by Gao Xingjian
Less than half of the notebook was the diary his mother had kept while doing farm labor before she drowned. Seven or eight years earlier, in the years of famine wreaked by the Great Leap Forward, his mother had gone to work on a farm to be reeducated, just as he had gone to the May Seventh Cadre School. She worked hard and had saved up several months of meat and egg coupons to supplement her son’s food supplies when he came home. She looked after a chicken farm but was bloated from starvation. At dawn, after working a night shift, she went to the riverside to wash herself and fell into the river; it was not clear whether she was overfatigued or weak from malnutrition. At daybreak some peasants herding ducks to the river discovered her corpse in the water. The hospital autopsy listed the cause of death as cerebral ischemia. He wasn’t able to see his mother’s corpse. All he had was this diary, which recorded impressions of her reform through labor, as well as a mention that she wanted to accumulate leave so that she could spend a few extra days with her son when he came home for the summer vacation. After he had copied out the myth written under the pseudonym of Alipeides, he placed it in the pot for salting vegetables with a layer of lime on the bottom, and buried it in the earth under the water vat in his house.
45
On the market days of the four villages of the commune, the small street of the county town was lined with carrying poles and big baskets. There were sweet potatoes, dried red dates, chestnuts, pine kindling, fresh mushrooms, unwashed lotus roots, fine white rice noodles, bundles of tobacco leaves, strips of dried bamboo shoots, live fish and shrimp, pairs of hemp shoes all strung together, bamboo chairs, and ladles. And there were women, children, young men and old men, all shouting and calling out to one another, and bargaining. Do you want it or not? No! There was haggling, joking, quarreling. When the small mountain town was not making revolution, life was bearable.
He ran into Secretary Lu, who had been transferred from the provincial capital to work at the grass roots. Lu was with his entourage of commune cadres, some clearing the way and others following behind, it was as if he were a leader on a tour of inspection. However, this old revolutionary, a former local guerrilla fighter whom villagers called Secretary Lu, had not done well in the bureaucracy. Demoted, a grade at a time, during successive political movements in the provincial capital, he had ended up back in his home village. Nevertheless, this still counted as a cadre being transferred to work at the grass roots, so the local village tyrants revered him as some sort of deity. And, of course, he didn’t have to do manual labor.
“Secretary Lu,” he reverently addressed this mountain-village big boss.
“Are you the person from Beijing?” Secretary Lu obviously knew about him.
“Yes, I’ve been here a year or so,” he said, nodding.
“Are you getting used to being here?” Secretary Lu asked as he came to a stop. He was tall and thin, and had a slight stoop.
“Yes, I was born in the South. The scenery is pleasant, and there is an abundance of produce.” He was on the point of praising it as a paradise but stopped himself.
“Generally, people don’t starve to death here,” Secretary Lu said.
He detected another meaning behind these words and thought Lu must be unhappy about having been transferred to the countryside.
“I can’t bear to leave, Secretary Lu, so I would appreciate your taking care of me!”
He seemed to be saying that he was entrusting himself to Secretary Lu, and he really needed someone’s protection. He respectfully nodded again and had just started to walk away when, unexpectedly, this Secretary Lu started taking care of him right away. Lu said, “Come for a walk with me!”
So, he followed behind. Lu held back to walk alongside him and continued to talk with him, ignoring the chatter of the commune cadres. He was obviously being especially kind to him. He walked to the end of the little street with Lu and from the shops and houses all the way they were greeted with friendly smiles. He knew he had won the favor of Secretary Lu, and that his status had instantly changed with the townspeople.
“Let’s have a look at where you live!”
This wasn’t an order, but Lu taking care of him even more. Lu motioned the cadres, to send them away.
He led the way along the raised path between the paddy fields, and they entered his house on the edge of the village. Lu sat down at the desk. He had just made tea, when children started arriving. He went to close the door, but Lu motioned to him, saying, “There’s no need, there’s no need.”
The news quickly spread through the village, and, before long, villagers and village cadres began arriving at his door so that there was an endless stream of hello Secretary Lu, hello Secretary Lu. Lu responded with something of a nod, then, holding his cup, blew on the leaves floating in his tea and started drinking.
There were, in fact, good people in the world. Or, maybe, people were basically good. Or, maybe, Secretary Lu had seen the outside world and had a good understanding of people. Or, maybe Lu also had been born at the wrong time, and was being kind to him because he needed someone he could talk with to alleviate his loneliness.
Lu did not touch the Marx and Lenin books on his desk, he knew they were a camouflage, and, when he got up to leave, he said, “If there are any problems, come and see me.”
He escorted Lu to the path between the paddy fields, then his eyes followed his thin, slightly stooped back. This man had strength in his stride, and he was not like an elderly person. It was in this way that he came to be taken care of by this mountain big boss. But, at the time, he didn’t understand why Lu had wanted to visit his house.
One night, he was at his desk, completely engrossed in writing, when suddenly someone shouting outside the door gave him a start. He got up right away, quickly stuffed the paper inside his straw mattress, and opened the door.
“You’re not in bed yet, are you? Secretary Lu wants you to do some drinking at the Revolutionary Committee Office!”
