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.
28
It was winter again. The stove door was shut, and he was sitting in bed, propped up against the headboard. The only light came from the table lamp, and the metal shade clamped to the bulb cut down the light that illuminated the floral bedcover and left the upper part of his body in darkness as he gazed at the circle of light on the bedcover. On the gigantic chessboard without borders, winning or losing was not decided by the chess pieces but by the chess players in the dark manipulating them. So, if a chess piece wanted to have its own way and stupidly refused to let itself be taken, surely it was crazy? You are less than insignificant, nothing but an ant that can be squashed underfoot any time, any place. But you can't leave this ants' nest, and can only mingle with the swarms of ants. Whether it was a matter of philosophical impoverishment or impoverished philosophy, from Marx down to those revolutionary sages, who could have foreseen the calamities and spiritual impoverishment this Cultural Revolution would bring?
There was a tapping on his window. At first, he thought it was the wind, but the glass was pasted with paper on the inside, and the curtains were drawn. Again, there were two soft taps.
"Who is it?" he sat up and asked. There was no response, so he got out of bed and walked barefoot to the window.
"It's me." A woman's voice came from outside, softly.
He could not make out who it was, but he unlatched the door and opened it a crack. In a gust of cold wind, Xiao Xiao pushed open the door and came in. He was surprised by this middle-school student coming so late at night and, as he was only in his underpants, quickly got back into bed and left it to the girl to close the door. She had almost got the door to close, when it blew open again and the chilly wind howled as it poured into the room. Xiao Xiao put her back against the door to stop it from blowing open.
"Latch it." He said this without thinking, but when he saw the girl hesitate before turning and gently pushing in the metal latch, his heart thumped. The girl unraveled the long woolen scarf wrapped tightly around her head to reveal her pale but refined features. Her head was bowed, and she seemed to be catching her breath.