One Man's Bible (13 page)

He knocked for more than half an hour on the door of the county post office, and even knocked on all the windows facing the street. Finally, lights came on, and someone opened the door. He explained that he was from the cadre school and had to send an official telegram. Writing the message was not easy, and it had to be written in the fancy jargon prescribed for personnel who had been sent to the countryside. Also, he had to get this schoolmate of his, whom he had not contacted for a long time, to understand the gravity of his predicament so that he would speedily find him a commune to settle in and immediately telegraph an official document accepting him as a peasant. He also had to be sure not to arouse the suspicions of the person in the post office sending the telegram.

The road back went by the railway station. A few cheaply built single-story buildings stood alongside the desolate platform, lit by some weak yellowish lights. Two months earlier, the army officer had assigned him and about ten other sturdy youths to go there to meet a large batch of new arrivals from his Beijing workplace. Office staff, laborers, cadres, and their families were all there. No
one had the good fortune of being excluded, not even the old, the sick, and the children. It was a special train with many carriages, and the platform was full of offloaded bedding rolls, suitcases, tables and chairs, furniture like wardrobes, and also big earthenware vats for pickling vegetables in brine. They looked like refugees. The army officer called it “war-preparation deployment.” There was the heavy smell of gunpowder in Beijing due to the armed conflicts on the China-Soviet border in Heilongjiang province, and the Number One War Preparation Mobilization Command signed by Deputy Commander-in-Chief Lin Biao had arrived at the cadre school.

In the unloading, a big vat was cracked, and brine seeping out made the whole place stink of rancid fermenting vegetables. Taking advantage of his laborer family background, the old man who used to be gatekeeper in the back courtyard of the workplace building, started to swear loudly. Whom he was swearing at wasn’t clear, and no one tried to stop him. Anyway, the man’s supply of salted vegetables for a whole winter had been ruined. With their heads pulled into their scarves against the chilly wind, people kept watch on their own little piles of “home” as they sat on bedding rolls or suitcases waiting to be assigned to some villages near the cadre school. Not daring to cry aloud, children with faces red from the cold quietly sobbed by the side of the grown-ups.

Three hundred big carts mobilized from several communes had assembled outside the station, and braying mules, neighing horses, and cracking whips created a greater ruckus than the village market. A small car was stuck among the mules, horses, and carts, and could move neither forward nor backward. Finally, with bright red badges on his collar and cap and his greatcoat draped over his shoulders, Officer Song emerged from the car. He walked to the platform, climbed onto a wooden crate, and started waving his arms about. Officer Song, who was in charge of the cadre school, had an army-bugler background and no significant revolutionary credentials.
While he had played a role in spurring on the troops on frontier battlefields, he couldn’t shift these peasants’ carts, and the chaos simply got worse.

From noon until dark, cart after cart had finally removed all the people, but the platform was still piled with furniture and crates. He and a few others were told to stay behind and guard these. The others all went into the waiting room to get out of the wind. However, he stacked some crates and wardrobes into a wind shelter, and bought himself a bottle of liquor as well as two steamed buns. The buns were made of a mixture of corn flour and wheat flour and were frozen solid by the cold. In his little corner that he had covered with a sheet of canvas, he gazed at the weak yellowish lights on the platform and thought about finding a wife. With a wife and a child, he would be the same as the others with families and children, and he would be able to get lodgings in a peasant home in one of the villages. He would still be working on the land, but at least he would have a small mud hut and be able to get away from the collective lodgings where people were staring right at one another all the time, and one was afraid of being overheard while having a dream.

He thought back to the previous year, when armed battles were raging, before the army took control of the factories and schools, to that night in the small inn on the embankment of the Yangtze he spent with a university student when there was nowhere else to stay. “We are the generation that fate has decreed should be sacrificed.” When the woman had the courage to write this in her letter, he knew that her situation must have been hopeless.

There were no battlefields now, but enemies were everywhere. Defenses were up all over the place, but defense was impossible. He could retreat no further. No longer wildly hoping for anything more, all he wanted was a house in a village, where he could settle down with a wife, but even that possibility was about to vanish.

