by Gao Xingjian
Xiao Xiao had come with a crowd of middle-school students to his workplace to take part in the movement that soon split into two factions. This girl and a few other female students leaned toward their faction, but they were fickle and moved from faction to faction; they were enthusiastic for a few days and would then disappear. It was only Xiao Xiao who came regularly to their headquarters. She didn’t yell and shout, and she was not keen on arguing, like the other girls, but always remained quietly on the side, reading newspapers or helping to copy out posters. Her calligraphy with a brush was passable, and she was patient. One afternoon, there was an urgent job to write out a batch of posters to attack the opposition, and by the time they had all been written and pasted up, it was already after nine o’clock at night. Xiao Xiao said her home was at the Drum Tower, and, as it was on the way, he offered her a lift. He got her to sit behind him on the bicycle rack. When they passed by the entrance of his courtyard, he suggested having something to eat before going on. Xiao Xiao came into his room, and it was she who went ahead and made noodles. After eating, they got on the bicycle and he took her to a hutong, where, insisting there was no need for him to go in, Xiao Xiao jumped off the bicycle and disappeared like smoke.
“Have you eaten?” he asked her out of habit.
Xiao Xiao nodded as she rubbed her hands. The heat radiating from the stove made her face instantly turn red. He had not seen the girl for a while, and was waiting to hear why she had come. Xiao Xiao remained seated on the chair by the stove, pressing her lovely face in her warmed hands.
“What have you been doing lately?” This was the only thing he could think to ask as he sat in bed.
“I haven’t been doing anything.” Xiao Xiao gazed at the fire with her hands on her cheeks.
He waited for her to continue, but the girl said nothing.
So, he went on to ask, “What’s happening in your school?”
“All the windows of the school have been smashed, and it’s too cold, so no one goes. My schoolmates have scattered everywhere, they don’t know what they will be doing either.”
“That’s great. You don’t have to go to school and can stay at home.”
The girl did not answer. He leaned across, pulled his trousers off the shelf at the foot of the bed, then started to get out of bed.
“You can just lie there. It’s all right. I’ve just come to talk with you.” At this, Xiao Xiao turned and looked at him.
“Then make yourself some tea!” he said.
Xiao Xiao just sat there without moving. He guessed why she had come. Her face was flushed, and there was a glint in her bright eyes.
“It’s a bit hot, shall I take off my padded coat?” Xiao Xiao said. She seemed to be asking both herself and him at the same time.
“Take it off if you’re hot,” he said.
The girl stood up and removed her padded coat. She was not wearing a jacket and had on a dark-red, knitted sweater that clung to her upper body. He saw her protruding breasts and said awkwardly, “I’d best get up.”
“There’s no need, there’s really no need,” Xiao Xiao said.
“It’s very late, it won’t be good if you are seen by the neighbors.” He was worried about her being there.
“It’s pitch-black in the courtyard, and the only glimmer of light was from your window. Nobody saw me come in.” Xiao Xiao’s voice had turned gentle, and, instantly, this girl who was a stranger was on intimate terms with him.
He nodded to indicate that she could come to him. Xiao Xiao walked to his bed, and, as her legs touched the bed, his heart began to pound. He heard a rustle as Xiao Xiao pulled up her sweater and the faded, pink, cotton shirt tucked in her trousers to reveal her slim, lustrous body and part of her breasts. He instinctively reached out to touch her, and the girl put her hand on his, but he was not sure if she wanted to guide or to stop him. He looked up at Xiao Xiao, but could not see the expression in her eyes. Her smooth body gleamed in the circle of light, and, at the lower part of the breast he was pressing on, was the raised line of a tender, red scar. The girl’s delicate fingers were squeezing his hand tightly, so, not bothering about the scar, he thrust his hand into the girl’s tight-fitting shirt and seized the breast that no longer seemed to be small but was firm and had swelled up. Xiao Xiao was mumbling something, but he did not have time to work out what she was saying. He swept her into his arms, and the next moment she was in his bed.
He could not remember how the girl got under his quilt, or how she had undone the tight buttons at the waist of her trousers. The smooth, moist part between her thighs had no hair yet, but he did not know whether or not she was a virgin. He only remembered that she didn’t squirm, didn’t resist, didn’t kiss him, and didn’t take off her thick padded trousers, but only pulled them down to the knees so he could fondle her. Then, she pulled up her sweater and shirt again, but, under the quilt, the soft part between her legs was all wet. What he did remember was that, as the girl snuggled against him with her eyes closed, the light under the shade shining on her slightly parted, full, red lips, he felt a tenderness for this girl whom he thought unattractive and not yet grown up. This incident was unexpected, and, not being prepared, he was afraid of getting her pregnant. He did not dare go any further, he did not dare to enjoy her. He didn’t know if this was why she had come, and didn’t know what she meant by showing him the scar on her breast. He didn’t know what would happen the next day, didn’t know his tomorrow or the girl’s, or whether they still had a tomorrow.
