by Gao Xingjian
Thus he became a member of the two-faced faction, and wore a mask that he put on when he went out, like putting up an umbrella when it rained. Back home, behind the closed door, where he wouldn’t be seen, he took off the mask to have a break. Worn too long, the mask would stick to the face, fuse with the flesh and the nerves, and he would not be able to remove it. It should be noted that this condition was prevalent everywhere around him.
His real face only came into existence later on, when, finally, he was able to take off the mask. But taking it off was not an easy matter, because the face and the facial nerves had become stiff from wearing the mask, and it took much effort to laugh with joy or to grimace with pain.
He was probably born a rebel; not a rebel with a clear objective, direction, or ideology, but simply one with a basic instinct for self-preservation. Later on, when he realized that his act of rebellion was being orchestrated, it was already too late.
From then on, he was devoid of ideals, but he did not want others to spend time thinking them up for him. He would not be able to pay for them, and he was afraid of being duped again. He no longer daydreamed, so he did not need to use fancy words to deceive others or himself. He no longer entertained any illusions whatsoever about people and the world.
He did not want comrades, and did not want to make plans with anyone to achieve goals, so there was no need to seize power. All that was too painful, and the endless struggles were psychologically draining. It was a blessing to be able to avoid big families and organized groups.
He refused to smash the old order but he was not a reactionary. If someone wanted a revolution, then let them go ahead, so long as it was not a revolution that made life impossible for him. To sum up, he could not be a fighter. He preferred to be away from revolution and rebellion, in a place where he could eke out a living and look on from a distance.
In fact, he had no enemies. It was the Party that was intent on making an enemy of him, and he couldn’t do anything about it. The Party gave him no choice and was intent on making him conform to a pattern, and his failure to conform meant that he was the enemy of the Party. Moreover, in order to lead, the Party needed to make a target of people like him to arouse the will and spirit of the people, to whip up the masses into displays of righteous indignation. So he was made an enemy of the people. But he had no quarrel with the people, he only wanted to be able to live his own insignificant life without having to depend for his livelihood on being used as a practice target.
He was this sort of a loner, and had always wanted to be like this. It may now be said that he had no colleagues, no one above or below him, no leader, no employer; he led and hired himself, and everything he did he did cheerfully.
But he was not a misanthrope. He continued to eat at the hearth of human society and was fond of the food of his ancestral land, a taste he had acquired as a child because of his mother’s wonderful cooking. Naturally, he also liked Western food, French haute cuisine, of course, and also Italian pasta, supposedly brought by Marco Polo from the Tang Empire, but sprinkled with Parmesan cheese that didn’t exist in China. Japanese raw fish laced with hot raw mustard was excellent, and so was Russian caviar, especially the black variety. Also, if Korean barbecued beef and kimchi were served with Indian rhoti, it was a perfect dish. Kentucky fried chicken was the only thing he couldn’t eat; for him it was bland and tasteless. He was fussy about food because he had gone through some good times in his childhood.
And he was also fond of women. As a youth, he had sneaked a look at his mother’s youthful body while she was having a bath. From then on, he deeply appreciated beautiful women. In those times, when he was without a woman, he would write about them, and what he wrote contained a lot of sex; in this respect, he was not a virtuous gentleman. Furthermore, he had great admiration for Tang Yin and Casanova, but he was never as lucky, so all he could do was to consign his sexual fantasies to his writings.
This is the report you have written for him to replace his file in China, which, no doubt, still exists, but which he will never see.
27
He looked at the cracks in the papered ceiling. The rats running around and fighting all night had widened the cracks, and had left his bedding covered in strips of black dirt. He had never been so idle, there was nothing to do, he did not have to get up early to get to work on time, and he no longer had to busy himself with rebelling. He did not read, because all the books that were readable had been put into wooden boxes or cardboard cartons, and he did not commit anything to writing. He had to stay awake so that he would not slip back into a nightmare. The old retired worker in the next room was up early and had his radio turned on full blast, tuned to the revolutionary opera Red Lantern. It was really irritating, and even while he masturbated under the bedcovers with his eyes closed, striving again to enjoy Lin’s hot naked body, he was not able to block out the solemn, virtuous words of that high-pitched singing. He was left feeling miserable.
He thought about getting a ladder to mend the cracks in the ceiling. But if he were to make a mistake, that brittle sagging paper shell could collapse, and it would be impossible to clean up the filthy mess of years of accumulated dust. It would take an expert to paper a ceiling. Instead, he moved the things piled on Old Tan’s bed into a corner of the room, moved his own bedding there, then dismantled his own bed. Old Tan definitely would not be coming back.
If he wanted to go for a walk, there was nowhere he could go but to buy one of the bulletins put out by the people’s organizations. These, in fact, contained much revealing information, and back home he would cook dinner and read as he ate. From the leaders’ speeches to various people’s organizations, he detected different views, hidden meanings. The many vehement pronouncements changed continually, like pictures in a magic lantern. A day earlier, a leader could be interpreting Mao’s newest directive, then, tomorrow or the day after, sure enough, the secret killing machine would fall on that leader, who would suddenly be transformed into an anti-Party criminal. His righteous indignation had cooled, and doubts kept springing up in his mind, although he did not dare to acknowledge this.
