Pearl of China

by Anchee Min

  “What are you listening to?” I asked.

  “Sh-sh!” Bumpkin Emperor pushed my head down.

  Papa kept adjusting the dial. Finally there was a human voice. Papa was ecstatic. “I got it, I got it!” The signal didn’t last. It turned to static again. Papa kept trying while the others waited patiently. After a long while the signal returned. A voice speaking foreign-accented Mandarin came on. “This is Voice of America broadcasting from the United States.”

  CHAPTER 30

  The radio had belonged to Bumpkin Emperor. It had been a gift from Chiang Kai-shek when Bumpkin Emperor was at the peak of his power as a warlord. The two men had joined forces against Mao. What made the radio valuable was that it had been made in America for military use. Bumpkin Emperor had donated the radio to the church after Papa had converted him.

  Papa no longer felt isolated since he’d mastered the radio. He was obsessed with it. Papa shared the latest world news with carefully selected church members. Life became more bearable, although not better. The Cultural Revolution continued and Mao worship intensified. Food shortages became the worst they’d been since the Great Leap Forward. Vanguard loosened his grip on me in order to catch people who were selling vegetables they grew in their backyards.

  One day, a stranger visited me. His name was Chu. Although I didn’t recognize him, I remembered the name. He was the Beijing general Dick had talked into surrendering in 1949. Dick had been proud when he saved the Imperial city and avoided a bloody battle in the streets of Beijing. Dick had negotiated with General Chu. Mao had promised Chu a high-ranking position in the People’s Liberation Army.

  The man who stood in front of me was sick and thin. He had wax-yellow skin and sunken eyes. He spoke in a whisper and his words confused me. He said that he had been Dick’s cellmate in prison. He then explained that he was on a medical release from the national prison. I told him that Dick was working for Mao. He said that it was no longer the case.

  “What do you mean by ‘cellmate’?” I asked. I hadn’t talked to Dick for two years. I knew nothing about his life.

  General Chu produced a wadded paper on which ink letters the size of ants were written.

  Dear Willow,

  This letter gives me a chance to explain everything, which I consider a blessing.

  I am writing from the Southwest Labor Prison near Tibet. You might wonder what I did to offend Mao. Well, again, the story has to do with Pearl Buck. But truly my own ambition is to blame.

  Mao summoned me on the evening of May 30, 1969. Madame Mao was there and unusually friendly toward me. Mao didn’t seem to be aware that it was the middle of the night. He was dressed in a white bathrobe. His hair was wet and he was barefoot.

  Once I was seated he simply said, “Pearl Buck wants to come to China. Premier Chou En-lai thinks we should make an exception and open the door for her. What do you think?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I was aware of Madame Mao’s wooden expression. A slight smile quivered on her lips.

  Given all my personal history with Pearl Buck, I marveled at Mao’s audacity. Had he forgotten that you, my wife, had gone to prison because of your refusal to denounce your friend? But I also knew that Mao’s desire for international recognition had only grown stronger over the years. No matter how strong he was at home, his reputation had not kept up abroad. He would do anything to gain the prestige that had eluded him. I saw at once that he was willing to rewrite history if it would fulfill his ends. I wasn’t so sure about his wife.

  I sat there sweating in my chair as Mao went on. He asked me to cultivate Pearl Buck and convince her to change her mind about China. “Tell her we now rule a quarter of the human race on earth,” Mao said.

  Mao revealed that his intelligence agency had recently reported that Pearl Buck had been a consultant to President John Kennedy. Mao believed that she had the potential to be his bridge to America.

  Looking back, my fate was set. Madame Mao was jealous of any female Mao was interested in. She had made secret arrests, tortured, and murdered in order to gain Mao’s affection back.

  Unfortunately, my own ambition made me willfully blind. Connecting Mao and Pearl Buck would be the best thing I could do to advance my career. Going down in history tempted me so much that I played with fire. The wind was in my favor, I thought, and I’d be a fool not to ride it. I planned on making a case to back up Chou En-lai’s position.

