Wild Ginger Part 18

He was in a bloodstained white s.h.i.+rt and blue pants. In a few minutes he would be a martyr. I broke down.

"Down with the anti-Maoists!" The shouting came from the loudspeaker. "Down! Down! Down!"

I was already in h.e.l.l. I saw a reason to destroy the world, the world in which Wild Ginger would go on living as a celebrated Maoist, and would feel no repentance. My conscience rebelled against my heart. My mind gathered its courage. My eyes sought the microphone and my voice prepared itself. The speech was already composed in my head. I knew exactly what I was going to say. I was going to say that I was sick of pretending. Then I would spit out the truth. The whole truth, starting with the closet and ending with the backstage conversation.

I gave myself permission to break the promise, to declare that my love for Wild Ginger was over.

"Convict Maple" was called through the microphone. The guards' clawlike hands came and grabbed my shoulders. They locked me in their grip and pushed me toward the stage. They lined me up with Evergreen.

I pivoted my head toward Evergreen. His eyes were closed and his chin protruded toward the sky. His face was a mask of sadness.

I stared at the microphone. I felt my legs shaking. My chest quaked.

A man with tiny eyes and fat cheeks appeared before me. He had a pair of scissors and an electric shaver. The guard pulled my arms behind my back and tied them there. I was pushed to my knees. Suddenly the sky was draped with the folds of skin under the fat man's chin. He started to shave my head.

The crowd boiled. It looked like a million termites.

My hair dropped in bunches. I thought of a hen being plucked in the market.

I told myself to wait for my moment to address the crowd.

Suddenly someone else's name was called. I was lifted from my knees and shoved down the stage.

I was exiting. No! I realized that I would not be given a chance to expose the truth. How foolish I was! The reason some convicts were given a moment to speak was because they couldn't talk-their vocal cords had been removed!

Despair overwhelmed me. I kicked and struggled with all my might. The guard hit my newly shorn head with the back of his gun.

The trucks were parked on the side of the square. It was loading time again. The guards pushed Evergreen toward the first truck while I was led to the second. I broke the guards' hold and threw myself at Evergreen. I yelled his name hysterically. I fell on the ground. Four other guards came trying to quiet me. But I was wild and desperate. I held Evergreen's leg. My tears wet the bottom of his trousers. It was too late. Nothing was going to save him. I had come to my senses too late. I had helped Wild Ginger murder him.

Where was Wild Ginger? The heart remains pure if the eyes don't see, The heart remains pure if the eyes don't see, my dead grandmother's voice said to me. How smart of her to hide now. But I was certain that she was somewhere watching us. Her mind's eye saw every second of this. She counted the minutes left for Evergreen to breathe and the time left for me to be warmed by the sun. Had I been wrong all the way back to the day we met? Was there ever a Wild Ginger who deserved a place in my final thoughts? my dead grandmother's voice said to me. How smart of her to hide now. But I was certain that she was somewhere watching us. Her mind's eye saw every second of this. She counted the minutes left for Evergreen to breathe and the time left for me to be warmed by the sun. Had I been wrong all the way back to the day we met? Was there ever a Wild Ginger who deserved a place in my final thoughts?

The guards stepped on my wrists. A sharp pain shot through my hand. I let go of Evergreen's trousers. I let go of my love and my life.

It was then that I heard a voice. Her voice. Far away but recognizable. I was sure it was she. She was talking through a loudspeaker. From high above. From the flat roof of the city hall.

My head turned, and with it a million other heads. The focus sharpened, toward a tiny figure standing on top of the roof waving madly, holding a microphone. Behind her, the setting sun looked like a giant red lantern.

The voice sounded distorted. The syllables came broken, as if cut by a gust of wind. "Long live Chairman Mao! I am the Maoist Wild Ginger. Stop the execution! Chairman Mao teaches us, 'A true Communist is a person who is n.o.ble, selfless, and lives for the cause of building Communism and to sacrifice herself for the people!' Well, I contradicted Mao's teaching! I am here because I can't explain what's happened to me. I deeply apologize to Chairman Mao. I am ashamed that I had to choose a coward's way ... If I can't be n.o.ble, can't be selfless, can't live for the cause of building Communism, I can climb on the altar..." The figure moved along the edge of the roof as if looking for a spot to jump. In one moment I envisioned her fall. My breath skipped.

"But I am too low for Chairman Mao. My sacrifice would not be acceptable for him. My blood has bourgeois ink in it. I am not fit for the revolutionary altar ... I am a waste, what can I tell you? I'll die and the significance of my death will weigh less than a feather. But I am not going to cry. At least I will act like a Maoist, so you will know I am not a fake. At the core I am who I've always claimed to be ... My friend Maple was stupid. She was not a Maoist. She needs to be reformed. She's a thief who stole hearts. But the singing rally incident had nothing to do with her, neither with Comrade Evergreen ... I am here to tell you the truth. I am a Maoist. I do what I have to do because I practice our great leader's teaching!"

