen to him, you naturally feel an irrepressible sorrow, but you must not let this emotion lead to vagueness or a drifting off into sentimentalism. While observing and examining him unmasked, you must turn him into fiction, a character that is unrelated to you and has qualities yet to be discovered. It is then that writing is interesting and creative, and can stimulate curiosity and the desire to explore.
You do not play the role of judge, and you should not regard him as a victim. In this way, the fervor and the suffering that are destructive to art make way for observation and examination. Of interest is not your judgment or his righteous indignation, your sorrow or his suffering, but, rather, the process of this inquiry.
23
During the Cultural Revolution, big posters and slogans covered all walls and filled the streets. Slogans covered all the lampposts and were even written on roadways. With more fanfare than at the grand ceremonies for National Day, from early morning to late at night, pamphlets fluttered in the air, as cars with big loudspeakers shuttled back and forth broadcasting songs to extoll Mao’s Sayings. Party leaders of various ranks, who previously stood on the viewing platform to review the people, now wore paper hats as they were escorted by the rebelling masses onto open trucks and paraded in public. Some wore tall paper hats that would blow off in the wind, so that both hands were needed to hold them down, while others simply wore an overturned wastepaper basket from the office. But, in all cases, the person wore a placard
on the chest bearing his or her name in black characters with a big red “X” through it. When the Cultural Revolution began in the early summer of 1966, middle-school children criticized and attacked principals and teachers like this. Then, by early autumn, Red Guards were hauling out people belonging to the Five Black Categories and attacking them in the same way. By midwinter that year, the old revolutionaries of the Party, whose very profession was class struggle, were targeted for attack by the Red Guards. All this followed Mao’s blueprint for mobilizing peasant movements, and had been devised by the Great Leader when, starting out from Hunan province, he had absolutely nothing.
Wu Tao was on the dais in the auditorium. Big Li was trying to push his head down, but he was quite stubborn. He had his dignity and, angry about being unjustly treated, refused to lower his head. Big Li punched him, right in his fat belly, and Wu Tao doubled over with pain, his face purple, but he did not raise his head again.
Sitting in the place formerly occupied by Wu Tao, on the dais covered with red tablecloths, he presided over all the denunciation meetings convened by the joint mass organizations. He was confronted by increasingly violent behavior, and he seemed to be sitting on top of a volcano. If he tried to exercise any restraint, he would be forced off the dais in exactly the same way. At the meeting, people’s emotions ran high. One by one, each Party committee member was called to stand at the front of the dais, learned how to bow his head, and reported on Wu Tao’s words and actions. All their instructions had been from higher up, each admitted errors, and each admitted the same things, but not a single sentence was their own. Chen, the tall, slim deputy secretary of the Party committee, whose stooped gaunt figure made him look like a dried shrimp, had a bright idea and added in his report that Wu Tao had recently told core members of the Party committee: “Chairman Mao doesn’t need us anymore.”
Emotions at the meeting boiled over again and everyone started shouting, “Destruction to anyone who opposes Chairman Mao!”
He detected grief in the shouting of the slogans “Down with Wu Tao” and “Long live Chairman Mao.” It was coming from the inner depths of Wu Tao; it sounded familiar, and he remembered that the senior cadre at Zhongnanhai had been resentful like this before he had discarded Wu Tao. However, coming from Wu Tao’s own lips, that resentment had turned to grief.
As chair of the meeting, he had to appear harsh, even while knowing that this slight amount of grief and resentment could hardly be defined as opposing the Great Leader. The scoundrel had to be thoroughly crushed. If restored to power, Wu would have no qualms about having him branded a counterrevolutionary for chairing the meeting.
The meeting passed a resolution, and Wu Tao was ordered to hand over the Party meeting minutes and his work notes. After the meeting, he, Tang, and Little Yu got into the black Jimu limousine reserved for the exclusive use of the Party secretary, and set off immediately to carry out a search of Wu Tao’s house, taking Wu Tao himself along with them.
He wanted this to be less traumatic, so, without using strong-arm tactics, he got the old man to open each of the drawers and the bookcase containing stacks of documents. Tang and Yu were rummaging through a wardrobe and ordered the old man to hand over the keys to the suitcases.
“They are only old clothes,” the old man grumbled in protest.
“Then why are you afraid of having them searched? What if they contain black documents on the masses?” Tang, hands on his hips and looking very cocky, obviously enjoyed carrying out the search.
The old man went into the dining room to get his wife to fetch the keys. It was dinnertime, food was on the table, and the door was open. Wu’s wife was there with a small child, their granddaughter, and she stayed inside throughout, deliberately chatting with the little granddaughter. The thought crossed his mind that maybe something important was hidden in the dining room, but he immediately banished the thought. To avoid having to face them, he did not enter the dining room.
