by Gavin McCrea
THE SISTERS MAO
Gavin McCrea was born in Dublin in 1978. His first novel, Mrs Engels (Scribe, 2015), was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Walter Scott Prize, and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. Gavin’s articles have appeared in The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Irish Times, Catapult, and LitHub.
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Published by Scribe 2021
Copyright © Gavin McCrea 2021
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Catalogue records for this book are available from the National Library of Australia and the British Library.
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To Iñaki
And in memory of
Margaret McCrea
When talk of revolution has gone the rounds three times,
You may commit yourself,
And people will believe you.
—I CHING
Contents
THE OPENING
I
II
III
THE INTERRUPTION
III
II
I
THE CLOSING
THE
OPENING
Public Security Hospital, Beijing
1 May 1991
My dear Mao,
This morning they came while it was still night to give me my meal. I was especially hungry, having found no sleep to escape the needs of my body, so it was with some eagerness that I took the bowl from them and went to eat under the window where sometimes there is sufficient light to pick out the grubs which, for their amusement rather than my nourishment, they push into my food. And there, on that square of floor where the night illuminated the night, I noticed something that I would like to relate to you, something that has roused me from my dumbness and brought me finally to address you. I noticed, my love, that I was watching my own fingers touching the chopsticks, the rice, the grubs, and that I was not watching the objects themselves. My gaze was fixed not on that which was hungered after but instead on that which was doing the hungering. And I understood — then — that I was changed. I had become aware of myself. Through sleeplessness and privation I had gained the capacity to look from above and afar at my own being, and my being had accordingly become the being of another, as single and as separate, and I realised that I would be capable, at last, of criticising my shortcomings and mistakes, and of rectifying them before you, as before a judge.
You know I have always found it hard to calm my mind down. I have lived an undisciplined life. I have had difficulty persevering. I have been too fond of wandering my own way. I have jumped from one track to another, serving Qin in the morning and Chu in the evening. But in that moment — in that long and quiet moment — I became clear. I saw black turn to white, and white turn to black, and I was, perhaps for the first time, a subject to myself. Old defences, which have long formed a wall around me, fell, and I was left with a naked figure in my sights.
It was a shock to hold audience with myself in this way; such a shock that when I heard a scream come from one of the other cells I thought it might have come from my own mouth. The sensation was that of being both infinitely light and infinitely substantial. The bowl, which had suddenly begun to feel like a boulder in my hands, passed through my fingers as a feather passes through air. I watched as I watched the food, my precious food, spill onto the floor, and I was surprised to see that I reacted with neither anger nor despair. I did not kick. I did not curse. I did not crawl around scooping the mess up, as yesterday I might desperately have done. For I found that I was no longer in want of it. I found, indeed, that I had no desires at all. In each organ I was satisfied and full.
The bowl, being cheap bamboo, bounced and then rolled around on its lip before settling upside down on the ground. The noise of this drew the attention of the sentry in the passage outside. The hatch on the door slid across, and I sensed her eye peering in through the grille — and I do not lie to you, honoured husband, I swear I am being truthful when I tell you that, right then, it was me who was occupying the sentry’s position. I, too, was on the outside looking in. I was seeing what she was seeing. Her eye was my own, scrutinising my actions, penetrating to my thoughts.
And, oh Great Saviour, what bliss I felt then! After the shock, what joy! A joy which sits within me still and seems invulnerable to disruption. For I have reached the point which every revolutionary, every Chinese, every Communist in the world hopes to reach in life: the point from which it is possible to begin the total criticism of oneself.
A lifetime of rehearsing, and suddenly the performance begins.
Your little actress,
Jiang Qing
I
Iris
1968
i.
Iris had never been to this flat before. Nor would she have been here now had she not, over the course of four days and nights, exhausted all the venues on her usual circuit. She had left home on Wednesday with the intention of dropping into the Speakeasy for one drink only. That drink turned into a heavy night at Happening 66, followed by a forty-eight-hour crawl of the bedsits and squats of Earl’s Court. At some stage on Saturday, at the bar in Middle Earth, she lost sight of her last reliable acquaintance. With a lack of alternatives, she decided to metamorphose a group of professional types into friends. After selling them some trips, she attached herself to them as a kind of counsellor and guide (there were things they did not know that they were supposed to know) and together they went on to an impromptu Sunday blowout on a bit of wasteland in Notting Hill. Then, when that was raided, she accompanied them here, to this place on Portobello Road. (A further act of generosity on her part. She would have been better off calling it a day and getting some proper sleep, but her expertise was something she could neither refuse nor keep to herself.)