Before dawn, he got the bicycle back to the village. Huang and his wife had waited for him and didn’t go to sleep; they were
dressed. The coal stove they had brought with them from Beijing was burning, and the house was warm. Huang’s wife had prepared dough and was making soup noodles for him. He didn’t decline. Having had no dinner, he had pedaled hard and fast for forty kilometers, there and back, and he was utterly famished. They watched him devour a big bowl of noodles. Before leaving, he waved to them and said that he hadn’t been there. They said, of course you haven’t, of course you haven’t. He had done all he could, the rest was up to fate.

14

“So you weren’t declared the enemy?” she asks as she stirs her coffee.

“It was close.” But you managed to escape. What else could you say?

“How did you escape?” she asks, still in an offhand manner.

“Do you know what ‘to simulate’ means?” you ask, forcing yourself to smile. When an animal is in danger, it pretends to be dead or else puts on a fierce look. It does not panic and lose control. But, in your case, you had to be very calm as you waited for a chance to escape.

“So, you’re a wily fox?” she laughs softly.

“Yes,” you admit. “When dogs were all around hunting you, you had to be more wily than a fox or they would have ripped you to shreds.”

“But people
are
animals, you and I are animals.” She sounds hurt. “But you aren’t a wild animal.”

“When everyone had gone crazy, one turned into a wild animal.”

“Are you also a wild animal?” she asks.

“What do you mean?” It is your turn to ask.

“Nothing special, I was just asking.” Her eyelashes lower.

“To keep a patch of clean soil in one’s heart, one had to work out a way of escaping from the arena.”

“Did you escape?” she asks, her eyelashes moving up.

“Margarethe!” The smile goes from your face. “Stop talking about Chinese politics. You’re leaving tomorrow and there are other things to talk about.”

“I’m not talking about China and I’m not talking about politics,” she says. “I want to know if you are a wild animal.”

You pause to think, then say, “Yes.”

She does not respond but looks hostile. After returning to the hotel from Lamma Island, she said in the elevator that she didn’t want to go to bed straight away, so you and she came to this coffee shop. The lights are low and the music is soft, in another corner two gays are drinking wine. There is no sugar in the bit of coffee in her cup, but she stirs it with the spoon from time to time. She must have something on her mind that she doesn’t want to talk about in bed. The gay lovers call the waiter, pay, and go off hand-in-hand.

“Do you want something else? The man is waiting to close.” You are talking about the waiter.

“Are you treating?” She tilts her head back and has a strange look.

“Of course, it’s not that much.”

She orders a double scotch, then says, “Will you join me?”

“Why not?” You order two double scotches.

The waiter wearing a tie is polite but gives her a look.

“I want to have a good sleep,” she explains.

“Then you shouldn’t have had coffee just now,” you point out.

“I’m tired, tired of living.”

“What are you talking about? You’re young, so beautiful, in the prime of life, you should enjoy yourself to the full.” You tell her that it is she who has again filled you with lust, and you put your hand on hers.

“I hate myself, I hate my body.”

Her body again!

“You, too, have used it. Of course, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last,” she says, pushing away your hand.

Your confusion passes and, with a sigh, you withdraw your hand.

“I also want to be a wild animal, but I can’t escape. . . .” she says, head bowed.

“Escape from what?” It’s your turn to question her, and this is more comfortable. Being interrogated by a woman is stressful.

“I can’t escape, I can’t escape from fate, I can’t escape from this sort of feeling. . . .” She takes a big mouthful of scotch and tosses back her head.

“What feeling?” You go to push back her hair so you can see her eyes, but she brushes it away herself.

“Women, a woman feels . . . you wouldn’t understand.” She laughs softly again.

It seems probable that this is what is causing her pain, and, looking searchingly at her, you ask, “How old were you at the time?”

“At the time,” she pauses, then says, “I was thirteen.”

The waiter is standing behind the counter with his head down, probably preparing the bill.

“That’s too young,” you say. Your throat feels tight, and you gulp down a big mouthful of scotch. “Go on!”

“I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to talk about myself.”

