Becoming Madame Mao (11 page)

I am sure you have been waiting for this letter. Well, this is the last time you will hear from me. I believe that you understand perfectly what kind of pain I must undertake in order to write this way. You have no idea how I suffered in order to save both of us. I need to leave in order to live. That is what I am telling myself. Banging my head, for I am numb, deaf, blind, and dead inside.

I'm trying to explain the contradiction of my feelings. How hard it is to tear myself away from this relationship. Our love operates in a very strange way. The darkness that didn't end until I met him. I explain what the departure means to me. Moments during which my nerves almost break down. Moments in which it is clear to me that life was not worth living.

You know how I tried. I lived to please you. I can't believe that this is the way I am supposed to feel happiness. To please you. I can't forget how we fought. The nastiness of it. Our selfishness. The moment that comes to me as an ending.

I break down every time I recall how you used to love me. The words you said when we walked along Nan-yang Boulevard in the evenings. It pulls me back, tells me to go on, to stick with you
until the end of time. It tells me not to allow this pain to spoil my future. The pain is like a fish bone stuck in my throat—can't take it out yet can't swallow it. This is where I am. A fish bone stuck in the throat.

She feels the passion. The passion of speaking in a familiar voice, Nora's voice. The sensation of being on a real-life stage keeps her going. She is her role again. Like Nora she is struggling to break away. She tells Tang Nah-Torvald that she must depart.

I live to be recognized, to leave a trace, to be someone, mean something. I had expected to see the same effort from you, for you are a talented man. You ought not to waste your life. You ought to perform to your highest capacity. To show the world who you are. I hate it when I see you opiumed by those who you call friends. You claim to be an artist only to excuse yourself from obligations. It gives you a reason to be lazy.

Isn't it true even when writing that you are a last-minute person? You never turn your papers in before the printer begins to roll. To me it is a sign of weakness. I am shown here a man of no action, no goal. Worse, a man who, instead of confronting his shortcomings, hides them. You love to say that you're misunderstood, mistreated by society—you don't hesitate to make yourself a victim of fate. But you forget that I am in the same boat. By acting weak you are drowning me.

At any rate, I have suffered enough. You have made your problem mine. Don't think I am strong. It is just that I don't allow myself to be fragile, for I know I will break. I am sorry that I must leave. It's time for you to learn to walk on your own legs, learn to fix problems with your own hands. Or else it would be a shame to even mention that you and I were once lovers.

At last she mentions Aixia—she has finally found out the name of the girl in a poem he wrote inspired by her.

Although you have denied the affair and the poem, you have forgotten that I have learned my lesson. I am twenty-three, not
thirteen. I know what love is, for I have loved and been loved. I know what it is like. You can't fool me. I can easily imagine the lines you two speak. The lines that you used to lure me. Believe me I know. Nevertheless I will always remember you as a man of warmth and kindness. Your feelings of love, even toward your enemy. Sometimes you are kind beyond reason. It always amazes me, because I am not at all like that. I don't put up with my enemy.

In a twist of fate, as if to compensate her, after dissolving her relationship with Tang Nah Lan Ping's career takes off. The hatred for the Japanese suddenly means that anti-Japanese movies are getting financed and produced and are becoming hits. Roles start to come her way. First the movie
Blood on Wolf Mountain.
She is cast as the wife of a soldier. Alone she fights a pack of wolves on screen. The vulnerable yet brave woman who fights without knowing whether she will ever win. Fights, knowing that she might be eaten before she gets to her next strike. A story about a simple woman, it is also about China's struggle under Japan's invasion. The acting is heartfelt and passionate.

Then the next movie,
Old Bachelor Wang.
Again she plays a heroic leading lady, Wang's wife. Again it is about a Chinese family that lives in poverty under the invasion of Japan. Again survival is the only theme. And she is extraordinary. At the end of the film, she carries her husband's dead body and swears to the camera: You can slice or shred me to a thousand pieces, but my spirit will never quit fighting!

