Red Azalea (24 page)

I did not allow myself to feel. Firewood, Cheering Spear, Bee OhYang and Little Bell resumed their voice exercises behind me. They sang:

The next day a producer at the Shanghai Film Studio gave me a big mop, a script, a notebook and a box of chalk. He asked me to memorize the script, which contained 1,042 shots. It was the shooting script of
Red Azalea.
My eyes hurt when I looked at the title. You see, said the producer,
a set clerk is the person who records the set, and this means everything. If there is an ant crawling through the set, a good set clerk will record it. It is a big responsibility, because we shoot scenes in a disorderly fashion. For example, a man opens a gate and steps into the hallway. It may take two scenes to complete the action. We will shoot the outside scene in Hunan and then shoot the inside scene back in Shanghai in the studio two months later. You have to be able to remember exactly what clothes he is wearing, for example, and how he wears them at different locations—for example, was his collar open or closed? If you make a mistake, you will have a person enter with his collar open and all of sudden it is closed. The scene would be wasted, of course. One foot of the film, which costs our peasant a season’s grain, will be salvageable. The wasted film could be food for generations of our peasants. And you know what that means to the country.

I forced myself to listen hard to the producer. He asked me to make thirty copies of his notes to the crew. We have only three days left before shooting, he said. He asked me to put out the shooting board, draw up the shots, check the costumes, the props, and the extras. The floor, the producer pointed his finger down as if reminding me of something important. You should begin by mopping the floor first, he said seriously. When I took a mop, he said, Listen, we don’t need feeble labor. Each carrot has its own patch, or you will be sent back to Red Fire Farm.

I did not raise my head when I mopped the floor. I felt I had no face. There was a rehearsal going on in the
recording studio. I heard someone yell repeatedly from a microphone. The voice had a strong Beijing accent. It was the Supervisor’s voice. I remembered this voice.

I finished my job by six o’clock in the evening and went to a back room to smoke. I had started smoking the day I was dismissed from the actor-training class. I sat on a bench. The surroundings were dark and damp. I did not switch on the light. I needed darkness. I came every day and smoked cigarettes in the dark until my lip numbed.

After the break I had to finish mopping the rest of the stairways in the building. The mopping seemed endless. I suddenly remembered an old saying. It said: “It is difficult for a snake to go back to hell once it has tasted heaven.” I was that snake now. Each day I felt worse than the one before. Every morning, the moment I woke up, my body and my soul went to separate places. The soulless body went to mop the floors and the bodiless soul went to the realm of vague hopes. A few times the body and soul joined momentarily when I felt the mop become a machine gun. As I mopped with it, it fired.

I inhaled deeply. I forgot time. Suddenly, a voice, a tender voice, rose from my back. Why do you like to sit in the dark? the voice asked.

I thought I had imagined the voice. I kept still. The voice repeated itself. The sound softer. A Beijing accent. I stood up and was about to switch on the lights. I’d like to smoke in the dark too, the voice said. Can I get a light? I
kept still in the dark. Thank you, the voice said. I heard the noise of a person standing up and moving toward me. Who are you? I asked.

I am like you, a set helper, the voice said. How do you do? I saw a cigarette held out to me. I passed him my cigarette. The two cigarettes touched. The smoker inhaled. It was a gentle face that I saw. The face faded back into the dark. My mind went back to its own thinking.

I thought of my parents. I had stopped talking to them. You don’t deserve those dunce caps, my mother said to me over and over. I told her that I was sick of her sense of justice, her fantasy. I told my mother not to interfere with me. I said, Why don’t you ever learn? What’s wrong with you? Is it because your own life hasn’t been miserable enough? My mother said, said in her own logic, I don’t regret a bit about my way of living, because I have been truthful to myself. I could not stand her logic. I said, I don’t want to inherit your life. It is a terrible, terrible and terrible life. I yelled at her. My mother went to take pills. I said, Don’t you see? Can’t you see it’s not working? Your philosophy does not work for me. My mother refused to give up. She said she didn’t believe that evilness should rule. I said, It’s ruling. She said, It’s impossible. I said, I mop floors, don’t you see? She said, What did you do wrong? I said, I wish I knew the answer. My mother started her repetition: Then that shouldn’t have happened to you. I said, It’s happening to me. She said she would like to have a talk with my instructor. I laughed.

The instructors came before my mother gathered her guts to go and confront them. Once again it was Soviet Wong and Sound of Rain who came. They came to put a
dunce cap on me. They wanted me to acknowledge a crime I did not commit. They wanted me to say, Yes, I deserve to be kicked out because I am bad. My mother asked, What did my daughter do wrong? You have shielded a wrongdoer, they replied. My mother refused to be confused. She fought to the end. She fought to the last step of the staircase. She said, Tell me what’s wrong with my daughter. They said, Everything. Everything’s wrong with your daughter. She said, Give me an example. They said, We don’t need to. My mother said, Comrade Soviet Wong, I would never ever want my daughter to call you teacher.

My mother followed them out of the lane. She yelled before falling on the cement. She yelled, You can’t make a criminal out of my innocent daughter. My father dragged Mother back upstairs. He said, You are making things worse. Don’t you know they represent the Party? My mother yelled, But I am not guilty. My father pushed her to sit on a chair. My father told my mother the simplest things in the world. The simplest things to make my mother understand the world she was in. My father told her that he himself was just fired by the Shanghai Museum of Natural Science because he disagreed with his Party secretary boss over a technical plan. He was accused of using science to attack the Communist Party. My father told my mother that Coral was forced to become a peasant because I was out of Red Fire Farm. Coral had to become a peasant to meet the Party’s policy. She was working at Red Fire Farm in Company Thirty, the company that had no drinking-water pipe of its own. The Party tells people what to do, not the other way around, my father
said. My mother refused to understand her world. She refused to understand the things that did not make sense to her. She shut her senses up because she preferred to live in her own world. She lived with the god of justice. She broke three dishes that night while dishwashing. I woke up in the early morning and found Mother sitting in the kitchen staring at the sinkhole, alone.

