My Name is Number 4 (7 page)

I had little sense of what an antique was, but I loved the paintings, their beauty, power and poetic calligraphy. Now here we were ready to cut them into strips with scissors, as if we were doing some sort of craft work. I chose “Winter,” thinking that my dislike of the cold damp season would make my task easier. But I was wrong. Soon tears fell onto the painting as I worked. I looked over at my baby sister, struggling with a pair of oversize scissors, scraping holes here and there in “Summer,” and my tears came faster.

“Stop, you’re ruining it!” I yelled, immediately realizing the stupidity of my words. I took her into my arms as she wept.
The last time we had all cried like this was when Mother died, eight months earlier.

“Go on,” Number 1 urged. “Hurry!” Once more we set about our horrible task.

Seeing Great-Aunt leave, her sewing bag full, while my two brothers swept the wall with dirty brooms to hide the marks left by the pictures, my fear intensified. Any indication of a new paint job would lead to accusations of trying to hide evidence.

Our building was one of the few in the lane that had not yet been searched. Granny Ningbo was utterly terrified, jumping at every footstep. The Guards had hacked off Granny Yao’s hair in Building 45, making her look like a crazy woman, and she was under close watch by her three grandchildren, for she had already tried to kill herself. Mrs. Qiao was in even worse shape after having talked back to the Red Guards when one of them insulted her children: the Guards had shaved half her hair off, creating what they mockingly called a yin-yang style. In the Ye family apartment, we waited for the inevitable.

At last, one hot night soon after, we heard footsteps on our stairs, followed by a knocking on our door. There were no gongs or drums, no yelling of slogans or insults. Tentatively, Number 1 pulled the door open. It was Uncle Yu, a worker from Father’s factory, whom Father had employed as a cook years before because he was from Wuxi and could prepare the kind of food Father liked. Uncle Yu pressed his index finger to his lips and quickly shut the door.
He was a short, plump man, with a chubby, youthful face, though he was over fifty.

“Ah Du,” he whispered to Number 1, “I came to warn you children. I overheard the Red Guards talking at the factory. They plan to raid your house tomorrow.”

He went on to explain that all across the city, workers had split into two factions: the Loyalists, who still supported the city government, and the Shanghai Workers Revolutionary Rebels, who wanted to overthrow it. In his workplace, Number 2 had joined the Loyalists, for no one was allowed to stay neutral. Uncle Yu went on to tell us in hushed, apologetic tones that there were a number of
da-zi-bao
in Father’s factory calling him insulting names and saying that his ghost refused to leave the place.

“The Communists claim there’s no such thing as a ghost,” I said, “so what are they doing, putting up such stupid posters?”

“Why are they coming here, Uncle Yu?” Number 3 cut in.

The old man looked as troubled as we felt. “I have no idea. But don’t give anyone an excuse to hurt you.” He pulled open the door, glanced out into the hall, and slipped away.

All of us were touched by Uncle Yu’s courage. Out of loyalty to Father, he had put himself at great risk to warn us. That was the last time we saw this kind old man. After vindictive Red Guards revealed that his daughter had been adopted, she left Shanghai, taking Uncle Yu’s grandchildren with her. He killed himself a few months later.

That night I could not sleep. Neither could Great-Aunt, who tossed and sighed beside me in the heat. She had said
nothing after Uncle Yu left. When I thought about it, I realized she had been uncharacteristically silent since the raids had begun.

All her life Great-Aunt had made a living by her own hands. She had envied Mother and others like her who were also country girls but had lived a better life through a good marriage. While she herself had been cursed with bad luck, Great-Aunt had watched Mother start a new life, surrounded by children. Now, ironically, her bad luck had made her safe from attack.

We waited all the next day, all six of us huddled in our three-room apartment, and when dusk fell our building was hit a double score. Granny Ningbo’s place was raided first. Then, after half an hour of shouting and crashing, it was our turn.

The insistent banging on our door was accompanied by bawled orders to open up. Seven people burst into the room—six Red Guards, two female and four male, all in their late teens or early twenties, all sporting the sinister red armbands. With them was a young guy from Father’s factory. The leader, who was from Beijing, ordered us into my parents’ bedroom.

