by Hua Bai
Comrades of the proletarian revolutionary factions, you
must know how sad I feel. The proletarian Cultural Revolution has been carried on for so long, yet it took us till now to dig up a malicious enemy like her. Chairman Mao is the
leader of the people of the whole world – the reddest, reddest sun in our hearts. Whoever dares to sabotage the image of Chairman Mao will be denounced and slain by the party, the nation, and the human race. How vicious is your wolfish ambition!’ The voice of Second Aunt Zhang, rising higher and higher, jumped two octaves at the last word and left a jarring sound, like scratching glass with an iron flint.
The crowd around her was aroused in great indignation
and shouted, ‘Long live, long, long live Chairman Mao!’
Grandma collapsed at her daughter’s feet.
“The representative from the combined committee of
police, prosecutor, and court seemed to direct policy well. A slight gesture from him subdued the waves of slogans.
‘Help her to her feet. And let her make a confession. Confess her motives, her criminal action, and her abettor.’
“Supported by her daughter, Grandma got to her feet, her face covered with tears and snot. The representative showed an even higher level of policy direction: ‘Give her a glass of water.’ But without touching the water, Grandma howled
hysterically, ‘I’ll confess – confess everything. Comrades, I deserve death ten thousand times over.’ Her address was
denounced immediately. Who would be a comrade of yours?
‘Chieftains, the crime was not committed by me. It was –
Lingzi, Lingzi who did it. She’s an ignorant child, a child who still eats her own shit. She’s too young to be responsible.’ Second Aunt Zhang rose in a rage. ‘Old fox, how dare 2 4 0
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you shunt your guilt onto the child!’ A wave from the representative shut her up.
“‘All right. Because you said it was done by the child, let me cross-examine her. Lingzi, your Grandma says you broke Chairman Mao’s sacred statue. Is that true?’ Lingzi looked around wide-eyed. Having no experience in such a grave situation, she was first scared and then fascinated. The grown-ups who spoke in strange tones and looked at people so mysteriously, were paying so much attention and were staring at her without blinking and waiting patiently. Grandma was
dead stiff, and her eyes flickered at Lingzi with a light in which pity and despair were mixed. The mother fixed her
eyes of love on Lingzi’s little mouth. Pursing her lips, Lingzi laughed. Looking this way and that, she asked, ‘What are you all talking about?’ The authority from the public prosecutor gave a detailed explanation with gestures, including the measures of the statue and its material. But Lingzi said,
‘I don’t know.’ Grandma was worried nearly to death. She suddenly knew what to do and said hurriedly, ‘Lingzi, it’s about your Grandpa Mao!’ Now Lingzi understood. She
smiled shyly and, pointing to the dimple on her cheek with the right thumb, she said, ‘I broke Grandpa Mao’s statue. I wanted to put a cap on his head. One touch, and he fell to the floor. Grandma asked me not to tell anyone.’ All eyes turned to Grandma, who suffered another wave of dizziness.
The representative made his decision: ‘Chairman Mao
teaches us: “Seek truth from the facts.” Now the case is clear. Lingzi is the chief criminal, and her accomplice is Guo-He Shi. Guo Yunling – Lingzi’s mother – should be
criticized for her irresponsible education of the child. Now I will pronounce judgment: Guo Yunling, although not pun-ishable by law, will return to her unit for disciplinary action. Guo-He Shi will receive labor reform by sweeping the public streets under the supervision of the masses. Guo Lingzi’s crime is serious, and the means she used to commit the crime are malicious. Although her attitude is good and 2 4 1
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she has made a confession, yet – ’ Sweeping everyone’s face with the sword of his eyes as if they were all criminals, he continued, ‘for such a hideous crime, no one can escape the law. No matter how high her position, no matter how many years she has worked for the revolution, no matter how long she has been a party member’ – now his cruel eyes fell on Lingzi – ‘and no matter how young a child she is, we must give her due punishment. We cannot calm the popular
anger without sentencing her to prison. Because she is still a child, it is decided that Guo Lingzi be sentenced to just two years’ imprisonment. The decision is effective immediately.’
When these words fell, Comrade Liu, the policeman, seized Guo Lingzi immediately from her mother’s arms. Lingzi
kicked and screamed at the top of her lungs. Grandma, with courage coming from an unknown source, dashed over to
take the child and begged aloud, ‘Please take me. I’m guilty.
It was I who committed this crime.’ Guo Yunling also
pleaded, ‘Please let me go to jail, instead of my child. Staying in the cadre school is not much different from sitting in jail.’ The man of authority pounded the table. ‘Don’t you have any respect for the law? Being steady, accurate, and merciless is our principle. We punish only the convicted criminal. During which dynasty in Chinese history can a
mother go to jail in place of her daughter?’ Guo Yunling pleaded more earnestly, ‘Please let me accompany her to jail, then. I would be happier with her in jail than worrying
about her at the cadre school. Please, please grant me this favor.’ Supporting his head with a fist, like Rodin’s The Thinker, the man of authority thought for three seconds and said with a decisive hand wave, ‘Okay!’ That was a year ago, and our prison has hosted the world’s youngest prisoner
with her mother ever since.”
