Forbidden City, page 23
“I want to toast to the health of the Chairman,” I said nervously. From the President’s expression, I could tell I had chosen what he’d wished to say.
“We’ll drink together.” The Chairman poured the oily liquor, filling the glass cup until it splashed onto the table.
“A long, long life to the Chairman!” I said. The glass clinked against my teeth, and in my hand, the stem seemed frail as a baby bird’s leg. Maybe I’d only wet my lips. Maybe I’d only taste it. Its heady bitter scent burned my nose, and then my throat as I swallowed the liquor, fire cascading into my stomach. Once I’d started drinking it, I couldn’t stop without spitting it out.
I coughed, a damp and dark sound. As I stroked the rim of the glass, the taste began to mellow in my mouth. If this was what being drunk felt like, maybe I didn’t have much to fear.
The President poured a second round. “Only under the brilliant leadership of the Chairman can the revolution blow from the east,” he said, flattering the Chairman and me, with this echo of my fake name.
We drank again, this shot burning a little less. Then the Chairman toasted me. “The future belongs to you.”
His was the final toast. I peeked at the beams painted with stripes in the deepest reds and blues, and the golden lanterns hung with red tassels between the polished columns that dwarfed us all, the colors hot enough to burn. The silk cushion beneath was slippery, and I braced my thick-soled shoes on the rug.
“The last empress drank maotai every day to keep her young and beautiful,” the Chairman said.
We nodded, but the conversation lulled.
He yawned. “This day never ends. Should we play a game? How about Truth or Challenge? Or Two Falsehoods and a Truth?”
“No one could ever beat you at those games,” the President said. He smiled, a smile that the Chairman shared in earnest. It could have been the last of the warmth born in Yan’an and on the Long March, those days scored in the lines on their faces.
My father and the other men in the village plaza had played those games, too. “Are the young people still amusing themselves that way?” the President asked. He glanced at the Chairman. “You’re trying to impress her, by showing we used to have fun, but people her age are probably playing games we’ve never heard of.” He turned to me. “Let me guess: You don’t have time.”
Secretary Sun cut in again. “We played the same games back when I was in school. People probably played them long before you and will long after any of us.”
“What are you studying when you’re not playing games?” the President asked me. He smelled like cigarettes, like smoldering.
“Bacteria. Nitrogen compounds.” I’d memorized the terms, even though I didn’t know their meaning. I repeated the words in my head, and bit my lip, struck by a wave of hilarity. The words made no sense at all! I fanned myself, the reception hall suffocatingly hot.
Secretary Sun eyed me. The maotai was seeping into me, stronger than I’d realized. Time flattened and I wondered how long I’d stay muddled, if I could hold my posture. I sat up straight, straining in the way I’d later realize was the way of a drunk who thought—hoped—that no one would notice and in doing so, called the attention she wanted to avoid. I hoped the liquor was making the men around me as slippery inside their heads.
“How funny!” the Chairman said. He scratched his crotch. “My family never used such words when we planted. We didn’t know them. We just did what had always been done before us.” He poured more maotai.
Without thinking, I gulped my drink. It gave me more time to think. Secretary Sun inhaled sharply. If he could have, he would have knocked the glass from my hand.
“Why are you studying agriculture?” the President asked me. “Students from the capital aren’t usually interested in the plight of the peasant.”
My head thrummed. “It’s my belief that peasants should no longer go hungry. Feeding the people feeds our future.” I let the words, heavy and solemn as a funeral gong, fill my mouth. “Consider the Sui dynasty, which lasted only thirty-eight years, because leaders didn’t take heed of that lesson.”
The emperor had forced millions to build a second capital. Because people toiled on buildings instead of in their fields, the crops were stunted from neglect. The famine sparked a rebellion that led to his downfall. After rebel forces captured the imperial granary, the peasants ate their fill again.
The Chairman smiled, his eyes dark slits above the buns of his cheeks. He was pleased with me—and himself. It was a smile of recognition and possession.
Hunger gnawed at me. I’d picked at my breakfast, and if I had food in my belly, maybe it would settle me. I wolfed down a flaky pastry filled with curried ground beef in three bites.
“What an appetite! I’m always after my daughter to eat more,” the President said.
Though I wanted another, I didn’t take it. An intellectual gorged on ideas and nibbled on food. My fingers were greasy, but I resisted the urge to wipe them on my sleeve or on the silk cushions. “How old is she?” I asked. “She’s in college?”
“Not that one!” the President said. “She’s thirteen.”
Perhaps that was why he didn’t attend the dances. It could have alarmed him, to see the cadre pairing off with girls not much older than his.
Blood pounded in my ears, so loud I didn’t realize I’d tilted toward the Chairman, nearly falling into his lap. As I sat up, the rug bunched under my feet. Clenching the arms of the chair, I stared at my fingers, gone white around the knuckles. If I let go, I’d slide onto the floor. Catching a whiff of the liquor oozing from my skin, I feared I might go up in flames.
