Colors of the Mountain (5 page)

“I have never done anything like that! You know that!” I said, using the best defense a nine-year-old could muster.

“I have the reports here”—he waved a thick sheaf of paper—“and I can ask these people to testify against you if necessary.”

“The people who wrote those reports were lying. I have never said anything against our country or the Communist party.”

“Shut up! You have no right to defend yourself, only the chance to confess and repent,” he spat out angrily. His voice deepened. “Do you understand what kind of trouble you are in now?”

“I have nothing to confess!” I was losing control again. My throat dried up and my arms began to tremble.

“I said, shut up! You have today and tonight to write a confession of all the treasonous things you have said, to explain the motivation, and to state who told you to say these horrible things. Like perhaps your father, mother, or your landlord grandparents.”

He was trying to involve my family. They would put my dad in prison. They would take Grandpa out into the street and beat him to death.

“They did
not
tell me to do or say bad things against the party! They didn’t!” I cried. I couldn’t afford to have my family dragged into this. I was scared and began to sob helplessly. The sky had just caved in and I felt that nobody could help me. I would be a young counterrevolutionary, a condemned boy, despised by the whole country. I would be left to rot in a dark prison cell for life. That was what had happened to Shi He, another high school kid, who was caught listening to an anti-Communist radio program from Taiwan, and worse, to the banned Teresa Deng’s love songs. His prison sentence had been twenty years.

I don’t remember how long I cried that morning. When I walked home alone in the afternoon’s setting sun, I felt the weight of shackles already around my ankles.

A condemned man at the age of nine! Confession tomorrow! The thoughts played over and over in my mind.

When I got home, I told Mom what had happened and she started sobbing, hitting her face and chest and pulling out her hair. She mumbled hysterically, in broken sentences, that their generation had brought the curse to the next generation. After a while, she sat down quietly, weak and limp like a frightened animal. Finally, she got up and sent Si and Jin to Dad’s camp to ask for advice. They got to talk to him by using the excuse that Mom was very sick again.

It was after midnight when, breathless, they ran back. I was still sitting in my room, staring at a piece of blank paper. I had not eaten anything. For the first time in my life, I had absolutely no appetite.

The message from Dad was simple. There was nothing to confess. Go back to school tomorrow and tell them that, he instructed. What were they going to do to you? Nothing, if you did not confess. Everything, if you did. If school becomes too hard, then quit. Dad’s words gave us power and courage even from afar, allowing me to feel hopeful again that everything would be fine. But I dreamed that night of the teacher’s face and smelled the dank odor of a dark, wet prison.

The following day, I dragged myself along the cobbled street, my eyes fixed on the ground, wishing I were as tiny as a mosquito. When I entered the classroom, there were silent stares from the other children. The lesson was on fractions, but nothing sank in. My mind kept wandering to the piece of paper I carried with me. What would the teacher say? What were they going to do to me? Each hour of class crawled torturously by. I couldn’t wait to hand in the confession and run back home to my family.

Finally, the day came to an end. My classmates filed out as I put my books in my schoolbag and prepared to face the teacher.

“You’re not going anywhere, are you?” La Shan questioned sternly, not looking up from the homework he was grading.

“I was just going to give you this.” I pulled out the piece of paper. “May I come up to your desk, please?”

“You have your confession?” he asked sharply, arching his eyebrows.

“I thought long and hard, and all that I have to say is here, honorable teacher.” I put the “confession” on his desk and turned to walk away.

“Stop!” His voice was so angry and disgusted it startled me. I stopped and stood there with my head down, afraid to look at him.

“You confessed nothing?” He screamed at me. “Did your parents tell you to write this?” He crushed the paper into a ball and threw it at me.

“No, it is all from me and it is the truth. I swear upon my ancestors’ graves that I am honest and innocent.” Tears trickled uncontrollably down my face. I was so nervous that my head began to feel hot again. Desperately, I felt myself losing my logic and calm.

“You are a liar, Chen Da! I am going to refer your counterrevolutionary acts to the principal and party secretary of the school. I wished
to handle your case here, but you are not cooperating, so now you force me to go to higher authorities.”

