by Hua Bai
speak like a man in front of men, a man will never speak like a man in front of Satan.” He needed someone to let him know that the statue was high because its steel frame was large and so it consumed more cement. But who was here to enlighten him? A bodhisattva was merely a Buddhist god
that did not really exist as a physical being in this universe; therefore, he could not be produced by way of chemistry. I alone could save old Gui, and I felt obliged to bring him out of the wilderness. To refuse to save him would be inhumanly cynical and cruel. He had suffered enough. Now it was time for me to help him swim the bitter sea.
With these thoughts, I felt a shining halo over my head, and my noble sentiments so thrilled me that my eyes filled with warm tears. It would be difficult to catechize him face to face. Better to write it out so he could read it over and over. I took out a notebook from the satchel and wrote the following:
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Old Gui:
I have been worried about you for some time. How are
you? You aren’t doing fine, I know that, because you are too naive, far too naive. Although no irregularity in a
chemical reaction can escape your eye, when confronted
with the false phenomena of the sacred in life, particu-
larly with certain wooden idols, you quickly lose your
power of perception. Worse still, you exalt those false
images with a dreamlike enthusiasm. Each of us has a
prison in his mind, but yours is much more fortified.
Why don’t you try sticking your head through the iron
bars to see the vast sky beyond the prison? Sometimes
just one more step will lead to a new world. I sincerely hope you accept my advice. Turn it over and over in your mind, pondering it like the tables, formulas, and equations you have mastered before. You will understand my
message. May one opening (insight) lead to one hundred
openings.
Your loving student,
Liang Rui
Month x, Date x, Year x
I folded the message into a butterfly bow and thrust it
into old Gui’s hand as I was leaving the farm. I whispered,
“A letter for you.”
“A letter?” He reacted strangely.
“For you alone to read.”
“Me alone?” His expression grew even more strange; he
stared at me pitifully.
“Yes. Read it several times. Think things over. Then
burn it.…”
“Burn it?” His voice became as dry as withered leaves.
I asked him another three times to burn the letter before I walked away with a relieved heart. I was lucky in having to wait only a minute before a bus came. As I dozed during the ride, I wore a broad smile because I had made progress.
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A beautiful new world was unfolding under my feet. I was imagining how old Gui looked on his awakening: his forehead must be radiating wisdom and his eyes becoming clear like a fountain, his face washed by tears of gratitude for me.
The screech of the bus sent me flying to the roof and then dumped me back into the seat. My head and buttocks hurt
badly. An accident? A two-car crash, or someone run over?
The moment I straightened myself out, the door opened and in stepped two men. To my surprise, one was the defense
leader of our farm; the other was his guard. The farm’s
defense office was like the state’s Department of Police, plus the Department of Security, plus court and prosecutor. Its leader had the power of minister plus judge plus prosecutor.
All four eyes sized me up. “Liang Rui, get off the bus!”
“What’s happened?” I stood up.
“You can ask that?” The leader was in a rage. “No nonsense now, roll yourself out of here!” Roll? Of course I actually walked out. As soon as I was off the bus, they snapped handcuffs on me. They used a fashionable new method:
pulling my right hand over my shoulder and twisting my
left behind my back, they locked my two hands together. I don’t know why I asked them, “Why shackle me like that?”
The guard said, “This is called ‘Su Qin Carrying His
Sword’. What a bumpkin you are.” Of course I was a bump-
kin; after all, not everybody has the right to exercise dictatorship over others. The Chinese, with their high culture, love to do everything in style. The Western Lake in Hangzhou has ten scenes of beauty. So everywhere in China people try to imitate it, as if without ten scenes a place would not be worth seeing. Refined literary names for the beautiful scenes stimulate a man’s appetite for sight-seeing. The bodies of a cat and a snake roasted together carries the name Dragon Fighting the Tiger. The body of a butchered
chicken decorated with a tomato is called Phoenix Facing the Sun. Inventing beautiful names to match cuisine is
understandable, because the names may serve as appetizers.
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But why did they need a heroic name for the manner in
which they shackled me? Could that also stimulate people’s appetites? It sure seemed to. Although it didn’t take long to shackle me and push me into the jeep, in that short time I attracted a large crowd. There were no villages on either side of the highway, so where did they come from? Did they spring out of the ground? China has certainly earned its fame as a country with a large population. The onlookers were excited to see that I, who was being devoured by the beast of power, was not one of them. Their happiness seemed to show their favor for the power and their complic-ity in the act of devouring.
