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.