One Man’s Bible

What had happened to his father nine years earlier also happened to him. He fell into the same trap. Indeed, all he had done was put his signature on a poster. It had on it Chairman Mao’s call—ALL OF YOU MUST CONCERN YOURSELVES WITH THE IMPORTANT AFFAIRS OF THE NATION—in bold-type print from the People’s Daily. When he was on his way to work, someone was putting up the poster in the big hall downstairs and was soliciting signatures, so he took up a pen and signed his name. He was unaware of the motives of this anti-Party poster nor of the political motives of the person who had written it. He couldn’t work it out, but he had to acknowledge that it was aimed at the Party Center. By signing his name, he lost his bearings as well as a class standpoint. Actually, he had no idea what class he belonged to—after all, he couldn’t count as a member of the proletariat—and so he didn’t have a clear class standpoint. If he didn’t sign this poster then he would have signed a similar poster. He confessed to this. He had, without doubt, committed a political error and from that time on, it was on his file. His personal history was no longer clean.

Prior to that he had truly never thought to oppose the Party. He had no need to oppose anyone and simply hoped that people wouldn’t disrupt him from dreaming. That night rudely awakened him and he could see his precarious situation: a political storm was raging everywhere and if he were to preserve himself he had to lose himself among the common people. He had to say what everyone else said and be able to show that he was the same as everyone else. He had to keep in step to lose himself among the masses, say what was stipulated by the Party, extinguish all doubts, and keep to the slogans. He had to join with colleagues in writing another poster to indicate his support for the Party Center leadership, denounce the previous poster, and admit his error, in order to avoid being labeled anti-Party.

The obedient will survive and the rebellious will perish. In the early morning, the corridors of the building were covered in new posters, there had been a change in the political climate: today was right and yesterday was wrong, people had turned into chameleons. A poster just put up by a political cadre gave him a shock.

“Renegade Liu so-and-so, you are called a renegade because you have gone against the basic principles of the Party! Renegade Liu so-and-so, you are called a renegade because you have betrayed Party secrets! Renegade Liu so-and-so, you are called a renegade because you are an opportunist and have profiteered all this time by concealing your landlord background to worm your way into the revolutionary camp! Renegade Liu so-and-so, you are called a renegade also because up to now you have sheltered your reactionary father by hiding him in your house to resist the dictatorship of the proletariat! You are a renegade, Liu so-and-so, because your class instincts are taking advantage of this movement. By confusing black with white to deceive the masses, you have jumped out to target the Party Center. You harbor evil motives!”

This inflammatory call for revolutionary action was intimidating. His immediate boss, Old Liu, thus relegated to a different class from everyone, was instantly isolated; he left the crowd around the poster, returned to his department-chief office, and shut the door. When he reemerged, he was no longer smoking his pipe, and no one dared to greet this former department chief.

After a full night of warfare, it had started to get light. He went to the lavatory and washed his face. The cold water revived him and he looked through the window into the distance at the stretch of gray-black roof tiles. People were probably still asleep and dreaming. Only the round top of the White Pagoda had been tinted by dawn and was becoming more and more distinct. For the first time it occurred to him that he probably was a concealed enemy, and if he wanted to go on living he would have to wear a mask.

“Please be careful of the carriage door, the next station is Admiralty.” This had been spoken first in Cantonese and then in English. You had dozed off and gone past your station. The underground in Hong Kong is cleaner than it is in Paris, and Hong Kong and Hong Kong people are orderly, compared to Mainlanders. You will have to get off at the next stop to go back the other way so that you can return to the hotel for a nap. Tonight you don’t know where you will wake up, but it will be in a bed with a foreign woman. You are irredeemable. Now you are not just the enemy, you are careering toward hell. However, memories for him were hell.

8

“Why don’t you tell me about that Chinese girl of yours? How is she?” Margarethe puts down her glass of wine and raises her long black eyelashes, thick with mascara, to look at you across the small round table.

“I don’t know, I suppose she’s still in China,” you mumble, trying to avoid the question.