She moved to the corner of the building and shouted, "Chairman Mao teaches us, 'Many things may become baggage, may become enc.u.mbrances, if we cling to them blindly and uncritically. Let us take some ill.u.s.trations. Having made mistakes, you may feel that, come what may, you are saddled with them and so become dispirited; if you have not made mistakes, you may feel that you are free from error and so become conceited. Lack of achievement in work may breed pessimism and depression, while achievement may breed pride and arrogance. A comrade with a short record of struggle may s.h.i.+rk responsibility on this account, while a veteran may become opinionated because of his long record of struggle..."'

"What is she talking about?" voices yelled from the crowd.

"She is going mad!" the guard escorting Evergreen uttered in amazement.

"She is mad!" the crowd cried.

"Wild Ginger has gone mad!" The crowd stirred.

"Somebody do something!"

"She's going to jump off the building!"

"No! Wild Ginger, don't do it!"

The crowd surged toward her like an ocean tide.

"Be still!" Wild Ginger called from above. "I want you all to listen carefully! I am a Maoist alive or dead. But I had impure thoughts. I tried to resolve my personal grudge but it backfired. I dishonored Chairman Mao, and I must punish myself for it. But please"-she bent her knee slightly-"remember me as a Maoist! A Maoist! A Maoist!"

She leapt.

26.

I saw Evergreen free himself from the guards and lunge toward where Wild Ginger lay. The guards swarmed over him as if he were attempting an escape. "Get an ambulance!" Evergreen yelled. "An ambulance! Somebody!"

"For heaven's sake, her skull is crushed," an old voice came. "She'll be lucky if death finds her; otherwise she'll live only as a vegetable."

The crowd resumed its beelike sound.

The microphone buzzed.

I felt stifled and gasped desperately for air. I wanted to move but my limbs wouldn't cooperate. Tripping over my own steps, I fell again and again. My forehead knocked on the concrete.

I crawled my way through until I was beside Wild Ginger. She lay motionless. Her face was pale purple. Her eyes were shut and her lips clamped tightly. No more Mao reciting. The blood was spreading from the back of her skull. Her hair covered half her face. She was in her uniform, washed and b.u.t.toned.

Her hands were still warm. I took them.

The sea inside my head started moaning. My world became white, like the negative of a photo.

Slowly her blood came, soaking my trousers.

Hot Pepper emerged from the crowd. She rushed to Wild Ginger and began to search her pockets. Before she went further a policeman stopped her. He searched Wild Ginger's pockets himself and took out a blood-soaked envelope.

27.

I don't remember how I got back to the cell. When I woke, I found myself lying on the bare concrete. It was chilly but I was sweating and running a high fever, slipping in and out of consciousness. I kept hearing my mother's voice. "Maple, go and take a look; Wild Ginger is calling you." I felt detached from my body. I couldn't lift my fingers or move my toes. My head spun threads of memory. Still unable to move, I started to recite Mao quotations uncontrollably. '"Communism is a complete system of proletarian ideology and a new social system. It is full of youth and vitality; it is the most complete, progressive, revolutionary, and rational system in human history. It is sweeping the world with the momentum of avalanche and the force of a thunderbolt..."'

The image of Wild Ginger jumping off the building repeated itself in front of my eyes. Her leap was like a child's acrobatics, like hopping off a fig tree. I could hear her laughter. Also Evergreen's. I kept seeing their faces. They came to me like the moon's reflection in the water. When I woke, the reflection broke. And when I fell asleep it was a new moon again. I could hear the sound of the water, splas.h.i.+ng the stone edge of the pond. I remember the moment I turned to look at Evergreen. In the sound of Long live Chairman Mao! Long live Chairman Mao! his smile froze. It was a hideous expression, like a person who gets his head chopped off in the middle of telling a joke. his smile froze. It was a hideous expression, like a person who gets his head chopped off in the middle of telling a joke.

In my faintness the guard came. "Get up and say long life to Chairman Mao!" When I raised myself up he came to unlock my cuffs. "Get out, you are free." He cleared his throat and spat his phlegm on the ground.

I asked what was going on; he replied, "How would I know?"

At the prison office I received an explanation.

Wild Ginger had admitted her guilt in the letter. She confessed that she and Hot Pepper were responsible for the singing rally incident. However, Hot Pepper denied the accusation. She claimed to be Wild Ginger's victim.

"What about Evergreen?" I was so overwhelmed that I choked. "He was on his way to be executed when the letter was finally read!"

"He's alive. He is a very lucky man. Once again this proves Chairman Mao's teaching, 'Our party will never mistreat a good comrade,'" the officer said expressionlessly. "Comrade Evergreen was rescued at the last minute. It is another victory of the revolution."

Lying in bed at Evergreen's house we wept. We tried to celebrate our new lives but it was impossible. Wild Ginger was constantly on our minds. Our bodies were locked so much in the pain of missing her that they became immune to desire. We looked at each other, but all we saw was Wild Ginger. And we heard her voice too. The pa.s.sionate reciting of Mao quotations. I held Evergreen. Slowly we drifted into a deep sleep. In my dream Wild Ginger put me back into her closet. Once again I felt her.