The man was a worker from the commune, and, having delivered the message, promptly left. At this, he relaxed.
The commune’s Revolutionary Committee Office was located on the stone embankment by the river. It was the former residence of a powerful landlord, and had a veranda and a large cobblestone courtyard. The owner was shot during the period when landlords were denounced and their land divided up. The village government took over the building, and, afterward, it became the site of the people’s commune. The newly established Revolutionary Committee also carried out its business here. The courtyard and main hall were crowded with people, and indoors there was a strong smell of tobacco and sweat; he had not imagined that it would be so lively at night.
In a room right inside, Director Liu, the new appointee to the Revolutionary Committee, and Old Tao, who was in charge of arming the militias, were drinking with Secretary Lu behind closed doors. Lu got him to sit with them. On the table were peanuts spread out on a newspaper wrapping, a bowl of fried anchovies, and a plate of dried bean curd, presumably brought from the homes of the commune cadres. Some of the men merely put the liquor to their lips, then put it back down on the table; it was for show, and they were not actually drinking. A village youth with a rifle pushed open the door, poked in his head, bowed to those present, then stood his rifle by the door.
“Who told you to bring a rifle?” Old Tao asked crossly.
“Wasn’t an emergency assembly called?”
“An emergency assembly is an emergency assembly. Nothing was said about it being an armed action!”
The youth, who couldn’t see the difference, explained, “Then what do you want me to do? All the militia brigades have brought their rifles along. . . .”
“Don’t go swaggering everywhere with your rifles! Put them all in the weapons department office and wait in the courtyard for the order!”
At that point, it dawned on him that the militias of the entire county would engage in a concerted action at midnight. From the county town to each of the villages, there were “large-scal
e monitoring and large-scale searching” assaults as soon as the county Revolutionary Committee gave the emergency assembly order. People from the Five Black Categories—landlord, rich, counterrevolutionary, bad element, rightist—were the main targets monitored. If unusual activities were discovered, there were immediate searches. When it was almost midnight, Director Liu and Old Tao went into the courtyard. They spoke about directions in the class struggle, then assigned missions. As the militia brigades set off, the courtyard grew quiet. The dogs nearby started barking first, and dogs in the distance gradually joined in.
Shoes off and sitting legs-crossed on the plank bed, Lu started asking him about his family. He simply said his father was also doing labor in the countryside, but didn’t say anything about the unsuccessful suicide attempt. He said he had a maternal uncle who had been a guerrilla fighter, but, at the time, he didn’t know that this old revolutionary elder had been admitted to the military hospital with influenza and was dead within hours of receiving an injection. Of course, he also said that as he was not familiar with the people and the locality, he greatly appreciated Secretary Lu’s taking care of him.
Lu was silent for a while and then said, “The primary school in town will be reopening, but as a junior middle school. It’s important that they learn to read and get some basic education. Go to the school and teach there!”
Lu said that when he was a child, his family was poor, and he was able to get the little education, which had served him to the present, only because of the kind old village teacher who didn’t charge him a tuition fee.
After two or three hours, the courtyard started getting noisy again, as the militia brigades returned with their booty. They hadn’t captured any counterrevolutionaries, but, in their searches, they had uncovered hidden cash and ration coupons in the homes of Five Black Categories people. They had also captured a pair of illicit lovers. The man was a metal worker in the town handicraft cooperative, and the woman was the wife of Droopy Mouth in the Chinese medicine shop. The woman’s husband had gone to the county town, yet there was this thrashing about in the dark inside the house. The militiamen who caught the illicit lovers said they had listened for a long time, and laughed as they talked about it.
“Where are they?” Old Tao, who was outside, asked.
“They’re squatting in the courtyard.”
“Are they wearing clothes?”
“The woman is, but the metal worker is naked.”
“Get him to put on his trousers!”
“He’s got his trousers on, but he didn’t have time to put on a shirt. Weren’t we told to catch them in the act? Otherwise they wouldn’t own up to it!”
Lu called out to them from the room, “Get them to write confessions and let them go!”
Before long, the same militiaman shouted from outside, “Reporting to Secretary Lu, the man says he can’t write!”
“Take down what he says and get his thumbprint on it!” This was Old Tao talking.
“Let’s go and get some sleep,” Lu said, putting on his shoes, then coming out of the room with him. Lu said to Old Tao, “Let them go, we can’t worry ourselves with these sorts of things, let them go.”
In the courtyard, the woman was cringing by the wall, with her head down. The metal worker, bare to the waist, came forward to kowtow to Lu, saying, “Secretary Lu, you are a kind man, a kind man, I won’t forget you as long as I live!”
“Go home, the pair of you, and stop making fools of yourselves! In future, don’t do it again!”
Having said this, Lu and he left the courtyard.
It was before dawn and the air was moist, laden with heavy dew. He thought to himself, Secretary Lu’s magnanimity was like a mountain, and had given him an escape route. Life would be bearable as long as it was in the domain of this mountain boss.