He lay there quietly, listening to the ticking of the clock on the table in the all-pervading silence. He wanted to ask about the scar. The girl had clearly come because of it, and would have thought about things before resolving to act. Afraid of shattering the suffocating silence, he turned on his side and looked at her for a long time. The ticking of the second hand alerted him that time was passing. It was when he raised himself to look at the clock that Xiao Xiao opened her eyes and, under the quilt, pulled together her clothes, buttoned her trousers at the waist, and sat up.
“Are you leaving?” he asked.
Xiao Xiao nodded and, still with her purplish-red socks on, crawled out from under the quilt. She got out of the bed and bent down to put on her shoes. All this time, he lay there, watching in silence as she put on her padded coat and wrapped the long scarf around her head. Then, as he saw her take her knitted gloves from the table, he asked her, “Are you in some sort of trouble?” He thought to himself that he sounded harsh.
“No,” Xiao Xiao said, looking down. She took her gloves and slipped them on, a finger at a time.
“If you’re in some sort of trouble, then speak up!” He felt he had to say this.
“It’s nothing.” Still looking down, Xiao Xiao suddenly turned and started to unlatch the door.
He quickly got up and went barefoot across the icy-cold brick floor, thinking to stop the girl, but not knowing what to do.
“Go back, you’ll catch a chill,” Xiao Xiao said.
“Will you come again?” he asked.
Xiao Xiao gave a nod and went out, slowly pulling the door shut behind her.
But Xiao Xiao did not come again, nor did she reappear at the workplace headquarters of their rebel faction. However, he did not have Xiao Xiao’s address. Of that gang of middle-school students, the girl had stayed the longest in their rebel group, but he had no way of finding out what had happened to her. He only knew that she was called Xiao Xiao, which could even have been a nickname used by her schoolmates. But what he clearly knew was that on this Xiao Xiao’s breast—below the left breast, no, the right breast, it was his left hand and the girl’s right breast—there was almost an inch-long, still raw, blood-red scar. He recalled that the girl was yielding and didn’t squirm, but that she wanted to show him the scar. Was it to win his sympathy or to seduce him? She was probably seventeen or eighteen, and still had no hair between her legs, but her body was beautiful, beautiful enough to arouse him. Maybe it was only because the girl was too yo
ung, too frail, that he was afraid of shouldering such a responsibility. He didn’t know if Xiao Xiao’s parents had been attacked, and there was no way of knowing how she had been wounded. Had the girl come to him because of the scar? Was she seeking his protection, someone to turn to? Maybe she was afraid and confused? Maybe she got into his bed hoping to be comforted? But he didn’t dare accept her, and didn’t dare ask her to stay.
For some time after, whenever he took his bicycle out, he would make a detour past the hutong where Xiao Xiao had got off, but he never saw her again. It was only then that he regretted not having got Xiao Xiao to stay. He hadn’t said anything kind or comforting to the girl. He was so careful, so overly cautious, and so spineless.
29
“Why were you arrested?”
“I was sold out by a traitor.”
“Were you a traitor? Speak up!”
“The Party examined my history and came to a decision long ago.”
“Should I read this document to you?”
The old scoundrel started to panic, and the bags under his eyes twitched a couple of times.
“ ‘At a critical juncture in the fight against the Communists, to stamp out disorder in order to save the nation, I was not vigilant, careless about whom I befriended, and was led astray.’ Do you remember those words?”
“I don’t recall having said them!” The old man was adamant in his denial, and the sides of his nose began to sweat.
“That’s nothing, just the first sentence to prompt you, should I read on?”
“I really can’t remember, it was many decades ago.” The old man’s tone had softened, and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed saliva.
He picked up the document from the table and waved it. He was acting out a repulsive role, but it was better to be the judge than being judged by others.
“This is a copy, the original bears a signature and a thumbprint. Of course, it’s the name you had at the time. You had to change your name and surname, surely you can’t have forgotten that?”
The old man was silenced.
“I’ll read some more sentences to help jog your memory.” He read on, “ ‘I earnestly beg the government for a lenient acquittal and hereby sign this guarantee that should there be any suspicious persons ingratiating and aligning themselves with the Communist bandits, I will forthwith report them.’ Doesn’t this count as being a traitor to the Party? Do you know how the underground Party dealt with traitors?” he asked.
“Yes, yes.” The old man nodded repeatedly.
“Then what about you?”
“I didn’t ever betray anyone. . . .” Beads of sweat began to ooze from his bald forehead.
“I’m asking you, were you a traitor to the Party?” he asked.
“Stand up!”
“Stand up when you speak!”
“Make an honest confession!”
Several members of the rebel faction were all shouting rowdily.
“I . . . I had to sign the guarantee so that they would let me out. . . .” The old man stood there, trembling. His voice, low in his throat, was barely audible.
“I didn’t ask how you were released. If you hadn’t capitulated, would they have let you out? Speak up! Isn’t that being a traitor?”
“But I . . . But, afterwards, I reestablished links with the Party—”
He cut him short. “That was because, at the time, the underground Party didn’t know you had capitulated.”
“The Party forgave, pardoned me. . . .” The old man bowed his head.
“You were pardoned? You were brutal with punishing other people. When you punished the masses, you went into a rage and didn’t let people off even after they had written a confession. ‘Instruct the branches under your supervision to make sure the evidence sticks so that the verdict can’t ever be reversed.’ Did you say this?”