Secretary Sun summoned the attendant, asking for tea. When it arrived, I drank it quickly, grateful to wash out the cloying taste of the maotai. I tightened my hands around the teacup, studying its decorations, dragons traced out against the deep imperial yellow, a color born from the sun. I was far from clearheaded, but I could see the possibility in the distance.
The President studied me with the depthless, lidless stare of a lizard, as if to pinpoint what didn’t fit. “Her name is too plain,” he told the Chairman. “It doesn’t suit her.”
“You meet her for the first time, and you insult her?” The Chairman couldn’t contain his smile. “You don’t like her name?”
“It’s patriotic but there’s no music,” the President said. “The sound is heavy in my mouth, plopping like mud. Dong Feng, Dong Feng, Dong Feng,” he said.
“What kind of name would you expect?” Secretary Sun asked. “Expectations have a way of getting overturned by the younger generation.”
“What about a name like Mei Xiang?” the Chairman asked, unable to hide the mischief in his voice.
The name my parents had given me.
The President shook his head. “Old-fashioned.”
I sat on my hands to stop them from trembling.
“Mei Xiang, Dong Feng—neither of them fit her. Her parents would know better,” the President insisted. “Or did you come up with Dong Feng?” he asked me. “You students have been renaming yourselves patriotically, ‘Revolution’ this and ‘Red’ that.”
I glared at him.
“Either way, you and your parents would have picked a name as sophisticated as you are.” He was making an elaborate backhanded compliment, of the sort I’ve come to recognize that men often use on women: to undermine our confidence and make us seek their approval.
The liquor made me reckless, made me mistake being heedless for confidence. Maybe my sister’s death had also put me past caring. So what if I’d talked back to the second most powerful man in the country? If the President knew that I was a peasant, he would expect only simple accomplishments from me, like chanting slogans and refraining from wiping my nose on my sleeve. It was insulting, to understand how little the President would expect from a Mei Xiang, even though he was from the countryside, too.
“What makes her seem sophisticated?” the Chairman asked. “The way she looks? Or is it the way she acts?” He paused. “The way she talks?”
The President gestured with his hands as if to say yes, yes, yes. He turned back to me. “Did you learn to read almost as soon as you could walk?”
“Yes,” I said. I’d stick to a one-word answer.
“Do you have so many books they stack double on your shelves?” he asked.
I nodded.
“She seems like a peasant to me,” the Chairman said.
“Nonsense!” the President said.
“How sure are you?” the Chairman asked.
“I’d swear on the revolution,” the President said. “On my mother’s grave.”
I blinked, settling back into my body, my tongue thick and disgusting from the liquor. The President had known the Chairman for so long, couldn’t he tell he was laying a trap? Maybe he thought he’d play along.
“If you were wrong, you’d take a dare?” the Chairman asked. “You’d bark like a dog?”
“I’ll never forget the look on Comrade Wu’s face when he howled at the moon!” the President said. It was probably a prank the Chairman pulled on someone years ago.
“You’d kiss her feet?” the Chairman pressed.
“You always came up with the most ingenious challenges! I think Comrade Tang tasted mud for days.” The President smirked, a man thinking he’s in on the joke when the joke’s on him.
Then I realized even if the President suspected the Chairman was trying to trick him, he thought he knew better, thought he could outwit the Chairman—and that was why the Chairman wanted him gone. He gave the Chairman a sidelong glance. “And if you’re wrong, then you’ll give me Dazhai?”
The Chairman nodded.
“You’ll think about it?” the President asked.
“If I’m wrong, it’s yours.”
The President couldn’t hide his delight. He could have believed he’d forced the Chairman’s hand. “Her upbringing is in her face!”
Judging by the Chairman’s amusement, he had no doubt that I’d deceived his rival, so much that I now had to convince the President of the truth.
“In my face?” I grabbed the President’s hand and flipped our palms over. Mine were dark and hard; his, white and soft. His eyes went wide. Mine did, too.
In touching him, I’d gone too far. He yanked back his hand.
The Chairman moved to the edge of his seat. “Six weeks ago, Secretary Sun and I decided we’d try to pass off a peasant as a student intellectual. Everyone knows peasants have no greater friend than in you,” he told the President.
The President offered a thin smile. “You never could resist a prank.”
“Aren’t you going to kiss her feet?” the Chairman asked.
The President stared at him.
“Come now,” the Chairman cajoled. “Shouldn’t she get rewarded? You can thank a peasant for her services to the revolution.” He put a hand on my thigh, and I rested mine on top of his, his sweaty heat oozing into my skin.
The President tightened his jaw. At last, he understood I was the Chairman’s mistress. At last, he understood he had to play along until the end. He reluctantly looked around the reception hall before kneeling down and brushing his lips against the tips of my shoes. His hair thinned on the top of his head, and his scalp beneath was papery and liver-spotted. He smelled stale, musty. The President—a father, a husband—kowtowed to me. It made me squeamish, realizing that with a shove, I could knock him over.