  I translated Pearl’s recent articles on China and carefully edited out her negative comments. But before I submitted the material to Mao, the wind changed its direction. Madame Mao got ahead of me.

  As evidence against Pearl, Madame Mao presented parts of her latest novel, Three Daughters of Madame Liang, in which Pearl depicted senseless murders taking place during the Cultural Revolution as if she had witnessed it. The novel amazingly mirrored the truth.

  From that moment on, Mao lost interest in Pearl Buck. But Madame Mao was not finished with me. She saw Pearl Buck as a personal threat and was determined to punish anyone with a connection to her. Accusing me of deceiving Mao, Madame Mao had me arrested.

  I expected Mao to offer his protection, but he didn’t.

  I met General Chu in prison. What a twist of fate! On one hand, I felt guilty because Mao never honored his promises—the terms I negotiated. Once Chu surrendered, he became useless to Mao and was abandoned. Although Chu was granted the title of commanding general of the People’s Liberation Army, it was a paper title only. Chu ended up without the army or his freedom. I felt that I had let the man down. Ending my life in prison almost makes me feel better, because it separates me from Mao.

  The Tibetan weather is harsh and the air is thin. We live like rodents in underground holes, which we dug ourselves—talk about digging one’s own grave. However, the dead do not get buried here. The prison doesn’t have enough prisoners to dig the holes to bury them all. Instead, the dead are dragged away and left in the open about a half mile from where we live. When the wind is strong, we can smell the rotten stench. Eventually, Tibetan wolves and buzzards eat what is left.

  I live on leaves, earthworms, and mice. Before summer ends, the leaves and earthworms will be gone. We have stripped the trees of bark and eaten the rough fiber. Now those trees have died. We don’t have enough energy to catch mice. I have begun eating “suicide seeds.” This is a kind of grass seed that one slowly dies from. At least it cures the hunger. I’ve been constipated for weeks. My belly hurts so much that I pass out from time to time. You would never imagine the scene: cellmates helping each other scoop the shit from each other’s rear ends with bare fingers. It is a bloody business.

  Chu was my partner. He hadn’t shit for nine days. I used a chopstick and tried to break the stool and scoop it out with a spoon. But his stool was as hard as a rock. He was in terrible pain. His stomach swelled like a big balloon. Another cellmate was from Shanghai, a doctor. Yesterday he died of constipation. He was only thirty-seven years old.

  People here don’t count on waking up when they go to sleep. Strangely, most people die quietly in their sleep. Like the end of a burning candle, the flame flickers and is swallowed by eternal darkness. Each night I think of you. I regret deserting you for Daisy. She reported my complaining to Madame Mao. My foolish pillow talk! Near the end, before I went to prison, she admitted that she was Madame Mao’s spy. I knew Daisy kept a diary, but I didn’t know it would be used as a weapon against me. I thought I was on top of the world when I said to her, “Human beings make mistakes. Mao is a human being. He makes mistakes.” Daisy received a promotion for reporting my comment. Before my arrest, Mao invited me to accompany him to Russia. He made me believe that I was his most trusted man.

  There was never a hint that I was to be punished. Then all of a sudden, Madame Mao told me that Mao was upset with me. Next I was stripped of my Party membership. I was to go to prison because I was no longer a comrade but a reactionary. Mao wouldn’t answer my calls or letters.

  I know I have hurt you by my
disloyalty. I have stayed away as you wished. I am writing this letter because I believe that I won’t last much longer. My belly is larger than a pregnant woman’s. I am chewed up by remorse and shame. I deserve Hell. I don’t expect myself to live beyond the New Year. There is no mail and almost no one gets out alive. In case Chu succeeds in getting out and this letter reaches you, I want you to know that I still love you and have always loved you, even when I was a foolish man.

