The Incarnations

by Susan Barker

  They make a fire of Granny Xi’s poisonous weeds and force her to kneel close to her burning furniture and books so that the smoke makes her cough and the heat blisters her skin. When the Red Guards leave, carting Granny Xi’s valuables, or ‘Ill-gotten Gains of the Exploiting Classes’, off in a wheelbarrow, we go outside to help Granny Xi to her feet. Though she has long detested us, Granny Xi does not resist as my mother and I bring her into our room. The old woman collapses on a chair, her cheeks smudged with smoke, and her white hair and eyebrows singed. Mother kneels by Granny Xi and squeezes her wrinkled hand.

  ‘Do you love Chairman Mao with all your heart?’ she asks gently. ‘If you let that love shine out of your heart, Red Guards will leave you alone.’

  And Granny Xi looks at my mother with such watery, defeated eyes I am nostalgic for the days they seethed at us with hate.

  Every day the black-category students go to school. Every day we study Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, write our Thought Reports and clean the school building. I am put on toilet-cleaning duty. Though I scrub the toilet bowls with my toothbrush every day for weeks, the pubic hairs, bloody sanitary napkins and faecal smears never cease to make me gag. But I can’t slack off, because Martial Spirit comes to inspect my work.

  ‘Why the vinegar-drinking face, Stinking Rightist? Too bourgeois to clean toilets, are you?’

  Comrade Martial Spirit, formerly my mousy, twitchy classmate Socialist Flower, has become a monster since her promotion to jailer-in-command of the Cattle Shed. As I crouch by the toilet with a toothbrush in my hand, Martial Spirit sneers, ‘Scrub harder, Rightist! Or I’ll kick the capitalist airs and graces right out of you!’

  My other duty is to feed the Black-gang Capitalists, incarcerated in the Cattle Shed. The Cattle Shed is the former music room, and the Black-gang Capitalists are our former teachers, now subject to interrogation for their crimes.

  ‘Long Live Chairman Mao!’ I yell, entering the Cattle Shed with a tray of rice bowls.

  ‘Long Live Chairman Mao!’ the teachers croak back, vocal cords ragged from screaming.

  The Cattle Shed smells of unwashed bodies and fear-loosened bladders and bowels. ‘Long Live the Red Terror!’ has been finger-painted in blood on the wall, above the portrait of Chairman Mao. Weeks of intimidation have broken the teachers down. They cringe behind their desks with bruised eyes, obedient as whipped dogs. I serve the bowls of rice and their chopsticks tremble as they eat.

  There are fewer Black-gang Capitalists now than at the start of the Cultural Revolution. Headteacher Yang was the first to die. The Cattle Shed jailers accidentally kicked her to death during an interrogation, and were out of their minds with panic afterwards. But there were no repercussions, and the next time they murdered a teacher they knew they had nothing to fear. Some Black-gang Capitalists commit suicide. I was the one who found Teacher Zhao’s corpse in the toilets, swinging from the leaky water pipes. Her salt-and-pepper head was bent over the noose and her toes swayed over the damp cement floor. A suicide note was pinned to her chalk-dusty Mao jacket:

  I am an Enemy of the People.

  In order not to poison the masses, I will exterminate myself from society.

  Long Live the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution!

  Long Live Chairman Mao!

  I went to Headteacher Yang’s former office, now the headquarters of the Cattle Shed jailers, to break the news. Comrade Martial Spirit reacted with dismay.

  ‘Teacher Zhao is a traitor of the revolution,’ she spat. ‘Had I known she was going to commit suicide, I’d have strangled her first!’

  Sometimes when I am cleaning the toilets, I remember the time we spent together and my chest becomes tight. I remember how your eyes shone in the darkness of your room and the spine-tingling caress of your words as you murmured, ‘If only I had been born a boy, Yi Moon. Then I could marry you one day.’ I remember the secret transactions our bodies made in your bed at night, and how your touch suffused every part of me with pleasure, unspoken of during the day. But now the Liya of that time no longer exists. Now you are a Red Guard, spreading terror throughout Beijing, and it’s as though that time never was.

  Since the suicide of Teacher Zhao, toilet-cleaning duty has become a break from the chaos of the Anti-capitalist School for Revolutionary Girls, for in spite of the brave new Socialist claims to not fear ‘Heaven or Hell, Gods or ghosts’, old superstitions die hard and girls stay away from the ‘haunted’ toilet block in droves. I am not scared of Teacher Zhao’s ghost though. Every time I scrub the stall where she dangled from the pipes, I speak to her.

