My Name is Number 4 (23 page)

By the time I walked into the summer of my nineteenth year, Lin Li-guo’s vice had spread as far as the PLA reps.

Lao Chang had warned us when we first arrived at the farm that dating was prohibited; under Cui and Zhao any kind of relationship, even friendship, was persecuted. Men and women were prohibited from visiting one another in their dorms. When the hot weather drove us outdoors at night, the reps would lead search parties under the bridge piers and through the bushes, looking for couples—as if an innocent romance was a political crime. Those they found were humiliated and criticized at a meeting called for that purpose.

At one special criticism meeting, Cui read out a personal letter from a woman in my dorm, Zhen Bao, to her boyfriend, Wang Hua-shan, whose brother was married to Zhen’s sister. Someone had stolen the letter from Wang and turned it in to
Cui, who read Zhen Bao’s words out loud in a girlish voice, leering and mimicking, drawing sneers and laughter from some of the crowd. “‘Thank god my period came yesterday,’” he read. The women near me gasped and shied away from this embarrassing declaration, but soon all of us, as expected and required, were shouting in unison, “Down with the hooligan Wang Hua-shan!” The next day, Wang was transferred to another sub-farm.

A few weeks later we were called together again and, on the way into the warehouse, forced to walk in single file past a table on which a dish and a Do Not Touch sign sat side by side. In the dish I saw a small shapeless object like a collapsed balloon. Next to the table, Yang, the tallest man in the village, stood with his head bowed. At the meeting, Zhao called Yang a dirty bastard for possessing a condom. Yang’s girlfriend was criticized and ridiculed. The next day she tried to kill herself.

All this moral rectitude on the part of Cui and Zhao was pretense. We often saw them through the open windows and doors of the brick house, lying on their backs while girls, using two aluminum penny coins, plucked the hairs from their chins. Both reps openly petted and fondled willing female students. On more than one occasion a woman was sent packing. We learned later that these women had regained their city
hu-kou
as a “reward” for having an abortion and keeping their mouths shut.

Meanwhile I was still living in suspense, wondering when my jail sentence would be finalized and where I would serve it. There was no prison on the farm. Would they ship me off
to a distant city? Then one day the five of us counterrevolutionary plotters were hauled up before the reps. It was a hot, humid July day, and the oscillating fan on Cui’s desk clattered in vain. Yu, Zhu, Qian, Jian and I stood with our heads bowed as Zhao read sententiously from the paper in his hand.

“For forming a counterrevolutionary clique and attempting to undermine the PLA, your sentence of two years is confirmed.”

My heart sank. In spite of myself I had been hoping that someone above Cui and Zhao would have some common sense, or take pity on me and my friends. But it was not to be. I steeled myself for what came next, certain that I would be sent even farther from home.

Zhao cleared his throat. “Sentence to be served supervised by the masses.”

I could hardly believe my ears. I clamped my lips shut to hold back any expression of relief and fought to keep myself from glancing at my friends. It was an anticlimax, after all. I would not be shipped off to a prison. The charge and sentence would be recorded in my dossier. I would lose my
tan-qin
for the duration of my sentence. But “supervised by the masses” meant that I would continue as I had been since my release from interrogation—working as normal under the nominal scrutiny of everyone. The reps’ recommendation for our imprisonment had been repudiated at a higher level.

My four friends were split up and sent away to different brigades. I was not even allowed to say goodbye to them. If not for Jia-ying, I would have felt completely alone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

C
ui often said that it was better to “reap proletarian weeds than sow capitalist seeds.” That autumn he got what he wanted. The rice harvest was so meagre that Lao Chang said it would have cost the government less money to have us sit around and do nothing, for the yield hardly repaid the investment of seed, equipment and fertilizer, let alone our wages and months of labour.

But for me, the poor harvest was more than balanced by good news. September 24, 1971 was a typically crisp fall day, a welcome relief after the long season of heat and humidity. When I awoke that morning I heard someone shouting outside.

I rushed out of the dorm, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. A young man stood in front of the reps’ brick house, hands cupped around his mouth, yelling, “They’re gone! They’re gone!”

People began to run toward him. I hung back, afraid of a trick. But after everyone converged on the house, I joined them. The structure was empty, stripped bare of furniture, posters, even the photo of Mao and Lin Biao. “Where have they gone?” everyone asked, but no one knew. Many made guesses. I kept my mouth firmly closed.

The speculation and gossip continued for a week, until one day, as we made our way to the fields, Representative Huang of the Shanghai Garrison pulled up in a jeep with an officer I had never seen. Huang directed everyone except the prisoners to go to the warehouse immediately for an important meeting. When we were all assembled he wasted no time on formalities.

“The traitor Lin Biao, his wife and son are dead. The plane they had commandeered for their escape to the Soviet Union crashed in Outer Mongolia.”

