by Gavin McCrea
Public Security Hospital, Beijing
3 May 1991
I must write to you, dear Mao, here in this room, to inform you of my progress. There is not an hour in my days when I am not engaged in the struggle against myself. And my nights, do not ask me about my nights, for they are immersed in dreams in which I am judged by monstrous figures masked as me. In darkness and in light, both, I slave at it, an ideal condition for a Communist, a state of grace, yet it has not always been easy, and I have suffered much, sometimes to the point of despair. Still, revered husband, I have persevered. I have gone back over every event. Retraced every action, every bad thought. And now I can name ninety-nine occasions when I feel I may have impeded the Revolution. Do you see the list here, Red Sun in my Heart, unrolled under your light?
But this morning, just as I was penning my last item, a banging started which forced me to interrupt my work. The door swung open — I heard it — and the outside air rushed in — I felt it — and then there was light, bright light, with five figures emerging from it, and I am eager to describe to you, Supreme Teacher, what happened next.
The figures had white outfits on, but they were not doctors; all were known to me as Party members. They dragged me by the hair to the centre of the room and kicked me in the back of my legs so that I would fall down to a kneel. Then they made a circle around me and began to taunt me. They called me ox demon. They called me snake spirit. They called me high-class whore. They called me Empress Wu. They, who had once allied themselves with me, produced hand-drawn posters in which I appear as a witch, a rat, a jackal, a tart with a siren’s tail and with knives sticking into my body.
—What do you think of that? they asked.
To which I said:
—I think it is a good thing that young people should rebel against the older generation.
But perhaps they were not really looking for a reply, for, instead of listening to my generous words, they slapped me in the mouth and told me to shut up.
The door opened again, and a record player was rolled in on a trolley. The extension cable was plugged into a socket in the corridor, which prevented the door from closing fully. Out of a fear that we would be heard through the open door, they put on ‘Men with Fine, Loyal Hearts’, and turned up the volume. Bellowing to be heard over the music — these are the comical touches that I know you will appreciate — they proceeded to read my indictment. The inventory of my so-called crimes was so long, its outlandishness so tediously familiar, that I could not refrain from yawning as it was enumerated. When they were finished, they asked:
—Do you still deny these charges?
To which I replied:
—Is it a crime in China to make Revolution?
This did not make them happy.
—Stand up! they said. Stand up when you speak!
When I did so, they knocked me back down, and, with a hand gripping the back of my head, forced me to kowtow in such a way that my forehead was hitting the floor like a pestle pounding garlic.
—If you have done nothing wrong, why would you be here?
—I do not know why I am here. I always tell you, you have the wrong person.
At that, they beat me across the back with a brass buckle.
—Stop playing the bloody fool. Confess now and we will be lenient.
—Everything I did followed Mao’s line. What you are doing is asking a widow to pay her husband’s debt. To you all, I say I am happy and honoured to pay this debt.
Still unsatisfied, they tied my hands behind my back and pushed them up to my ears:
—Once and for all, you must plead guilty in front of the revolutionary masses.
I could hear the sound of my tendons tearing and the blood vessels bursting open:
—My only error was to be more radical even than my husband, more Mao than Mao. Such an error can only ever be judged by the Chairman himself. I will plead guilty in only one hall of justice, and that is his.
Confounded by my indifference to their cruelty, they then tied me to a chair with iron wires, tightening and tightening the binds until deep furrows formed in my skin and blood poured down.
—You have been tried by the people and found guilty, yet you continue to profess your innocence. The masses think one thing about you, while you think another. When are you going to align your mind to theirs?
They told me that even my daughter had denounced me. They said Li Na was in agreement with China’s guilty verdict in my case. They lowered the volume of the music and brought my attention to the sounds coming from outside the room, saying that Li Na was next door, but I would not see her unless I wrote a confession. They play-acted so convincingly that, for a mad second, I thought I really did hear Li Na’s voice. Even so, instead of giving them a confession, I sucked the mucus out of my nostrils and spat it into their faces.
This gesture, capturing the sum total of my feelings, did not put an end to their pantomime. For then they brought in a woman, her identity obscured by a headscarf and dark glasses, and put her sitting in a chair a couple of metres away, and said:
—Look, here is Li Na. Do you want your darling daughter to witness your humiliation?
This made me laugh so hard that one of my teeth actually fell out. The useless motherfuckers. Did they truly think I feared getting rid of my pride and dignity in front of this impersonator? To remind them who they were dealing with, I released the internal muscles which until then I had been contracting, and the contents of my bladder rushed out of me, through my clothes and onto the concrete.
—That one was for the cameras, I said.
Now it was their turn to laugh. They could not help it. But laughing did not make them happy.
—Jiang Qing, they said, we have added up the bill for your life. It is time to settle accounts.