Where is your interest? The voice in the dark interrupted my thoughts. I have no interest, I said. I need some comments on a costume I’ve just picked—would you care to give some? the voice said.

The light was switched on. Under the hazy gaslight I saw a man in an ancient red silk robe with an embroidered golden dragon on the chest and silver waves at the bottom. Under a hat decorated with diamonds shone a pair of bright almond eyes. Long and thin eyebrows like the wings of a gliding sea goose. His smooth pale skin shaded mauve on the cheeks. A delicate nose and a tomato-red full mouth. He cited:

I stared at the man. I thought, It must be the makeup. The makeup made him look femininely handsome. Who are you? I heard myself say. I have told you I am a set helper like you. Where are you from? Beijing.

He stepped over to shake hands with me. Staring at his painted face, my mind was occupied by a strange
thought: Was he a woman or a man? He seemed to be both. He was grotesquely beautiful. He lowered his head, then looked away, almost bashfully. Lifting his robe carefully, he walked toward the door like a swinging willow—he was wearing costume boots with four-inch heels.

What are you doing here? I asked. Playing, he said. Don’t you remember Chairman Mao’s teaching “Make the past serve the present”? I am playing with that idea. I asked, What do you supervise here? Everything, he said. By the way, how do you like this costume? I told him that it looked unusual. I had the costume man send it to me, he continued. Isn’t it gorgeous? He told me that he was collecting ideas to create good art for the people. He asked me to give opinions on the model operas. I said, How could anyone have any opinions? The Party’s opinion is the people’s opinion. How dare I have my own opinion? I was eliminated by Soviet Wong because I had opinions.

My words just gushed out of my mouth. My anger made me shake. When I spoke of Soviet Wong I became vicious. I expressed my hatred eagerly. I did not care who was listening at that moment. He waited quietly until I emptied my words. I began to regret my impulse. I said, Nine million people watched nine operas in nine years. It is wonderful. In the tenth year, there would be number ten,
Red Azalea.
I wanted to pronounce Cheering Spear’s name but I could not continue. It hurt me to pronounce this name. My jealousy was indescribable.

You are not speaking your mind, he said. Of course I am, I said. He said, The model operas were created, let me remind you, by Madam Mao, Comrade Jiang Ching.
Did that mean no one was supposed to criticize them? That’s right, I said. He laughed, in a womanish silky voice.

He said to me that he had touched a sly mind. He said it was interesting to have a challenge. He had been bored. He took off the costume, the makeup, then put on an indigo Mao jacket. He was a delicate-looking man. I recognized the man I saw when I failed my performance. The Supervisor. He was the one who picked the thief who had stolen my Red Azalea. He liked Cheering Spear. I only wished that I could tell him what Cheering Spear did to me that day. How could I not sound ridiculous? Cheering Spear was fantastic when beating me. Cheering Spear was talented in making my work hers. If I spoke, how could I not make myself look more ridiculous than I already had? The Supervisor asked me if he could have a cigarette. His fingers were fine and smooth like a woman’s. I lit a cigarette and gave it to him. The smoke we exhaled joined in the air.

The next evening he asked if I would sit with him until he finished his cigarette. I said, Fine. We sat in the smoking room. He asked where I lived. I said, On Shanxi Road in an apartment with my family. He asked, How many members? I said, Five at present. He asked, How many rooms do you have? I said, One room and one porch. He said, So you do not get to sleep alone. I said, No, of course not. He said, I see.

He asked again whether I liked the model operas. I replied again, How could anyone not like them? How
would anyone dare not like something like that? He said, Can you explain? I said he would be bored with my answer. He said he preferred a personal one. He said that he himself was not satisfied with the operas. He said that he craved revolutionary passion and many of the operas lacked it. I said that I agreed with him and said that I would be interested in the private lives of the characters. I said that it was strange to me that the opera protagonists had no private lives. He said, You mean romance? I said, I didn’t mean to say it, but yes, perhaps, that was it, all right, then, that
is
it. I don’t have anything to lose. I can’t be put lower. He laughed silently. You don’t have to be so panicked, he said. I am interested in your opinion. Do go on. He said it was true that none of the model operas had romance. I said, I don’t believe that the protagonists had no lovers in their lives whatsoever. I don’t believe any human’s mind could be so free of deep emotions.

A cloud of scorn passed over the Supervisor’s face. We should not use fantasy to deceive our young people, he said. His fingers that carried the cigarette traveled in the air. Romantic love does not exist among proletarians, he said firmly. It is a bourgeois fantasy. People will not forgive anyone who sells lies.

I stood up and went to take the mop. He rose and stepped on my mop. I stood quietly. You must have a lover of some sort, he said. Don’t you lie to me. I do not, I said. You have problems—he stared into my eyes. That is not your business, I said, taking the mop, and went out through the door.

You forgot to ask me my name yesterday, he said to me the next afternoon in the smoking room. You can tell me now, I said impatiently. He said, I don’t intend to. You will have to call me the Supervisor like everybody else. I said, I could find out from other crew members if I wanted to. Try it, he said.