The digs, which she treated to a full inspection on arrival, came from a different epoch of taste. The conventional flowered wallpaper and the dark carpets were evidence of this and had purposely not been removed. Instead they had been casually overlaid with some cheap tokens of modernity: indoor plants, striped Kazakh rugs, framed cinema posters, ornaments with Buddhist motifs. In the sitting room a gas heater had been fitted into the fireplace cavity, and air-sofas placed in an L in front. The adjoining dining room had been emptied of table and chairs in favour of cushions and beanbags, which were arranged on the floor to form a circular dancing space. Under a spotlight, where once a dresser had had pride of place, sat
an extensive Bang & Olufsen hifi. A train of LPs skirted the walls. From mounted speakers Pink Floyd now blared.
—You cats are into some plastic shit, she said.
At which the group — designers and advertisers and marketeers — all laughed because they had decided, as a unit, to be amused by her. In the face of her unconcealed disdain, they behaved warmly towards her. Welcomed her into their fold. Established effortlessly that she was not expected to be like them: these days everyone partied with everyone.
—Fine, she said, for she understood their game and was too far in to fight it. Now which one of you nasty little bureaucrats is going to light me a cancerette?
All the same, she was uncertain about how much she could achieve with them. They were older than what she was used to. And sharper. More preoccupied by style. Spoiled by constant talk of success. With a habit of presenting themselves with a full and immediate declaration of personality — In my line of work you have to be X, I’m such a fan of Y, If there’s something I can’t bloody stand, it’s Z — which aroused in her a distinct feeling of mistrust. A person could spend a lifetime fighting to get such people to accept truths that the underground freaks accepted at once.
As she danced amongst them now, she deliberately avoided their eyes. Coming from them, the eyes, were fine threads of light which threatened to entangle her and return her to the world from which the LSD had delivered her. By lowering her gaze and focussing instead on the bodies — on the luminous patterns which the arms traced in the air, or the sparks that exploded where the hips touched — she was able to keep herself here, firmly in the experience.
A fact lost on crowds like this: tripping, the good kind, required concentration. Discipline. Without it, one’s journey was likely to remain superficial, devoid of lessons, susceptible to the negative emotions that so quickly turned it into a breakdown. Iris had been taking LSD on a regular basis for two years, and in that time had had a host of terrifying trips from which she thought she might never recover. In every case her mistake had been the same: she had approached what was deadly serious as something light. The trick, which a person only learned after a lot of practice, was to give all one’s attention to the hallucinations, and to behave towards them, not as if they were real, but as real. Not as one’s own imaginary property but as actually existing out there. Getting to such a place was not easy. The mind was an insecure god; it transformed anything that lay outside its comprehension into something to be feared. But for Iris, giving up — submitting once and for all to the limits of mind — was not an option. She was going to persevere. Row harder against the water. Push further. What she craved, simply, was to see things, all things, as they were. And in seeing them, to be united with them, no distinctions; she and they as one.
Craving such union now, she reached up to grab the objects that were swimming just beyond her vision. Then, looking at her hands, she laughed at how odd it was to feel that she was not the same as them. Her hands were objects just like the colours and the shapes they were trying to catch, belonging to no one. The more often she tripped, the less odd this feeling became, so it was crucial, in this moment, to remember how revolutionary it actually was. Nothing less than an end to one-sidedness. A switching to the third person. A self-overturning.
Fathoming this once more, she released a wild cry, and all the electricity in the room passed through her. Her body arched backwards and was convulsed in a ripple. And then another. And another. Every part of her participated in this undulatory, rhythmical wave, which only by coincidence matched the beat of the music. The flowing of her limbs, which had been enclosed within itself, not moving beyond its own borders, now oozed onto other surfaces in space. And the reverse: the current of the room spread onto her limbs. The result was a churning pool of primitive colours, the pressure of which she felt all around her.
The ocean parted as a man (possibly the owner of the flat, possibly not) came to dance directly in front of her. He mimicked her movements, as if by doing so he might absorb some of her ferocity. Iris, deeming him to be in need of reassurance, gave him a smile. In response, he seized her arm. She did not want to be seized in this way, yet she allowed it, for the velvet of his jacket, when it brushed her skin, gave her a nice sensation. Below a glowing halo of blond hair, his eyes pulsated. In his irises, Iris could make out tiny crystals, each made up of a perfect geometrical arrangement, from which shafts of light flashed. She saw the magnificence of every little grain.
He brought his mouth close to her ear. She felt the tickle of his beard as far away as her toes.
—Some of us here are into groups.
