by Hua Bai
quotations in unison, their vigorous actions had now
become chaotic and sluggish. The splendid past scenes of Red Guards crossing the Yangtze River had now became a
pitiful scene of struggling for life. Those heroic fights had turned into monkeys rioting in a swamp. The distorted
scenes flashed back, the faded colors reappeared. All fragments, nothing but fragments. The sonorous music bore me up again and again from my distress. I had never been
moved like this before, had never gained so many insights, had never rid my brain so thoroughly of waste. I felt heavy as well as light, sorrowful as well as happy at the same time
– a mixed feeling of rising and sinking. Once past its painfully cramped stage, the music marched over vast spaces
with resolute, frank melodies. Then it returned to stillness with a lingering depression.
A long moment passed before I knew my eyes were still
closed. Opening them, I turned to Yunqian and found her
lapels were soaked with tears. She did not weep or sob. Her tears just seeped out. The record player ticked to a stop. The world inside the cocoon was frozen in a void. We sat in the grim hollow for a long time. Then I uttered a helpless sigh, a sigh that sent a chill up and down my spine.
After another long pause, Yunqian stood up, turned off
the light, and quietly opened the window facing the street.
Pale moonlight poured in, and the world outside the cocoon quieted down at last and became an inhabitable place. Fresh 1 0 1
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air filled the room at once. I walked to the window and
looked at the shaded path in the dim streetlight. There was not even a dog’s barking – only some loose, big-character posters rustling in the wind. She looked at me with tears in her large eyes. As if by magic, I could see my own image clearly in her pupils. She said softly (only to me), “Only at this time of day do I open the window. Like a jailer, I open the door of my own cell and let my eyes out for relaxation.
During the daytime, inside the window is a small jail, and outside the window is a large prison. I’d rather imprison myself in the small one, all alone. Only my imagination is free. Here, I can exist for myself. Stepping out of it, I have to exist for others. All my behavior and words have been denied by others. Although the prisoners in the large
prison, with their own complaints, hardships, and unspeakable sufferings, are pitiful men, their pitifulness turns them only into starving wolves, waiting for their chance to tear up any among them who appears weaker and more pitiful.
In order to avoid becoming so cruel, I try hard not to visit the large prison. In order to protect yourself there you have to be vigilant and pretentious all the time, never blink. It’s too exhausting. Why should life be so exhausting? Every
minute they are ready to take you out. Why do they
demand that hundreds of millions of people must be spot-
less? Is it that a human being lives just to avoid making mistakes? Without any defects, can one still be flesh and blood? What is sin, after all? If life is full of sin, then no one should be called a sinner. If they demand that others be spotless, how about themselves? Have they never committed any sin? Are they really as pure as plaster statues? Certainly not. They are vicious hunters who set snares for animals. They hear the painful cries of the captured animals in the snares as music. Isn’t this the greatest sin in the world?
When snares are set everywhere, can they themselves still walk without obstacles? Ah!’’ She heaved a deep sigh, deep as the sound of wind coming from the autumn woods. One
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could imagine thousands of yellow leaves falling with the wind. “Again I’ve squandered my emotions over things that have long bored me to death. You are incorrigible, Fang
Yunqian. Don’t laugh at me!” She sneered at herself, helplessly shaking her bobbed hair.
I gaze at her window. In the past it was pasted over with black paper; now a cloth curtain with tiny blue flowers hangs there.
She and I stood on the borderline between the small jail and the large prison. Under the lingering effects of Tchaikovsky’s booming symphony and a young girl’s heartfelt
monologue, I seemed to dwindle to a tiny speck, a spiritual pauper. I had never experienced such a pleasant mental pain before. Against Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony and Yunqian’s philosophical deliberations, anything from my mouth would seem either redundant or foolish. Even if I spoke for a whole night, my words would not carry one-tenth of the
weight of hers because her words were not spoken, yet
flowed like spring water from a deep valley, nurturing the natural flowers of wisdom grown in the dark woods. I alone had the luck to watch the glistening of those flowers. I went up close to her, and she gradually moved her tearful face to my shoulder and held me in her arms, quite naturally. Soon my face was covered with her tears and with mine. Then our burning cheeks dried her tears and mine. I felt her soft lips nibble at my face and neck; she was looking for my mouth.
She kissed it greedily. For the first time in my life I learned that kissing did not mean a simple touch of the lips. I imitated her clumsily. Then, I became even more ravenous in kissing back.
Suddenly, a shriek like a bayonet thrust itself into our world, and we shoved each other away in horror. Not until three seconds had passed did we realize that someone was shouting in the street loudspeaker.
“The latest supreme command! Attention, revolutionary
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comrades! Please get up immediately! We are going to
broadcast the latest supreme command!”
Yunqian shut the window at once and walked silently to
the iron bed, sitting on it. I followed her to distance ourselves from the shouting. When I sat by her side, she
grabbed me. I could feel her blazing body turning icy cold, shivering.
