Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

Eventually, a draft verdict on him was drawn up by the team investigating him. It said that he had 'committed serious political errors' which was one step away from behind labeled a 'class enemy." In line with Party regulations, the draft verdict was given to my father to sign as confirmation that he accepted it. When he read it, he wept.

But he signed.

The verdict was not accepted by the higher authorities.

They wanted a harsher one.

In March 1975, my brother-in-law Specs was up for promotion in his factory, and the personnel officers of the factory came to my father's department for the obligatory political investigation. A former Rebel from Mrs. Shau's group received the visitors and told them my father was 'anti-Mao." Specs did not get his promotion. He did not mention it to my parents for fear of upsetting them, but a friend from my father's department came to the house and my father overheard him whispering the news to my mother. The pain he showed was harrowing when he apologized to Specs for jeopardizing his future. In tears of despair he said to my mother, "What have I done for even my son-in-law to be dragged down like this? What do I have to do to save you?"

In spite of taking a large number of tranquilizers, my father hardly slept over the following days and nights. On the afternoon of 9 April he said he was going to have a nap.

When my mother finished cooking supper in our small ground-floor kitchen, she thought she would leave him to sleep a little longer. Eventually she went upstairs to the bedroom and found she could not wake him. She realized he had had a heart attack. We had no telephone, so she rushed to the provincial government clinic one street away and found its head, Dr. Jen.

Dr. Jen was extremely able, and before the Cultural Revolution he had been in charge of the health of the elite in the compound. He had often come to our apartment, and would discuss the health of all my family, with great concern. But when the Cultural Revolution started and we were out of favor, he became cold and disdainful toward us. I saw many people like Dr. Jen, and their behavior never ceased to shock me.

When my mother found him, Dr. Jen was clearly irritated, and said he would come when he had finished what he was doing. She told him a heart attack could not wait, but he looked at her as if to say that impatience would not help her. It was an hour before he deigned to come to our house with a nurse, but without any first-aid equipment.

The nurse had to walk back to fetch it. Dr. Jen turned Father over a few times, and then just sat and waited.

Another half an hour passed, by which time my father was dead.

That night I was in my dormitory at the university, working by candlelight during one of the frequent blackouts.

Some people from my father's department arrived and drove me home without explanation.

Father lay sideways in his bed, his face unusually peaceful, as though he had gone to a restful sleep. He no longer looked senescent, but youthful, even younger than his age of fifty-four. I felt as if my heart was torn into fragments, and I wept uncontrollably.

For days I wept in silence. I thought of my father's life, his wasted dedication and crushed dreams. He need not have died. Yet his death seemed so inevitable. There was no place for him in Mao's China, because he had tried to be an honest man. He had been betrayed by something to which he had given his whole life, and the betrayal had destroyed him.

My mother demanded that Dr. Jen be punished. If it had not been for his negligence, my father might not have died.

Her request was dismissed as a 'widow's emotionalism."

She decided not to pursue the matter. She wanted to concentrate on a more important battle: getting an acceptable memorial speech for my father.

This speech was extremely important, because it would be understood by everyone to be the Party's assessment of my father. It would be put into his personal file and continue to determine his children's future, even though he was dead. There were set patterns and fixed formulations for such a speech. Any deviation from the standard expressions used for an official who had been cleared would be interpreted as the Party having reservations about, or condemning, the dead person. A draft speech was drawn up and shown to my mother. It was full of damning deviations. My mother knew that with this valedictory my family would never be free of suspicion. At best we would live in a state of permanent insecurity; more likely, we would be discriminated against for generation after generation. She turned down several drafts.

The odds were heavily against her, but she knew that there was a lot of sympathy for my father. This was the traditional time for a Chinese family to engage in a bit of emotional blackmail. After my father's death she had had a collapse, but she ban led with undiminished determination from her sickbed. She threatened to denounce the authorities at the memorial service if she did not get an acceptable valedictory. She summoned my father's friends and colleagues to her bedside, and told them she was putting the future of her children in their hands. They promised to speak up for my father. In the end, the authorities relented.

Although no one yet dared to treat him as rehabilitated, the assessment was modified to one that was fairly innocuous.

The service was held on 21 April. Following the standard practice, it was organized by a 'funeral committee' of my father's former colleagues, including people who had helped to persecute him, like Zuo. It was carefully staged down to the last detail, and was attended by about 500 people, according to the prescribed formula. These were apportioned between the several dozen departments and bureaus of the provincial government and the offices that came under my father's department. Even the odious Mrs. Shau was there. Each organization was asked to send a wreath, made of paper flowers, the size of which was specified. In a way, my family welcomed the fact that the occasion was official. A private ceremony was unheard of for someone of my father's position, and would be taken as a repudiation by the Party. I did not recognize most of the people there, but all my close friends who knew about my father's death came, including Plumpie, Nana, and the electricians from my old factory. My classmates from Sichuan University came as well, including the student official Ming. My old friend Bing, whom I had refused to see after my grandmother's death, turned up and our friendship immediately picked up where it had left off six years before.

The ritual prescribed that one 'representative of the family of the deceased' should speak, and this role fell to me. I recalled my father's character, his moral principles, his faith in his Party, and his passionate dedication to the people. I hoped that the tragedy of his death would leave the participants with plenty to mull over.

At the end, when everyone filed past and shook hands with us, I saw tears on the faces of many former Rebels.

Even Mrs. Shall looked lugubrious. They had a mask for every occasion. Some of the Rebels murmured to me, "We are all very sorry about what your father went through."

Maybe they were. But what difference did that make? My father was dead and they had had a big hand in killing him. Would they do the same thing to somebody else in the next campaign, I wondered.

A young woman I did not know laid her head on my shoulder and sobbed violently. I felt a note being tucked into my hand. I read it afterward. On it was scribbled: "I was deeply moved by the character of your father. We must learn from him and be worthy successors to the cause he has left behind the great proletarian revolutionary cause."

Did my speech really give rise to this, I pondered. It seemed there was no escape from the Communists' appropriation of moral principles and noble sentiments.