One Man

by Gao Xingjian

  Chairman Mao put it well: 'Those reactionaries simply aren't going to be overthrown unless you strike them down!'"

  At this, all around, people stood up and, with raised fists, began shouting loudly.

  "Down with all Ox Demons and Snake Spirits!"

  "Long live Chairman Mao!"

  "Long live!"

  "Long, long live!"

  This time, the slogans rose and subsided in waves, which became more uniform and forceful. After this had been repeated a few times, the whole gathering was shouting uniformly, like an all-engulfing wave, like an unstoppable tide that instilled terror in people's hearts. He no longer dared to look around and, for the first time, perceived that these familiar slogans possessed a menacing power. Chairman Mao was not far away in Heaven, was not an idol that could be stored away, Chairman Mao had supreme power. He had to keep up with the shouting and he had to shout clearly and, moreover, absolutely without any hesitation.

  "I just don't believe it! So many intellectuals have been crammed into this workplace of yours; can everyone assembled here really be so revolutionary? I'm not saying it's not good to have knowledge, I didn't say that. I'm talking about those two-faced counterrevolutionaries. In their writings, they use our revolutionary slogans, they put up the red flag to oppose the red flag, they say one thing but mean something else! I reckon, they would not have the guts to openly jump out to present themselves as counterrevolutionaries. Are there any such people at this gathering? Would any of you dare to stand up and say you oppose the Communist Party, oppose Mao Zedong Thought, and oppose Socialism? If there is, I invite you to come onto the dais to speak!"

  The gathering fell silent, breathing virtually stopped, and the air congealed. If someone had dropped a needle, it would have been heard.

  "But it is after all the world of the dictatorship of the proletariat! So they are forced to assume a disguise, take up our revolutionary slogans, and, with a shake, transform themselves. Wasn't I just now talking about groping for fish in muddy waters? While we are engaged in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, they are out there fanning up evil winds and lighting malicious fires, colluding with people in high positions and jumping down to work on the people below. They are intent on wrecking every level of our Party in the workplace and are making out that we are a sinister gang. They are wicked and crafty! Comrades, you must be vigilant! Look around yourselves carefully and haul out all those enemies, scheming careerists, and despicable worms inside and outside the Party who have infiltrated our ranks!"

  After the senior cadre departed, everyone quietly filed out, nobody daring to look at anyone else for fear of showing the terror in one's heart. But, back at the offices where all the lights were on, people came face to face with one another and everyone went through hurdles of confession and remorse. People all requested individual sessions, at which everyone, sobbing and weeping, reported their misdeeds to the Party. People were easily manipulated. They were softer than dough when they wanted to make themselves pure, although they were vicious when it came to exposing others. Around midnight, people were most vulnerable, wanting the comfort of their partner in bed, and it was at this particular time that the interrogations and confessions took place.

  Some hours earlier, at the after-work political study session, everyone had a copy of Mao's Selected Works on the desk as they browsed through the newspapers or pretended to be doing something to fill in the two hours before they would go home, laughing and joking.

  Revolution was seething in the upper echelons of the Party but hadn't yet fallen onto the heads of the masses. When the person from the political department came into the office to tell people to stay for the all-staff meeting, it was already eight o'clock at night.

  Another two hours were wasted, and still there was no sign of people being assembled. Old Liu, the department chief, kept tamping more tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, and someone asked him how many more pipes he'd need to smoke. Old Liu smiled without replying, but it could be seen that he was deeply worried. Old Liu was normally not officious, and the fact that he had put up a poster about the Party committee had endeared him to everyone. However, when someone said you couldn't go wrong if you followed Old Liu, he immediately raised his pipe and corrected him, "We must follow Chairman Mao!" Everyone laughed. Right until then, it seemed that no one wanted this class struggle to erupt among colleagues in the same office. Furthermore, Old Liu was an old Party member from the time of the War of Resistance against Japan, and this was reflected in his salary and rank. And as for that curved leather chair with armrests in his department chief's office, not just anyone was entitled to it. His room that smelled of his pipe tobacco with its chocolate aroma still had a relaxed feeling.

  After midnight the political cadres and the staid, expressionless Party secretaries separately ensconced themselves in their own offices. One after another, people went through the cycle of confession, remorse, crying if they wanted to, and then entered the phase of informing on one another. Big Sister Huang, in charge of receiving and dispatching documents, had her turn to speak ahead of him.

  Her husband, who had worked for the Nationalist Government, had abandoned her to run off with his mistress to Taiwan. The old woman said that the Party had given her a new life and, whimpering uncontrollably, took out her handkerchief to dry her eyes and nose. She was so frightened she was crying. He did not cry, but only he knew that sweat was running down his back.