I gaze at her window. In the past it was pasted over with black paper; now a cloth curtain with tiny blue flowers hangs there.
Holding each other tightly, we fell onto the narrow bed.
What happened next I can’t recall clearly. However, I
remember she was not the experienced fox I had expected
but a virgin. I was disappointed, depressed, upset, troubled with all sorts of self-questioning. Can I do this to her? Is it legal? Is it right? What if someone catches us? If I do it, what will she think of me, and what will I think of myself?
How can we face each other in the morning light? All the pleasure I could have possibly enjoyed was swallowed by the flood of these endless questions.
As expected, she looked wronged, as if she had lost something or exposed her soft spot to me. We dared not even
look at each other. From the corner of my eye, I watched her in a sorrowful state of mind. While I was doing my morning toilet, she cooked our breakfast silently – two bowls of oatmeal and some toast. She covered the floor with old
newspapers and sat on them. I hesitated because every page of the newspaper carried Chairman Mao’s portraits and his supreme commands in bold print. Sitting or wiping your
feet on them would be sacrilege. However, when I saw the window pasted over with black paper, I saw how I really was in a cocoon and could be seen by nobody else but her and how she could be seen only by me. With a faint grin, I sat down beside her. We nibbled our bread and sipped our
gruel. After eating, I offered to do the dishes in the little 1 0 4
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kitchen. When I returned, Tchaikovsky’s symphony was
again radiating in the cocoon. Sitting on the iron bed, looking up at the bulb that shone day and night, she was warming her hands with a glass of hot water. She seemed to have transcended herself and was lost in music, he
r eyes reflecting the rays of the light.
With every turn of the record, the needle jumped once,
creating an extra quarter note and an interval of a sixth not written by Tchaikovsky.
So that is how Yunqian and I started living together. She forbade me from getting in touch with the outside world
except when, wearing a big mouth cover, I went to the farm periodically to deliver my medical reports, with the seals of the hospital and the chief doctor, to the PLA rep. She alone shouldered the minimal diplomatic work required for our
survival. Each time I handed in a medical report with the words, “contagious tuberculosis, positive,” the PLA rep
treated me like a ghost. Holding my report at arm’s length from his eyes with tweezers from the clinic, he gave it a hasty glance and sent me away. He would say, “Chairman
Mao teaches us: Do not hide your disease for fear of the doctor. Because disease befalls you, take it easy. All right, take advantage of the treatment. You may leave now.” I stretched out my hand for him to shake, but he merely waved goodbye. I suppressed a laugh. He was always lecturing us on the supreme command, “Fear neither hardship nor death.” Yet
he wildly feared death. In the thirties, romantic novelists resorted to this incurable disease to create tragedies for their lovers. But tuberculosis was no longer a dangerous disease in the seventies.
“Leave now or you’ll miss the bus to the city.” Only then did I realize that I was a patient with a contagious disease.
The PLA rep never asked where I was living or what I was doing for money or whether I was still making revolution in the depths of my soul. His indifference gave me the cover I needed.
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Where did I get all these medical reports? During the
years of white terror, how could there be a hospital or doctor who would dare to commit the crime of forging reports to help a petit bourgeois intellectual escape labor reform? Yunqian told me the following story:
She got my medical reports from a chief doctor who was
currently the child of fortune. This doctor had once lived in the apartment opposite Yunqian’s. Now he had moved
to Red Hill Village, famous for its celebrity dwellers: newly promoted ministers, bureau chiefs, major actresses and
actors of model operas, and doctors who had gained their merits by curing the diseases of the nouveau riche. Doctor Jia Songli belonged to the last group. Early in the Cultural Revolution, he had been tortured nearly to death because he had treated capitalist roaders and reactionary academic authorities with his excellent knowledge of medicine.
Worse still, he had studied in Germany as a young man. At the mere mention of Germany, those class-conscious, vigilant party members would naturally associate him with Hitler. Their imagination well surpassed that of poets, and Jia Songli was tortured as a scapegoat of the long-dead Hitler.
Every day he had to dress up like Hitler, with a little moustache on his lip and a tuft of hair drooping from his forehead. He wore a tall hat and carried a gong. Giving the
Nazi salute with his right hand between the beats of the gong, he paraded along the route designated by the revolutionary rebels. If he slacked off at all during his parade, they would make his route even longer and his hat even taller and heavier (by putting some pig iron inside). However
absurd Jia Songli’s performance looked, it inspired no
laughter at the time. Even the street urchins were shocked rather than amused by his show. After each parade he had to drag himself to his upstairs room. No one, not even his wife, would lend him a hand. Yet little Yunqian often came to his rescue, calling him uncle, asking after him with charming smiles, sharing her food with him, giving him cups of hot 1 0 6
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water, and even sending him local papers published by all sorts of factions. To her, his Hitler moustache and tall hat were invisible.
