Red Azalea (4 page)

I found my words were blocked by my stiff tongue. I kept saying, Autumn Leaves is my teacher. Secretary Chain suggested that we work on my problem. He lit a cigarette and told me the fable of “A Wolf in Sheep’s Skin.” He said Autumn Leaves was the wolf. He told me that Autumn Leaves’ father was a Chinese American who was still living in America. Autumn Leaves was born and educated in America. Secretary Chain said, The capitalist sent his daughter back to China to educate our children. Don’t you see this as problematic?

For the next two hours Secretary Chain convinced me that Autumn Leaves was a secret agent of the imperialists and was using teaching as a weapon to destroy our minds. Secretary Chain asked whether I would tolerate that. Of course not, I said. No one can pull our proletarians back to the old society. Good, said Secretary Chain, tapping my
shoulders. He said he knew I would be a sharp spear for the Party. I raised my head and said, Secretary, please tell me what to do. He said, Write a speech. I asked what I should write. He said, Tell the masses how you were mentally poisoned. I said that I did not quite understand the words “mentally poisoned.” Secretary Chain said, You are not mature enough to understand that yet. He then asked me to give an opinion on what kind of person I thought Autumn Leaves was. I told him the truth.

Secretary Chain laughed loudly at me. He said that I had already become a victim of the spy who had almost killed me with the skill of the wolf who killed the sheep, leaving no trace of blood. He punched his fist on the table and said loudly, That in itself is wonderful material to be discussed! I felt awkward. He stopped laughing and said, You shouldn’t be discouraged by your immaturity.

He made me feel disappointed in myself. Let me help you, he suggested. He asked me the name of the books she loaned me.
An Old Man of Invention,
I began to recall,
The Little Mermaid,
and
Snow White.
He asked for the author’s name. I said it was something like Andersen.

Secretary Chain suddenly raised his hand in the air and furrowed his brow. He said, Stop, this is it. Who is Andersen? An old foreign man, I guess, I replied. What were his fairy tales about? About lives of princes, princesses and little people. What does Andersen do now? he asked. I do not know, I replied.

Look how careless you are! Secretary Chain almost yelled at me. He could be a foreign spy! Taking out a little glass vial, Secretary Chain put a few pills into his mouth. He explained that it was the medicine for his liver pain.
He said his liver was hurting badly, but he could not tell his doctor about this because he would be hospitalized immediately. He said his pain was getting worse, but he could not afford to waste a second in the hospital. How can I disappoint Chairman Mao, who put his trust in people like us, the working class, the class that was once even lower than the pigs and dogs before Liberation?

His face was turning purple. I suggested that he take a rest. He waved me to go on as he pressed his liver with his hands to endure the pain. He told me that he did not have much schooling. His parents died of hunger when he was five. His brother and little sister were thrown into the sea after they died of cholera. He was sold to a child dealer for fifteen pounds of rice. He became a child worker in a shipping factory in Shanghai and was beaten often by the owner. After the Liberation he joined the Party and was sent to a workers’ night school. He said, I owe our Party a great deal and I haven’t worked hard enough to show my appreciation.

I looked at him and was touched. His pain seemed to be increasing. His fingers pressed against his liver harder, but he refused to rest. You know, we found Autumn Leaves’ diary and it had a paragraph about you, he said. What … what did she say about me? I became nervous. She said that you were one of the very few children who were educable. She put quotation marks around “educable.” Can you think of what that means? Without waiting for my reply, Secretary Chain concluded, It was obvious that Autumn Leaves thought that you could be educated into her type, her father’s type, the imperialists’ type. He pointed out that the purpose of writing this diary was to
present it to her American boss as proof of her success as a spy.

My world turned upside down. I felt deeply hurt and used. Secretary Chain asked me whether I was aware of the fact that I was set up as a model by Autumn Leaves to influence the others. Her goal is to make you all
betray
Communism! I felt the guilt and anger. I said to Secretary Chain that I would speak tomorrow. He nodded at me. He said, Our Party trusts you and Mao would be very proud of you.

