Part 12 (2/2)

'Whole families are dying now. People are eating hay, leather, bits of cloth. Anything to fill their bellies. When they die, there's n.o.body left to bury them, or perform the funeral rites, so they can't go to heaven, or even be reborn.'

When I opened my shutters one morning the roof of the forest was bright and hushed with blossom. The Holy Mountain didn't care about the stupid world of men. A monk called that day. His skin wrapped his hungry face tightly. 'According to Mao's latest decree, the new enemies of the proletariat are sparrows, because they devour China's seeds. All the children have to chase the birds with clanging things until the birds drop out of the sky from exhaustion. The problem is, nothing's eating the insects, so the Village is overrun by crickets and caterpillars and bluebottles. There are locust clouds in Sichuan. This is what happens when men play at G.o.ds and do away with sparrows.'

The days lengthened, the year swung around the hot sun and deep skies. Near the cave I found a source of wild honey.

'Your family are surviving,' a monk from the Village told me, 'but only because of money sent by your daughter's people in Hong Kong. A husband was found for your daughter after New Year. He works in a restaurant near the harbour. And, a baby is already coming. You are to become a grandmother.'

My heart swelled. My family had done nothing but heap shame onto my daughter since her birth, and now she was saving their skins.

Autumn breathed dying colours into the shabby greens. I prepared firewood, nuts, dried sweet potatoes and berries and fruit, stored up jars of wild rice, and strengthened my Tea Shack against blizzards, patching together clothes made of rabbit fur. When I went foraging, I carried a bell to warn away the bears. I had decided in the summer that I was going to winter on the mountain. I sent word down to my village cousins. They didn't try to persuade me. When the first snows fell, I was ready.

The Tea Shack creaked under the weight of icicles.

A family of deer moved into the glade near by.

I was no longer a young woman. My bones would ache, my breath would freeze. And when the deep midwinter snows came, I would be trapped in my Tea Shack for days on end with n.o.body except Lord Buddha for company. But I was going to live through this winter to see the icicles melt in the sun, and to kiss my daughter.

When I saw my first foreigner, I didn't know what to feel! He I guessed it was a he loomed big as an ogre, and his hair was yellow! Yellow as healthy p.i.s.s! He was with a Chinese guide, and after a minute I realised that he was speaking in real language! My nephews and nieces had been taught about foreigners in the new village school. They had enslaved our people for hundreds of years until the communists, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Mao Tse Dong, had freed us. They still enslave their own kind, and are always fighting each other. They believe evil is good. They eat their own babies and love the taste of s.h.i.+t, and only wash every two months. Their language sounds like farting pigs. They rut each other on impulse, like dogs and b.i.t.c.hes in season, even in alleyways.

Yet here was a real, living foreign devil, talking in real Chinese with a real Chinese man. He even complimented my green tea on its freshness. I was too astonished to reply. After a few minutes my curiosity overcame my natural revulsion. 'Are you from this world? My nephew told me there are many different places outside China.'

He smiled, and unfolded a beautiful picture. 'This,' he said, 'is a map of the world.' I'd never seen such a thing.

I looked in the middle for the Holy Mountain. 'Where is it?' I asked him.

'Here. This is where we are now. The mountain is here.'

'I can't even see it.'

'It's too small.'

'Impossible!'

He shrugged, just like real people shrug. He was good at mimicry. 'This is China, you can see that, right?'

'Yes,' I said dubiously, 'but it still doesn't look big enough. I think someone sold you a broken map.'

His guide laughed, but I don't think being ripped off is anything to laugh about. 'And this is the country I'm from. A place called ”Italia”.'

Italia. I tried to say this place, but my mouth couldn't form such absurd sounds so I gave up. 'Your country looks like a boot.' He nodded, agreeing. He said that he came from the heel. It was all too strange. His guide asked me to prepare some food. I tried to say this place, but my mouth couldn't form such absurd sounds so I gave up. 'Your country looks like a boot.' He nodded, agreeing. He said that he came from the heel. It was all too strange. His guide asked me to prepare some food.

While I was cooking the foreign devil and his guide carried on speaking. Here was another shock they seemed to be friends! The way they were sharing their food and tea... How could a real person possibly be friends with a foreign devil? But they seemed to be. Maybe he was hoping to rob the devil when he was sleeping. That would make sense.

