by Hua Bai
Doctor Liu turned to her nurse. “Give me a sphygmoma-
nometer.”
I felt a secret joy in my heart. My abnormal heartbeat had caught her attention. But as she wrapped the sphygmomanometer around my arm, a strange horror seized me: was it a noose in her hand? Could I still escape? As the inflated cuff tightened, the horror in my heart grew more and more
acute. I almost fell into a swoon. When she took the sphygmomanometer off my arm, I experienced the relaxation of
being set free from bondage.
She said coldly, “My dear young fellow! Why don’t you
take better care of yourself? You have no right to ruin your own body. Do you regard your body as belonging to yourself? No. It belongs to our great leader, Chairman Mao.
Please sit here for a while for observation. Don’t move.”
I felt a chill penetrate me, from outside to inside, from head to foot, as if a bucket of icy water had just been poured on me. I did not know how long a while was going to take.
Worse still, I was not allowed to move. Pretty soon my
pulse and blood pressure would become regular. My schem-
ing and desperate running had worked for a paltry five minutes. I had been on the verge of victory. If this Iron Plum wrote “transfer to the hospital” on my file and signed it 3 6
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“Liu,” I could dash to the intercity bus station. Who cared whether my pulse beat eight hundred times or eight times per minute? But – this unlucky but ruined everything.
Here I was, sitting on a bench, staring like an idiot at a corner of the room where a huge spider sat securely in her web while a tiny moth struggled in its corner. Should there be spiderwebs in a clinic? As I thought it over, there was really nothing strange about it. If creatures like Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng, and Yao Wenyuan could appear at Tiananmen
Square, why couldn’t a clinic keep a poisonous spider? I felt like that tiny moth, and the woman called Iron Plum was
that huge spider. The spider sat still without a side-glance at the moth; her calmness angered and disgusted me. That tiny moth was me, utterly helpless, too weak to break free from those sticky filaments. It was better not to struggle.
The more you struggled, the more the web tightened
around you, and the sooner she could eat you. I had not suspected that I would be so powerless when my own fate was in my hands. I usually considered myself a strong man!
Now she had drawn a circle on the ground and easily made me her prisoner. Could I still find a way out? Hmm, I was missing Mr. Zhuge Liang again, a man of superior wisdom
who had died seventeen hundred years ago. What a good-
for-nothing I was!
Then I noticed that Liu Tiemei and Yu Shouchen were
nodding and whispering to each other. I could not read their lips and could hear them only very faintly. Although the faint sounds wove into a sheet of noise, I could not make out its warps and wefts. Their discussion, however, struck horror into my heart, numbed my hands, and even caused my
ears to ring. They were talking about me for sure. I saw bullets shooting at me sporadically from the corners of their eyes. All of a sudden, I felt two snakes creeping from my armpits to my waist. I was at the point of screaming when I realized that these were two streams of cold sweat. After this 3 7
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shock I continued my tense waiting. I believed my situation was not so different from a criminal’s awaiting sentencing in court.
Liu Tiemei came over and grasped my wrist fiercely – as
if she were putting handcuffs on me. Again she tied the cuff around my arm. Like a captive deprived of his weapon, I
surrendered my life to her disposition and thus overcame my fear. I even watched the rising mercury together with her, although I knew nothing about the line between normal and abnormal blood pressure. After the measurement,
Liu communicated with Yu Shouchen in complicated hand
gestures. Like a deaf-mute, she did it so fast and so skillfully that there was no way for an outsider to guess her meaning.
She took off the sphygmomanometer, put it away in its
metal case and closed the lid.
Then she said solemnly, “Chairman Mao teaches us: One
must be loyal and honest to the party.”
I repeated the quotation after her. Just as all priests represent Jesus, in China all politically privileged men and
women, whether they were members or not, might well rep-
resent the party. I said to the party in a tone of sincerity. “I have learned this by heart.”
“Before you came to the clinic, were you engaged in any
strenuous exercise?”
“No.”
“No?” Her eyes doubled in size.
“No.” I also doubled the volume of my voice.
“Say that again.”
“No! I swear to Chairman Mao!” Now I understood per-
fectly the possibilities of looking bold and self-assured.
“All right. You may leave now.”
Released. Was I released for being guilty or innocent?
“Okay…” I looked at her expectantly, hoping she could
write me a sick leave pass. If I couldn’t leave the farm, I could at least take some rest on the farm. If I couldn’t get full-time rest, then part-time rest would do.
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“You may continue doing routine work. Just pay more
attention to your nutrition.”
I promptly seized the chance to show my cleverness.
“May I have a day off to buy some nutritious food in town?”
“Leave your money with me. I’ll ask our manager to buy
some for you.”
“Then…” I could not allow my sweat and pain to go for
nothing, nor would I allow myself to be scared and shocked to no purpose. I said hastily, “Can you write me a few sick-meal tickets?”