From then on, he was greeted whenever he ran into commune cadres on the small street of the county town, and even the policeman from the local police station greeted him. They would pat one another on the shoulder, or give one another a cigarette. The middle school subsequently opened, and those big children who had not completed primary school were enrolled for two more years of study but counted as junior-middle-school students. He moved from the village into the town primary school, which had been idle for several years. The villagers all addressed him as “Teacher,” and doubts and suspicions about his background vanished.
46
If you can use the smiling face of Buddha to look upon the world, you will be happy, your heart will be at peace, and you will be in nirvana.
You eat and drink with the village cadres, listen to them raving about nothing, bullshitting, and talking about women. “Have you ever touched Maomei?”—“Don’t fuckin’ talk nonsense, she’s a pristine virgin!”—“Come on, have you ever touched her?”—“Hey, hold on, how do you know she’s a pristine virgin?”—“Don’t keep spouting rubbish, she’s been promoted in the militia!”—“So what? You’re just bullshitting, come on, out with it!”—“She’s a successor to the revolution with the right genealogical background. How about saying something decent!”—“It’s you who fuckin’ never says anything decent!”—“That’s crap, you’ve had too much to drink!”—“Hey, do you want to have a fight?”—“Come on, just drink up!”
This is life, and you have to drink like this to be happy! And you have to talk about how you managed to get a fir log and had two cupboards made from it. You tell people you are collecting cheap timber at the state price. You’ve settled here and, sooner or later, you will have to build a house, and building a house requires long-term planning. You will get a vegetable garden going, then build a pig pen, because for a person to get by, he has to keep a pig. Your meaningless chatter and gossip gradually makes you into a normal person, and your existence is no longer conspicuous.
You look at what is on the table. Virtually nothing is left of the big bowls of food, and the group has finished off nine and a half bottles of fiery sweet-potato liquor. You move away from the drunk who has slid under the table and is resting his head on your thigh, push the wooden bench, and stand up. The drunk falls to the floor and starts snoring. Everyone in the room, above the table or on the floor, is a rotten drunken mess with an idiotic smile on his face. It is only the host, Hunchback Zhao, who is sitting upright at the top end of the table, loudly slurping chicken soup. He rightly deserves to be Party secretary of the production brigade, because he can drink a lot but knows how to manage his liquor.
Over the past five days, there had been concerted training for seventy or eighty militia personnel from the villages. On the morning of the first day, they assembled in the commune courtyard, sitting on their bundled bedding, as they listened to instructions from the director of the Revolutionary Committee. Afterward, led by Old Tao, they did target practice on the threshing square, then they laid detonators, let off dynamite, and practiced with explosives under the cliff by the river. Also, on the harvested, drained paddy fields, they practiced squad and platoon assaults, scattering ranks like lightning, as they threw hand grenades, which noisily exploded and sent dirt flying into the air. They had been engaged in heavy action for days, and, on the last night, they were brought to this village. Hunchback Zhao, Party secretary for twenty years, had the credentials and the status for giving a really good feast to these brave stalwarts. Apart from the military-training food subsidy from the commune, there were also ten or so live chickens presented by the villagers. Hunchback’s wife wasn’t stingy either, contributing an old hen that was still laying, so there were meat and fish dishes, as well as salted vegetables and bean curd.
The heads of the militias were seated at the table in Hunchback’s dining hall, the rest were looked after in the granary by the family of the brigade accountant. Those able to dine at Hunchback Zhao’s table, naturally, had some standing, and he had been designated by Secretary Lu, as the school representative, to take part in the military training.
“Teacher, you’ve come from being at the side of Chairm
an Mao in the capital, you’re willing to suffer hardship here, and you’re one of our Secretary Lu’s people, so don’t stand on ceremony. Come and sit in the place of honor at the table!” Hunchback Zhao said.
The women customarily did not sit at the banquet table. Hunchback’s wife was in the kitchen cooking, and young Maomei, who was just eighteen and had been promoted to company leader in the militia, was serving the food and running to and from the kitchen. The eight men at the table drank and ate from dusk till midnight. A bottle of liquor just filled a big soup bowl, and this was passed around, for each person to ladle out one scoop. Everyone was given the same amount, no more and no less. After a few rounds, when bottle after bottle had been emptied, he said he couldn’t drink as much as everyone else, and, having refused several times, got away without drinking any more.
“That you, a distinguished person from the capital, will consent to drink liquor from the same bowl as us, country bumpkins with mud caked on our legs, is a great honor. Bring Teacher some rice!” Zhao said.
Maomei served him from behind a very big bowl of rice.
Flushed with alcohol, everyone became very talkative, and there was much laughing and joking. From revolutionary rhetoric they turned to talking about women, and started getting crude, so Maomei fled to the kitchen and didn’t reappear.
“Where’s Maomei? Where’s Maomei?”
The men, all with red faces and thick necks, giggled and kept clamoring. Hunchback’s wife came out to mediate, “Why do you want Maomei? Don’t start getting reckless with your arms and legs just because you’re full of alcohol, she’s a pristine virgin!”
“Don’t pristine virgins think of men?”
“Hmph! Her flesh is not for your lips!”
Everyone then turned to praising Hunchback’s wife, saying this and that about her. “She knows how to manage the household and knows how to care for people. Old Zhao is really lucky!”
