One Man's Bible (20 page)
They all regarded themselves as blood-lineage proletariat and believed that this red country should belong to them. Revolution or rebellion, it finally came down to seizing power. This fact was so simple that it surprised him. But, at the time, he did not know what he wanted, and even his rebelling was a path he had strayed onto by mistake.
“Comrades, Chen Duxiu failed to seize political power at a critical point of the revolution! He was a rightist opportunist!” The Party-member older sister dismissed him with this reference to Party history, then began shouting slogans to the people at the meeting.
“All of you who are not for the revolution can get the hell out of here!” the more radical among them shouted along with her. As a latecomer, she was trying to maneuver herself into a leadership position.
“If you want to be the leader, then go for it!”
He rose to his feet angrily and left the smoke-filled meeting room where forty or fifty people had been puffing on cigarettes the whole night. In the office next door, he pulled together three chairs and went to sleep. He was upset and confused. If he wasn’t a fellow traveler of the revolution, was he then an opportunist rebel? Probably he was, and this was unsettling.
On the night of that New Year’s Eve, the meeting thus unhappily dispersed. In the New Year, sporadic war began between Big Li’s crowd and the most radical members of the Battle Corps that had announced a takeover of the paralyzed Party committee and political department.
“Smash the Party committee! Smash the political department! Revolutionary comrades, do you support or oppose the New Red Political Authority? There is a clear line of demarcation between being revolutionary or not!”
Little Yu was shouting into the broadcast system. Offices had been fitted with speakers, and the announcement of the political coup blared through all the corridors and rooms. Escorted by Big Li, Tang, and some service personnel, a group of old cadres and some young Party branch secretaries all wearing placards on their chests were paraded through the corridors of the entire building. In the lead was Wu Tao, beating on a gong.
What were they up to? Probably this was precisely how revolutions began. Those once dignified leading cadres who were the embodiment of the Party now filed past, one after the other, heads
bowed, abject and wretched. The Party-member older sister led the rebel group with her fist raised and, shaking it, she loudly shouted, “Down with the capitalist road elements in positions of power! Long live the New Red Political Authority! Long live the victory of Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line!”
In imitation of the national leaders at reviews, Tang waved at the people squeezed in the corridors and blocking office doorways. This made some laugh, but made others look grim.
“We know you are opposed to their seizing power—” the former field officer said.
“I don’t, but I oppose their method of seizing power,” he replied.
The person who approached him had transferred from the army to work as a political cadre. He was only a deputy department chief, and, in the chaos, was eager to advance himself. All smiles, he said, “You’ve got much more influence with the people than that mob. If you put yourself forward, we will back you. We hope that you will rally a contingent to work with us.”
This conversation took place in the confidential documents room of the political department, a room he had not previously entered. The workplace documents and personnel files, including his own file with a record of his father’s problem, were all kept in this place. When Big Li’s crowd seized power, they pasted paper seals on the metal security cupboards as well as the locked document cupboards. The seals could be torn off at any time but nobody would dare to destroy the files.
The former field officer had sought him out in the main dining hall and said he wanted to exchange ideas with him. However, his arranging to meet in this room indicated another motive and, entering the room, he somehow sensed this. He knew who was behind the former field officer, because a few days earlier, the Party-committee deputy secretary, Chen, had given him a signal by putting a big bony hand on his shoulder. Chen formerly headed the workplace political department and seldom spoke or laughed; after being denounced, he
had turned stony and cold. Chen had come up to him from behind and, as no one was around, had actually called his name and even addressed him as “comrade.” Chen put his hand on his shoulder for one or two seconds, gave a nod, and walked past. This seemingly casual act, however, intimated extraordinary closeness, a pretense of having forgotten that it was he who had denounced Chen at a big meeting. This man far outstripped that motley crowd of rebels in political experience and meanness, yet here he was, stretching out a hand to him. He was by no means an old hand at playing politics, and was not as cunning as this man, but he knew he could not stand in their ranks. He reaffirmed his position, “I don’t condone how they have seized power, but that doesn’t mean that I am opposed to the general direction of those who have seized power. I definitely support rebelling against the Party committee.”
This pleased the former field officer, who was silent for a while before saying with a nod, “We’re also rebelling.”
It sounded as if the man were saying “We’re also drinking tea.” He laughed, but said nothing.
“We were just having a casual chat, treat our conversation just now as having never occurred.” Having said this, the former field officer stood up.
He left the confidential documents room, declined their deal, and severed links with them.