“Speak up! Did you say this?” someone roared.
“Yes, yes, I made an error. It was the same as having betrayed the Party,” the old man quickly admitted.
“How can it be just an error? You make it sound like it’s nothing! You had people jumping out of the building to commit suicide!” Someone banged on the table.
“That . . . That wasn’t me, that was how it was carried out—”
“This was your instruction, you yourself gave the instruction: ‘Historical problems have to be linked to actual behavior and need to be thoroughly investigated.’ Did you or did you not say this?” this comrade kept at him relentlessly.
“Yes, yes.” The old man was learning to be clever.
“Who is anti-Party? It is you who have betrayed the Party! Write all that down!” this comrade shouted harshly at him.
“What do you want me to write?” the old man asked, looking forlorn.
“Do you need a secretary to write it?” another comrade asked scornfully.
Everyone started laughing and talking all at once. They were excited, it was as if they had caught a big fish. The old man looked up a little, his face ashen. His slack, colorless lower lip began to tremble as he spoke.
“I . . . I’ve got a heart problem. . . . Could I have a drink of water?”
He shoved a glass of water on the table to him. The old man took a small medicine bottle out of his pocket, tipped out a pill with his shaking hands, and swallowed it with a gulp of water.
It flashed through his mind that the old scoundrel was older than his own father. . . . Hey! Don’t you have a heart attack and drop dead here. He said, “Sit down and drink up all the water. If you need to, you can lie down on the sofa for a while.”
The old man didn’t dare go to the sofa where people were sitting, and looked miserably at him.
He gave up the idea and made a decision, “Now listen, first thing in the morning, bring a detailed account of your capitulation, and of your betrayal of the Party. Outline, clearly and in full, how you were arrested, how you got out of prison, who were the witnesses, and what confessions you made in prison.”
“Ai, ai.” The old scoundrel immediately bowed and nodded.
“You may leave now.”
As soon as the old man went out the door, his comrades, who were all fired up for action, turned on him.
However, he was a slick talker, and just as mean. “Do you think he can get away with all this evidence against him? The heavenly net of the dictatorship of the proletariat won’t let him escape! Don’t let the old bastard have a heart attack and drop dead right in front of us.”
“What if he goes home and commits suicide?” someone asked.
“I doubt that he would have the courage. If he wasn’t afraid of dying, he would not have capitulated back then. He’ll deliver his confession tomorrow without fail. What do all of you think?”
His comrades were speechless. He thoroughly detested the old bastard who spouted the Party line every time he spoke. But he felt sorry for him now that his own faith in revolution had been destroyed and he had dispensed with the myths that the perfect new people and the glorious revolution had created. The old scoundrel had concealed the matter of his capitulation by using a former pen name as his real name. By doing this, he had evaded successive investigations, yet he must have spent all these years in trepidation, he thought.
Can’t a person’s faith change? Once aboard the Party ship, does it have to be for the whole of a person’s life? Is it possible not to be a loyal subject of the Party? Then what if one has no faith? By jumping out of the rigid choice of being either one or the other, you will be without an ideology, but will you be allowed to exist? When your mother gave birth to you, you did not have an ideology. You, the last in a generation of a doomed family, can’t you live outside ideology? Is not to be revolutionary the same as counterrevolutionary? Is not to be a hatchet man for the revolution the same as being a victim of the revolution? If you don’t die for the revolution, will you still have the right to exist? And how will you be able to escape from the shadow of revolution?
Amen. Yo
u were born with sin and unqualified to be a judge, but, cynically and for your own self-protection, you infiltrated the rebel ranks. At this very time, you are even more certain of this. It is also to find a refuge that, on the pretext of investigating Party cadres, you get a wad of letters of introduction stamped with official seals, draw a sum of money for expenses, and go off wandering everywhere. There’s no harm in getting to learn a bit about this inexplicable world and seeing if there’s anywhere to escape this catastrophic revolution.
On the southern bank of the Yellow River, in the city of Ji’nan, he found a small workshop on an ancient street. The person he was investigating had been released from a prison farm. The middle-aged woman supervisor wearing sleeve protectors was pasting up paper boxes. She replied, “The person’s been gone a long time.”
“Is he dead?” he said.
“If he’s gone, of course he’s dead.”
“How did he die?”
“Go and ask his family!”
“Is his family still here? Who are they?”
“Who, in fact, are you investigating?” the woman asked back.
He couldn’t say to some woman worker in a workshop that opened onto the street that the dead person and the cadre under investigation had been classmates at university and had joined the student movement of the underground Party organization, and afterward they had been in a Nationalist prison together. Also, there was no point in wearing himself out trying to explain all this cast-iron revolutionary logic. But he did have to get hold of a document saying that the person was dead, so that he could claim his travel expenses.
“Would you be able to put your seal on it?” he asked.
“Put my seal on what?”
“A testimony that the person’s dead.”
“You’ll have to go to the public security supply office. We don’t issue death certificates.”
“All right. Which way do I have to go to get to the Yellow River?” he asked, imitating the woman’s Shandong accent.
“What Yellow River?” the woman asked.