  The year he started university, when he was just seventeen and virtually still a child, he attended a struggle session against rightist senior students. It was in a lecture room with stairs, and new students had to sit on the floor at the front for their initiation in political education. As a name was called, the rightist student stood up, walked to the bottom of the stairs, and, head bowed, faced everyone. Sweat on the forehead and nose, tears and mucus splashing on the floor, the student would be absolutely wretched, just like a dog floundering in water. Those who came forward were fellow students, and, one by one, they went through the emotional routine of listing their anti-Party crimes. Some time later, these rightist students who never said anything and always sat at a separate table, leaving as soon as they had eaten, disappeared from the big dining hall. No one ever mentioned them again. It was as if they had never existed.

  It was not until after he graduated that he heard the expression reform through labor," there seemed to have been a taboo on any mention of it. He didn't know that his father had been investigated and sent to a reform-through-labor farm, he had only heard a few vague remarks about it from his mother. He had already left home and was in Beijing studying at university, and his mother had written about it in a letter, but as "labor training." When he returned home during summer vacation a year later, his father had returned from the farm and had been reinstated in his job but he had been smeared as a rightist. His parents kept all this from him and it was not until the Cultural Revolution, when he asked his father, that he found out that he had been implicated because of his old revolutionary maternal uncle. His father's workplace had a much higher percentage of rightists than the quota, so his father was not branded a rightist, instead he only had a salary cut and a record made in his file. His father's problem was that he had written a hundred-character piece on the news blackboard where he "spoke freely" in response to the Party's call for people to freely voice their views to help the Party improve people's work habits. At the time his father did not know that this was called "luring snakes out of their lairs."

  What had happened to his father nine years earlier also happened to him. He fell into the same trap. Indeed, all he had done was put his signature on a poster. It had on it Chairman Mao's call-all of

  YOU MUST CONCERN YOURSELVES WITH THE IMPORTANT AFFAIRS

  of the nation-in bold-type print from the People's Daily. When he was on his way to work, someone was putting up the poster in the big hall downstairs and was soliciting signatures, so he took up a pen and signed his name. He was unaware of the motives o
f this anti-Party poster nor of the political motives of the person who had written it. He couldn't work it out, but he had to acknowledge that it was aimed at the Party Center. By signing his name, he lost his bearings as well as a class standpoint. Actually, he had no idea what class he belonged to-after all, he couldn't count as a member of the proletariat-and so he didn't have a clear class standpoint. If he didn't sign this poster then he would have signed a similar poster. He confessed to this. He had, without doubt, committed a political error and from that time on, it was on his file. His personal history was no longer clean.

  Prior to that he had truly never thought to oppose the Party. He had no need to oppose anyone and simply hoped that people wouldn't disrupt him from dreaming. That night rudely awakened him and he could see his precarious situation: a political storm was raging everywhere and if he were to preserve himself he had to lose himself among the common people. He had to say what everyone else said and be able to show that he was the same as everyone else. He had to keep in step to lose himself among the masses, say what was stipulated by the Party, extinguish all doubts, and keep to the slogans. He had to join with colleagues in writing another poster to indicate his support for the Party Center leadership, denounce the previous poster, and admit his error, in order to avoid being labeled anti- Party.

  The obedient will survive and the rebellious will perish. In the early morning, the corridors of the building were covered in new posters, there had been a change in the political climate: today was right and yesterday was wrong, people had turned into chameleons. A poster just put up by a political cadre gave him a shock.

  "Renegade Liu so-and-so, you are called a renegade because you have gone against the basic principles of the Party! Renegade Liu so-and-so, you are called a renegade because you have betrayed Party secrets! Renegade Liu so-and-so, you are called a renegade because you are an opportunist and have profiteered all this time by concealing your landlord background to worm your way into the revolutionary camp! Renegade Liu so-and-so, you are called a renegade also because up to now you have sheltered your reactionary father by hiding him in your house to resist the dictatorship of the proletariat!

  You are a renegade, Liu so-and-so, because your class instincts are taking advantage of this movement. By confusing black with white to deceive the masses, you have jumped out to target the Party Center. You harbor evil motives!"

  This inflammatory call for revolutionary action was intimidating.

  His immediate boss, Old Liu, thus relegated to a different class from everyone, was instantly isolated; he left the crowd around the poster, returned to his department-chief office, and shut the door. When he reemerged, he was no longer smoking his pipe, and no one dared to greet this former department chief.

  After a full night of warfare, it had started to get light. He went to the lavatory and washed his face. The cold water revived him and he looked through the window into the distance at the stretch of gray-black roof tiles. People were probably still asleep and dreaming.

  Only the round top of the White Pagoda had been tinted by dawn and was becoming more and more distinct. For the first time it occurred to him that he probably was a concealed enemy, and if he wanted to go on living he would have to wear a mask.

  "Please be careful of the carriage door, the next station is Admiralty." This had been spoken first in Cantonese and then in English.

  You had dozed off and gone past your station. The underground in Hong Kong is cleaner than it is in Paris, and Hong Kong and Hong Kong people are orderly, compared to Mainlanders. You will have to get off at the next stop to go back the other way so that you can return to the hotel for a nap. Tonight you don't know where you will wake up, but it will be in a bed with a foreign woman. You are irredeemable. Now you are not just the enemy, you are careering toward hell. However, memories for him were hell.

