One Man Page 7

  "Then do you need to suffer?" you ask.

  "It's not a question of need. The pain actually exists."

  "So, do you want to take all of humankind's sufferings upon yourself? Or at least the sufferings of the Jewish race?" you respond.

  "No, that race ceased to exist a long time ago, it has scattered all over the world. I am simply a Jew."

  "Isn't that better? It's more like a person."

  She needs to affirm her background, and what can you say to that?

  What you want is precisely to remove the China label from yourself.

  You don't play the role of Christ, and don't take the weight of the cross of the race upon yourself, and you're lucky enough not to have been crushed to death. She's too immature to discuss politics and too intelligent to be a woman. Of course, you don't say the last two things out loud.

  A few trendy Hong Kong teenagers arrive. Some of them have their hair tied in ponytails, but they are all men. The tall blond waitress seats them at the table next to yours. One of them says something to the woman, but the music is too loud, and she has to bend down. After listening, she smiles, showing her white teeth that glow in the fluorescent lights, and then moves another small, round table: apparently others are coming. A male couple, gently stroking each other's hands, is ordering drinks.

  "After 1997, will they still let homosexuals meet publicly like this?" she moves close and asks in your ear.

  "In China, it's not just a matter of not being able to meet publicly. If homosexuals are discovered, they are rounded up as vagrants and sent off to labor camps, or even executed." You had seen some Cultural Revolution cases in internal publications from the Public Security Office.

  She moves away and leans back but doesn't say anything. The music is very loud.

  "Shall we go out for a walk in the street?" you suggest.

  She pushes away the almost empty glass and stands up. Both of you go out the door. The little street, a blaze of neon lights, is thronging with people. There are bars one after another, as well as some elegant cake shops and small restaurants.

  "Will this bar still exist?" She is obviously asking about after 1997.

  "Who knows? It's all business, as long as they can make a profit.

  The people here are like that, they don't have the guilt complex of the Germans," you say.

  "Do you think all Germans have a guilt complex? After the Tiananmen events of 1989, the Germans kept doing business with China."

  "Do you mind if we don't discuss politics?" you ask.

  "But you can't escape politics," she says.

  "Could we escape for a little while?" you ask her very politely and with the hint of a smile.

  She looks at you, laughs, and says, "All right, let's have something to eat. I'm a little hungry."

  "Chinese food or Western food?"

  "Chinese food, of course. I like Hong Kong, it's always so full of life, and the food is good and cheap."

  You take her into a small, brightly lit restaurant, crowded and noisy with customers. She addresses the fat waiter in Chinese, and you order some local dishes and a bottle of Shaoxing rice liquor. The waiter brings a bottle of Huadiao in a pot of hot water, puts down the pot as well as two cups, each containing a pickled plum. He says with a chuckle, "This young woman's Chinese is really-" He puts a thumb up and says, "Wonderful! Wonderful!"

  She's pleased and says to you, "Germany is too lonely. I like it in China. In Germany, there is so much snow in winter, and, going home, there is hardly anyone on the streets, they're all shut up in their houses. Of course, the houses are large and not like they are in China, and there aren't the problems you've mentioned. I live on the top floor in Frankfurt, and it's the whole floor. If you come, you can stay at my place, there'll be a room for you."

  "Won't I be in your room?"

  "We're just friends," she says.

  When you come out of the restaurant, there's a puddle on the road, so you walk to the right and she to the left, and the two of you walk with a distance between you. Your relationships with women have never been smooth, you always hit a snag and are left stranded. Probably nothing can help you. Getting someone into bed is easy, but understanding the person is difficult, and there are only ever chance encounters that provide temporary relief from the loneliness.

  "I don't want to go back to the hotel right away, let's take a walk," she says.

  Behind big front windows, the bar by the footpath is dimly lit and people are sitting around small tables with candles.

  "Shall we go in?" you ask. "Or would you like to go somewhere by the sea where it will be more romantic?"

  "I was born in Venice, so I grew up by the sea," she replies.

  "Then you should count as Italian. That's a beautiful city, always bright and sunny."

  You want to ease the tension and say that you have been to Piazza San Marco. At midnight, the bars and restaurants on both sides of the square were crowded, and musicians were playing in the open air on the side near the sea. You remember they were playing Ravel's Bolero and it drifted through the night scene. The girls in the square bought fluorescent bands from peddlers and wore them on their wrists, around their necks, in their hair, so green lights were moving everywhere. Beneath the stone bridges going out to sea, couples sat or lay in gondolas, some with little lanterns on their tall prows, and, rowed slowly by the boatmen, they glided toward the black, smooth surface of the sea. Hong Kong lacks this elegance but it is a paradise for food, drink, and commodities.

  "All that's for the tourists," she says. "Did you go as a tourist?"

  "I couldn't afford to be a tourist. I had been invited by an Italian writers' organization. I thought at the time it would be good to settle in Venice and find myself an Italian woman."

  "It's a dead city with no vitality, which relies on tourists to keep going, it has no life," she cuts in.

  "Still, people there lead happy lives."

