Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

Li rubbed his eyes with gloved hands. The concentrated light of his desk lamp on the white pages of the diary were making them water. He sat back and lit a cigarette, blowing smoke into the darkness that lay beyond the ring of light. Then he leaned forward again, and with his white gloves he turned each page with great care in order not to disturb whatever forensic evidence the diary might yield. Reading it was depressing, like a journey back through time to a distant memory of his own childhood and an experience shared with millions of people all over China. July 1966. It was only just beginning.

He did not read it all, flicking carefully forward through the pages, August, September, stopping here and there to read the increasingly harrowing account, as the fate that befell Yuan Tao’s parents unfolded.

September 15th, 1966

Your father and I watched from our window today as Mr Cai from across the landing was attacked in the street by Red Guards. They took his shoes and made him squat on a stool in full view of the street and shaved his head. I do not know why. It seems more and more that they can do what they like to you on whatever pretext they dream up.

Your father has not been at the school for nearly two weeks. His angina attacks are less frequent now, and he has learned to sit quietly and wait with great patience for the pain to pass. It is an awful thing for me to think, but I am glad of his heart condition. It keeps him away from the school. I fear for his life every time he goes there.

October 21st, 1966

They came to the house today. Six of them. All former pupils of your father. To look for ‘black’ materials, they said. This is anything that they believe is opposed to the Communist Party. The leader is a boy who lives in our street, Ge Yan. I think you know him. He is the boy who keeps birds in his yard. It is strange to think of someone who can love such delicate creatures being so violent and filled with hate. He screamed and shouted at me when I refused to let him see your father. He was very red in the face, with veins bulging at his temples. I was very frightened. But your father had not been well earlier, and he was in his bed.

Finally, when he heard all the shouting, he came out in his dressing gown and asked them what they wanted. He was quite angry with them for shouting at me, and they seemed quite taken aback. I don’t think they knew how to deal with him. They still remembered him as their teacher and I think were still a little afraid of him.

The girl that the others called Pauper was the boldest. She told your father that as a teacher of English, he was a lover of things foreign, and all foreigners were opposed to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. His interests, therefore, were ‘black’, she said, and he must give up all his ‘black’ materials. I do not think they knew what these materials were, but your father was clever. He said that of course he would give them anything they considered ‘black’, as he wanted to do everything he could to help the revolution. He went into our front room and took all his old magazines from England and America that he has been collecting for years and told them to take them away. They were undoubtedly ‘black’, he said, because they were all in English.

The one they called Zero, whose name your father says is Bai Qiyu, took your bicycle. He said that you had betrayed the revolution by going to study abroad, and that your bicycle must be confiscated. I did try to stop him, but there was nothing I could do. Your father said to let them go.

When they were gone, I asked him if it did not break his heart to lose his prized collection of magazines. But he said they were just paper and ink, and that flesh and blood were more important.

I am so sorry about your bicycle.

February 2nd, 1967

Tao, do you remember Mrs Gu, my friend Gu Yi from the kindergarten? She is dead. When she finished mourning the death of her husband she tried to find herself another man, because she still had two children, and her job at the kindergarten did not pay much. She wore pretty clothes and make-up to make herself attractive. But all she did was attract the fury of the hung wei ping .

Last week they came to her door in a procession, banging drums and gongs and carrying scarlet banners. They made her paste a da-zi-bao on her door, denouncing herself as a capitalist whore. They dragged her into the street and forced her to ‘confess’ and promise to remould herself conscientiously. They hung two torn shoes around her neck, which is a sign of immorality, and made her wash her face publicly, and tore off her ‘black’ bourgeois dress.

Last night she hanged herself.

April 15th, 1967

Your father’s condition continues to deteriorate. He has been in his bed for several days. Still, I am glad he is safe here at home instead of at the school. We hear terrible stories. Your old headmaster and some of the senior teachers have been made to do manual labour. They are supervised by the Red Guards of the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade, who are all former pupils at the school. I think they were all in your year.

We hear that Headmaster Jiang and the others were forced to demolish the school’s lovely old stone gateway with sledgehammers provided by a group of construction workers. And then they had to parade around the square wearing pointed paper dunce hats, just like the landlords during the Land Reform Campaign in 1951. They were made to wear signs around their necks branding them ‘cow-headed ghosts’ and ‘snake spirits’. The schoolchildren, apparently, took delight in calling them ‘monsters’.

I was surprised that Headmaster Jiang was treated in this way, because he is a member of the Communist Party. But your father says many of the people targeted are Party members. They are seen as the persons in authority who have taken the capitalist road. He says he is glad now that he never joined the Party.

April 29th, 1967

They came again today. Oh, Tao. I am so afraid. They have found out that I attended the American university in Beijing before the Liberation, and that my father owned a little land in the north.

They are horrible, these children. Their faces are twisted by anger and hatred. They screamed and shouted at me in our own house. They made Gau Huan, the slow-witted boy they call Tortoise, tear up our family photo album. I don’t think he really knew what he was doing, but he is like a hungry devil who feeds on destruction. I pleaded with them not to do it, and when I tried to stop Gau Huan, the girl, Pauper, struck me with her hand across my face. She hit me so hard I saw stars and black spots in front of my eyes. One of the others, a clever boy called Yue Shi, shouted in my face that I did not have a good class status. I was the daughter of a landlord. I could not choose my class status, but I could choose my future. I was to denounce my family and destroy their ‘black’ history.

They asked about you, Tao. They wanted to know when the ‘black whelp’ was coming home. I screamed at them. I told them you would not be back because you were smarter than they were. I told them they were stupid, and all they could do was destroy things. The girl, Pauper, hit me again.

Hearing the raised voices and my sobbing, your father came out from the bedroom. His face was grey. He had your grandfather’s big, stout walking stick in his hand and he bellowed at the little bastards and told them if they raised a hand to me again he’d beat them to within an inch of their lives.

I think they were startled by his appearance and his anger and the threat of violence. They left, then, but said they would be back. I cried for nearly an hour after they had gone, and your father just sat in the chair by the window and gazed out in silence. I could not get him to speak for the rest of the day.