Ha Jin: The Crazed

“Yes, I can raise my legs higher than that, no problem,” he said with a wide grin. “I always love Chairman Mao. For him I dare to climb a mountain of swords and walk through a sea of fire. Why don’t you believe me? Why?” His head rocked from side to side.

I was puzzled by his assertion of loyalty to the Great Leader. When he was in his right mind, Mr. Yang had never expressed any deep feelings for Chairman Mao in front of me. Did he really love him? Was this a subconscious emotion that had at last surfaced once his mind failed? Chairman Mao had died twelve years ago; why was Mr. Yang still obsessed with him? Did he really worship him in his heart?

Whatever the truth was, I thought I’d better stop him from hallucinating. He might damage his brain. I shouted, “Hey, Professor Yang, wake up. We’re in the hospital now.”

He made no response and kept singing and “dancing.” I went over, held his wrists, and clapped his hands a couple of times, hoping this might wake him. But it didn’t. He paused, then yelled, “Long live the Communist Party! Down with warlords! Long live the New China!” My mind boggled and I let go of his hands. He must have been imagining himself as a revolutionary martyr being dragged to an execution ground by the police like a hero in a propaganda movie. He was hopelessly crazy.

I hurried out, heading downstairs to the nurses’ station. I knew Dr. Wu often prescribed sedative-hypnotic drugs for Mr. Yang.

I expected to find Hong Jiang in the office, but the small woman wasn’t there. A nurse in her mid-twenties sat on a broad windowsill, her unbuttoned robe revealing her sea-green dress. Her hands were busy embroidering a butterfly on a white tablecloth. On her right, toward the corner and against the baseboard, stood a line of scarlet thermoses containing boiled water, their mouths emitting tiny hisses. She recognized me but didn’t budge, as if I were one of the nurse’s aides hired to do cleaning. Her large eyes were fixed on the needle-work in her long, rosy fingers; the butterfly, as large as a palm, was still missing a wing. Ignoring her slight, I walked up to her and asked if she was in charge of Mr. Yang’s medication.

“Uh-huh,” she said without lifting her eyelids. Overhead a fluorescent tube was blinking with a faint ping-ping-ping sound.

“My teacher has gone berserk today,” I told her. “He’s been singing and raving like a madman. Can you sedate him?”

She only half listened and didn’t respond, so I repeated my request. After a few more stitches, she placed the tablecloth on the sill. She yawned but immediately clapped her narrow hand on her mouth. “I’m so tired,” she said, smiling feebly. “You know what? We tried to give him a sedative pill this morning. I mean your classmate Comrade Fang and I tried, but your teacher thought we were going to poison him and yelled for all he was worth. We couldn’t force him to take the medicine, you know. That would’ve agitated him more.”

“Can you give him another tablet now?” I asked.

“Well, I have no right to give him anything.”

“But Dr. Wu often prescribes drugs for him, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, but he’s not here.”

“Please help me calm him down, I beg you. I’m afraid he’ll hurt his brain if he goes on like this.”

“Well, maybe we can put a pill into his porridge at dinner.”

She squinted her left eye, then winked at me, as if asking, Isn’t this a smart idea?

“But he’s running wild now,” I said. “Dinner’s still three hours away. Can’t you give him an injection or something? Help him, please!”

“You’re a pretty good student,” she said dryly. She came down from the windowsill and went over to the long desk, on which sat a few shiny metal cases and a row of amber bottles containing drugs, all with glass stoppers in their mouths. She picked up the phone and called the doctor.

I felt relieved to see her jotting down a prescription. She hung up, selected two ampules of medicine, and wrapped up an injection kit. Together we headed out. On our way upstairs, she told me that her name was Mali Chen and that she had just graduated from a nursing school in Shanghai. A metropolitan girl, I thought, no wonder she looks frail and anemic.

Opening the door of the sickroom, I was surprised to see Mr. Yang sitting on the bed with one foot tucked under him. Strands of gray hair stuck out above his temples, making his face appear broader. How could he sit up by himself? Had somebody slipped in when I was away? Impossible. He must have done this on his own.

Mr. Yang was still humming something that I couldn’t make out at first. Then lifting his voice, he chanted in gasps, “How powerful the tall cranes are! They can pick up tons of steel easily. .”

I realized he was impersonating the retired stevedore in an aria from the revolutionary opera The Harbor, praising the brawn of some newly installed cranes, but his voice was too smooth and too thin to express the proletarian mettle. I hadn’t known he could sing Beijing opera. He had seldom gone to the theater and must have learned the snatch from the radio.

“See, the pill is still here,” Nurse Chen said to me and pointed to a small cup on the bedside cabinet. It contained a large yellowish tablet, probably barbiturate.

While she was preparing the injection, I removed the quilt from Mr. Yang’s legs and got hold of the string of his pajamas, which was a long shoelace. He stopped short. Before I could untie his pants, he opened his eyes — only to see the syringe spurting a white thread of liquid. His face turned horror-stricken, though Nurse Chen forced a smile and said enticingly, “Well, Professor Yang, it’s time to have some—”

“Help! Help! Mur-der! They want to poison me!” he screamed, his eyes glinting. He kicked his right leg but was unable to raise his arms. He was gasping, agape like a spent fish.

The nurse looked scared, her eyebrows pinched together. She turned to me and asked, “Do you think we can still make him take the needle?”

I didn’t answer. Mr. Yang kept howling, “Save me! They’re assassinating me!”

“Stop this, please!” I begged him in an undertone.

“Help me!”

“You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”

“Don’t kill me!”

Nurse Chen took apart the syringe, dropped the needle back into the oval metal case, emptied the medicine into the spittoon, and wrapped everything up. “I think we’d better leave him alone,” she said with a toss of her head. “Let him cool off by himself. Every time we try to put him to sleep, we only upset him more.”

I said nothing. Anger was surging in my chest, but I checked my impulse to yell at him.

“Well now, I must be going,” she continued. “Don’t disturb him. It’ll take a while for this one to become himself again.” She put the injection kit under her arm and said to me casually, “Bye-bye now.” She left, her heels clicking away toward the stairwell.

Professor Yang started sobbing; tears leaked out of his closed lids, trickling down his cheeks and stubbly chin. He whimpered something incoherently. I listened for a moment and felt he seemed to be begging mercy from someone, who might be an imagined murderer. He went on wagging his head and grunting like a piglet; his words had turned to gibberish.

This mustn’t continue. I decided to give him the sedative pill no matter how hard he resisted. With a spoon I set about grinding the tablet in the porcelain cup until it became powder. On the cabinet stood an opened bottle of orangeade. I poured some of it into the cup and stirred the concoction for a minute, then sat down beside him. “Mr. Yang, drink this please,” I pleaded and raised the cup to his lips.

He opened his eyes and saw the juice. He said, “You want to poison me, I know. I refuse to take it.”