Wild Ginger Part 15

'"Keep pus.h.i.+ng the cart,' Maple!"

'"Keep pus.h.i.+ng the cart until ... until we reach the Communist heaven!'"

"Oh Maple, the blind man is picking peaches."

"And the blind woman has caught a fat fish-this is a miracle."

"Do the quotations!"

"You armchair revolutionary!"

He groaned, "Oh! Chairman Mao!"

The night didn't end until we collapsed in each other's arms. I meant to talk about what to do with Wild Ginger but didn't get a chance. To be honest, I was avoiding the discussion. The problem had grown too big to be fixed. In the meantime Evergreen and I were testing each other. Before I could do anything regarding Wild Ginger I needed to know my feelings as well as Evergreen's. Nevertheless I feared that I had no control of the situation. Wild Ginger could break in any moment. I had, in fact, been waiting for it to happen. She always had a foreboding before her fate took shape. I could smell the scorched words in her mouth.

I continued to avoid Wild Ginger. Luckily all her time was being taken up with a big campaign to promote Mao's latest teachings. There was an accident-an "accident" in Wild Ginger's eyes, but not in mine. It chilled my enthusiasm completely for the Maoists. A high school student, a piano player, had criticized the Red Guards for destroying his piano. A fight broke out and the Red Guards placed the pianist's hand in a doorjamb and slammed the door shut.

Wild Ginger rushed to the spot. "The man could have played Mao quotation songs! I know him. His name is Guo-Dong the Grand Beam. He is a good comrade. We had talked about having him play the solo for the Shanghai Mao Propaganda Band. He was my responsibility! And now you have ruined my plan!" She ordered the door slammer to be immediately arrested and sentenced to life in prison.

To all of us the sentence was too harsh. Wild Ginger had been acting strangely recently. Her voice was distant and her expression remote. Her eyes looked weary although still penetrating. Something seemed to be seriously bothering her and she was constantly angry.

I ran toward home as if someone were chasing me. It was my own thoughts. Evergreen and I hadn't met for a month. Had he gone back to Wild Ginger? Or had she caught him and made him confess? I had a feeling that the confrontation between me and Wild Ginger was about to take place.

The neighborhood was quiet that noon. The midsummer heat was stifling. Fat locusts infested the trees and made high-pitched noises. I slowed as I neared the lane. I noticed a shadow under the sun. It was Evergreen.

"Wild Ginger and I are finished," he began.

I felt bad and relieved at the same time.

"Last night I made up my mind. I went to her house." Evergreen's voice was strained. "She ... actually knew. The moment I mentioned your name she came and slapped me in the face. She told me that she didn't want to know the details. She didn't cry or anything. She ... led me to her bed."

My hair began to p.r.i.c.kle at its roots.

"She stripped herself and said that she would give me what I wanted. Even if it meant that she would have to lie to keep her position."

I squatted down by the roots of a tree and waited for him to continue.

"I could hardly think at that moment." He knelt down next to me and lowered his voice as much as he could. "I... tried to hold on to my clothes when she tried to strip me. She was ... I don't know how to describe it. I couldn't tell if she was herself. Anyway, she wouldn't let me go ... She insisted on us going to bed. I told her that I couldn't do it. I ... I didn't want to hurt her feelings, so I said that it was not worth it. She should have her first time with someone who would appreciate it. Then she cried."

My tears welled up.

"She said that she had put her shame in my hands and that I was ... obligated to pity her and show mercy if I had a conscience ... It was ... awful. She slapped her own face when I refused to touch her. She began to hit her head against the wall, said that she was sorry to Chairman Mao, said that she was going to whip the beast out of her body. The sound of her banging her head on the wall devastated me. I begged her to stop and ... I said I would try to take her.

"It felt like making love to the dead. She was underneath me, her eyes were shut, her legs apart, her jaws locked tightly, as if she were going through torture ... But she wouldn't let me go. She cried, 'You must finish me!' In the meantime she wouldn't stop talking and reciting Mao quotations. She yelled at me, 'Prove that you are not a coward, admit that you are evil seduced. Show your shame, take out your sun instrument and look at it, spit on it...' Oh, these terrible words! I can't get them out of my ears! I thought I was mad to hear that. I am sorry, Maple, I shouldn't put you through this..."

