Becoming Madame Mao - Anchee Min [48]
He bends, picks up the mug and takes a sip.
She hears the sound of pencils scratching paper.
The crowd, including Fairlynn, writes down Mao's speech.
The girl doesn't write. She memorizes Mao's lines, the spoken and unspoken. It is where she puts her talent to work.
He paces, sips the tea and waits for the crowd to raise their heads from the notepads. He has no printing machine, no newspapers. He relies on the mouths of his crowd. His eyes brush through the hall. Suddenly there is an unexpected sight. His focus is interrupted. He recognizes her, the girl who doesn't take notes like the rest. The actress with her makeup off. The impact is like dawn-light lunging through darkness. Its sensation shoots through him.
A sleeping-seed sprouts.
She looks away, knowing that she has altered his focus. His attention is now on her, and on her alone. It happens in complete silence. A wild chrysanthemum secretly and fervently opens and embraces the sunbeams. The girl feels strangely calm and experienced. She is her role. She takes the moment and tries to make it shine. She is pleased with herself, an actress who has never failed to cast a spell over her audience. Her heart misses no beat. In silence she introduces herself to him. Every part of her body speaks, delivers and reaches. She has him watching her, freely and boldly. Her neatly combed hair, her ivory skin. She sits still, on the ground of Yenan. She lets him find her.
And he smiles. She turns toward him. Her eyes then pass and go beyond him. She doesn't allow him to make contact. Not yet. She crosses him in order to light the fire, to grasp him, to have him begin the pursuit.
The arias of opera flow in her head. The butterfly wings are heavy with golden flower-powders ... She then hears Fairlynn. Her shout. Marvelous! I love the lecture! I love the man!
***
Mao signs autographs and answers questions. The girl raises her arm. He nods her a yes. She projects, asks a question on women's liberation. Suddenly she notices that there is an absent look in his smile. He is looking at her but his eyes don't register.
She drops her question. She feels unsure of herself as she sinks back into the sea of the crowd. Mao raises his eyes. She hopes that he is looking for her. She can't tell. He discontinues the search. She stands up and walks out. She tells herself that she would rather disappear than be unrecognized.
Later on he explains to her the problem. Although he has been living alone the obstacle is that he is still married. The wife's name is Zi-zhen, a heroine as popular and respected as he is. When he was a bandit Zi-zhen rebelled against her landlord family to follow him. She was seventeen then. She was known for her beauty and bravery. She had bullets beneath her ribs from the Long March in 1934. She had borne him six children, but only one, a girl, is alive.
Their separation began when she became terrified of another pregnancy. She refused to sleep with him and he started to sniff around. Zi-zhen found out. Then give it to me, he demanded. She punched him in the face and then went straight to the Politburo. Make him behave like Mao Tse-tung the Savior! she demanded.
Mao wished that he could gun down the marriage certificate that hung between him and Zi-zhen. He moved out of the cave and told Zi-zhen that the marriage was over. Zi-zhen took out her pistol and shot every ceramic pot in the room. He imagined that it was his head that she smashed. He ran away. She broke down but was determined to get him back, determined to make herself suit him. He avoided her. Gradually she learned his will.
Teach me how to suit you! She moved back, he left the room. She insisted that he had to give a reason. He made one up: You know too little of Marxism and Leninism.
She marked his words in her notebook and put herself on a train to Russia. I'll be one hundred percent Marxist and Leninist when I come back.
Agnes Smedley,