  8

  "Why don't you tell me about that Chinese girl of yours? How is she?" Margarethe puts down her glass of wine and raises her long black eyelashes, thick with mascara, to look at you across the small round table.

  "I don't know, I suppose she's still in China," you mumble, trying to avoid the question.

  "Why don't you get her out? Don't you ever think about her?"

  Her eyes are fixed on you.

  "That was ten years ago, what's the point of bringing it up? If it's not brought up, then it's forgotten." You try to say this nonchalantly. What you want right now is to be romantic with her.

  "Then how is it that you remembered me? That night, the first night we met in your home?"

  It's hard to say, sometimes the smallest incident remains clear, yet some other times I can't remember the names of people I know well, and sometimes I can't remember what I had been doing for many years-"

  'Have you also forgotten her name?"

  "Margarethe!" You squeeze her hand and say, "Memories are depressing, let's talk about something else."

  "Not necessarily, there are also happy memories, especially of people one has loved."

  "Of course, but it's best to forget what is in the past." You, in fact, can't think of the girl's name and can, instead, only recall pain. Her voice and face have also become blurred.

  "Will you forget me, too?"

  "When you're so vibrant, so full of life, how could I forget you?" You look at her eyes under her thick eyelashes, trying to change the subject.

  "But her, you're not saying that she wasn't?" She doesn't avoid your eyes and looks directly at you as she says, "She was so young, delicate, lovely, and so sexy. She was sitting right in front of me, clutching her skirt around her legs, the front of her dress hung low and she clearly had nothing on underneath. It was in China, at that time, so it left a very deep impression."

  "When you were knocking on the door, we were probably making love." Your lips part in a smile, it is best not to be too serious.

  "You'll forget me just the same, and before many years." She pulls her hand back.

  "But this is different, it's different!" you retort, unable to think of what to say, and not saying anything intelligent.

  "For men, it doesn't matter which woman's body it is. It's all the same thing."

  "No!"

  But what can you say? Every woman wants to prove she's different and in that hopeless battle in bed, tries to find love in lust, always thinking that after the physical lust passes something will remain.

  In this very fashionable Bar 97 on this little street in Lan Kwai Fong you sit facing her. You are close but there is a small round table between you, and you are trying to catch her eye. Loud rock music is playing, and the howling is in English. White clothing glows in the dark-blue fluorescent lights. The men with ties, mixing drinks behind the counter, and the hostesses are all tall Westerners. Margarethe, dressed all in black, is barely visible except for her bright red lipstick that shines and looks purple in the fluorescent lights. She seems unreal and is utterly stunning.

  "Is it simply because I'm a Western woman?" She is staring at you with a slight frown and her voice seems to be coming from far away.

  "No, it's not simply because you're a Western woman. How can I put it, you're in every sense a woman whereas she was still a girl."

  You seem to be lighthearted and joking.

  "How else are we different?" She seems determined to find out everything.

  In her unflinching gaze you detect something devious, and say, "She didn't know how to draw in, she could only give but didn't know how to enjoy…"

  "Of course, the woman would come to know, sooner or later…" She stops looking at you, and her eyelashes, heavy with mascara, lower.

  You think of her pulsating body, stiff but yielding, her moistness, her warmth, and her breathlessness, that all arouse your lust, and you fiercely say you're thinking of her again.

  "No!" She cuts you short. "It's not me you are thinking about but her. You are only seeking compensation from my body."

  "How can you say this, you are truly beautiful!"

 
; I don't believe you." She looks down and turns the glass with the tips of her fingers. This little movement is very seductive. She looks up and smiles, revealing the gully between her breasts that had been blocked by the shadow of her head, and says, "I'm too fat."

  You start to say no but she stops you, "I'm quite aware of it."

  "Aware of what?"

  "I hate this body of mine." She suddenly turns frosty again, has a sip of wine, and says, "All right, you don't understand me, you don't know anything of my past and my life."

  "Then tell me about it!" you coax her. "Of course I want to understand, I want to know everything, everything about you."

  "No, all you want is to have sex with me."

  All right, you can only try to wheedle your way out. "There's nothing bad about that, people have to go on living, the important thing is to be living in this instant. What has happened is in the past, there has to be a clean break."

  "But there can't be a clean break. No, there can't be!" she insists.

  "What if I have?" You wince. She is a serious woman, she was probably good at mathematics in middle school.

  "No, you can't cut off memories, they remain submerged in your heart and from time to time they gush out. Of course, it's painful, but it can also give you strength."

  You say that memories may give her strength but for you they are the same as nightmares.

  "Dreams aren't real but memories are events that have actually happened and can't be erased." This is how she argues.

  "Of course, and moreover, they haven't necessarily gone into the past." You give a sigh, and go along with her argument.

  "They can resurface any time if you don't guard against them.

  Fascism is like that. If no one talks about it, doesn't expose it, doesn't condemn it, it can come back to life again!" She becomes agitated as she speaks and it is as if the suffering of each and every Jew weighs upon her.