Pull out the hidden class enemy, the American spy Autumn Leaves! Expose her under the bare sun! the crowd shouted as soon as the meeting started. I was sitting on the stage on one of the risers. Two strong men escorted Autumn Leaves onto the stage facing the crowd of two thousand people, including her students and colleagues. Her arms were twisted behind her. She was almost unrecognizable. Only a few days had passed since I had seen her, but it seemed as though she had aged ten years. Her hair had suddenly turned gray. Her face was colorless. A rectangular board reading “Down with American Spy” hung from her neck. Two men forced her to bow to Mao’s portrait three times. One of the men bent her left arm very hard and said, Beg Chairman Mao for forgiveness now! Autumn Leaves refused to say the words. The two men bent her arms up backward. They bent her harder. Autumn Leaves’ face contorted in pain and then her mouth moved. She said the words and the men let her loose.

My mouth was terribly dry. It was hard to bear what I saw. The string of the heavy board seemed to cut into Autumn Leaves’ skin. I forgot what I was supposed to do—to lead the crowd to shout the slogans—until Secretary Chain came to remind me of my duty.

Long live the great proletarian dictatorship! I shouted, following the slogan menu. I was getting more and more scared when I saw Autumn Leaves struggling with the two men who had been trying to press her head toward the floor while she tried to face the sky. When her eyeglasses fell off, I saw her eyes close tightly.

Secretary Chain shouted at her. The crowd shouted, Confess! Confess! Secretary Chain took the microphone and said that the masses would not have much patience. By acting this way Autumn Leaves was digging her own grave.

Autumn Leaves kept silent. When kicked hard, she said that she had nothing to confess. She said she was innocent. Our Party never accuses anyone who is innocent, said Secretary Chain, and yet the Party would never allow a class enemy to slip away from the net of the proletarian dictatorship. He said now it was time to demonstrate that Autumn Leaves was a criminal. He nodded at me and turned to the crowd. He said, Let’s have the victim speak out!

I stood up and felt dizzy. The crowd began clapping their hands. The sunlight was dazzlingly bright and was hurting my eyes. My vision became blurred and I saw a million bees wheeling in front of me sounding like helicopters. As the crowd kept clapping, I moved to the front of the stage. I stopped in front of the microphone. Taking
out the speech I had written last night, I suddenly felt a need to speak with my parents. I had not gone home but slept in the classroom on the table with other Little Red Guards. Five of us wrote the speech. I regretted not having my parents go over the speech with me. I took a deep breath. My fingers were shaking and would not obey in turning the pages.

Don’t be afraid, we are all with you, Secretary Chain said in my ear as he came to adjust the height of the microphone. He placed a cup of water in front of me. I took the water and drank it down in one breath. I felt a little better. I began to read.

I read to the crowd that Autumn Leaves was the wolf in sheep’s skin. I took out the books she loaned me and showed them to the crowd. As I was delivering my speech, I saw from the corner of my eye that Autumn Leaves had turned her head in my direction. She was murmuring. I became nervous but managed to continue. Comrades, I said, now I understand why Autumn Leaves was so kind to me. She was trying to turn me into an enemy of our country, and a running dog of the imperialists! I read on.

There was some slogan-shouting, during which I glanced secretly at Autumn Leaves. She was breathing hard and was about to fall. I stood, my limbs turning cold. I tried to remove my eyes from Autumn Leaves, but she caught them. I was terrified when I saw her staring at me without her eyeglasses. Her eyes looked like two Ping-Pong balls that almost popped out of her eye sockets.

The crowd shouted, Confess! Confess! Autumn
Leaves began to speak slowly to the crowd with her hoarse voice. She said that she would never want to turn any of her students into the country’s enemy. She broke into tears. Why would I? she repeated again and again. She was losing her voice. She began to swing her head trying to project her words, but no sound came out. She swung her head again making an effort to let her words out. She said that her father loved this country and that was the reason she came back to teach. Both her father and she believed in education. Spy? What are you talking about? Where did you get this idea? She looked at me.

If the enemy doesn’t surrender, let’s boil her, fry her and burn her to death! Secretary Chain shouted. The crowd followed, shouting and waving their fists. Secretary Chain signaled for me to go on. But I was trembling too hard to continue. Secretary Chain walked to the microphone from the back of the stage. He took over the microphone. He told the crowd that this was a class enemy’s live performance. It had given us an opportunity to learn how deceitful an enemy could be. Can we allow her to go on like this? No! the crowd shouted.