Only two months earlier, Red Guards had searched his own room. One Sunday soon after, someone knocked on his door, and, standing outside, was a pretty girl with a fair complexion. The sun shining at that angle made her eyes sparkle and the hair around her ears shine. She said she was the landlord’s daughter from the adjoining courtyard, and had come to collect the rent for her family. He had never gone there but knew that Old Tan and the landlord were old friends.
The girl stood at the doorway, took the money he handed her, frowned, and, glancing inside, said, “The furniture inside, the table and that old sofa, belongs to my family and will be removed in due time.”
He said he could help her shift the furniture right away. She made no response, but, before she turned and went down the steps, her bright eyes swept coldly across him with obvious hostility. He thought the girl must have wrongly assumed that he had reported on Old Tan so that he could take over his lodgings. A few weeks passed, but the girl did not come to collect rent or to remove the furniture. It was only when the old man from next door came to collect rent for the housing department of the street committee that he found out all private real estate had become public property. He did not bother to find out what had happened to the landlord, but the cold look the girl had given him remained fixed in his mind.
He avoided seeing Wu’s wife and the little granddaughter. Even though the child was small, she would remember and would continue hating him for a long time.
Tang brought out one suitcase at a time. Unlocking them, Wu Tao said they contained his daughter’s and her child’s clothing. When he saw the bras and dresses, he suddenly felt embarrassed, recalling how it was when the Red Guards found condoms while searching through Old Tan’s things in the room they shared. He waved them to stop. Tang was searching the sofa, pulling up the cushions, feeling down between the armrests, and demonstrating the expertise of someone who suddenly had been delegated the responsibility of carrying out a search. However, he was anxious to end the search and had parceled up bundles of letters, documents, and notebooks.
“Those are my private letters and have nothing to do with my work,” Wu said.
“We’re going to examine them. They will be recorded, and if there are no problems they will be returned,” he retorted.
What he wanted to say, but did not, was that they had actually been very polite.
“This is . . . the second time in my life!” Wu hesitated as he said this.
“Have Red Guards already been here?” he asked.
“I am referring to forty years ago. When I was an underground agent for the Party . . .” Wu’s eyelids wrinkled as he gave a bitter smile.
“But didn’t your people also search homes when you tyrannized the masses? I doubt that your people were as polite as us,” he said with a grin.
“That was the doing of Red Guards in your workplace. Our Party committee did not decide all that!” Wu insisted.
“But the name lists were supplied by the political department! Otherwise, how would they have known whose homes to search? Why didn’t they search your home?” he asked, staring at Wu.
Wu kept quiet. He was, after all, experienced in the ways of the world and he even silently escorted them to the gate of the courtyard. But he knew Wu Tao hated him and that, if reinstated, the old scoundrel would have him sent to hell straight away. He had to find enough evidence to get Wu branded as the enemy.
After returning to the workplace building, he spent the whole night going through Wu’s letters and found a family letter referring to Wu as his elder cousin. The letter said, “The People’s Government is magnanimous and has been lenient in meting out punishment. However, it is hard for me, because I am sick and have old folks and young children at home. I hope that you, Elder Cousin, will be able to speak on my behalf to the local government authorities.” Clearly, this relative had problems with his political history and was seeking Wu’s help, but he put the letter into a document envelope and wrote on it “examined.” Something had psychologically prevented him from taking the matter further.
In those times, he hardly went home, and just slept in the office that served as the headquarters of their rebel group. Day and night, there were big and small meetings, liaising with, then breaking off with various people’s organizations, and endless internal squabbles within their rebel group. Everyone seemed to be like ants in a hot frying pan, frantically running around and advocating rebellion. The old Red Guards announced they had rebelled against the Party committee and were now known as the Red Revolutionary Rebel Column, and even the political cadres had established their own Battle Corps. However, as people scrambled to find some way out, they were all much the same in their switching of loyalties, betrayal, opportunism, revolution, and rebellion. Once the original network of order and authority had been thrown into disarray, restructuring occurred in all parts of this beehive-like workplace building, and countless secret plots were not confined to this one floor.
At all the denunciation meetings of the various people’s organizations, Wu Tao would, without fail, be hauled out for criticism. Danian’s crowd was savage. Not satisfied with Wu Tao just having to wear a placard, bowing, and hanging his head, they pulled back his arms, forcing him to his knees until he fell flat on the ground—just as they had dealt with Ox Demons and Snake Spirits a few months earlier. Robbed of their political authority by the rebel group, they were reduced to asserting their authority on the person of Wu Tao, this old Party secretary who, discarded by the Party, had become a useless old dog whose bad odor, people feared, might rub off onto them.
One day, after a snowfall, he saw Wu Tao at the back of the workplace building. He was digging up snow that had become packed solid from people walking on it. Wu heard someone coming and quickly moved out of the way. He stopped and asked, “How are you?”
The old man held onto his hoe, and, panting for breath, repeated, “Fine, fine. You don’t use physical violence, but they do.”