Less than ten days later, in February, after the New Year, the old Red Guards and some political cadres again organized a corps to oppose the seizure of power and smashed the workplace broadcasting station that was controlled by the rebels. The first armed conflict broke out between the two sides, and there were some injuries, but he was not present at the time.
Is it worth writing pure literature, that pure literary form where style, language, word games, linguistic structures, patterns simply follow their own course, but which is unrelated to your experiences, your life, the dilemmas of life, the quagmire of reality, or you, who are a part of the filth? Pure literature is a subterfuge, a shield, a limitation, and there is no need for you to crawl into a cage demarcated by others or yourself.
Your writing is not in the cause of pure literature, but neither are you a fighter using your pen as a weapon to promote truth. You don’t know what truth is, but you don’t need someone else to tell you what is. You know you are certainly not the embodiment of truth, and you write simply to indicate that a sort of life, worse than a quagmire, more real than an imaginary hell, more terrifying than Judgment Day, has, in fact, existed. Furthermore, it is very likely that when people have forgotten about it, it will make a comeback, and people who have never gone crazy will go crazy, and people who have never been oppressed will oppress or be oppressed. This is because madness has existed since the birth of humanity, and it is simply a question of when it will flare up again. Then are you trying to play the role of a teacher? Many have worn themselves out as teachers and preachers, but have people become any better?
It is best not to strive to make yourself despair, so why go on relating all this misery? You are distressed, but even if you wanted to, you can’t stop. You must have this release, it has become an affliction, and the reason, you suspect, is because you yourself have this need.
You vomit up the folly of politics, yet, at the same time, you manufacture another sort of lie in literature, for literature is a lie that hides the writer’s ulterior motive for profit or fame. However, what guides or stops the pen are not utilitarianism and vanity, but a deep, instinctual, animal drive, and differences within the species are due to the persistence of this drive, which is not affected by temperature changes, whether one is hungry or not, or the seasons. It is just like shit; if there is the need to, it is discharged. But it is unlike shit in that it is discharged in different places, and what is discharged must be endowed with sensuality and aesthetic beauty—for example, linking grief to your enjoyment of language. While exposing the land of your ancestors, the Party, the leaders, the ideals, the new people, and also that modern superstition and fraud—revolution—you use literature to create a gauze curtain, so that, viewed through it, that trash can at least be looked at. Hidden on this side of the curtain, in the dark with the audience, you derive pleasure; so doesn’t this provide satisfaction?
Lies are everywhere in the world, and you are similarly creating lies in literature. Animals do not tell lies but exist in the world no matter how it is, whereas humans need to use lies to adorn this forest of humanity, and it is this that distinguishes animals from humans. More cunning than animals, humans need to use lies to conceal their own ugliness in order to seek a reason for living: to articulate pain in order to alleviate pain seems to make pain bearable. In ancient times, the dirges at funerals in the villages had the effect of drugging the senses, and, like the singing of Mass in churches, the singing of these could be addictive.
Pasolini adapted for cinema Sade’s exposés of the evil of political power and human nature; by using only the screen to separate the audience from reality, he made people feel that they were viewing the violence and evil from the outside. That there can be a tantalizing quality in violence and evil is probably the wonder of art and literature.
Sincerity is the same for the poet and the novelist. The writer hides like a photographer behind the camera, affecting impartiality and detachment behind an objective camera, but what is projected on the negative is still self-love and self-pity, masturbation and sadism. That eye with its pretense of neutrality is driven by all sorts of desires, and what is manifested is tinged with aesthetic taste while claiming to look with indifference upon the world. It is best that you acknowledge that your writing strives for reality but that it is separated from reality by a layer of language. It is by cloaking naked reality with a gauze curtain, ordering language and weaving into it feelings and aesthetics that you are able to derive pleasure from looking back at it, and are interested in continuing to write.
You articulate in language your feelings, experiences, dreams, memories, fantasies, thoughts, assessments, premonitions, sensations, as well as providing the music and rhythms for linking these to the existences of real people. In the process of linguistic actualization, the present and past history, time and space, concepts and knowledge, all become fused and leave behind magical illusions created by language.
The magic of literature lies in willingness on the part of the author and the reader. Unlike political frauds that even the unwilling are forced to accept, literature may either be read or not, there is no coercion. You do not choose literature because of a belief in its purity; for you, it is simply a means of release.
Also, you are not polemical. You do not extend or amputate according to the other person’s height, do not tailor yourself to the framework of theories, do not restrict what you say to what interests
others. Your writing is only to bring pleasure and happiness to your life.