However, he had to make an appearance at the workplace from time to time, to drop in at the rebels’ headquarters that had formed after various splintering and regrouping. As people came and went, he would smoke a few cigarettes and chat. He simply showed his face, listened to a bit of news, then slipped away when nobody was watching. There were endless struggles and regroupings, then new struggles, and he was not interested.
Chang’an Avenue was where things were happening and where there was the most news, so whenever he went to the workplace, he always made a detour. Tents and bamboo-matting shelters were up everywhere outside the red-brown walls of Zhongnanhai. There were the red flags of the university rebel groups and a huge red horizontal banner displaying the words: beijing battle-line liaison point of the proletarian revolutionary group to haul out liu shaoqi for criticism. Several hundred big loudspeakers, day and night, blared out war songs nonstop, and the nation’s president was denounced in the name of the Supreme Leader, the Red Sun. However, even this sight failed to excite him.
“Newest material on Liu Shaoqi’s daughter exposing her father! Read all about it! Former wife exposes Liu Shaoqi’s misappropriation of revolutionary funds to buy gold shoehorns!”
Among the circle of people around the newspaper seller, he saw Big Head, his classmate from middle-school times, and clapped him on the shoulder from behind. Big Head got a fright, but was relieved, and smiled when he turned and saw who it was. Big Head was carrying an artificial-leather satchel and had bought a bag of newspapers and other publications.
“Let’s get out of here, come to my place!” He felt a pang of nostalgia, for Big Head had become the last link with the life he had lost.
“I’ll get a bottle of liquor!” Big Head was also excited.
The pair of them got on their bicycles and went off to Dongdan Market, where they squabbled over paying for the cooked food and li
quor, then went back to his room. The afternoon sun was shining through the curtains, it was warm inside, and, after a few cups of liquor, their faces were flushed, and their ears were burning. Big Head said he was hauled out at the beginning of the movement. After he had made some careless comments in his dormitory, they searched and found his two small notebooks blaspheming Mao’s philosophy. However, people were aiming higher nowadays, and could no longer be bothered with his petty reactionary words. He also said he had never put up a poster, that the movement had not involved him; nevertheless, he could not work at his mathematics and was simply collecting newspapers and secretly doing a bit of reading.
“What books?” he asked.
“A Mirror for Good Government, I brought it with me from home.” A smile congealed on Big Head’s round face that was flushed from alcohol.
He had never been interested in the art of empire, and couldn’t fathom Big Head’s smile.
“Haven’t you read Wu Han’s Biography of Zhu Yuanzhang?” Big Head asked, testing him, putting out a feeler.
The Cultural Revolution had started with criticisms of Wu Han, the deputy mayor of Beijing. A specialist in Ming history, Wu Han had written books on how the first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, had assassinated the meritorious officials who had helped establish his empire. Wu Han committed suicide at the beginning of the movement and set a precedent for countless subsequent suicides. He understood what Big Head was implying, it confirmed his own suspicions, and, tapping his fingers on the table, he shouted, “You devil!”
Big Head’s eyes shone enigmatically behind his glasses, he was no longer the bookworm he had been as a youth.
“I scanned it, but took it all to be history, old imperial history. It didn’t occur to me that . . . Could things have gone a full circle?” he asked, testing Big Head.
“A boomerang. . . .” Big Head took him on, chuckling.
“But isn’t that dialectics?”
“Only it’s not clear whether it’s high- or low-level dialectics. . . .”
What was implied and hinted at, what could be articulated neither directly nor obliquely, was whether it was imperial control strategies with an ideology or political power strategies with the trappings of ideology. History is big on ideology, but what was the reality?
Big Head stopped smiling. The radio on the other side of the wall was still on, and now it was another of the revolutionary operas directed by Madam Mao, Red Detachment of Women: “Advance, advance, the burden of revolution is heavy and the resentment of women is deep!” Madam Mao, Comrade Jiang Qing, who had been prohibited from taking part in politics by the Party elders, was now resolutely in the process of realizing her political ambitions.
“Why is the soundproofing so poor?”
“It’s better with the radio on over there.”
“Don’t you have a radio?”
“My roommate Old Tan had a transistor, but it was confiscated, and he’s in solitary confinement at the workplace.”
The two of them fell silent for a while and could clearly hear the singing on the radio in the room next door.
“Do you have a set of chess? Let’s have a game!” Big Head said.
He fished out a carved-bone chess set from one of the cardboard cartons of Old Tan’s belongings piled against the wall, moved the liquor and food, and began setting up a game on the table.
“What made you think of reading this book?” He returned to their discussion as he moved a chess piece.
“When the newspapers had just started criticizing Wu Han, my old man got me to make a trip home, he said he had applied to retire. . . .”
Big Head moved a chess piece, lowered his voice, and deliberately mumbled. His father was a history professor and also had a Democratic Personage title to his name.