  ‘You were a good person, Teacher Zhao,’ I say. ‘You never committed any counter-revolutionary crimes. They were wrong to persecute you.’

  Silence.

  ‘I don’t blame you, Teacher Zhao,’ I say. ‘There’s only so much suffering we can endure. I understand why you hanged yourself.’

  Silence.

  ‘I envy you, Teacher Zhao. If I had the guts, I’d find a length of rope and betray the revolution too . . .’

  The thought of ‘betraying the revolution’ becomes more seductive by the day. I imagine affixing the rope to the pipes and kicking the upturned mop bucket out from under my feet. I imagine the noose squeezing my neck until the moment of release. It’s only the thought of my mother that stops me, and I can’t help but resent her for holding me back.

  Autumn. The sky is bled dry of colour. Leaves wither and wilt from the branches of trees. They rustle under my shoes as I walk into the playground and see a new Big-character Poster on the notice board:

  Down with Zhang Liya! Daughter of a Loyal Running Dog of Liu Shaoqi!

  Since the Cultural Revolution began there have been many sudden reversals in status. A people’s hero one day can be persecuted as the people’s enemy the next. But this is so unexpected I nearly fall down in shock.

  Zhang Liya Must Be Brought to Justice for Her Anti-Party Crimes.

  Down with Zhang Liya, Part of Liu Shaoqi’s Plot to Assassinate Chairman Mao.

  Girls crowd around the Big-character Posters. There are some half-hearted murmurs – ‘How dare Zhang Liya betray us!’ But most girls stare up at the posters in a subdued mood. After weeks of class struggle, revolutionary spirit is flagging.

  The Red Guards are back. Long March, Patriotic Hua and Red Star – now known as Dare to Rebel, Red Soldier and Martial Warrior. The Red Guards have shaved their heads. Their khaki uniforms, unwashed or changed in weeks, are nearly black. Their eyes are hardened and they are more like veterans back from fighting a war than sixteen-year-old girls. Long March, now known as Comrade Dare to Rebel, has a loudspeaker in one hand, and a People’s Daily in the other, opened to an editorial about the latest Communist Party purge. She waves the newspaper about as she rants into the loudspeaker.

  ‘Though her father has been expelled from the Party and is now in prison for anti-Party crimes, Zhang Liya remains free and hiding out in the bourgeois luxury of her home. Zhang Liya must be brought to justice. We must bring her into school for interrogation! Down with Zhang Liya!’

  ‘Down with Zhang Liya!’ Long March yells.

  ‘Down with Zhang Liya! Down with Zhang Liya!’ chant the schoolgirls in the playground – but obediently and bored.

  The Red Guards, led by Comrade Dare to Rebel, turn and march out of the gate. Before I have the chance to think about what I am doing, I have caught up with Long March and tapped her on the shoulder. She wrinkles her nose at me, as though I am a cockroach or a rat.

  ‘Comrade Dare to Rebel,’ I say, ‘I have been to the Zhang family residence and have seen poisonous weeds of the Nationalist era hidden in Zhang Liya’s bedroom.’

  I half expect to be cursed or slapped for daring to speak to her. But Long March frowns, thinking over what I said. ‘Then you must come with us, Comrade Yi Moon,’ she says urgently. ‘You must come with us and show us where the poisonous weeds are hidden. They will be used as evidence against Zhang Liya in her trial.’


  Pride swells in my chest. ‘Comrade Yi Moon’, she called me. Not ‘Capitalist Roader’ or ‘Daughter of a Rightist’, but ‘Comrade Yi Moon’.

  I follow the Red Guards out of the playground, to Ironmongers Lane and your home.

  The Red Guards’ clenched fists bang bang bang on your front gate.

  ‘Open up, you Sons of Bitches! Open up, you loyal running dogs of Liu Shaoqi!’

  Your servant girl unlocks and opens the gate and cries, ‘Long Live Chairman Mao! Long Live Chairman Mao! Don’t attack me! I am just a servant exploited by bourgeois Zhang family!’

  The Red Guards ignore the girl’s whimpering and stampede to your room.

  You are waiting in a chair by the window. Your striking face shows no sign of fear or intimidation as twenty Red Guards chanting ‘Down with Zhang Liya!’ stomp their heavy boots into your room. You sit in your PLA uniform, and regard the mob of Red Guards with the dignity and composure that made you the natural choice for their leader. You have been expecting them.