And you are not a superman. Since Nietzsche, there has been a glut of both supermen and common herds in the world. You are, in fact, very ordinary, the epitome of ordinariness and practicality. You are relaxed and at ease, have a smile like Buddha’s, although you are not Buddha.
You absolutely refuse to be a sacrifice, refuse to be a plaything or a sacrificial object for others, refuse to seek compassion from others, refuse to repent, refuse to go mad and trample everyone else to death. You look upon the world with a mind that is the epitome of ordinariness, and in exactly the same way you look at yourself. Nothing inspires fear, amazement, disappointment, or wild expectation, hence, you avoid frustration. If you want to enjoy being upset, you get upset, then revert to this supremely ordinary, smiling, and contented you.
You do not detest the world and its ordinary ways that will always be fashionable. By not exaggerating your challenge to those in power, you have survived to enjoy freedom of speech. You have also received kindness from others and, as far as you are concerned, the principle “I don’t want others to owe me anything and I don’t want to owe others anything” is wrong. You are indebted to others, and others are indebted to you, but adding together all the kindness you have received from others, you have certainly received much more than you have given. Indeed, you are very lucky, so why are you complaining?
You are not a dragon, not an insect, not this, not that, so, “are not” is thus you, but rather than negation, “are not” is a sort of reality, a trace, a cost, or a result. At the end point, that is, at the brink of death, you are merely an indication of life—expression and speech that confronts “are not.”
You have written this book for yourself, this book of fleeing, your
One Man’s Bible
, you are your own God and follower, you do not
sacrifice yourself for others, so you do not expect others to sacrifice themselves for you, and this is the epitome of fairness. Everyone wants happiness, so why should it all belong to you? However, what should be acknowledged is that there is actually very little happiness in the world.
He saw no future in the total chaos of the times, so it was best for him to get out of danger. He wanted to retrieve that lost world, the startling beauty he had seen in the person of the landlord’s daughter, the beautiful contour of her face and her slim figure. As the girl stood sideways outside his door, her pink fleshy earlobe was outlined in detail by the sunlight in the courtyard and her hair, eyebrows, and lips seemed to radiate light. Her beauty had entranced him, but the hatred in the girl’s eyes was daunting. He wanted to dispel the girl’s misunderstanding of him, so he went to the neighboring courtyard. He had imagined it to be a quiet courtyard complex with just the one family, which would be an isolated little paradise cut off from the chaotic world. The old man from next door had not come to collect rent for the street committee, so he went to pay his rent in the neighboring courtyard as an excuse to see the girl.
The small door on the street opened when he touched it, and the little courtyard inside the wall gave him a shock: it was a shambles, a clutter of odds and ends piled by the wall and under the eaves. An old woman was washing bedcovers in an aluminum basin at the top of the steps right in front of the main door, and there was a small child inside the house crying and making a racket. He thought he had come through the wrong door and was about to retreat when the old woman looked up and asked, “Who are you looking for?”
“I’ve come to pay the rent. . . .”
“What?”
“I live in the courtyard next door, and I’m looking for the landlord. No one has collected the rent for months.” He had come prepared with an explanation.
The old woman shook the soapsuds off her hands and pointed to the apartment at the side with a lock hanging on the door, took no more notice of him, and went back to washing the bedding in the basin.
He could only guess that something had happened to the landlord’s family. It seemed that the whole place had been confiscated as public property and that the family had been relegated to occupying a side apartment. The hatred in the girl’s eyes would now be even harder to erase, but he lacked the courage to return to the courtyard to look for her again.
In the early spring, in March, he went to Xiehejian in the Western Hills on the outer fringe of Beijing. He got on a train at Xizhimen, a station mainly for freight trains. It was a slow train to the outer suburbs in the mountain area of the northwest, and two hard-seat carriages had been coupled at the rear. The high tide of endless streams of students had passed, and the empty carriages were left with just a few passengers at the front and back. He sat down by the window of an unoccupied compartment. The train went through a series of tunnels and then began to wend its way through valleys. Out the window, he could see the old steam engine at the front puffing smoke and steam as it pulled a string of freight cars and this empty hard-seat carriage swaying at the back.
At a small stop called Goose Wings, where there was no platform, he jumped off and watched the long-distance train continue around the side of the mountain. The stationmaster waved the flag and blew
the whistle, then went into the small hut by the shoulder of the road, leaving just him standing on the gravel by the side of the railway tracks.
