by Hua Bai
makes mistakes. But he has performed a meritorious deed
by trusting in the strength of the party and helping to root out a counterrevolutionary.” I heard old Gui give a sigh of relief. “However, he must undertake serious self-criticism in order to cast off his birthmark and his old bones.” Could old Gui cast off his birthmark? Could his old bones be
remolded? I doubted it.
That night I was sent to the second prison, along with
the evidence of my crimes – the message I had written and all the criticism speeches delivered at the meeting. My way to prison seemed simple – no delay caused by red tape, no torture to obtain a confession. Everything – all the procedures from arrest to incarceration – was boiled in one pot. If only other matters in our country could be performed in
such an efficient manner. After they checked my ID card
and the evidence against me, the prison gate clanked open. I was driven in a prison car for quite a few minutes before reaching the cell allotted to me. The prison was obviously a big one. Two guards walked me to a changing room, where
they ordered me to strip. As I took off my shorts, the two suddenly jumped me, kicking and pummeling me. I only
had time to give a desperate cry: “Hey, I have TB!”
“We wouldn’t spare you if you had cancer!”
I gaze at her window. In the past, it was pasted over with black paper; now a cloth curtain with tiny blue flowers hangs there.
When I came to, I was prisoner number 809999 in cell
number 10045. My first discovery was that my hair had
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vanished. Cell number 10045 had an area of approximately ten square meters. Why approximately? Because I did not have any measuring tape with me. I was the fifth prisoner in that cell. Those who had arrived earlier treated me quite politely in that cell, not like in the prisons described in nineteenth-century European fiction, where old prisoners bully the new ones, nor like the KMT prisons shown in Chinese movies, where the prisoners love and live harmoniously like one big family. I stretched my limbs. Luckily, they still moved. My number was printed on the chest of my prison
suit. It was so long I read it several times for fear of being beaten for not knowing my so-called identity.
“Number 99!” Who was number 99? I was obviously
number 809999. A young man pointed at me. In the con-
fines of the room, his finger nearly scratched my nose. “Hey, number 99, they’re calling you!”
“Ah!” So the numbers could be shortened by leaving out
the first four digits. Had they arrived at the figure for my savings account in the same way, I would have suffered a tre-mendous loss.
“You must reply ‘Here!’ Here means you are in this cell, not escaped or dead. Listen, number 99!”
“Here!”
“That’s it. What are you in for?”
To avoid their contempt and insults, I said audacious-
ly, “Double agent. A spy of the American FBI as well as for Taiwan.”
“Too common.” He laughed. I saw the number on his
chest was 809998. His laughter sounded like the cry of a baby duckling, quite pleasant. “Do you know what kind of man I am?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you know what kind of man he is?”
Number 98 pointed at number 97 – a shy young man
with feminine brows and a pale face.
“No.”
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“Or what kind of figure is he?” Number 98 pointed at
number 96 – a sleepy-looking man in his forties.
“No.”
“Or what kind of fellow is he?” Number 98 pointed at
number 95 – a boy of about fifteen, whose prison sleeves were too long and dangled like those of a classical Beijing Opera actor.
“No.”
“See, there’s peak beyond peak, heaven beyond heaven.
Don’t be so cocky. Number 97, although he looks like a delicate bookworm and blushes at coarse words, is a very famous man. He is the big counterrevolutionary who once
held a nuclear device in his hands and attempted to blow up City H.”
I burst out laughing. “Don’t make me sick with your lies.
How can one hold a nuclear device in his hand? How could he lift it up?”
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Number 98 detected
my surprise. “That’s why he was brought in. Ask him yourself.”
Number 97’s face flushed. As he smacked his lips, two
lovely dimples appeared on his cheeks. He said, “It’s true.”
“It’s been more than five years now, hasn’t it?” Number
98 asked.
“Five years, three months, and four days.” Number 97
recalled the date exactly. He took a newspaper clipping from his underwear and pressed it into my hand. Unfolding it
carefully, I saw the striking red headline:
A Great Victory for Mao Zedong Thought. City Cracks
Giant Criminal Case. Counterrevolutionary Thug Feng
Minzeng Attempts to Blow up City H with a Hand-Held
Nuclear Device!
Two full pages vividly described how the young univer-
sity student had contacted a Russian exchange student
named Natasha, who had given him a nuclear device from
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the USSR by the fifth piling of the Ming River Bridge and had expected to blow up the city on National Day. On
behalf of the Soviet government, Natasha gave him ten
thousand rubles. For future communication, she left him a button-sized transmitter. Thanks to the luck that always follows our great leader Chairman Mao, the remote control of the device malfunctioned because of dampness, and the attempt failed. With the rise of the proletarian Cultural Revolution, the rebels exposed and arrested this dangerous enemy with the telescope and microscope of Mao Zedong
thought. The nuclear device, which sank to the bottom of the river, is being retrieved, while the button transmitter was swallowed by the thug’s mother. Although revolutionary medical workers dissected the mother’s body, they failed to find it. In all likelihood it passed through her system, and revolutionary rebels in charge of the sewer system have expressed their determination to pursue the matter to the end.
