Pearl of China (22 page)
Authors: Anchee Min
I slid back into my sleeping box. I hadn’t cried when Dick had told me that he had fallen in love with his secretary and had decided to end our marriage. But now I was hit by an emotion that felt like the ocean’s high tide.
Rouge rolled over and hugged me as I sobbed.
“You are home, Mama.” She gently wiped my tears. “We are home.”
The person in charge of my reform was Chin-kiang’s Communist Party boss, Vanguard, formerly known as Confucius, the son of the beggar lady Soo-ching. Vanguard had grown into a squirrel-faced, cross-eyed, middle-aged man with a fat belly. He enjoyed denouncing me so much that he ordered others to do the same.
Vanguard pretended that he did not know me. He spoke Mandarin with a heavy Chin-kiang accent, and he was proud of being an illiterate. Since becoming the party boss, he had banned the worship of God and made it a crime to mention the names of Absalom, Carie, and Pearl.
When Vanguard learned that Pearl had won the Nobel Prize, he saw an opportunity to advance his political career. He invited Mao’s favorite journalists to Chin-kiang to tour the hometown of the notorious American cultural imperialist. The event caught Madame Mao’s attention. Vanguard was summoned to the Forbidden City to be honored as “Chairman Mao’s great foot soldier.” Madame Mao awarded Vanguard with a work of her calligraphy that read, “
The hope of launching
a cultural atomic bomb on the world’s Capitalism rests on your shoulders
.”
Vanguard called me “the evil twin sister of Pearl Buck” and “Chin-kiang’s shame.” He encouraged children to call me scum. He ordered me to clean out the town’s sewage drains and public restrooms daily. Every Friday afternoon I reported to Vanguard to confess my crimes. Depending on my response, Vanguard would either pass or fail me. If he was displeased, he would add more to my workload. He might order me to clean his office, which was the former British Embassy. If he felt I needed further humiliation, he would order me to walk through the town banging a chime with a stick. I was instructed to shout, “Come and see the American running dog!”; “Down with Willow Yee!”; and “Long live the proletarian dictatorship!” Vanguard hated it when I protested by staring at him in silence.
“I can have you tortured, you know,” he threatened constantly.
Vanguard expected me to tell him the details of my relationship with Pearl Buck.
“I want you to trace back all the way to your childhood,” he ordered.
Papa taught me to forget about preserving my dignity. “Speak the wolf’s language!” If he were me, Papa said, he would toy with Vanguard.
I tried, but it didn’t work. Vanguard was determined to please Madame Mao. He didn’t buy my abstractions and empty words. “How dare you try to fool the Communist Party!” he yelled at me.
To pressure me further, Vanguard organized rallies. They took place in the town’s square. The crowd repeated after Vanguard as he shouted, “Confess or be tortured to death!”
While Vanguard pulled my hair back to show the public my “evil features,” I imagined the opera
The Butterfly Lovers
. I remembered every detail of Pearl and me going to see the performance together with NaiNai. When Vanguard used a whip to beat me, I saw the birds, bees, and dragonflies flying into Absalom’s church. When the blood came and pain burned inside my body, I heard Carie singing her favorite Christmas song, “What Child Is This?”
In my dreams, I visited Pearl in her American home. The furniture I imagined for Pearl was made of red sandalwood in the style of the Chinese Ming dynasty. I saw the pictures on her walls, beautiful Chinese brush paintings and ink calligraphy. Also, I dreamed of Pearl sculpting. It was something she had said that she would love to learn. We used to watch Chin-kiang’s craftsmen making cookie figures out of sugared flour. For three pennies, we bought our favorite colored animals and opera figures. At our playground behind the hills, Pearl once sculpted a mud head using me as a model, and I did one of her. To emphasize our individual characteristics, I made her nose high and she slanted my eyes. Both faces were smiling because we couldn’t help laughing while making them.
I dreamed of Pearl’s play stove, a real one built by Carie’s gardener. It was located behind the hillside. It was there that we cooked real food. Wang Ah-ma taught us to bake yams and roast soybeans and peanuts. I could still hear the sound of Pearl and me chewing beans as if our teeth were made of steel.
Since moving back to Chin-kiang, I had been praying with Papa. Vanguard had no power over my spiritual being. My resistance against the Communists grew stronger. I decided to try to bore the crowd with my confessions, filling and padding them out with Mao quotations, slogans, and self-name-calling. My typical first sentence would be “I was a cat that lost her way before I was guided back home by Chairman Mao’s teaching.” My second sentence would be “Although I have never read a word of
The Good Earth
, my desire to read the book is absolutely reactionary and criminal.”
