He refused to smash the old order but he was not a reactionary. If someone wanted a revolution, then let them go ahead, so long as it was not a revolution that made life impossible for him. To sum up, he could not be a fighter. He preferred to be away from revolution and rebellion, in a place where he could eke out a living and look on from a distance.
In fact, he had no enemies. It was the Party that was intent on making an enemy of him, and he couldn't do anything about it. The Party gave him no choice and was intent on making him conform to a pattern, and his failure to conform meant that he was the enemy of the Party. Moreover, in order to lead, the Party needed to make a target of people like him to arouse the will and spirit of the people, to whip up the masses into displays of righteous indignation. So he was made an enemy of the people. But he had no quarrel with the people, he only wanted to be able to live his own insignificant life without having to depend for his livelihood on being used as a practice target.
He was this sort of a loner, and had always wanted to be like this. It may now be said that he had no colleagues, no one above or below him, no leader, no employer; he led and hired himself, and everything he did he did cheerfully.
But he was not a misanthrope. He continued to eat at the hearth of human society and was fond of the food of his ancestral land, a taste he had acquired as a child because of his mother's wonderful cooking. Naturally, he also liked Western food, French haute cuisine, of course, and also Italian pasta, supposedly brought by Marco Polo from the Tang Empire, but sprinkled with Parmesan cheese that didn't exist in China. Japanese raw fish laced with hot raw mustard was excellent, and so was Russian caviar, especially the black variety. Also, if Korean barbecued beef and kimchi were served with Indian rhoti, it was a perfect dish. Kentucky fried chicken was the only thing he couldn't eat; for him it was bland and tasteless. He was fussy about food because he had gone through some good times in his childhood.
And he was also fond of women. As a youth, he had sneaked a look at his mother's youthful body while she was having a bath. From then on, he deeply appreciated beautiful women. In those times, when he was without a woman, he would write about them, and what he wrote contained a lot of sex; in this respect, he was not a virtuous gentleman. Furthermore, he had great admiration for Tang Yin and Casanova, but he was never as lucky, so all he could do was to consign his sexual fantasies to his writings.
This is the report you have written for him to replace his file in China, which, no doubt, still exists, but which he will never see.
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!"