“What do you think of that?” Number 98 asked me.
“Well, mine looks ordinary by comparison.” My case
had been decided simply by public criticism, and the two huge pages of a printed newspaper definitely carried more weight.
“Number 96 can’t be slighted, either. Although his stay
here is short, he is profoundly learned. He has published an important work during the Cultural Revolution. Maybe
you’ve heard of it.”
“What work?”
“The Ouyang Dictionary of Self-Criticism.”
“A true hero does not like to show off his past glorious deeds,” said number 96. “Were it not for the shortage of paper, the circulation of my dictionary would have been
comparable to that of The Quotations of Chairman Mao. ”
“Yes, I read the publisher’s advertisement somewhere in a rebel newspaper. If your dictionary helps propagate Mao
Zedong thought, and you look like a man of foresight, how did you wind up in prison?”
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“Don’t flatter me. If I really had foresight, I wouldn’t be here. My knowledge was insufficient and the power of foresight is precisely what I lack. I committed a mistake by including many of Lin Biao’s words. I never dreamed that Mao Zedong’s constitutional successor would fall so hard.
Strangely enough, his fa
ll implicated me as a trumpeter for the ambitious Lin Biao and a schemer for his restoration.
Could I deny the crime? Could I refuse to confess? Because everything is printed in black and white, I willingly admitted all my crimes. My heart, my mouth, even my toes agree that I deserve punishment. China has a proverb: If a man does not have a long-term plan, he must be beset with
immediate troubles. It’s true.”
And number 95 – what sort of figure was he? He turned
his body to face the wall.
“He is a renegade.”
“What? A renegade?” Although I was not normally
rowdy, I found myself shouting.
“Yes. In 1938, he escaped from Yan’an to Xi’an. When he
stopped at Wuhan he joined the KMT central spy network,
thus betraying the revolution and selling party secrets.”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“It’s no joke. I’m merely giving you his background.”
“But he wasn’t even born in 1938.”
“You know that and I know that, but the men who sent
him here don’t know that – ”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Zhang Guotao.”
“Zhang Guotao. You mean he is Zhang Guotao?”
“Yes, no doubt about it. Zhang as in the combined characters bow and long, guo as in fruit, and tao as in the word for waves. Granted, the last two characters of his name are only homonyms with those of the historical Zhang
Guotao.”
“He should appeal. It can’t be hard to explain such a simple thing, is it?”
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“Who can he appeal to?”
“To the prison director.”
“The director cares only about locking up prisoners, not about reviewing cases. None of us has had a trial – ” I
started laughing convulsively. I laughed and laughed until the guard roared and struck me with a leather whip. But as soon as he left I recommenced laughing, and this time sobbing as well, although I covered my mouth with my hands
so that my laughter would not be heard. When I stopped
laughing out of exhaustion, I heard number 95 sobbing.
“How about you, number 98?”
“I’m a riddle.”
“A riddle?”
“Yes, a riddle.”
“How can a man be a riddle? What kind of riddle?”
“I don’t know myself – I was an elementary school
teacher who traveled to Beijing to make revolution. One
day, following a crowd of my countrymen, I squeezed into the Jiangsu Room of the Great Hall of the People. It so
happened that Kang Sheng, adviser to the central cultural revolutionary committee, was receiving rebel representatives from Shandong Province. I never dreamed I might see such a big shot in my life. You know, during the anti-Japanese war, Kang supervised work in Shandong – land reform I was told. He was a daring man of power and carried out a policy of annihilating the enemy. People said his maxim was Where does the soul go if the body no longer exists? I looked at him, smiling like an idiot and with tears of joy started clapping madly. I was obsessed with catching his attention,
with letting him know how I had worshipped him all this
time. Thank heavens, he noticed me, even though he was
pretty far away. He pointed and asked in our Shandong dialect: ‘Who is that man?’ It was just like the poetic line: ‘The native dialect remains, though the hair turns gray.’ I was too thrilled to stammer out a sentence. ‘I – I – ’ The crowd opened up, and I squeezed my way through to him. As I
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stood watching him, his face dropped quite unexpectedly
and he told his bodyguard, ‘Have you ever seen him be-
fore?’ The guard said no. Narrowing his eyes as if focusing a camera, Kang reminded me of his lovely nickname, the
‘Chinese Dzherzinsky.’ I once saw Dzherzinsky in a Soviet movie called Cyclone of Hatred. When his eyes fixed upon a reactionary, the reactionary could never run away. Why
did Kang look at me like that? Just like Dzerzinsky – well, it might not be bad to have an X ray because I have no disease to fear. For reasons known only to God, Kang suddenly said, ‘This man is a riddle. Arrest him.’ Before I understood his words, I was gagged by the guard and bundled off to
prison. This is the third prison I have stayed at. After all these years, maybe Kang has forgotten to guess the riddle.
But I have been guessing.… The more I try, the more con-
fused I become.… Why am I a riddle? How can I, a human
being, be a riddle?”
