Rouge was worried about my declining health and the fact that I was not allowed to see a doctor. She prayed with me for the first time in many years. She told me she wanted to learn more about God, but I feared that she had been brainwashed too thoroughly and one day might turn on me. I felt the best way to influence her was through my own example.
Early one morning, I was dragged from my cell. I was told that the Red Guard had taken over the prisons. I was to be beaten to death unless I denounced Pearl Buck.
Thin, rancid rice porridge was all I was fed and there was never enough. Hunger gnawed at my insides. There was no electricity or water. My cell was a dark concrete box without windows. I lost all sense of time. I knew many people had been driven mad that way.
To preserve my sanity, I began singing Christian songs to myself. When I was ordered to stop singing by the prison guards, I changed my methods. I practiced finger calligraphy, recalling sentences from the Bible. Since there was no water available, I wet my index finger in the urine bucket and wrote the words on the concrete surface of the floor as if it were rice paper. I moved from left to right. By the time I reached the lower corner, the top corner was dry and ready for me to write on again.
Time passed without measurement. There was no mirror, so I didn’t know how I looked. One day I noticed strands of my own hair on the floor and realized that my hair had turned white.
Eventually, a prison guard came and led me to another room, where there was a table, chair, and sink. I was given a comb and a toothbrush and was told to make myself presentable.
“You have an assignment,” the guard told me. I was to meet a high-ranking party official.
After I had cleaned up, two men in soldiers’ uniforms escorted me to a car. One of them tied a cloth blindfold over my eyes.
It was a long ride over bumpy roads.
When the blindfold was removed from my eyes, I discovered that we had arrived in front of a military complex. We passed through a narrow entrance. I smelled food cooking. The soldiers led me to a large room where there was a stained carpet, red sofas, and deep-green curtains. There was a basket of bananas on the table.
“Help yourself,” a female attendant said in perfect Mandarin.
I would not have touched anything if I hadn’t been dying of hunger. Like a monkey, I grabbed a banana. Quickly peeling off the skin, I stuffed the banana into my mouth. I was so absorbed in chewing that I didn’t pay attention to anything else. When I reached out for another banana, I noticed a person sitting on the sofa. At first I thought it was a man because she was dressed in a man’s army uniform. She was wearing the green cap with a red star in the front.
“Take your time,” she said.
I froze. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Old friend, have you already forgotten me?” She smiled.
I stared, recognizing the long, bony fingers. “Madame Mao, is that you?”
“Yes, it’s been a long time.” She smiled. “See, I didn’t forget you.”
She offered to shake my hand.
I refused, explaining apologetically that my fingers smelled of urine.
Madame Mao withdrew her hand. “The Chairman sends his greetings. As you can imagine, he’s been very busy. I’d like to work with you toward a solution that will please him.”
“How could I possibly be useful to you?” I said.
“Comrade Willow Yee, I am offering you a great opportunity. You can change your life by proving your loyalty to the Chairman.”
It was hard to figure out the meaning of her words. She looked changed since the first time I had met her in Yenan. Still imposing, the Madame Mao in front of me today had dyed her hair ink black. Her eyes said, “I am powerful.” She kept herself in shape physically, but she was no longer a beauty. Although her eyebrows were still as thin as a shrimp’s feelers, the dark-framed glasses took away her femininity.
“I see that you are hungry,” she said, showing her bright white teeth. “Would you like to start lunch?”
Before I could answer, she clapped her hands.
A door on the far side of the room opened.
“A private banquet has been waiting for you,” Madame Mao said cheerfully, as if we were at a party.
The servants came and lined themselves up against the wall.
Stretching out her arms, Madame Mao took up my hands. “Let’s have a heart-to-heart chat, just the two of us.”
“We are fighting a cultural war with the Western countries led by America,” Madame Mao said dramatically. Her thin lips quivered. She reached out and grabbed my hands again and squeezed them. “We will defeat the American cultural imperialists. We will chase them to the end of the universe. They will have no time to catch their breath!” She shivered as if she was cold.
“Excuse me…” I didn’t know what to say.
She put a hand up in a let-me-finish gesture and continued. “When we succeed, we will take over the Capitalists’ propaganda machine. We will have our voice heard and views printed in the newspapers of the world. Imagine-the New York Times, the London Times. It will be the victory of the proletarians of the world! The Chairman will be so proud of your efforts!”
“I am not quite following you, madame…”
“You eat, eat.” Madame Mao placed a dish of roast duck in front of me.
“I’d like to know my assignment if I may,” I requested.
“Relax, dear comrade.” Madame Mao smiled gleefully. “Believe me, I would not assign you a task that you would be incapable of accomplishing.”
“What is it exactly, then?”
“The assignment is easy: Write two articles. One will be titled ‘The Good Earth Is a Poisonous Plant’ and the other ‘Exploitation: Pearl Buck’s Forty Years of Evildoings in China.’ The subtitle will be ‘Crime Exposed by a Childhood Friend.’”
Although I had no idea what exactly was going on, I sensed that Pearl had done something that had offended Madame Mao personally, over and above her refusal to endorse Mao’s policies for China. Many years later, I would learn that Madame Mao had dreamed of having Pearl Buck write her biography. With The Good Earth being made into a Hollywood movie, Madame Mao had imagined that she could be the next subject for the Nobel Prize-winning novelist. With characteristic confidence, Madame Mao had her agents approach Pearl Buck. The book’s title would be The Red Queen and the character of Madame Mao would have the style and flavor of Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind.
Pearl’s rejection had come quickly. Madame Mao had been in the middle of watching Gone with the Wind for the fourteenth time. She had imagined Vivien Leigh playing her.
Seeds of revenge had sprouted. Madame Mao vowed destruction.
“Besides attacking Chairman Mao through her writings, Pearl Buck has been discovered helping Chinese dissidents escape to America,” Madame Mao told me.
I asked if I could just “digest” her words first.
“I am not asking whether or not you’re willing to do it,” Madame Mao said, raising her chin toward the ceiling. “I am asking for the date you will deliver the weapon.”
I was reunited with my husband and daughter. We were provided with a room in the complex. My punishment if I did not cooperate had been spelled out. Saying no to Madame Mao meant saying yes to the continuing prison sentence and perhaps death. My age had never bothered me before but it did now. My body was tired and sick. I was over seventy and the idea of dying in a cold cell terrified me.
“You should not consider this an act of betrayal,” Dick tried to convince me. “You won’t hurt Pearl if you denounce her. She will understand. She is not in China. It is very likely that you two will never see each other again. Pearl won’t even know that you wrote the criticism.”