by Gavin McCrea
—If you take only a desultory interest in your work, if you go about things casually and leave them as they come out, you won’t make progress. The opposite: you’ll retrogress. Have you ever heard the saying, There are no poor soldiers under an able general? As your leader, I’m responsible for your development. How you perform is a reflection of my own performance as your guide. If you are wrong, then I am wrong. Are you trying to mortify me?
—No, Auntie Jiang. We love you.
—If you love me, why aren’t you showing it?
—We’re sorry.
—Sorry is not going to wash the window. What are you going to do to improve yourselves?
The dancers smeared their faces with their hands and blinked though their wet lashes.
—Think of the song that is sung as you make your first entrance. What does it say?
—Advance, advance—
One of the dancers half-sang between gulps of air.
—the burden of revolution is heavy and the resentment of women is deep.
—That’s exactly right. But in your work today I saw neither the burden nor the resentment which enables you to carry that burden. All I saw was indifference. If you’re indifferent, if you don’t care, you’ll die a non-person, a no one. Is that what you want? In revolution, half-measures may as well be no measures. They lead to decline in a person, and eventually degeneracy. The apathetic person dies friendless and alone. No one attends his funeral.
The dancers sniffed and swallowed:
—Thank you, Auntie, for your teaching. To die alone isn’t what we want. If we die, we want to die making revolution, surrounded by our comrades.
Jiang Qing took a piece of ice from the drinks cabinet, wet it with water, and gave it to the girls in a linen napkin.
—For your puffy eyes, she said.
Each of the dancers in turn dabbed their eyes with the ice cube, then passed it on.
Watching them, only with difficulty could Jiang Qing conceal the surging-up inside her, the discovery that she was happy, that this indeed was happiness.
—Here, give that to me, Jiang Qing said when the last dancer had had her go.
She threw the wet napkin containing the remains of the ice cube into a wine cooler.
—The question now is, are you prepared to make up for your errors?
Out of all the girls who had flocked to the countryside commune, she, Jiang Qing, had been chosen. She was, they said, the lucky one. But fate only led her to the starting line. Ambition got her on. The average Chinese woman had no ambition to be powerful, nor did she dream of changing her fortunes overnight. A husband, a son, food on the table: these things brought her contentment, and contentment brought her happiness. Jiang Qing was unique in setting no limit to her ambitions. Her low birth was a spur to future greatness. Her time in Shanghai, meanwhile, showed her what life was like for a woman who had not got there, and it was worse than not living at all.
—Are you prepared to undergo the form of rectification the Party has decided for you?
If Jiang Qing had remained content merely to be a secretary, the Chairman would not have tolerated her for long. He would have tossed her out and replaced her with one of the other ordinary girls that populated the commune in large numbers. He used the role of assistant as a form of initiation. Disguised in his orders was the question: Are you driven and compelled, as I am, to keep at it because nothing else means enough?
—Are you ready to perform any act unconditionally, no matter what it is?
He had not loved her at first. He was won over by her love for him, by a loyalty that implied something more than submission. She was prepared to love him with complete generosity, for what he was and not what she wanted from him. She poured all her care and attention in one direction, to the one man who was strong enough to take her at her fullest. She let him occupy her whole life. She took on his emotions and thoughts. Her decisions were based on his decisions, her existence on his. For she knew that only in this way could she live happily in his shadow, and that only by coming out of his shadow one day she would achieve success of her own.
—Answer me, she said now to the dancers. Do you trust that the Party has your best interests at heart? Do you understand that the People’s Government is ungrudging and lenient? That its aim isn’t to punish you for the sake of it, but rather to improve your world outlook, align it more closely to the Party, so that you can be of greater benefit to the Revolution?
The dancers bobbed their heads eagerly:
—We haven’t raised high the banner of the People’s Government, they said. We’ve let it drop. We’ll do whatever is necessary to rectify our mistakes.
Smiling, Jiang Qing held out both hands.
They placed their hands in hers, one on top of the other.
—You’re going to go through a special test, she said. Tomorrow night, you’ll be brought to a place where you can be re-educated. Taken out of your normal routine and given a chance to learn, to be objective. Now I warn you, it won’t be anything you’ve seen before, and you might suffer, but whatever suffering you do will make you a better communist. Whatever happens, always remember that with the radiance of Mao Zedong Thought lighting your forward path, you have the fortitude to pick yourself up and go on.
At the Compound, she signed the dancers in, and got them visitor passes. Two guards escorted them across the courtyard of the Chairman’s old residence. The dancers, as they peered around, looked shocked.
—Don’t lose your critical faculties, she told them. They’re only buildings.
They went up the marble steps, between the bronze dragons, to Apartment 118. The guards took up positions outside.
—This—
She opened the door and pulled back the curtains.
