He stopped at the refreshment stall for a coffee. Everyone said, “Oh, so you’re back at last, are you?” But he just shook his head.
Before he left he made one last round of the huge factory where ‘he’d spent part of his life. Everywhere voices called out, “Back again, engineer?” But he either shook his head or merely smiled. Pain at having to leave this place was like a growing weight inside him. The wall newspapers, to which until now he’d paid little attention, the graphs recording socialist endeavour, the photographs of outstanding workers., even the mere announcements dotted about the noticeboards — “Union meeting tomorrow at 4 o’clock,” “Choir practice today” — all seemed different now.
As he prowled around he could feel people looking at him. “There are all sorts of stories being told about you,” said an electrical engineer who kept him company for a while. “You’re a real legend! More than a legend! There’s talk of demonstrations against you in Tienanmen Square, protests at the U.N., and I don’t know what! Are people letting their imagination rue away with them, or can it all be true?”
Victor smiled as he listened. As a matter of fact, the business of the X-ray wasn’t all that different from such fabrications. As he passed through the workshops the female workers on either side gazed at him admiringly. Every so often he would remember Linda’s embrace, and he would feel as if he were weightless, borne along on some invisible wave. Then ordinary consciousness returned, and he could feel the ground under his feet again.
At last he came to the place where he had stood on the Chinaman’s foot. He shook-his head as if to drive away the idea of those cloth shoes, more like slippers, so symbolic of the Chinaman’s stealthy approach. The softness of those shoes contrasted with the cynicism which had made their wearer call for a stoppage ie two of the workshops and almost bring the whole factory to a standstill. For a moment Victor had felt as if all the hypocrisy in the world were concentrated in that pair of cloth slippers. Moved not only by anger but also by the desire to tear away the mask of deceit, he’d gone up to the man and trodden on his foot as if by accident.
“Yes, a real legend — you’re the hero of the hour,” the other engineer went on. “Do you know what Aunt Nasta says? She says it’s a shame to lose a good man just because of one of those short-assed Chinks!”
He guffawed as he spoke, but Victor found it hard to join in.
An hour later he left the factory and walked towards the bus stop, gazing blankly in front of him and still deep in thought. He looked back one last time at the chimneys, belching black smoke. He’d recently dreamed, of seeing others like them, only they were all upside down. Perhaps, with his transfer, his life would get back on the right lines. As the proverb said, every cloud has a silver lining. He went on musing as he looked back at the chimneys, thinking of the engineer’s jokes but still not finding them funny. The way the smoke rose into the sky struck him as somehow alien to and supremely scornful of the human race. Not for nothing did interpreters of dreams regard smoke as a bad omen.
5
HIGH ABOVE THE SURFACE of the earth, faint traces of life sped steadily across the sky. In the deepening chill of autumn, spy satellites transmitted from one to another a list of the members of the Politbureau of the Chinese Communist Party, arranged in the same order as for the committee appointed recently to organize a state funeral. There was only one slight change from the order as it had been three weeks earlier: the member who wore a towel round his head, the One in the Turban, as sinologists now called him among themselves, had risen from thirty-fourth to thirty-third, thus changing places with his colleague with the two barrels. Insignificant as the change might seem, the experts who were no doubt already rushing to interpret the signs would scrutinize it for the slightest indication that the balance was swinging, even temporarily, in favour of one faction rather than the other. Unfortunately, despite their untiring efforts, the experts had never been able to make out which school either of the two members belonged to. A novice might have thought their rivalry reiected a preference for developing the textile industry on the one hand and the food industry on the other (the towel and the chick-peas), and that the change In the list meant that the first had been given priority over the second. But the explanation was probably to do with something more profound, such as the Chinese economy as a whole; or, more important still, some change in foreign policy or in the state of the class struggle at home. Meanwhile other experts pored with equal zeal over Ming dynasty encyclopaedias and learned treatises on poetic symbolism in order to puzzle out what the towel and the chick-peas might stand for in themselves, and what they might mean when placed in a dialectical relationship.
The spy satellites made no mention of other events. But just before dawn, one of them transmitted the following: “As far as is known, no reply has yet been sent to the Albanians’ letter, This information is derived from a reliable source. It may be that no such letter exists.” In the morning the satellite received a message in reply: “There certainly was a letter from the Albanians. Do everything possible to get hold of the answer.” But there hadn’t been any answer. Though the attaché-case belonging to Gjergj Dibra, now on a Eight from Peking via Karachi to Paris, did contain some important papers, these didn’t include any reply to the letter. It was now eleven in the morning. The heavy aircraft was flying over the plains of southern China, above thin clouds touched by the autumn sun. Every now and thee the sound of the engines reached the ground. “Couldn’t they have re-routed the plane a bit?” grumbled Mao Zedong, a few thousand metres below.
He was quite alone in the midst of the vast plain (his guards were crawling on all fours through the bushes, so as not to be seen). The horizon shimmered in a reddish haze. Mao looked up, trying to see the plane. He was worried not only about his own peace and quiet, but above all about security. These plains grew marihuana, and foreign secret services had apparently got wind of it: the international airlines all seemed to be trying to fly over the area, at low altitudes whenever possible because of what they alleged were difficult atmospheric conditions. But his own idiotic foreign minister and home secretary didn’t understand about this, and spent all their time trying to keep atomic secrets, as if the drugs being grown all over the plains were of less importance. They found it quite natural to concentrate all their attention on the sophisticated sciences of electronics and nuclear technology, ignoring fields and crops, the work of mere peasants. Mao let out a growl, in the access of blind rage that gradually swept over him whenever he thought anyone was daring to underestimate or even despise any work to do with the country. He always regarded such indifference or disdain as directed against his own peasant background, and his elderly brain, instead of dismissing it as a matter of taste or principle, saw it as the sign of a desire to take his place.
Let them guard their little aristocratic secrets. He had more faith in the fields of Indian hemp than in all the bags of tricks produced by electronics, atomic power, and all the other confounded sciences.
This was the fourth day that he’d walked in the fields, and he’d rarely felt as he did now. He’d been right to come here straight from his cave. His eyes half-closed against the light, he gazed over the quivering ruddy surface of the plain.
The red ceremonial flags, the posters, the banners…The anthem, “The East is red”…All the little red books brandished by millions of people…“Do you think I take all these red whatsits seriously?” He laughed to himself at the thought of this question, then suddenly stopped and tried to remember where he’d asked it and of whom; but he couldn’t. “Do you think I take all this seriously?” Oh, now it was coming back to him. It was one of the questions he asked himself in imaginary conversations with important people — politicians, kings, presidents, his own colleagues, his enemies. Deep inside himself he’d accumulated heaps of such questions, all waiting to emerge one day. Or perhaps they’d given up hope of ever doing so; perhaps they were quite dead, and lay there within him only in the form of corpses.