Discovering he'd been tricked, he might have grabbed hold of her hair-perhaps to hit her, or just to shout at her, to express his anger. Instead, he took her ravishingly pretty face in his hands and kissed it. `I didn't mean it when I called you a bitch) ust then.'
She shook her head at him, her face pink with gratitude. Outside, after some light drizzle, the sun was coming back out into an almost clear sky, filling the room with the mellow, golden light of approaching autumn. She stood up and sat, straight backed, on the bed once more. A modest glint of triumph lit up her face, her beatific smile sharpened by a kind of knowing, feminine mischief.
A deep quiet fell over the room, as if the physical world around them had dissolved into nothingness. The sweat steamed off their bodies, adding a salty tang to the room's musty air.
They gazed at each other, both their faces suddenly wet with tears. It was as if this unhinged passion had, somewhere deep inside their numbed psyches, awoken a capacity for love of which neither had known they were capable; a love that both knew could only end in painful separation. Neither dared say or do anything, for fear it would bring their fragile, unsustainable liaison instantly to an end. Their tears pattered onto the ground, like raindrops falling from eaves. He took a step forward and, kneeling before her, laid his head on her lap like a child looking for comfort. As she distractedly ran a finger through his short hair, her tears fell onto his face, mingling with his own before running down her legs. She tilted his face up toward her and kissed him, as a prelude to speaking.
`Would you like to marry me?'
`Yes.'
`I'd like to marry you, too, but it's impossible.'
His eyes asked why.
'Have you forgotten who my husband is?'
She spoke mildly, without emphasis; as if talking about some trivial object she had absentmindedly lost. But to him her words sounded like a warning. His tears stopped, cut off at the source. At the same time the gentle sorrow in her expression stiffened into awkward reserve, as if Wu Dawang were a passing stranger she'd mistaken for a friend.
'So you don't want to leave the Commander?' he said.
'Of course I do. But it's not going to happen.'
'Why not?'
`Because he's the Division Commander.'
'Didn't his last wife divorce him?'
'More fool her.'
'So you don't want to leave him?' he repeated.
'Look, I'm not going to ask him for a divorce. I'm just happy thatyou want to marry me; that's enough for me. And I'll keep my promise: I'll do whatever it takes to getyouyour promotion and haveyour family moved to the city. Whatever you want, I'll make sure you get it.'
Though their eyes were now dry, neither had noticed when the other had stopped crying; when the great tide of love had begun to ebb. Reality had conquered fantasy. Wu Dawang was neither particularly surprised by or inclined to doubt Liu Lian's resolve — from the outset, he'd known how the thing would turn out. But for a brief instant he'd allowed a delusion to overwhelm his common sense. Neither suspected the other of shedding insincere tears; both knew that, sooner or later, hard truth would prevail over daydreams.
None the less, Wu Dawang became almost petulant in his desperation to retrieve that fleeting, shared intensity of feeling from the clutches of Liu Lian's cool pragmatism. Retreating a few steps, he sat down on the chair by the table.
`I don't care whetheryou divorce the Commander, fix me a promotion or get my family moved to the city. Whatever happens, I'll never forget you.'
This declaration didn't have the impact he'd anticipated. After a pause, Liu Lian merely smiled. `Flatterer.'
Wu Dawang's face crumpled anxiously. `Don't you believe me?'
'Of course. Like I believe Chairman Mao's really going to live for 10,000 years,' she teased.
He cast about for a way of proving his devotion. Finally, his eyes fell on the dust of the statue that he'd first smashed to pieces, then crushed to powder underfoot. `Ifyou don't believe me,' he said, `you can tell Security what I did to that statue. I'll either be shot or spend the rest of my life in prison.I
He kicked again at the powder dusted over the floor, his face sweating with agitation. When he looked back up, she was still contemplating him — but more seriously than before.
`Do you really think I'm going to forget you?'
'You're the Division Commander's wife, you can forget whoeveryou like. All I know is I'll never forget you.'
'D'you want me to swear it?'
'Hot air.'
Glancing across at the poster of Chairman Mao stuck above the table, she walked over, ripped it off the wall, screwed it up and tore it into pieces. She then threw them onto the floor and stamped on them.
