A Heart for Freedom (31 page)

“We are here,” said a calm, firm voice. “You may come out now.”

26

The Meaning of Freedom

It turned out the entire voyage had taken four days and five nights. One hundred and five hours. When my feet touched solid ground, I knew we had reached freedom. Unlike the sunny dream I’d had, my first breath of freedom was foggy and damp. Little Brother told us how close we had come to being discovered when the police stopped our boat out in the harbor. Apparently, they had received information that we were on the run that night. But after searching high and low for us, they allowed our boat to continue its journey.

It had been a long journey. I didn’t feel thrilled or overwhelmed; I felt at peace. It was the same way I used to feel after a grueling final exam. We walked the streets of Hong Kong, totally unaware of the dangerous presence of mainland spies and operatives who might try to kidnap us back to the mainland. At the University of Hong Kong, we found someone who could connect us to the underground rescue network. The machine immediately began to move. In a matter of days, we were given the option of becoming refugees in either the United States or France. Feng chose France.

A few days later, we were given French passports and driven to the airport, where we were smuggled through the back door of a plane, accompanied by a French diplomat and his female companion. He was obviously nervous. After we were airborne, he kept glancing out the window at the land below. Finally, after half an hour, he sank back in his seat and relaxed.

“We just flew beyond the airspace of the People’s Republic,” he said. “I was worried. I thought someone might have leaked the information that you were onboard and the Chinese might shoot us down.”

The plane cut across the blue sky and headed west, out of the endless darkness and into the sun.

* * *

In Paris, we were immediately swept off to the home of a French family, and the diplomat went his separate way. Later that afternoon, Feng and I slipped out of the house for a stroll. It was springtime in Paris, and people were in a holiday mood. Feng and I wandered hand in hand along the cobbled side streets of the Left Bank. It was the first time we could recall walking freely in public together without fear. I felt a deep, satisfying peace. On a whim, Feng took off and ran, and I chased him, like a little bird.

Free at last.

When Li Lu received word of our flight to freedom, he called from New York before boarding a flight to come see us. Over the transatlantic line, his voice sounded ebullient. Feng and I were excited to reconnect so soon with one of our close comrades. The strong bond we’d formed during the last hours at Tiananmen had erased all earlier friction.

The evening after Li Lu arrived, we were visiting with some French officials when I received a phone call from Yan Jiaqi, a well-respected Chinese scholar, who was leading the Federation for a Democratic China (FDC) in France. He wanted to meet with me. Li Lu waved his hand to signal “no.” I didn’t know what was going on, but I would soon begin to feel the pull of the overseas democracy movement and learn how politically complicated it had become.

When night came, Li Lu, Feng, and I all slept in one big bed like three comrades in a foxhole, indifferent to gender, just one in the purest sense.

The next morning, a tall, thin woman in her late thirties walked into the apartment and made herself at home. Li Lu’s face went red. “This is Liao Da Wen,” he announced, “my girlfriend.” The intimate atmosphere of the Tiananmen reunion evaporated. “That ceremony I had on the Square doesn’t count as a real wedding,” Li Lu declared, as if reading my mind.

Feng was intrigued. He thought Da Wen and Li Lu made an interesting pair. She was clearly older than he and seemed to know a lot about various dissidents who had come out of China and where they were. She’d worked with Li Lu on his English and helped him with his school application and the book he was writing. She offered to help Feng and me as well. I just sat and listened. This was a lot of information to digest, especially for my jet-lagged brain. We were exhausted. We took a nap after lunch in separate rooms.

When I awakened around four in the afternoon, I could see Feng had been crying. Still half asleep, I heard him and Li Lu talking out on the balcony. When they came back inside, Feng’s face bore a resolute expression.

“I’m not comfortable in the free world,” he declared, as if making an announcement over a loudspeaker. He did not look directly at me, but it was clear he was speaking to me. “I have decided you and I and our colleague Li Lu will go our separate ways. I am going to move out. I’m leaving so I can be alone. I will let you know more in the days to come.”

