One Man Read online

  "But didn't your people also search homes when you tyrannized the masses? I doubt that your people were as polite as us," he said with a grin.

  "That was the doing of Red Guards in your workplace. Our Party committee did not decide all that!" Wu insisted.

  "But the name lists were supplied by the political department! Otherwise, how would they have known whose homes to search? Why didn't they search your home?" he asked, staring at Wu.

  Wu kept quiet. He was, after all, experienced in the ways of the world and he even silently escorted them to the gate of the courtyard. But he knew Wu Tao hated him and that, if reinstated, the old scoundrel would have him sent to hell straight away. He had to find enough evidence to get Wu branded as the enemy.

  After returning to the workplace building, he spent the whole night going through Wu's letters and found a family letter referring to Wu as his elder cousin. The letter said, "The People's Government is magnanimous and has been lenient in meting out punishment. However, it is hard for me, because I am sick and have old folks and young children at home. I hope that you, Elder Cousin, will be able to speak on my behalf to the local government authorities." Clearly, this relative had problems with his political history and was seeking Wu's help, but he put the letter into a document envelope and wrote on it "examined." Something had psychologically prevented him from taking the matter further.

  In those times, he hardly went home, and just slept in the office that served as the headquarters of their rebel group. Day and night, there were big and small meetings, liaising with, then breaking off with various people's organizations, and endless internal squabbles within their rebel group. Everyone seemed to be like ants in a hot frying pan, frantically running around and advocating rebellion. The old Red Guards announced they had rebelled against the Party committee and were now known as the Red Revolutionary Rebel Column, and even the political cadres had established their own Battle Corps. However, as people scrambled to find some way out, they were all much the same in their switching of loyalties, betrayal, opportunism, revolution, and rebellion. Once the original network of order and authority had been thrown into disarray, restructuring occurred in all parts of this beehive-like workplace building, and countless secret plots were not confined to this one floor.

  At all the denunciation meetings of the various people's organizations, Wu Tao would, without fail, be hauled out for criticism. Daman 's crowd was savage. Not satisfied with Wu Tao just having to wear a placard, bowing, and hanging his head, they pulled back his arms, forcing him to his knees until he fell flat on the ground-just as they had dealt with Ox Demons and Snake Spirits a few months earlier. Robbed of their political authority by the rebel group, they were reduced to asserting their authority on the person of Wu Tao, this old Party secretary who, discarded by the Party, had become a useless old dog whose bad odor, people feared, might rub off onto them.

  One day, after a snowfall, he saw Wu Tao at the back of the workplace building. He was digging up snow that had become packed solid from people walking on it. Wu heard someone coming and quickly moved out of the way. He stopped and asked, "How are you?"

  The old man held onto his hoe, and, panting for breath, repeated, "Fine, fine. You don't use physical violence, but they do."

  Wu had put on a miserable look just to get on good terms with him, he thought at the time. It was a year later that he began to pity this old man for whom nobody dared to show any concern. The old man swept the yard with a big bamboo broom every morning, always head bowed and wearing a dirty, old, blue jacket with patches. Nobody who went by even so much as glanced at him. Obviously, he had aged a great deal, his shoulders drooped and the skin around his eyes and on his cheeks had become flaccid. It was only then that he began to feel sorry for Wu Tao, although he didn't ever speak to him again.

  The struggles that allowed for only one survivor turned everyone into enemies, and hostility blanketed people like an avalanche. Waves of intensifying winds pushed him to confront one party bureaucrat after another. He did not hate them as individuals, but he wanted to have them branded as the enemy. Were they all enemies? He could not decide.

  "You are being too soft on them! They showed no mercy when they oppressed the masses. Why don't you have the whole lot of those accomplices hauled onto the dais?" Big Li was reprimanding him at an internal meeting of the rebel group.

  "Can you overthrow all of them?" He paused, then retorted, "Can one totally reverse things so that every person who had unjustly denounced others is branded the enemy? People have to be allowed to correct their errors. To win over the masses, some thought has to be given to a strategy for differentiating how people are to be treated."

  "Strategy, strategy, you're just an intellectual!" Big Li, bad-tempered and pushy, said this with derision.

  "Why are we joining up with and taking in just about anyone who comes along? The rebel group isn't a plate of stir-fried vegetables!

  That's the rightist opportunist line, and it will snuff out the revolution!" This older sister, a Party member, had recently joined their command department and she was challenging him. She had studied the history of the Party and was quite radical. The "correct line" struggle had started within the rebel group. "The revolutionary leadership authority must be firmly controlled by authentic leftists and not by opportunist elements!" This Party-member older sister of the rebel group was all worked up and her face was like a red rag.

  "What are you getting up to!" He banged the table. Being in this motley group had made him tough, but he was worried.

  He could not remember how he got through those days and nights of so much endless argument, righteous anger, inflammatory revolutionary words, lust for personal power, stratagems, plotting, collusion and compromise, indignation with ulterior motives, unthinking recklessness, and wasted emotions. Unable to resist, he allowed himself to be manipulated into arguments to challenge the conservative forces and also into endless quarrels within the rebel group.