After Vanguard’s lectures and criticisms, it was my task to lead the crowd in shouting, “Burn, fire, fry, and roast Willow if she doesn’t surrender!” To amuse myself, I created variations. “Down with Willow Yee” became “Down with the American running dog Willow Yee!” and then “Down with the big liar, big traitor, big bourgeoisie, big snake, and big rotten, assless, slummy, and poisonous spider Willow Yee!” I began to play with the crowd’s breath. I dragged the sentences out as long as I could. I invented slogans to shout as breathing exercises. My favorite only a few could follow: “Long live our great leader, great teacher, great helmsman, great leader Chairman Mao’s great, glorious, and forever correct revolutionary line!”
In the winter, Vanguard conducted a political rally in the former British Embassy’s ballroom. The crowd was ordered to sit on the floor for hours on end. As I confessed, men smoked cigarettes and played cards, while women sewed their clothes and knitted. Old people napped and babies screamed. Vanguard insisted that my confessions were not heartfelt. He concluded that I purposely resisted reform and ought to be further punished.
I was put to work as the town’s slave.
To those who were sympathetic toward me, Vanguard warned, “The word
mercy
doesn’t exist in our proletarian dictionary!”
When Vanguard decided to lead Chin-kiang to “enter Communism overnight,” he eliminated the use of chamber pots. Everyone was to use the public restrooms, but because restrooms didn’t belong to anyone, no one cleaned them. They became a breeding ground for maggots, flies, and mosquitoes. It became my responsibility to clean them.
I labored day and night. Rouge helped when she could. Her old job as a textile worker had been given to a relative of her boss, and now she worked as a concrete mixer for a construction company. Close to the Chinese New Year in 1970, Rouge was ordered to work both the night and day shifts. I made my rounds of the public restrooms alone. As my tired hands scrubbed the walls of the feces-filled pits, I felt helpless and exhausted. I asked myself, “What is the point of going on?”
I had to restrain myself from crying or I would wake everyone. Papa was asleep. Rouge was working. The shadow of Dick’s secretary-nurse would not leave me alone. I had finally learned her name, Daisy. My mind’s eye saw that she had a full-moon face, big eyes, and a cheery mouth. She and Dick were embracing in the bed that used to be mine.
“Papa,” I called.
No answer.
I got up, climbed down, and landed on the floor. Papa was not in his sleeping box.
I went searching for him. I checked the washing area and the dining area. Passing the stacked firewood and coal buckets, I arrived in the kitchen. I heard a noise over my head. It came from the storage area behind the kitchen. Standing still, I listened carefully. It was the sound of a radio—someone was tuning through the channels.
Like an old monkey, I climbed the rope ladder. My legs were shaking and I was out of breath. I lost my balance and my shoulder hit the storage door.
The radio stopped.
After a long moment of silence, the door opened.
Holding a candle, Bumpkin Emperor stuck his head out. “What are you doing here?”
“I am looking for Papa.”
“He is not here.”
“I heard the sound of a radio. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Can I come in?”
“No, you can’t.”
“Don’t make me wake up everyone,” I threatened.
“I said no.”
“Let me in, please.”
“No.”
“You are hiding something, aren’t you?”
“It’s none of your business . . .”
“Let me in!”
“Don’t make me push you . . .”
“Willow!” Papa’s voice came from inside.
Bumpkin Emperor pivoted his body, and I entered.
Papa’s face was lit by candlelight. He was holding a brick-sized box. It was a radio of a fancy make, better than the one Dick had owned. Papa turned the radio dial. Static filled the shadowy room. The scene reminded me of a propaganda film in which criminals gathered in conspiracy. Papa was in his pajamas. He was calm and focused. I had never seen him concentrating like this. He tilted his head to the side as he searched for a signal and listened. I looked around and saw more faces. Besides Bumpkin Emperor and his sworn brothers, there were Carpenter Chan, his sons, and a few others. They all looked nervous but excited.
“What are you listening to?” I asked.
“Sh-sh!” Bumpkin Emperor pushed my head down.
Papa kept adjusting the dial. Finally there was a human voice. Papa was ecstatic. “I got it, I got it!” The signal didn’t last. It turned to static again. Papa kept trying while the others waited patiently. After a long while the signal returned. A voice speaking foreign-accented Mandarin came on. “This is Voice of America broadcasting from the United States.”
The radio had belonged to Bumpkin Emperor. It had been a gift from Chiang Kai-shek when Bumpkin Emperor was at the peak of his power as a warlord. The two men had joined forces against Mao. What made the radio valuable was that it had been made in America for military use. Bumpkin Emperor had donated the radio to the church after Papa had converted him.
Papa no longer felt isolated since he’d mastered the radio. He was obsessed with it. Papa shared the latest world news with carefully selected church members. Life became more bearable, although not better. The Cultural Revolution continued and Mao worship intensified. Food shortages became the worst they’d been since the Great Leap Forward. Vanguard loosened his grip on me in order to catch people who were selling vegetables they grew in their backyards.