The jeep returned along the route it had come. It took at least a mile to throw off the onlookers. The springy seats of the jeep could by no means be compared with those in a luxury car. In less than five minutes I tasted the heroism of Su Qin Carrying His Sword. My wrists, elbows, and back ached intolerably. I started groaning, as I tried to guess what crime I had committed. Had they discovered my illness to be false? No, impossible. As long as that head doctor was still in power, he would take responsibility. Even if they had found out the true nature of my illness, did they need to stop a passenger bus to arrest me? Had my affair with Yunqian been discovered? No, even more unlikely. We were
always hidden in our cocoon. Who would bother worming
into it to catch us? Even if we were discovered, at most we should only be criticized for behaving immorally before
marriage, a defect that can be corrected through education. I sorted through my entire short history but failed to find any crime, mistake, or even an error of omission for which I deserved to be arrested. I was certain they had made a mistake in arresting me, producing another miscarriage of justice. Yet they had to have some reason to arrest me! Yes –
suddenly it came to me in a flash. Perhaps the message I had passed to old Gui had fallen into the wrong hands.
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No, impossible. Absolutely impossible. After all, I told him the letter was for him alone to read. Even if the message upset his three loyalties and four infinite loves, he would not report me so fast. I had repeatedly told him: “Read it several times. Think things over. Then burn it.” If he had read it twice and thought things over for three minutes
before reporting, they still could not have arrested me so fast. Unless he reported me the moment he read the first line, as if he had discovered a dagger on unfolding the sheet.
I thought it utterly impossible – a hundred times impos-
sible, a thousand times impossible, ten thousand times
impossible.
But the facts taught me that it was possible – a hundred times possible, a thousand times possible, ten thousand
times pos
sible.
Before the jeep arrived at the farm, the huge shed had
already been prepared for a large criticism meeting. Their experience in handling such meetings was truly admirable.
When I was escorted to the shed, I looked up and saw an
extra-large banner hanging across the stage: Criticize the Active Counterrevolutionary Liang Rui, which already determined the nature of my crime and put a tall criminal’s hat on me. Therefore, as soon as I entered, like a famous Beijing Opera actor striking a pose as the embroidered curtain rises, I received an uproarious welcome. Slogans showered down
on me like a storm and hundreds of fists were raised in my direction, stretching and withdrawing like cannon barrels.
Being denounced by the pointing fingers of thousands gave me the sense of being a star. Suddenly I felt like a great president with a sky-scraping hat. Swarms of people on tiptoes, squeezing and nudging each other, pushed forward to catch a glimpse of me. I was escorted to the stage. Holding my head high, I stood there in the heroic pose of Su Qin Carrying His Sword. Hysterical shouting distorted everyone’s
voice; I could not make out what they were shouting. When 1 9 9
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my head was thumped by a fist, I guessed they were shouting for me to lower my head. So I lowered my head, unable to see anything but my toes.
The solemn voice of the PLA rep rose above the din:
“Chairman Mao teaches us: ‘When the old reactionaries are wiped out, new ones will grow. If we lose our vigilance, we will suffer a great loss.’ ‘The trees want to be still but the wind will not stop.’ ‘Never be so bookish and naive as to treat complex class struggle as a simple matter.’” From the quotations he recited I could tell the ordeal I was about to go through, and my body froze from the inside out. The
PLA rep continued in a voice quivering with indignation:
“Comrades, revolutionary comrades! Don’t some of you
think the Cultural Revolution has carried on too long?
Don’t some believe that all cow ghosts and snake-spirits have been wiped out? And don’t some blame us for shooting mosquitoes with cannons or creating a storm in a teacup?
I hope those comrades will draw a lesson from this active counterrevolutionary. Comrade Gui Renzhong, would you
please come to the stage?”
The words comrade and please used by the PLA rep created a disturbance in the meeting. I was unable to see but could well imagine: being surprised by the favor, Gui Renzhong’s legs turned soft. It took a long time for him to reach the stage. The PLA rep said to him, “Please read to our comrades the reactionary manifesto of the active counterrevolutionary Liang Rui!” Manifesto? If I weren’t shackled, I’d have dashed over to tear him into pieces. When did I ever write a reactionary manifesto?
Gui Renzhong started in a funereal tone. “Comrades! Ac-
tive counterrevolutionary Comrade Liang Rui – No! He is
not a comrade but an enemy. Taking advantage of us being bedmates, he wrote me a letter in an attempt to shake my revolutionary belief. Before I had read it through, I smelled something fishy and immediately handed it over to the PLA rep. Now I’ll read this reactionary manifesto – ”
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Old Gui’s reading shocked me. Did I really write that?
How could I have written something like that? Could I have been so careless as that? Now even I was finding the message to be extremely reactionary. Before old Gui had finished it, I was already soaked in sweat. Then the model
fighters of the farm vied to take the stage. Nearly all of them became professional speakers, delivering elegant criticisms with associations, allusions, political theories, and class guidelines. Each heightened his speech with a grave face, harsh tone, and grandiose terminology, as well as with physical gestures such as beating the chest, stamping the feet, and spraying saliva in all directions. Although I had expected such expertise, I could not help shouting bravo in my mind for their penetrating analyses and apt associations.