Days, weeks, and months pa.s.sed. Evergreen and I were unable to make love.

My mother told me that on the day Wild Ginger's body was cremated, she had volunteered to collect the ashes. Against the authorities order, she took the ashes and secretly went to a temple in the mountains. She prayed for Wild Ginger's soul to be at peace and burned incense. She mixed the incense with Wild Ginger's ashes and left the remains in a monastery under an altered name suggested by the head priest. Instead of "Wild Ginger" she wrote "Land Found." She gave me the address of the monastery.

Evergreen left Shanghai. He went to fulfill his dream of becoming a village teacher. I remained behind. We had decided to give up the relations.h.i.+p. We hadn't been able to make it work no matter how hard we tried. There was not much to say. We couldn't mention Wild Ginger and yet we couldn't stop mentioning her either. She died taking a big part of us with her. Every night I could smell the earth's mold and every morning its fragrance.

I didn't go to the train station to bid Evergreen farewell. He didn't ask me. It was as if we both were trying to forget ourselves before we were able to forget Wild Ginger.

I was a.s.signed to work as a clerk at Shanghai Number Thirteen Department Store. I sold pencils, notebooks, and school bags. Once in a while when there was a clearance sale I would think about buying something to send to Evergreen. But I never did buy anything. I didn't have his address. He never wrote. At any rate, I wouldn't contact him even if I had his address.

28.

Over the years, I had other men in my life. I dated the ones who knew nothing of my past. Yet I often felt emptiness. I guess subconsciously I longed to unearth the part of myself that I had buried the day Wild Ginger died. None of the relations.h.i.+ps I pursued were consummated. There were a couple of failed engagements. I was twenty-nine years old. I felt ninety-two.

My mother died of uterine cancer in 1981. One of her last wishes was to have me visit the temple annually to light incense for Wild Ginger. "We owe Mrs. Pei that," she said. My father never said anything. Released from forced labor camp after seventeen years, he had turned into a man of very few words. He hated the ex-Maoists.

My family members were spread all over the country. Most of them were married and had children. Two of my brothers had become railway workers and one served in the army as a radio technician. My younger sisters were working too. One was a nurse and the other the head of a remote labor collective. We gathered in Shanghai every New Year's Eve. While the children played hide-and-seek under the table, my siblings began to crack jokes about the Cultural Revolution. They joked about Mao, his followers, and the ex-Maoists. The tone was cynical. I was never much of a partic.i.p.ant. To me, the Cultural Revolution was a religion, and Wild Ginger was its embodiment.

This year at the New Year's Eve table my father toasted me with heavy rice wine. He said forgetting was the best way to be happy.

After the fireworks I went to visit the house at the end of Chia Chia Lane. It had been turned into a storehouse for preserved vegetables. It belonged to the market. All the Mao murals, paintings, and calligraphy of Mao quotations and poems around the neighborhood had been sc.r.a.ped and coated over with layers of cement. There was no trace of Wild Ginger except the fig tree. Its trunk was bucket thick now and it bore a tremendous amount of fruit in the summer.

I made my first visit to the temple on the fourth day of the spring. The temple was located in the midst of the mountains. The climbing was difficult. The Buddha's statue sat within a large cave. Behind the statue was a monastery where Wild Ginger's ashes were kept in a tiny ash drawer by the altar, which was covered with red silk fabric; in front of it hundreds of candles were burning.

Not until then did I understand my mother's intention. It was her way to help me to come to terms with my loss and sorrow. She knew that I could never forget Wild Ginger and Evergreen. She knew that I had to reconcile with them in order to go on with my life. Mother had waited patiently for my enlightenment.

The walls surrounding the altar were covered with quotations copied from Buddhist scriptures. In essence, they seemed to be about moving and floating through life without stopping and without letting bitterness get in the way. Was I bitter?

It had been almost nine years since Wild Ginger's death. The country had pulled down its mask after Mao. Being an ex-Maoist brought one embarra.s.sment. The Cultural Revolution was officially criticized as madness and destruction although Mao was not yet questioned for his responsibility. In the neighbors' mouths, the incident at the Mao quotation-singing rally was a sad story. No one remembered Wild Ginger as a heroine, only as a foolish girl.

It was big news in the paper that the Russian-style city hall was scheduled to be demolished on October 1, the National Independence Day. A new hotel that had j.a.panese investment backing was to take its place. The year was 1994, twenty years after Wild Ginger's jump.

I felt distracted that morning. The city hall was in front of my mind's eye. I was eating breakfast when I heard the announcement from the radio in the cafeteria where I worked that the explosion would take place at nine o'clock. I found myself imagining the explosion. I had an urge to be a witness. The feeling became so strong that I had to excuse myself. I left work without permission. Taking a bus, I headed to the People's Square.