  You say that when you got back to the hotel, it was well after midnight, and no one was on the streets. In front of the hotel, two Italian girls were amusing themselves by dancing around a tape recorder on the ground. You watched them for quite some time; they were really happy and even tried to get you to talk and laugh with them.

  They were talking in Italian, and, even though you couldn't understand them, you could tell they were not tourists.

  "Just as well you couldn't understand them, they were just baiting you," she says coldly, "they were a couple of prostitutes."

  "Probably," you say, thinking back, "but they seemed passionate and very lovely."

  "Italians are all passionate, but it's hard to say if those women were lovely."

  "Aren't you being overly critical?" you say.

  "You didn't hire them?" she asks instead.

  "I wouldn't have had the money," you say.

  "I'm not a prostitute," she says.

  You say it was she who started talking about Italy.

  "I've never been back."

  "Then let's stop talking about Italy."

  You look at her and feel dejected.

  You return to the hotel and go to your room.

  "How about if we don't make love?" she says.

  "All right, but the double bed can't be separated."

  You don't make a move.

  "We can each sleep on our sides of the bed and we can sit up to talk."

  "Talk until morning?"

  "Haven't you ever slept with a woman without touching her?"

  "Of course, with my former wife."

  "That doesn't count, that was because you no longer loved her."

  "It wasn't only a case of not loving her, I was also afraid she'd expose-"

  "Your relationships with other women?"

  "At the time it was impossible to have other women. I was afraid she'd expose my reactionary thinking."

  "It was also because she didn't love you."

  "It was also because she was terrified; terrified I would bring disaster upon her."

>   "What kind of disaster?"

  "It's impossible to explain in a few words."

  "Then it's best not to try. Haven't you ever slept with a woman you loved or liked and not made love?"

  You think about it and say, "Yes."

  "That was the right thing to do."

  "How was it the right thing to do?"

  "You must have respected her, respected her feelings!"

  "Not necessarily. If you like a woman and don't touch her-that is, when you are sleeping in the same bed-it's very difficult." For you, anyway.

  "You're quite honest," she says.

  You thank her.

  "No need, there's no proof yet, let's see."

  "It's the truth, it actually happened. Afterward I regretted not having touched her but I was no longer able to find her."

  "In other words, you respected her."

  "No, it was also because of fear," you say.

  "Fear of what? Fear that she would report you?"

  You say it was not that former wife of yours, it was another woman. She would not have reported you. She was the one who had taken the initiative and, of course, you wanted to, but you were too afraid.

  "Why?"

  "I was afraid of being discovered by the neighbors. Those were terrifying times in China, I don't want to talk about those old happenings."

  "Talk about them, you will feel better after you talk about them."

  She seems to understand something of the human mind.

  "But just don't talk about women." You think she's acting like a nun.

  "Why not talk about women? Whether it's a man or a woman, they're human in the first instance and it's not only a sexual relationship. You and I should be the same."

  You don't know what you should talk about with her. In any case, you can't immediately get into bed, so you try studying the well-ordered strokes in the set of color woodcut prints in gilded frames on the wall.

  She removes the clasp in her hair, and her hair tumbles down.

  While taking off her clothes, she says her father went back to Germany afterward. Italy was poor, and it was easier to make money in Germany.

  You don't ask about her mother, you remain carefully silent and try not to look at her. You think it's impossible to relive the beautiful dream of yesterday.

  She takes a robe into the bathroom, leaving the door open, and, running the water, goes on to say, "After my mother died, I went to Germany to study Chinese; the Chinese programs in Germany are quite good."

  "Why did you study Chinese?" you ask.

  She says she wanted to distance herself from Germany. When a new fascism reared its head, they would again report her. She was referring to the neighbors in her street, the cultivated ladies and gentlemen she had to acknowledge with an insipid hello when they met outside. If she came upon them on weekends, while they were polishing their cars-their cars were as shiny as leather shoes-she'd have to stop to say a few words to them. But some day, as happened in Serbia not long ago, they or their children would betray, expel, gang-rape, and murder Jews.

  "Fascism wasn't only in Germany, you never really lived in China. Fascism was no worse than the Cultural Revolution," you say coldly.

  "But it wasn't the same. Fascism was genocide, it was simply because one had Jewish blood in one's body. It was different from ideologies and political beliefs, it didn't need theories." She raises her voice to argue.

  "Your theories are dog shit! You don't understand China at all and you haven't experienced the Red Terror. It was an infectious disease that made people go mad!" You suddenly lose your temper.

  She says nothing, and, wearing a loose gown and holding the bra she has taken off, she emerges from the bathroom, shrugs her shoulders at you, and sits on the bed, head bowed. With eye makeup and lipstick removed, her face is pale but it has a more feminine softness.

  "Sorry, sexual repression," you explain with a bitter smile. "You go to sleep." You light a cigarette.

  She stands up, walks over to you, presses you against her soft breasts, fondles your head, and says quietly, "You can sleep next to me but I don't have any lust, I just want to talk with you."

  She needs to search for historical memories, and you need to forget them.

  She needs to burden herself with the sufferings of the Jews and the racial humiliation of the Turks, but you need to receive from her body a confirmation that you are living at this instant.

  She says, right now she has no feelings.

