Becoming Madame Mao - Anchee Min [54]
He caresses her and whispers in her ear another story of his fatal survival. Tells her how he escaped from the mouth of death. It was September 1927. He was captured by Chiang Kai-shek's agents right after the Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan. He was traveling, recruiting members of Communist groups and enlisting soldiers from the workers and peasants. Chiang Kai-shek's terror was at its peak. Hundreds of suspects were killed every day. He was taken to the militia headquarters to be shot.
The listener wears a white cotton shirt she has made herself. Her hair is ear-short. Her slender body is ripe. She feels his massiveness. She feels that he picks her up from the dust. She takes time the way she would on stage.
Borrowing a few yuan from a comrade, I attempted to bribe the escort to free me. The ordinary soldiers were mercenaries, with no special interest in seeing me killed, and they agreed to release me, but the subaltern in charge refused to permit it. I therefore decided to escape. I had no opportunity to do so until I was within about two hundred yards of the militia headquarters. At that point I broke loose and ran into the fields.
Later on when Madame Mao becomes the executive producer of all China's stage productions, she orders an episode dedicated to the scene she hears today. The hero escapes on his way to execution. He breaks loose and runs into the fields, hides in a tiny island in the middle of a lake with tall grass surrounding it. The title is The Sha Family Pond.
I reached a high place, above a pond with tall grass covering me. I hid until sunset. The soldiers pursued me. They forced some peasants to help them search. Many times they came near, twice so close that I could have almost touched them. Somehow by fate I escaped discovery. I was almost certain that I would be captured.
Madame Mao's opera singer playing the leader of the guerrillas carries his voice to the highest note and stylishly pitches the final line:
The victory will fall into your hands
If you hold on to your faith
Even when the situation seems
Utterly out of hope and impossible to reverse
At last, when it was dusk, they abandoned the search. At once I set off across the mountains. I traveled all night. I had no shoes and my feet were badly bruised. On the road I met a peasant who befriended me, gave me shelter and later guided me to the next district. I had only two yuan with me and I used the money to buy a pair of shoes, an umbrella and six buns. When at last I reached safety, I had only one copper in my pocket.
He makes her see heaven's grace in his valor. In bed he is impatient, like a tomb robber grabbing gold. She presents herself, the gift of seduction. In the future the couple will do the same to the minds of a billion.
At daybreak when he asks her to repeat the pleasure she refuses. She has been awake and has been thinking about Zi-zhen. Her body is caught in the mind's struggle.
You have arms thin like a thirteen-year-old's. He comes to touch her gently. It's amazing that a woman with such thin limbs bears such full breasts.
Her tears well up.
He asks to be given a chance to understand her sadness.
She says that it would be impossible.
No one can take away my right to be educated. He wipes her tears.
It is me who needs education. She turns away. You are a married man with a family. I should not have made a mess of—
You are not leaving me, Lan Ping.
But Zi-zhen is alive!
He looks at her and smiles almost vindictively.
I can't do this to Zi-zhen, she continues. She has never harmed me.
Strangely she realizes that the line is from a forgotten play except that she has replaced the character's name with Zi-zhen. She starts to put on her clothes and moves out of his bed. He has difficulty looking at her ivory skin. It sets his mind burning. Suddenly he believes that she