'You can report me, too. Once we were both Partyfaithful. Now we're both counterrevolutionaries. But you destroyed an image of Chairman Mao by accident, while I did it deliberately. Which makes me more counterrevolutionary. Believe me now?'
For a moment he paled with shock at what she'd done. Then he walked over to the basin, pulled a quotation off the wall behind it and, like her, screwed it up and stamped on it.
`I'm more counterrevolutionary than you. I deserve two firing squads.'
Scanning the room, her eyes fixed on a red book lying on the corner of the writing table: The Selected LY7orkd of Mao Zedoaq. She grabbed up the bible of Revolution, pulled off its jacket and tossed it to the ground, then tore through its pages, ripping and screwing them up until finally she reached the title page with its portrait of Chairman Mao, which she made into a ball and stamped on.
`Now who's the bigger counterrevolutionary?'
Without replying, he strode out of the room and over to the stairwell. There, he threw onto the floor the framed double portrait of Lin Biao and Chairman Mao entitled The Great Helinsinwi Guided Ud Across the Sead. Having smashed the glass, he gouged out the two men's eyes into four dark, scowling holes. He then straightened up and looked over at her. `You tell me.'
She walked into the Division Commander's mapfilled conference room and staggered back out carrying an almost life-sized, gold-plated bust of Chairman Mao. After laying the statue down in front of Wu Dawang she chiselled off its nose with a neat little hammer. `How about that, then?'
From the ground floor, he brought up a Chairman Mao badge and a nail, then hammered the latter through the nose of the former. His work done, he stared defiantly at her.
She, too, went downstairs. Finding a medicine cabinet with the Chairman's face printed on it, she hammered two large nails through its eyes.
Over a quotation stamped on to a washbowl'Fight Selfishness, Criticize Revisionism'-he scribbled `Please Yourself'.
She found two enamel army mugs, both emblazoned with Mao quotations and portraits. After smearing the text and pictures with ink, she threw both cups into the large ceramic basin she used as a bidet.
They searched out every single item-every picture, bowl, vessel, cabinet or chair- that had any link to Mao Zedong and the Great Men of the Revolution, and destroyed or defaced them all. After making sure the sitting room had been stripped bare of its revolutionary memorabilia, Liu Lian ran into the kitchen and smashed every rice bowl decorated with images of Mao.
Wu Dawang broke a brand-new aluminium pot covered in the Chairman's quotations.
When the cupboards refused to yield up any more holy objects for desecration, she proceeded into the dining room and seized the talismanic Serve the People! sign that had borne near-constant witness to their affair. However, as she lifted it up to smash it, he strode over, wrested it from her and placed it carefully back on the table.
What are you doing?' she asked.
`I want to keep it.'
What for?'
`I just do.'
`First you have to admit that I am the greatest counterrevolutionary the world has ever known, a poisonous viper hidden in the breast of the Party and a devastating time bomb ticking away deep in the ranks of the Revolution. And finally, that I love you a hundred times more than you love me.'
Do I have to?'
`I'll smash it if you don't.'
`All right, I admit it.'
`Say it three times.'
Three times he admitted she was the greatest counterrevolutionary the world has ever known, a poisonous viper hidden in the breast of the Party and a devastating time bomb ticking away deep in the ranks of the Revolution. He then went on to say, again three times, that her love for him exceeded his for her a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand times.
They gazed at each other, tears shining in their eyes.
As dusk cast its hazy, grubby light through the downstairs, the evening breeze brought a refreshing coolness to the house. While they stood listening to the music of the birds returning to their nests, surveying their surroundings, there was an almost mystical quality to the quiet that had descended after their riotous frenzy of destruction.
Just as the silence between them was beginning to seem as interminable as The Collected LY7orkd of Mao Zedonzg, she wiped away her tears with her hand. `I'm hungry,' she said.
He, too, wiped away his tears. `Then I'll cook you something.'
`I'm thirsty.'
`Then I'll get you some water.'
`I'm cold.'
`Are you going to get dressed?'
`I'd rather die.'
So what's to be done?'
She picked up the Serve the People! sign from the table.
He walked over and swept her up in his arms, as one would an exhausted child, then climbed slowly upstairs to the bedroom. The sound of his footsteps on the stairs, crunching the debris of their afternoon's work, echoed through the house like a wooden mallet striking a great empty drum.