  "Political power is vital for the revolution. If we don't seize power, our rebelling will be so much wasted effort!" Big Li, enraged, also banged the table.

  "Can you hold onto power if you don't unite with the majority?" he retorted.

  "Unity will only last if it is unity created by struggle!" Little Yu held up Mao's little red book of Sayings to shore up his own weak class origins. "We can't listen to you, because at critical times the intellectuals will always waver!"

  They all regarded themselves as blood-lineage proletariat and believed that this red country should belong to diem. Revolution or rebellion, it finally came down to seizing power. This fact was so simple that it surprised him. But, at the time, he did not know what he wanted, and even his rebelling was a path he had strayed onto by mistake.

  "Comrades, Chen Duxiu failed to seize political power at a critical point of the revolution! He was a rightist opportunist!" The Party-member older sister dismissed him with this reference to Party history, then began shouting slogans to the people at the meeting.

  "All of you who are not for the revolution can get the hell out of here!" the more radical among them shouted along with her. As a late-comer, she was trying to maneuver herself into a leadership position.

  "If you want to be the leader, then go for it!"

  He rose to his feet angrily and left the smoke-filled meeting room where forty or fifty people had been puffing on cigarettes the whole night. In the office next door, he pulled together three chairs and went to sleep. He was upset and confused. If he wasn't a fellow traveler of the revolution, was he then an opportunist rebel? Probably he was, and this was unsettling.

  On the night of that New Year's Eve, the meeting thus unhappily dispersed. In the New Year, sporadic war began between Big Li's crowd and the most radical members of the Battle Corps that had announced a takeover of the paralyzed Party committee and political department.

  "Smash the Party committee! Smash the political department! Revolutionary comrades, do you support or oppose the New Re
d Political Authority? There is a clear line of demarcation between being revolutionary or not!"

  Little Yu was shouting into the broadcast system. Offices had been fitted with speakers, and the announcement of the political coup blared through all the corridors and rooms. Escorted by Big Li, Tang, and some service personnel, a group of old cadres and some young Party branch secretaries all wearing placards on their chests were paraded through the corridors of the entire building. In the lead was Wu Tao, beating on a gong.

  What were they up to? Probably this was precisely how revolutions began. Those once dignified leading cadres who were the embodiment of the Party now filed past, one after the other, heads bowed, abject and wretched. The Party-member older sister led the rebel group with her fist raised and, shaking it, she loudly shouted, "Down with the capitalist road elements in positions of power! Long live the New Red Political Authority! Long live the victory of Chairman Mao's revolutionary line!"

  In imitation of the national leaders at reviews, Tang waved at the people squeezed in the corridors and blocking office doorways. This made some laugh, but made others look grim.

  "We know you are opposed to their seizing power-" the former field officer said.

  "I don't, but I oppose their method of seizing power," he replied.

  The person who approached him had transferred from the army to work as a political cadre. He was only a deputy department chief, and, in the chaos, was eager to advance himself. All smiles, he said, "You've got much more influence with the people than that mob. If you put yourself forward, we will back you. We hope that you will rally a contingent to work with us."

  This conversation took place in the confidential documents room of the political department, a room he had not previously entered. The workplace documents and personnel files, including his own file with a record of his father's problem, were all kept in this place. When Big Li's crowd seized power, they pasted paper seals on the metal security cupboards as well as the locked document cupboards. The seals could be torn off at any time but nobody would dare to destroy the files.

  The former field officer had sought him out in die main dining hall and said he wanted to exchange ideas with him. However, his arranging to meet in this room indicated another motive and, entering the room, he somehow sensed this. He knew who was behind the former field officer, because a few days earlier, the Party-committee deputy secretary, Chen, had given him a signal by putting a big bony hand on his shoulder. Chen formerly headed the workplace political department and seldom spoke or laughed; after being denounced, he had turned stony and cold. Chen had come up to him from behind and, as no one was around, had actually called his name and even addressed him as "comrade." Chen put his hand on his shoulder for one or two seconds, gave a nod, and walked past. This seemingly casual act, however, intimated extraordinary closeness, a pretense of having forgotten that it was he who had denounced Chen at a big meeting. This man far outstripped that motley crowd of rebels in political experience and meanness, yet here he was, stretching out a hand to him. He was by no means an old hand at playing politics, and was not as cunning as this man, but he knew he could not stand in their ranks. He reaffirmed his position, "I don't condone how they have seized power, but that doesn't mean that I am opposed to the general direction of those who have seized power. I definitely support rebelling against the Party committee."

  This pleased the former field officer, who was silent for a while before saying with a nod, "We're also rebelling."

  It sounded as if the man were saying "We're also drinking tea." He laughed, but said nothing.

  "We were just having a casual chat, treat our conversation just now as having never occurred." Having said this, the former field officer stood up.

  He left the confidential documents room, declined their deal, and severed links with them.

  Less than ten days later, in February, after the New Year, the old Red Guards and some political cadres again organized a corps to oppose the seizure of power and smashed the workplace broadcasting station that was controlled by the rebels. The first armed conflict broke out between the two sides, and there were some injuries, but he was not present at the time.