“Margarethe, if you want mutual understanding, not just a sexual relationship, then it isn’t just a matter of what you want. We should be able to talk about anything,” you protest.

She is silent for a while, then says, “It was early winter, a dull day . . . Venice is not always sunny, and there were not many tourists on the streets.” Her voice seems to be coming from far away. “From the window, a window that was very low, I could see the sea and the gray sky. Usually, when I sat on the windowsill, I could see the dome of the church. . . .”

She looks out the window at the mass of lights above the pitch-black sea.

“And the dome of the church?” you say, prompting her.

“No, I could only see the gray sky.” She continues, “It was below the window, on the stone floor of his studio that he, that artist, raped me. There was a radiator in the room, but the stone was very cold.”

You shudder.

“Do you find this upsetting?” Her gray-blue eyes watch you intently from behind her glass, yet she also seems to be staring at the transparent scotch.

“No,” you say. But you want to know if she was to some extent fond of the man before and after this.

“At the time I didn’t understand anything, I didn’t know what he was doing to my body, my eyes were wide open and staring at the gray sky. I only remember that the stone floor was very cold. It wasn’t until two years later, when I discovered changes in my body and I’d become a woman, that I understood. So I hated my body.”

“But did you go again, did you continue to go to his studio? During those two years?” you ask.

“I can’t remember very clearly. At first, I was frightened and couldn’t remember anything that had happened during those two years. I only knew that he had used me, and I was frightened all the time, frightened others would find out. He kept asking me to his studio, and I didn’t dare tell my mother, because she wasn’t well. At the time, we were very poor, my parents had separated and my father had gone back to Germany, and I didn’t want to stay at home. At first I went with another girl my age to watch him paint. He said he would teach us to paint, starting off with sketches. . . .”

“Go on.” You wait for her to go on, and watch her turning the glass in her hands. The scotch she has been sipping leaves streaks on the inside of the glass.

“Don’t look at me like that, I’m not going to tell you everything, and I want to make that quite clear. I don’t know, and I can’t explain why I went again. . . .”

“Didn’t he say he wanted to teach you to paint?” you say, reminding her.

“No. He said he wanted to paint me, he said my curves were gentle. At the time, I was tall and slender, still growing and just starting to fill out. He always got me to comply, he said my body was very beautiful. My breasts were not like they are now. He really wanted to paint me, that’s all.”

“So, you agreed to it?” You test her, wanting to find out what had happened.

“No—”

“I’m asking whether you agreed to be his model, not about what happened after he raped you,” you explain.

“No, I didn’t agree, but each time he would take off my clothes. . . .”

“Was this before or after?”

You want to know if she had agreed to model for him before that. That is, had she presented herself naked to him.

“It was like that for two years!” she says decisively, then drinks a mouthful of scotch.

“Like what?” You want to get a better idea.

“What do you mean by ‘like what’? Rape is rape, what else is there to it? Surely you know that.”

“I’ve never experienced it.”

You have a drink and try hard to think about something else.

“For two whole years,” she frowns, turns the glass in her hand, “he raped me!”

That is, she had not resisted. You can’t stop yourself from asking, “Then how did it end?”

“I ran into that other girl at his studio. To begin with, I used to go to his studio with her. We had known one another for a long
time, and often saw one another. But after the first time he raped me in his studio, I didn’t see her again. One day, I had put on my clothes and was about to go out when that girl turned up. I came face to face with her in the passageway by the landing. She tried to avoid me, but her eyes fell upon me and looked me up and down. Then, without a greeting or a good-bye, she turned to leave. I called her name, but she walked faster and, with a toss of the head, was going down the stairs. I turned, saw him standing awkwardly by the door of the studio, and immediately understood!”

“Understood what?” you ask.

“That he was also raping her,” she says. “For two years he had been raping me and also her!”

“She, the girl,” you say, “maybe she accepted and wanted it, maybe she was jealous of you—”

“No, of course it’s impossible for you to understand that look! I’m talking about the way that girl looked me over. I hated myself, not just that girl. It was only through her eyes that I was able to see myself, and I hated him and also my body that had prematurely become a woman’s.”

