Becoming Madame Mao - Anchee Min [140]
The sound of her silk skirt has stopped
On the marble pavement dust grows
Her empty room is cold and still
Fallen leaves are piled against the doormat
Midnight, October 6. The Garden of Stillness. Along the deep walls come noises. The sound of steps rises behind the gates. Whispers. Someone is talking with the guard. Yes, sir, the guard answers. A tall shadow approaches. A man leaps. It is Zhang Yiao-ci, the second in command of the 8341. The sound of the gate clashes and locks behind. Zhang Yiao-ci freezes at the entrance. After a moment he advances and enters the mansion. He pounds on the door. His fingers tremble.
It's open, the first lady's voice comes.
Zhang Yiao-ci lunges in. His right hand rests on top of the weapon behind his back.
Madame Mao Jiang Ching sits on the sofa, holding a mug of tea. Her calm freezes the man.
The man looks around. Sweat oozing.
A long-legged bird from the painting on the wall stares down.
Madame Mao speaks, then laughs shrilly. I have long anticipated this day! I have spread flowers all the way from my bedroom to the gate.
The man gasps and wills himself to push the syllables out of his mouth: Jiang Ching, the republic's enemy, the Politburo has ordered your arrest.
When the imaginary curtain comes up the actress presses herself forward. She envisions the billion-large audience cheering at the top of their lungs and waving flags. An ocean of red. The color sears her eyes. She smells the warm sun. In the music of her opera she strides. In her head, the drums and trumpets come together. She remembers once how Yu described his feelings when composing on her order: it is the sound of hundreds of train engines puffing smoke and churning their pistons. The notes tighten and twist to the point of breaking. It is as if the composer were choked by the claws of the madness and took each note separately off of his mind's hook and threw them all together into a giant bucket and began to stir.
Then there is a pause. She can hear Yu's sob. It is followed by a silence so complete that she hears the crack of time. A shooting star falls.
Once again, she sees her life as a film. And once again she is a young woman standing on top of a roof overlooking the city of Shanghai and dreaming of her future. She sees the gingko-nut boy and hears his selling drill: Xiang-u-xiang-lai-nu-u-nu! The boy's tone is smooth and mindless. Still clear. The midnight wind sweeps through the long dark lane. The boy squats in front of his wok holding an armful of firelight.
She sees herself in the cell of Qin-Cheng national prison where Vice Chairman Liu's wife, Wang Guang-mei, spends a dozen years before her. Madame Mao sits facing the wall. She is ordered to make dolls for export. She has to meet the daily production objective. The dolls will be sold in children's stores all over the world. She sews tiny colorful dresses onto the tiny plastic bodies. Tens, hundreds and thousands of dolls between 1976 and 1991. She embroiders spring on the dresses, draws flowers from her imagination. When guards are not watching, she secretly embroiders her name, Jiang Ching, onto the inner edges of the dresses. And then she is found out and is stopped. Nevertheless, it is too late to retrieve the ones that had already been shipped. Baskets of dolls, with her signature. Out of China and into the world. Where would they land? In a child's forgotten bin? Or a display window?
It is time to empty the stage. Remember, you will always come across me in the books about China. Don't be surprised to see my name smeared. There is nothing more they can do to me. And don't forget that I