“Why?” I asked, still drowsy from jet lag. “I don’t understand.”

“He is asking for his freedom,” Li Lu said. “See, it is easy to go out on the streets asking for freedom from your leaders. It’s different when you are the one being asked. If you truly believe in democracy, you should let him go.”

“I love democracy,” Feng said. “With democracy, I can make my own choices. I love freedom,” he said with boyish glee. “Long live freedom.”

He walked out of the room.

Da Wen looked at me with compassion. “Let him go,” she said. “Men always act like men. Let him cool off for a few days, and maybe he’ll return to his senses.”

With Li Lu’s blessing, Feng departed. I was stunned. But I was soon to receive an even bigger surprise.

An FDC staff member brought over an extensive article from a Hong Kong newspaper by a reporter who claimed she had scooped the story of our escape. The story contained photos and details to back up her claim. Then I discovered the reporter was none other than the female companion of the French diplomat who had accompanied us on our flight to freedom. She’d heard about our escape and managed to sneak aboard the flight.

Her seemingly heroic effort won her a journalism prize but put me in a precarious position. The June 8 tape I’d made as witness to the massacre had turned me into a missing media personality, and I had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Along with the Chinese government, hundreds of journalists had been hunting for me for ten long months. The media frenzy was fueled by an award offered to the journalist who found out where I was hiding. Rumors had continually surfaced that I’d been arrested or killed. Now word was out—complete with pictures—that I’d escaped.

I was hoping for time to recover from my grueling journey, but that was not to be. Hundreds of interview requests clogged the answering machine at the office of the Federation for a Democratic China and anywhere else the media thought they might reach me. People were hungry to know what had happened during those ten months: Who had protected us? Was any part of the Chinese government involved? Where had we hidden? How did we get out? How did the rescue effort work? Who saved us? What was going to happen to China’s democracy movement? Fragile in health, sleep deprived, and emotionally shell-shocked, I was utterly unprepared to face the wonders of the free-world media.

With the advice and assistance of a staff volunteer at the FDC, I decided to hold a press conference and forgo individual interviews.

“Beware of the media,” Wan Runnan, the head of the Federation, told me. “They are a machine. They will tear you down just as fast as they will build you up. The higher they build you up, the steeper will be your fall.” I felt I had a responsibility to represent the overseas democracy movement and restore the respect it needed for continuing support. The burden of this duty only made it more difficult for me to rest and recover my strength.

* * *

As the hour of the press conference grew near, Feng returned, along with a former high school classmate with whom he’d reunited. Feng looked more at ease, as if he’d begun to reconcile himself to this strange new world of freedom. His friend, however, was critical of the overseas democracy movement and urged us to keep our mouths shut. He told us we were in way over our heads and should go off somewhere to study and stay out of the spotlight. Feng really drank this up, and it became the basis of how he operated.

I, on the other hand, was infuriated. How could he say we shouldn’t speak up for friends such as Xiong Yan, Zhou Fengsuo, and Wang Dan, who were still in jail, others who had been killed, and those who were still in hiding? I felt we needed to show them that the rest of the world had not forgotten them. I remembered how hearing the news that others had escaped had brought me such joy and hope during my days in hiding. I spoke about this, but couldn’t seem to change Feng’s mind. He said he would not answer reporters’ questions. A huge gulf was building between us.

The next day, Feng and I walked together into the pressroom, but I ended up doing most of the talking. After the press conference, which lasted several hours, our translator told us it was a great success. I felt relieved. I had made no major blunders. I had not let anyone down. Now I could rest and repair my health. I could finally become the ordinary wife I had always wanted to be. I could make dinner for Feng and enjoy a nice weekend with him. I could enjoy the simple things of life, of which I had so long been deprived.

It was a Friday night. I was looking forward to dinner and a movie together, like a normal married couple. But the moment dinner was served, Feng was summoned to the telephone. By the time he returned, the food was cold, but he looked happy, even excited.

