Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (60 page)

My mother sat up slowly, her face ashen.  She cupped her left ear in her hand.  My father had awakened her by striking her on the side of the head.  Her voice was weak, but she was calm.

"Don't worry, I'm all right," she said to my sobbing grandmother.  Then she turned to us and said, "See how your father is.  Then go to your rooms."  She leaned back against the oval mirror framed in camphor wood which formed the headboard of the bed.  In the mirror I saw her right hand clutching the pillow.  My grandmother sat by my parents' door all night.  I could not sleep either.  What would happen if my father attacked my mother with their door locked?

My mother's left ear was permanently damaged, and became almost totally deaf.  She decided it was too dangerous for her to stay at home, and the next day she went to her department to find a place to move to. The Rebels there were very sympathetic.  They gave her a room in the gardener's lodge in the corner of the garden.  It was terribly small, about eight feet by ten.  Only a bed and a desk could be squeezed in, with no space even to walk between them.

That night, I slept there with my mother, my grandmother, and Xiao-fang, all crammed together on the bed.

We could not stretch our legs or turn.  The bleeding from my mother's womb worsened.  We were very frightened because, having just moved to this new place, we had no stove and could not sterilize the syringe and needle, and therefore could not give her an injection.  In the end, I was so exhausted I dropped into a fitful sleep.  But I knew that neither my grandmother nor my mother closed their eyes.

Over the next few days, while Jin-ming went on living with Father, I stayed at my mother's new place helping to look after her.  Living in the next room was a young Rebel leader from my mother's district.  I had not said hello to him because I was not sure whether he would want to be spoken to by someone from the family of a capitalistroader, but to my surprise he greeted us normally when we ran into each other.  He treated my mother with courtesy, although he was a bit stiff.  This was a great relief after the ostentatious frostiness of the Rebels in my father's department.

One morning a couple of days after we moved in, my mother was washing her face under the eaves because there was no space inside when this man called out to her and asked if she would like to swap rooms.  His was twice as big as ours.  We moved that afternoon.  He also helped us to get another bed so we could sleep in relative comfort.

We were very touched.

This young man had a severe squint and a very pretty girlfriend who stayed overnight with him, which was almost unheard of in those days. They did not seem to mind us knowing.  Of course, capitalist-roaders were in no position to tell tales.  When I bumped into them in the mornings, they always gave me a very kind smile which told me they were happy.  I realized then that when people are happy they become kind.

When my mother's health improved, I went back to Father.  The apartment was in a dreadful state: the windows were broken, and there were bits of burned furniture and clothing all over the floor.  My father seemed indifferent to whether I was there or not; he just paced incessantly around and around.  At night I locked my bedroom door, because he could not sleep and would insist on talking to me, endlessly, without making sense.  But there was a small window over the door which could not be locked.  One night I woke up to see him slithering through the tiny aperture and jumping nimbly to the floor.

But he paid no attention to me.  He aimlessly picked up various pieces of heavy mahogany furniture and let them drop with seemingly little effort.  In his insanity he had become super humanly agile and powerful. Staying with him was a nightmare.  Many times, I wanted to run away to my mother, but I could not bring myself to leave him.

A couple of times he slapped me, which he had never done before, and I would go and hide in the back garden under the balcony of the apartment.  In the chill of the spring nights I listened desperately for the silence upstairs which meant he had gone to sleep.

One day, I missed his presence.  I was seized by a presentiment and rushed out of the door.  A neighbor who lived on the top floor was walking down the stairs.  We had stopped greeting each other some time before in order to avoid trouble, but this time he said: "I saw your father going out onto the roof."

Our apartment block had five stories.  I raced to the top floor.  On the landing to the left a small window gave onto the flat, shingled roof of the four-story block next door.

The roof had low iron rails around the edge.  As I was trying to climb through the window, I saw my father at the edge of the roof.  I thought I saw him lifting his left leg over the railing.

"Father," I called, in a voice which was trembling, although I was trying to force it to sound normal.  My instinct told me I must not alarm him.

He paused, and turned toward me: "What are you doing here?"

"Please come and help me get through the window."

Somehow, I coaxed him away from the edge of the roof.

I grabbed his hand and led him onto the landing.  I was shaking. Something seemed to have touched him, and an almost normal expression replaced his usual blank indifference or the intense introspective rolling of his eyes.  He carried me downstairs to a sofa and even fetched a towel to wipe away my tears.  But the signs of normality were short-lived.  Before I had recovered from the shock, I had to scramble up and run because he raised his hand and was about to hit me.

Instead of allowing my father medical treatment, the Rebels found his insanity a source of entertainment.  A poster serial appeared every other day entitled "The Inside Story of Madman Chang."  Its authors, from my father's department, ridiculed and lavished sarcasm on my father.

The posters were pasted up in a prime site just outside the department, and drew large, appreciative crowds.  I forced myself to read them, although I was aware of the stares from other readers, many of whom knew who I was.  I heard them whispering to those who did not know my identity.  My heart would tremble with rage and unbearable pain for my father, but I knew that reports of my reactions would reach my father's persecutors.  I wanted to look calm, and to let them know that they could not demoralize us.  I had no fear or sense of humiliation, only contempt for them.

What had turned people into monsters?  What was the reason for all this pointless brutality?  It was in this period that my devotion to Mao began to wane.  Before when people had been persecuted I could not be absolutely sure of their innocence; but I knew my parents.  Doubts about Mao's infallibility crept into my mind, but at that stage, like many people, I mainly blamed his wife and the Cultural Revolution Authority.  Mao himself, the godlike Emperor, was still beyond questioning.