“All right.” She was pretty generous about this and gave me a whole week’s worth of sick-meal permits and a few
vitamin B12 tablets. Although a sick meal was nothing but a bowl of soft noodles, the tickets proved that I was not pretending to be sick and gave me hope for my next try. My
first battle had not ended in complete defeat after all. But it had exhausted me, and I was listless for three days. I actually did become sick. But my efforts were not totally wasted. It was a necessary trial, and I had gained some knowledge
about my opponents, Yu Shouchen and Liu Tiemei. I re-
membered one of the supreme commands from my days as a
Red Guard: “We must look down upon the enemy in strat-
egy but deal with the enemy seriously in tactics.” Now I saw that the two doctors were not omniscient gods with
three heads and six arms and that the clinic was not an
impregnable bulwark.
While I was racking my brain to find a way to go to
town, a major event related to asking for leave occurred on the farm. The protagonist was my roommate and colleague, a former professor of chemistry. I’d like to introduce this respectable elder man, Gui Renzhong, before telling his
story. He was already sixty. I called him my roommate
because he and I slept in adjacent cots in the huge dormi-tory. He was my colleague because he and I were both herds-men. Every night I heard his wretched screams, which were not the voice of a human but a ghost’s wailing in a midnight 3 9
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bamboo grove tossed by the wind. Gui himself could not
make such shrill, quavering sounds except during one of his nightmares.
His wife Jane, a dozen years his junior, was a delicate, beautiful woman, a Hawaii-born lady of one-half Chinese
blood, one-quart
er black blood and one-quarter white
blood. In 1965 she came to China from America with her
husband Gui Renzhong. She was thrown into a panic by
what happened in 1966. Her Anchor (Gui Renzhong’s
English name) was taken away from her. All their books,
cosmetics, and expensive clothes were burned to ashes, and she was swept out of her house like dust. She found herself a survival nest in a janitor’s closet beneath the stairs. In order to follow revolutionary trends, she exchanged her snow-white Russian blanket for a grass-green PLA uniform. You can well imagine how funny she looked – her natural
brownish red curls simply refused to stay under her army cap. As soon as she tucked them in, they slipped out again.
The watching Red Guards felt so provoked that they could not help clipping their scissors aloud. She went around
pleading for Anchor, telling everyone that he was not guilty, not a spy. When they were in America, he had longed for his motherland, wept for his motherland, praised her Yellow
and Yangtze Rivers. He had told her, “There’s a paradise above, and there are Suzhou and Hangzhou on earth.” Jane told people, “We came a long way from America to China.
We even took a detour to Japan to avoid suspicion – isn’t this the best evidence to show that Anchor loves China?”
But nobody believed it, because she and her Anchor came
from the dirtiest land, from the most reactionary, most
treacherous of people: after all, at least eighty percent of Americans were CIA agents. Later, Jane was told about a
newly emerged man of enormous power whose words could
change any man’s political identity, including that of a man like Anchor. After a long search, Jane finally located him.
He was short and fat, with protruding lips. After saying a 4 0
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single word, “This – ” he needed a pause to gasp for air. He loved to take off his shoes and sit cross-legged like a Buddha on the sofa, although his bodyguard had to assist him with every movement of his legs. The first time Jane went to see him, he did not allow her to be near him, perhaps for fear of catching U.S. imperialist germs. At a distance of twenty-six feet, she was stopped by a bodyguard with a pistol. After this important man had heard Jane’s tearful appeal, rendered in broken Chinese mixed with English, he did not
respond for a long time. Jane saw a pair of amazed, idiotic eyes flicker, and his eternally open mouth made a clucking sound as his Adam’s apple slithered to swallow some saliva.
“I’ve heard your case. Let’s talk… next…next time.…”
His words gave Jane a glint of light at the end of the long tunnel. Three days later, she was summoned to see him
again. This time there were no bodyguards, and the one who accompanied him was his wife – a thin, sallow hag with
worry written all over her face. The important man stam-
mered, “I’ll find a way, find…a way.…”
Overjoyed, Jane rushed forward to kiss his wife’s reedlike, withered hand. Then she stooped to kiss his feet, which had long been freed from his square-toed leather shoes. He was suddenly shaking all over and seemed to be bending his
hard-to-bend waist to help Jane up. Jane’s face was washed by grateful tears. But at the same time, Jane was puzzled by him: he suddenly gasped fearfully and his swollen red face turned purple. She thought he was having a stroke or something; his two small round eyes were beaming bloodily
bright. While Jane was at a loss, he fell like a huge sack of rice, crushing her to the carpet. A most unexpected and
most horrible thing happened: That sallow, shriveled wife of his did not even try to stop the rape. Instead, she desperately held Jane’s legs apart and with loud sobs begged Jane to obey her husband, to help him accomplish what he could
not have done on his own.
Afterward, Jane was sent to a lunatic asylum, and there
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she turned into the filthiest, ugliest, and most violent madwoman. Dragging a long chain behind her, she cried in
English over and over from the barbed-wire enclosure,
“God! God! God!”