His threats were working. My knees felt weak. I wanted to kneel before him and beg him not to report this to the principal, who was also the commune’s party secretary. Today I was the outcast in my classroom, but tomorrow the whole school would know about it. I would be finished.

“Please!” I cried. “Can you please just let it go, honorable teacher Shan? I’m very scared. Please help me?”

“Help you? How can I help you if you don’t help me?” His tone softened. “Here, take this paper back and promise to write something useful on it and bring it back tomorrow.”

I saw it as a gesture of kindness. I took the crumpled paper gratefully and quickly left school. As soon as I got home, Mom asked me, “What are you still doing with the paper?”

I told her how the teacher had softened and was giving me a second chance instead of sending my case to the principal.

“He’s tricking you again, that snake!” Mom began to sob. “Do as your father said. Confess nothing! Do you want to go to prison? Do you want to see the rest of your family in prison?” she screamed at me, trying to make me understand what was at stake. But all the tricks, threats, and political subtleties were beyond my grasp. I felt lost, but I believed in my parents’ wisdom and vowed to do as they said.

I lay in bed that night staring at the ceiling, wishing desperately that my parents were a couple of poor young farmers with no political burdens to worry about, only their wrath over the mistreatment of their young son. Then they could have gone with me to school, punched out that snake of a teacher’s teeth, thrown him to the floor, and kicked the shit out of him until he begged for mercy and swore not to lay a finger on me anymore. But Dad was burdened with political troubles of his own, my tiny mom was in no shape to perform such an act, and my landlord grandpa would be thrown into prison for even thinking of such a thing.

A trick it had been. As soon as I walked into school the following day, the teacher stopped me in the hallway and personally marched me to the principal’s office.

Thoughts about running into the fields, hiding in the woods, and never returning to the damned place passed through my mind, but I didn’t have the will to do anything. They would catch me and put me in the slammer in no time. I admired the students who passed by us, so carefree, laughing and joking. They were just starting another day of fun and learning while I was being escorted to a political questioning session, just short of wearing handcuffs.

The teacher dropped me off in the principal’s office and left. The principal didn’t even bother to look at me. He was cleaning his huge wooden desk as I stood nervously in the corner.

The principal, Mr. Gao, was a frog of a man. He had bowed legs and walked with a wide side-to-side swing. Despite a mustache, his face was bland. He was about fifty and, in addition to being the school principal, had recently been promoted to the position of party secretary. Older students once told me that he loved fondling little girls’ hands and shoulders and enjoyed having young, female teachers iron his clothes in his dormitory room late at night, while he conferred his seasoned, political wisdom on them. He was the most zealous objector to romance among the young teachers because, it was said, he couldn’t bear the idea of anyone else having his way. His wife was a heavy smoker, with yellow teeth and ugly wrinkles on her face. They were a well-matched couple.

He asked me all kinds of questions and urged me again to make a confession. I declared my innocence over and over.

For the entire week that followed, Mr. Gao met with me daily, either in between classes or after school. He went on mumbling his advice and making threats to stop my schooling. I sat quietly during those sessions, much more alert and logical than in the presence of the teacher. Though Mr. Gao was the top dog, he somehow didn’t scare me. He muttered rather than talked and he was an incoherent speaker. He would start a line of argument then totally lose himself in it until he had to ask me blankly, “Where were we?”

In the beginning, I would tell him where we had left off. Then, gradually, I told him I also forgot and he would stare at me and scratch his head. He seemed quite bored with these sessions that were getting nowhere. All I confessed to him were some minor infractions, useless
garbage like stealing chalk, letting classmates copy my homework, and taking fruit from the neighbor’s fruit trees. One thing seemed clear throughout the weeklong questioning. He asked a lot of questions about my family. I was very careful not to say anything stupid that could implicate them. They were going out of their way to try and get my dad.

Finally, one day he said, “If you do not confess, I am sending your case to the commune and the police.” This time, his face was deadly serious. “You have left me no other choice. In fact, the police chief asked about you the other day and recommended that you appear on the public humiliation platform with Yu Xuang during his confession in front of the whole school.”

