One Man`s Bible

27

He looked at the cracks in the papered ceiling. The rats running around and fighting all night had widened the cracks, and had left his bedding covered in strips of black dirt. He had never been so idle, there was nothing to do, he did not have to get up early to get to work on time, and he no longer had to busy himself with rebelling. He did not read, because all the books that were readable – had been put into wooden boxes or cardboard cartons, and he did not commit anything to writing. He had to stay awake so that he would not slip back into a nightmare. The old retired worker in the next room was up early and had his radio turned on full blast, tuned to the revolutionary opera Red Lantern. It was really irritating, and even while he masturbated under the bedcovers with his eyes closed, striving again to enjoy Lin's hot naked body, he was not able to block out the solemn, virtuous words of that high-pitched singing. He was left feeling miserable.

He thought about getting a ladder to mend the cracks in the ceiling. But if he were to make a mistake, that brittle sagging paper shell could collapse, and it would be impossible to clean up the filthy mess of years of accumulated dust. It would take an expert to paper a ceiling. Instead, he moved the things piled on Old Tan's bed into a corner of the room, moved his own bedding there, then dismantled his own bed. Old Tan definitely would not be coming back.

If he wanted to go for a walk, there was nowhere he could go but to buy one of the bulletins put out by the people's organizations. These, in fact, contained much revealing information, and back home he would cook dinner and read as he ate. From the leaders' speeches to various people's organizations, he detected different views, hidden meanings. The many vehement pronouncements changed continually, like pictures in a magic lantern. A day earlier, a leader could be interpreting Mao's newest directive, then, tomorrow or the day after, sure enough, the secret killing machine would fall on that leader, who would suddenly be transformed into an anti-Party criminal. His righteous indignation had cooled, and doubts kept springing up in his mind, although he did not dare to acknowledge this.

However, he had to make an appearance at the workplace from time to time, to drop in at the rebels' headquarters that had formed after various splintering and regrouping. As people came and went, he would smoke a few cigarettes and chat. He simply showed his face, listened to a bit of news, then slipped away when nobody was watching. There were endless struggles and regroupings, then new struggles, and he was not interested.

Chang'an Avenue was where things were happening and where there was the most news, so whenever he went to the workplace, he always made a detour. Tents and bamboo-matting shelters were up everywhere outside the red-brown walls of Zhongnanhai. There were the red flags of the university rebel groups and a huge red horizontal banner displaying the words: beijing battle-line liaison

POINT OF THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTIONARY GROUP TO HAUL

out liu shaoqi for criticism. Several hundred big loudspeakers, day and night, blared out war songs nonstop, and the nation's president was denounced in the name of the Supreme Leader, the Red Sun. However, even this sight failed to excite him.

"Newest material on Liu Shaoqi's daughter exposing her father! Read all about it! Former wife exposes Liu Shaoqi's misappropriation of revolutionary funds to buy gold shoehorns!"

Among the circle of people around the newspaper seller, he saw Big Head, his classmate from middle-school times, and clapped him on the shoulder from behind. Big Head got a fright, but was relieved, and smiled when he turned and saw who it was. Big Head was carrying an artificial-leather satchel and had bought a bag of newspapers and other publications.

"Let's get out of here, come to my place!" He felt a pang of nostalgia, for Big Head had become the last link with the life he had lost.

"I'll get a bottle of liquor!" Big Head was also excited.

The pair of them got on their bicycles and went off to Dongdan Market, where they squabbled over paying for the cooked food and liquor, then went back to his room. The afternoon sun was shining through the curtains, it was warm inside, and, after a few cups of liquor, their faces were flushed, and their ears were burning. Big Head said he was hauled out at the beginning of the movement. After he had made some careless comments in his dormitory, they searched and found his two small notebooks blaspheming Mao's philosophy. However, people were aiming higher nowadays, and could no longer be bothered with his petty reactionary words. He also said he had never put up a poster, that the movement had not involved him; nevertheless, he could not work at his mathematics and was simply collecting newspapers and secretly doing a bit of reading.

"What books?" he asked.

"A Mirror for Good Government, I brought it with me from home." A smile congealed on Big Head's round face that was flushed from alcohol.

He had never been interested in the art of empire, and couldn't fathom Big Head's smile.

"Haven't you read Wu Han's Biography of Zhu Tuanzhang?" Big Head asked, testing him, putting out a feeler.

The Cultural Revolution had started with criticisms of Wu Han, the deputy mayor of Beijing. A specialist in Ming history, Wu Han had written books on how the first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, had assassinated the meritorious officials who had helped establish his empire. Wu Han committed suicide at the beginning of the movement and set a precedent for countless subsequent suicides. He understood what Big Head was implying, it confirmed his own suspicions, and, tapping his fingers on the table, he shouted, "You devil!"

