‘You are my son,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘You are my only son. Do you know why?’
‘No, Mother.’
‘Because I do not want some fat boys and girls running around the house. I do not wish to perpetuate your father’s family name by helping to produce a dynasty. I took a vow to have only one child and I made your father take the vow too. Do you know why?’
‘No, Mother.’
‘To distance ourselves from the reactionary bourgeoisie. To make sure our only child developed intellectually, physically and, most important, morally. To help you become a good labourer with socialist awareness and discipline.’
Her lips curved upwards as if she was smiling but she started to weep. She turned to the mirror and looked at herself. She stretched her big lips and lifted them on one side to show the broken teeth that jutted out of her mouth. The boy realized that she was trying to make herself ugly and that he had never before seen her tears. He became frightened.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll be a good labourer.’
‘Look at me,’ said his mother, her cheeks blotched. ‘I should have concentrated my vigour on speeding up our country’s modernization. Instead, I’m a class dissident. I want to go to university.’
*
She woke at an odd hour, having slept in snatches. She was no longer able to sleep uninterruptedly through the night. Anxiety would pull her awake and keep her up, her eyes wide and a pulse thudding in her ears. She woke and lay still, listening to the noises of the night and her husband’s steady breathing in his bed near the window. She heard her son in the next room, talking in his sleep. What was he saying? The words were too muffled to make out. She pinched her fingers and thought about the White Lotus Society, the group of rebels and mystics whose descendants became the heroic patriots of the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists. The Fists won fame for taking up arms against the foreign conspirators who tried to partition China, but for her their significance was much greater. She revered them for the simple fact that they continued the great work of the White Lotus, a secret society led by the peasant who overthrew the Mughal armies, declared himself Emperor and founded a dynasty. The dynasty, like all dynasties, eventually became decadent and corrupt, but not so the White Lotus, which, according to her, was the single pivot on which Chinese history turned; it was the fount from which all greatness ensued. She repeated to herself the alternative names the White Lotus had used to disguise itself in the years in which it was forced to go underground. She said the names very softly, because to say them aloud was to invite catastrophe. White Clouds, she said, and waited. She said, White Fans, and waited. Then, because this was the most dreaded one of all, she mouthed silently the name, White Eyebrows. She sat up and put her feet on the floor and listened. She listened and walked through the house in the dark. It was a bright night and snow was falling. Moonlight dropped straight onto the kitchen floor with a curious sound, a sound it took her a moment to recognize, and then she felt the hair rise on her arms. It was the sound of money. She placed her fingernails against her neck and pressed until she felt the skin break. She closed her eyes and focused her thoughts on the pain, but it wasn’t sharp enough. She found her nail file with the flat steel hook. She put the hook into her mouth, wedged it between her gums and teeth and twisted until she tasted copper. Then she went into the front room where her son slept. He lay on his side with his hands propped under his face. He’d placed his sleeping mat against the front door as if to guard the house against intruders. She tiptoed up to him until she was close enough to hear what he said. It was a prophecy meant only for her ears. He said, ‘Nothing.’
*
Lee and his father didn’t give much thought to his mother’s new regard for education. She’d wanted to take driving lessons, though there was little chance the family would ever own a car. She’d attended a class in martial arts but didn’t return after the first lesson because she was unused to physical exercise. She’d wanted to be a structural engineer, because, she said, bridges were the key to the future. But nothing had come of these desires. This time it was different. She actually enrolled in the night college, though she hadn’t passed the requisite exams and could not officially register for classes. She read aloud from textbooks of modern history, her voice shrill, as if she was arguing with someone, an old argument that had only gotten worse with the passage of time. As the day for the exams approached she became increasingly nervous. She slept very little and she forgot to eat. One night his father brought home a carp that someone had presented him and he made a stew with shallots, peeled ginger, some cloves of crushed garlic and half a spoon of sesame oil. His mother stayed in her room, not emerging even though delicious smells were wafting through the house. His father put some of the fish stew in a bowl and served it to her with a side dish of rice and barbecue pork. Her wail was loud enough to wake the neighbours. You’re trying to destroy me, she said. You want to corrupt me with food. You want me to die, die. How many times have I said it’s wrong to eat so much pork when two hundred and fifty grams is the quota per person per month? You are killing me. She went into the other room and shut the door. Lee heard the sound of furniture being moved and something falling to the floor. They went outside and looked in through the window. Lee’s mother was levitating. She wanted to rise to heaven but her progress was impeded by something caught in her throat. Her face had turned dark and her glasses were missing. Where were her glasses? He looked around and saw them on the floor, broken in three pieces, though the bandage was still intact. His father smashed the window and held her by the legs while Lee untied her. The rope left a gouge, a deep red furrow that she carried for the rest of her life.
Chapter Three ‘Opium-smoking bandit’
Around this time, some writers were summoned to the communist headquarters to attend a series of talks by Mao Tse-tung. On the fourth day, in the session titled ‘Talks on Art and Literature’, Mao laid down a number of guidelines for writers. They must seek neither fame nor literary merit, he said, for these were avenues of self-gratification. Fame served no purpose other than to puff up the writer’s ego, which was already inflated by the self-absorbed nature of his or her work. He did not make this observation lightly, said Mao, for he too was a writer, and a reader, and this fact gave him a vantage point from which to view the literary world’s numerous pretensions. Very few writers were willing to face the truth, that their work was no more important than a peasant’s. In fact, without the peasant the nation would plunge into a crisis. Without writers, the nation would most likely prosper. Yet writers were prone to endless egotism, which was the worst of the bourgeois mannerisms that continued to infect China. Bourgeois ideas manifested themselves in several ways, said Mao, some insidious, some obvious, but all marked by the self-indulgence known as individualism. Only a process of continuous purification would cleanse society of the menace. As for literary merit, it was as dangerous a preoccupation as seeking out fame since such merit served only to perpetuate the writer’s posthumous reputation. What was the use of such a reputation? How did it serve society? The proper use for literature, said Mao, was in the service of the political cause. Writers who did not understand this had no place in the new China.