One Man`s Bible

23

Party, whose very profession was class struggle, were targeted for attack by the Red Guards. All this followed Mao's blueprint for mobilizing peasant movements, and had been devised by the Great Leader when, starting out from Hunan province, he had absolutely nothing.

Wu Tao was on the dais in the auditorium. Big Li was trying to push his head down, but he was quite stubborn. He had his dignity and, angry about being unjustly treated, refused to lower his head. Big Li punched him, right in his fat belly, and Wu Tao doubled over with pain, his face purple, but he did not raise his head again.

Sitting in the place formerly occupied by Wu Tao, on the dais covered with red tablecloths, he presided over all the denunciation meetings convened by the joint mass organizations. He was confronted by increasingly violent behavior, and he seemed to be sitting on top of a volcano. If he tried to exercise any restraint, he would be forced off the dais in exactly the same way. At the meeting, people's emotions ran high. One by one, each Party committee member was called to stand at the front of the dais, learned how to bow his head, and reported on Wu Tao's words and actions. All their instructions had been from higher up, each admitted errors, and each admitted the same things, but not a single sentence was their own. Chen, the tall, slim deputy secretary of the Party committee, whose stooped gaunt figure made him look like a dried shrimp, had a bright idea and added in his report that Wu Tao had recently told core members of the Party committee: "Chairman Mao doesn't need us anymore."

Emotions at the meeting boiled over again and everyone started shouting, "Destruction to anyone who opposes Chairman Mao!"

He detected grief in the shouting of the slogans "Down with Wu Tao" and "Long live Chairman Mao." It was coming from the inner depths of Wu Tao; it sounded familiar, and he remembered that the senior cadre at Zhongnanhai had been resentful like this before he had discarded Wu Tao. However, coming from Wu Tao's own lips, that resentment had turned to grief.

As chair of the meeting, he had to appear harsh, even while knowing that this slight amount of grief and resentment could hardly be defined as opposing the Great Leader. The scoundrel had to be thoroughly crushed. If restored to power, Wu would have no qualms about having him branded a counterrevolutionary for chairing the meeting.

The meeting passed a resolution, and Wu Tao was ordered to hand over the Party meeting minutes and his work notes. After the meeting, he, Tang, and Little Yu got into the black Jimu limousine reserved for the exclusive use of the Party secretary, and set off immediately to carry out a search of Wu Tao's house, taking Wu Tao himself along with them.

He wanted this to be less traumatic, so, without using strong-arm tactics, he got the old man to open each of the drawers and the bookcase containing stacks of documents. Tang and Yu were rummaging through a wardrobe and ordered the old man to hand over the keys to the suitcases.

"They are only old clothes," the old man grumbled in protest.

"Then why are you afraid of having them searched? What if they contain black documents on the masses?" Tang, hands on his hips and looking very cocky, obviously enjoyed carrying out the search.

The old man went into the dining room to get his wife to fetch the keys. It was dinnertime, food was on the table, and the door was open. Wu's wife was there with a small child, their granddaughter, and she stayed inside throughout, deliberately chatting with the little granddaughter. The thought crossed his mind that maybe something important was hidden in the dining room, but he immediately banished the thought. To avoid having to face them, he did not enter the dining room.

Only two months earlier, Red Guards had searched his own room. One Sunday soon after, someone knocked on his door, and, standing outside, was a pretty girl with a fair complexion. The sun shining at that angle made her eyes sparkle and the hair around her ears shine. She said she was the landlord's daughter from the adjoining courtyard, and had come to collect the rent for her family. He had never gone there but knew that Old Tan and the landlord were old friends.

The girl stood at the doorway, took the money he handed her, frowned, and, glancing inside, said, "The furniture inside, the table and that old sofa, belongs to my family and will be removed in due time."