'So how come you never talk about the Cultural Revolution?' the devil was saying. 'Are you afraid of police retaliation? Or do you have wind of an official revision of history proving that the Cultural Revolution never actually happened?'

'Neither,' said the guide. 'I don't discuss it because it was too evil.'

My Tree had been nervous for weeks, but I hadn't known why. A comet was in the north-east, and I dreamed of hogs digging in the roof of my Tea Shack. The mist rolled down the Holy Mountain, and stayed for days. Dark owls hooted through the daylight hours. Then the Red Guard appeared.

Twenty or thirty of them. Three quarters were boys, few of whom had started shaving. They wore red arm bands, and marched up the path, carrying clubs and home-made weapons. I didn't need Lord Buddha to tell me they were bringing trouble. They chanted as they marched near.

'What can be smashed-' chanted half...

'Must be smashed!' answered the other. Over and over.

I recognised the leader, from the winter before the Great Famine. He was a dunce at school, who rarely moved a muscle except to do occasional bricklaying work. Now he swaggered up to my Tea Shack like the Lord of Creation. 'We are the Red Guard! We are here in the name of the Revolutionary Committee!' He yelled as if hoping to knock me over by the power of volume.

'I know exactly who you are, Brain.' 'Brain' was his Village nickname, because he didn't have any. 'When you were a little boy your mother used to bring you to my cousin's house. I cleaned your a.r.s.e when you shat yourself.'

I thought these children were like bears: if you show fear they attack. If you act as if they're not really there, they carry on up the path.

Brain slapped me across my face!

It stung, my eyes watered, and my nose felt caved-in, but it wasn't the pain that shocked me it was the thought of an elder being slapped by a youth! It ran against the laws of nature!

'Don't call me that again,' he said, casually. 'I really don't like it.' He turned round. 'Lieutenants! Find the h.o.a.rd that this capitalist roader has leeched out of the ma.s.ses! Start looking in the upstairs room. Mind you search thoroughly! She's a devious old leech!'

'What?' I touched my nose and my fingers came away scarlet.

Boots thumped up the stairs. Banging, ripping, laughing, smas.h.i.+ng, spintering.

'Help yourself,' Brain told the other Red Guards, pointing to my kitchen. 'This saggy corpse stole it from you in the first place, remember. Destroy that religious relic first, though. Smash it to atoms!'

'You'll do nothing of the sort-'

Another blow felled me, and Brain stood on my face, pus.h.i.+ng my head down into the mud. He stamped on my windpipe. I thought he was trying to kill me. I could feel the imprint of his boot. 'Just you wait until I tell your mother and father about this.' I barely recognised my voice, it sounded so strangled and weak.

Brain tossed his head back and barked a short laugh. 'You're going to report me to my mummy and daddy? I'm p.i.s.sing my pants at the prospect. Let me tell you what Mao says about your parents: ”Your mother may love you, your father may love you, but Chairman Mao loves you more!”'

I heard Lord Buddha being smashed.

'You're going to be in trouble when the real communists hear about this!'

'Those revisionists are being liquidated. The Village Party Females have been found guilty of whoring with a Trotskyite splinter group.' He dug his big toe into my navel, and looked down at me from the dimness. A spoonful of saliva splashed onto the bridge of my nose. 'Whoring, a subject you're no stranger to, I've heard.'

I was still strong enough to feel anger. 'What do you mean?'

'Spreading your thighs for that feudalist! The Warlord's Son! Runs in the family, no doubt! We know all about your mongrel whelp sucking the imperialists' c.o.c.ks in Hong Kong! Conspiring to overthrow our glorious revolution! Don't look so shocked! The villagers were falling over each other to denounce cla.s.s traitors! Don't tell me you've forgotten how good it felt to have a man up you!' He bent down to whisper in my ear. 'Maybe you need a little reminder?' He squeezed my breast. 'That hairy pouch between your legs still has a splash of oil in it, has it? Maybe-'

'We found her money, General!'

That probably saved me. The Red Guard certainly wouldn't. He stood up again, and opened my strongbox. In the background the destruction of my Tea Shack was continuing. The youths were stripping my Tea Shack of food like locusts.

'I'm appropriating your stolen goods in the name of the People's Republic of China. Do you wish to lodge an appeal with the People's Revolutionary Tribunal?'

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