A said, “You’re sure long-winded. Aren’t you thirsty?”
“Can you give me a bowl of water?”
“I have only a bladder full of urine.”
“Take it out. If you dare take it out, I will drink.”
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B said, “All right. No more kidding. E, how can you tell the story in so much detail, not having seen it yourself?
You must have added a lot of soy sauce and vinegar to the recipe.”
“Inevitable for oral literature. But Lingzi stands right before us; so does her mother. This means that no one has added any seasoning to its factual plot or theme. The facts are irrefutable.”
C said with a sigh, “That’s true. They are right before
our eyes.”
A said, “How did the big country girl to the left of the mother get here? She’s quite pretty.”
E said, “A mute. She and Lingzi are charged with the
same kind of crime.”
B said, “How come you know everything?”
“Living in a prison, you must keep your eyes open six
ways and your ears pricked in eight directions; otherwise, you will rot.”
C said, “How could a mute – ? I thought misfortune
came from the mouth, and wished I were a mute because
people can neither catch your words nor grope for what
you’re thinking. They can’t seize your pigtail since you grow none.”
“That’s only one side of the truth. Besides speaking, a
person can also act. If his action is wrong, he will be caught the same way. Little Lingzi, who feared that the great leader might catch cold, did not invite her misfortune by mouth.”
D said, “Tell me then. What rule did the mute break and
how serious was it?”
“She was given a life sentence.”
A, B, C, and D cried out in surprise at once: “That
serious!”
“Her crime is grave.”
“What crime?”
“The same sort of crime.”
A said, “We kn
ow they committed the same sort of
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crime. But the circumstances were not the same, were
they?”
“Hard to say.”
B said, “I bet you don’t know. If you do, don’t keep us
guessing.”
“I know the whole story.”
“Then please tell us.”
“Well, it happened like this: The mute girl is a peasant’s daughter. One day about six years ago, her mother asked her to go to a fair in town. Her task was very simple – to sell firewood and to ‘invite’ home a sacred statue of Chairman Mao. Peasants in the south use a shoulder pole to carry firewood, with two pointed ends sharp as daggers. Things went smoothly for the mute girl. As soon as she entered the town she sold the firewood. It was not hard to invite Chairman Mao’s sacred statue, either. She got one in a stationer’s for 2.50 yuan, the price of her firewood. But bringing home the sacred statue was hard for the mute girl. She did not have a basket and thought it indecent for a big girl to carry a man’s statue in her arms. And she could not place it steadily on her head. While she stood racking her brains, a one-and-a-half-foot length of hemp on the road suddenly brightened her eyes. She picked it up and hung the statue with it from one end of the shoulder pole – ”
B cut in. “Wait a minute. I didn’t get that. How did she tie the statue? By which part?”
“I’d rather not say.”
C said, “You don’t have to hold anything back. Spit
it out. We won’t report you. We have suffered enough
together.”
“Can’t you guess? It’s obvious, there’s only one spot she could tie it to. That is – ” Still E could not say it, merely making a hanging gesture around his own neck. “In broad
daylight, in the public eye, how could such a criminal
escape? She was seized immediately. Just imagine the shock and rage the crime aroused in the crowds at that moment.
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The people nearly trampled the mute girl to death right on the spot.”
Sticking out their tongues with horror, they said simul-
taneously, “People were really generous with her. Other-
wise – ”
Silence followed. Our group was also lost in silence. I
guessed the listeners were visualizing close-ups of the whole surging scene in which the masses of people who love their great leader were spurred on by their boiling anger, plunging forward to crush her with their stamping feet and forests of raised arms. The stormy scene of roars, shouts, and cries was truly heart stirring. If I had been there, I, too, would have trampled her and waved my fists with tearful cries. I would have had a guilty conscience, grieving over the existence of such reactionaries in China.
While I was deep in thought, the whistle blew to signal
the end of work. My first reaction was to feel that time had passed too fast. I stood up and stamped my feet, numbed by a whole day of sitting on a tiny stool.
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.
After supper, the appearance of a young female guard surprised us in cell number 10045. She signaled me to come
with her. Like a white ghost, she hooked my soul away –
now to my death. I heard several prisoners had been called to execution by a female guard. I immediately switched on the computer in my body to search for signs that would lead to such a catastrophe. The result of the search was nothing.
