Pearl of China

by Anchee Min

  Dick had been secretly working with General Chu, who had guarded Peking for Chiang Kai-shek. Dick had talked General Chu into surrendering. He convinced the man that Chiang Kai-shek had abandoned him. In Dick’s view, further fighting would mean a bloodbath from which Chu would emerge the loser no matter how hard he fought. In Mao’s name, Dick promised General Chu a high-ranking position in the People’s Liberation Army. Dick signed his name on this secret agreement for Mao. The moment General Chu raised the white flag, he would be called the People’s Hero.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes when Dick took us to see our new home. It was inside the Forbidden City. We were to occupy one of the palaces. Dick told me that Mao and his wife, along with his vice chairman, his ministers, and their families, had already moved into the Forbidden City.

  It took me days to convince myself that my life had really changed. At last, I didn’t have to live in a cave. I no longer had to endure air raids. Food would never again be a problem. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a face I hardly recognized as my own. At age fifty-nine, I was finally able to settle down.

  Instead of calling the palaces by their former Imperial names, the Communist housing authority gave them numbers. Our residence used to be called the Palace of Tranquillity; now it was called Building number 19.

  I walked around my new home admiring the splendor of the Imperial architecture. The palace was a living work of art. Like a true beauty, she changed her face according to the light. Tremendous arching beams and brick columns reminded me of opera stage sets. Rouge was impressed by the huge wooden gate. She ran from room to room cheering and singing. We had four spacious main rooms and seven utility rooms. There was a roofed hallway to the garden withevergreen trees, luxurious bushes, and wonderfully scented flowers.

  “How can we afford to live here?” I asked.

  Dick smiled. “It’s free.”

  “What do you mean free?”

  “I didn’t choose this place,” Dick said. “It was Chairman Mao’s decision.” Looking at my expression, Dick explained, “It’s for Mao’s convenience. He wants me to be near for the sake of business.” He paused, looking at me attentively. “I thought this arrangement would make you happy. How many people in China get to live in a palace like this?”

  I would have chosen a place where we could be private. I understood that Dick had no choice. Rouge was to join other children of high-ranking officials attending a private school where she would be taught more Russian than Chinese. The school’s goal was to prepare its graduates for the University of Moscow.

  I felt a growing distance from my daughter after she started school. She no longer wanted to pray with me. She threw away the little picture of Jesus I kept in my bathroom. She told me that she had been selected captain of her class. Instead of a hug and a good-bye in the morning, she would raise her right hand to her temple and say, “Salute, comrades!” One day I found a portrait of Mao in my bedroom, replacing my favorite lotus painting. When I protested, Rouge said, “It is for your own good, Mother. You don’t seem to understand what is going on outside our family.”

  I was not used to my new role as a revolutionary’s housewife. For security reasons, I was not allowed to share my address with anyone, including Papa. I complained to Dick and said that I missed my father. A month later, Papa was dropped at my door like a package. Although robust in health and glad to see me, Papa described his journey as being “kidnapped.” Mao’s secret agents plucked him from Chin-kiang and brought him to Beijing. Papa was not told where he was going or whom he was going to see. During his stay in the Forbidden City, Papa was reprimanded for trying to exit the gates without permission. He fought with the guards and said that he didn’t want to be a prisoner. Finally Papa begged me to buy him a ticket so that he could return to Chin-kiang. I bought him a ticket and was sad when he didn’t turn his head as he boarded the train. We barely had time to talk and catch up about our lives. I didn’t even get a chance to ask Papa how everyone was doing in Chin-kiang.

  I tried to find a way to let Pearl know about my move to Beijing. I assumed that she would know about Mao’s victory. I wondered what she thought about Chiang Kai-shek’s defeat. In a way, Pearl had predicted the outcome during our earlier correspondences. So many had been impressed by Madame Chiang Kai-shek, who had campaigned in America for her husband and succeeded in rallying the public behind her. But Pearl did not believe her claims. Pearl had often said in the past that the Chiangs were in power for themselves. She believed that there was a divide between the Chiangs and the peasants of China. She had said long ago that Mao’s power came from his understanding of the peasants.