He had to shout to be heard over Syd Barrett’s guitar riff in ‘Interstellar Overdrive’.
—You might or mightn’t be into that, it’s up to you. You can stay where you are or come with us. We’re going to the bedroom. Over there. You can join in at any time, or you can go home, the decision is completely yours. Like completely. Whatever you decide is a-okay, okay?
She thought she was being asked to leave, and, having no desire to do so, felt her spirit dip. Colour drained from her view.
—Haha. Right on, the man said.
His mouth, when it opened, engulfed the entire lower half of his face. When it closed, it disappeared entirely.
—I can always tell when a bird is up for it. From a mile off I could tell.
She was puzzled. It felt like she was hesitating, holding back, yet her body was definitely moving forward, yes, definitely following him towards the corridor. Her hand in his, his step leading hers, she felt on the outside of her own wishes. A perplexing sensation. One which deserved some reflecting upon. But there was no time. The bedroom was already here and she was in it. A dim, vaporous cave. Incense and candles burning to cover the smell. The air too heavy to breathe with comfort. Lots of little noises — whisperings, rustlings, the wet sounds of mouth and tongue — yet in sum, eerily quiet; the sound of the music outside like distant bells.
It took a moment for her to adjust. It was just wilderness at first, but then she began noticing things, as though parts were being added to the scene. An oriental wall hanging. A large bed, four people on that. A chair, another two people in that. In a second chair, a solitary figure. By the window, a couple in a standing embrace. Two, three, how many? loitering around, watching or waiting.
To her surprise — she had expected him to try to seduce her — the blond man released her hand and moved away across the room, stripping off his jacket and shirt as he went. She, suddenly alone in the doorway, did not know what to do except make herself invisible, somehow, amongst these bodies. Spotting an empty bit of back wall, she dropped onto all fours — whoosh! — and crawled over the rug towards it. Once at her destination, she turned around like a dog in grass — the shag as dense as forest undergrowth — and then sat with her legs crossed, a hand placed unconsciously on her kaftan in order to keep it from rising up and showing her knickers.
From here, the perspective was that of a child looking up at a massive adult world. The lines of the room did not meet in right angles but were warped so that the back wall receded sharply, tunnel-like, to a point of light far off. The effect was to shrink the bodies on the far side of the bed, and to make giants out of those on the near side. With detached curiosity, she studied the giants, then the dwarfs. Here, there, up, down, backwards and sideways: all of them convinced that their fucking was making the world a better place. Imagining themselves to be liberated when in fact they were wearing the same armour and playing the same games.
From experience she knew not to express such judgements on the scene. When she had done so in the past, she had been told that she was afraid of sexuality. That she was a puritan. A prude. An accusation which stung, but one which she could not wholly deny. It was true, she did fear sex, at least some aspects of it, and was tentative as a result, and often lonely. Most men she found boring and invasive. The few she let in, when subsequently they
tried to take ownership of her, she rejected them outright. Capable of neither free love nor traditional relationships: it was an impossible way to be, and she knew it. Her aversion to contact was itself a form of attachment. She prided herself on being able to take care of herself, yet more often than not this translated into a painful withholding. A disengagement. A retreat into this position here. The squatter in the corner.
The room leaned and swayed as she searched it for an entry point. (What she was dealing with was a form of repression which — yes, now — she had to conquer.) Amongst the different configurations of bodies, she did not see anything capable of leading up to passion. But she had to move in. It was not possible to love at a distance.
The figure alone in the chair.
That?
Squinting, she saw what it was. A balding head. An athletic figure grown flabby at the waist. Dark hair covering his shoulders and chest and curling high off his legs. With his feet planted wide on the floor and his knees splayed out, he was a man, one that was taking sugar cubes from a side table and putting them under his foreskin, and inviting people, both men and women, to come and suck them out.
Taking up her position between his legs, she giggled like a woman who had stopped trying to be interesting and now wanted only to please.
—Don’t laugh, the man said. I’m offering you the gift of divine sight.
She hated him then. Nevertheless she took his penis in. Used her lips to peel the top back. The sugar cube fell out onto her tongue, and for a moment she froze. As a rule she only did drugs from her own batches because they had been tested by people she trusted. There were stories going around of acid cut with strychnine.
She pushed the sugar cube into her cheek to let it dissolve.
Fuck the stories.
The man’s grip on her skull began to feel crushing, so she jerked herself free, and, heaving in air, let her body fall backwards onto the floor. Feeling red flashes of self-righteous rage, she bent her knees and spread her legs: a naughty girl showing her knickers to the world.
