by Gavin McCrea
Even so, she had not dropped out. This was something she could say in her favour. Unlike Álvaro, and unlike her sister Iris, she had played the game at the Royal Academy and had not been defeated by it. She had thrown herself in, and, in spite of the conservatism, the narrowness, the arbitrary standards, had come out on top. First in her class every year, the recipient of various prizes, a regular presence in the principal cast in school productions, after graduation she was offered a place in the Royal Shakespeare Company, which, as had always been her plan, she turned down. For that was what the true rebel did. She stayed the course. Learned the rules. Became the best, exactly as the rule-makers defined it. And then, just when they expected her to complete her integration, with a kiss and a wave, she turned and walked the other way.
—Listen, I love you, Álvy, she said now.
—Well, I can’t say the same thing to you, when you behave like this.
They had reached place de la Sorbonne, which, like the theatre square, was filled with striking students. Some held placards: DOWN WITH THE CONSUMER SOCIETY and FUCK THE POLICE. Others wore t-shirts: I’M A MARXIST, THE GROUCHO KIND. Or handed out duplicated leaflets. Eva took one of these. Its headline was: VIOLATE YOUR ALMA MATER.
—There you go, she said, handing it to Álvaro. Some advice for you.
Refusing to get her joke, he threw the leaflet on the ground with the others.
Two women were sitting high up in a windowsill, legs open, no knickers, waving Vietcong flags.
—Look there!
He did not look.
Literature stalls had been set up on either side of the street, selling the works of Marx and Lenin, and Mao’s Sayings, as well as old issues of journals, yellowed by the years. Enormous portraits of Trotsky and Fidel and Che had been pasted onto the walls. There was even a Stalin, though a black cross had been sprayed across his face.
—You know, I don’t know why I put up with it, he said.
—Put up with what?
—People wonder, and I don’t have a clue what to tell them.
—You tell them to fuck off.
—And then I find myself thinking—
—Oh here it comes.
—why did I leave university? For this? I should’ve stuck it out. I’m wasting my time with you lot.
—Are we going to have this conversation again?
—I shouldn’t have let you convince me to leave the LSE.
—Earth to Álvy, leaving was your decision. You hated that place.
—If I went back, with what I know now, I’d get a first. I know I would.
—Why don’t you then? Call your parents. Tell them you want to re-register. They’d be delighted.
—They would be. But you wouldn’t, would you? That’s the point. You wouldn’t give me the support that I’ve given you.
At the junction with rue de la Sorbonne, a stall had been set out with notices and posters denouncing the French Communist Party, which was still in thrall to the Russians and refusing to learn the lessons from China. On the wall behind the stall was a large billboard on which was written every statement attacking the student revolution to have appeared in Party leaflets and newspapers. A man with a megaphone was decrying the Party’s counterrevolutionary tendencies.
Eva stopped to listen for a minute. She translated what she heard for Álvaro, though he did not seem to be interested.
They moved off towards the Sorbonne Chapel, where they sat on the steps underneath big letters which read:
WE WANT SOMEWHERE TO PISS, NOT SOMEWHERE TO PRAY
—So have you forgiven me? she said, taking Álvaro’s hand.
He gave her an uncertain look.
—Eva, I want to tell you something.
—Sounds serious.
—Just listen.
—You’re not leaving Wherehouse, Álvaro. Not now. Just when we’re finding our feet. Making progress. You promised—
—Shh. That’s not what I was going to say.
—What then?
—What I was going to say was, you’re not invisible, you know.
—Me? I know that.
—You have a—. You have a presence. People see you. You don’t need to do dangerous stuff like climbing onto balconies to get attention.
—That’s not what that was about. If attention was what I was after, I’d be in the West End, or doing Pinter for the fucking BBC, like my mother. If you knew me at all, you’d know I don’t care what people think of me.
—Then maybe I don’t know you.
—Right. Maybe you don’t.
Because the truth was, when she was performing, she became nothing. She gave herself to her public. Her body. Her thoughts. There was no Eva left. No difference between me and them. People could think what they liked about her, because she was not even there. The only relevant thing was the message she was carrying. War. Oppression. Injustice. Unemployment. Deportation. Workers’ problems. Race prejudice. Mao.
—I think, said Álvaro, that what you want is for your indifference to public notice to be universally recognised.
—Ah!
She drew fists to her face and turned away from him, exasperated.
—I could kill you. You say these things only to hurt me.
—I don’t do anything to hurt you. I’m trying to help you.
—By hurting me. You’ve always thought that’s the only way to win against me. You’ve never understood how wrong you are about that.
Álvaro touched her arm:
—Are you crying?
She glanced over her shoulder so that he could see her face: dry as a bone.
—All right, all right, he said and leaned back against the pillar.
His skin was pale. He looked drained. He was a man facing defeat in the final round.
—All I’m saying is, he said, that if you really felt you belonged in the group, if the group was enough for you, you wouldn’t need to do this sort of thing. Do you feel the group is holding you back?