While at university, he had come here as a volunteer laborer to dig holes and plant trees on the mountain. It was also in early spring, and the ground was still frozen. Each time he swung his pickax, he would not bring up two inches of soil, so, in a few days, his palms were covered in blood blisters. Once he was almost killed when he jumped into the bone-chilling river to recover the hemp bag containing the saplings he was to plant. He had it soaking in the river and it was swept away by the fast-flowing current. For this, he was commended, but the Communist Youth League still did not want him. He and some fellow students, all of whom had been refused membership, called one another “Old Reject.” They formed a theater group and had just put on two plays when cadres of the student association at the university sought them out and spoke with them separately. They were not ordered to stop, but the theater group could no longer function, and, as a matter of course, disbanded.
They had performed Chekhov’s
Uncle Vanya
. It had old-fashioned charm, with a sweet and kindly country girl from a small farm saying nostalgically that everything should be beautiful, with beautiful people in beautiful clothes and also with beautiful hearts; it grieved for a past that was like the old photographs he had burned.
He walked along the railway sleepers for a while, but, seeing a train coming from the distance, he went down the shoulder of the road and headed for the rock-covered riverbed. The water in the Yongding River was clear, unless it was swollen with rain or the sluices of the government dam upstream had been shut off.
He had brought Lin here and taken photographs. Lin had a beautiful figure, and she stood barefoot in the water with her skirt scooped up in her arms. Afterward, among the bushes on the mountain, they picnicked, kissed, and made love. He regretted not having
photographed her nude as she lay in the grass, but all that was now beyond his reach.
What else could he do? What else was there to do? There was no need for him to go back to his office desk to arrange those virtually identical propaganda documents as he was meant to, as no one was in charge of him. Also, there was no need for him to rebel: that strange righteous indignation, too, had passed. For several months, he had headed the assault on the opposition, but now the thrill and excitement had completely vanished, or, rather, he had tired, had had enough of it. He should bravely retreat while he still could; there was no need for him to play the role of a hero.
He took off his shoes and socks, and walked barefoot in the clear icy current. As the water gently trickled in shining broken ripples and sparkled in the sunlight, he suddenly started thinking clearly. He should go to see his father because he had not received a letter from home for a long time, and he should also take the opportunity, when no one would notice, to travel south to clarify this business in his file about his father having “hidden a gun.”
He rushed back to the city by early afternoon, went home to get his bankbook, cycled to withdraw money before the bank closed, then went to Qianmen Railway Station to buy a ticket for that night. He returned home to lock his bicycle in his room, and, carrying the satchel he normally took to work, he boarded the express train south at eleven o’clock.
Father and son had not seen one another for two years, and, when he suddenly turned up, his father was overjoyed. His father went off to the free market and bought fresh fish and live shrimp, and went to the kitchen to gut the fish. When his mother died, his father became morose and seldom spoke, but now he was a different person, doing the cooking, cheerful and talking a lot. Then came his father’s concerns about politics, and he kept asking questions about the Party and the national leaders who had vanished from the papers. Not
wanting to upset his father straight away, he sat at the table, drinking, and talked about things that couldn’t be read in the newspapers. He told his father there was an internal struggle going on in the highest echelons of the Party, but that it was something about which ordinary people would not be able to find out anything. His father said he knew, he knew; in the provinces and the cities, it was the same. His father also said that he had joined the rebels and that the head of the personnel department, who had denounced a string of people, had been overthrown. He held back for a while but felt he had to warn his father.
“Father, you mustn’t forget the lesson of the anti-rightist period—”
“I did not oppose the Party! I only raised some views about a particular person’s work!”
His father became agitated. His hand began to shake, and he spilled the liquor from his cup onto the table.
“You’re not young, and you have problems with your personal history, you can’t join such groups! You don’t have the right to take part in such campaigns!” He was also very agitated. He had never spoken in that tone of voice to his father before.
“Why can’t I?” His father slammed his cup on the table. “There’s nothing wrong with my history, I didn’t join with reactionaries, I have no political problems! That year, the Party called upon people to speak out, and I simply said that the wall between the masses should be torn down. I was referring to that person’s work style. I did not say a word against the Party. It was his revenge! I said this at the meeting, and many people were present, they all heard and can testify to this! That blackboard document of mine with more than a hundred characters had been requested by their Party branch!”
“Father, you’re too naive—” he went to argue, but his father cut him short.
“I don’t need you to lecture to me! Just because you’ve done a bit of study! Your mother overindulged you, she spoiled you rotten!”
