‘Class Enemy Zhang!’ Long March yells. ‘You must come with us for interrogation and trial. Do you know why?’
You nod. You look older. Like the other Red Guards, the weeks of destroying the Four Olds have aged you. ‘Yes, Comrade Dare to Rebel, I do.’
Long March smirks. You have been her greatest rival for years, and your downfall is her triumphant rise. ‘Class Enemy Zhang Liya. You and your father were loyal running dogs of Liu Shaoqi and part of his conspiracy plot to overthrow Chairman Mao. Your crimes will be punished severely!’
You nod once more. ‘I understand.’
You don’t deny the accusations. You know the futility of denial. Your restraint and strength of character are remarkable. But the Red Guards will break you. And if they can’t break you with words, they will do it with knives.
‘We have also been informed of your loyalty to the Nationalist Party,’ Long March says. She nods at me, ‘Comrade Yi Moon, can you show us the evidence?’
For the first time since the Red Guards stormed your room, you look surprised. You stare at me in shock. I stare back coldly. I stamp out my guilt by remembering the humiliating terms of our ‘friendship’. How is this betrayal when there is no friendship to betray?
I go to your bed, reach for the screwdriver under the bedding and pry up the loose floorboard. I remove the cardboard box and turn your dead mother’s possessions out on to the floor. Long March pounces on the black and white photograph. She holds it up to her eyes and laughs in your mother’s lovely twenty-year-old face.
‘Who is this syphilis-ridden whore? Why does Zhang Liya have a picture of an ugly Nationalist-era prostitute under her floor?’
Your eyes are blank as Long March rips the photograph up and scatters the torn pieces over your chair.
‘Bring this loyal running dog of the Nationalists back to school!’ she commands. ‘Bring the poisonous weeds too!’
The Red Guards lunge for you. They force you into aeroplane position, wrenching your arms back and shoving your head forwards, and march you out. Other Red Guards start ransacking your room. Patriotic Hua holds up your mother’s scarlet and gold embroidered qipao. There is admiration in her eyes as she gazes at the shimmering silk. She strokes the fabric with her fingers, and the sensual pleasure of it softens her harsh face. Then she notices me watching her.
‘Who gave you permission to look at me, Stinking Rightist?’ Patriotic Hua snaps. ‘Take your beady little capitalist eyes off me!’
Long March, who is staring at the glamorous singer on the Hong Kong record sleeve, glances at me and says casually, ‘So you think you are one of the Red Guards now, Yi Moon? Don’t be so deluded. Go back to the black-category girls where you belong.’
They lock you up in Headteacher Yang’s former office. Red Guards go in and out, carrying water and food and the papers on which they have recorded your confession. Days and weeks go by, and I never once hear you scream or weep or beg. Your silence unnerves me more than the howls of the Cattle Shed. Your interrogator, Comrade Martial Spirit, prides herself on making class enemies scream. Screaming, she says, exorcizes the counter-revolutionary demons from the soul. Your silence will be seen as defiance. Your silence will provoke them to inflict even more pain.
Winter. The toilet block is unbearably cold and damp. I breathe out fog and shiver under the sinks, reading sheets of toilet paper. When the Red Guards came back to school, they ransacked the library, clearing the shelves of every book not authored by Chairman Mao. Most of the books were razed on a bonfire, but some were torn up for toilet paper, as ‘poisonous weeds’ are fit only for ‘wiping our backsides’. Though a sorry fate for literature, the sheets of toilet paper are my salvation during the bleak winter days, as I read Journey to the West, Dream of the Red Chamber and other banned volumes, escaping through the pages into illicit other worlds.
One day I am lost in the Book of Odes when footsteps approach the toilet block. Scared of being caught reading the Propaganda of the Capitalist Classes, I throw the toilet paper aside, grab a rag and pretend to be scrubbing the floor. Head down, on my knees, I scrub and wait for the unexpected visitor to go into a toilet stall. But the footsteps walk over to where I crouch instead. I look up.
‘Liya?’
You stand in the pallid winter light coming through the window. Your eyes are blackened and swollen, the lids welded shut. There are bald patches on your head and cuts on your legs seeping blood and pus. Your mother’s silk qipao hangs in shreds.
‘Liya, is that you?’
You breathe in shallow exhalations. ‘Who else. . would be wearing this dress?’
The high-ranking Party official’s daughter is gone. They have persecuted the high status out of you. They have proved you are just like the rest of us, with hair that rips out and blood that leaves the body through wounds. I wince at the cuts on your legs. They need to be disinfected and stitched up at the hospital, or they won’t heal. I take a deep, shaky breath.
‘Liya,’ I say, ‘my mother has a bottle of iodine at home. I can run home and bring it for you. .’
‘Don’t bring me iodine, Moon. . Or I will report you for collaborating with a class enemy.’
You smile bleakly. Are you joking? I can’t tell from your empty gaze. They have persecuted the life out of your eyes.
‘But your wounds are infected. .’
You say nothing to this, seeming not to care about your limbs rotting away.
‘How did you get out of Headteacher Yang’s office?’ I ask. ‘Have the Red Guards released you?’
You hold up your clenched fist. There’s a toothbrush in its grip. ‘Reporting for duty, Comrade Yi,’ you say. ‘Long Live Chairman Mao!’
The sight of the toothbrush is so pitiful I start to cry. Is this what I hoped for when I led the Red Guards to the box hidden under your floorboard? For you to be beaten until your head swelled black and blue? For your hair to be dragged out at the roots, leaving your scalp bleeding and bare?
‘I am sorry I betrayed you. .’ I whisper.
You stare back, unmoved. ‘My father was expelled from the Party and imprisoned for counter-revolutionary crimes,’ you state flatly. ‘They would have tortured me anyway.’
Pipes leak and drip on to the cement floor. In the distance is the chanting of a denunciation rally. A teenage girl shrieks hysterically into a loudspeaker. The sound is exhausting to me.
‘I don’t blame you, Yi Moon. .’ you say. ‘I looked the other way when they persecuted you. .’
‘You stopped the Red Guards from raiding our home!’
‘I could have done more, but I didn’t want to risk my status. . I was a bad friend. . I deserve your hate.’
I go and put my arms around you. ‘I’ve never hated you,’ I whisper.
I breathe in your rankness and the septic odour of your wounds. They have been starving you, and you are thin as a stalk of bamboo.
‘Yi Moon. .’ your voice is a low mosquito hum in my ear ‘. . I need your help. .’ You move out of my embrace. You press a hard, smooth, metal object into my hand. I look down. A penknife. ‘I stole it when Martial Spirit wasn’t looking,’ you say. ‘Don’t worry. She won’t miss it. She has plenty of knives.’
My heart beats faster. I stare at the penknife and fear shunts my chest, knocking the air out of my lungs. I stare at you, bleeding, bruised and paler than the dead. But behind their swollen lids, your eyes are burning and intense. Brought back to life by your will to die.