Part 13 (1/2)

He knelt on my shoulder blades and peered into my face. My face was still pressed sidewards into the dirt, but I stared straight back. I could see right up his nose.

'I'll take that as a ”no”. And what is this? Speak of the devil? Your suckling runt, unless I'm very much mistaken.' He twirled the photograph of my daughter between finger and thumb. Brain clicked open his lighter and watched for my reaction as he fed a corner to the flame. Not my daughter! The lily in her hair! Grief was rattling in me, but I suffered in silence. I wasn't going to give Brain the pleasure of a single tear. He flicked my blackening treasure away before it burnt his fingers.

'We're all done here, General,' a girl said. A girl!

Brain freed my windpipe at last. 'Yeah. We should be pus.h.i.+ng on. There are more dangerous enemies of the revolution than this abomination higher up the mountain.'

I leant against my Tree and looked at the wreckage of my Tea Shack.

'The world's gone mad,' I said. 'Again.'

'And it will right itself,' said my Tree. 'Again. Don't grieve too much. It was only a photograph. You will see her before you die.'

Something in the wreckage gave way, and the roof thumped down.

'I live here quietly, minding my own business. I don't bother anybody. Why are men forever marching up the path to destroy my Tea Shack? Why do events have this life of their own?'

'That,' answered my Tree, 'is a very good question.'

I was one of the lucky ones. The following day I went down the path to the Village to borrow supplies. The monastery had been looted and smashed, and many of the monks shot where they knelt in the meditation hall. In the courtyard of the moon gate I saw a hundred monks kneeling around a bonfire. They were burning the scrolls from the library, stored since the days Lord Buddha and his disciples wandered the Valley. The monks' ankles were tied to their stretched-back heads. They were shouting 'Long Live Mao Tse Dong Thought! Long Live Mao Tse Dong Thought!' over and over. Gangs of Red Guard patrolled the rows, and stoned any monk who flagged. Outside the school the teachers were tied to the camphor tree. Around their necks hung signs: 'The more books you read, the more stupid you become.'

Posters of Mao were everywhere. I counted fifty before I gave up counting.

My cousin was in her kitchen. Her face was as blank as the wall.

'What happened to your tapestries?'

'Tapestries are dangerous and bourgeois. I had to burn them in the front yard before the neighbours denounced me.'

'Why is everybody carrying a red book around with them? Is it to ward off evil?'

'It's Mao's red book. Everyone has to own one. It's the law.'

'How could one bald lard-blob control all of China like this? It's-'

'Don't let anyone hear you say such things! They'll stone you! Sit down, Cousin. I suppose the Red Guard dropped by on their way up to burn the temples at the summit? You must drink some rice wine. Here you are. One cup. Drink it all down, now. I've got some bad news. Your remaining relatives in Leshan have gone.'

'Where? To Hong Kong?'

'To Correction Camps. Your daughter's presents aroused their neighbours' envy. The whole household has been denounced as cla.s.s traitors.'

'What's a Correction Camp? Do people survive?'

My cousin sighed and waved her hands. 'n.o.body knows...' No more words.

Three sharp knocks and my cousin cringed like a mantrap had snapped on her gut.

'It's only me, Mother!'

My cousin lifted the latch, and my nephew came in, nodding a greeting at me. 'I came back from a Self-Criticism Meeting in the market-place. The cow farmer got denounced by the butcher.'

'What for?'

'Who cares? Any c.r.a.p will do! Truth is, the butcher owed him money. This is a handy way to wipe clean the slate. That's nothing, though. Three villages down the Valley a tinker got his k.n.o.b cut off, just because his grandfather served with the Kuomintang against the j.a.panese.'

'I thought the communists fought alongside the Kuomintang against the j.a.panese?'

'That's true. But the tinker's grandfather chose the wrong uniform. Chop! And outside Leshan, there's a village where a pig roast was held two days ago.'

'So?' said my cousin.

My nephew swallowed. 'They haven't had pigs there since the famine.'

'So?' I croaked.

'Three days ago the Commune Committee were shot for embezzling the People's b.u.t.tercream. Guess what guess who they put in the pot... Attendance at the pig roast was compulsory on pain of execution, so everyone shares in the guilt. Pot or shot.'

'It must be quiet down in h.e.l.l,' I thought aloud. 'All the demons have come to the Holy Mountain. Is it the comet, do you think? Could it be bathing the world in evil?'

My nephew stared at the bottle of rice wine. He had always supported the communists. 'It's Comrade Mao's wife's doing! She was just an actress, but now all this power has gone to her head! You can't trust people who lie for a living.'

