Gao Xingjian - One Man

"Get the people of the political department to come forward!"

"Get the people of the political department to come forward to testify!"

"Hand over the blacklist of people targeted for criticism!"

"Only allow leftists to rebel! Don't allow rightists to overturn things!" The person who had shouted this was already charging up to the dais. It was Danian.

"Revolution is not a crime! It is right to rebel!" It was Big Li shouting this slogan, his face red, and he was standing on his seat. He, too, stood up. The meeting had turned into a riot and everyone was standing up.

"I have had thirty-six years in the Party, I have never been anti-Party, and the Party and the people can investigate my history-"

Before Old Liu finished, Danian had jumped onto the dais and seized him.

"Get the hell down! An anti-Party careerist like you, with a landlord father hidden away, has no right to speak!"

Danian had grabbed Old Liu by the shoulders and was pushing him off the dais.

"Comrades! My father is not a landlord. During the War of Resistance he supported the Party and the Party has a policy toward enlightened gentry. This can be checked in the archives-"

The Red Guards who had torn off the armband from the arm of Old Liu's son were on the dais and Old Liu, shoved off the dais, fell to the floor.

"Beating up people is not allowed! It is futile to repress revolutionary mass movements!" He was worked up and could not help shouting out.

"Let's go!" Big Li waved an arm as he gave a yell and, leaping over the backs of seats, charged up to the dais. Their group had also surged onto the dais.

The two groups confronted one another, each shouting slogans and on the brink of fighting. The meeting was a total shambles.

"Comrades, Red Guard comrades, Red Guard comrades on both sides, please go back to your seats-"

Wu was tapping the microphone but nobody took notice, and the cadres of the political department were too afraid to intervene.

Everyone at the meeting was standing up and feverish with excitement. He was on the dais and somehow had grabbed the microphone from Wu's hand and was shouting into it, "If Wu Tao won't capitulate then let him be destroyed!"

The meeting instantly responded in agreement, and he took the opportunity to declare, "The Party committee no longer has authority to hold such meetings to intimidate the masses; if meetings are to be held, they must be convened by us, the revolutionary masses!"

Below the dais everyone was clapping. He had ended the stalemate in the confrontation between the Red Guards and seemed to have become the leader needed by the unruly masses.

The Party secretary who had been deprived of his power to terrorize had become the target of the masses. To protect himself, the senior cadre of the Party Center had dissociated himself from Wu Tao and could not be contacted by telephone. Comrade Wu Tao who had given "wrong instructions," too, had thus become a pawn in the gamble at a higher level of politics.

And how is Margarethe? She had dragged you into a quagmire with writing this damn book. It is hard going forward or backward, but there is no stopping. People are no longer interested in those worn-out stories, and you yourself are fed up with being tormented. Each of her letters to you is signed with a yellow star of David. She never forgets that she is a Jew, but you want to erase the imprints of your suffering.

You phoned her seven, eight, or even ten times but the tape always repeated the same string of long convoluted sentences. You could only make out one German word, bitte… no doubt it was asking you to leave a message, but she didn't ever phone back. In her last letter, she said find yourself a happy woman, she can't live with you. It would be too painful, doubly painful, because she wants a secure family, a child, to be a mother. Can a Jewish child of a Chinese father be happy? The Chinese in her letters was odd, and the characters with strokes missing gave an unfamiliar feeling that was unlike her fluent spoken Chinese, which was intimate and sensual, even in the choice of words. When she talked about the body and sex, she was so natural you could feel her warmth, her moistness.

However, her letters were cold and pushed you away from her flesh and her feelings; they were sarcastic and you couldn't help feeling hurt. As far as you could understand, she was over thirty and couldn't drift through the world not knowing if you would meet next in Paris or in New York, while you, an eternal Ulysses, were on your modern odyssey. Just treat it as a beautiful chance encounter, a beautiful encounter among many. She had given you everything you wanted, so let it stop there, she can not be your woman. Like friends, you simply parted, and maybe it's possible for you to remain friends for a long time, but she doesn't want to be your lover. So, find yourself a French filly to play sex games that will gratify your fantasies, someone who will give you inspiration without adding to your suffering. It won't be hard for you to find such a woman, a prostitute, who takes your fancy. But what she wants is peace and security, a home that can give her warmth and love. She is not searching for suffering, but she can't get rid of it, because she lacks security, and it is this, which you can't provide for her.

But you can't find a woman like her, who will listen to you talk about the hells of the world. People don't want to listen to those rotten old truths and would prefer watching made-up disaster and horror films produced in Hollywood. If you were writing a story about sadistic sex, the lovemaking would excite, and you would enjoy a climax, even if there were no one to talk to and you were just talking to yourself. So you may as well continue by yourself in this observation, analysis, reminiscence, or dialogue.

You must find a detached voice, scrape off the thick residue of resentment and anger deep in your heart, then unhurriedly and calmly proceed to articulate your various impressions, your flood of confused memories, and your tangled thoughts. But you find this is very difficult.

What you seek is a pure form of narration. You are striving to describe in simple language the terrible contamination of life by politics, but it is very difficult. You want to expunge the pervasive politics that penetrated every pore, clung to daily life, became fused in speech and action, and from which no one at that time could escape. You want to tell about an individual who was contaminated by politics, without having to discuss the sordid politics itself. Nevertheless, you must return to his state of mind at that time, and to describe this accurately is even more difficult. The many layers of accreted, intersecting happenings in memory can be easily made to capture the attention of readers, but you want to avoid impurities, because it is not your intention to write stories of suffering. You seek only to narrate your impressions and psychological state of that time, and to do this, you must carefully excise the insights that you possess at this instant and in this place, as well as put aside your present thoughts.

His experiences have silted up in the creases of your memory. How can they be stripped off in layers, coherently arranged and scanned, so that a pair of detached eyes can observe what he had experienced? You are you and he is he. It is difficult for you to return to how it was in his mind in those times, he has already become so unfamiliar. Don't repaint him with your present arrogance and complacency, but ensure that you maintain a distance that will allow for sober observation and examination. You must not confuse his fervor with his vanity and stupidity, or hide his fear and cowardice, and to do this is excruciatingly difficult. Also, you must not become debauched by his self-love and his self-mutilation, you are merely observing and listening, and are not there to relish his sensory experiences.