One Man`s Bible

17

It was a tailor-made new society, brand new and shiny, in which everyone was a glorious worker. People were organized into work units so that they could serve the people, even the barefoot peasants who worked in the fields and the bathhouse workers who pared the calluses from people's feet. Outstanding workers were selected as model workers and commended in the newspapers. There were no idlers, begging and prostitution were banned, and grain was allocated according to the number of mouths to be fed so that not a single bowl of rice would be wasted. The sense of personal gain was eradicated and everyone relied upon a wage or salary. Everything was the shared property of society, including the workers who were rigorously managed so that they would be perfect. There was no escape for the bad, and those not executed were sent to prison or to a farm to be reformed through labor. Red flags fluttered everywhere and, although it was only the first stage, a human ideal of a heavenly kingdom had come into being.

New people were also created. A perfect model, an ordinary soldier called Lei Feng, who grew up as an orphan under the five-star red flag not knowing what it was to be an individual, selflessly saved others and sacrificed his own life. When this hero of few desires first learned to read, he felt boundless gratitude to the Party for being able to read the Selected Works of Mao Zedong and to write about it. Lei Feng was willing to be a bright, shiny cog in the machinery of the revolution so that citizens could model themselves on him. And everyone had to do just that. He was dubious about this type of new people, but the confession system at the university required that everyone confess their thoughts to the Party. One's own thoughts and those of others, including one's doubts, all had to be reported at special summing-up meetings. He was tricked and frivolously asked if one could be a hero without having to throw oneself on a bag of explosives and getting blown up, and wasn't the function of the engine more important than that of a cog. This instantly sent his fellow students into an uproar, the women students making the loudest protests. He was criticized, luckily only at a class discussion, so it was not too serious. However, he had been taught a sound lesson: a person had to lie. If one wanted only to tell the truth, then there was no point living. It was fundamentally impossible for a person to be pure, but it was only many years later that he was able to comprehend this. He was able to learn through other people's and his own experiences, but only after having personally verified the experiences of others and suffering as a consequence.

You now do not need to take part in compulsory study meetings to confess your words and actions, and you no longer have to repent. You also distance yourself from any new myths that are similar to those. However, at that time he was frustrated and needed to talk about how he felt, so he arranged a get-together with some old schoolmates who were in Beijing and studying at university. They met at the Purple Bamboo Courtyard Park in the western suburbs. From different universities, luckily, they were not directly linked in an association, but only did a bit of writing when they felt deeply moved. All of them had written things like poetry, and simply wanted to come out of the intellectual shackles of the campus to relax. The park had only recently opened to the public and was fairly deserted. A teahouse by the lake sold cakes, but those poor students could not afford to go inside to sit down. However, on the grass in the shade of the trees, farther off, there were some quiet spots without any people. The fresh smell of wheat wafted on the breeze from the fields above the earth embankment, so probably it was May, because the grain was ripe.

Big Head said he wanted to write a play like Mayakovski's Bath-house. He was nicknamed Big Head, because he had won the first prize in a mathematics competition for all middle-school students in Beijing, and also because the cap he wore in winter was two sizes bigger than that of anyone else. Big Head, fortunately, went back to his mathematics and didn't write about any bathhouses or mud baths. However, as two of his articles had been published, in English, in an international students' mathematics journal just before that anticulture Cultural Revolution broke out, he was sent for eight years to herd cattle on a farm. Big Head's problem was not the result of that get-together in the park but came about after he had graduated. He made a flippant comment in the dormitory of his research institute and was reported by a colleague.

It was the reedy Mandarin Jacket Cheng, who got in trouble on that occasion. His nickname came from middle-school days, when he used to wear his father's old clothes that were several sizes too big for his skinny body. Without his knowledge, a fellow student read Cheng's diary and reported it to the secretary of the Communist Youth League. Mandarin Jacket was the only one of their group who had somehow weaseled membership into the League. The diary had a note on their get-together, but had not recorded what they had talked about. Cheng got in trouble because he had written about Women in the diary. It was said to have been pornographic and lewd, but it wasn't clear if the women were figments of his imagination or real. When people from Cheng's university arrived to question him about Cheng, he broke out in cold sweat.

