Angered that her family had underestimated her future prospects, she said, ‘Who is my mate? You wouldn’t understand even if I told you. My mate is the performing stage! You may think I’m callous, but if I don’t make a break with you, you will control my future, and while you may not care about the future, I do!’
After leaving the Horsebridge butcher’s shop, Mother’s travels took her to many places. She applied for membership of the Beijing Opera Troupe, the Armoured Corps Cultural Troupe, a Shaoxing Opera Troupe, as well as district Beijing Opera troupes. She even applied for an acrobatic troupe. But her hopes were dashed each time — in like a tiger’s head, out like a snake’s tail, as the saying goes — either because they thought her legs were stumpy or that her family background presented problems. After being refused entry into the traditional cultural troupes, she’d used up all her travel money and had become discouraged. So she lowered her expectations, setting her sights instead on the popular stage, to perform for the masses. By taking a step back, she opened up new vistas and quickly found work at the Harvest Nitrate Fertilizer Factory, which was home to the celebrated Golden Sparrow River Region Cultural Propaganda Troupe. And there she received the recognition she deserved; at last her beauty had caught someone’s attention. During the day, workers at the factory packaged fertilizer, but after hours they rehearsed for cultural performances. My mother was either the lead singer or lead dancer in the amateur troupe. When she walked out of the factory door at the end of her shift, her blue uniform reeked of ammonia, but the captivating world of the stage lived beneath her collar.
One day, my father, who worked as a woodsman at the time, went to the factory to buy fertilizer and laid eyes on my mother for the first time. He was surprised to see a bright-red silk jacket under her work clothes, her costume for the red silk dance. He did not know what to think about her costume or how to sum up her singular charm. Their second meeting, which was arranged by a go-between, took place by the fertilizer drainage ditch; he watched as she emerged from the factory’s rear door, lithe and graceful, again with a costume under her work clothes, this one a familiar light-green dress, which, he recalled, would be worn in the tea-picker’s skit. This time he was prepared. He stirred feelings in her with the first thing he ever said to her: ‘Comrade Qiao,’ he said, ‘your body emanates the spirit of revolutionary romanticism.’
While one could say that my parents fell in love, it would be more accurate to say that they discovered one another at the same moment. My father discovered her beauty and talent; she discovered his bloodline and future prospects. He was half a head shorter than she, which even then made their marriage a mismatch, though there were reasons for them to come together. But then in September, my father’s secrets were exposed. Someone, it’s not clear who, revealed to Mother that the first thing he habitually said in furtherance of his womanizing was ‘Comrade So-and-So, your body emanates the spirit of revolutionary romanticism.’
My mother’s lungs felt as if they were about to explode — that was one of her favourite expressions. She once described for me the powerful reflex anger caused in her lungs: ‘I have trouble breathing,’ she said, ‘my lungs pound against my chest, and I’m sure that I lose part of them every time that happens.’ Anger and hurt led her to a new discovery about Father, that he was what is known as ‘cow dung disguised as a flower garden to trick the flowers’. She was one of those flowers, now growing in a pile of cow dung, and the reasons for them to have come together suddenly no longer existed, while reasons for them to part mounted. Mother began folding her clean autumn clothes and packing them away in a camphor chest, storing her treasured stage costumes in a suitcase that itself was a treasure, a relic from her life on the stage. A red seal on top of the suitcase said:
AWARDED TO THE POPULAR
ENTERTAINMENT ACTIVISTS
OF THE HARVEST NITROGEN FERTILIZER
FACTORY
Towards the end, our family life became chaotic and stifling. Mother divided the household chores into three categories. One was reserved for her, and consisted mainly of preparing lunch and dinner for me and for herself. Another was reserved for me, and consisted mainly of sweeping and dusting and taking out the rubbish. The final category was the most arduous: making breakfast for all three of us, cleaning the toilet twice a day, and taking care of all aspects of Father’s daily life: food, clothing and whatever else he needed. Those were his duties. Mother said she’d lost her appetite for washing his socks and underwear, and was adamant about not cooking for him. She said she’d suffered so much humiliation she could barely keep from poisoning his food.
My mother followed methods used by organs of the dictatorship in punishing criminals, subjecting Father to the ultimate settling of accounts. She overlooked nothing, from his labour-reform activities in the yard to special examinations in the bedroom. His last days at home were little more than house arrest, with Mother as his inquisitor, and everything centred on problems of lifestyle. Just that, his lifestyle, which of course involved only the area below the waist, not something people liked to talk about. Father, who was easily embarrassed, could not endure the questioning, so he took to keeping out of sight. The minute Mother came home from work, he hid in the toilet and stayed there as long as he could.
Whenever I saw Mother take a pen and her worker’s notebook out of a drawer, I knew the interrogation was about to begin. ‘Go on, call your father out here.’ She wanted me to bang on the toilet door, and if I refused, she did it herself with a broom handle. Father would emerge and pass under the broom, bent at the waist, heading for the yard. But he’d barely make it to the front door before hearing Mother’s sarcastic laugh. He’d stop, turn, and come face to face with her broom, pointing at him. ‘Go ahead,’ she’d say sternly. ‘Open the door and go outside, where a crowd of people is waiting to see Ku Wenxuan embarrass himself. Go out there and give them a show. I’m betting you don’t have the guts!’
He didn’t. After taking a turn around the yard, he’d obediently come back inside and sit opposite her, where he’d beat about the bush instead of answering her questions, or else admit minor transgressions but do whatever he could to avoid the more serious ones. To Mother, this smacked of passive resistance. They never argued in front of me and lowered the curtain to keep me from peeking in at the window, but on one occasion I heard Mother’s hysterical shouts tear through the window: ‘Ku Wenxuan, leniency to those who confess their crimes and severity to those who refuse!’ The shouts emanated from a bedroom confrontation. It sounded comical to me, but scary as well.
The truth is, the more they argued, the less I cared. On the contrary, the quieter and more peaceful they were, the more I worried. Caution piqued my curiosity. They might be able to deceive the neighbours, but not me. One night a deadly silence descended in their room, throwing me into a panic. I climbed the date tree and had an unobstructed view through the transom window. The lamp was lit, so I could see them both. Mother was sitting at her desk, notebook in hand, her cheeks wet with tears; my father was kneeling at her feet like a dog and had pulled down his trousers to show her his honoured fish-shaped birthmark. At it again! He’d brought his sickness home with him. I saw her curse him loudly, glaring at him with contempt and disgust. But he was relentless. His trousers were round his knees, and he was crawling along the floor, moving to wherever Mother turned her face. Sharp light glinted off his pale, bony backside in the darkened room. Then his shouts tore through the night.