—is where you’ll be brought tomorrow night. Come on in. Don’t be shy.
She switched on the lamps. Opened the window drapes just a little, to let in some natural light.
The dancers stayed bunched at the door, terrified of venturing any further.
—I understand your fears, said Jiang Qing, you are young and this is new, but you must overcome them. Tomorrow this room will be your stage. This is your one and only chance to get acquainted with it.
Reluctantly, keeping close to one another, the dancers did a tour of the room. As they shuffled round, they fixed their eyes on the floor, not daring to stop and look at the wooden screens and the silk hangings. Jiang Qing physically had to stop them and turn them by the hip.
—For heaven’s sake, she said, look! Your eyes won’t burn out of your heads. You mustn’t be stupefied. They’re just objects.
At the bookcase, thinking she was obeying orders, one of them reached out for a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
—No, said Jiang Qing. Not that. You’re not to touch any of the books. Unless, that is, he asks you to read to him. Which is unlikely.
The shock beat up in them so rapidly, their eyelashes fluttered, and they looked half-blind.
—Why the faces? Haven’t you understood yet?
They had. But the immensity of the spoken words overwhelmed them.
—You’re going to meet the Chairman. You’re going to dance for him.
One of them clutched her mouth and started to cry again. The others just looked dumb, knocked out of themselves.
Jiang Qing laughed:
—Leaders are not emperors. They’re functionaries of the Party merely. In this room, don’t think of the Chairman as the Great Saviour. Think of him as merely a state official of the Chinese Republic. There’s an expression: To rule truly is to serve. Tomorrow the Chairman will be your servant, come to kowtow before your bodies, your talent.
Even at the height of their sexual relationship, when they made love several times a day, the Chairman would turn to Jiang Qing and say, I wonder whether the kind of love I�
�ve read about in Western poetry can really exist. What would it be like, do you think? In those moments, she could see she was caught in a contradiction. On the one hand, she believed she loved her husband better than anyone, and triumphantly asserted that love to him — I love you, I am the only one who loves you — and on the other hand, she was often struck by the obvious fact that he was impenetrable, intractable, not to be found.
This was because he was two men: husband and Chairman.
The intensity of the love she felt for the husband was possible only in a world in which things were important, in which the words one spoke, and the actions one took, left their mark. Later, when the Revolution changed history, her love changed with it. From then on, she rarely felt the passion for the husband that she did for the Chairman. The Chairman became her first love, pure and innocent. However much she loved the husband, it would never be enough to last a life, whereas now she had a relationship that possessed the sanctity of worship and lifelong devotion.
She sat down on the bed:
—He’ll be lying here.
She made a circle in the air with a finger:
—You’ll dance over there.
She gestured to the other side of the mattress:
—And if he asks you to join him here, of course you’re to do so.
She got up. Smoothed the sheets where she had wrinkled them by sitting. Opened one of the sideboards and began flipping through the record collection. A fearful silence enveloped her from behind.
—You’ll see, she said without looking round. When you’re with him, everything seems important. Living becomes a privilege. You feel twice as much.
She picked out a record of ballroom music. Removed the sleeve. Wiped the vinyl with the special duster.
—But he’s an old man now. And, as when dealing with any man his age, one must learn to read the signs of his mood.
To speak before being spoken to is rash.
Not to speak when spoken to is to be evasive.
To speak without observing the expression on your face is to be blind.
Unless you’ve studied Mao Zedong Thought, you’ll be ill-equipped to speak at all.
If you do speak, don’t claim to know too much; he doesn’t like girls who are too world-wise.
When you offend against him, there’s nowhere you can turn to in your prayers.
She put the record on the player. Lifted the needle over. Waited for the music to start. Raised the volume. Lowered it. Raised it again.
—Do you recognise this music?
The dancers shook their heads.
—Do you know how to dance the foxtrot?
Again they shook their heads, and Jiang Qing laughed.
—You know the loyalty dance? The foxtrot is like capitalism’s loyalty dance.
She stepped into the dancing space, and, holding an imaginary partner, demonstrated both the male and the female steps: slow, slow, quick-quick, slow.
—I’m teaching it to you, she said as she turned around the room, so that tomorrow night you can perform it for the Chairman. But, after that, you’ll never dance it again. You’ll forget you ever heard of it. You won’t show the steps to anyone, or even say the word foxtrot, or even think it to yourselves.
She finished her demonstration and came to stand in front of them.
—You were never here, do you understand? You didn’t meet the Chairman. This didn’t happen. This will be your lifetime secret. One which won’t be easy to keep. The ego is strong and will be tempted to divulge, but you must resist it. You must think of the greater contribution your silence is making. If you don’t, if you give in and start squealing, you’ll be found out, and the consequences for you will be most severe.
She split them into pairs, and set them orbiting around her, and criticised them until their execution was flawless.
