Ma Jian - Red Dust

Silence.

Then Chairman Liu explodes. ‘You know very well what you have been up to, Ma Jian! Your free-wheeling tendencies have gone far beyond the type of behaviour we expect from a healthy young socialist! Think of those cover designs and photographs — without the leaders’ scrutiny and advice, imagine what the consequences could have been! You do not understand how deeply you have been poisoned by bourgeois Spiritual Pollution!’

Director Zhang’s eyes are red with fury. ‘Those furtive friends of yours, with their long hair and denim jeans, like toads in their dark glasses. They visited you during office hours and delivered a bucket of petrol. The security office knows all about it.’

‘We were going to the reservoir that Sunday. One of us made dumpling soup, one of us borrowed a car, someone else bought the petrol. There was nothing sinister about it.’

‘The bucket was placed in the basement.’

‘Are you suggesting we were trying to blow up the building?’

‘You know perfectly well what you were trying to do.’

‘Of course I do. If he had brought the bucket to my house, would you accuse me of plotting to blow myself up?’

Lin Zhenyu catches Chairman Liu’s eye. ‘I would like to say a few words, chairman. I visited Young Ma’s room when he lived in the dormitory block. There were paintings everywhere. Young Ma is certainly keen on art, but in my opinion, not one of his paintings conveys the joy and excitement of life under the Four Modernisations. I asked why a face in one of his paintings looked like the face of a corpse. He laughed and said everyone puts on a mask but underneath our souls are ugly shameful things. He said we are born in a daze and die in a dream. His decadent thoughts have cut him off from social realities. He sees life as a great blackness. I feel he should confront his disturbed psychology.’

Guo Xiaomei raises her hand. ‘I will say something too. Young Ma works very hard. I often go to the printers with him to check proofs. But today we are here to offer him advice. I think he is too arrogant sometimes, and he doesn’t like taking orders. Those photographs he took at Spring Festival — the pictures of dumpling-making were fine, but the exterior shots of workers drawing money from the bank or strolling through the park were of very poor quality. He insisted on using them though, and a week later our department received a written complaint from Deputy Qian.’

Another colleague pipes up. ‘Ma Jian has told us how able he is, so perhaps he will find my suggestion superfluous. I do not understand his spare time activities, but I feel he should take care to distinguish between the greater duty he owes to the Party and the Motherland, and the lesser duty he owes to himself. Young Ma often reads modern novels. We were travelling on a minibus once with a group of foreign delegates, and I caught him reading The Catcher in the Rye. I told him we should stick to foreign affairs protocol but he said, "We’re on a bus, the foreigners are snoring, so what are you afraid of?" Sometimes he talks to me about modern literature. He says that socialism has alienated people’s minds. Of course we work in different departments, so I don’t know him very well.’

The thick tobacco smoke slowly warms the air. No one dares look at me when they speak, but I feel their eyes bore into every inch of my flesh.

‘Listen to me, Ma Jian. You are the only person in the entire federation to have been called into the Public Security Bureau. Chairman Liu fought hard to give you this chance today. We know you have talent for propaganda work, but the paintings in your room are in very poor taste. They have affected your work. We are still trying to save you from arrest, but. .’

A sudden rage overtakes me. I clench my fists and shout, ‘If you don’t shut your mouth, Director Zhang, I will throw you out of the window!’ I pause and try to compose myself. ‘Please excuse me, I must go now. I have to fetch my mother from the train station. You can mark me down as absent today.’

Slowly my world closes in. When I queue for lunch in the cafeteria, everybody looks away. There are a thousand employees in this building. I hear them crack jokes in the corridor, drop their children off at nursery, collect post from the mail room, but not one of them will talk to me. Just once, when I am waiting for the lift, a voice behind me whispers, ‘You were right.’ I turn round, and the man looks away. It is the graduate from Beijing University who has recently joined our English section.

One morning in late December, I step into the corridor and pin a notice to the wall. ‘Open letter to the foreign propaganda department. The leaders do not support my work. They are trying to muzzle me.’ The security office removes the notice and summons me in for a talk. They inform me that from now on I must turn up for work on time and not take any more sick leave.

After lunch, as I sit at my desk reading my post, Director Zhang walks in and says, ‘You are wanted at the Public Security Bureau.’ I look round and see two policemen standing in the doorway.

It is dawn three days later before I am finally released from the Western District Public Security Bureau. The officer who walks me to the gates says, ‘Don’t look so pleased with yourself. If we want to, we can make you slowly disappear.’

The sky is still dark. A horse-driven muck cart moves down the street leaving a foul stench in the cold air. Cyclists swish by on their way to work, their faces a blur. A road sweeper whisks his brush over the frozen asphalt. The noise echoes between the high walls and the black buildings behind. The morning buses have not started yet. I stand for a while at the bus stop, then walk on.

It is a long walk home. I will have to cross the entire city. My legs feel weak. A cold shiver runs down my spine. I see a truck parked in a side alley and walk towards it. There is no one inside, so I take a crowbar from the back, prize the cabin door open and lie down across the seats.

Scenes from last night flit through my mind. The interrogator put his legs on the table and stroked his cup of tea. He wore black-rimmed glasses. The table was laden with reports from my neighbours, my self-criticism, my keys, the contents of my pockets and the belt and buttons removed from my trousers to stop me from running away. He kept repeating, ‘Think carefully. If you had done nothing wrong, why would you be here? Confess now and we will be lenient. Just stop playing the bloody fool.’

‘I have nothing to confess.’

‘Did you kiss Lu Ping or not?’

‘No, she just came to my house to pose for the photographs.’

‘And why did she take her clothes off?’

‘I told you — my old work unit commissioned me to take the pictures last year for a product catalogue. It was all above board. Anyway, you couldn’t see her body, only her hands and the candle were in focus.’

‘Still, you don’t need naked women to advertise candles. What happened after you took the pictures?’

‘She put her clothes on and said, "That was quick." ‘

‘And what did you do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Wipe that smirk off your face, you smug bastard. You think you’re something special with your long hair and denim jeans. Well, you can’t get away with that here! If you were such an upstanding citizen, how come we have received so many reports on you? We released you two years ago to give you a chance to prove yourself. But look what I have here: "Long-haired man, about forty, visited him twice in his office. . A woman seen sauntering in and out of his house all day." Can you explain why the people have chosen to pick on you in particular?’

‘That was my sister they were talking about. She often stays with me. The neighbours must have seen her using the tap in my yard.’