Gao Xingjian - One Man

During the military-control period, Big Li was interrogated in isolation for over two years, then put into a mental institution for two or three years before being released. Big Li recognized him and grabbed him with his big hands, very strong hands, and looked at him gleefully. The people in his former workplace said he had gone crazy, and that whenever he saw anyone, he would just laugh, and this was exactly how he was. They were blocking the footpath of the narrow street, and people were bumping and knocking into them, but Big Li hung onto him and wouldn't let go, all the time with this silly smile on his face. Unable to keep looking at him, he made some idle conversation, then pulled his arms free and hurried off.

After the disbanding of the Army Control Commission, Danian was handcuffed and arrested for committing "wrong-line errors." He was interrogated by the new army officer, and, afterward, declared his crimes at a public meeting: two people had died by his own hands. In the case of Old Liu, he got together a few thugs at night, and, in the underground room of the workplace building, had tortured him to extract a confession. They had used rubber-coated electrical cables on him, and had pulverized his internal organs.

Afterward, they carried him upstairs and threw him out of a window to make it look like a case of suicide. The other person killed by similar tactics was a Chinese woman who had returned from abroad.

She was given electric-shock treatment, to extract a confession. A transformer with the voltage turned down had been used to get her to confess into a tape recorder that she had been sent by a Taiwanese spy organization. She was forced to give the names of the people she had recruited as well as the people in the upper and lower ranks of the spy organization. The names supplied enabled them to proceed with purging cadres in the opposition faction. The former army officer who had taken part in all this was arrested at the same time.

Wang Qi's husband, who had formerly been denounced as an anti-Party black element, was useful again, and, reinstated in the central apparatus of the Party, now took part in the investigation and punishment of new cases of anti-Party organizations. Wang Qi was promoted, but was the same as before, and seemed to be even kinder. During the army-control period, she, too, had been interrogated in isolation and kept in solitary confinement in a small room of a warehouse for half a year. The hundred-watt globe in the ceiling was kept on day and night. The light switch was outside, and the window had been nailed with cardboard from the outside, with no gaps, so she didn't know if it was day or night. She had to write testimonies over and over on the underground student movement in Beijing, known in those days as Beiping. She said she was disoriented and, if she shut her eyes, she would feel that she was hanging by the feet and spinning upside down. Nevertheless, she said she had been treated leniently and had not been subjected to physical abuse or humiliation. This was probably because she was old, and also because some of her old comrades still held important positions in the army and, to some extent, they had looked after her.

The old cadres had mostly been reinstated to their former positions. However, a small number, like the former Party secretary Wu Tao, were too old; arrangements were made for their retirement when they were exonerated, and remuneration, such as salary and housing and the allocation of work for their children, taken care of.

However, a person like Old Tan, who was not a Party member but an insignificant deputy section-chief with a blemished background, remained at the cadre school doing hard manual labor until cadre schools were abolished and reverted to local governments as reform-through-labor farms for criminals. It was then that Old Tan returned to the capital. He was not old enough to retire, and had to wait around to be allocated some kind of work or other.

Lin had divorced and remarried. Her second husband was a newly appointed deputy department-head, whose former wife had died during the Cultural Revolution.

He began to publish his works, became a writer and left that old workplace. Lin had invited him to her home for a meal. Her second husband who was also there commented on literature, "The disaster that our Party has gone through really should be properly written up to educate later generations!"

Lin was in the living room with them, and there was a maid in the kitchen preparing the food. Lin was among the first to use imported perfumes; it was probably a French perfume, one of the latest by Chanel, or some such famous brand anyway.

He was in the process of getting a divorce. His wife, Qian, had written a letter to the Writers' Association, accusing him of reactionary thinking, but had not been able to produce any evidence. He explained that she had become deranged during the Cultural Revolution and was mentally unstable, and she hated him because he had initiated divorce proceedings. Following the decade of the Cultural Revolution, people wanting a divorce were considerably fewer than those wanting to get married, but divorce was common practice.

The law courts, which had just started to function again, couldn't handle all the cases of miscarriage of justice, and didn't want to create new problems, so he was finally able to extricate himself from the marriage. He apologized to Qian for having committed her youth to the grave. Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution alone could not be blamed. He himself was also to blame, although this could not compensate her for her lost youth. Fortunately, the anti-Party spy case against Qian's father was suddenly dropped, and she was able to leave the village and return to be with her father.

He received a letter from Lu, which said, "All the good trees of the mountain have been cut down, and there is no place left for a decaying tree." Lu had turned down an appointment to chair the new Discipline Investigation Committee of the local Party. He said he had retired, just like that. He wanted to build a house on the mountain to live out his old age.

A year later, he had the opportunity to travel south for work, and he made a special trip to see this benefactor who had once protected him. He first went to the county town where his old schoolmate Rong was still living in his thatched hut. In the interim, the roof had been rethatched, but it was again due for replacement. Rong now had another son. In the county town, family planning was not as rigorously enforced as in big cities, and the inspector for the family register was an acquaintance. In any case, Rong had already been living there for twenty years, and his wife was a local, so, after a slight delay, the child was given a residential permit. Rong was still working as a farm technician, and his wife was still selling merchandise in the cooperative shop at the entrance to the county town. She had tried to get a transfer to the department store in the little street behind their house; it was closer and would have been ideal for looking after the two small children at home. She had not given the cadre in charge enough gifts, and wasn't successful. Rong was even more taciturn than before, and there were long periods of silence, when they just looked at one another.

The bus from the county town arrived at the little village, and, as always, people started to surge on board before everyone had got off. The bus left, but he didn't go to the little street or the school.

He was afraid of running into people he knew, then being dragged off for a meal or something. It would not do to visit one family and not another, and he thought that if he went from one place to another, it would take a couple of days. He stood at the bus stop and looked around for someone he knew, so that he could ask where Lu had built his house.