  Dick

  My only thought was to see Dick before it was too late. I didn’t bother asking Vanguard for permission to leave because I knew he wouldn’t agree. Rouge bought the ticket, and I left Chin-kiang by train the next day. It was a standing-only ticket because I didn’t have enough money to buy a seat. For the next seventy-two hours, I stood during the day and managed to rest at night, curled up next to urine-soaked newspapers.

  After the train, I traveled on foot. It took me two weeks to reach the prison camp. Then they made me wait for days before I was told the truth, that Dick had already died. He had been punished for stealing food. The story was that Dick hadn’t reported the death of another prisoner so that he could claim the dead man’s share of food. Dick slept with the corpse until the stink of rotting flesh gave him away. After that, the prison guards starved Dick and he died.

  I wept imagining Dick sleeping with a corpse. I asked that I be allowed to identify Dick’s remains, but I was refused. I went to the prison headquarters and put on a hunger strike. After a week, I was taken to the open graveyard Dick had described in his letter.

  As Dick had written, none were buried. Bodies and bones were everywhere. The smell was horrible. I stumbled from body to body looking for my husband. It was almost impossible to recognize any of the dead. I refused to give up. Hours later, I found him. Dick was naked. I recognized him by a scar I remembered. The flesh on his body had been torn by vultures and chewed on by wild dogs.

  I fainted. When I woke up, I struggled to remember Dick’s face as I had known him. I did not want to remember him like this. I went and found a local peasant who owned a donkey. I paid him to bring me a bucket of gasoline and some firewood. I borrowed a rusty old shovel and dug a ditch. I dragged what was left of my husband to the ditch and piled the wood on him and poured the gasoline over that. I set this on fire. Afterward, I collected Dick’s bones, but they were too big to fit inside my bag. I had to abandon most of them. I never imagined Dick would end like this.

  After I returned to Chin-kiang, Papa performed a memorial for Dick. We invited only the people we trusted who had known Dick. I meant to invite General Chu, but he was nowhere to be found. He had gone into hiding. Papa said that prison life must have made Chu cautious and distrustful. “Let’s remember him as a loyal friend to Dick.”

  “What’s important is that Chu risked his life to deliver Father’s letter,” Rouge said.

  “God must have guided General Chu,” Papa agreed.

  I remembered Chu’s words. He felt blessed to be the messenger because he believed that he would soon join Dick. He believed that finding me would be the best gift he could offer to his friend.

  I burned Dick’s writing, which I had saved over the years. Dick would have liked me to do that. He had worshipped Mao and Communism with all his heart. It was what Dick had believed.

  I saved Dick’s last letter for Pearl, although I had no idea if we would ever see each other again. A reunion with my friend was becoming harder and harder to imagine. Today’s Chinese children knew Americans only as enemies, and things seemed to be getting worse. I wondered whether Pearl would be amused or horrified at the fact that Mao had considered converting her into a proletarian.

  CHAPTER 31

  Papa was a master when it came to tricking the authorities. “Mao fought guerrilla style and won China,” Papa said to his congregation. “We stand the same chance to save souls for God if we follow his example.”

  I warned Papa that he was asking for trouble.

  “I have an advantage over Mao,” Papa replied with confidence. “I have the radio.”

  I was worried. “You will end up in prison.”

  “That already happened before you came home.” Papa stuck up three fingers. “Three times I was in and out of that filthy place. What more can the authorities do to a century-old man?”

  Papa reminded me more and more of Absalom. He attended births, marriages, and funerals. He fooled the government spies with the language he used. He commenced each ceremony the traditional way and then turned it into a Christian event without anyone being the wiser—even when an agent was in the crowd. Papa started each sermon with Mao’s Quotation Book in his hand. He would begin with “We are people from all walks of life” and conclude by reciting from the Bible, “He that had gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack.”

  Papa developed a language only his Christian congregation understood. He referred to God as “the Cloud-walker,” punishment in hell as being “handpicked by Karl Marx,” the Bible as “the Quotation Book,” and salvation as “the revolutionary mission.”

  During the celebration on China’s twenty-second National Independence Day, Papa was arrested for the fourth time for spreading poisonous thoughts. Papa confessed quickly to avoid torture. He denounced himself and made promises to the authorities, but he had no intention of keeping them.