'I'm going back to my Tea Shack,' I said. 'And I'm never coming down from the Holy Mountain again. Visit me sometimes, Cousin, when your ankles let you climb the path. You'll know where to find me.'

The eye was high above. It disguised itself as a shooting star, but it didn't fool me, for what shooting star travels in a straight line and never burns itself out? It was not a blind lens, no: it was a man's eye, looking down at me from the cobwebbed dimness, the way they do. Who were they, and what did they want of me?

I can hear the smile in My Tree's voice. 'Extraordinary! How do you tune yourself into these things?'

'What do you mean?'

'It hasn't even been launched yet!'

Once again, I rebuilt my Tea Shack. I glued Lord Buddha back together with sticky sap. The world didn't end, but h.e.l.l did empty itself into China and the world was bathed in evil that year. Stories came up the path, from time to time, brought by refugees with relatives at the summit. Stories of children denouncing their parents, and becoming short-lived national celebrities. Truckloads of doctors, lawyers and teachers being trucked to the countryside to be re-educated by peasants in Correction Camps. The peasants didn't know what they were supposed to teach, the Correction Camps were never built in time for the cla.s.s enemies' arrival, and the Red Guard sent to guard them slowly grew desperate as they realised that they had been sent into exile along with their captives. These Red Guard were children from Beijing and Shanghai, soft with city living. Brain had been denounced as a Dutch spy, and sent to an Inner Mongolian prison. Even Mao's architects of his Cultural Revolution were denounced, their names reviled in the next wave of official news from Beijing. What kind of a place was the capital, where such things were loosed from their cages? The cruellest of the ancient emporers were kittens alongside this madman.

No monks prayed, no temple bells rang, not for many seasons.

Like the guide told his foreign devil, it was all too evil.

Summers, autumns, winters and springs swung round and around. I never went down to the Village. The winters were sharp-fanged, to be sure, but the summers were bountiful. Clouds of purple b.u.t.terflies visited my upstairs room during the mornings, when I hung out the was.h.i.+ng. The mountain cat had kittens. They became semi-tame.

A handful of monks returned to live at the summit of the Holy Mountain, and the Party authorities didn't seem to notice. One morning I awoke to find a letter pushed under the door of my Tea Shack. It was from my daughter a letter, letter, and a photograph, in colour! I had to wait until a monk came by, because I can't read, but this is what it said: and a photograph, in colour! I had to wait until a monk came by, because I can't read, but this is what it said: Dear Mother,I've heard that some short letters are being allowed through at the moment, so I'm trying my luck. As you can see from the photograph, I'm almost a middle-aged woman now. The young woman to my left is your granddaughter, and do you see the baby she is holding? She is your great-granddaughter! We are not rich, and since my husband died we lost the lease on his restaurant, but my daughter cleans foreigners' apartments and we manage to live well enough. I hope one day we can meet on the Holy Mountain. Who knows? The world is changing. If not, we will meet in heaven. My stepfather told me stories about your mountain when he was alive. Have you ever been to the top? Perhaps you can see Hong Kong from there! Please look after yourself. I shall pray for you. Please pray for me.

A trickle of pilgrims slowly grew to a steady flow. I could afford to buy chickens, and a copper pan, and a sack of rice to see me through the winter. More and more foreigners came up the path: hairy ones, puke-coloured ones, black ones, pinko-grey ones. Surely they're letting too many in? Foreigners mean money, though. They have so much of it. You tell them a bottle of water is 20 yuan, and often they'll pay up without even doing us the courtesy of haggling! That's downright rude!

A day pa.s.sed near by, not long ago. In summer, I hire the upstairs room for people to sleep in. I set up my father's hammock in the kitchen downstairs and sleep in that. I don't like doing it, but I have to save money for my funeral, or in case a famine returns. I can make more money from a foreigner this way than in a whole week of selling noodles and tea to real people. This night a foreigner was staying, and a real man and his wife and son from Kunming. The foreigner couldn't speak. He communicated in gestures like a monkey. Night had come. I'd boarded up the Tea Shack, and lay in the hammock waiting for sleep to come. My visitors' son couldn't sleep, so the mother was telling him a story. It was a pretty story, about three animals who think about the fate of the world.

Suddenly, the foreigner speaks! In real words! 'Excuse me, where did you hear that story first? Please try to remember!'

The mother was as surprised as me. 'My mother told it to me when I was a little girl. Her mother told it to her. She was born in Mongolia.'