Anchee Min - Red Azalea

I thought I had imagined the voice. I kept still. The voice repeated itself. The sound softer. A Beijing accent. I stood up and was about to switch on the lights. I’d like to smoke in the dark too, the voice said. Can I get a light? I kept still in the dark. Thank you, the voice said. I heard the noise of a person standing up and moving toward me. Who are you? I asked.

I am like you, a set helper, the voice said. How do you do? I saw a cigarette held out to me. I passed him my cigarette. The two cigarettes touched. The smoker inhaled. It was a gentle face that I saw. The face faded back into the dark. My mind went back to its own thinking.

I thought of my parents. I had stopped talking to them. You don’t deserve those dunce caps, my mother said to me over and over. I told her that I was sick of her sense of justice, her fantasy. I told my mother not to interfere with me. I said, Why don’t you ever learn? What’s wrong with you? Is it because your own life hasn’t been miserable enough? My mother said, said in her own logic, I don’t regret a bit about my way of living, because I have been truthful to myself. I could not stand her logic. I said, I don’t want to inherit your life. It is a terrible, terrible and terrible life. I yelled at her. My mother went to take pills. I said, Don’t you see? Can’t you see it’s not working? Your philosophy does not work for me. My mother refused to give up. She said she didn’t believe that evilness should rule. I said, It’s ruling. She said, It’s impossible. I said, I mop floors, don’t you see? She said, What did you do wrong? I said, I wish I knew the answer. My mother started her repetition: Then that shouldn’t have happened to you. I said, It’s happening to me. She said she would like to have a talk with my instructor. I laughed.

The instructors came before my mother gathered her guts to go and confront them. Once again it was Soviet Wong and Sound of Rain who came. They came to put a dunce cap on me. They wanted me to acknowledge a crime I did not commit. They wanted me to say, Yes, I deserve to be kicked out because I am bad. My mother asked, What did my daughter do wrong? You have shielded a wrongdoer, they replied. My mother refused to be confused. She fought to the end. She fought to the last step of the staircase. She said, Tell me what’s wrong with my daughter. They said, Everything. Everything’s wrong with your daughter. She said, Give me an example. They said, We don’t need to. My mother said, Comrade Soviet Wong, I would never ever want my daughter to call you teacher.

My mother followed them out of the lane. She yelled before falling on the cement. She yelled, You can’t make a criminal out of my innocent daughter. My father dragged Mother back upstairs. He said, You are making things worse. Don’t you know they represent the Party? My mother yelled, But I am not guilty. My father pushed her to sit on a chair. My father told my mother the simplest things in the world. The simplest things to make my mother understand the world she was in. My father told her that he himself was just fired by the Shanghai Museum of Natural Science because he disagreed with his Party secretary boss over a technical plan. He was accused of using science to attack the Communist Party. My father told my mother that Coral was forced to become a peasant because I was out of Red Fire Farm. Coral had to become a peasant to meet the Party’s policy. She was working at Red Fire Farm in Company Thirty, the company that had no drinking-water pipe of its own. The Party tells people what to do, not the other way around, my father said. My mother refused to understand her world. She refused to understand the things that did not make sense to her. She shut her senses up because she preferred to live in her own world. She lived with the god of justice. She broke three dishes that night while dishwashing. I woke up in the early morning and found Mother sitting in the kitchen staring at the sinkhole, alone.

Where is your interest? The voice in the dark interrupted my thoughts. I have no interest, I said. I need some comments on a costume I’ve just picked-would you care to give some? the voice said.

The light was switched on. Under the hazy gaslight I saw a man in an ancient red silk robe with an embroidered golden dragon on the chest and silver waves at the bottom. Under a hat decorated with diamonds shone a pair of bright almond eyes. Long and thin eyebrows like the wings of a gliding sea goose. His smooth pale skin shaded mauve on the cheeks. A delicate nose and a tomato-red full mouth. He cited:

I stared at the man. I thought, It must be the makeup. The makeup made him look femininely handsome. Who are you? I heard myself say. I have told you I am a set helper like you. Where are you from? Beijing.

He stepped over to shake hands with me. Staring at his painted face, my mind was occupied by a strange thought: Was he a woman or a man? He seemed to be both. He was grotesquely beautiful. He lowered his head, then looked away, almost bashfully. Lifting his robe carefully, he walked toward the door like a swinging willow-he was wearing costume boots with four-inch heels.

What are you doing here? I asked. Playing, he said. Don’t you remember Chairman Mao’s teaching “Make the past serve the present”? I am playing with that idea. I asked, What do you supervise here? Everything, he said. By the way, how do you like this costume? I told him that it looked unusual. I had the costume man send it to me, he continued. Isn’t it gorgeous? He told me that he was collecting ideas to create good art for the people. He asked me to give opinions on the model operas. I said, How could anyone have any opinions? The Party’s opinion is the people’s opinion. How dare I have my own opinion? I was eliminated by Soviet Wong because I had opinions.

My words just gushed out of my mouth. My anger made me shake. When I spoke of Soviet Wong I became vicious. I expressed my hatred eagerly. I did not care who was listening at that moment. He waited quietly until I emptied my words. I began to regret my impulse. I said, Nine million people watched nine operas in nine years. It is wonderful. In the tenth year, there would be number ten, Red Azalea. I wanted to pronounce Cheering Spear’s name but I could not continue. It hurt me to pronounce this name. My jealousy was indescribable.

You are not speaking your mind, he said. Of course I am, I said. He said, The model operas were created, let me remind you, by Madam Mao, Comrade Jiang Ching. Did that mean no one was supposed to criticize them? That’s right, I said. He laughed, in a womanish silky voice.

He said to me that he had touched a sly mind. He said it was interesting to have a challenge. He had been bored. He took off the costume, the makeup, then put on an indigo Mao jacket. He was a delicate-looking man. I recognized the man I saw when I failed my performance. The Supervisor. He was the one who picked the thief who had stolen my Red Azalea. He liked Cheering Spear. I only wished that I could tell him what Cheering Spear did to me that day. How could I not sound ridiculous? Cheering Spear was fantastic when beating me. Cheering Spear was talented in making my work hers. If I spoke, how could I not make myself look more ridiculous than I already had? The Supervisor asked me if he could have a cigarette. His fingers were fine and smooth like a woman’s. I lit a cigarette and gave it to him. The smoke we exhaled joined in the air.

The next evening he asked if I would sit with him until he finished his cigarette. I said, Fine. We sat in the smoking room. He asked where I lived. I said, On Shanxi Road in an apartment with my family. He asked, How many members? I said, Five at present. He asked, How many rooms do you have? I said, One room and one porch. He said, So you do not get to sleep alone. I said, No, of course not. He said, I see.