When I asked who had called, he told me it was a woman he had spent time with at Tiananmen Square. “I could tell just by her voice that she wanted me, and I wanted her, too,” he said with determination.

I felt the now-familiar stab of pain as Feng went right on talking. “I’m not having dinner here,” he said. “I’m leaving.”

“Leaving?” I said. “Where are you going?” I wanted to say some other things, but the words stuck in my throat. Instead, I watched as Feng walked out, taking with him the rest of my dreams. Our dinner remained cold and untouched on the table.

I didn’t want to sit alone in the hotel room, so I went for a walk along the streets of Paris. But it seemed that everywhere I looked, I saw happy couples hugging, laughing, and enjoying the beautiful evening. I felt completely alone in this new, unfamiliar city and this strange, new world called freedom. Just a day or two before, newspapers around the world had published happy pictures of Feng and me after our escape. Now as I listened to the sorrowful notes of a flute played by a homeless woman at a subway station, I felt I was one step away from being just like her.

* * *

A few days later, I was invited to stay with an elderly French couple in the south of France to recuperate. Feng came too, and Li Lu and Da Wen came down from Paris to join us. After eating lunch the first day, the four of us took a walk to the oceanside, but Feng immediately announced that he had to go back to Paris right away. Sorrow and pain washed over me as I watched my husband depart. While Li Lu and Da Wen drove him to the airport, I sat alone on a rock overlooking the ocean. I had finally achieved freedom, but with Feng gone, I had lost all purpose in living. My family was far away, in a place where I could not return. Big Brother and his friends and contacts who had saved me were no longer with me to protect me. I had never felt more alone. At that moment, the struggle I had gone through in the quest for freedom seemed to lose all importance. I would never have found the strength to achieve it if I had known in advance what this so-called freedom was all about. As I watched the waves crashing on the rocks below, I had a sudden impulse to jump in and end my life then and there. To me, all was gone. All was lost. All was over. It was finished.

A voice came into my mind:
If you die now, what will happen to your parents when they find out? You are their hope. Live for them; be strong.

As the waves continued to crash onto the rocks, emotionless, unceasing, I could no longer hold in all the pain. Like a little child, I cried out, “Mama, I miss you! Mama, I want you! Mama, please hold me! Mama—!”

The clouds and the sky responded with silence. My mother was more than five thousand miles away—unreachable.

When Li Lu and Da Wen returned from the airport, they had decided to drive back to Paris. I had no reason to stay by myself, so I went with them. We rode in silence.

In Paris, Li Lu spoke to Feng, who sounded like his old happy self. That night, I took the Metro to visit him. The train had long since left the station before he showed up to get me.

Feng was staying with a French Chinese family, and it soon became evident he was attracted to the couple’s seventeen-year-old daughter. I later learned that the mother of the family was a spy for the Chinese government—a retired spy, as she claimed. After staying overnight, I returned to my hotel convinced it was time for me to learn how to live on my own and develop my independence. Painful as it might be, I decided I would endure like a good Buddhist.

I met some interesting people, including an American diplomat who talked to me at length before a trip I planned to take to the United States for ceremonies marking the anniversary of Tiananmen. He was professional and serious. “We’ve been looking for a leader of the movement,” he told me. “I think you may be it. The president hasn’t met with any other dissidents.”

I felt honored, but once again I began to feel the burden of responsibility.

May 22 was Feng’s and my second wedding anniversary. I was hoping with all my heart he would remember the day and join me so we could celebrate together. I waited all morning in my hotel room, but the phone never rang, and Feng never showed up. Finally I decided to celebrate by myself, and I went sightseeing on the Seine.

* * *

My trip to the United States was rapidly approaching. I needed to obtain my visa. The day after our anniversary, I met Feng outside the US Embassy, where we were going to have our French travel documents stamped. After we’d obtained our visas, I asked Feng gently, “Do you remember what day it was yesterday?” He stared at me blankly, then turned and walked away, without a word.