"Go on, please. I need to know."

"She said it was her turn. She must toss herself in the pit of shame. She must see for herself how grotesque coupling was. She pulled over a mirror and demanded that I look at myself while taking her. The ugly members of our bodies. She said, 'Don't you think they are the most disgusting organs? One is like a worm and the other like a bee's nest! One should be cut and the other scorched!' She made me hate my body. I really did at that moment. I could have thrown up. She said it was the right feeling. The disgust. Keep looking. I can still see her shouting in front of my eyes. 'What are these? Animals! Animals!'

"I was completely impotent ... I begged her to quit, but she said that we must fix the problem. It was only s.e.x that blocked my eyes to see my own potential as a great Maoist. She said I could be fixed if I let her help. She said, 'You must get erect. I must go through this in order to get it out of your system. We must do this so there will be no myth between our bodies.' I tried to explain but she refused to listen. She pushed herself onto me, all over, and my body started to betray me and then ... suddenly"-Evergreen paused to catch his breath, his shoulders trembled, and his face turned paper white-"I saw blood."

18.

I couldn't sleep. I felt that I owed Wild Ginger an explanation. I had become clear about my feelings toward Evergreen. After our talk Evergreen wrote me a letter. "To me, Maple, love is more important than Maoism."

After contemplation, I wrote back. I accepted his proposal of engagement, however with one condition: I would not further my relations.h.i.+p with him before I made peace with Wild Ginger. Wild Ginger was too important to my life. And I was determined to keep her friends.h.i.+p.

It was two o'clock in the morning. My mind had been racing. Finally I got up and sneaked out of the house. I wandered around the streets and then found myself at Wild Ginger's door. Her light was on. I stood, trying to figure out whether or not to knock. Suddenly the door opened. Wild Ginger in her uniform stood in front of me.

"I don't intend to spit on you but I might not be able to help myself," she said. "Go away, Maple."

"Wild Ginger," I uttered weakly. "I need a chance."

"Go away before I pick up a gun and shoot you in the head."

"Please, Wild Ginger, I'll do what you ask, anything."

She laughed. "Anything? Who are you fooling? Don't say it if you don't mean it!"

"I mean it."

"What about giving up Evergreen? Now tell me that you mean it!"

I lowered my head.

"How blind I was to trust you ... How I hate myself!"

"Please, Wild Ginger, I am..." It was as if my mouth were not mine. I tried to drag more words out of it but my thoughts scattered. I watched Wild Ginger talk but I couldn't hear her. I saw her mouthing "I hate myself." Suddenly my mind was stirred by the image of years ago in which she stabbed her hand with a sharpened pencil.

I began to feel that I could never truly love Evergreen, that the relations.h.i.+p between Evergreen and me would never work because it would always be haunted. It was doomed right from the beginning-I loved Wild Ginger so much that her suffering over Evergreen was my curse.

She pushed me out and slammed the door.

I stood there, unable to think.

I can't remember how long I stood. Dawn broke. The locusts had begun their chorus. The noise was piercing and getting louder by the moment. The sound filled my head.

For the next three months Wild Ginger and I didn't talk. The pain not only didn't go away but deepened. We were almost eighteen. Bored with Mao study I retreated into my own world where missing-cover Western novels and hand-copied ancient ma.n.u.scripts became my obsession. Evergreen resigned his post as the district Red Guard head. He was in a military training program preparing to go to Vietnam. We couldn't make ourselves stay away from each other.

Wild Ginger turned into an unrecognizable character. She set laws for all the youth-anyone who was caught engaging in a s.e.xual act would be considered a criminal. She personally took charge of several raids where the Red Guards broke into people's houses.

I sensed that Wild Ginger was looking to catch us.

It was as if I weren't walking on my own legs that morning. I ate no breakfast. After I came back from the market I headed for school. As I approached the cla.s.sroom, I saw Hot Pepper chatting intimately with Wild Ginger. Hot Pepper was dressed in a blouse printed in a pattern of pine trees and falling snow. Wild Ginger was in a navy blue Mao jacket with a bright red collar. She was examining an application of some sort, which I was sure Hot Pepper had completed. As I got closer and saw the red letterhead I was able to tell that it was Hot Pepper's application for Communist party members.h.i.+p.