He said he could help her shift the furniture right away. She made no response, but, before she turned and went down the steps, her bright eyes swept coldly across him with obvious hostility. He thought the girl must have wrongly assumed that he had reported on Old Tan so that he could take over his lodgings. A few weeks passed, but the girl did not come to collect rent or to remove the furniture. It was only when the old man from next door came to collect rent for the housing department of the street committee that he found out all private real estate had become public property. He did not bother to find out what had happened to the landlord, but the cold look the girl had given him remained fixed in his mind.

He avoided seeing Wu's wife and the little granddaughter. Even though the child was small, she would remember and would continue hating him for a long time.

Tang brought out one suitcase at a time. Unlocking them, Wu Tao said they contained his daughter's and her child's clothing. When he saw the bras and dresses, he suddenly felt embarrassed, recalling how it was when the Red Guards found condoms while searching through Old Tan's things in the room they shared. He waved them to stop. Tang was searching the sofa, pulling up the cushions, feeling down between the armrests, and demonstrating the expertise of someone who suddenly had been delegated the responsibility of carrying out a search. However, he was anxious to end the search and had parceled up bundles of letters, documents, and notebooks.

"Those are my private letters and have nothing to do with my work," Wu said.

"We're going to examine them. They will be recorded, and if there are no problems they will be returned," he retorted.

What he wanted to say, but did not, was that they had actually been very polite.

"This is… the second time in my life!" Wu hesitated as he said this.

"Have Red Guards already been here?" he asked.

"I am referring to forty years ago. When I was an underground agent for the Party…" Wu's eyelids wrinkled as he gave a bitter smile.

"But didn't your people also search homes when you tyrannized the masses? I doubt that your people were as polite as us," he said with a grin.

"That was the doing of Red Guards in your workplace. Our Party committee did not decide all that!" Wu insisted.

"But the name lists were supplied by the political department! Otherwise, how would they have known whose homes to search? Why didn't they search your home?" he asked, staring at Wu.

Wu kept quiet. He was, after all, experienced in the ways of the world and he even silently escorted them to the gate of the courtyard. But he knew Wu Tao hated him and that, if reinstated, the old scoundrel would have him sent to hell straight away. He had to find enough evidence to get Wu branded as the enemy.

After returning to the workplace building, he spent the whole night going through Wu's letters and found a family letter referring to Wu as his elder cousin. The letter said, "The People's Government is magnanimous and has been lenient in meting out punishment. However, it is hard for me, because I am sick and have old folks and young children at home. I hope that you, Elder Cousin, will be able to speak on my behalf to the local government authorities." Clearly, this relative had problems with his political history and was seeking Wu's help, but he put the letter into a document envelope and wrote on it "examined." Something had psychologically prevented him from taking the matter further.

In those times, he hardly went home, and just slept in the office that served as the headquarters of their rebel group. Day and night, there were big and small meetings, liaising with, then breaking off with various people's organizations, and endless internal squabbles within their rebel group. Everyone seemed to be like ants in a hot frying pan, frantically running around and advocating rebellion. The old Red Guards announced they had rebelled against the Party committee and were now known as the Red Revolutionary Rebel Column, and even the political cadres had established their own Battle Corps. However, as people scrambled to find some way out, they were all much the same in their switching of loyalties, betrayal, opportunism, revolution, and rebellion. Once the original network of order and authority had been thrown into disarray, restructuring occurred in all parts of this beehive-like workplace building, and countless secret plots were not confined to this one floor.

At all the denunciation meetings of the various people's organizations, Wu Tao would, without fail, be hauled out for criticism. Daman 's crowd was savage. Not satisfied with Wu Tao just having to wear a placard, bowing, and hanging his head, they pulled back his arms, forcing him to his knees until he fell flat on the ground-just as they had dealt with Ox Demons and Snake Spirits a few months earlier. Robbed of their political authority by the rebel group, they were reduced to asserting their authority on the person of Wu Tao, this old Party secretary who, discarded by the Party, had become a useless old dog whose bad odor, people feared, might rub off onto them.

