Becoming Madame Mao - Anchee Min [98]
She feels for him but is not unhappy. The truth is that his fear has made him see her. She needs to have the danger continue in order to be able to stay in his view.
Lead me to the fire! she says to him. Give me a chance to demonstrate how much I can and will do for love.
He reaches for her.
Once again she feels the presence of Lady Yuji. The worship comes back and charges itself. She reenters the scene. The lovers walk around the eight sides of Buddha statues surveying the nine hundred blue, green and yellow gods. The lovers are no longer in each other's arms and their lips do not caress, but they speak and begin to hear each other. They are taking turns describing the numberless beasts around them, obscure workers of the land, terrible innocents, killers and their dreams, the gigantic swarming of bees, the way they silently mate and murder.
Oh, heaven knows how much I feel for you! she cries in a theatrical voice. The line is stylish and self-moving. Command me, Chairman, here is my sword.
***
No more operating solo. No more living life in splendid isolation. My body has never felt so youthful. On April 9, I am bored listening to Mayor Peng Zhen's nonsubstantial self-criticisms. I leave the matter to Kang Sheng and Chen Bo-da, a critic executioner whom I recently recruited, and who is also the director of the Institute of Marxism and Leninism in Beijing. I send a report prepared by Chen Bo-da on Peng Zheng entitled "The 5.16 Notification" to Mao. By now I sense that Mao has set his mind on bringing down Vice Chairman Liu—punishing Mayor Peng, Liu's front man, is Mao's first step.
As expected, Mao comments on the report and orders the battle to be fought publicly.
May 4. A meeting finalizing Mayor Peng's fall takes place. The host is not Mao, but Vice Chairman Liu. Liu is given no option. He is incapable of bringing himself to rebel against Mao. At the meeting Liu looks pale. He takes deep breaths when he delivers the speech denouncing his friend. He reads in the name of the Politburo. He can barely sustain his performance. Peng has been a faithful employee and an ardent supporter of his programs.
Vice Chairman Liu never dreams that he will be the next. If he had spent time reading The Romance of the Three Kingdoms as Mao had, he might have anticipated his leader's plans.
To please Mao, on May 8, under the pen name Gao Ju—High Torch—I published an article entitled "Toward the Anti-Communist Party Group: Fire!" It is my first publication in thirty years. The article becomes the talk of the nation. Shouts of To guard Chairman Mao with our lives! are heard everywhere.
It is the night of May 9. I am losing sleep to joy. I have taken fate into my own hands and am rewarded. Mao phoned this morning to congratulate me. He wanted me to have a pack of his ginseng. The phone rang again in the afternoon. It was Mao's secretary. Mao wanted me to come for dinner. Nah is home, the message said.
I have nothing to wear, I said.
The secretary was confused. Does that mean "no"?
***
Sitting in my chair I feel my body shiver. He wants me, finally. All the years of resentment dissolve in one phone call. Am I crazy? Is he fooling me again? Or is it nothing but part of his aging? Or am I daydreaming? He has not stopped his longevity practice and continues to sleep with young girls; and yet he wants to reconnect with me. And he wants it badly.
Sometimes I feel that I know him well enough to forgive him—he is driven not by passion or lust or even his great love of country, but fear. Other times I feel that he has always been a stranger to me. An aloof, emotionally disconnected being like myself. He has never paid a single visit to his ex-wife Zi-zhen, or to his mentally disturbed second son Anqing in their hospitals. Just like me with my mother—I have never tried to find out what became of her.
Mao doesn't talk about the Korean War. It is to avoid his pain of missing Anying, his older son, who died from an American