Seeing me, Wild Ginger put her arm around Hot Pepper's shoulders and the two turned and walked away. Within two weeks Hot Pepper was p.r.o.nounced a party member. She followed Wild Ginger like a dog. She carried a heavy paste bucket all day long to help Wild Ginger put up news columns. I saw her pour Wild Ginger water during her speeches. The two flattered each other at the Mao activists' conventions. Hot Pepper must have felt an inch taller when she ran into me in the neighborhood. She gave me a warning for being late for last Thursday's Mao quotation reciting.

As a radical Maoist, Wild Ginger not only pushed herself, but also pushed the entire district to be the model of Mao studies. In the name of Mao she enslaved us. We worked on reciting the quotations like monks chanting Buddhist scriptures. There was no longer time even for me to go to the market. Every morning Wild Ginger's shrill whistle would come from the loudspeakers mounted on the electric poles throughout the neighborhood. I often rushed to the school without was.h.i.+ng my face or brus.h.i.+ng my teeth. Within minutes the entire school would gather in an open square.

Wild Ginger would stand on a four-foot-high concrete stage. The microphone in her hand looked like a grenade. Her skin was sunburned. Her eyes blinked nervously and her hands made fists. She often started out with a controlled voice but then, in an instant, she would shout. The sound would blast and the microphone would buzz. After a brief Mao quotation reciting, she would order us to march and run. She would keep us going so long we sometimes wondered if she had forgotten about us. Anyone who dropped out would be publicly humiliated and punished.

When we ran into each other she treated me like a wall. One time she laughed hysterically when our shoulders brushed. I saw her showing more affection toward Hot Pepper. If Hot Pepper had a tail she would have wagged it harder. I knew she had been coveting a chair at the Red Guard's headquarters.

19.

When my mother asked me about Wild Ginger I lied. I figured that she had some idea about our breaking up. She seemed just as awkward around the subject as I was.

At the end of summer, Evergreen returned from military training. At the train station where I went to pick him up we discussed our future. "I have changed my mind about wanting to go to Vietnam," he began. "I'd like to open a husband-and-wife elementary school for poor children in a remote village in the countryside." After a pause he asked, "Would you like to be the wife?"

Without thinking, I answered yes. I wanted to escape as much as he did since I had failed to make peace with Wild Ginger. "You would have to wait until I graduate from the middle school," I added. He was thrilled. The idea of being with Evergreen, away from Wild Ginger, and teaching children was both appealing and exciting. The options for graduates were not encouraging in 1973. Shanghai's population had exploded and the city was terribly overcrowded. There was little demand for workers. One's best option, if one qualified, was to become a city sanitation worker. The rest would be sent to labor collectives in the remote countryside. A person's fate depended on family background, the level of his or her loyalty toward Mao, and the government's quota the family owed.

When I broke the news to my parents, they were quiet. They weren't sure if it was a good idea for me to become engaged at eighteen. I explained that our love was strong. Finally my parents granted me silent permission. When Evergreen started to receive "congratulation" candies from the neighbors he cautioned me to "be careful of Wild Ginger." I couldn't think of Wild Ginger as dangerous, so didn't take his words too seriously.

"She might not mean to harm you," Evergreen warned, "but she is insane."

"Well, she needs time to heal, and after all we are the cause of her pain."

"I don't think that we should blame ourselves for her misery," Evergreen disagreed. "She had made it clear at the very beginning, to both of us, that being a Maoist was more important to her than being human. I was not what she wanted. To make a bad joke-you picked up her leftovers."

I didn't want to argue with Evergreen. I believed that Wild Ginger loved Evergreen. It was a part of herself that she couldn't understand, didn't know what to do with. I had taken advantage of her confusion. I was the thief. I was prepared to face Wild Ginger's rage one day. I needed that combat; I needed her to slap me in the face. It would be a kindness, forgiveness, and blessing.

20.

"We're organizing a Mao quotation-singing rally!" Wild Ginger's voice came through a loudspeaker. "The Cultural Revolution is in its seventh year, and the struggle between the proletarian cla.s.s and the bourgeois cla.s.s has intensified ever more significantly. Defending Maoism and demonstrating the proletarian cla.s.s's strength is not only important but absolutely necessary. We must sing loud, louder, and louder the Mao quotation songs. We must promote hard, harder, and hardest the ideas of Maoism! The rally will be held in the Shanghai Acrobatics Stadium!"