  ‘Class Enemy Zhang!’ Long March yells. ‘You must come with us for interrogation and trial. Do you know why?’

  You nod. You look older. Like the other Red Guards, the weeks of destroying the Four Olds have aged you. ‘Yes, Comrade Dare to Rebel, I do.’

  Long March smirks. You have been her greatest rival for years, and your downfall is her triumphant rise. ‘Class Enemy Zhang Liya. You and your father were loyal running dogs of Liu Shaoqi and part of his conspiracy plot to overthrow Chairman Mao. Your crimes will be punished severely!’

  You nod once more. ‘I understand.’

  You don’t deny the accusations. You know the futility of denial. Your restraint and strength of character are remarkable. But the Red Guards will break you. And if they can’t break you with words, they will do it with knives.

  ‘We have also been informed of your loyalty to the Nationalist Party,’ Long March says. She nods at me, ‘Comrade Yi Moon, can you show us the evidence?’

  For the first time since the Red Guards stormed your room, you look surprised. You stare at me in shock. I stare back coldly. I stamp out my guilt by remembering the humiliating terms of our ‘friendship’. How is this betrayal when there is no friendship to betray?

  I go to your bed, reach for the screwdriver under the bedding and pry up the loose floorboard. I remove the cardboard box and turn your dead mother’s possessions out on to the floor. Long March pounces on the black and white photograph. She holds it up to her eyes and laughs in your mother’s lovely twenty-year-old face.

  ‘Who is this syphilis-ridden whore? Why does Zhang Liya have a picture of an ugly Nationalist-era prostitute under her floor?’

  Your eyes are blank as Long March rips the photograph up and scatters the torn pieces over your chair.

  ‘Bring this loyal running dog of the Nationalists back to school!’ she commands. ‘Bring the poisonous weeds too!’

  The Red Guards lunge for you. They force you into aeroplane position, wrenching your arms back and shoving your head forwards, and march you out. Other Red Guards start ransacking your room. Patriotic Hua holds up your mother’s scarlet and gold embroidered qipao. There is admiration in her eyes as she gazes at the shimmering silk. She strokes the fabric with her fingers, and the sensual pleasure of it softens her harsh face. Then she notices me watching her.

  ‘Who gave you permission to look at me, Stinking Rightist?’ Patriotic Hua snaps. ‘Take your beady little capitalist eyes off me!’

  Long March, who is staring at the glamorous singer on the Hong Kong record sleeve, glances at me and says casually, ‘So you think you are one of the Red Guards now, Yi Moon? Don’t be so deluded. Go back to the black-category girls where you belong.’

  They lock you up in Headteacher Yang’s former office. Red Guards go in and out, carrying water and food and the papers on which they have recorded your confession. Days and weeks go by, and I never once hear you scream or weep or beg. Your silence unnerves me more than the howls of the Cattle Shed. Your interrogator, Comrade Martial Spirit, prides herself on making class enemies scream. Screaming, she says, exorcizes the counter-revolutionary demons from the soul. Your silence will be seen as defiance. Your silence will provoke them to inflict even more pain.

  Winter. The toilet block is unbearably cold and damp. I breathe out fog and shiver under the sinks, reading sheets of toilet paper. When the Red Guards came back to school, they ransacked the library, clearing the shelves of every book not authored by Chairman Mao. Most of the books were razed on a bonfire, but some were torn up for toilet paper, as ‘poisonous weeds’ are fit only for ‘wiping our backsides’. Though a sorry fate for literature, the sheets of toilet paper are my salvation during the bleak winter days, as I read Journey to the West, Dream of the Red Chamber and other banned volumes, escaping through the pages into illicit other worlds.

  One day I am lost in the Book of Odes when footsteps approach the toilet block. Scared of being caught reading the Propaganda of the Capitalist Classes, I throw the toilet paper aside, grab a rag and pretend to be scrubbing the floor. Head down, on my knees, I scrub and wait for the unexpected visitor to go into a toilet stall. But the footsteps walk over to where I crouch instead. I look up.

  ‘Liya?’

  You stand in the pallid winter light coming through the window. Your eyes are blackened and swollen, the lids welded shut. There are bald patches on your head and cuts on your legs seeping blood and pus. Your mother’s silk qipao hangs in shreds.