—Remember, you’re impersonating the dregs of the old society, so you can drop your revolutionary poses for now. Stick your chests out. Don’t hide your legs.
She made them dance for five, ten, twenty minutes without stopping. What are they thinking? Deep down, what are they really feeling? Tomorrow, with the Chairman watching them, will they feel what she felt: the distance and the enormous closeness?
—The foxtrot is bad but giving to the Chairman is good. By turning the bad to good, you are making the future glorious.
Will they see the world as she sees it: filled with people with whom she has to share her love?
—Everything good has something nasty about its first origin. Think: did your mother not shit out of her arse at the same time she was giving birth to you?
The world: an obligation to share?
The world: a rival?
Eva
1968
v.
Coming out of sleep, sound by sound she became aware of the dormitory. Without opening her eyes, she felt around on the mattress beside her. Finding no one there, she bolted upright.
—Álvaro?
She had been dreaming about arguments she was always going to lose, and here now, unarguably, though no less dreamlike, was Paris.
—Álvy, are you here?
Her calls turned the heads of the students on the neighbouring beds. None of the faces were friendly. Some appeared hostile to this foreign voice. Most, indifferent.
—My boyfriend? she said to them in French. The guy who was with me before? Has anyone seen him?
The students blinked, shrugged, turned away. The boy on the opposite bed resumed his strumming; the girl her singing; the surrounding heads their bobbing.
—Fuck you all, Eva murmured in English as she put on her boots.
She searched the whole building, the corridors on each floor and in every unlocked room, but sluggishly and with only half a heart. Part of her was furious that Álvaro had not returned, and she had every intention of admonishing him for it when they were reunited, yet another part of her, the larger part, was glad to be alone. Washing her face at the bathroom sinks, she looked into the mirror and said to herself, What are we going to do now?
She found the Action Committee in a classroom on the first floor. The bust of a classic French philosopher had been placed on the ground to keep the door open. Desks were arranged in a large square, around which a number of men sat.
Let me do the talking.
She introduced herself.
—English?
—London.
—Alone?
—I’m part of a performance group.
In order to prove she was not a flic, she gave the names of some people that Max had instructed her to give.
—Your French is all right. Any other languages, apart from English?
—A bit of Spanish.
—Chinese?
—No. But I admire Mao. I’ve read his work closely and believe it shows the real meaning of things behind what is apparent.
While the men murmured amongst themselves, she gave them some information about Wherehouse, its history, its manifesto. The atmosphere was so tense — a phone in the corner was ringing and no one seemed interested in answering it — and the men so evidently unimpressed, she could not help exaggerating the group’s size and importance.
—Have you been to the Odéon?
—We’ve just come from there.
The man glanced through the open door to see if anyone else was waiting outside:
—We?
—The group and me.
—Wouldn’t that be a more suitable base for you?
—We feel—
She fiddled with the rings on her fingers.
—we feel we’d contribute more here. At the Sorbonne.
Again the men leaned in: more murmuring.
—We’re here to learn, comrades, she said. We want to understand how you run things, what your methods a
re, to see if they would work as effectively in England. Our aim is to use your flame to light the radical fires at home. The revolution won’t spread on its own. It needs people to carry it, in their fists and in their minds. We intend to be that people. We intend to be the carriers.
At this point, sensing that the men were wavering, Álvaro would have produced his address book from his satchel. The book, which he kept in a second bag of its own, sown to size in purple silk, contained the names of hundreds of kindred spirits across the world: people who had stayed at Wherehouse, and their friends, and friends of those friends. One of Álvaro’s pleasures was to put these spirits in touch with each other. Look, he would have said. Look here. I have people in England. Holland. Germany. Spain. Latin America. Cuba. You know, Cuba?
—Trust me, she said in his place. We have ideas. And contacts. Do you know Doris Lever?
The men shook their heads:
—Where is your group now?
—Waiting downstairs.
—Do you mind being split up?
She pictured Álvaro swiping through the pages of his book in search of names that might convince them.
—No.
They assigned her to the communications room of the Propaganda Committee, the location of which they circled on a duplicated map.
—Go alone. If the rest of your group want to get involved, they’ll have to come here individually to be screened.
—I understand, she said, folding the map into her pocket. Cheers, boys. You won’t regret it.
As she made her way outside, she vindicated herself to herself: Looks like I’m in. They didn’t put us all together, which is a pity. I tried to convince them, but personal relationships aren’t grounds for special treatment. They send you where you’re needed.
The communications office was in a modern building on rue Censier. It had glass doors and conditioned air and closed-circuit television. In the foyer she stopped to examine a machine selling food in sterilised containers. Masking tape had been stuck over the coin slot and a poster pasted on the front:
DON’T BE CAPITALISM’S GUINEA PIG: USE THE CANTEEN