One day, after a snowfall, he saw Wu Tao at the back of the workplace building. He was digging up snow that had become packed solid from people walking on it. Wu heard someone coming and quickly moved out of the way. He stopped and asked, "How are you?"

The old man held onto his hoe, and, panting for breath, repeated, "Fine, fine. You don't use physical violence, but they do."

Wu had put on a miserable look just to get on good terms with him, he thought at the time. It was a year later that he began to pity this old man for whom nobody dared to show any concern. The old man swept the yard with a big bamboo broom every morning, always head bowed and wearing a dirty, old, blue jacket with patches. Nobody who went by even so much as glanced at him. Obviously, he had aged a great deal, his shoulders drooped and the skin around his eyes and on his cheeks had become flaccid. It was only then that he began to feel sorry for Wu Tao, although he didn't ever speak to him again.

The struggles that allowed for only one survivor turned everyone into enemies, and hostility blanketed people like an avalanche. Waves of intensifying winds pushed him to confront one party bureaucrat after another. He did not hate them as individuals, but he wanted to have them branded as the enemy. Were they all enemies? He could not decide.

"You are being too soft on them! They showed no mercy when they oppressed the masses. Why don't you have the whole lot of those accomplices hauled onto the dais?" Big Li was reprimanding him at an internal meeting of the rebel group.

"Can you overthrow all of them?" He paused, then retorted, "Can one totally reverse things so that every person who had unjustly denounced others is branded the enemy? People have to be allowed to correct their errors. To win over the masses, some thought has to be given to a strategy for differentiating how people are to be treated."

"Strategy, strategy, you're just an intellectual!" Big Li, bad-tempered and pushy, said this with derision.

"Why are we joining up with and taking in just about anyone who comes along? The rebel group isn't a plate of stir-fried vegetables!

That's the rightist opportunist line, and it will snuff out the revolution!" This older sister, a Party member, had recently joined their command department and she was challenging him. She had studied the history of the Party and was quite radical. The "correct line" struggle had started within the rebel group. "The revolutionary leadership authority must be firmly controlled by authentic leftists and not by opportunist elements!" This Party-member older sister of the rebel group was all worked up and her face was like a red rag.

"What are you getting up to!" He banged the table. Being in this motley group had made him tough, but he was worried.

He could not remember how he got through those days and nights of so much endless argument, righteous anger, inflammatory revolutionary words, lust for personal power, stratagems, plotting, collusion and compromise, indignation with ulterior motives, unthinking recklessness, and wasted emotions. Unable to resist, he allowed himself to be manipulated into arguments to challenge the conservative forces and also into endless quarrels within the rebel group.

"Political power is vital for the revolution. If we don't seize power, our rebelling will be so much wasted effort!" Big Li, enraged, also banged the table.

"Can you hold onto power if you don't unite with the majority?" he retorted.

"Unity will only last if it is unity created by struggle!" Little Yu held up Mao's little red book of Sayings to shore up his own weak class origins. "We can't listen to you, because at critical times the intellectuals will always waver!"

They all regarded themselves as blood-lineage proletariat and believed that this red country should belong to diem. Revolution or rebellion, it finally came down to seizing power. This fact was so simple that it surprised him. But, at the time, he did not know what he wanted, and even his rebelling was a path he had strayed onto by mistake.

"Comrades, Chen Duxiu failed to seize political power at a critical point of the revolution! He was a rightist opportunist!" The Party-member older sister dismissed him with this reference to Party history, then began shouting slogans to the people at the meeting.

"All of you who are not for the revolution can get the hell out of here!" the more radical among them shouted along with her. As a late-comer, she was trying to maneuver herself into a leadership position.

"If you want to be the leader, then go for it!"

