by Cheng Nien
“Perhaps his suicide was faked?” I was thinking of my daughter and wondering when I would find out the truth.
“That’s what his family claims. In Beijing, Premier Zhou’s adopted daughter, Sun Weishi, the director of the People’s Art Theater, was put in prison and tortured to death simply because Jiang Qing regarded her as an enemy. Two well-known Beijing opera actors, Ma Lianliang and Cheng Yanqiu, were beaten to death because they refused to confess they were Kuomintang spies. I heard these two actors had been invited back from Hong Kong by Premier Zhou, who was also their sponsor when they joined the Party. There are many cases of scientists accused of being spies for the imperialists who were invited back to China by the premier too. Just think, if any one of these people had confessed to being a spy, the radicals could have then cast doubt on the premier, if not actually accused him of shielding spies,” Mr. Hu said.
“Do you mean to say that your Party secretary was of the opinion that I and other senior Chinese employees of foreign firms in Shanghai were put in prison and pressed to confess just because someone, either Lin Biao or Jiang Qing, wanted to use our confessions, if we made them, to discredit Premier Zhou’s policy of allowing foreign firms to operate in China?” I asked him.
“Yes, my Party secretary implied as much. Lin Biao and Jiang Qing both regarded Premier Zhou as the major obstacle to their ambition after Liu Shaoqi was overthrown. In their eyes Premier Zhou was difficult to deal with because unlike Liu Shaoqi, he had never opposed Chairman Mao. So they had to formulate an outlandish scheme. Premier Zhou was not a single person alone. Behind him stood a large group of Party leaders and the senior members of the bureaucracy. It’s a formidable force in the power structure.”
“Now that Lin Biao has died, Premier Zhou has become the most powerful man after Chairman Mao. Isn’t his position secure?” I asked Mr. Hu.
“Strengthened, but not secure, because Jiang Qing and her associates are ambitious. Premier Zhou is ill. The question is who will succeed him.”
“Isn’t Deng Xiaoping going to succeed Premier Zhou?”
“That’s by no means certain. Deng Xiaoping is not a subtle person like Premier Zhou. He wants quick results. The radical leaders will feel threatened. That would hasten the next round of struggle,” said Mr. Hu.
It was really getting very cold in the deserted park since the sun had gone down. In the distance, several desultory figures were walking towards the exit. I suggested that we leave too. Mr. Hu asked me if I would go with him to a restaurant for an early supper, but I was depressed and tired. We took a bus home.
Outside the front gate, Mr. Hu said goodbye and told me that he would like to visit me again when he had his day off. “It’s ages since I have enjoyed an excursion as I did today. It’s good to see you looking so well. You mustn’t stay by yourself and brood. I’ll come and try to cheer you up.”
I opened the gate to find Mrs. Zhu standing in the cold on the terrace. I supposed she came out when she heard us.
Taking her cigarette out of her mouth, she said, “Did you have a nice outing?”
She probably hoped I would tell her where I had been so that she could report to the Residents’ Committee. Resisting an impulse to be rude, I merely said, “Don’t you find it cold standing there?” and went upstairs.
The next day, my old friend Hean’s mother arrived while I was still with my student. By the time the lesson ended, she had prepared a simple lunch for both of us. While we were eating, she mentioned the Chinese New Year celebrations several times and kept on bringing the conversation around to the guests I had until I suddenly realized that she was hoping I would tell her about Mr. Hu. But how did she know Mr. Hu had been to see me? Shocked and disappointed, I came to the reluctant conclusion that she had been asked to visit me by those who were having me watched. I went cold all over. I decided to be candid with her so that no one would think I was trying to hide anything.
“Besides all the young people, an old friend also came to see me. Apparently Lao-zhao met him on the street and gave him my address. I went with him to Nantao yesterday and bought a Yixing teapot and a vase,” I said.
“Is he married?”
“He is a widower.”
“Have you known him long?”
“He was really my husband’s friend.”