In 1969, when one of his old capitalist-roader patients became a VIP member of the proletarian headquarters, Jia Songli was promoted because he was indispensable to the
VIP’s health. Ridding himself of Hitler’s little moustache and tall hat, he became a man of merit to the proletarian headquarters. The chairman of the revolutionary committee at his hospital happened to be a former student who had
once attempted to kill Jia; he never dreamed that Jia would return to the hospital alive. When Jia resumed his work in the hospital, the chairman, to show his goodwill, appointed Jia as the chief doctor. Whatever Jia demanded, he would agree to. In fact, Jia did whatever he wanted first and
informed the chairman later. Jia’s rehabilitation not only was a severe blow to the chairman’s morale but also was
a political threat because of a strange thing he had done in the past.
That strange thing had occurred during the first winter
of the Cultural Revolution. At that time, the chairman of the revolutionary committee was the general of the Rebels of the Municipal Medicine Circle. The headquarters, set in the former dean’s office, became his private court as well as his pleasure palace. One night, the general and his underlings gave Jia Songli the third degree, trying to force him to confess his participation in Hitler’s Beer-Hall Putsch. Jia Songli appealed repeatedly to them that he had no knowledge of history, had never heard of the putsch, let alone been part of it. Of course, his appeal was interpreted as resistance, which must be met with corporal punishment. So they
forced Jia to kneel on the floor with eight heavy bricks on his back. Dismissing his case, the general summoned a
young female doctor named Lu Xiu. He then ordered his
underlings to leave and to bar the headquarters entrance from outside. What about Jia Songli kneeling on the floor?
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Well, the general considered his teacher little more than a broken chair. He believed his teacher would never pick up his stethoscope again in this life. Even if he survived, he would be politically dead. A politically dead person was little different from a pig or a dog, whose existence held no threat to human beings. Therefore he did not give a second thought to performing the following interrogation right
before his teacher.
“Lu Xiu. How do you feel now, my old classmate? What
you refused me for five years I gained easily last night, didn’t I?” Although pale, Lu Xiu was still beautiful. She sobbed but refused to answer. “You can’t blame me. I had hoped that we could love each other equally, like old classmates, and I pursued you patiently. But you wouldn’t accept me. Not even I could foresee that today I would become the master of your fate. Your crime is very grave.”
“I was innocent. It was by accident, a slip of my pen, that I wrote a slogan incorrectly.”
“The evidence of your crime is in my hands, but I haven’t shown it to anyone else. You can still be saved, if you – ”
“No! No!”
“No? You already did it with me last night.” The general grinned.
“That was forced. You drugged me. What you did was
immoral and illegal.”
“Illegal? Immoral?” He laughed savagely and swiveled in
his chair.
“You had your way; won’t you please let me go? I won’t –
won’t report you – ”
“What?” he shouted. “Will the sun rise in the west
tomorrow? You report me? Go ahead and try. If they don’t accuse you of class revenge, you will still be labeled a class enemy who attempted to corrupt a leader of the revolutionary rebels. In the end I will remain what I am!”
“But you already did it to me.”
Jia Songli’s back and knees ached terribly. He endured
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the pain as sweat dripped to the floor.
Yet as he listened to this strange interrogation, the pain in his heart overwhelmed his physical suffering.
“Yes, I did. And I want to do it again. I want to do it
when you are awake, not in a coma. I want you to react like a woman. I want you to twist, to groan, to hold me tight.”
She wept in indescribable sorrow. A pitiful young
woman, trembling with fear like a hare cowering before a wolf, she appeared absolutely hopeless and helpless. Her weak nerves had gone numb.
Jia wanted to leap up with a roar and smash the general’s head with the bricks on his back. Yet he knew he was unable to stand up. And he knew few people could stand up at this moment. He wanted to die. Although people turned into
various strange creatures in stories he had read, none could match this general. His boldness shocked him but also won his admiration. Now he saw that boldness belonged to a
man in power who had nothing to fear, and displayed itself in front of the weak. Once he realized this, Jia Songli felt he was being humiliated more than the young woman was. He
sighed. “I am weak, weaker and more pitiful than a woman.
No. I am a dead man, dead in body and soul.” He found it impossible to believe he was still a feeling man with a memory, and this former student of his definitely treated him as subhuman. This, then, was not really a case of the general behaving like a brute before an actual witness.
Jia Songli found no way to tell Yunqian what the general then did right in front of him. The general never imagined that Jia Songli, a man once sentenced to death and a nonbe-ing with eight bricks on his back, would stand up again.
Wearing his white gown, he came back to work at the same hospital, a real human being. To the student-general-chair, Jia’s return meant not just the restoration of a job but the appearance of a living witness to his crime. It was too late for regrets – the sun indeed had risen in the west.