My good luck ran out quickly. In the summer of 1937 Shanghai is under occupation. The flag of Japan flutters on top of the city's tallest building. The city is paralyzed. The last studio shuts down. I am totally broke and have moved in with Zhang Min. We have developed a great affection for each other. His wife has walked out because of me. But I wouldn't remarry. My relationship with Zhang Min is not that kind. Zhang Min is a harbor to and from which I come and go. I am here to rest but not to stay.

I was told the other day that Tang Nah had attempted another suicide. It was after receiving my letter from Junli. Apparently Junli couldn't stop him. He jumped into the Huangpu River. It was during the day and he was rescued. He should have done it at night if he didn't mean it to be a show. I knew his purpose. It was his way to get back at me, to blame me, to have all our friends, critics and the public alike, point their fingers at me. And they did. It was in the evening paper. My name meant selfishness—the opposite of the heroines I portray. The rumors damage my chance to play leading roles in the future. Once a villain, always a villain. My face lost its credibility overnight.

Tang Nah moved to Hong Kong right after the Communist liberation in 1949. He was wise. If he had stayed Madame Mao wouldn't have known what to do with him. Would he have ended up like Junli or Dan? Maybe Tang Nah knew that there would be trouble. He is a man of good vision.

The Pagoda of Six Harmonies stands like a silent man in deep thought against the velvet indigo sky. How many loves sworn and broken has it witnessed? I still taste my tears. I counted on it the moment we were pronounced husband and wife. God knows how much I wanted to be cured. I gave him everything. The man from Suzhou.

Now that I am finally leaving him all the good times come back to me. The memories, so vivid. He takes me in my dreams uninvited. I wake up screaming his name. It was after he explained to me his delirious notion of women. The way he worships the female body. He was not comfortable with his own body, especially not particularly proud of his member. He always left his shirt on when coming over me, like an eagle with its wings fully spread. His face hung upon my face. It was a rather funny picture.

He loved to keep the light on, low and dim. Each night he moved the light to a different angle, so he could see my body in different shades. He would put the light on a chair or on top of a closet, or under the bed. He watched me and would say that I had the body of a goddess. He worshiped my skin. Its ivory color. Strangely my skin doesn't age, Madame Mao said later. I have gone to places that are terrible for anyone's skin, but my skin stays unchanged.

I remember him lighting a cigarette, taking a drag and then puffing the smoke around my breasts. Like a dirty old man, he then lay back to watch the smoke make circles around my breasts. Aha, he would say. Aha, he would wink.

Aha, I would laugh, and get up to bring his tea. I took the opportunity to display myself, knowing this would please him. Stop, he would say, extinguishing his cigarette in the ashtray. Come here.

It could be anywhere, on a chair, or on a sofa, on the floor, or by the window, in a hallway, or sometimes just standing in the middle of the room, as if we were on stage.

J
ULY 1937. A TRAIN WAILS
through the night like an angry dragon. It heads toward Shanxi Province in the northwest of the country. This is guerrilla territory—the heartland of the Communist Party and its Red Army. Lan Ping is twenty-three years old. She rides the train. The track condition is poor. Outside the window the scene is desolate. There are no mountains, no rivers, no trees or crops. Barren hills extend mile after mile. The train has crossed the provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui and Henan.

An elderly man sitting next to Lan Ping asks if she had seen anything interesting. Without waiting for a reply he points out that they are passing through ancient battlefields. The sun is beginning to rise. Dark-skinned men and women are plowing in the fields. The women carry their infants on their backs. The man tells Lan Ping that in 1928 and 1929 three million people died of starvation in the area.

At first
Yenan
is a strange word to her. A place in the middle of nowhere. It is the opposite of Shanghai. Lan Ping feels like a blind woman in an alley—finding her way by touching walls. After Shanghai she tried other places. She tried the cities of Nanking, Wu Han and Chong-qin. She spoke to friends and acquaintances and asked for help and recommendations. Nothing worked. People had either never heard of her or they had heard too much. She knocked on doors, announced her name to strangers. She kept going, pushing herself, and kept a picture of hope in her head.

She began to hear more and more the name Mao Tse-tung. A guerrilla hero. A folk legend in the making. He represents the inland Chinese, the majority, the ninety-five percent of the peasants who are concerned about their homeland being taken over by the Japanese. There is no money for school, arts or entertainment, but the peasants send their sons to join the Red Army, to be Communists and be led by Mao Tse-tung.