Jane’s tragedy had become public news for every-
one except her husband, Gui Renzhong. The very night I
launched my assault on the clinic, Gui Renzhong saw a note on his makeshift brick pillow as he was changing for bed.
He put on his glasses and hurriedly read it through. It said,
“Your Jane is dying in Hospital 808.”
Gui Renzhong hopped up like a locust, plunged toward
the farm headquarters in his undershirt and shorts, and
pounded at the door of the PLA representative, who threw the door open with an angry roar. “You! How dare you come to see me in your shorts?”
“PLA rep, look at yourself. You’re also wearing shorts to see me, aren’t you? And yours are flower printed.”
The PLA rep touched his bare legs self-consciously.
“Well, what’s up? In the middle of the night like this – ”
“I want to ask for a furlough. I must ask for a furlough. I must – ”
“Why?”
“Look, my Jane – ”
He passed the note to the PLA rep, who smacked his lips
as he glanced through it. Thinking it over, he raised his eyebrows and asked, “Who wrote this note?”
“I don’t know. I found it on my brick.”
“On your brick?”
“Yes. The brick I use for my pillow.”
The PLA rep gave a cold chuckle. “Can the message be
trusted?”
“What are you asking?”
“I’m saying, you’d better stay on the farm to reform yourself honestly.”
“But my Jane, she – she is dying!” Gui Renzhong’s tears
gushed out. “She came back with me just to – ”
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“To what?” The PLA rep knew he was going to say “to
suffer,” and he waited to spring. When Gui Renzhong realized he was about to commit a terrible political error, he stiffened. Then – anxiety produces wisdom – he finished off his sentence in a most satisfactory way.
“She came back with me to…to be educated.”
“That’s right. She gets her education and you get yours.
Both of you need to be educated. No furlough for you.
Please go back to bed. Attention! About face! Double
time!”
Gui Renzhong could do nothing but follow the PLA rep’s
commands. But he did not run back to his dorm. Instead, he dashed to the giant concrete statue of Chairman Mao that stood at the farm entrance, prostrating himself at the feet of the statue and praying silently. He knew that, if he pleaded with the PLA rep again, the consequences would be even
more horrible. In his blurred consciousness, he gained a sudden realization that the Mao Zedong in a PLA overcoat was the great leader who commanded everyone, including the
PLA representatives. He looked up at Mao Zedong, who
stood gazing off into the distance, and said through his sobs,
“Chairman Mao, you have always been generous and big-
hearted. Even if I am a poor sinner, my Jane at least is innocent. You should take pity on her for the Chinese blood in her. Now she is in danger of dying. I believe the message is true. Nobody would play a joke like that on me. She must be worried to death because of my absence. Although I am a poor wretch, enslaved by Western ideas, and have received many years of bourgeois education and sweated in America for U.S. imperialism, I have confessed my entire past and am willing to reform. The cows in my care are free of disease and disaster. They pass by every day; you must have seen them. Of course you’ve seen them bec
ause you are a great leader who knows everything. This spring I didn’t get a
wink of sleep for several nights running in order to take care of the newborn calves. At least these damned Ph.D. hands of 4 3
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mine were finally put to some good use. I received a dozen little calves and all are healthy and strong. I am atoning for my sins little by little. Now I’ve also learned how to milk a cow. But unfortunately my Jane is in danger in the hospital.
I’m afraid she won’t even have a chance to drink a cup of milk again. Oh, how she loves milk. She always told me
how when she was small she went with her father on a journey to the American West. On a cattle farm, she could drink a large bucket of fresh milk at one meal. I knew the bucket she meant was merely a toy bucket, perhaps like a big cup.
Chairman Mao, I beg you, please put in a word with the
PLA rep for me. I beg you. What a benevolent man you are!
It’s a pity you haven’t met my Jane. If you had met her, you would be very fond of her. She is such an innocent, lovely lady, and she loves our country so profoundly. In America if she had heard someone speak ill of China or the Communist party, she would bash his head in with her high heels.
“She was born in poverty. As you know, not all American
girls are capitalist young ladies. Her father was a sandwich man. I’m sorry, Chairman Mao, I don’t mean that her father was a bread with sliced meat. No. What I mean is that her father was a humble man who made his living by hanging
advertising posters on his body, front and back. Jane grew up in the midst of discrimination and insults. Chairman
Mao, you should take pity on her for the fact that she left all her relatives and friends to follow me to China. She strove to march toward the bright future. Now she has no relatives around and no friends to comfort her in sickness. Chairman Mao, don’t you know that? During the Korean War she, like her father, hung a placard before her with the Chinese character Renmin Zhongguo hao! and another behind her with its English translation ‘Bravo, People’s China!’ For such a trifling thing, she was held in custody for three days, as she was too young to go to jail. Chairman Mao, I wouldn’t dare to bring up what I’ve just told you at meetings because people would think I was trying to evade my own crimes or try-4 4