Wild Ginger - Anchee Min [26]
The guard opened the door. He was eating his dinner. His motorcycle was parked in the center of the room. Hearing my report he immediately phoned his headquarters. "The patrol is on the way." He wiped his oily mouth and put on his jacket. Starting his motorcycle he said, "Get on the back with me, kid."
By the time the police and the patrol arrived Wild Ginger's face was scratched and her right arm hung loose in front of her chest. Trying to stop Choo and his group from escaping she was almost strangled to death. The police chief arrested Choo and his group on the spot.
Wild Ginger was sent to the local hospital. Evergreen and I followed her into the large building. In an operating room, we sat by her side while doctors tended to her. They set her arm and wrapped it in a cast. They gave her blood transfusions and stitched up her cuts. I dampened her lips with a wet towel. She was in enormous pain. Evergreen offered his hand. She grabbed it and breathed deeply. I watched the sweat on her forehead turn into crystal beads. Evergreen kept talking to her, trying to distract her from the pain. It surprised me to see the usually quiet Evergreen chatting away like a young wide-eyed boy. He told Wild Ginger stories of his childhood, of his fathers adventures as a sailor, his achievements and accidents, and later his strokes and nerve disorders. He told her how he and his late mother helped the old man when he was paralyzed. And finally about his own early dream of becoming a captain. He got excited when mentioning a toy ship he made when he was ten.
"It's giant." He spread out his arms to show its length. "It's got a hundred and twenty-three compartments. It took twenty pounds of wood and six hundred empty matchboxes. I had collected matchboxes since I was seven. The ship took me two years to complete. I named it Victory:"
Wild Ginger was quiet. She looked, no, stared at Evergreen, as if it weren't her body the doctor's needles were going through.
"I used to make rainbow soap papers as a child," she told Evergreen after she was sent to the recovery room. "I was fascinated with the process. I went door to door to collect soap scraps. I scrubbed the leftover soap from soap boxes. After I had a bucketful, I melted it on the stove. I added fragrant jasmine petals. Then I divided the paste in different bowls and dyed it different colors. I stirred the paste under the sun until it became thick. Then I took pieces of cardboard and cut them into all kinds of shapes. I coated the papers with the paste. After they dried the fragrance became strong. There was nothing else like them. You could take the papers anywhere and wash your hands with them. I liked them so much that I didn't use them. I put them in my Mao books. I looked at and smelled them every day when I worked on my reciting."
"You must show them to me."
"When you show me your wooden ship."
Wild Ginger was visited by the district party secretary in the hospital. Overnight she was pronounced a heroine and a revolutionary model. She was interviewed by the People's Daily and the Liberation Daily. The next morning her story was on every household's breakfast table. The journalists asked if Wild Ginger had been directed by Mao's teaching during her brave exploit. Not only did she give a positive answer, she provided the details in the paragraph of Mao's teaching which had inspired her action. Her words were printed with quotation marks and underlines. She was now a true champion.
I was thrilled for Wild Ginger. But in the meantime I wondered if reciting Mao at the moment of being strangled was possible. Maybe Mao was the driving force behind her action. Maybe she had become a true Maoist.
I was interviewed as well. But when asked what was on my mind when fetching the policeman, I