  Pearl never trusted the Communists. She enjoyed her friendship with Dick and supported my marriage to him because she saw that he loved me. On the other hand, Pearl didn’t like my being brainwashed by Dick. When I mentioned Dick’s worship of Karl Marx in a letter, Pearl wrote back and asked, “Do you know who Karl Marx is? He is this strange little man, long dead, who lived his narrow little life, and somehow managed by the power of his wayward brain to lay hold upon millions of human lives!”

  This made sense to me, although nothing I said changed Dick’s mind. With Mao’s victory, Dick had gone further on what I would call a journey of no return.

  A party commemorating national independence was next on Mao’s agenda. Dick was put in charge of arranging it. He was grateful that Mao trusted him with the job. He was finally doing what he loved—bringing talented people together. I rarely got to see Dick in daylight. I told myself that I was lucky my husband had not died in battle, and that I should be satisfied our lives were taken care of by the Communist Party. We were given chefs, drivers, doctors, dressmakers, bodyguards, and house cleaners.

  I wrote to Pearl the first chance I got. Beijing was a huge city where I could easily melt into the crowd when visiting a post office. I told Pearl that while Dick became an ever more devoted Communist, I remained an independent bourgeois liberal, and worse, I continued to be a Christian. “The changing China excites me and scares me at the same time,” I confessed. “Mao has made himself into a god to the people. I feel like I am losing my husband and daughter to this man. The irony is: I am the person they think mad.”

  For the sake of my daughter, I stopped trying to seek out churches in Beijing in which to worship. But even if I wanted to, I could never give up my faith in God. I prayed in the dark. I was on my knees when Dick and Rouge were asleep. I was also determined to keep up my correspondence with Pearl as long as I could.

  Dick’s stomach pain worsened and finally he needed surgery. Two thirds of his stomach was removed. He continued to work from his hospital bed. He met with some of the day’s most influential people, from Chiang Kai-shek’s former ministers to famous artists. Dick’s goal was to secure domestic and international legitimacy for Mao. “Chairman Mao must make more friends. At any time, America could use Taiwan as its military base to launch an attack on China,” Dick told Rouge.

  As China’s new minister of the Bureau of Culture, Science, and Art, Dick encouraged overseas Chinese to return to their homeland. For the next ten years Dick would write hundreds of letters telling his friends all over the world that “Mao is a wise and merciful leader who recognizes and appreciates talent.”

  Among those who returned were intellectuals, scientists, architects, playwrights, novelists, and artists. In the name of the Communist Party, Dick guaranteed their salaries and offered privileged lifestyles and freedom of expression. Dick appointed them as heads of national theaters and universities. Every morning, Dick drove his jeep to pick up the new arrivals. Every evening, he hosted a gay welcoming party.

  At one welcoming party, Dick drank too much. The next morning, with puffy, bloodshot eyes, he said, “If Hsu Chih-mo hadn’t died, I would have invited him. He would have enjoyed himself.”

  “Hsu Chih-mo would not hide himself like I do,” I responded. “He would have criticized Mao. He would have told Mao to his face that he was an amateur p
oet.”

  “Who are you trying to challenge?” Dick was irritated. “Why are you so cynical all the time?”

  “I just question how true China’s freedom of expression is,” I said. “Are you sure that you can keep the promises you have made to so many?”

  Dick understood my concern. He could not answer my question, because deep down he knew that “Mao’s will” would be the “nation’s will.”

  “You might end up carrying the stone that will eventually smash your own toes,” I said, afraid.

  Dick put his arm around my shoulders and said that he agreed with me. “But I must have faith in what I do.”

  I rubbed my face against his hand and told him that I understood.

  “I must trust that others share my values,” Dick said in a gentle voice.

  “You are being naïve.”

