Читать книгу One Man’s Bible - Mabel Lee, Gao Xingjian - Страница 17

March wind. Why March? And why wind? In March, on the North China plains, it is still very cold. Endless stretches of muddy marshlands and alkaline flats on the ancient riverbed of the Yellow River have been reclaimed for farmland by reform-through-labor prisoners. If there was no drought, the millet sown in winter would result in a harvest of the same amount of seed after the beginning of spring. In accordance with the newly promulgated highest instructions of the highest leadership, these prison farms were converted into May Seventh Cadre Schools, and the original prisoners and military police were sent to the desolate uninhabited highlands of Qing-hai province. Hence the farms came to be farmed by purged bureaucrats and workers from the Red Capital.

“The May Seventh Cadre School is not a haven from the winds of class struggle!” The army officer from Beijing had come to convey this instruction. This rime it was a purge of the May Sixteenth counterrevolutionary group that had infiltrated every nook and cranny right down to mass organizations. Anyone who was investigated would instantly be considered a practicing counterrevolutionary. The very first time he was confronted, soon after the initial period of the movement to sweep away Ox Demons and Snake Spirits, he was so frightened that he made a confession on the spot. But now he had become a fox and was capable of biting back. He, too, could bare his sharp fangs and put on a mean pose. He was not going to wait for a pack of hunting dogs to pounce on him. Life, if this could be called life, had thus taught him to be an animal. At most, he was a fox surrounded by hunters, and, if he made a false move, he would be torn to shreds.

After several years of chaotic warfare over what was right one day and wrong the next, a whole series of crimes could be listed for anyone who had to be purged. As soon as a person was investigated, problems were sure to be found, and if a person had problems he would be declared the enemy. This was known as fighting to the death in the class struggle. As the army officer had named him as the main target of investigation, all that remained was for the masses to get fired up so that they would direct their fire at him. He was fully aware of this process and, before the masses were fired up, he had to bide his time.

Right up to the day before the commanding officer announced that he was to be investigated, the masses were still laughing with him. The masses lived with him and, in the same dining hall, drank the same corn gruel and ate the same unleavened mixed-grain buns with him. They slept together on the cement floor of the granary on a mattress padded with straw. The row upon row of communal mattresses were forty centimeters in width per person—no more, no less—measured with a tape measure, whether one was a high-ranking cadre or an odd-job worker, fat or thin, old or sick. However, the men and the women were separated. Husbands and wives without young children to take care of couldn’t stay in the same place. Everything was organized in military formation—squad, platoon, company, battalion—and everyone came under the leadership of the commanding officer. At six o’clock in the morning, the bugle call got people up, and they had twenty minutes to brush their teeth and have a wash. They then stood before the portrait of the Great Leader on the wall to seek, “morning instructions,” sang songs from Mao’s Sayings and, holding high the little red book, shouted out “long live” three times before going to the dining room to drink gruel. Assembly followed, and Mao’s Selected Works were recited for half an hour before people shouldered their hoes and pickaxes to work on the land. Everyone had the same fate. What was the point of all this endless fighting?