Becoming Madame Mao - Anchee Min [122]
It's too depressing, he complains. He suggests that I make it a happy ending. I disagree but promise to consider his remarks and tell him that I shall try my best to make the change.
The fact is that I am determined to do nothing about it. I won't touch the ending. It is symbolic. It is how I feel about life. The flying bullets are in the air. It's my life. So many times I have been shot.
***
It is an open space. Man-high wooden poles stand three feet apart against the gray sky. Twenty of them. Weeds are waist high. The wind is harsh. The prisoners are kicked out of the truck and tied to the poles. Blinders are removed. Colorless faces, some with towels stuffed in their mouths. The chief executioner shouts an order. Some prisoners begin to lose consciousness. Their heads drop to their chests as if they have already been shot.
Fairlynn is shaking hard. She struggles to breathe. Suddenly her legs start to walk by themselves. She walks toward the wooden pole involuntarily. She wails, Chairman Mao!
The chief executioner comes and pulls Fairlynn up by the collar. He drags her to the side. Fairlynn's mind is paralyzed. She feels as if she were a cooked fish lying on a plate with its spine taken out.
The soldiers raise their guns. The sound of the wind can be heard. One female prisoner turns around. Her eyes seek Fairlynn. It is Fairlynn's cellmate, Lotus. Fairlynn rolls on the ground and then rises up on her knees. Suddenly she sees Lotus wave her hands, punching her fists toward the sky. Lotus's mouth opens, shouting Down with Communism! Down with Mao!
The woman stops punching her fists toward the sky—she is hit by a bullet. But her mouth keeps moving.
In terror Fairlynn lifts her head and crawls toward Lotus. Her surroundings spin. The earth is upside down. Her ears begin to buzz. Suddenly everything starts to float soundlessly in front of her eyes.
The prisoners fall, scattered in all directions. Some of them bounce off the wooden poles. Shot-broken ropes drop to the ground. Lotus runs toward Fairlynn. She wags her body with her chin toward the sky. Behind her, the clouds have fallen to the earth, rolling like giant cotton balls.
The chief executioner shouts his last order. In extreme silence, Fairlynn witnesses Lotus's face break. The splattered blood paints a blooming chrysanthemum.
Chimpanzee experiment! Fairlynn passes out.
Although Fairlynn survives the Cultural Revolution, the moment Lotus's face became a bloody chrysanthemum, an important compartment in her own conscience bursts as well, as her memoir suggests (written in 1985 and published by South Coast China Publishing in 1997).
True, Chairman Mao has his weaknesses. They seem more poignant during the last few years of his life. I think it is all right to write about it. But under the circumstances I refuse to reveal more than what's known. There are people who intend to deny Mao's great contributions and heroic deeds. They not only want to smear his name but also want to have him nailed as a demon, and I will not allow that. No matter how wrongful the treatment I was made to endure in the past, I will not use my pen to write any word attacking Mao.
In later chapters the seventy-nine-year-old legend lingers on an encounter with Mao in a tone of elation:
It was in Yenan. I visited Mao's cave quite often. Almost every time I went he would give me a poem of his own or by others as a gift. All presented in his beautiful calligraphy on rice paper. Once Mao asked me, Do you agree that Yenan is like a small imperial court, Fairlynn?
I was sure that he was joking, so I answered, No, for there isn't a board of one hundred advisors. He laughed and said, That's easy, Just make a board. Let's draw up a list. He took out a pen and pulled a sheet of paper and said, Come on, you produce the candidates and I'll grant them titles.
I pronounced the names that came to my mind as he wrote them down. We were having such fun. He wrote ancient titles next to the names. Li-bu-shang-shu—Judge of the