The Chairman swept the teapot off the table, which shattered on the stone floor. He must have wanted everyone to look at us, drawn to the sound of the irreplaceable breaking, the sound of no turning back. Chatter dipped, like a candle snuffed out, and every head turned in the reception hall. The Chairman grinned at me.
Struggling to get up from his crouch, the President braced himself on the low table and a chair, the furniture heavy enough not to wobble. He swayed, his face turned dark and red as a pig’s liver. A few officials, among the dozens clustered inside, were nudging one another now. They’d seen something; maybe they’d seen everything and soon word would get out: The Chairman would do the same to anyone who supported the President.
“Lei Feng washed the feet of his comrades,” the President said loudly, grandly. That model soldier. “But this will have to do. Who’s next?”
He’d try to laugh it off. In truth, his humiliation couldn’t have been more complete. The Chairman had explained it might spur on the President. Wounded like that, wouldn’t he convince himself he deserved students who worshipped him? Whom he deserved to control?
The Chairman gestured for him to sit down. “I could always count on you to play along!”
The President smiled, but he’d balled his hands into fists. As attendants rushed up to wipe the shards of porcelain and spilled black tea leaves, conversation buzzed again, louder than before—people no doubt gossiping about what had happened.
“It turns out that training her taught us as much as it did her,” the Chairman said to him. “It was a way into the schools. The time she spent on campus—you wouldn’t believe what she’s seen. I’ve been away too long. We both have.”
“I could see what students couldn’t see about themselves,” I said.
“It takes an outsider to recognize it,” the Chairman said.
“They dream of being revolutionaries,” I said. “But they don’t know how.”
Though a vein pulsed on his temple, the President spoke evenly. “I’ve found students are the same, no matter when or where you are. Caught up in the same quarrels we found ourselves in. Thinking they are the first to reinvent the world.”
“They need a model,” I said. “A model like you.”
“And how should I tell them?” the President asked. “Who’s to say they’ll listen to me any more than my daughters do?”
“You could have someone from the Party who goes on behalf of you—someone closer to their age,” I said. “Someone from the Party, not much older than us.”
The President nodded slowly.
“We need someone students can look up to,” I added. “It’s easier for us to picture ourselves where we might be in five years than in twenty. Maybe a whole group of cadre could go.” If many officials showed up on campus, students might resent them even more. “To show how much you want to hear what the students have to say.”
The President leaned back. “I’ll think about it.”
“If you’re not going to take her up on her idea, maybe I will,” the Chairman said. He gave the President a sidelong glance.
After falling for the prank, the President had to be twice as wary. I wondered why he was even listening to my advice; though of course, he couldn’t help but see himself as smarter than me. And smarter than the Chairman; that had been and would always be his undoing.
“You have a point,” I told him. “Who could possibly sway the students?”
Not you.
His expression hardened. “It must be easy to teach a clever girl,” he told the Chairman.
Easy? He had imagined the masses reaching up for help, but could never see me pulling him down so that I could climb up. He didn’t believe that people like me deserved to control their destinies, decisions best left to him and his allies.
A clever person turns great troubles into little ones and little ones into none, and perhaps I wasn’t so clever after all, because I couldn’t leave the President’s praise alone.
He set down his cup with a thump.
“Maybe after the trip to the university, you could go to my village.” I rolled the empty teacup in my hand, absorbing the last traces of warmth. “Maybe you’d learn something from us. If you just looked long enough. If you looked at all.”
It was too noisy in the reception hall for the other guests to hear us; if they could, they would have surely found me rude—brazen as the teenage Red Guard who would rise up against the establishment in half a year.
None of them knew I’d lost a sister and none of them would have cared. “What are you doing to keep the revolution alive?” I asked him.
The President couldn’t hide his irritation. He’d put up with the Chairman and his eccentricities—he might well have preferred the Chairman being caught up in such antics while leaving the country for him to run—but he’d had enough of me.
“Yes, what?” the Chairman asked him.
The President sagged in his chair.
“Away from the countryside, people turn weak,” the Chairman said. “They forget the sweat, the toil of peasants. They turn selfish, looking only after themselves and not the collective. You must take care of the communal fields before you take care of your own! If intellectuals never learn to eat bitterness, they’ll never carry on the revolution. They can learn from the ways of peasants, must learn from the ways of peasants.”
Looking back, I’d realize this command was his opening call to action in the Cultural Revolution, even if none of us—the Chairman included—knew it then, with a campaign that would begin in the schools and in the cities, before moving to the countryside.
* * *
—
Within weeks of National Day, the President recruited cadre to go on his behalf to universities. Nothing public, not yet, but word of it reached the Chairman.
Our arrow had found its mark.
“Who volunteered first?” the Chairman asked Secretary Sun. He’d arrived just as we were about to get into the pool.
At night, temperatures fell to near freezing, but in here, it felt humid as summer. Drops of sweat beaded above Secretary Sun’s lip. After he listed a few names of cadre I didn’t recognize, the Chairman smacked the table with the palm of his hand. His robe flapped open, and our empty teacups jumped with a clatter. I smacked the table, too. Laughing, he clasped his hands around mine.
