Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

That evening, my mother went to see an old colleague of hers and showed him Zhou's note. Chen Mo had worked with my parents in Yibin in the early 1950s, and got on well with both of them. He had also managed to maintain a good relationship with the Tings, and when they were rehabilitated he threw in his lot with them. My mother asked him, in tears, to help secure my father's release for old times' sake, and he promised to have a word with the Tings.

Time passed, and then, in April, my father suddenly reappeared. I was tremendously relieved and happy to see him, but almost immediately my joy turned to horror.

There was a strange light in his eyes. He would not say where he had been, and when he did speak, I could hardly understand his words. He was sleepless for days and nights on end, and paced up and down the apartment, talking to himself. One day he forced the whole family to go and stand in the pouring rain, telling us this was 'to experience the revolutionary storm." Another day, after collecting his salary packet, he threw it into the kitchen stove, saying that this was 'to break with private property." The dreadful truth dawned on us: my father had gone insane.

My mother became the focus of his madness. He raged at her, calling her 'shameless," 'a coward," and accusing her of 'selling her soul." Then, without warning, he would become embarrassingly loving toward her in front of the rest of us saying over and over again how much he loved her, how he had been an unworthy husband, and begging her to 'forgive me and come back to me."

On his first day back he had looked at my mother suspiciously and asked her what she had been doing. She told him she had been to Peking to appeal for his release. He shook his head incredulously, and asked her to produce evidence. She decided not to tell him about the note from Zhou Enlai. She could see he was not himself, and was worried he might hand in the note, even to the Tings, if 'the Party' ordered him to. She could not even name Yan and Yong as her witnesses: my father would think it was wrong to get involved with a Red Guard faction.

He kept coming back to the issue obsessively. Every day he would cross-examine my mother, and apparent inconsistencies emerged in her story. My father's suspicion and confusion grew. His rage toward my mother began to verge on violence. My siblings and I wanted to help my mother, and tried to make her story, about which we were vague ourselves, sound more convincing. Of course, when my father started to question us, it became even more muddled.

What had happened was that while my father was in prison, his interrogators had constantly told him he would be deserted by his wife and family if he did not write his 'confession." Insisting on confessions was a standard practice. Forcing victims to admit their 'guilt' was vital in crushing their morale. But my father said he had nothing to confess, and would not write anything.

His interrogators then told him that my mother had denounced him. When he asked for her to be allowed to visit him, he was told she had been given permission, but had refused, to show that she was 'drawing a line' between herself and him. When the interrogators realized that my father was beginning to hear things a sign of schizophrenia- they drew his attention to a faint buzz of conversation from the next room, saying that my mother was in there, but would not see him unless he wrote his confession. The interrogators play-acted so vividly that my father thought he really heard my mother's voice. His mind began to collapse. Still he would not write the confession.

As he was being released, one of his interrogators told him he was being allowed home to be kept under the eyes of his wife, 'who has been assigned by the Party to watch you." Home, he was told, was to be his new prison. He did not know the reason for his sudden release, and in his confusion he latched onto this explanation.

My mother knew nothing about what had happened to him in prison. When my father asked her why he had been released, she could not give him a satisfactory answer. Not only could she not tell him about Zhou Enlai's note, she could not mention going to see Chen Mo, who was the right-hand man of the Tings. My father would not have tolerated his wife's 'begging for a favor' from the Tings.

In this vicious circle, both my mother's dilemma and my father's insanity grew, and fed off each other.

My mother tried to get medical treatment for him. She went to the clinic that had been attached to the old provincial government. She tried the mental hospitals. But as soon as the people at the registration desks heard my father's name, they shook their heads. They could not take him without sanction from the authorities and they were not prepared to ask for that themselves.

My mother went to the dominant Rebel group in my father's department and asked them to authorize hospitalization. This was the group led by Mrs. Shau, and firmly in the hands of the Tings. Mrs. Shau snarled at my mother that my father was faking mental illness in order to escape his punishment, and that my mother was helping him, using her own medical background (her stepfather, Dr. Xia, having been a doctor). My father was 'a dog that has fallen into the water, and must be flogged and beaten with absolutely no charity," said one Rebel, quoting a current slogan vaunting the merciless ness of the Cultural Revolution.

Under instructions from the Tings, the Rebels hounded my father with a wall-poster campaign. Apparently, the Tings had reported to Mme Mao the 'criminal words' my father had used at the denunciation meeting, in his conversation with them, and in his letter to Mao. According to the posters, Mme Mao had risen to her feet in indignation and said, "For the man who dares to attack the Great Leader so blatantly, imprisonment, even the death sentence, is too kind! He must be thoroughly punished before we have done with him!"

The terror such wall posters induced in me was immense. Mme Mao had denounced my father! This was surely the end for him. But, paradoxically, one of Mme Mao's evil traits was actually to help us: Mme Mao was more dedicated to her personal vendettas than to real issues, and because she did not know my father and had no personal grudge against him, she did not pursue him.

We were not to know this, however, and I tried to take comfort in the thought that her reported comment might only be a rumor. In theory, wall posters were unofficial, since they were written by the 'masses' and not part of the official media. But, deep down, I knew that what they said was tale.

With the Tings' venom and Mme Mao's condemnation, the Rebels' denunciation meetings became more brutal, even though my father was still allowed to live at home.

One day he came back with one of his eyes badly damaged.

Another day I saw him standing on a slow-moving truck, being paraded through the streets. A huge placard hung from a thin wire that was eating into his neck, and his arms were twisted ferociously behind his back. He was struggling to keep his head up under the forceful pushing of some Rebels. What made me saddest of all was that he appeared indifferent to his physical pain. In his insanity, his mind seemed to be detached from his body.

He tore to pieces any photographs in the family album which had the Tings in them. He burned his quilt covers and sheets, and much of the family's clothing. He broke the legs of chairs and tables and burned them, too.

One afternoon my mother was having a rest on their bed and Father was reclining on his favorite bamboo armchair in his study, when he suddenly jumped up and stamped into the bedroom. We heard the banging and dashed after him and found him gripping my mother's neck. We screamed and tried to pull him away. It looked as if my mother was going to be strangled. But then he let go with a jerk, and strode out of the room.