They freed one of my hands and put a pen in it, then held out a document and ordered me to sign it. When I refused — by dropping the pen and, with magical timing, just as it hit the ground, farting loudly — they went into a rage. They put my hands in a basin of black ink and ordered me to smear the ink over my own face, which I readily did. With only one hand, however, I could not apply ink fast enough for their liking, so they splashed it over me until it was dripping from my eyes and my nose and my mouth, long strings of black reaching all the way down to the concrete. Deciding that even this was not enough, they poured it down the neck of my shirt so that it oozed out from my waist, ran along my legs and came out the end of my trousers. Then they poured what remained down my actual neck until I vomited it back up.
One would think that these events move fast, but actually they are slow with lots of pauses to change the music and to convene.
How far was too far?
I had time to think and plan my responses. They were using techniques that I myself had perfected, so I often knew in advance of their orders what they wanted me to do. This allowed me to perform reactions before actions. I answered before I was asked. I sneered before I was jeered. I suffered blows before I was hit. I passed out before reaching my limit and came back to consciousness before any cold water touched my skin. In this way I felt I was performing at a great distance from my torturers. I was playing here, while they were playing way over there.
Thus detached, I turned to concentrate on myself, and found that I gradually separated from the person I was familiar with, and, according to the law of one divides into two, multiplied into many foreign-seeming forms. One of these forms was particularly startling, and my purpose in writing to you, Great Leader, is to describe it as best I can to you.
In my place, on the chair in the centre of the room, was a woman I had once struggled against, the wife of a shoe seller who had been caught possessing foreign products. Her face was streaked with lipstick. Clumps of hair had been pulled from her scalp. She was wearing a necklace made of ping-pong balls. High-heeled shoes had been strung together and looped around h
er body. Broken bits of Western junk, like playing cards and aluminium cans, dangled from her clothes. She had been forced to sit on a burning cigarette and was being made to recount over and over again how she had come to commit her crime. During the pauses between her phrases, a crowd shouted slogans and jeered, and at the same time pressed forward, convulsed in an agony of impatience, longing to drag her down from the stage, and beat her with fists and broomsticks, and parade her through the streets, thereby upholding justice on behalf of themselves, the people.
All the while I was in the wings, directing the torturers’ every move. Although I was hidden from the masses by a screen, I knew the woman was aware of my presence, for occasionally she would turn her head a little and glance in my direction. And what magnificent eyes she had now that she was suffering. She had let go of defiance, had embraced hardship and trauma, and as a consequence the lines of her face had softened and her natural beauty had returned. Her honour was gone, her self-respect with it; all she had inside now was a nucleus, a hard kernel of hate: the pain of the oppressed that has existed since our ancestors’ times, the hatred of thousands of years — and it made her glow.
Her acknowledgement of this hate at her soul’s core meant that she could truly empathise with her torturers. Like her, hatred was the only satisfaction they had left, it was their final identity. All they were doing, she recognised, was looking for a punishment that would make punishment unnecessary, a violence that would end violence. They believed that the only way to be understood was to hurt, and perhaps they were right: she would show her mutual understanding by not resisting. When they came hard, she gave them soft. Their blows she met with humbleness, gentleness, then let them go. And while she said:
—Good people, I kowtow to you, I was wrong in the past.
And she said:
—I am guilty, I committed crimes against the Revolution, I lower my head and admit it.
And she said:
—I must be obedient, I am not allowed to speak or act without permission, if I do so, may you beat me and smash me.
She was in fact thinking: I am justified. I am the winner if I give way to you willingly. Your cruelty arises from your greater misery. You are doing nothing but cleansing me for my forthcoming mission to save China. I, the victim, am on the right side of history, and will be remembered, not merely memorialised. My hate will outrun yours; it is the water that cannot be mopped up, the fire that cannot be put down.
So I ask you, wise husband, to tell me please, when I describe this to you, what do you see? You see more than I, and further, so perhaps you can clarify these happenings for me. This woman, whom I remember from my past, was she me? Or was she not-me? Was she a ghost, come on an evil wind?
The living dead, the texts of literature say, are by nature reactionary. They insist that the world return to the way it was for them. Is that why she appeared to me? To demand that I give her back her China? If so, hers was a wasted visit, for that is not something I can do. I could not even give her my China, if she should want that, for my China no longer exists either. The China of today is neither hers nor mine but belongs to others.
And now I ask myself:
When I die, whom would I visit? Whom would I break in upon to demand the return of my world? Who is to blame for stealing the Revolution from me? On whom could I bear down to take revenge in my name? I would not even know where to start. After so long a fight one loses the capacity to distinguish who has done what to whom. When the mantis catches the cicada, the finch is right behind. One thing overcomes another, and eventually we all get even.
Your leading lady,
Jiang Qing
III
Jiang Qing
1974
x.
—and what she saw turned her blood, as though she had stumbled across a snake in the middle of the road.