“What does he do?”
“He used to have a paint factory.”
“Is he interested in you personally?”
“What do you mean?” I asked her, feeling rather annoyed.
“If you’ll forgive my saying so, Chinese gentlemen of our generation don’t ask Chinese ladies to go out with them unless they are interested in them personally,” my old friend said.
I said to her, “You mustn’t jump to conclusions. I think it’s possible he feels lonely and he enjoys my company.” I was thinking perhaps it was just as well that Mr. Hu’s visit to me was seen in this light rather than as something political. “I’m an old lady now. I consider him only an old friend who is trying to be kind,” I told her.
“You are an attractive old lady. It’s strange that in spite of your terrible experience, you still look years younger than your age. I have no doubt your gentleman friend will eventually ask you to marry him, if you give him the chance.”
“I really don’t know Mr. Hu very well. It’s premature to think our relationship will develop into anything at all.”
“Speaking as an old friend, I would like to see you married. It’s not good to be alone in this society. You need someone to discuss things with and to look after you,” she said with sincerity.
After she had left, I drew the curtains and lay down on my bed. It was depressing to know I was being watched so closely. And it saddened me to have Hean’s mother join the ranks of informers. When would I be able to live a normal life again? I asked myself. As for Mr. Hu, I had no idea what his plans were beyond enjoying my company on his days off. In any case, I would not marry him or anybody else. It was still my intention to leave China for good when circumstances permitted.
Since President Nixon’s visit, the Shanghai police had resumed issuing exit permits for private people to go abroad. Though the waiting period remained long and there were many rejections, since my release I had heard of several people actually being granted passports to leave the country. I continued to examine Mao’s photograph closely whenever it appeared in the newspaper, just as I had in prison, and I wished for his death no less ardently than when I was in the detention house. I knew that unless there was a change in the political situation, I had no hope of being allowed to leave. To keep myself fit and well so that I could survive still seemed the sensible thing to do.
I heard heavy footsteps on the cement path that ran the length of the house, followed by knocking on my door at the foot of the stairs. Since I was in no mood to see anybody, I didn’t get up to open the door. After a while, I heard Da De talking to Mrs. Zhu beneath my window.
“Isn’t A-yi here?” Da De said.
“She has gone to visit her family,” Mrs. Zhu’s voice said.
They stood in the garden talking in low whispers for a little while. Then Da De knocked again. Again I didn’t get up to open the door.
In the evening, Mrs. Zhu came up with a plateful of fish she had cooked, followed by her grandson.
“I know you don’t like to cook, so I prepared something for your supper,” she said. She didn’t mention Da De’s visit, so I didn’t say anything either. I knew she was using the fish as an excuse to come up and find out if I was really sound asleep and hadn’t heard Da De or if I didn’t wish to see him.
I offered her grandson some sweets and invited them to be seated. He held an armband of the militia in his hand. Jokingly I said to him, “Have you joined the militia?”
He held the armband out and said, “This belongs to my uncle. He is training under Uncle Da De.”
“Is Da De in the militia?” I asked him. Though I was surprised, I kept my voice as casual as I could.
&nbs
p; In spite of Mrs. Zhu’s effort to divert his attention to the sweets, he said, “Oh, yes! He’s a captain.”
“Isn’t that wonderful!” I exclaimed. “I bet when you grow up you would like to be in the militia just like your uncle and Da De!”
The child had obviously said something I was not supposed to know, because Mrs. Zhu was not only embarrassed but frightened as well. She said to the boy, “You are talking nonsense. Uncle Da De isn’t in the militia at all.”
The child retorted, “He is! He is!”
Hastily Mrs. Zhu stood up and said good night to me. As she went down with her grandson, she was still muttering to him for talking out of turn.
Since the militia was a subsidiary of the army, it used to be under Lin Biao’s men in Shanghai. After Lin Biao’s death, the control of the militia fell into the hands of Jiang Qing’s associates in the city. In 1974 and 1975, the radical leaders did a great deal to expand and strengthen the Shanghai militia, hoping to develop it into their own private army.