“Form a line!” he shouted. We stood with heads bowed as he read us several quotations from Mao’s treasure book.

“Whoever lives in this society is branded by the class he or she was born into!” one of the women Guards exclaimed when he had finished.

The Beijinger and the worker sat at Father’s desk and examined our
hu-kou
—registration book—checking against a list in his hand and ordering us to stand still, face forward, and
answer as our names were called. The Beijinger, about the same age as Number 1, had puffy red cheeks. His interrogation was continually interrupted by shouts from the other Guards, who had fanned out and begun a systematic search of our two rooms. Great-Aunt’s room was left alone once the worker pointed out that she was a retired working-class woman. She remained inside with the door closed.

One of the women searching a dresser waved a pair of cotton socks with frequently mended soles and jeered, “Are these socks or shoes? It seems this family has iron soles!”

The Guards scouring the bedroom burst into laughter, but our interrogator kept his attention on his list. I stood silently, thinking of one of Mao’s quotations: “The poorer people are, the better revolutionaries they will be.” Another of his famous lines said that poverty was like a piece of new white paper on which one could write the finest calligraphy and draw the most beautiful pictures. Yet at the same time we were humiliated, first because we were the offspring of a capitalist, second because we were so poor we walked in mended socks.

A sudden movement interrupted my thoughts as the Beijinger pounded his fist on the desk.

“I knew it! I knew it!” he crowed. “Reactionaries are never straightforward in their evil ways. Look, everyone!” he shouted, bringing the ransacking of our meagre belongings to a temporary halt. “See what I have found.”

He stood and strutted around the desk, pushing his finger into Number 2’s face. “Tell me your name again.”

“Ye Zhong-xing,” answered my brother, his voice shaking.

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“And you?” He pointed to Number 1.

“Ye Zheng-xing. Twenty.”

“You see!” he looked around at his comrades and then suddenly punched Number 2 on the shoulder as he hissed, “Now you can tell me how your dead father was a supporter of the Guomindang reactionaries!”

I was dumbfounded. Beside me, Number 3 caught her breath. The guard was referring to the old government led by Chiang Kai-shek. Father had never supported him.

“We all know that Chiang Kai-shek’s other name, given by his mother, is Chiang Zhong-zheng, the one he prefers but doesn’t deserve!”

Number 1’s name, Zheng—Upright—is a good name for a boy, though uncommon. Number 2’s, Zhong, means Steadfast. These were names a scholar like my father would think appropriate for his male children.

But there was something wrong with the Red Guard’s theory. “That can’t be true,” I spoke up, earning a warning glance from my eldest brother. “As you said, Chiang’s name is Zhong-zheng. If Father had been a Nationalist sympathizer he would have named Number 1 Zhong instead of Number 2. The word order is wrong!”

“Shut up!” screamed the Guard, spit flying from his mouth. “That just shows your ghost-father’s cunning! He reversed the order to fool people. But our Red Guards’ eyes are much sharper, thanks to Mao Ze-dong Thought!”

I felt helpless in the face of his twisted logic. I had never so much as seen a photo of Chiang Kai-shek. The caricatures in our textbooks depicted a skinny, stiff man wearing a crossed bandage on his right temple. The Guomindang was described as rotten to its roots; Chiang Kai-shek’s army had been full of “playboys” and all his soldiers had “rabbit legs” because they constantly ran away from battle during the wars against Japan and the Communists.

Our apartment pulsated with booming voices as the Red Guards began to vilify my father, shouting his name in unison, “Down with Ye Rong-ting! Down with the Guomindang running-dog, Ye Rong-ting!”

Despite everything, I couldn’t help smiling inwardly at the fools shrieking around me. The literal translation of “down with” in Chinese—
da-dao—
is to knock someone down physically. They seemed to forget that my father was already in his grave.

As if reading my thoughts, the fools changed the chant. “Ten thousand deaths will not expiate Ye Rong-ting’s crime! Feed his dead body to the dogs! And the dogs won’t want it because it stinks too much!”