—From what?
—Doing your own thing.
She shifted back round so that she was facing him again:
—I don’t feel like anyone is holding me back. Each member brings something different to the table. Everyone is valued equally. That’s always been our ethos. What you’re saying, I don’t recognise it. It’s coming from you, not from me.
—The group isn’t blind, Eva. It’s sees your ambition. It makes them nervous. They think you have your own plans.
—Plans?
—Like, are you in Paris for Wherehouse, or are you just chasing Doris Lever?
—Oh that’s dense.
She got to her feet and began to pace a short path along the bottom step, two steps this way and two that.
—So bloody dense.
—They know about Doris and your dad.
—Hardly a secret.
—They know you’ve history with her. That when you were a child she lived at the theatre with your family. And that you and she were close.
—Close is pushing it.
—And that’s she’s been to China. Seen the real revolution, first-hand.
—So what if she’s been to China? I’m going to get there myself one day. You watch.
—She has influence on you, Eva. She does all the things you want to do. The group are worried that you’re scheming to get close to her again.
—Everyone needs to fucking relax. I’m not running after Doris.
—You are fascinated by her. You mention her a lot.
—I respect her. Her work can be interesting sometimes. But we’re different. Doris calls herself an artist, and I don’t see myself as an artist in that way. I’m a performer, one that can’t work alone. I have to work with a group. Part of it is personal, I’d be lost without you guys. And part of it is po
litical. A group can make work that’s a hundred times more powerful.
—If that’s the case, why is Doris Lever better known than Wherehouse? She’s in galleries all over. And the papers. Isn’t there a book about her now?
—Her thing is in vogue now, that’s all. And she’s been at it longer than we have. We just need a bit more time to figure out how to spread our message. When you look at it, we have an advantage over Doris. We have our methods. Our manifesto. We’ve got Vietnam. We’ve got Cuba. We’ve got Mao. She might’ve gone to China, but she doesn’t really believe in China, as an ideal to work towards. She’s all over the place. No system. No philosophy.
Álvaro held out his hand, as if to ask her to help him up. When she took it, he pulled her into him and kissed her. His goatee beard scratched her skin. She pushed his hair back from his forehead, then let it flop forward again. He pressed her breasts against his chest and rubbed her bottom.
—Come on, he said, getting up.
—Back to the room? she said, allowing him to take her with him.
He shook his head:
—Let’s stay out a while longer, just you and me.
—I could do with putting my head down for an hour.
—All right. Let’s find a place.
Hand-in-hand, then with arms around each other’s waists, they went up rue de la Sorbonne to the main entrance of the university. Eva translated the poster on the door:
THE REVOLUTION WHICH IS BEGINNING WILL CALL INTO QUESTION NOT ONLY CAPITALIST SOCIETY BUT INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY. THE CONSUMER SOCIETY IS BOUND FOR A VIOLENT DEATH. SOCIAL ALIENATION MUST VANISH FROM HISTORY. WE ARE INVENTING A NEW AND ORIGINAL WORLD. IMAGINATION IS SEIZING POWER.
Inside, posted on the corridor wall was a large hand-drawn map, beautiful to look at, with the important buildings and squares marked by intricate little illustrations. The streets shown were those of the Latin Quarter, but on the top it said, HEROIC VIETNAM QUARTER. The main Sorbonne auditorium was called CHE GUEVARA HALL. The Pantheon Square, HO CHI MINH PLACE.
Dormitories had been set up in some empty classrooms on the third floor. Finding none of the beds free, they pleaded their case to a number of couples and groups — they had travelled a long way, Eva told them, and had nowhere else to go — a tactic which eventually fell on sympathetic ears.
They climbed onto the mattress fully clothed except for their shoes. They embraced for a while under the sheet, and touched and felt and rubbed, but she found herself too tired to take it further.
—Do you mind if I just sleep for a bit?
—All right.
But he quickly became bored and started to toss and turn.
—You don’t have to stay, she said.
—I wouldn’t mind having another look around. Would you be all right? I wouldn’t like leaving you.
—I’d be fine.
—Sure?
—Álvy, I said I’d be fine.
He kissed her:
—I’ll come and find you shortly, and we’ll go to the demonstration together, all right? Don’t disappear.
—I won’t move till you come.
—Good, he said. Get some sleep.
Contained within his departing caresses, their vehemence, was a brag about how long he worked and how late he stayed out; how little he slept; how self-denying he could be. They kissed for a long time, but she could sense that he could not wait to get away on his own. And when he was gone, she felt relieved. For a commune member, there was no way out of entanglement. The only responsible course was to ensure that, when the desire to be alone came, one satisfied it by giving it to others.
She flopped over onto her back, reached one arm into the liberated space and laid the other across her eyes. The room was noisy and stuffy. Around her no one was sleeping. Rather, everyone seemed to be smoking and talking and giggling and petting at once. Without being anything like boarding school, it reminded her of boarding school, which she had liked, not least because she had been liked there, so she quickly fell into a contented sleep populated by lots of laughing faces.