Left speechless, you light a cigarette. Outside the big window, the city lights illuminate the night sky, and the gray-white nebula seems to be speeding. The lights in the front section of the lounge have been turned off, only the lights over your table in the rear section are still on.

“Should we leave?” you ask, glancing at the bit of scotch left in her glass.

She drains her glass and smiles at you; you can tell she is a bit tipsy. You raise your glass and empty it, saying that it is to wish her well on her journey.

Back in the room, removing the clasp and loosening her hair, she says, “Do you still want to fuck me?”

You don’t quite know how to reply and, somewhat in a daze, sit by the table in the round-backed chair.

“If you really want to. . . .” she murmurs as the corners of her mouth turn down. She takes off her clothes in silence, her bra, her black panty hose and underpants, then lies there on her back staring at you. Her face has a drunken and yet childish look. You don’t make a move, you would not be able to fuck her, and somehow you pity her. You must force yourself to be mean, as you coldly question her further.

“Did he ever give you money?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“The artist, weren’t you his model?”

“The first few times, but I didn’t take it.”

“And later?”

“Do you want to know everything?” There is a bitter edge to her voice.

“Of course,” you say.

“You know too much already,” she says weakly. “I have to keep a bit to myself. . . . Since my mother died I have never returned to Venice.”

You have no idea how much of what she has told you is true, or how much she hasn’t told you. You say that she is a very intelligent woman, to console and soothe her.

“What’s the use of being intelligent?”

She is weaving a net to snare you. What she wants is love, and what you want is freedom. You have paid too high a price for the small freedom of controlling your own freedom, but it is really hard for you to leave her. She compels you, not just to enter her physically, but also to enter deep into the secret recesses of her mind. You look at her voluptuous body, but she gets up and abruptly turns to you.

“Just sit there and don’t move! Just sit there and talk.”

“Until morning?” you ask.

“As long as you’ve got something to say, say it, I’m listening!”

Her voice is commanding, yet imploring and radiating loveliness, intangible softness. You say you want to feel her reactions, otherwise
you would be talking to a vacuum, you would not know when she had fallen asleep, and would feel let down.

“All right, you take off your clothes, too! Just make love with your eyes!”

Chuckling to herself, she props a pillow behind her back against the headboard and, legs crossed, sits facing you. You take off your clothes but are unsure about going across to her.

“Just sit in the chair, don’t come near!” she commands.

You obey, and you confront one another naked.

“I want to look at you and feel you like this,” she says.

You say that this is like exposing yourself to her.

“What’s wrong with that? A man’s body is sexy in the same way, don’t feel so aggrieved.” At this, her lips curl up and she looks wickedly pleased with herself.

“Revenge? Compensation? Is that what you want?” You say this to mock her, this must be what she wants.

“No, don’t think so badly of me. . . .” Her voice suddenly seems to be wrapped in a layer of downy feathers. “You’re very gentle,” she says with sadness in her voice. “You’re an idealist, you’re still living in dreams, your own dreams.”

You say no. You only live in this instant of time, you no longer believe in lies about the future. You need to be able to live in reality.

“Have you never used violence on a woman?”

You think for a while, then say no. Of course, sex and violence are inevitably linked, but that’s another matter. The other party has to be willing and accepting. You have never raped anyone. You ask her whether the men she has had were rough.

“Not necessarily. . . . It’s best if you talked about something else.”

She turns away and leans on the pillow. You can’t see her expression. You say that you have experienced the feeling of being raped, of being raped by the political authorities, and it has clogged up your heart. You can understand her, and can understand the anxiety, frustration, and oppression that she can’t rid herself of. Rape is not a sex
game. It was the same for you, and it was only long afterward, after obtaining the freedom to speak out, that you realized it had been a form of rape. You had been subjected to the will of others, had to make confessions, had to say what others wanted you to say. It was crucial to protect your inner mind, your faith in your inner mind, otherwise you would have been crushed.

“I’m terribly lonely,” she says.

You say you understand her, want to go over to comfort her, but are afraid she might wrongly think that you just want to use her.

“No, you don’t understand, it’s impossible for a man to understand. . . .” Her voice is tinged with sadness.