  24

  Is it worth writing pure literature, that pure literary form where style, language, word games, linguistic structures, patterns simply follow their own course, but which is unrelated to your experiences, your life, the dilemmas of life, the quagmire of reality, or you, who are a part of the filth? Pure literature is a subterfuge, a shield, a limitation, and there is no need for you to crawl into a cage demarcated by others or yourself.

  Your writing is not in the cause of pure literature, but neither are you a fighter using your pen as a weapon to promote truth. You don't know what truth is, but you don't need someone else to tell you what is. You know you are certainly not the embodiment of truth, and you write simply to indicate that a sort of life, worse than a quagmire, more real than an imaginary hell, more terrifying than Judgment Day, has, in fact, existed. Furthermore, it is very likely that when people have forgotten about it, it will make a comeback, and people who have never gone crazy will go crazy, and people who have never been oppressed will oppress or be oppressed. This is because madness has existed since the birth of humanity, and it is simply a question of when it will flare up again. Then are you trying to play the role of a teacher? Many have worn themselves out as teachers and preachers, but have people become any better?

  It is best not to strive to make yourself despair, so why go on relating all this misery? You are distressed, but even if you wanted to, you can't stop. You must have this release, it has become an affliction, and the reason, you suspect, is because you yourself have this need.

  You vomit up the folly of politics, yet, at the same time, you manufacture another sort of lie in literature, for literature is a lie that hides the writer's ulterior motive for profit or fame. However, what guides or stops the pen are not utilitarianism and vanity, but a deep, instinctual, animal drive, and differences within the species are due to the persistence of this drive, which is not affected by temperature changes, whether one is hungry or not, or the seasons. It is just like shit; if there is the need to, it is discharged. But it is unlike shit in that it is discharged in different places, and what is discharged must be endowed with sensuality and aesthetic beauty-for example, linking grief to your enjoyment of language. While exposing the land of your ancestors, the Party, the leaders, the ideals, the new people, and also that modern superstition and fraud-revolution-you use literature to create a gauze curtain, so that, viewed through it, that trash can at least be looked at. Hidden on this side of the curtain, in the dark with the audience, you derive pleasure; so doesn't this provide satisfaction?

  Lies are everywhere in the world, and you are similarly creating lies in literature. Animals do not tell lies but exist in the world no matter how it is, whereas humans need to use lies to adorn this forest of humanity, and it is this that distinguishes animals from humans. More cunning than animals, humans need to use lies to conceal their own ugliness in order to seek a reason for living: to articulate pain in order to alleviate pain seems to make pain bearable. In ancient times, the dirges at funerals in the villages had the effect of drugging the senses, and, like the singing of Mass in churches, the singing of these could be addictive.

  Pasolini adapted for cinema Sade's exposes of the evil of political power and human nature; by using only the screen to separate the audience from reality, he made people feel that they were viewing the violence and evil from the outside. That there can be a tantalizing quality in violence and evil is probably the wonder of art and literature.

  Sincerity is the same for the poet and the novelist. The writer hides like a photographer behind the camera, affecting impartiality and detachment behind an objective camera, but what is projected on the negative is still self-love and self-pity, masturbation and sadism. That eye with its pretense of neutrality is driven by all sorts of desires, and what is manifested is tinged
with aesthetic taste while claiming to look with indifference upon the world. It is best that you acknowledge that your writing strives for reality but that it is separated from reality by a layer of language. It is by cloaking naked reality with a gauze curtain, ordering language and weaving into it feelings and aesthetics that you are able to derive pleasure from looking back at it, and are interested in continuing to write.

  You articulate in language your feelings, experiences, dreams, memories, fantasies, thoughts, assessments, premonitions, sensations, as well as providing the music and rhythms for linking these to the existences of real people. In the process of linguistic actualization, the present and past history, time and space, concepts and knowledge, all become fused and leave behind magical illusions created by language.

  The magic of literature lies in willingness on the part of the author and the reader. Unlike political frauds that even the unwilling are forced to accept, literature may either be read or not, there is no coercion. You do not choose literature because of a belief in its purity; for you, it is simply a means of release.

  Also, you are not polemical. You do not extend or amputate according to the other person's height, do not tailor yourself to the framework of theories, do not restrict what you say to what interests others. Your writing is only to bring pleasure and happiness to your life.

  And you are not a superman. Since Nietzsche, there has been a glut of both supermen and common herds in the world. You are, in fact, very ordinary, the epitome of ordinariness and practicality. You are relaxed and at ease, have a smile like Buddha's, although you are not Buddha.

  You absolutely refuse to be a sacrifice, refuse to be a plaything or a sacrificial object for others, refuse to seek compassion from others, refuse to repent, refuse to go mad and trample everyone else to death. You look upon the world with a mind that is the epitome of ordinariness, and in exactly the same way you look at yourself. Nothing inspires fear, amazement, disappointment, or wild expectation, hence, you avoid frustration. If you want to enjoy being upset, you get upset, then revert to this supremely ordinary, smiling, and contented you.