Mai Jia - Decoded

Of course, that is not what happened at all — the fact is that Daddy died of a brain haemorrhage.

We debated whether or not we should ask Zhendi to come back — after all he had not been gone for long and he was now attached to a very mysterious and powerful work unit — not to mention the fact that he was so far away — we had already discovered by that time that Zhendi was not at the provincial capital. In the end Mummy decided to call him back. She said, ‘Since his surname is Rong, since he calls me “Mother”, he is our son — his father is dead so of course we ought to call him back.’ So we sent Zhendi a telegram asking him to come back for the funeral.

The person who came was a complete stranger. He brought an enormous wreath of flowers with him, which he laid on behalf of Rong Jinzhen. It was the largest of any of the wreaths at the funeral, not that that was much consolation. The whole thing upset us very much. You see, given what we knew of Zhendi, if it was at all possible he would have wanted to be there in person. He was a very highly principled person: if it was something that he thought was right he would find a way to do it — he was not the sort of person to be put off by inconvenience or difficulty. We thought a lot about why it was that he had not been able to come for the funeral. I don’t know why — maybe it was because the man who came spoke so very evasively — I got the impression that it was most unlikely that Zhendi would ever come back, no matter what happened to the rest of us. He said something about how he was a very close friend of Zhendi’s and was here on his behalf. On the other hand there was also a lot about how he couldn’t answer that question, or that this subject was something he couldn’t discuss, and so on and so forth. The whole thing was very odd; I sometimes even found myself wondering if something had happened to Zhendi — maybe he was dead. Particularly given that afterwards the letters that he sent were so much shorter and came at much longer intervals. It went on year after year — letters came but we never got to see him. I was becoming more and more certain that Zhendi was dead. Working in a secret organization dedicated to preserving the security of the nation is a great honour, a great glory, but it would be perfectly possible for them to give the family of a dead person the impression that he was still alive — that would be one way of showing how powerful they are, how special the work that they do. Anyway, given that Zhendi didn’t come home from one year to the next, given that we never got to see him, never got to hear his voice — I became more and more certain that he was never coming back. The letters did nothing to convince me otherwise.

In 1966, the Cultural Revolution broke out. At the same time, the landmine that fate had planted under my feet some decades earlier exploded. There was a big-character poster put up to criticize me, saying that I was still in love with him (this referred to Master Rong’s ex-boyfriend), and after that there were a number of absolutely outrageous suggestions made. It was said that the reason I never married was because I was waiting for him, that loving him meant that I loved the KMT, that I was a KMT whore, that I was a KMT spy. They said all sorts of horrible things about me, and they were all presented in a very bald way, as incontrovertible facts.

On the afternoon of the day that the big-character poster went up, a couple of dozen students made a confused attempt to surround the house. Maybe thanks to Daddy’s reputation, they did a lot of shouting but they did not break in and drag me away — eventually the chancellor arrived just at the right moment to get them to leave. That was the first time I had ever been in any kind of trouble. I thought that this would be the end of it. They hadn’t behaved too badly, after all.

They came back a little over a month later. This time there were a couple of hundred people. They had a lot of important figures from the university, including the chancellor, under arrest. They burst into the house, grabbed hold of me and dragged me out. They put a dunce’s cap on my head with the words ‘KMT Whore’ written on it and I was thrust into the group who were there to be ‘struggled against’. They were going to start by parading us about the place like criminals, as an example to the populace. When that was over, I was imprisoned in a women’s lavatory, together with a woman professor from the chemistry department who was accused of immoral practices and bourgeois corruption. During the daytime they would take us out and beat us up, at night we were returned to our prison to write self-criticisms. After a while they shaved one half of our heads in the yin-yang style, making us look like nothing on earth. One day, Mummy saw me being struggled against and she was so horrified that she fainted dead away, right then and there.

Mummy was in hospital — I didn’t know if she was alive or dead. I was just one step away from death myself. That evening, I wrote a secret message to Zhendi — just one line: ‘If you are still alive, come back and rescue me!’ I signed it with my mother’s name. The next day, one of my students who felt sorry for me helped me to send it. Once the telegram had gone, I thought out the various possible options. It seemed most likely that I simply wouldn’t hear any response. The next most likely result was — like when Daddy died — that a stranger would come. I couldn’t imagine that Zhendi would be in a position to be able to come himself, not to mention that he would turn up quite so quickly. .

[To be continued]

That day Master Rong and her colleague were being ‘struggled against’ in front of the chemistry department building. The two of them were standing on the steps in front of the main building, wearing tall dunce’s caps on their heads, with heavy placards hung round their necks. There were red flags and posters hung to either side, while massed in front of them were students from the chemistry department and other professors — about two hundred people in all. They were sitting on mats on the ground. The people who had been selected to speak stood up. The whole thing looked to have been very carefully organized.

Starting at 10 o’clock in the morning, they alternated exposés of the pair’s evil actions with interrogations. At midday, they ate lunch on site (it was brought in). Master Rong and the other professor were ordered to recite sayings of Chairman Mao. By the time it got to 4 o’clock in the afternoon, neither of them could stand up any more. Faute de mieux , they were kneeling on the ground. It was then that a jeep with military number-plates drove up. It stopped in front of the chemistry department building, drawing all eyes. Three men got out. Two of them were very tall and they walked on either side of a short man, bracketing him. They marched right into the middle of this ‘struggle session’. When they approached the steps, a couple of the Red Guards on duty that day tried to stop them, asking them who they were. The short man in the middle said aggressively, ‘We have come to take Rong Yinyi away!’

‘Who are you?’

‘The people who are going to take her away!’

One of the Red Guards, incensed by his casual attitude, warnedhim in a loud voice: ‘She is a KMT whore, you can’t take her away!’

The little man glared at him. Suddenly he spat on the ground and cursed: ‘Fuck you! If she is KMT, then what does that make me? Do you know who you are talking to? I am telling you, she is coming with me! Out of my way!’

As he spoke, he pushed the people blocking his path out of the way and marched up to the platform.

It was just at that moment that someone shouted from the back: ‘How dare he curse us Red Guards! Let’s beat him up!’