She reeled back from the peephole and, feeling her legs weakening, groped about in the dark for somewhere to sit down. The sensation was that of a heavy bag of rice suddenly being placed on her shoulders. She clung to the wall to steady herself, nearly taking down a court robe that hung there.
As she staggered around, she hit her head on an empty bird cage, and knocked over a spittoon with her foot. Cursing, she ventured away from the peripheries towards the centre of the room and located the area where gifts from foreigners were stored: boxes of Cuban cigars from Castro and aged brandy from Ceausescu. She sat atop a case and breathed deeply, filling her senses with the sweet smell of camphor wood.
Blinking into the black, she had the impression that for the first time since her childhood she was seeing objects clearly. Life was suddenly present, in all its meaning. She was in it, not looking through a window at it. Thoughts which she had had before, but which she was prohibited to think, were now visible in her mind and demanding her attention:
Mao is dying. You’re going to lose him.
Iris
1968
xi.
—then the third spool of film abruptly ended. The final images flickered and were consumed by white light. Blinking into the glare, she listened without emotion to Eva, who had started to cry, and to Doris who was rubbing Eva’s back and saying:
—It’s all right, let it out. If I was you, I’d do the same.
Out of nothing, then, Iris felt all the frustration, the agony, the despair of a childhood spent in her sister’s shadow. What the fucking hell is she bawling about?
—What is with you? she said.
—Shh, said Doris. Don’t.
—No, I’m serious. I want to know. Are you crying because I took your place in the stupid play? That you didn’t have your big fucking moment? You’ve had plenty of moments since then to make up for it, haven’t you?
—Shut up, Iris, said Eva.
—I mean, you’re not going to start pretending, now, that you had it harder than me, are you?
—I said shut up.
—Papa’s little actress. Dry your bloody eyes, please, and give us all a break.
Eva wiped her face and glared at her with red eyes:
—You’re a monster, you know that? How can you speak to me like that after what we’ve just watched? What gives you the right to be angry with me?
—Maybe it has something to do with you going off to Paris without me.
—Oh God, is this going to be your new weapon?
—It’s the truth of what happened, isn’t it? You went off and left me here. Your sister. A full, voting commune member. And now, as a stinger, you come home and dredge up this family crap. For what purpose? You haven’t learned anything.
—Enlighten me, Iris. What am I supposed to have learned?
—You honestly still think you’re the victim, don’t you? You don’t get it at all. I did it for you.
—Excuse me?
—I took your place in The Sing-Song Tribunal because I was trying to save you.
Eva grimaced:
—Save me? From what?
Yourself.
—From nothing. Forget it.
Eva was a girl with a bit of talent, but not enough talent, and it haunted her. By taking her place in the play, Iris had protected her from the mortification of exposing herself to the world at too young an age. A mortification from which she would not have recovered. A mortification which would have destroyed her ambitions of becoming an actress. In point of fact, if Eva was able to call herself an actress today, it was owing to Iris’s intervention. By rights, she should be thanking her. Down on her hands and knees.
—I just can’t believe you continue to blame me for what happened, said Iris.
—Who else is there to blame?
—You know, it’s not all about you, Eva. When I did what I did, I wasn’t thinking about you. You were the furthest thing from my mind.
—That’s for fucking sure.
—The only person I was thinking about was Mama. Isn’t that obvious? It was her I was trying to get at. Her I was trying to show—
—Show what? What were you trying to show her exactly, Iris? You’d nothing to complain about. All the woman did was spoil you.
—Spoil me? Is that what you call how she treated me? She did terrible things to me. And the film proves it.
Eva had stopped crying. Her face was stone.
—Are you out of your mind? she said. The film proves nothing of the sort. What it shows is a dirty brat marching into a place she shouldn’t have been. Taking my stage. Stealing my part. If I was your mother, God forbid, I’d have done much worse.
At that, the fury got too much. Iris closed her eyes and allowed it to consume her.
Keith was right. How could a ten-year-old be to blame for so much? Could nobody else see with whom final responsibility lay? Who the puppet master behind it all had been? Eva could cry all she liked, but it was not going to do them any good. This pain was the kind caused by a mother’s hand, and the honey of revenge was the only medicine for it.
Eva
1956
xii.
—once it was over, she left the chair in the centre of the circle and joined her mother.
The same arm which her mother had used to push her into the circle, she now put around her waist. Eva read this as a consoling gesture. Hard luck. You did your best. Which even Eva, who did not yet know a lot about techniques, could tell had not been enough. She had been exposed; she had humiliated herself.
Iris, who was sitting on the piano stool, started to cry. It was something Eva would never forget: the moment her sister shed real tears for her. Doris comforted Iris by taking her hand and squeezing it, and by rubbing her back
Max stood up and began to gather his things from the director’s table, as if signalling that that would be it for the day. Rehearsals would resume when an adequate actress had been found.
Well, that settled it, Eva thought. She had been given her chance, and she had blown it.