One day, a stranger visited me. His name was Chu. Although I didn’t recognize him, I remembered the name. He was the Beijing general Dick had talked into surrendering in 1949. Dick had been proud when he saved the Imperial city and avoided a bloody battle in the streets of Beijing. Dick had negotiated with General Chu. Mao had promised Chu a high-ranking position in the People’s Liberation Army.
The man who stood in front of me was sick and thin. He had wax-yellow skin and sunken eyes. He spoke in a whisper and his words confused me. He said that he had been Dick’s cellmate in prison. He then explained that he was on a medical release from the national prison. I told him that Dick was working for Mao. He said that it was no longer the case.
“What do you mean by ‘cellmate’?” I asked. I hadn’t talked to Dick for two years. I knew nothing about his life.
General Chu produced a wadded paper on which ink letters the size of ants were written.
Dear Willow,
This letter gives me a chance to explain everything, which I consider a
blessing.I am writing from the Southwest Labor Prison near Tibet. You might
wonder what I did to offend Mao. Well, again, the story has to do with
Pearl Buck. But truly my own ambition is to blame.Mao summoned me on the evening of May 30, 1969. Madame Mao
was there and unusually friendly toward me. Mao didn’t seem to be aware
that it was the middle of the night. He was dressed in a white bathrobe. His hair was wet and he was barefoot.Once I was seated he simply said, “Pearl Buck wants to come to China.
Premier Chou En-lai thinks we should make an exception and open the
door for her. What do you think?”Out of the corner of my eye I was aware of Madame Mao’s wooden
expression. A slight smile quivered on her lips.Given all my personal history with Pearl Buck, I marveled at Mao’s audacity. Had he forgotten that you, my wife, had gone to prison because of your refusal
to denounce your friend? But I also knew that Mao’s desire for international
recognition had only grown stronger over the years. No matter how strong he
was at home, his reputation had not kept up abroad. He would do anything
to gain the prestige that had eluded him. I saw at once that he was willing to
rewrite history if it would fulfill his ends. I wasn’t so sure about his wife.I sat there sweating in my chair as Mao went on. He asked me to
cultivate Pearl Buck and convince her to change her mind about China. “Tell her we now rule a quarter of the human race on earth,” Mao said.Mao revealed that his intelligence agency had recently reported that
Pearl Buck had been a consultant to President John Kennedy. Mao believed
that she had the potential to be his bridge to America.Looking back, my fate was set. Madame Mao was jealous of any female
Mao was interested in. She had made secret arrests, tortured, and murdered
in order to gain Mao’s affection back.Unfortunately, my own ambition made me willfully blind. Connecting
Mao and Pearl Buck would be the best thing I could do to advance my
career. Going down in history tempted me so much that I played with fire. The wind was in my favor, I thought, and I’d be a fool not to ride it. I
planned on making a case to back up Chou En-lai’s position.I translated Pearl’s recent articles on China and carefully edited out her
negative comments. But before I submitted the material to Mao, the wind
changed its direction. Madame Mao got ahead of me.As evidence against Pearl, Madame Mao presented parts of her latest
novel,
Three Daughters of Madame Liang,
in which Pearl depicted
senseless murders taking place during the Cultural Revolution as if she had
witnessed it. The novel amazingly mirrored the truth.From that moment on, Mao lost interest in Pearl Buck. But Madame
Mao was not finished with me. She saw Pearl Buck as a personal threat
and was determined to punish anyone with a connection to her. Accusing
me of deceiving Mao, Madame Mao had me arrested.I expected Mao to offer his protection, but he didn’t.