If Da De was a militia captain, he could not have been an “unemployed youth” as he claimed, because members of the militia were recruited among the activists in factories and government offices. I did not think Da De was a factory worker, because he was too interested in books and his hands were too clean. He must have been an activist in an office of the Shanghai government. In other words, his masters were Jiang Qing’s associates in Shanghai. I was glad to know at last Da De’s true status. Was he with the police or some other organization? It really made no difference to me or to the situation. I had long suspected that he was more than what he seemed.
Time went on and spring came to Shanghai again. I had been out of the No. 1 Detention House a whole year. But I could hardly say I was free. Certainly my material life had greatly improved. I seemed to have no health problems other than arthritis.
Early in the morning I would stand on the balcony and look down at the garden. The metasequoia trees planted by the Housing Bureau had grown very fast. Now tiny buds of delicate green dotted the branches. In the short period of a few days they would burst into clusters of young leaves. My old gardener had made two beds of roses and planted a border of mixed spring flowers. He had also put in rambler roses at the base of the pillar of my balcony and made a latticed frame for them to climb on. An increasing number of sparrows were making the garden their home, and in the early mornings I sometimes heard a cuckoo singing in the trees.
As the days got warmer, the balcony became my living room. I would sit there with my students for our English lessons. Often I would have my meals out there, sitting in the sun among pots of jasmine, lilies, ferns, and other plants I had collected or my students had given me. A beautiful dwarf tree in an ornamental flat vase with a rock arrangement and moss-covered earth was the pride of my possessions. I succeeded in borrowing a copy of Three Hundred Tang Poems and spent many pleasant hours copying the poems into an exercise book and reciting them to improve my memory.
Mr. Hu came to visit me from time to time. I noticed that if we sat on the balcony, Mrs. Zhu would be right there below us on her terrace; if we stayed in the room, A-yi would be within earshot.
One day in August, when daylight lingered until evening and the temperature was hot, Mr. Hu called on me. He wanted me to go out with him to a restaurant. But since A-yi had already prepared dinner, I invited him to stay and share it with me. When dinner was ready, we ate on the balcony in fading daylight in the evening breeze. Mr. Hu was in a happy mood, chatting to me about his childhood years in Hangzhou. After A-yi had cleared the table, Da De turned up. He always had a good excuse for coming to see me. This time, it was to give me a bag full of luscious Wuxi peaches, which he said would have spoiled if he had waited until the following morning to bring them. I introduced him to Mr. Hu. It was getting dark. There was no light on the balcony, so A-yi took the table lamp from my desk and placed it on the windowsill. She also handed Da De a large plate. When Da De took the peaches out of the bag and laid them on the plate, I saw that each was without blemish and was ripened to exactly the right degree. They were better than any I had ever been able to buy from the shops even before the Cultural Revolution.
“Where did you get the peaches?” I asked him.
“I have many back doors. In fact, though I didn’t go to college, I’m a Ph.D. of back doors,” Da De joked. Then he went to the kitchen to wash the peaches.
Da De’s sudden appearance seemed to have disconcerted Mr. Hu, who became silent. However, he allowed an interval of time to pass and complimented Da De on the excellent peaches before he politely took his leave. I walked downstairs with him and saw him to the front gate. The Zhus were nowhere to be seen, as was always the case whenever Da De was with me. They behaved as if they no longer had to pay attention to me when he was there.
“I’ll come again tomorrow, if I may,” said Mr. Hu as he shook hands with me.
When I returned to the balcony, Da De said to me, “He is a capitalist, isn’t he?”
“How do you know?”
“I can tell by his bearing. Besides, he exudes the bad odor of money, like all capitalists,” said Da De with vehemence.
“You are still very much the leader of the Red Guards, I see.”