After his father had calmed down, he had to ask him. “Father, did you ever have any guns?”
His father was stunned. It was as if he had been struck on the head. Slowly his head drooped, and he stopped talking.
“Someone has divulged that my file has this problem,” he explained. “I made this trip to see if you were all right. Is there any truth in the matter?”
“Your mother was too honest. . . .” his father mumbled.
In other words, it was true. His heart went cold.
“It was a year or two after Liberation. Census forms were issued for people to fill out, and there was a column for weapons. It was your mother’s fault, she was asking for trouble, she insisted that I honestly write down that I had sold a gun to a friend. . . .”
“What year was this?” he asked, glaring. His father had become the object of his interrogation.
“It was a long time ago, during the War of Resistance. It was still the Republican Period, before you were even born. . . .”
People all testified like this, they had to, he thought. However, the matter of the gun was already an incontestable fact, and he had to struggle to pull himself together and to curb his anger. He could not interrogate his father, so he said quietly, “Father, I’m not blaming you, but where is this gun?”
“I passed it on to a colleague at the bank. Your mother said she couldn’t understand why I was keeping the thing, but I had it for protection, because of the social unrest in those times. She said I wouldn’t know where to aim it, and what if it went off by accident? So, I sold it to a colleague at the bank!” His father laughed.
But this was not a laughing matter, and he said sternly, “But it is recorded in my file that you had hidden a gun.”
These were Lin’s exact words, and he could not have heard them wrongly.
His father shook and almost shouted, “That’s impossible! It happened more than thirty years ago!”
Father and son looked at one another. He believed his father more than the file, but he had to say, “Father, they are sure to investigate.”
“In other words . . .” His father was wretched.
“In other words, who would now admit to having bought the gun?” He, too, despaired.
His father covered his face with both hands. He had finally realized the implications, and was weeping. The food on the table, hardly touched, had gone cold.
He said he did not blame his father, and, whatever happened, he was still his son, there was no question of his not acknowledging him as his father. During the great famine in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward period, his mother had also been naive. She responded to the call of the Party and went to a farm to be reformed through labor; excessive fatigue led to her drowning in the river. He and his father were left to depend upon each other, and he knew his father loved him very much. When he came home from university swollen from malnutrition, his father used two months of meat-ration coupons to buy pork fat to make lard for him to take back with him. His father said it was cold up north and impossible to get hold of anything nutritious, whereas here carrots could be bought from the peasants. He could never forget his father pouring the boiling fat into a plastic jar, which immediately shriveled up and melted; the fat ran from the table to the floor. In silence, they got on their haunches to scrape up the solidified lard, bit by bit, with a spoon from the floor.
He went on to say, “Father, I’ve come back to clear up this business about the gun, for your sake and for mine.”
It was only then that his father said, “I sold the gun to an old colleague at the bank more than thirty years ago. After Liberation, I have only had one letter from him. If he is still alive, he will be working at the bank. Do you remember him? You used to call him Uncle Fang. He was very fond of you and would never betray you. He
didn’t have any children and said he wanted to have you as his godchild, but your mother refused.”
There was an old photograph at home, if he hadn’t burned it, he recalled. This Uncle Fang was bald and had a fat round face. He was like a Buddha, but in a suit and tie. The child in a knitted pullover who sat on the lap of this living Buddha in a suit was holding a gold Parker fountain pen and wouldn’t let go of it. The pen was later given to him, and he treasured it as a child.
After spending a day at home, he continued south by train another day and night. When he found the local bank and made inquiries, the youth at reception turned out to be a member of a rebel group. Then, after asking the cadre in charge of personnel, he found out that a certain Fang had been transferred twenty years earlier to a savings office in the suburbs. This was probably because old personnel who had been retained were not trusted.
He rented a bicycle and found the savings office. They told him that Fang had retired, and gave him his address.
At the end of a passageway of a simple two-story building, was an old woman in an apron washing vegetables at the communal tub. She gave a start at his inquiry, and asked instead, “What do you want him for?”
“I was passing through on a business trip and came to pay a visit,” he said.
Hedging, the old woman wiped her hands incessantly on her apron, then finally said that he was not in. He suspected that she was Fang’s wife, so, with a smile, he explained that he was the son of Fang’s old friend so-and-so, and that he had come to visit his old uncle. The old woman quietly exclaimed, then took him to a door. She opened it to let him in, then brought tea and invited him to sit down. She told him her husband was working in the vegetable garden and that she would fetch him right away.