We watched my father deteriorate mentally and physically with each passing day.  My mother went to ask Chen Mo for help again.  He promised to see what he could do.

We waited, but nothing happened: his silence meant he must have failed to get the Tings to allow my father to have treatment.  In desperation, my mother went to the Red Chengdu headquarters to see Yan and Yong.

The dominant group at Sichuan Medical College was part of Red Chengdu. The college had a psychiatric hospital attached to it, and a word from Red Chengdu headquarters could get my father in.  Yan and Yong were very sympathetic, but they would have to convince their comrades.

Humanitarian considerations had been condemned by Mao as 'bourgeois hypocrisy," and it went without saying that there should be no mercy for 'class enemies."  Yan and Yong had to give a political reason for treating my father.

They had a good one: he was being persecuted by the Tings.  He could supply ammunition against them, perhaps even help to bring them down. This, in turn, could bring about the collapse of z6 August.

There was another reason.  Mao had said the new Revolutionary Committees must contain 'revolutionary officials'

as well as Rebels and members of the armed forces.  Both Red Chengdu and 26 August were trying to find officials to represent them on the Sichuan Revolutiona~ Commiuee.

Besides, the Rebels were beginning to find out how complex politics was, and how daunting a task it was actually to run an administration. They needed competent politicians as advisers.  Red Chengdu thought my father was an ideal candidate, and sanctioned medical treatment.

Red Chengdu knew that my father had been denounced for saying blasphemous things against Mao and the Cultural Revolution, and that Mme.  Mao had condemned him.

But these claims had only been made by their enemies in wall posters, where truth and lies were often mixed up.

They could, therefore, dismiss them.

My father was admitted to the mental hospital of Sichuan Medical College.  It was in the suburbs of Chengdu, surrounded by rice fields. Bamboo leaves swayed over the brick walls and the iron main gate.  A second gate shut off a walled courtyard green with moss the residential area for the doctors and nurses.  At the end of the courtyard, a flight of red sandstone stairs led into the windowless side of a two-story building flanked by solid, high walls.  The stairs were the only access to the inside the psychiatric wards.

The two male nurses who came for my father were dressed in ordinary clothes, and told him they were taking him to another denunciation meeting.  When they reached the hospital my father straggled to get away.  They dragged him upstairs into a small empty room, shutting the door behind them so my mother and I would not have to see them putting him into a straitjacket.  I was heartbroken to see him being so roughly handled, but I knew it was for his own good.

The psychiatrist, Dr.  Su, was in his thirties, with a gentle face and professional manner.  He told my mother he would spend a week observing my father before he gave a diagnosis.  At the end of the week, he reached his conclusion:

schizophrenia.  My father was given electric shocks and insulin injections, for which he had to be tied tight onto the bed.  In a few days, he began to recover his sanity.  With tears in his eyes, he begged my mother to ask the doctor to change the treatment.

"It is so painful."  His voice broke.

"It feels worse than death."  But Dr.  Su said there was no other way.

The next time I saw my father, he was sitting on his bed chatting to my mother and Yan and Yong.  They were all smiling.  My father was even laughing.  He looked well again.

I had to pretend to go to the toilet to wipe away my tears.

On the orders of Red Chengdu, my father received special food and a full-time nurse~Yan and Yong visited him often, with members of his department who were sympathetic to him and who had themselves been subjected to denunciation meetings by Mrs.  Shau's group.  My father liked Yan and Yong very much, and although he could be unobservant, he realized they were in love, and teased them charmingly.  I could see they enjoyed this greatly.  At last, I felt, the nightmare was over; now that my father was well, we could face any disasters together.

The treatment lasted about forty days.  By mid-July he was back to normal.  He was discharged, and he and my mother were taken to Chengdu University, where they were given a suite in a small self contained courtyard.

Student guards were placed on the gate.  My father was provided with a pseudonym and told that he should not go out of the courtyard during the day, for his safety.  My mother fetched their meals from a special kitchen.  Yan and Yong came to see him every day, as did the Red Chengdu leaders, who were all very courteous to him.

I visited my parents there often, riding a borrowed bicycle for an hour on potholed country roads.  My father seemed peaceful.  He would say over and over again how grateful he felt to these students for enabling him to get treatment.

When it was dark, he was allowed out, and we went for long, quiet strolls on the campus, followed at a distance by a couple of guards.  We wandered along the lanes lined with hedges of Cape jasmine.  The fist-sized white flowers gave off a strong fragrance in the summer breeze.  It seemed like a dream of serenity, so far away from the terror and violence.  I knew this was my father's prison, but I wished he would never have to come out.

In the summer of 1967, factional fighting among the Rebels was escalating into mini civil war all over China.

The antagonism between the Rebel factions was far greater than their supposed anger toward the capitalist-roaders, because they were fighting tooth and nail for power.  Kang Sheng, Mao's intelligence chief, and Mme Mao led the Cultural Revolution Authority in stirring up more animosity by calling the factional fighting 'an extension of the struggle between the Communists and the Kuomintang' without specifying which group was which.  The Cultural Revolution Authority ordered the army to 'arm the Rebels for self-defense," without telling them which factions to support.  Inevitably, different army units armed different factions on the basis of their own preferences.

The armed forces were in great upheaval already, because Lin Biao was busy trying to purge his opponents and replace them with his own men. Eventually Mao realized that he could not afford instability in the army, and reined in Lin Biao.  However, he appeared to be in two minds about the factional fighting among the Rebels.  On the one hand, he wanted the factions to unite so that his personal power structure could be established.  On the other hand, he seemed incapable of repressing his love of fighting: as bloody wars spread across China he said, "It is not a bad thing to let the young have some practice in using arms we haven't had a war for so long."