The Incarnations (44 page)

You shake your head, as though at my naivety, and say, ‘Do you really think they’d send your father to a labour camp if he hadn’t committed a crime?’

A servant enters the courtyard with a teakwood tray of rice porridge, steamed buns and soy milk. The servant girl, who is our age, lowers the tray beside you on the bench then retreats, walking backwards like a eunuch before the Emperor. You don’t thank her, or even nod to acknowledge her, your chin propped up high by your sense of entitlement. How can you pretend to be one of the masses? I think scornfully. How can you pretend to be one of the proletariat, when you live like
this
?

I turn to leave. I don’t bother to say goodbye. ‘
Wait!
’ you cry. You come after me, catching me by my shoulder at the gate. I turn around, expecting an apology for what you said about my father. Tenderness returns to your eyes as you stroke my head. ‘Sorry they cut your hair,’ you say. ‘You used to have such beautiful hair. But that bitch Miao
butchered
it.’

Who gives a damn about my hair? I want to scream. I step back, disgusted, and your eyes turn sad.

‘Yi Moon, I want you to know,’ you say, ‘I am protecting you and your mother. I am keeping you safe.’

‘My mother and I don’t need you to protect us,’ I mutter as I turn and walk out the gate.

Your laughter pursues me down Ironmongers Lane: ‘If only you knew . . .’

The Smash the Four Olds movement begins, and the Red Guards take over the streets of Beijing, intent on destroying the Old Culture, Old Society, Old Education and Old Ways of Thinking. Red Guards stand at intersections, shouting the quotations of Chairman Mao through loudspeakers. Red Guards hijack buses and lecture the passengers about the Ox Freaks and Snake Monsters in their midst. Red Guards armed with knives chase after people in western clothes, slashing their American-style shirts and dresses to shreds.

Destroy the Capitalists Street. All Hail the Red Guards Lane. The East is Red Boulevard. All over Beijing, street names are changed to revolutionary slogans. Shops selling paintings, ornaments and other ‘poisonous weeds of the capitalist classes’ are smashed up and portraits of Chairman Mao displayed in the windows. Signs saying
Masses Beware! For Tens of Years This Shop Has Exploited the Sweat and Blood of the Workers!
appear over shop doorways. The Red Guards ‘liberate’ the shop assistants from their managers, who are beaten to the floor. The Red Guards change the traffic-light system so revolutionary red means ‘go’ and green means ‘stop’. The Red Guards then persecute the victims of the resulting traffic accidents, for ‘clinging to the Old Culture and Old Ways of Thinking’.

Red Guards from Beijing University stand in our alley, halting passers-by and ordering them to quote Chairman Mao. They stop my mother, who nervously stammers, ‘Serve the People!’ (choosing the simplest quote, because those who misquote the Great Helmsman are beaten). The Red Guards stop Idiot Zhu from the junk yard, who, when asked for a quote, laughs and says, ‘Chairman Mao stinks of dog farts!’ The students take off their leather belts and beat the giggling Idiot Zhu, yelling, ‘Enemy of Chairman Mao! You deserve to die!’ They eventually drag Idiot Zhu off to jail, and we don’t see or hear of him again.

The home raids begin. Teenage fists
bang bang bang
on our courtyard gate, and my mother and I rush panicking around our room, hiding bamboo mah-jong tiles, father’s calligraphy and anything that could be labelled ‘poisonous weeds’. The Red Guards break the gate down and we are certain we are done for. But as we cower behind our locked door, we overhear them say, ‘What about the rightist Yi family?’

‘Zhang Liya struck them off the list. Besides, the Yi family don’t have a pot to piss in.’

And the twenty or so Red Guards storm into Granny Xi’s room instead.

Landscape paintings, Qing Dynasty vases, classic novels and land deeds to old properties in the city – the Red Guards drag a haul of riches out of Granny Xi’s room. Though Granny Xi petitioned to have my mother and me evicted, I can’t help but pity the old woman as she is dragged out and forced to kneel in the yard. Mother and I peek out the window as a pimply teenage boy slaps Granny Xi in the face with her Nationalist-era land deeds.

‘You kept these land deeds hoping that the Nationalists would return, didn’t you?’ he accuses. ‘You are hoping the Nationalists will come back and restore your status as a landlord, aren’t you?’

‘No,’ says Granny Xi, ‘I hate the Nationalists. I just forgot to throw them away.’

