Wild Ginger - Anchee Min [41]
"I'm listening."
"Read me Mao quotations while I do it."
"You agree with my suggestion then, don't you?" She looked at him. "That we carry on a spiritual relationship?"
"Is that what you want?"
"Yes."
"You don't have to look at me..."
"I promise. I will keep my eyes on the lines."
"Are you ready?"
"Sure. Which Mao would you like me to read?"
"Anything."
"How about 'The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains'? Or 'Introductory Note to How Control of the Wutang Co-operative Shifted from the Middle to the Poor Peasants'?"
"Never mind."
"What's wrong?"
"I feel sick."
When Wild Ginger asked about my time in the closet, I didn't reveal what I'd seen, but I didn't know why. To say that I was afraid to upset Wild Ginger would be untrue. Later as I sorted out my thoughts, I realized that Evergreen's decision to keep his discovery secret from Wild Ginger had been a turning point. In all our time together, I hadn't grown intimately closer to Wild Ginger, but strangely, now I somehow felt closer to Evergreen. It was as if through his silence Evergreen and I were engaged in something together—the betrayal of Wild Ginger.
"You have helped me reach my goal," Wild Ginger said as she made me tea. "It is perfect that Evergreen has come to feel disgusted by his own behavior; he has disabled the power of nature's evil. We've struck a deal. We'll stay close friends and comrades in arms. I'll get to see him every night without risking my future."
"Why do you have to see him every night? Why don't you just leave him alone for good?" I asked almost angrily.
"I wish I knew why, Maple. It's become a craving. I can't bear not to see him every day."
"You are in love. You have been denying the truth."
"Don't apply that bourgeois term to me. I have already told you that such words don't belong in a Maoist's vocabulary. And such sentiments could destroy me. Now swear, Maple, never say that again."
"But you have just said that you couldn't bear not to see him."
"I guess it is the price I have to pay to be a Maoist. Now you know that I'm a piece of real gold—I can stand being hit by a hammer ten thousand times—and still be myself."
"What about him?"
"He just needs to be refined. He is Maoist material. We are a revolutionary pair."
"But the truth is you two fight."
"Well, that's part of the attraction! Did you ... Maple, did you see him come on me?"
"How could I not see?"
"What did you think?"
"What do you expect me to say?"
"Say what's on your mind."
"It's a jar of porridge there."
"You are good, Maple. You are straight and devil-proof."
"What do you know about me?"
"I know you inside out. I trust you with my most inner secrets. I couldn't be a Maoist without you."
16
The campus smelled of ink and spoiled flour paste. The school seemed another world where wall-to-wall news columns on Mao study discussions were published every other day. Before the first layer of the poster paper dried, the second layer was applied. The traces of dripping ink looked like tears. When the wind blew, the torn papers were swept up in the trees. When it rained, walls of calligraphy were washed away. The lines bled into each other so that the characters were unreadable. The waste was tremendous. No one really read the posters anymore because all of them sounded the same.
We were seventeen years old. We were still studying nothing but Mao. One teacher suggested adding a course of world history, and he was immediately suspected of having an interest in becoming a foreign spy. In geography, we were still on the route that Mao's Red Army traveled during the Long March in 1934. The class dwelt on the same map semester after semester. For tests we had to memorize the names of the villages. We studied no other countries besides Russia, Albania, and North Korea. We didn't know where America was when we shouted "Down with U.S. imperialism!"
"A well-disciplined party armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, using the method of self-criticism and linked with the masses