But who says one cannot be killed without signs? There are lots of historical precedents. Maybe I was just being transferred to a single cell. Or maybe, with a sudden wishful thought, I was being set free. Standing up, I asked, “Shall I take my belongings with me?” She shook the forefinger that had been used as a hook and the flickering of my hope was 2 4 5
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nipped in the bud. With a funereal eye, I bade my inmates farewell: Goodbye, take care. The cell I had found cramped and smelly, the imprisoned days I had found hard to get
through, and those inmates with faces swollen like buns
soaked in sewage, all this became gloriously warm to me, hard for me to tear myself away from. Moreover, every
inmate had a fantastic tale I could enjoy while chipping stones. And every inmate was an interesting book that
enhanced my knowledge, spurred my thinking and opened
my appetite. Of course, all things serving as appetizers here were not much different from poison – a defect of prison life. As the female guard was turning to leave, with tears in my eyes I clapped one fist in the other palm to bow to the inmates, like an ancient hero, then followed her out with my head held high. No matter how low I sank, I was a man and must act like one in front of a woman.
When a man reaches his end, what awaits him is death.
What is death? Although I had not acquired its flavor, I had tasted the sourness, sweetness, and bitterness of human life; relishing it afterward, I found, was far more delicious than actually experiencing it. My affair with Yunqian was the best example. Could I still relish all this after death? I took the memory relished after death as the most valuable.
I followed the guard. It was a pity I hadn’t noticed her face. Was it pretty, or ugly, or somewhere in between?
When she hooked me with a finger, she had instantly
become the goddess of death in my mind. I felt no need to see the face of the goddess of death; instead, all my attention focused on her finger. Now, even if she had a cruel face I could no longer see it. Only the outline of her back was visible. Although she wore a uniform too loose for her body, to a sketcher like me the outlines of her body were still clear.
She was no more than twenty-five years old, five feet three inches in height, with well-developed breasts, slender
limbs, and firm buttocks. If her face wasn’t too ugly, I would have willingly embraced this seductive body before 2 4 6
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my death. I could grab her shoulders from behind, cover
her breasts with both my hands. My fantasy suddenly
soured. How could a man faced with death still produce
such life-seeking fantasies? Prison is a wharf leading to death, which dangles a man between the boat of death and the bank of life, a place devoid of sensual colors or bodies of the other sex.
By accident, I found that, although I could tell male prisoners wearing the same gray prison clothes at a distance, when trying to watch a female prisoner my vision was poor.
Such a long-distance attraction made us suffer the pangs of sexual starvation more keenly. It would have been better had I never lived with a woman. But unfortunately, I had experienced romance with Yunqian in the cocoon. Like those lusty men who cannot pass a day without talking about sex, I was burning with sexual desire. I swore secretly that once out of prison I would write a book about prison life, regardless of its publishability. In it, I would tell free men what tortures and depresses a man most when he loses his freedom. All
prison corridors are long and damp. In the past I had seen them only in movies, but now I was treading along one of them. I followed the young guard closely. If someone had filmed us for a movie, a foreign audience would expect a dramatic scene of violence. But the Chinese audience would not. The Chinese guard did not need to be on guard, and she did not need to carry a pistol. A prisoner in China does not dare to act out the scenarios he has rehearsed many times in his imagination. It is not simply a matter of courage; it is because every Chinese is mentally imprisoned.
The woman ahead of me stopped suddenly and I nearly
bumped into her. She pushed open the door of a small room for visitors. Turning to me, she ordered, “Enter!”
Now I had a c
lear view of her face: not ugly, but actually quite pretty in my view, perhaps because I had not been
close to a woman for so long. I could hear her breathing, the sweet breathing of a female. She looked at me, without
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malignance, actually with a shred of the normal intuitive reaction between a woman and a man. Her zipped lips
betrayed a little smile that roused the passionate drives of a primitive man. But it was too late. First, I realized I was not on a ship of death; second, another person was sitting inside the room, also a female, wearing a large face mask, with her army cap pulled very low.
The guard said to me, “A person has come to investigate.
Please answer all her questions honestly or you will be punished severely.”
“Yes.” I lowered my head, the orgies of a natural man
after impulsive excitement having subsided.
“Take a seat.” The guard pointed to the rough bench op-
posite the visitor. Having not touched a chair or a bench for a long time, I sat on it with a delicious sigh. The guard went over to the visitor and whispered into her ear, “You may ask your questions now. I have some business else-where. But he’s okay, you don’t need to worry.”
Her voice was tiny, yet I heard every word. I was con-
vinced of the increasing sensitivity of my ears. I thought to myself quite complacently, “Now I have become an old jail-bird.” Her impression that I was okay proved it was hard to gauge a man’s psyche even under extreme stress. I didn’t think I was okay, because I was often mad for freedom and sex – the desires of a not-so-okay man. But they couldn’t see through me. The guard left. I lowered my head, waiting to be questioned. Who was she investigating? My parents?
Was it possible to overturn the verdict in their case? Gui Renzhong? Yunqian? Was she in trouble? The visitor held
her tongue patiently. I could sense her removing her mouth cover and cap. Strange, why didn’t she ask me anything? I raised my head. Yunqian! “How did you find me here? And
how did you get in here?”
“I have a letter of introduction from a powerful man,
under the pretext of investigating the cause of your parents’