He rose to his feet angrily and left the smoke-filled meeting room where forty or fifty people had been puffing on cigarettes the whole night. In the office next door, he pulled together three chairs and went to sleep. He was upset and confused. If he wasn't a fellow traveler of the revolution, was he then an opportunist rebel? Probably he was, and this was unsettling.

On the night of that New Year's Eve, the meeting thus unhappily dispersed. In the New Year, sporadic war began between Big Li's crowd and the most radical members of the Battle Corps that had announced a takeover of the paralyzed Party committee and political department.

"Smash the Party committee! Smash the political department! Revolutionary comrades, do you support or oppose the New Red Political Authority? There is a clear line of demarcation between being revolutionary or not!"

Little Yu was shouting into the broadcast system. Offices had been fitted with speakers, and the announcement of the political coup blared through all the corridors and rooms. Escorted by Big Li, Tang, and some service personnel, a group of old cadres and some young Party branch secretaries all wearing placards on their chests were paraded through the corridors of the entire building. In the lead was Wu Tao, beating on a gong.

What were they up to? Probably this was precisely how revolutions began. Those once dignified leading cadres who were the embodiment of the Party now filed past, one after the other, heads bowed, abject and wretched. The Party-member older sister led the rebel group with her fist raised and, shaking it, she loudly shouted, "Down with the capitalist road elements in positions of power! Long live the New Red Political Authority! Long live the victory of Chairman Mao's revolutionary line!"

In imitation of the national leaders at reviews, Tang waved at the people squeezed in the corridors and blocking office doorways. This made some laugh, but made others look grim.

"We know you are opposed to their seizing power-" the former field officer said.

"I don't, but I oppose their method of seizing power," he replied.

The person who approached him had transferred from the army to work as a political cadre. He was only a deputy department chief, and, in the chaos, was eager to advance himself. All smiles, he said, "You've got much more influence with the people than that mob. If you put yourself forward, we will back you. We hope that you will rally a contingent to work with us."

This conversation took place in the confidential documents room of the political department, a room he had not previously entered. The workplace documents and personnel files, including his own file with a record of his father's problem, were all kept in this place. When Big Li's crowd seized power, they pasted paper seals on the metal security cupboards as well as the locked document cupboards. The seals could be torn off at any time but nobody would dare to destroy the files.

The former field officer had sought him out in die main dining hall and said he wanted to exchange ideas with him. However, his arranging to meet in this room indicated another motive and, entering the room, he somehow sensed this. He knew who was behind the former field officer, because a few days earlier, the Party-committee deputy secretary, Chen, had given him a signal by putting a big bony hand on his shoulder. Chen formerly headed the workplace political department and seldom spoke or laughed; after being denounced, he had turned stony and cold. Chen had come up to him from behind and, as no one was around, had actually called his name and even addressed him as "comrade." Chen put his hand on his shoulder for one or two seconds, gave a nod, and walked past. This seemingly casual act, however, intimated extraordinary closeness, a pretense of having forgotten that it was he who had denounced Chen at a big meeting. This man far outstripped that motley crowd of rebels in political experience and meanness, yet here he was, stretching out a hand to him. He was by no means an old hand at playing politics, and was not as cunning as this man, but he knew he could not stand in their ranks. He reaffirmed his position, "I don't condone how they have seized power, but that doesn't mean that I am opposed to the general direction of those who have seized power. I definitely support rebelling against the Party committee."

This pleased the former field officer, who was silent for a while before saying with a nod, "We're also rebelling."

It sounded as if the man were saying "We're also drinking tea." He laughed, but said nothing.

"We were just having a casual chat, treat our conversation just now as having never occurred." Having said this, the former field officer stood up.

He left the confidential documents room, declined their deal, and severed links with them.

Less than ten days later, in February, after the New Year, the old Red Guards and some political cadres again organized a corps to oppose the seizure of power and smashed the workplace broadcasting station that was controlled by the rebels. The first armed conflict broke out between the two sides, and there were some injuries, but he was not present at the time.