Secretary Chain was ordering Autumn Leaves to shut up and accept the criticism of the revolutionary masses with a correct attitude. Autumn Leaves said that she could not accept any untrue facts. Autumn Leaves said that a young girl such as I should not be used by someone with an evil intention.

You underestimated our Little Red Guard’s political awareness, Secretary Chain said with a scornful laugh. Autumn Leaves demanded to speak to me. Secretary
Chain told her to go ahead. He said that as a thoroughgoing dialectical materialist he never underestimated the role of teachers by negative example.

As the crowd quieted down, Autumn Leaves squatted on her heels to seek her glasses on the floor. When she put her glasses back on, she started to question me. I was scared. I did not expect that she would talk to me so seriously. My terror turned into fury. I wanted to get away. I said, How dare you put me in such a spot to be questioned like a reactionary? You had used me in the past to serve the imperialists; now you want to use me to get away from the criticism? It would be a shame if I lost to you!

Autumn Leaves called my name and asked if I really believed that she was an enemy of the country. If I did not think so, could I tell her who assigned me to do the speech. She said she wanted the truth. She said Chairman Mao always liked to have children show their honesty. She asked me with the exact same tone she used when she helped me with my homework. Her eyes were demanding me to focus on them. I could not bear looking at her eyes. They had looked at me when the magic of mathematics was explained; they had looked at me when the beautiful Little Mermaid story was told. When I won the first place in the Calculation-with-Abacus Competition, they had looked at me with joy; when I was ill, they had looked at me with sympathy and love. I had not realized the true value of what all this meant to me until I lost it forever that day at the meeting.

I heard people shouting at me. My head felt like a
boiling teapot. Autumn Leaves’ eyes behind the thick glasses now were like gun barrels shooting at me with fire. Just be honest! her hoarse voice raised to its extreme. I turned to Secretary Chain. He nodded at me as if to say, Are you going to lose to an enemy? He was smiling scornfully. Think about the snake, he said.

Yes, the snake, I remembered. It was a story Mao told in his book. It was about a peasant who found a frozen snake lying in his path on a snowy day. The snake had the most beautiful skin the peasant had ever seen. He felt sorry for her and decided to save her life. He picked up the snake and put her into his jacket to warm her with the heat of his body. Soon the snake woke up and felt hungry. She bit her savior. The peasant died. Our Chairman’s point is, Secretary Chain said as he ended the story, to our enemy, we must be absolutely cruel and merciless.

I turned to look at the wall-sized portrait of Mao. It was mounted on the back of the stage. The Chairman’s eyes looked like two swinging lanterns. I was reminded of my duty. I must fight against anyone who dared to oppose Mao’s teaching. The shouting of the slogans encouraged me.

Show us your standpoint—Secretary Chain passed me the microphone. I did not know why I was crying. I heard myself calling for my parents as I took the microphone. I said Mama, Papa, where are you? The crowd waved their angry fists at me and shouted, Down! Down! Down! I was so scared, scared of losing Secretary Chain’s trust, and scared of not being able to denounce Autumn Leaves. Finally, I gathered all my strength and yelled hysterically at Autumn Leaves with tears in my throat: Yes,
yes, yes, I do believe that you poisoned me; and I do believe that you are a true enemy! Your dirty tricks will have no more effect on me! If you dare to try them on me again, I’ll shut you up! I’ll use a needle to stitch your lips together!

I was never forgiven. Even after twenty-some years. After the Revolution was over. It was after my begging for forgiveness, I heard the familiar hoarse voice say, I am very sorry, I don’t remember you. I don’t think I ever had you as my student.

It was at that meeting I learned the meaning of the word “betrayal” as well as “punishment.” Indeed, I was too young then, yet one is never too young to have vanity. When my parents learned about the meeting from Blooming, Coral and Space Conqueror, they were terrified. They talked about disowning me. My mother said, I am a teacher too. How would you like to have my student do the same to me? She shut me out of the house for six hours. She said being my mother made her ashamed.