“No! When I was a leader of the Red Guards, I was just a hotheaded fanatic. Now I’m a Marxist.”
“Are you a Party member?” I asked him.
“Not yet. I’ll join the Party one day in the not too distant future.”
“Since you hate the capitalists so much, why do you want to study English with me? Don’t you find me as repugnant as the capitalists? Don’t I exude the bad odor of money too?”
“You are different. Actually I don’t think you would make a good capitalist, as you are rather careless with money. The trouble with you is you are naive enough to believe in kindness, charity, generosity, and all that rubbish preached by the ruling class of the capitalist nations to fool their people and undermine their revolutionary spirit,” Da De said.
“What do you know about the capitalist nations anyway? You have never been to one.”
“And, more’s the pity, I have no hope of going.”
“Do you want to go if you have the chance?” I asked him.
“Of course I would go! In the United States or in a European country I could work hard and create my own life. I would probably do quite well,” he said wistfully.
“You puzzle me. A moment ago you wanted to join the Communist Party. Now you say you would like to go abroad if you have the opportunity. Are you perhaps thinking of starting a revolution in a capitalist country?” I asked him.
“Of course not. I want to join the Communist Party because I have to stay here. If I could go abroad to a capitalist country, I would try to become a capitalist,” he said impatiently, almost as if he thought I was too stupid to see his perfect logic.
“What! I thought you hated the capitalists!”
“I hate them now. But if I were one of them, I wouldn’t hate them, would I?”
“Won’t you be uncomfortable if you become something you hate?”
“Why should I? Don’t you understand dialectical materialism?”
After Da De left, I sat there on the balcony for a long time thinking of this rather strange young man. Never in my life had I met anyone quite like him. Marxists believed a man’s character was formed by environment. Was he the typical product of the Chinese Communist Revolution? In fact, I felt rather sorry for him. He was extremely intelligent and hardworking. If he had the chance to live and work in a free society, he would probably do well. I did not think he would have much of a future in China, even as a Party member. With his overdeveloped ego and self-confidence, Da De was essentially an individualist. The Communist Party was not very tolerant of individualists. And with his uncle dead, he had lost his entrée to the proletarian elite.
Mr. Hu came again after work the next day. This time I went with him to a noisy restaurant. After we were seated, Mr. Hu said, “That st
udent of yours seems to have access to food reserved for senior government officials. I don’t think anyone less than a deputy Party secretary of the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee could get hold of those peaches he brought you.”
“You don’t think he got them through the back door?”
“No, definitely not! Peaches like those are not for sale through front or back doors. They are reserved for senior officials, who do not have to pay for them.”
“No wonder he couldn’t tell me what I owed him.”
“The question is why he was given those peaches to bring to you.” Mr. Hu sounded worried.
“Perhaps it was just an excuse to come to see me right away. He had to bring something not easily obtainable and not easily kept fresh without refrigeration.” Actually I thought he came because Mr. Hu was there, but I did not want to alarm Mr. Hu by telling him that.
“Do you think you are under observation?”
“Yes, I’m pretty sure that is the case.”
“To have you under such close surveillance is anomalous. What did they say to you when you were released?” Mr. Hu asked me.
“Nothing very much. No mention that I was found to be innocent. They just said that I had been reeducated and had shown a certain degree of improvement in my thinking.” I was remembering my last interview in the interrogation room of the detention house.
While Mr. Hu was thinking over what I had said, I remembered the man from the film studio.
“The man from the Shanghai Film Studio said that I was released for health reasons,” I told him.
“Really? Did he say that? Do you think they would have kept you there longer if you had not been ill?” he asked me anxiously.
“They thought I had cancer.”
“Perhaps your case is not closed and no decision has been made about the so-called conspiracy. That would explain why you are being watched so closely,” Mr. Hu said.
“If they are looking for an excuse to take me back to the detention house again, they won’t succeed,” I said.
“Have you tried to get in touch with Shell in London or Hong Kong?”