“Do you have that book by Wu? Is it still available?” He moved another chess piece.
“We had one at home, my old man got me to read it, but it was burned a long time ago. Who would dare to keep the book? He only got me to take an old hand-sewn copy of A Mirror for Good Government, a Ming woodblock edition, and it counts as his legacy to me. Old Mao used to get senior cadres to read it, otherwise I wouldn’t still have it.” Big Head said the word “Mao” very softly, as part of a casual comment, then made another move.
“Your old man is really smart!” He wasn’t sure if he was praising Big Head’s father or lamenting that he didn’t have such a wise head of the family. His own father was so muddle-headed.
“But he was too late. They wouldn’t let him retire and, with the problem of his personal history, they still had him hauled out for criticism.” Big Head took off his glasses, peered close to the chessboard with his dull, nearsighted eyes, and said, “What’s this shit game you’re playing?”
Suddenly, he scrambled the game and said to Big Head, “I’ve had enough of this crap game, they’re a whole lot of stinking cunts!”
Big Head gave a start at his coarse language, but suddenly burst out laughing. The pair of them then laughed loudly until tears came to their eyes.
You must both be careful! If someone reports your discussion, it will be enough to get the pair of you executed. Terror lies hidden in everyone’s hearts, but people don’t dare articulate it, can’t bring it into the open.
When it was dark, he first went into the courtyard to put out the rubbish, a bucketful of chicken bones and coal cinders from the stove. When he saw that the neighbors all had their doors shut, Big Head quickly got on his bicycle and left. Big Head was living in a collective dormitory and was still being investigated. His father had kept an eye on him, but when the army moved in to implement and supervise the purification of class ranks, Big Head’s carelessness while chatting in the dormitory meant that one sentence became a heinous crime: he was sent to be reformed through labor, to herd cattle for eight years on a farm.
The fear generated by that conversation caused them to avoid one another. They didn’t dare make any further contact, and it was only fourteen years later that they met again. Big Head’s father was dead, and an uncle in America had helped him to liaise with a university for further study. When Big Head had his passport and American visa, he came to say good-bye and mentioned that evening when, happy with alcohol, ears burning, they cracked the mystery of Old Mao’s unleashing of the Cultural Revolution.
Big Head said, “If what you and I said that day had been exposed, I wouldn’t have been herding cattle and would be somewhere else!” He also added that if he could get a teaching position in a university in America, he would probably never return.
That night, fourteen years earlier, after Big Head left, he opened wide the door to his room to let out the smell of alcohol. Afterward, he locked the door, allowed himself to calm down from the excitement and fear, and stretched out on the bed to look at the black cracks in the ceiling. It was as if he had pried open an ants’ nest, and inside was a pitch-black, wriggling chaos. The ceiling could collapse on him any time, and this made him feel numb all over.
28
It was winter again. The stove door was shut, and he was sitting in bed, propped up against the headboard. The only light came from the table lamp, and the metal shade clamped to the bulb cut down the light that illuminated the floral bedcover and left the upper part of his body in darkness as he gazed at the circle of light on the bedcover. On the gigantic chessboard without borders, winning or losing was not decided by the chess pieces but by the chess players in the dark manipulating them. So, if a chess piece wanted to have its own way and stupidly refused to let itself be taken, surely it was crazy? You are less than insignificant, nothing but an ant that can be squashed underfoot any time, any place. But you can’t leave this ants’ nest, and can only mingle with the swarms of ants. Whether it was a matter of philosophical impoverishment or impoverished philosophy, from Marx down to those revolutionary sages, who could have foreseen the calamities and spiritual impoverishment this Cultural Revolution would bring?
There was a tapping on his win
dow. At first, he thought it was the wind, but the glass was pasted with paper on the inside, and the curtains were drawn. Again, there were two soft taps.
“Who is it?” he sat up and asked. There was no response, so he got out of bed and walked barefoot to the window.
“It’s me.” A woman’s voice came from outside, softly.
He could not make out who it was, but he unlatched the door and opened it a crack. In a gust of cold wind, Xiao Xiao pushed open the door and came in. He was surprised by this middle-school student coming so late at night and, as he was only in his underpants, quickly got back into bed and left it to the girl to close the door. She had almost got the door to close, when it blew open again and the chilly wind howled as it poured into the room. Xiao Xiao put her back against the door to stop it from blowing open.
“Latch it.” He said this without thinking, but when he saw the girl hesitate before turning and gently pushing in the metal latch, his heart thumped. The girl unraveled the long woolen scarf wrapped tightly around her head to reveal her pale but refined features. Her head was bowed, and she seemed to be catching her breath.
“Xiao Xiao, what’s the problem?” he asked, sitting up in bed.
“Nothing.” The girl looked up but remained standing by the door.
“You must be frozen, open the stove door.”
The girl took off her knitted woolen gloves. With a sigh, she took the iron hook lying by the stove, and opened both the stove door and the iron cover on top. It was as if she was expected to do this. Clearly, this thin, ungainly girl was not spoiled at home and was used to domestic chores.