The city was mobilized. Hot Pepper led a thousand-member team and distributed leaflets at every street corner. People were ordered to put down whatever they were doing to join the event. The factories, labor collectives, and schools were required by the city committee to send a delegation of singers to the rally.

As the executive producer, Wild Ginger selected the delegations and scheduled their auditions. She discussed her ideas with the orchestra, stage designers, and technicians on sound, lights, and props. She conducted the practices, rehearsals, and run-throughs. On the surface her energy seemed inexhaustible, but I could tell beneath her smiling face she was falling apart. There was a detectable nervousness in her voice. People who worked with her talked about her unpredictable outbursts and mood swings. The way she shouted and yelled for no particular reason. Her habit of smas.h.i.+ng things. Her use of profanity.

Although Evergreen and I had no interest in joining the rally, our names were called and we had no choice but to go to the Acrobatics Stadium for practice.

The practice was a three-week, daylong commitment involving fifteen thousand people from over five hundred work units. Each group was called to stand up and sing until Wild Ginger gave her approval. Some groups were good. The Shanghai Garrison was disciplined, with a tradition of singing, and had obviously been practicing. But the peasant groups were lousy. They were sent by the commune and had hardly sung in their lives. They sang off-key and confused Mao quotation songs with their folk songs. Wild Ginger did as much as she could to help them but finally she had to give up. "As long as you show me that you can follow the beat, I will pa.s.s you," she told them. The school groups were the best, but the young children had little patience. When it wasn't their turn, they sneaked around the bowl-shaped stadium and looked for their friends and neighbors to play.

Evergreen's group was about two gates away from me. I saw him sitting quietly, reading The Electrician's Guide. The Electrician's Guide. I didn't understand why Wild Ginger insisted on having us. It was awkward to meet like strangers. I didn't understand why Wild Ginger insisted on having us. It was awkward to meet like strangers.

Evergreen and I fought over whether or not to continue attending Wild Ginger's rehearsals. Encounters with her had become unbearable for him. I didn't want to go either, but I was concerned that we would be singled out in ways that would jeopardize our future. Evergreen disagreed.

We were in a vegetable patch somewhere in the suburbs. It was night. We were afraid of Wild Ginger's spies so we traveled as far as the public bus would take us. But still, we couldn't escape Wild Ginger. Whenever we opened our mouths, her name popped out. Even in the middle of pa.s.sion my mind would slip and I would feel a wave of guilt wash over me. Evergreen was affected, but he couldn't loosen Wild Ginger's hold on my mind. Soon he was frustrated. "We'll leave Shanghai as soon as we can."

I was unsure about Evergreen's feelings about Wild Ginger. He wanted so badly to get away from her. But my conscience kept telling me that it was because he wanted her. Maybe we both wanted Wild Ginger so much that we couldn't stand it.

To avoid mentioning Wild Ginger we ceased talking. We would meet at the station, get on the bus, and sit silently until our destination. When we got off the bus I would follow him. We would walk miles until he located a quiet spot. Our usual place was in a cow shed behind fields of yecai. We would climb over the packed hay to hide ourselves. He would lay his raincoat down and I would offer him my body. It had become a ritual, a way to get the frustration out of ourselves.

I had trouble looking at him because Wild Ginger was so much on my mind. I kept seeing her eyes. Yet I dared not speak about my thoughts. I would get on my knees and look at the cows. I asked Evergreen to do whatever he liked with my body while I thought about my future with him, a future without Wild Ginger. And then I would be aroused.

I could feel his tension-his pleasure often came in the middle of our shared pain. Too many times I saw tears in his eyes. He wouldn't speak about his thoughts either. I knew he was thinking of her too. I told him that it was all right. Everything would be all right. It would be over soon and we would survive. At that moment he broke down and he was free. I received and calmed him until he became full of desire again.

One night things became unbearable for me. I asked him to call me by her name. Before he could react I started to talk like Wild Ginger. I started to recite Mao quotations the way Wild Ginger would. I copied her tone and style. I recited the quotations as I unzipped his trousers.