She has the eyes of a pioneer. It is with this vision that she finds her next stage. Yenan is territory available for her to claim.

Before her departure she wrote an article which was published in the
Shanghai Performing Arts Weekly.
The title was "A View of Our Lives." In the article she criticized "pale art," the art that promotes bourgeois sentimentality. The plays in which women are praised for their sacrifices. The plays that embrace the foot-binding tradition. The art that turns a blind eye on the country's fatal condition. She called it "the selfish art." "To me art is a weapon. A weapon to fight injustice, Japanese, Imperialists and enemies alike."

"A View of Our Lives" was a loud cry. This performance, it was said, had legs and walked its way to Yenan, to Mao's cave, his bed.

The old truck she is on groans like a dying animal. Coated with red dust the girl from Shanghai is in good spirits. After three weeks on the journey she has just passed Xian, the gate of the red territory. They enter Luo-chuan, the last stop before Yenan.

August 1937. She has made friends with a woman named Xu who comes to join her husband Wang. Wang is the secretary of the Communist organization called United Front Against Japan's Invasion. He is here attending an important meeting.

That night Lan Ping and Xu stay in a peasant's cabin. Their beds are made of straw. They plan to fetch Wang the next day from the meeting and continue their journey together to Yenan. Lan Ping is tired and goes to bed early. She doesn't know that tomorrow morning will go down in history as an unsolved mystery of modern China.

At breakfast Xu tells Lan Ping that the place of her husband's meeting is a few houses down the path. The meeting has already ended by dawn. Xu suggests that they pack buns for the trip. It is fifty-some miles from Luo-chuan to Yenan.

The morning is cool. The color of the rising sun dyes the hills golden. Lan Ping is neatly dressed in her new gray cotton Red Army uniform. A belt fastens at the waist. Her slender body is willowlike. Two long braids are tied up with blue ribbons. Carrying bags she and Xu walk toward their truck. Just beyond sit three other weather-beaten vehicles. One of the cars has characters written on it:
Emergency Medicare—Life Support. The New York Chinese Workers' Association.
It is Mao Tse-tung's car.

In the future the next moment is discussed as a moment of historical significance. Different views and interpretations have been adopted. Some say Mao walked out of the little meeting house and got into his car while Lan Ping was climbing into her truck—they missed each other. Some say that Lan Ping watched the leaders walk out one by one and thought the ink pen they each carried in their chest pockets was funny—she didn't recognize Mao. Some say that Mao bent his head as he exited the house because of his height and when he raised his eyes again, he was caught by her beauty—love at first sight. In Madame Mao's own story everyone comes to greet her with warm hellos.

The truth is no one comes. No one says hello to anyone. The girl from Shanghai gets in the truck, settles herself in a comfortable spot and waits for the truck to take off. She sees the men exiting the house. She knows that they are men of importance but she doesn't know which one is Mao nor does she expect to meet him.

It is not until the truck begins to move—not until she overhears Wang whispering to his wife, Look, that's him! That's Mao!—that she pays attention. She had crossed his path but missed him. The biggest big shot in Yenan. He is already in the car.
Emergency ... Life Support.
She didn't catch him, only the smoke his car puffed. She remembers the car shaking, hopping like a patient with heart failure.

***

If people in modern China barely know the name Yu Qiwei, they are all familiar with the name Kang Sheng. Comrade Kang Sheng, Mao's most trusted man, the head of China's national security and intelligence. Educated in Russia by Stalin's people, Kang Sheng is a man of mystery and conspiracy. No one can tell anything from reading his facial expressions. No one knows how he relates to Mao or how the two work together. All his life, Kang Sheng keeps himself in the background, out of focus. One doesn't feel his presence until one is suddenly caught by his shadow. And then it is too late. You have sprung his trap. You are seized by a nightmare. You are swallowed and dismembered by a mysterious creature. No one so far has been able to get out and tell the world what happened. No one can tell the story of Kang Sheng. Only a few have described the invisible black hand, its fingers stretching across China.