  “I know, I know,” he cut me off. “Your worries are legitimate but unnecessary.”

  “I can see it coming.”

  “Willow, you have a wild imagination. Don’t let it drive you crazy.”

  “I won’t say this again. Listen, I am your wife, and I know you enough to know that you and Mao are different people.”

  “We complement each other.”

  “That is not what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean, darling.”

  “Let me finish, will you?” I was upset. “To get his way, Mao will not hesitate to persecute or—dare I say the word?—murder. He’s done it before.”

  Dick stood and put some distance between us. “Mao doesn’t own the party,” he said in a firm voice. “Communism is about justice and democracy.”

  Dick led me to his room and opened the top drawer in his desk. He took out an envelope. I could tell that the Chinese writing on the envelope was Pearl’s. The stamps showed that the letter had arrived two months ago, and the letter had already been opened. The envelope was empty.

  “My privacy has been invaded,” I protested.

  “Mao’s internal security agents opened it.”

  “Where is the letter?”

  “The central bureau has it. They notified me that it was to be confiscated.”

  “Why didn’t you speak up for me?”

  “You would not be here now if I hadn’t!” Dick almost yelled.

  I knew Dick had done his best.

  “Look.” Dick pulled more documents from his drawer. “Here is more evidence. I have fought for you not once but repeatedly.”

  I had had no idea that I was in so much trouble.

  “You are being watched by internal security,” Dick continued. “You are one step from becoming known as an enemy sympathizer. Your friendship with Pearl Buck is seen as a threat to national security. Pearl’s status in America and her public criticism of Mao and the Communist Party have categorized her as an enemy of China.”

  “Am I a suspect?”

  “What do you think? You were caught passing her information.”

  I remembered that in my letters I had shared with Pearl my doubts about Dick’s efforts to recruit people to the Communist cause. I had confided to her that I could never forget what had happened in Yenan in the thirties. Several Shanghai youths Dick had recruited had been arrested as spies and shot. All these years later, their families still wrote to Dick asking for information about their loved ones. Dick put on a mask when talking to them. He had no answers for them. He felt responsible and couldn’t forgive himself no matter how many times he told himself that the murders had been caused by the war with Japan.

  I didn’t mean to mail Pearl another letter. I knew it was too dangerous. The political atmosphere had begun to change after Mao’s experiment called the Great Leap Forward. It began in the year 1958 and lasted three years before utterly failing. It forced the entire nation to adopt a communal lifestyle. The result was millions of deaths and a starving nation. By the end of 1962, respect for Mao had faded. There were voices calling for a “competent leader.”

  Feeling that his power was threatened, Mao suppressed the growing criticism. Madame Mao opened a national media conference to “clear away the confusion.” Dick was to draft a “battle plan.” The first thing Dick was ordered to do was close China’s door to the outside. He had to personally apologize to foreign journalists and diplomats for canceling their entry visas. “It is temporary,” Dick assured them. “China will be open for business again sooner than you know.”

  But when Dick came home he told me that he had little confidence in what he had promised his friends. Mao had no intention of reopening China’s door. It led me to think that mailing the letter would be my last chance to contact Pearl. It would be now or never.

  Acting like an undercover agent, I disguised myself as a peasant and dropped my letter in a post office outside Beijing. It was a warm day in April. The sunshine filtered through the clouds. The trees were light green with new leaves. Children wearing red scarves on their necks were singing cheerful songs. I made sure to cover my tracks by taking different buses. On my way back I couldn’t help wiping my tears. I sensed that I might never again hear from Pearl.

  Hard as I tried, I could no longer put on a smiling face and maintain a positive attitude. As far as the party was concerned, this meant being politically correct at all times. It grew harder every day. I would attack Dick at home and my anger would spill over.

  “Mao robs the lives of innocent people!” I would yell and throw my chopsticks at the wall. “It’s brutality!”

  “Sacrifice would be a better word.” My husband hushed me and went to shut the windows.