  ‘Liya, is that you?’

  You breathe in shallow exhalations. ‘Who else . . . would be wearing this dress?’

  The high-ranking Party official’s daughter is gone. They have persecuted the high status out of you. They have proved you are just like the rest of us, with hair that rips out and blood that leaves the body through wounds. I wince at the cuts on your legs. They need to be disinfected and stitched up at the hospital, or they won’t heal. I take a deep, shaky breath.

  ‘Liya,’ I say, ‘my mother has a bottle of iodine at home. I can run home and bring it for you . . .’

  ‘Don’t bring me iodine, Moon . . . Or I will report you for collaborating with a class enemy.’

  You smile bleakly. Are you joking? I can’t tell from your empty gaze. They have persecuted the life out of your eyes.

  ‘But your wounds are infected . . .’

  You say nothing to this, seeming not to care about your limbs rotting away.

  ‘How did you get out of Headteacher Yang’s office?’ I ask. ‘Have the Red Guards released you?’

  You hold up your clenched fist. There’s a toothbrush in its grip. ‘Reporting for duty, Comrade Yi,’ you say. ‘Long Live Chairman Mao!’

  The sight of the toothbrush is so pitiful I start to cry. Is this what I hoped for when I led the Red Guards to the box hidden under your floorboard? For you to be beaten until your head swelled black and blue? For your hair to be dragged out at the roots, leaving your scalp bleeding and bare?

  ‘I am sorry I betrayed you . . .’ I whisper.

  You stare back, unmoved. ‘My father was expelled from the Party and imprisoned for counter-revolutionary crimes,’ you state flatly. ‘They would have tortured me anyway.’

  Pipes leak and drip on to the cement floor. In the distance is the chanting of a denunciation rally. A teenage girl shrieks hysterically into a loudspeaker. The sound is exhausting to me.

  ‘I don’t blame you, Yi Moon . . .’ you say. ‘I looked the other way when they persecuted you . . .’

  ‘You stopped the Red Guards from raiding our home!’

  ‘I could have done more, but I didn’t want to risk my status . . . I was a bad friend . . . I deserve your hate.’

  I go and put my arms around you. ‘I’ve never hated you,’ I whisper.

  I breathe in your rankness and the septic odour of your wounds. They have been starving you, and you are thin as a stalk of bamboo.

  ‘Yi Moon . . .’ your voice is a low mosquito hum
in my ear ‘. . . I need your help . . .’ You move out of my embrace. You press a hard, smooth, metal object into my hand. I look down. A penknife. ‘I stole it when Martial Spirit wasn’t looking,’ you say. ‘Don’t worry. She won’t miss it. She has plenty of knives.’

  My heart beats faster. I stare at the penknife and fear shunts my chest, knocking the air out of my lungs. I stare at you, bleeding, bruised and paler than the dead. But behind their swollen lids, your eyes are burning and intense. Brought back to life by your will to die.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘My wrist is broken. A couple of my fingers are too. I don’t have the strength . . .’

  I turn the penknife over and click out the blade. Short, but brutal and sharp. I imagine it cutting your wrist. Slicing through skin, blood vessels and tendons. I shudder and retract it again.

  ‘Liya,’ I say carefully, ‘the Cultural Revolution will be over in a few months, just like the Anti-rightist campaign was. Your father will be released from prison and rehabilitated. Your wounds will heal. Life will get better.’

  ‘My father won’t be released from prison,’ you say. ‘He died there yesterday.’

  ‘Oh . . .’

  ‘I deserve to die, Yi Moon. I am a murderer. During the home raids I kicked people to death. I dragged a woman by a dog’s leash around her neck until she was strangled dead. I gouged the eyes out of a dead man’s head and crushed them in my bare hands.’

  What you say is sickening and can’t be true. But I look into your eyes, and know you are not lying. I say weakly, ‘All the Red Guards have blood on their hands . . .’

  ‘Then we all deserve to die.’

  ‘I can’t do it, Liya.’

  ‘You can.’ You go down on your knees on the damp cement. You hold out your thin, blue-veined wrists. You look up at me from this begging posture, your bruised eyes pleading with mine. ‘You can . . .’

  You lift your wrists higher, baring them for the blade. Your arms are shaking from the exertion, and tears sting my eyes, because I know then that I will do it. I will do it out of mercy, because it is the most humane thing to do. I will do it out of love.