Gao Xingjian - One Man

You certainly were a clown, otherwise you would have been "dog shit, less than human." Those were Old Man Mao's own words of warning, to draw a line of demarcation between the people and the enemy. Faced with choosing between being dog shit and being a clown, you chose to be a clown. You loudly sang the army song, "Three Main Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention." Like a soldier, you stood to attention before the portrait of the Commander-in-Chief that hung in the middle of the main wall of every office, and, holding high a red plastic-covered copy of Mao's Sayings, you shouted "long live" three times. After the implementation of army control, all this was compulsory daily ritual at the start and finish of work. It was called "seeking instructions in the morning" and "reporting at night."

At such times, you had to be careful not to laugh! Otherwise there would have been dire consequences, unless you were prepared to be a counterrevolutionary and hoped that at some future date you'd become a martyr. The former lieutenant colonel was absolutely correct, he was a clown, but he didn't dare to laugh. It is only you of the present, who recalling those times, can laugh, although you find that you can't.

He was the representative of a group of people's organizations in a ferret-out team controlled by army personnel. When that group of masses and cadres chose him, he knew that his judgment day had come. However, the masses and cadres of the group that looked to him for support did not know that that single item in his file, his father's having "hidden a gun," could see him purged from that one big revolutionary family.

At the meeting of the ferret-out team, Officer Zhang read aloud an "internal control" list-that is, a list of persons on whom internal control was to be carried out. This was the first time he had heard the term, and it gave him a shock. The "internal control" was not directed only at ordinary workers, but included certain Party cadres. The ferreting-out was to start with "bad people" who had infiltrated people's organizations. This was no longer the Red Guard violence of two years ago, or the armed fighting between factions of people's organizations. It was now leisurely, and directed by army personnel, and, like a strategic plan of war, it was planned, coordinated, and fought in stages. The Army Control Commission had removed the seals from the personnel files, and in front of Officer Zhang were piles of materials on people with "problems."

"All of you here are representatives of people's organizations. Comrades, I hope all of you will rid yourselves of any capitalist-class factional feelings, and purge any bad elements who have infiltrated your organizations. We can have only one standpoint, and that is the standpoint of the proletariat. Factional standpoints are not allowed! We will discuss each of these cases, decide whom to put in the first list and whom to put in the second list. Of course, there is also a third list, and whether they are dealt with leniently or harshly depends on whether those persons take the initiative to admit their crimes, and on how they conduct themselves in confessions and disclosures!"

Officer Zhang had a wide face and a square jaw. His eyes swept over the representatives of the various people's organizations as he jabbed a thick finger at the big pile of documents. Then, removing the cover on his cup, he began to drink his tea and to smoke.

He cautiously raised some questions, but only because Officer Zhang had said discussions were allowed. He asked what problems Liu, his former superior and department chief, had apart from a landlord family background? Also, there was a woman bureau chief who, back in those times, had been an underground Party member and organizer of student movements. According to the findings of his group, she had never been arrested, and there were no suspicions of her having been anti-Party or having capitulated to the enemy. Why had she also been listed for special investigation? Officer Zhang turned to him, raised the hand holding the cigarette, and gave him a look. That was when the former lieutenant colonel had rebuked him: "You clown!"

Several decades later, you were able to read a number of memoirs that gradually shed light on the internal struggles within the Chinese Communist Party. At the Political Bureau meetings, Mao Zedong probably gave his generals a look like this if they so much as offered the slightest dissent, then went on smoking and drinking his tea. Other generals would come forth to rebuke them. It was not necessary for the old man to say anything.

You, of course, were not a general. The former lieutenant colonel also yelled at him, "You insect!" Quite right, you were a very small insect. What was your ant's life worth anyway?

After work, he went to get his bicycle from the shed downstairs and ran into Liang Qin, who worked in his office. When he had rebelled two years earlier, it was Liang Qin who had taken over his work. But his life as a rebel had ended. Seeing no one around, he said to Liang, "Go on ahead, but after the intersection slow down. There's something I want to talk to you about."

Liang went off on his bicycle and, afterwards, he caught up.

"Come to my home for a drink," Liang said.

"Who else will be there?" he asked.

"My wife and son!"

"No, it wouldn't be convenient. Let's just cycle and talk like this."

"What is it?" Liang had immediately sensed that something was wrong.

"Do you have any problems in your background?" He didn't look at Liang and asked the question as if it was nothing of importance.

"No!" Liang almost fell off his bicycle.

"Have you ever contacted anyone abroad?"

"I don't have any relatives abroad!"

"Have you ever written letters to anyone abroad?"

"Wait! Let me think____________________"

There was another red light, and they each put a foot on the ground and stopped their bicycles.

"Yes, I have. People at the workplace asked me about it, it was many years ago…" Liang was on the verge of tears as he said this.

"Don't cry, don't cry! You're out on the road…" he said.

At that point, the green light came on, and the tide of bicycles started surging ahead.

"Tell me what else there is to this, I won't implicate you!" Liang had pulled himself together.

"There is talk that you could be a spy, you will need to be careful."

"Where did you hear this?"

He said he didn't know.

"I did, in fact, write a letter to Hong Kong, to a neighbor of mine. We had grown up together, but, later on, one of his paternal aunts got him to go to Hong Kong. I did, in fact, write him a letter asking him to get me a dictionary of English idioms, that was all, and it was many lifetimes ago! It was during the war in Korea, when I had just graduated, I was in the army as an interpreter in a prisoner-of-war camp…"

"Did you receive the dictionary?" he asked.

"No! You're saying… the letter was never sent? Was it intercepted?" Liang went on to ask.

"Who knows?"

"I'm suspected… of having communicated with a foreign country?"

"It was you who said this."

"And do you suspect me?" Liang turned to ask him.

"I'm not going into that with you. Just be careful!"

As a long, two-carriage, electric trolleybus passed close by, Liang swerved and almost collided with it.

"No wonder they transferred me out of the army…" For Liang, everything had suddenly become clear.

"All this is not so important."

"What else is there? Tell me everything, I won't bring you into it, even if they beat me to death!" Liang's bicycle swerved again.

"Don't get yourself killed in the process!" he warned.

"I won't stupidly kill myself! I've got a wife and a son!"

"Just be careful!"

He cycled around the corner. What he didn't say was that Liang's name was on the second list.