Anchee Min - Becoming Madame Mao

You have arms thin like a thirteen-year-old's. He comes to touch her gently. It's amazing that a woman with such thin limbs bears such full breasts.

Her tears well up.

He asks to be given a chance to understand her sadness.

She says that it would be impossible.

No one can take away my right to be educated. He wipes her tears.

It is me who needs education. She turns away. You are a married man with a family. I should not have made a mess of-

You are not leaving me, Lan Ping.

But Zi-zhen is alive!

He looks at her and smiles almost vindictively.

I can't do this to Zi-zhen, she continues. She has never harmed me.

Strangely she realizes that the line is from a forgotten play except that she has replaced the character's name with Zi-zhen. She starts to put on her clothes and moves out of his bed. He has difficulty looking at her ivory skin. It sets his mind burning. Suddenly he believes that she is going to be the bride of one of his young generals or she is going back to Shanghai.

He reaches for her. In silence she lets him fill her.

After a while he gives up. He rolls over, his face toward the ceiling. Desert me now. Be gone.

Buttoning up her clothes her tears flow. I just don't see a way. I don't want to be a concubine.

He watches her and she can hear the sound of his teeth grinding in his jaw.

A mouse appears on the floor near the wall. It advances, cautiously crosses the floor, then scampers around the foot of the bed and stops. Raising its head, the beanlike eyes stare at the couple.

The sun's rays jump over the floor.

If I can survive the Long March, I can survive losing anything, he murmurs. Like any war there will be casualties. Haven't I seen enough blood?…Do as you please, but please promise that you'll never come back.

She begins to sob uncontrollably.

Let's get over with this mess. You say that I am a married man, but what you mean is that I am a doomed man. Why don't you fire? He puts a hand on her shoulder. Kill me with your coldness.

The best illusionist is one who can explain to you how the trick works and then still make you believe there is magic… She lifts her chin to look at him. This is where I stand at the moment-I still believe that you are meant for me!

Then say you won't leave.

But I must. Oh heaven, I must leave you.

He gets into his shoes and walks away from the bed.

She tries to move but her legs feel heavy.

What's wrong with you? he shouts. Are you a coward? I hate cowards! Don't you hear me? I hate, hate and hate cowards! Go now. Obey my order. Go! Go! Abandon me, abandon Yenan! Out!

She walks toward the door. Her hand feels the knob. She hears him wailing behind her: The war has taken everything away from me, my wives and my children… My heart has been shot through and through. So many times, so many holes, it is beyond repair. Lan Ping, why do you offer a man ginseng soup while making him a coffin!

I am back with my unit. The next day I am assigned to a saomangban -a team that works to "brush away" Yenan's illiteracy. I teach Chinese and math. My students are from the advanced women's platoon. Among them are the wives of the Party's high-ranking officers. It doesn't take me long to learn that Zi-zhen had been their shooting coach.

An older woman comes and grabs me by the wrist. This is how Zi-zhen likes to practice, she says. By the way, Comrade Lan Ping, Zi-zhen is a crack shot. Zi-zhen used to take me to watch her practice. She loves to do it at night. Especially moonless nights. She would light ten torches at about a hundred yards away, then shoot with two pistols. Tatatatata, tatatatata… Ten bullets out, ten torches down. Then she would have me set up another set of torches, then another set… Tatatatata, tatatatata…

The students observe the girl from Shanghai as if watching a peasant skin a snake. The girl refuses to be played. What a woman! What a heroine! Lan Ping fills her voice with admiration.

He sends out Little Dragon to invite me for tea. We are awkward. The invisible Zi-zhen stands between us. While I choose to be silent, he begins to mock. Later on I discover that mocking is his style. He mocks, especially when he intends to punish. He chats warmly. One can never know what is coming.

I was thinking about what you told me the other day about your experience in Beijing. He sips his tea. I'd like to share some of mine with you. It also took place in Beijing. 1918, I was twenty-five years old. I was a part-time student at Beijing Normal University. I worked in the mailroom and the library. My position was so low that people avoided me. I knew then that there was something wrong. For hundreds of years the scholars had moved away from the people, and I began to dream of a time when the scholars would teach the coolies, for surely the coolies deserve being educated as much as the rest.

The truth is that Mao failed to gain any attention in Beijing. The country bumpkin felt humiliated. He was unable to forget the disappointing encounter. Later on it becomes one of his reasons to call for a great rebellion-the Cultural Revolution. It is to punish scholars nationwide for his early suffering. But at the moment, the girl from Shanghai lacks understanding. It will take forty years for her to grasp the story's true meaning. Then she will become his battle horse.

She thinks that he has a way to cheer her up. So she listens.

My own living conditions in Beijing were quite miserable, in contrast to the beauty of the old capital. I stayed in a place called Three-Eyes Well. I was sharing a tiny room with seven people. At night we all packed into the large bed made of earth heated from underneath. There was scarcely room for any of us to turn. I had to warn people on each side of me when I needed to do so.

The girl doesn't care if the man in front of her is describing their future home. Her concern is to make the man remove the woman between them.

Yesterday I felt the warmth of the early northern spring, Mao says. His eyes brighten. The white plums bloom while the ice seals over the Pei Lake. It reminds me of the poem by a Tang poet, Tsen Tsan. Ten thousand peach trees blossoming overnight.

The girl can't understand the charm of the poem, but she senses his feeling from the lines.

The women squat on their heels eating breakfast. Lan Ping stares at her bowl. Her thoughts are on Mao. She watches the women marching and exercising until class time. The women come and sit in rows in front of her. She tries to be vivid and illustrative. The students pay no attention. They begin to discuss among themselves how to weave fancy-patterned baskets.

Listen, I am here to teach you math! I need some respect.

The students turn to her and begin to complain that her voice is too soft. Our hearing has been damaged by Chiang Kai-shek's air raids. You are from the city, you don't know war… One woman suddenly calls the teacher a hypocrite.

This is rude, says Lan Ping.

Rude? The woman spits on the ground. Hypocrite!

The class echoes the woman.

Lan Ping throws the chalk and stops teaching.

The women cheer happily.

Suddenly comes the sound of gunshots.

It's Zi-zhen. The older woman makes a curling gesture with her finger, like pulling a trigger. It's her pistol. Do you know, Miss Lan Ping, that once Zi-zhen almost shot the Chairman?

When? the teacher asks, panicking.

It was when he came to visit her.

Why did she want to shoot him?

Because he was flirting with a lowlife. Zi-zhen always goes after the lowlifes. They make good targets for the crack shot.

I run as fast as I can back to my barracks. I close the door and pour cold water over my face. I know it was not Zi-zhen. Zi-zhen is in Russia. The women, her students, are there to take revenge for her and for themselves. They all would be affected if Mao divorces Zi-zhen. If Mao is allowed to abandon his wife, so are the others.