Anchee Min - Becoming Madame Mao

Without telling a soul I go to the train station. I buy a ticket to Jinan. I don't know why I am running off to Jinan. My grandparents have died and I have long ago lost contact with my mother. But Jinan is my hometown and there is comfort in the idea. After I get off the train I head toward my grandparents' old house where I find a distant relative occupying the place, who doesn't recognize me. I decide to call her Aunt and I ask if I can stay for a while. She welcomes me.

I can't believe it when I receive a message from the manager of the town's only hotel. It is the third day. Tang Nah is waiting in the Railway Inn for me. I am surprised that he has found me. But I refuse to see him. He keeps begging, comes to the neighborhood, walks up and down the street and stands in front of the house. Finally my aunt invites him in.

He looks pale as if his blood has drained out of him. He says he needs to clarify something.

What's the point? We're finished. We can't change ourselves.

He yells loudly, almost screaming, I knew I would not be able to fight fate the moment I met you!

I fail to help myself. It is impossible to gather my thoughts. My will retreats but I manage to say, I won't go back.

He says fine, never mind. It is no problem.

The next morning, the hotel manager runs gasping up to our house. He looks like a man who has lost his soul. We can hardly make sense out of his words. Finally he gets me to understand that Tang Nah has overdosed himself with sleeping pills and is in the hospital.

I rush to his bedside. I call his name. He opens his eyes, tries to force a smile and passes out again. I don't know what to say. After Tang Nah gets out of the hospital I bid my aunt good-bye and go back to Shanghai with him.

Lan Ping moves into Tang Nah's place. They make themselves believe that love will conquer all. While they put on their best behavior they are still on guard. When his body recovers and he wants to make love, she is unable to. He feels her rejection. Her body's coldness, its stiffness. He feels its dying. He weeps. He knows that they can't go on. He gets up and asks if she has forgiven him.

For what? The letters?

It was terrible, he repeats over and over. I was frustrated and drunk. It doesn't mean anything. I don't even know the girl. She could be a prostitute. I don't remember her at all.

He says he is destroying himself-that is who he is without her affection. She says, It is not up to me. My heart has its own way. You see how hard I try. You see I am forcing myself. But my body remembers the hurt. Again it is not up to me. One reaps what one sows.

He gets up and passes into the drawing room, which they share with other tenants. She lies in bed. She is not aware that he is leaving her a note.

She doesn't recall how long it took her to find the note. She followed him as one sleepwalker might follow another, tracing his steps along on the edge of a high roof. The shadow of their past, the ghost of their love must have dragged her. She discovers his note. It says that he is going to kill himself again. There is no other way, the note says. He has to go. That way he will free her from his trouble.

Show my note to the police, so they'll know that it is my own choice to end my life. You may pity me for I am unable to give up this love. Now, finally, you know the truth about me, you know that I am not strong enough for you.

She looks into the crowd, trying to locate him. Finally she sees him, running away from her. She races.

They are face to face. He is stared at by death. Yes, this is the look in his eyes. Stared at by death. She shakes him. He doesn't respond. The buses, bicycles, crowds pass by them. Scenes seem unreal. People, objects move, pull in and out. The suffocation. Slowly everything begins to freeze. The way death stills. She hears her heart's cry.

We will talk, she says.

They are coming down from the peak of their crisis. In Lan Ping it takes the form of fever. She lies in bed in his arms, shivering, collapsing. One moment she cries hysterically, sits up, punches the mattress with her fist. The next moment she passes out, unconscious. He tends her, in repentance. He feeds her porridge the way a mother would her infant. He is at her bedside every time she wakes. Sometimes it is at midnight. Three o'clock in the morning. She opens her eyes, sees him sleep, head over his folded arms, on a stool. In front of him, a bowl of porridge, still warm.

She weeps, doesn't know what to do with him and herself. She feels for him but cannot love a man who has lost his way. The image of the letters haunts her. She pities him, wants to love him back but can't break through the wall. It is impossible to see him in a new light. She can't erase what happened-can't even decide what troubles her most: his infidelity or his attempts to take his own life.

Yet another part of her fights this logic. There are reasons to revive their love. She is attracted to his stubbornness, his doglike loyalty. His willingness to die for her. The way he bluntly said that if love doesn't conquer, then it is not love. She is moved by his faith in love and his promise that he will never abandon her. She is sure there is no other man on earth who would do what Tang Nah does for her. She remembers the unhappiness of living without love. She is not sure which is worse.

They bury themselves in work. He becomes a freelance writer and she still hunts for roles in theater and film, but their loneliness grows. She doesn't want to find out about the girl who wrote the letter, and yet she can't let go. The girl preoccupies her thoughts-the ghost opens a kitchen in her mind and cooks. She can taste her in him sometimes. She is suspicious. She can't stand him touching her. She has lost her desire for him completely.

He goes out, spends evenings with his friends, doesn't stop drinking until he's drunk. In Dan and Junli he finds comfort and understanding. They have been trying to help him locate a staff position on a paper or magazine, but the editors reject him-his suicide attempt is now a household story. In their eyes Tang Nah has sacrificed his dignity.

Interestingly enough, on Lan Ping's part the story increases her popularity and helps her find work. She becomes involved in political low-budget movies produced by independent film-makers. She has had no luck getting roles in mainstream romantic-themed movies. She can't beat those moon-face and vase-body creatures. But the political films serve her well. There is less competition. The producers are unable to get the famous actresses so they turn to the starlets and even unknowns.

China, my country, matters more to me than my personal misfortune. The news of Japan's preparation for further invasion has filled the papers. To my distaste, the Shanghainese are not terribly affected. Seeking pleasure is forever the city's priority. Theaters are still packed for romantic movies. The audience's lives seem to require sucking on illusions. I resent those who play conscience-numbing doctors, those who offer opium-feeding tubes to the masses' brains. Many of them are Tang Nah's friends. Tang Nah hangs out with them to escape his own frustration. He has become a layabout.

Tang Nah no longer answers her challenge. He avoids her. Soon she discovers that he is having an affair again.

She finds herself too hurt to weep. She goes out and walks in the shadows of the streetlights. One night she stops at the door of Zhang Min, the director of A Doll's House. She knocks. He is home and is surprised at her visit. She asks if she can come in. He opens the door, offers a chair, puts out drinks, tells her that his wife and daughter are away. She breaks down, sobbing, tells him her story. He has all the time and attention in the world for her. He has always adored her.