  He came home quoting a Chinese saying: “A hero is someone who doesn’t swim against the current.”

  Papa forgave himself in God’s name. He called his lies strategies to avoid unnecessary sacrifices. Using himself as an example, he taught his congregation how to deal with the authorities. Once, Papa pretended to have a nervous breakdown. He claimed that he suffered flashbacks from the time when he was “poisoned” by Absalom. At public rallies Papa pointed at himself and shouted, “Down with Absalom’s number-one running dog!” This caused stifled laughter to ripple through the crowd.

  When ordered to criticize himself, Papa said, “My hands would be busy picking your pockets if Absalom hadn’t introduced me to Jesus Christ.”

  Vanguard tried to stop Papa. “How dare you praise that American cultural imperialist!” he yelled.

  “Down with Absalom!” Papa shouted back as he punched his fists into the air. “I salute Comrade Vanguard!” Turning toward Mao’s portrait on the wall, he bowed deeply. “I’ll confess more to you, Chairman Mao!”

  “More confessions!” the crowd cheered. “More confessions!”

  Papa carried on. “Chairman Mao teaches us that ‘we must educate the masses by exposing what our enemy has done.’ Now, let me tell you what Jesus Christ has done.”

  I learned from Papa not to “swim against the current.” I still felt hurt when children called me evil, but I no longer felt guilty. My true healing started when I began to help Papa with his guerrilla church.

  To his amazement, Papa started to receive shocking confessions. Although he did not share them with me at first, eventually he did. I learned that Carpenter Chan had confessed that he had been a secret member of the Communist Party and Vanguard had been his leader. Carpenter Chan joined the party in 1949 believing that Mao and the Communists represented the poor. Carpenter Chan’s assigned task was to report on Papa. However, Chan became troubled when he realized how flawed and power-hungry Vanguard was. As the years went by, Carpenter Chan became convinced that Vanguard was a false prophet and Mao a false God.

  My childhood memories were like splendid Imperial Palaces where I wandered and lingered. Often I imagined that Pearl and I were reunited. That scene was my favorite daydream. I felt closest to God when thinking about Pearl. I considered such moments like opening gifts from heaven.

  Unlike me, my daughter, Rouge, was a realist, especially after her father’s death. Memories weren’t the same to her as they were to me. She chose to forget over remembering.

  I would live with Rouge until she was in her forties and finally married. My son-in-law was a hardware-factory technician who had lost his wife to illness
. The man struggled to raise his two young daughters. I was pleased when Rouge married him and adopted both girls. A year later Rouge gave birth to her own baby girl. My favorite activity was taking my granddaughters to visit the places where Pearl and I used to play hide-and-seek. I enjoyed the sunshine and the gentle rolling scenery, especially when the wind blew softly, brushing against my face. During such moments, I forgot how old I was. I felt like a girl again until one of my granddaughters started singing Carie’s favorite song and I realized that she wasn’t Pearl. That’s when I wondered if Pearl was still alive.

  The day before Chinese New Year’s Eve in 1971, Papa came with a surprise.

  “Pearl Buck will speak on Voice of America!” Papa could barely contain his excitement.

  So, she was alive! I got down on my knees and thanked God. It had been thirty-seven years since I had last seen her. I was white-haired and imagined her to be the same.

  It was no use when Papa advised people not to come.

  “It’s an enemy radio station,” Papa warned. “You will be considered a traitor if caught listening. You will be arrested and sent to prison.”

  The day was carefully planned. The secret gathering would be disguised as a Chinese New Year’s banquet.

  I was surprised when Vanguard and his assistant, nicknamed Catfish, walked into the church moments before the broadcast.

  “Secretary Vanguard, welcome, and please join us,” Papa greeted the two with a smile.

  I pulled Papa aside and whispered in his ear, “Have you lost your mind?”

  Papa ignored me. He took out his radio and began to set it up.