Big Head's eyes shone enigmatically behind his glasses, he was no longer the bookworm he had been as a youth.

"I scanned it, but took it all to be history, old imperial history. It didn't occur to me that… Could things have gone a full circle?" he asked, testing Big Head.

"A boomerang…" Big Head took him on, chuckling.

"But isn't that dialectics?"

"Only it's not clear whether it's high- or low-level dialectics…"

What was implied and hinted at, what could be articulated neither directly nor obliquely, was whether it was imperial control strategies with an ideology or political power strategies with the trappings of ideology. History is big on ideology, but what was the reality?

Big Head stopped smiling. The radio on the other side of the wall was still on, and now it was another of the revolutionary operas directed by Madam Mao, Red Detachment of Women: "Advance, advance, the burden of revolution is heavy and the resentment of women is deep!" Madam Mao, Comrade Jiang Qing, who had been prohibited from taking part in politics by the Party elders, was now resolutely in the process of realizing her political ambitions.

"Why is the soundproofing so poor?"

"It's better with the radio on over there."

"Don't you have a radio?"

"My roommate Old Tan had a transistor, but it was confiscated, and he's in solitary confinement at the workplace."

The two of them fell silent for a while and could clearly hear the singing on the radio in the room next door.

"Do you have a set of chess? Let's have a game!" Big Head said.

He fished out a carved-bone chess set from one of the cardboard cartons of Old Tan's belongings piled against the wall, moved the liquor and food, and began setting up a game on the table.

"What made you think of reading this book?" He returned to their discussion as he moved a chess piece.

"When the newspapers had just started criticizing Wu Han, my old man got me to make a trip home, he said he had applied to retire…"

Big Head moved a chess piece, lowered his voice, and deliberately mumbled. His father was a history professor and also had a Democratic Personage title to his name.

"Do you have that book by Wu? Is it still available?" He moved another chess piece.

"We had one at home, my old man got me to read it, but it was burned a long time ago. Who would dare to keep the book? He only got me to take an old hand-sewn copy of A Mirror for Good Government, a Ming woodblock edition, and it counts as his legacy to me.

Old Mao used to get senior cadres to read it, otherwise I wouldn't still have it." Big Head said the word "Mao" very softly, as part of a casual comment, then made another move.

"Your old man is really smart!" He wasn't sure if he was praising Big Head's father or lamenting that he didn't have such a wise head of the family. His own father was so muddle-headed.

"But he was too late. They wouldn't let him retire and, with the problem of his personal history, they still had him hauled out for criticism." Big Head took off his glasses, peered close to the chessboard with his dull, nearsighted eyes, and said, "What's this shit game you're playing?"

Suddenly, he scrambled the game and said to Big Head, "I've had enough of this crap game, they're a whole lot of stinking cunts!"

Big Head gave a start at his coarse language, but suddenly burst out laughing. The pair of them then laughed loudly until tears came to their eyes.

You must both be careful! If someone reports your discussion, it will be enough to get the pair of you executed. Terror lies hidden in everyone's hearts, but people don't dare articulate it, can't bring it into the open.

When it was dark, he first went into the courtyard to put out the rubbish, a bucketful of chicken bones and coal cinders from the stove. When he saw that the neighbors all had their doors shut, Big Head quickly got on his bicycle and left. Big Head was living in a collective dormitory and was still being investigated. His father had kept an eye on him, but when the army moved in to implement and supervise the purification of class ranks, Big Head's carelessness while chatting in the dormitory meant that one sentence became a heinous crime: he was sent to be reformed through labor, to herd cattle for eight years on a farm.

The fear generated by that conversation caused them to avoid one another. They didn't dare make any further contact, and it was only fourteen years later that they met again. Big Head's father was dead, and an uncle in America had helped him to liaise with a university for further study. When Big Head had his passport and American visa, he came to say good-bye and mentioned that evening when, happy with alcohol, ears burning, they cracked the mystery of Old Mao's unleashing of the Cultural Revolution.

Big Head said, "If what you and I said that day had been exposed, I wouldn't have been herding cattle and would be somewhere else!" He also added that if he could get a teaching position in a university in America, he would probably never return.

That night, fourteen years earlier, after Big Head left, he opened wide the door to his room to let out the smell of alcohol. Afterward, he locked the door, allowed himself to calm down from the excitement and fear, and stretched out on the bed to look at the black cracks in the ceiling. It was as if he had pried open an ants' nest, and inside was a pitch-black, wriggling chaos. The ceiling could collapse on him any time, and this made him feel numb all over.