Let me give you some samples:
“Comrades, my revolutionary comrades! Listen, what
kind of words are these: ‘How are you? You aren’t doing
fine, I know that. Because you are too naive, far too naive.’
Do these words sound strange or new? No. They smell reactionary. Chairman Mao teaches us, ‘Reactionaries are waving their hands at you.’ What does waving their hands mean? The message ‘How are you? You aren’t doing fine, I know that.
Because you are too naive, far too naive’ is a typical example.
The author cunningly hid the supplement to the sentence.
Too naive with whom? It is obvious that his spear is aimed at our great leader Chairman Mao, at the great, glorious, and flawless Chinese Communist party, and at the revolutionary masses. The beginning of his message exposes
his inveterate hatred toward them.” At this moment, the
speaker could not help shouting from the bottom of his
heart: “Long live our great leader Chairman Mao. Long,
long, long may he live!” The audience echoed his words
with the force of thunder and lightning.
Another example: “The phrase irregularity in a chemical reaction sounds exactly like the counterrevolutionary Hu Feng. Is the author really talking about chemistry? No.
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Counterrevolutionaries know the importance of putting politics in command. Some of our comrades are naive enough to complain that we have overemphasized politics. The counterrevolutionaries have done it much more than we have! The author then talks about the false phenomena in life, particularly those of the sacred! Attention, comrades! What are these false phenomena of the sacred in life? What can be called sacred in life? What else if it is not our loyalty to the great leader and our belief in revolution? But he does not stop there. Listen to the next line: ‘You exalt those false images with a dreamlike enthusiasm.’ Notice the arrogance of this counterrevolutionary, who assumes the reactionary intellectual’s pose of ‘I alone wake while the whole world sleeps.’ He is slandering the great, stormy, revolutionary movement we are currently carrying out as the false dream of a single individual. How vicious he is! If we tolerate him, who can we not tolerate? Down with the counterrevolutionary Liang Rui!”
Another wave of slogans resounded in the shed.
Another example: “This counterrevolutionary is extreme-
ly vicious. He attacks every happy man living in our socialist China for having a prison in his mind. What does the mind prison refer to? It refers to the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought. He has issued
a reactionary call for us to step out of the prison, saying ‘just one more step will lead to a new world.’ What new world
is he really talking about? No doubt, the so-called Free World. This counterrevolutionary Liang Rui must be a
running dog of U.S. imperialism. We can be certain, without any investigation, that he is a spy of the American
FBI. Down with U.S. imperialism! Down with Soviet revi-
sionism!” U.S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism were a matching pair. Each phrase sounded incomplete without
its partner, even in slogans.
Another one: “‘May one opening lead to one hundred
openings.’ What does that mean? No doubt it is a reactionary password. Be open to whom? His first opening seems to 2 0 2
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be toward Taiwan and Taiwan’s spy organizations. This first opening will then lead to U.S. imperialism, French imperialism, British imperialism, Soviet revisionism, and so on: more than a hundred openings. How dangerous one opening is, my comrades!”
Yet another. “The reasons Liang Rui joined the American
&nb
sp; FBI and Chiang Kai-shek’s spy networks to sabotage our
socialism can be traced to his class background.” When did I join these spy organizations? How did I join them? Did I have contacts to introduce me? Who? Where? I searched my mind in earnest. “Both his parents were reactionary intellectuals. The moment the great Cultural Revolution started, they committed suicide to resist the revolutionary campaign and to show their deep-seated hatred for the Communist
party. Liang Rui has buried hatred in his heart because of his late parents and has attempted to revenge them at every
possible turn. Now he is honing his sword. Shouldn’t we
hone ours?!”
There were too many wonderful speeches to display
them all here. But they unexpectedly calmed me down, and I pondered them with pleasure. But old Gui was scared
almost to death; I could hear him shivering. His report on me, his vigilance and his loyalty had won him little forgiveness: nearly a third of the criticism speeches were
directed at him. For instance: “Why did the counterrevolutionary choose you? You must have something in common,
stinking together.” “How did you collaborate with him?
Why did he call himself a student of yours? Why? You
must have taught him his counterrevolutionary schemes.”
“It is to your credit that you exposed him in time and
regained your political head. However, the fact that he chose you and you alone proves what a dark, reactionary soul you have.” “Your relationship with him has exposed your ugly soul to the broad daylight. Don’t entertain the idea that you are different from him. You and he are wolves of the same pack!” Although my hands were shackled, I took pity on old 2 0 3
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Gui, fearing he would be too scared to live this thing
through. It was true that the PLA rep had a higher understanding of policy, for he said in a conciliatory tone: “Comrade Gui Renzhong – ” The term comrade dragged old Gui from the enemy side over to the ranks of the people. It was a reprieve from death. “Of course, he has made his own mistakes. But mistakes are different from crimes. Everyone