The Red Guard unbuckles his belt and tugs it out of the trouser loops. He lashes the strip of leather down on Granny Xi’s back and my mother gasps, ‘She’s
eighty-four
!’

They make a fire of Granny Xi’s poisonous weeds and force her to kneel close to her burning furniture and books so that the smoke makes her cough and the heat blisters her skin. When the Red Guards leave, carting Granny Xi’s valuables, or ‘Ill-gotten Gains of the Exploiting Classes’, off in a wheelbarrow, we go outside to help Granny Xi to her feet. Though she has long detested us, Granny Xi does not resist as my mother and I bring her into our room. The old woman collapses on a chair, her cheeks smudged with smoke, and her white hair and eyebrows singed. Mother kneels by Granny Xi and squeezes her wrinkled hand.

‘Do you love Chairman Mao with all your heart?’ she asks gently. ‘If you let that love shine out of your heart, Red Guards will leave you alone.’

And Granny Xi looks at my mother with such watery, defeated eyes I am nostalgic for the days they seethed at us with hate.

Every day the black-category students go to school. Every day we study Chairman Mao’s
Little Red Book
, write our Thought Reports and clean the school building. I am put on toilet-cleaning duty. Though I scrub the toilet bowls with my toothbrush every day for weeks, the pubic hairs, bloody sanitary napkins and faecal smears never cease to make me gag. But I can’t slack off, because Martial Spirit comes to inspect my work.

‘Why the vinegar-drinking face, Stinking Rightist? Too bourgeois to clean toilets, are you?’

Comrade Martial Spirit, formerly my mousy, twitchy classmate Socialist Flower, has become a monster since her promotion to jailer-in-command of the Cattle Shed. As I crouch by the toilet with a toothbrush in my hand, Martial Spirit sneers, ‘Scrub harder, Rightist! Or I’ll kick the capitalist airs and graces right out of you!’

My other duty is to feed the Black-gang Capitalists, incarcerated in the Cattle Shed. The Cattle Shed is the former music room, and the Black-gang Capitalists are our former teachers, now subject to interrogation for their crimes.

‘Long Live Chairman Mao!’ I yell, entering the Cattle Shed with a tray of rice bowls.

‘Long Live Chairman Mao!’ the teachers croak back, vocal cords ragged from screaming.

The Cattle Shed smells of unwashed bodies and fear-loosened bladders and bowels. ‘Long Live the Red Terror!’ has been finger-painted in blood on the wall, above the portrait of Chairman Mao. Weeks of intimidation have broken the teachers down. They cringe behind their desks with bruised eyes, obedient as whipped dogs. I serve the bowls of rice and their chopsticks tremble as they eat.

There are fewer Black-gang Capitalists now than at the start of the Cultural Revolution. Headteacher Yang was the first to die. The Cattle Shed jailers accidentally kicked her to death during an interrogation, and were out of their minds with panic afterwards. But there were no repercussions, and the next time they murdered a teacher they knew they had nothing to fear. Some Black-gang Capitalists commit suicide. I was the one who found Teacher Zhao’s corpse in the toilets, swinging from the leaky water pipes. Her salt-and-pepper head was bent over the noose and her toes swayed over the damp cement floor. A suicide note was pinned to her chalk-dusty Mao jacket:

I am an Enemy of the People.

In order not to poison the masses, I will exterminate myself from society.

Long Live the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution!

Long Live Chairman Mao!

I went to Headteacher Yang’s former office, now the headquarters of the Cattle Shed jailers, to break the news. Comrade Martial Spirit reacted with dismay.

‘Teacher Zhao is a traitor of the revolution,’ she spat. ‘Had I known she was going to commit suicide, I’d have strangled her first!’

Sometimes when I am cleaning the toilets, I remember the time we spent together and my chest becomes tight. I remember how your eyes shone in the darkness of your room and the spine-tingling caress of your words as you murmured, ‘If only I had been born a boy, Yi Moon. Then I could marry you one day.’ I remember the secret transactions our bodies made in your bed at night, and how your touch suffused every part of me with pleasure, unspoken of during the day. But now the Liya of that time no longer exists. Now you are a Red Guard, spreading terror throughout Beijing, and it’s as though that time never was.

Since the suicide of Teacher Zhao, toilet-cleaning duty has become a break from the chaos of the Anti-capitalist School for Revolutionary Girls, for in spite of the brave new Socialist claims to not fear ‘Heaven or Hell, Gods or ghosts’, old superstitions die hard and girls stay away from the ‘haunted’ toilet block in droves. I am not scared of Teacher Zhao’s ghost though. Every time I scrub the stall where she dangled from the pipes, I speak to her.