II
Jiang Qing
1974
iv.
She raised her pass as she entered the outer gate of the Chairman’s courtyard. The two sentinels did not take their hands from their submachine guns in order to do a full check of her identification, as they were supposed to. Wisely they did not move at all except to glance briefly out of the tail of their eyes. Wise indeed, these lowly boys; they knew not to cross her.
By contrast, in the porter’s lodge at the inner gate, the more senior guards were slouched over chairs, their feet up, chattering loudly and freely. As soon as they saw her approach, they stubbed out their cigarettes and jumped up.
—Soldiers, she said to them, are your minds fixed on Mao Zedong Thought? Because it looked like you were gossiping like women.
She hummed, pleased with herself, while she filled out the visitor’s form.
The soldiers listened in silence to her tune, which was ‘Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman’.
She handed the form back to be stamped. One of the soldiers took the seal out of the locked drawer and pressed it onto the bottom corner of the page. Then, completed form in hand, he came out of the lodge and accompanied her along the covered corridor running around the courtyard, and into the underground tunnel that led to the inmost place: Building 202, the Chairman’s residence.
As they walked, she took the opportunity to examine the soldier’s face. It had reached her ear that one of the Chairman’s guards had done an imitation of her. According to the report, he had put on a straw hat of the kind she used in the garden, and had pranced about in it, twisting his body this way and that, shouting orders in a deep voice like a man. This news must have been relayed by a hundred mouths before coming to her; she had cried herself into fits when she heard it. She had not yet found the culprit. Was it this one?
—Was it you? she said.
—Commander? he said.
—Don’t play dumb with me. You know what I refer to.
—Sorry, Commander, I don’t.
The soldier pressed a button on the wall and a voice answered down the loudspeaker. The soldier stated their business into the grille as if broadcasting to the nation.
—Commander Jiang for the Chairman.
The door buzzed open and the soldier held it for her.
—Who are our friends, Soldier? she said as they climbed the stairs. And who are our enemies? This is a question of first importance for the Revolution.
—Yes, Commander.
—Have you ever looked around the Compound and asked yourself, can everyone who works here really be so revolutionary? Two-faced counterrevolutionaries that hold up the red flag while opposing the red flag could be sleeping right next to you. Even here, at the centre of operations, reactionary scoundrels could be skulking in dark corners waiting to jump out and act brazenly as soon as the climate is right.
—Yes, Commander.
—I myself have noticed a change in behaviour amongst many comrades in the Compound of late. They have started acting like grandees and have fallen into deluded and inflated notions, a consequence of living in such a cut-off way, no doubt. They are working hard, but their work is accompanied by steadily deepening cynicism. Have you seen it too? A slightly malicious tone? a sarcastic edge to a voice? those little things which so quickly develop into the cancer that eats a movement from the inside?
—Yes, Commander. This way, Commander.
The soldier conducted her through a door and round the corner of a modern white-walled corridor.
—And it’s not just others we have to watch out for, is it? It’s vital we remain vigilant about ourselves too. Counterrevolutionary influences are hidden in the most secret places of our own bodies. As communists, we have a duty to locate those influences and purge
ourselves of them. Have you ever taken the time to wonder, am I as revolutionary as I claim to be? Do you keep an eye on what kind of jokes you make, for instance? Are your jokes contrary to what you say in Party meetings? Do they go against what you thought you believed in?
—I try not to joke, Commander.
The soldier opened a door and stood against it. Gave her the visitor’s form and directed her into the reception hall of Building 202.
—I’ll be waiting here to bring you back.
She folded the form in the middle. Ran the crease between two fingertips in order to make it permanent. All day she was treated with respect, but people’s feelings ran as shallow as water; privately nobody cared about her.
—Soldier—
She lowered her voice so as not to be heard by the guard at the reception desk.
—piss a puddle and look at yourself in it. What is it that you see? Do you deserve to be where you are?
She brought her lips to his ear.
—What is that smell? Is it your soul? Stinking like your mother’s cunt?
Smiling broadly — at the end of the day, if the choice was to imitate or to be imitated, she would always choose the latter — she came away. She gave the visitor’s form to the guard at the reception, who nodded her on. As she made her way to the stairs, behind her she could hear him lift the telephone receiver and turn the dial.
Up the two flights, she was fast enough to catch one of the Chairman’s minor secretaries with the telephone to her ear. Seeing her appear, the secretary said a couple of quiet words and put the receiver down. Jiang Qing stood in front of the secretary without speaking. The secretary put her elbows on her desk, interlaced her fingers and looked down at them. The two guards flanking the double doors behind stared at an uncertain point above Jiang Qing’s head. After a minute, during which each actress in this tableau faithfully maintained her pose, the double doors opened and the Chairman’s personal secretary, Zhang Yufeng, came out.