  9

  Late at night, after the criticism meeting at the workplace had ended, he went back to his room. Old Tan, who shared the room with him, had been locked up for interrogation in the meeting room of the workplace building, and would not be returning. He locked the room, lifted a corner of the curtain to see that all the lights were out in the neighboring homes of the courtyard, closed the curtain and carefully checked that there were no gaps. He then opened the coal stove, put a bucket next to it, and began to burn his manuscripts: a pile of diaries, and notes in several dozens of books of all sizes that he had kept since his university days. The belly of the stove was very small, and he had to pull apart a few pages at a time, then wait for the scorched paper to burn thoroughly and become white ash, before shoveling it into the bucket. The ash was ground to a paste: not the smallest fragment of unburned paper must remain.

  An old photograph taken with his parents fell out of a diary. His father was wearing a suit and tie, and his mother was wearing a qipao. When his mother was alive and took out the clothes from the chest to air them, he had seen this silk qipao with orange-yellow flowers on an ink-blue background. In this faded photograph his parents were leaning against one another and smiling, and in between them was a skinny child with thin arms whose eyes were round with bewilderment as if he thought a bird would fly out of the box camera. Without hesitating, he stuffed the photograph into the fire. With a dull crackle, the edges began to burn. His parents had started curling up by the time he thought to retrieve it, but it was already too late, and he watched the photograph curl and then flatten out. His parents' image had turned into black-and-white ash, and the skinny child in the middle had started to go yellow…

  The way his parents were dressed, they would have counted as capitalists or managerial employees of a foreign firm. He had obliterated whatever he possibly could, done everything he could to cut off his past, wipe out his memories. Even recalling those times was a heavy burden.

  Before he burned the manuscripts and diaries, he had witnessed a crowd of Red Guards beat an old woman to death in broad daylight. He was riding his bicycle near the soccer grounds of bustling Xidan around midday during the lunch break, so there were lots of people out on the main street. Ten or so teenagers, fifteen- or sixteen-year-old middle-school students-a few girls among them-wearing old army uniforms and red armbands with black writing on them, were using leather army belts to beat up an old woman who was sprawled on the ground. The old woman had a wooden placard with the words reactionary landowner's wife tied with wire around her neck. She could no longer move but was still wailing. People passing by all kept a certain distance and watched in silence. Not one person stepped forward to stop them. A civilian policeman wearing a blue hat and swinging his white gloves walked past and seemed to look with unseeing eyes. A girl in the group, who had her short hair tied into two little bunches and looked quite elegant in glasses with a light-colored frame, also started wielding her belt. The brass buckle struck a mass of disheveled gray hair with a thud, and the old Woman's hands went up to clutch her head as she collapsed onto the ground. Blood oozed between her fingers, but she could no longer make a sound.

  "Long live the Red Terror!" The Red Guard patrol riding in formation on their new Eternal brand bicycles shouted this slogan all the way along Chang'an Avenue.

  They had also interrogated him. It was about ten o'clock at night, and he had just cycled past the front of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse with its armed sentries. Up ahead, under the bright streetlight, were a few
motorbikes with sidecars. The road was blocked by a line of youths in military uniforms, wearing red silk armbands with the black inscription: BEIJING RED GUARD UNITED ACTION COMMITTEE.

  "Get off!"

  He braked suddenly and almost fell off his bicycle.

  "What background?"

  "Professional."

  "What work?"

  He named his workplace.

  "Have you got your work permit?"

  Luckily, he had it on him, and he took it out to show them.

  Another person on a bicycle was stopped, a youth with a flat-top haircut, at the time a self-deprecating sign for "offspring of dogs."

  "You should be at home so late at night!"

  They let him pass. He had just got on his bicycle when he heard the youth with the flat-top haircut behind mumble a few words and then being beaten until he was howling. He didn't dare to look back.

  For several days on end, from late at night until early morning, he was in front of the stove and his eyes were red from the heat. During the day, he had to force himself to be wide awake to deal with the dangers that could crop up at any time. When the last pile of notebooks was burned, he stirred the ashes into a paste to make sure no traces remained, then poured a plate of leftover vegetables and half a bowl of noodles on top. Totally exhausted and unable to keep his eyelids open, he lay on the bed fully clothed but could not fall asleep. He recalled that at home there was still an old photograph that could stir up trouble. It was a group photograph of the War of Resistance National Salvation Theater Troupe of the YMCA, which his mother had joined when she was young. They were all wearing military uniforms that must have been presented to members of the troupe when they went to express their appreciation to officers and soldiers in the War of Resistance: the military caps had badges with the Nationalist insignia. If this photograph were seized it would definitely create problems, even if his mother had died some time ago.

  He didn't know whether his father had dealt with the photograph, but it was unsafe to write to alert him.

  Among the manuscripts destroyed was a novel he had given a prominent elderly writer to read, hoping for a recommendation or, at least, approval of it. He did not expect that the old man would be stony-faced and without a word of encouragement to the younger generation. Finally, with a grave expression, the old writer sternly warned him: "Think carefully before committing anything to writing! Don't submit manuscripts casually. You don't understand the dangers of the written word."