As his words trailed off, he closed his eyes and sank into deep thought. I believed he was continuing his guesswork. I wished I could help him find the answer. Soon I came to see that, if an old Bolshevik like Kang could not solve the riddle, then I, an ordinary person, could not possibly do so. It was clear that the man was indeed a riddle, in the sense that every Chinese man is a riddle. The most solemn task facing the nation and the party is to guess this riddle. Of course, not everyone has the right to solve it; however, everyone has the right to join the guessing game to avoid having himself be written off as a riddle. Only a few conjurers have the power to create and declare answers to riddles. The connection between a riddle and its answer is top secret. Millions of people deprived of the right to solve riddles, together with those who keep the logical connection between riddles and their answers secret, are forever sitting on pins and needles. As the saying goes, “Misfortune befalls a man while he is sitting at home.” Who knows when you may be written
up as a riddle for wild conjecture? Even those few who have 2 1 0
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the right to create riddles and declare answers, and those who hold the secret link between a riddle and its answer, enjoy no peace of mind. Besides the very few at the top of the pagoda, all other players shiver in a state of wakeful puzzlement, for they know best the conspiracies hidden in the handkerchief of the master magician. I heard many legendary tales in prison. (Even thick prison walls cannot block the spread of tales. Perhaps that is the way ancient tales such as Yi Shot Down Nine Suns and Kuafu Chased the Sun have
survived along with eternally suffering humanity. They possess not only infinite charm but also the power to transcend space and time.) Of course, although believable, they cannot be put on trial for truth. For instance, I once heard a tale about a member of the central cultural revolutionary committee and a member of a provincial revolutionary committee. I will record the dialogue as follows:
“Old W, don’t worry. Even if the flood swallows
9,599,999 square kilometers, on the heights of the last kilometer you may sit fishing away.”
“Old L, please don’t talk like that. I feel just the opposite way, like someone who has been forced to sit on the edge of a well, waiting for a fateful push.”
“You worry too much. How could that ever happen?”
“One morning you or I may go to jail in chains.”
“Stop pulling my leg.”
“Want to bet?”
“Yes, how much?”
“Well, a carton of Colorful Butterfly, the best cigarettes your province produces.”
“And what’s your stake if I win?”
“A carton of Great China.”
Soon after, they were both sent to prison. L lost a carton of Colorful Butterfly to W, and L’s follower sent it to W’s prison in Qin City.
Take the case of Lin Biao and his die-hard followers like Huang, Wu, Ye, Li, and Qiu: In one moment they were
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climbing up to the ruling peak, a single step from absolute power, beneath one man but above many millio
ns of people.
Then they fell into the abyss, and to the Chinese people, it was like a dramatic nightmare.
The neighboring cell on our right also held five crimi-
nals. These five inmates all belonged to the same unit. Let’s call them A, B, C, D, and E. A came to prison because B
exposed him; B came because C informed on him; C came
because of D; D came because of E; and while in prison A wrote heaps of information to implicate E. Because of their mutual hatred, A, B, C, and D quarreled fiercely and fought bloodily. But when E was thrown in they became reconciled. Instead of quarreling and fighting, the five of them sat in a circle, playing Passing the Flower to the Drumbeats.
By turns one of them would beat his thigh like a drum.
Then A, B, C, D, and E would pass the flower – a dirty
handkerchief – as quickly as they could. At the stop of the drumbeat, the one holding the kerchief had to describe the most delicious food he had ever eaten, with gestures and noises to convey the color, flavor, and smell of the food. A was from Sichuan. He said the dish he loved most was
twice-cooked pork. The thin, transparent slices of pork colored with red pepper, tender ginger, and green garlic are cooked together with thin slices of hard bean curd. The dish tastes peppery, spicy, boiling hot, and salty all at once. He mimed eating it with hissing noises, oil dripping from his mouth, tears welling up in his eyes, and snot running from his nose. His performance was so brilliant that his audience felt they truly had shared a complete Sichuan dish with him.
When it was D’s turn, as a native of Guangdong, he per-
formed the eating of baby mice. In the fields one catches a nest of pink baby mice that have not yet opened their eyes.
They can do nothing but twist their tiny heads and huddle together, making cute little squeaks. To stress the eating ceremony, one must put the tender mice on a snow-white
six-inch plate. If you snap a color picture of them, the white 2 1 2
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and pink will form the essence of an artistic work. Then one puts a small cinnabar cup on the table, pours it two-thirds full of excellent soy sauce (Guangdong natives call it Sheng-chou), and then adds a few drops of hand-ground sesame oil.
To complete the ritual, one prepares a pair of ivory chopsticks. When the gourmet sits down at the table, his eyes fill with the pink flower pattern created by the darling babies before he even picks up his chopsticks. One must eat the dish with a style known as “three cries.” If one fails to achieve the three cries, the mice are blamed as weaklings without enough vitality and liveliness. What are the three cries? The first occurs when the ivory chopsticks pinch a baby mouse, which lets out a crispy cry, zhi! The second occurs when one dips the mouse into the cup, and its tender skin is stung by the sharp soy sauce with a sizzle. The third occurs when one puts the seasoned mouse into his mouth