I met General Chu in prison. What a twist of fate! On one hand, I felt
guilty because Mao never honored his promises—the terms I negotiated. Once Chu surrendered, he became useless to Mao and was abandoned. Although Chu was granted the title of commanding general of the People’s
Liberation Army, it was a paper title only. Chu ended up without the
army or his freedom. I felt that I had let the man down. Ending my life
in prison almost makes me feel better, because it separates me from Mao.The Tibetan weather is harsh and the air is thin. We live like rodents
in underground holes, which we dug ourselves—talk about digging one’s
own grave. However, the dead do not get buried here. The prison doesn’t
have enough prisoners to dig the holes to bury them all. Instead, the dead
are dragged away and left in the open about a half mile from where we
live. When the wind is strong, we can smell the rotten stench. Eventually,
Tibetan wolves and buzzards eat what is left.I live on leaves, earthworms, and mice. Before summer ends, the leaves
and earthworms will be gone. We have stripped the trees of bark and eaten
the rough fiber. Now those trees have died. We don’t have enough energy to
catch mice. I have begun eating “suicide seeds.” This is a kind of grass seed
that one slowly dies from. At least it cures the hunger. I’ve been constipated
for weeks. My belly hurts so much that I pass out from time to time. You
would never imagine the scene: cellmates helping each other scoop the shit
from each other’s rear ends with bare fingers. It is a bloody business.Chu was my partner. He hadn’t shit for nine days. I used a chopstick
and tried to break the stool and scoop it out with a spoon. But his stool was
as hard as a rock. He was in terrible pain. His stomach swelled like a big
balloon. Another cellmate was from Shanghai, a doctor. Yesterday he died
of constipation. He was only thirty-seven years old.People here don’t count on waking up when they go to sleep. Strangely,
most people die quietly in their sleep. Like the end of a burning candle, the
flame flickers and is swallowed by eternal darkness. Each night I think
of you. I regret deserting you for Daisy. She reported my complaining to
Madame Mao. My foolish pillow talk! Near the end, before I went to
prison, she admitted that she was Madame Mao’s spy. I knew Daisy kept
a diary, but I didn’t know it would be used as a weapon against me. I
thought I was on top of the world when I said to her, “Human beings make
mistakes. Mao is a human being. He makes mistakes.” Daisy received a
promotion for reporting my comment. Before my arrest, Mao invited me to
accompany him to Russia. He made me believe that I was his most trusted
man.There was never a hint that I was to be punished. Then all of a sudden,
Madame Mao told me that Mao was upset with me. Next I was stripped
of my Party membership. I was to go to prison because I was no longer a
comrade but a reactionary. Mao wouldn’t answer my calls or letters.I know I have hurt you by my disloyalty. I have stayed away as you
wished. I am writing this letter because I believe that I won’t last much
longer. My belly is larger than a pregnant woman’s. I am chewed up by
remorse and shame. I deserve Hell. I don’t expect myself to live beyond the
New Year. There is no mail and almost no one gets out alive. In case Chu
succeeds in getting out and this letter reaches you, I want you to know that
I still love you and have always loved you, even when I was a foolish man.Dick
My only thought was to see Dick before it was too late. I didn’t bother asking Vanguard for permission to leave because I knew he wouldn’t agree. Rouge bought the ticket, and I left Chin-kiang by train the next day. It was a standing-only ticket because I didn’t have enough money to buy a seat. For the next seventy-two hours, I stood during the day and managed to rest at night, curled up next to urine-soaked newspapers.
After the train, I traveled on foot. It took me two weeks to reach the prison camp. Then they made me wait for days before I was told the truth, that Dick had already died. He had been punished for stealing food. The story was that Dick hadn’t reported the death of another prisoner so that he could claim the dead man’s share of food. Dick slept with the corpse until the stink of rotting flesh gave him away. After that, the prison guards starved Dick and he died.
I wept imagining Dick sleeping with a corpse. I asked that I be allowed to identify Dick’s remains, but I was refused. I went to the prison headquarters and put on a hunger strike. After a week, I was taken to the open graveyard Dick had described in his letter.
As Dick had written, none were buried. Bodies and bones were everywhere. The smell was horrible. I stumbled from body to body looking for my husband. It was almost impossible to recognize any of the dead. I refused to give up. Hours later, I found him. Dick was naked. I recognized him by a scar I remembered. The flesh on his body had been torn by vultures and chewed on by wild dogs.
I fainted. When I woke up, I struggled to remember Dick’s face as I had known him. I did not want to remember him like this. I went and found a local peasant who owned a donkey. I paid him to bring me a bucket of gasoline and some firewood. I borrowed a rusty old shovel and dug a ditch. I dragged what was left of my husband to the ditch and piled the wood on him and poured the gasoline over that. I set this on fire. Afterward, I collected Dick’s bones, but they were too big to fit inside my bag. I had to abandon most of them. I never imagined Dick would end like this.
After I returned to Chin-kiang, Papa performed a memorial for Dick. We invited only the people we trusted who had known Dick. I meant to invite General Chu, but he was nowhere to be found. He had gone into hiding. Papa said that prison life must have made Chu cautious and distrustful. “Let’s remember him as a loyal friend to Dick.”
“What’s important is that Chu risked his life to deliver Father’s letter,” Rouge said.
“God must have guided General Chu,” Papa agreed.
I remembered Chu’s words. He felt blessed to be the messenger because he believed that he would soon join Dick. He believed that finding me would be the best gift he could offer to his friend.
I burned Dick’s writing, which I had saved over the years. Dick would have liked me to do that. He had worshipped Mao and Communism with all his heart. It was what Dick had believed.
I saved Dick’s last letter for Pearl, although I had no idea if we would ever see each other again. A reunion with my friend was becoming harder and harder to imagine. Today’s Chinese children knew Americans only as enemies, and things seemed to be getting worse. I wondered whether Pearl would be amused or horrified at the fact that Mao had considered converting her into a proletarian.