At the get-together, he had talked about Ehrenburg's memoirs, Paris at the beginning of the century, and the bar frequented by that group of surrealist poets and artists. He had also talked about Meyerhold, who was shot for his involvement with formalism. What Big Head talked about was even more frightening. They listened with bated breath as he told them about Khrushchev's secret report on Stalin, which he had read in the English edition of Moscow News. At the time, strict controls on foreign-language publications in university libraries were not yet in place. The fourth person at the get-together was studying biology and genetics, and he had raved on about Indian philosophy and said that Tagore's poetry was like a meeting with immortals. The people who came to question him didn't ask about any of this. In other words, Mandarin Jacket was indeed a good friend and had not betrayed them. What they asked was whether women students were present and whether he knew anything about Cheng's off-campus relationships with women. At this he knew they were out of danger. So ended their one and only get-together.

You had been living in Paris for a number of years but had never thought to look for that bar. Once, quite by chance, after dinner at the home of a French writer, you left with a Chinese poet who was also living abroad. It was a lively scene at the Latin Quarter at midnight, and, passing by a bar crowded with people sitting inside and outside the door with a glass panel, you looked up and saw the neon sign la rotonde. It was that bar! The two of you sat down at a small round table that had just been vacated; around you were tourists speaking English or German. On the eve of a new century, the French poets and artists had all gone elsewhere.

All of you refused to take part in any movements, refused to commit to any ideology, and refused to join any groups. Luckily, those of you at the Purple Bamboo Courtyard Park managed to pull the brake in time. No one reported on the others; otherwise, even if you had not been branded counterrevolutionaries, the things you talked about would have been recorded in your files, and you wouldn't be here today. Afterward, all of you learned to wear a mask, and either extinguished your voice or else hid it deep at the bottom of your heart.

On waking, a few clouds are slowly drifting in the night sky outside the window, and, for an instant, you don't know where you are; you are relaxed and lethargic. It has been a long time since your thoughts have meandered like this into the past. You look at your watch and get out of bed. You must get to the theater before the end of the performance, for photo ops with the actors and stagehands, and then go to dinner with them. Parting after the last performance is always somehow sad.

From city to city, country to country, your journey is less secure than a migratory bird's, you simply enjoy these moments of pleasure. As long as you can fly, you persevere, and if your heart and body die, you will just drop down. You are now an unfettered bird, seeking joy in flight, and no longer need to go looking for suffering.

A private room has been reserved at the restaurant, and the group of thirty or forty clink glasses, laugh, talk, and exchange addresses. But most of you will never meet again, the world is just too big. The sturdy young woman with big eyes who played the female lead wants you to write something for her on a poster, so you write next to her name: "A good woman."

Her eyes narrow as she wickedly asks, "Good in what way?"

"Good in being free," you say.

Everyone cheers, so she raises both arms and pirouettes to show off her supple and beautiful figure. Another, a brash guy, asks, 'What do you think about marriage?"

You say, "Anyone who hasn't been married should get married."

"What about those who've been through a marriage?" he goes on to ask.

You can only say, "Then try a second time." Everyone claps and cheers. The brash guy does not let up and goes on to ask, "Do you have lots of girlfriends?"

You say, "Love is like sunshine, air, and wine."

Everyone rushes up to have a drink with you. With young people, there are none of those rules and etiquette, it's rowdy and a lot of fun.

"Then what about art?" It is the shy voice of a young woman standing a couple of people away from you.

"Art is simply a mode of life."

You say that you are living at this time and in this instant, and do not seek immortality. Epitaphs are erected for the living and have nothing to do with the dead. You have had a lot to drink, and it doesn't matter if you rave on. Writing plays is for enjoyment, and when you write them, you enjoy yourself to the full. You say that working with them was a pleasure and thank everyone.

Your associate director is a slim man, cool-headed and experienced, older than the actors. Speaking on their behalf, he says they all really like this play that you had written ten years ago but had not dated. They hope you will return to stage your new plays. You do not want to disappoint them, and say that the world is not big, Hong Kong can be seen at a glance on the map, and there would be opportunities. Of course, you know quite well that once a bird has flown from its cage, it will not want to fly back into it. You think about the parched high plateau of Central France, where you once looked down from the cliff at the little city with its prominent church spire at the foot of the mountain. Some distance from the highway, a Frenchwoman lay on her back sunbathing naked among the bushes. Her voluptuous arms shading her eyes were a dazzling white in the sun, like the rest of her body. The wind brought with it the screeching of eagles and the flapping of their wings as they circled below your feet, halfway down the mountain. French eagles became extinct a long time ago, and these eagles had been purchased in Turkey, then set free here.

You need to distance yourself from suffering, calmly scan those dim memories, and find in them some bright spots, so that you will be able to investigate the road you have traveled.

They are still young, but do they have to go through your experiences? That is their affair, they have their own fates. You do not take on the sufferings of others, are not the savior of the world, you seek only to save yourself.