No one spoke. We were stunned. Vice Chairman Lin Biao a traitor? Once again someone we had been taught to revere was now being called a stinking heap of animal dung. More than three weeks before, Huang told the silent assembly, Lin had fled when his plot to assassinate Mao and take over the government by military coup was uncovered.

Huang went on to admonish us not to speak of these events. An official investigation conducted by Premier Zhou En-lai himself was under way, and since our farm had been under the authority of Lin Biao and had figured largely in his plans as a base, some people’s lives were at stake. When he spoke these words, many turned their eyes toward me. I stared straight ahead, numb with fear.

No wonder Cui and Zhao had run off. They were associated with the PLA faction loyal to Lin Biao. Now the work to make the road fit for military vehicles made sense. Lin Biao had been preparing for possible civil war.

And so the tables were turned yet again. Another movement began, a rectification campaign criticizing Lin Biao and all those in his camp. What had been white was now black. Our nights were filled with political study, reading and discussing documents denouncing Lin Biao and his counterrevolutionary activities. Now, all the evil stupidities of the Cultural Revolution carried out on our farm—from the neglect of the fields to friends informing on each other—were blamed on Lin Biao and our departed PLA reps. Even Leggy bragged that she had harboured doubts about the reps as she took part in the merciless interrogation of me and my friends. I seethed at the hypocrisy. It wasn’t Lin Biao but the people around me who had persecuted me.

In the end, my four friends and I were brought together for a rehabilitation meeting at the sub-farm. What had been black was now white. Gatherings like this were supposed to cancel all the harm that had been done. Our malicious treatment was blamed on the dead. But exoneration tasted like ashes in my mouth. Was I expected to be grateful that we were not counterrevolutionaries after all? Our innocence, friendship and trust had been shattered. None of us talked about what had happened or what we had said and written under torture. None of us discussed our detention. More than ever I wanted to tell Yu Hua, Xiao Jian, Xiao Qian and Xiao Zhu
what I had said and done, to clear the air. I craved their forgiveness, even though I could hardly remember the things I had “admitted.”

On my visit home that winter, after a two-year absence, Number 2 bought me a new short-wave radio and a set of recently published English textbooks. The gifts were his way of showing his concern for my suffering and apologizing for the letter in which he had criticized me for ruining his chances to join the Party.

“Shanghai Radio Station has started broadcasting English lessons as a positive signal to the United States,” he said. “You always liked English, Ah Si, so maybe you can continue learning it.”

Holding the books in my hand, I could not speak, for my throat was thick with emotion. I was touched by his generosity. I knew he was still paying off the loans he had taken out to help Number 5 and me prepare to go to the countryside.

But I was also filled with sadness because I could not bring myself to tell him the details of my ordeal or what I had done to my friends. Nor would Great-Aunt be a help. Even she was saying how she had always had a bad feeling about Lin Biao’s “conspiratorial looks.”

“He had ghostlike features,” she claimed, “with those tiny triangle eyes under bushy brows. That pale smiling face always gave me goose bumps.” Hindsight can be blinding.

Two months after I returned to the farm, news came that there was a shortage of manpower in Shanghai, from sales-clerks to street-sweepers, from prison guards to teachers. The chaos of the Cultural Revolution had killed many by suicide, execution, beatings or battles, and hundreds of thousands had been sent to the countryside. A number of us would be chosen to return to the city to fill some of the jobs, and the farm buzzed with excitement and speculation as everyone tried in vain to keep their hopes in check. Hope, we all knew to our cost, was mother to disappointment. People around me thought I might have a chance to become a teacher because, ironically, a pure class background was not necessary for that role. To avoid frustration, I fought hard to remain unenthusiastic about my chances. It won’t happen, I kept telling myself. Yu Hua was selected to be a prison guard. When Jian, Qian and Zhu were assigned teaching posts I began to hope in spite of myself. Delirious with joy, they packed up and left the farm for good.

But all four of them were “red” students and I was not. Our new rep, Meng, said that I must remain on the farm. He explained that I needed more hardship to overcome my “bourgeois weakness.”

There were more changes. A newly formed civilian leadership took control of the farm, replacing PLA reps and self-appointed students’ committees. We moved across the bridge into houses with brick walls and thatched roofs—a great improvement over the damp wattle buildings in which I had spent the last four years.

I passed what little free time we were allowed on my bed, listening to my new radio and studying English. Although I was hurt and extremely bitter, as well as lonely, I reached a separate peace. My roommates pitied me and left me alone or jeered at me for “drawing water with a bamboo basket”—wasting my time studying a useless language. They could not understand that I wanted to be by myself and stay out of trouble. Nor did they know how much I thirsted for love and friendship.

And yet sometimes I thought of myself as a cold and insensitive creature not fit for this world. After all the persecution, insults, lies and betrayals, I didn’t know how to deal with matters of the heart like love and trust.