One Man’s Bible

The old man was not like the old cadres; nevertheless, when he instructed young people, he was forever saying our Party this and our Nation that. He was, after all, a famous person with revolutionary credentials. He spoke with a vigorous voice, and what he said was always measured and lucid. But now his voice had suddenly turned reedy, and trembled deep down in his throat as he said, “I’m a black-gang element, don’t come here again. You’re young, don’t get involved. You’ve never been through the experience of struggles within the Party—”

The old man wouldn’t let him finish his greetings, and, nervously opening the door a crack, peeped out and said, “Keep it for later, wait until all this passes, keep it for later, you don’t know about the Yan’an Rectification Movement.”

“What was the Yan’an Rectification Movement like?” he went on to stupidly ask.

“I’ll tell you later, leave quickly, leave quickly!”

All this took place in less than a minute. One minute earlier he thought the struggles within the Party were somewhere far away, it had not crossed his mind that they were right in front of him.

Ten years later, he heard that the old man had been released from prison. By then, he too had returned from the countryside and was back in Beijing, so he went to see him. The old man was reduced to skin and bones, and one of his legs had been broken; he was propped up in a reclining chair and had a black Persian cat on his lap. A walking stick stood by the armrest.

“A cat’s life is actually better than a human’s.”

The old man’s lips parted in what seemed to be a smile, revealing the few front teeth he had left. As he stroked the old cat, his beady eyes in their sunken sockets glinted strangely, just like a cat’s. The old man did not talk to him about his experiences in prison. It was not until he visited him in hospital, shortly before his death, that he said his greatest regret in life was that he had joined the Party.

Back then, when he left the old man’s house, he thought about those manuscripts of his. They had nothing to do with the Party, but they could get him into trouble. Still, he hadn’t decided to burn them, so he carried them on his back in a big bag to the home of Big Lu, a friend he’d made while in hospital with dysentery. Big Lu, born and bred in Beijing, had a big build and taught geography in a middle school. Trying to impress a pretty young woman, Big Lu got him to draft a series of love letters. Then, by the time Big Lu’s newly wedded wife found out he’d been an accessory in the letter writing, she was already irreversibly married to Big Lu, so there was a special friendship between the three of them. Big Lu lived with his parents, and they had an apartment with a courtyard all to themselves, so it wasn’t hard to hide a bag of things.

At the height of summer, August, the Red Guard movement started. Big Lu’s wife suddenly phoned him at the office and arranged to meet him at noon in a shop that sold milk drinks and Western-style cakes. He thought the couple must have had an argument, so he hurried on his bicycle to the cake shop. The old shop sign had been taken down and replaced with a new one, with the slogan: SERVING THE WORKERS, PEASANTS, AND SOLDIERS. Inside the shop, above the seats, was a long slogan scrawled in black characters across the wall: OUT WITH ALL STINKING CAPITALIST OFFSPRING!

At first, the “destruction of the four olds” by the Red Guards, which had started in the middle schools, seemed to be children having a ruckus. However, the Great Leader’s public letter addressed to them, affirming that “it is right to rebel,” incited the young teenagers to violent action. Anyway, not being a stinking capitalist offspring, he went in. They were selling milk drinks, as usual, but before he had found somewhere to sit, Big Lu’s wife came in, took his arm as if she were his girlfriend, and said, “I’m not hungry yet, let’s go for a walk, there’s something I have to buy.”

When they had left the cake shop and were on the street, she quietly told him that Big Lu had been so intimidated by the Red Guards at the school that he had shaved his own head in advance. This was because his family owned their apartment. They did not count as capitalists, but even as petty entrepreneurs, they could be searched at any time by the Red Guards. She asked him to quickly take away that bag of his from the coal shed in the courtyard.