The mention of Yu Xuang terrified me. He had confessed to making counterrevolutionary statements and was already condemned to sweeping the dirty street of Yellow Stone. Sometimes he was sent to the same labor reform camp that my dad was in.

This was the end of me. Standing next to Yu Xuang on the platform, facing hundreds of students shouting threats and throwing bricks at me, would ruin my future forever, if I survived the session. In the people’s eyes I would be branded a counterrevolutionary like Yu Xuang. I might as well be dead already.

Gloomily, I headed for home, hoping there was a god who could turn the whole world around, send me a new, bright day full of colors, but it was hopeless. Families were registered at a certain commune. You couldn’t move anywhere else unless the government reassigned you. There was no escape.

As the day of Yu Xuang’s public denunciation approached, Mom quietly said to me, “Go pack. You are leaving tomorrow.”

“Where am I going?”

“To Wen Qui’s home.” He was a distant cousin who lived in Ding Zhuan, another tiny town about twenty miles west of Yellow Stone.

“They will catch me.”

“No, they won’t come after you. They were just threatening you.”

“What about school?” It was my future.

“We will worry about that later. You can still be the best student after missing a few lessons.”

I went into her arms. “I’m scared.”

“Don’t be.” She held me tight. “Wen Qui has already been secretly informed of your coming.”

The next day, as the sky shed its first ray of light, I crept out our back door, crossed the wooden bridge that swung and squeaked in the wind, and started my half-day’s journey on foot. I carried a bag of clothes, a small bag of dried yams to contribute to Wen Qui’s household when I got there, and two pieces of sweet rice cake, which were my favorite treats, and which Mom had stayed up late preparing for me. As soon as I crossed the Dong Jing River, I followed Mom’s instructions: ducked low, and disappeared into the lush, mile-long fields of sugarcane to avoid bumping into anyone. The morning dew still kissed the sharp leaves that innocently scratched my face and arms.

Beyond the sugarcane field lay a narrow dirt road winding into the mountains. Though I had walked this scenic path a few times before, it was scarily quiet in the early dawn, so I sang out loud and whistled as I ran along, my bag bouncing on my back. When I was halfway to my destination I sat down to rest by a large pond. I leaned against an old pine tree and unwrapped my first piece of rice cake. As I sank my teeth into the sticky sweet rice, I was reminded once more of how good life could be if one weren’t a political fugitive running for his life.

I took off my shoes and waded into the shallow edge of the pond, scooping up a handful of the fresh spring water to drink. It tasted as sweet as the mountain itself. Everything was so peaceful I couldn’t help skipping a few rocks and watching the ripples spread out gently. I remembered the time my dad and I competed at this very pond to see who could skip a rock the farthest. I had thrown a stone so hard that I had skidded and fallen into the soft young wheat, and now, again, I could hear Dad’s hearty laughter at my antics.

When I got to the Quis’ home, it was lunchtime. Wei’s sister was the wife of my uncle. The family had been forced to move to this small mountain village remote from Yellow Stone because his father had been a wealthy fabric merchant. Wen once said his father could judge the quality of a fabric by blindly feeling it behind his back. The Quis lived in the house of a former landlord, a man whose family had all been executed by the Communists.

Wen was no more than twenty-eight and was really fun to be with. He played the
er hu
, a two-stringed instrument that sounded like a violin, as well as a bamboo flute. He sang beautifully, and could write wonderful prose. He was a handsome, carefree, romantic artist condemned to farming in the village. He was also the first man I knew who had not found his wife through a matchmaker, but on his own. I had known them during their courtship several years ago, when he had been our neighbor in Yellow Stone. He and his future wife would play and sing in their backyard in the moonlight. His wedding was the saddest one I ever attended. The bride’s family had tied her to her bed in an attempt to prevent the ceremony, because she was from a worker’s family, a politically good family, and had been promised to a distant cousin who was a rich Hong Kong businessman. Wen was from a politically bad family. Her brothers and father had caught Wen and beaten him severely. But later that evening the bride escaped to Wen’s house and they were married beneath a kerosene lamp with a few close family members in attendance, and with a meal of fried noodles to celebrate.