I stole a glance at my brothers and sisters. Their eyes were wide with fear. We had been badly enough off as children of the hated capitalist class; now the blood of a traitor supposedly ran in our veins. Yet, despite all the vindictive yelling and screaming, I felt strangely calm. The anxiety and panic of the past weeks and the endless waiting for the dreaded raid were over. Number 5, though, was shaking in terror, and I put my arm around her shoulders. I glanced at the door of Great-Aunt’s room but it remained closed and there was no sound
from within. Our neighbours, who in the past would always stick their noses into our apartment at the slightest provocation, were silent, as if they had suddenly lost their hearing.

When the shouting died down, Number 1 began to speak. Calmly he tried to reason with the Guards, telling them how my father’s step-cousins had left for Taiwan before the liberation, but Father had remained. Why would he stay in Shanghai if he were a running-dog of Chiang Kai-shek?

“Aha, an overseas relationship!” one of the Guards exclaimed.

“Having illicit relations with foreign countries!” piped a second.

Another stupidity, I thought. Even at fourteen I knew clearly China’s stern policy that Taiwan was a province of China. It was strictly prohibited to refer to it as a foreign country and the punishment for violation ranged from “reforming through labour” to imprisonment.

“But we have no contact with—”

“Shut up, traitor!” yelled the Beijing Red Guard.

“Make them change their names!” a thin woman with a long face and protruding teeth suggested. The rest of the Guards shouted agreement.

While the search resumed, my brothers were given five minutes to think of new names. One male Guard approached the Beijinger and presented him with a thick sheaf of papers.

“You can have them if you want,” Number 1 offered without delay. “We don’t want them.”

“These are stock certificates and government bonds. Capitalist trash. Destroy them,” the Beijinger sneered, handing them over to Number 1.

Without hesitation my brother tore the securities to bits while three of the Red Guards nodded their approval. As far as I was concerned the fancily printed bonds and certificates, the expropriation payments for Father’s factory, were useless, just stacks of paper gathering dust in a drawer for years. The Red Guards, who thought the documents were valuable, praised Number 1’s actions.

“Please,” Number 2 spoke up. “I’d like to change my name to Loyalty.” The character for loyalty was turning up more and more in
da-zi-bao
on walls and in store windows. The Red Guards accepted it right away. Number 2’s choice was brilliant, because his new name—Zhong—was a homonym for “steadfast,” his original name.

The Red Guards were starting to lose interest. Our two rooms offered nothing of note or value except a few items of furniture. But they did confiscate our family photos, claiming that they were “of the Four Olds” because in one grandfather had on an old-style “half melon” hat and in others Father wore a Western-style suit coat and tie and Mother had permed hair and makeup. Led by the Beijinger, the Red Guards left, chanting slogans as they thumped down the stairs and into the sky-well. Again I smiled inwardly. They had forgotten that Number 1 had not changed his name.

No one said a word. Number 5 wept quietly, shoulders hunched, hands shaking. Number 3 stood apart with her hands crossed on her chest, eyes wide. My two brothers looked at each other and nodded. We had survived.

After a few moments, Great-Aunt shuffled from her room, looking sheepish and guilty, but none of us blamed her for failing to come out and stick up for us. We all knew that would only have made things bad for her and worse for us. She immediately set about making tea and preparing us a late supper, which we ate in silence.

Over the next few weeks, trucks came into our lane and left loaded with goods—sofas, paintings, silk hangings, clothes, record players and records, even some cooking utensils—all were labelled “bourgeois” and appropriated by the Red Guards. What could not be seen was the jewellery and money they confiscated. And what they couldn’t take away with them, they wrecked, leaving smashed roof tiles, holed walls, splintered floorboards and ripped chairs and chesterfields.

I realized then how wise Number 1 had been in voluntarily tearing up the securities. And I smiled whenever I thought about Number 2, whom Great-Aunt called slow and stubborn, brilliantly choosing his new name.

CHAPTER SIX