‘You were a good person, Teacher Zhao,’ I say. ‘You never committed any counter-revolutionary crimes. They were wrong to persecute you.’

Silence.

‘I don’t blame you, Teacher Zhao,’ I say. ‘There’s only so much suffering we can endure. I understand why you hanged yourself.’

Silence.

‘I envy you, Teacher Zhao. If I had the guts, I’d find a length of rope and betray the revolution too . . .’

The thought of ‘betraying the revolution’ becomes more seductive by the day. I imagine affixing the rope to the pipes and kicking the upturned mop bucket out from under my feet. I imagine the noose squeezing my neck until the moment of release. It’s only the thought of my mother that stops me, and I can’t help but resent her for holding me back.

Autumn. The sky is bled dry of colour. Leaves wither and wilt from the branches of trees. They rustle under my shoes as I walk into the playground and see a new Big-character Poster on the notice board:

Down with Zhang Liya! Daughter of a Loyal Running Dog of Liu Shaoqi!

Since the Cultural Revolution began there have been many sudden reversals in status. A people’s hero one day can be persecuted as the people’s enemy the next. But this is so unexpected I nearly fall down in shock.

Zhang Liya Must Be Brought to Justice for Her Anti-Party Crimes.

Down with Zhang Liya, Part of Liu Shaoqi’s Plot to Assassinate Chairman Mao.

Girls crowd around the Big-character Posters. There are some half-hearted murmurs – ‘How dare Zhang Liya betray us!’ But most girls stare up at the posters in a subdued mood. After weeks of class struggle, revolutionary spirit is flagging.

The Red Guards are back. Long March, Patriotic Hua and Red Star – now known as Dare to Rebel, Red Soldier and Martial Warrior. The Red Guards have shaved their heads. Their khaki uniforms, unwashed or changed in weeks, are nearly black. Their eyes are hardened and they are more like veterans back from fighting a war than sixteen-year-old girls. Long March, now known as Comrade Dare to Rebel, has a loudspeaker in one hand, and a
People’s Daily
in the other, opened to an editorial about the latest Communist Party purge. She waves the newspaper about as she rants into the loudspeaker.

‘Though her father has been expelled from the Party and is now in prison for anti-Party crimes, Zhang Liya remains free and hiding out in the bourgeois luxury of her home. Zhang Liya must be brought to justice. We must bring her into school for interrogation!
Down with Zhang Liya!
’

‘
Down with Zhang Liya!
’ Long March yells.

‘
Down with Zhang Liya! Down with Zhang Liya!
’ chant the schoolgirls in the playground – but obediently and bored.

The Red Guards, led by Comrade Dare to Rebel, turn and march out of the gate. Before I have the chance to think about what I am doing, I have caught up with Long March and tapped her on the shoulder. She wrinkles her nose at me, as though I am a cockroach or a rat.

‘Comrade Dare to Rebel,’ I say, ‘I have been to the Zhang family residence and have seen poisonous weeds of the Nationalist era hidden in Zhang Liya’s bedroom.’

I half expect to be cursed or slapped for daring to speak to her. But Long March frowns, thinking over what I said. ‘Then you must come with us, Comrade Yi Moon,’ she says urgently. ‘You must come with us and show us where the poisonous weeds are hidden. They will be used as evidence against Zhang Liya in her trial.’

Pride swells in my chest. ‘Comrade Yi Moon’, she called me. Not ‘Capitalist Roader’ or ‘Daughter of a Rightist’, but ‘Comrade Yi Moon’.

I follow the Red Guards out of the playground, to Ironmongers Lane and your home.

The Red Guards’ clenched fists
bang bang bang
on your front gate.

‘Open up, you Sons of Bitches! Open up, you loyal running dogs of Liu Shaoqi!’

Your servant girl unlocks and opens the gate and cries, ‘
Long Live Chairman Mao! Long Live Chairman Mao!
Don’t attack me! I am just a servant exploited by bourgeois Zhang family!’

The Red Guards ignore the girl’s whimpering and stampede to your room.

You are waiting in a chair by the window. Your striking face shows no sign of fear or intimidation as twenty Red Guards chanting ‘
Down with Zhang Liya!
’ stomp their heavy boots into your room. You sit in your PLA uniform, and regard the mob of Red Guards with the dignity and composure that made you the natural choice for their leader. You have been expecting them.

‘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.’