  “Speak to me without your mask, Dick! Tell me, in your heart have you questions, reservations, doubts?”

  Dick went silent.

  “How can you bear the thought that you have murdered for Mao? You are struggling to justify yourself.”

  “Enough, Willow. This is 1963, not 1936! The proletarians rule today. Our Chairman is following in Stalin’s footsteps. One wrong word and you can lose your tongue, if not your head.”

  “You haven’t answered my questions.”

  “I am tired.”

  We sat facing each other for a long time. Our dinner was on the table, but we had no appetite.

  “When Mao panics, he gets carried away,” Dick said, taking a deep breath. “He needed to purge the anti-Communist bug.”

  “Did he do the right thing ordering the murders of those young people you recruited?”

  “At the time, yes. But now, no. The tragedy was the party’s loss. It benefited no one but our enemies.”

  “Dick Lin, I have been watching you running around trading on your reputation to get people to return to China. What if Mao changes his mind? What if those people say and do things that end up displeasing and offending Mao? Are you going to be the executioner?”

  “It won’t happen.”

  “I thought by now that you knew Mao.”

  “I do.”

  “Then you are evil to follow him.”

  “I am riding on the back of a tiger. I will die if I try to get off.”

  “What a selfish statement!”

  Dick turned away and went to sit in a chair. He cupped his face with his hands. “You have never approved of what I do anyway.”

  “You refuse to acknowledge the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “There is no Communism but what Mao wants!”

  “Comrade Willow.” Dick stood up. “I have never insulted your God, so please stop insulting mine.”

  CHAPTER 27

  I was arrested at home while washing the dishes. I never expected a postal officer to turn me in. I was denounced and accused of being an American spy. Without a trial, I was thrown in prison. I had seen this happen to others, but I was shocked when it happened to me.

  Dick pulled strings. But no one dared to help. My crime was my friendship with Pearl Buck. Dick said that it wasn’t Pearl Buck’s literary success that made her China’s enemy, but her refusal to be the Maos’ friend.

  Since tak
ing over China, the Maos had wished that Pearl would give her support to the regime. But Pearl kept her distance. Agents from China repeatedly contacted her hoping that she could do what the American journalists Edgar Snow and Anna Louise Strong had done for China. Although Pearl was friendly with both journalists, she held her own political views. In the late 1950s, when millions of Chinese starved to death during the Great Leap Forward, Pearl criticized Mao. She pointed out a crucial fact that others had ignored: “Mao allowed his people to die of starvation and disease while he helped the North Koreans fight a war against the Americans.”

  “Is Pearl Buck a friend or an enemy?” Dick told me Mao had once asked him.

  Dick answered truthfully that Pearl Buck loved the Chinese people, but she didn’t believe in Communism.

  Mao instructed Dick to work on Pearl Buck. Mao wanted Dick to repeat the success he had achieved when he had talked General Chu into switching sides in 1949. Mao made Pearl Dick’s next challenge. Mao’s order to Dick was clear: “I’d love to gain a Nobel Prize winner as a comrade.”

  Behind my back, Dick wrote to Pearl. She didn’t respond, and she didn’t mention Dick’s efforts in any of the letters she wrote to me.

  Frustrated, Dick asked Mao why he had to have Pearl Buck.

  “There is no comparison between Pearl Buck and Edgar Snow,” Mao replied. “Pearl Buck is read in every country on the world map. Her books have been translated into over a hundred languages! If Edgar Snow is a tank, Pearl Buck is a nuclear bomb.”

  Dick failed in his mission because Pearl was too knowledgeable about China to be fooled. Pearl judged Mao by his actions, not by his fancy slogans. “Serve the people with heart and soul” meant nothing to her. Like her father, Absalom, Pearl refused to be bought. The novels she wrote during the 1960s depicted the tragic lives being led under Mao, although she wrote them from across the sea and was only guessing. It seemed that her senses were growing sharper as she aged.