Red Azalea (25 page)

No one knew his name. Everyone said that he was from Beijing and was an expert on opera and film. Everyone called him “the Supervisor.” His mission, Sound of Rain once told the crew, was the most important mission of the century. Sound of Rain himself knew nothing about the details.

Cheering Spear was brought to the set again and again to be screen-tested for
Red Azalea.
I saw her dream in her eyes. Radiant-faced, Cheering Spear didn’t deign to take a glance at me. I mopped the floor and was burnt by extreme envy. The Supervisor stood close to Cheering Spear, watching her being made up. Beautiful, he said wholeheartedly. He did not mind showing the crew that he adored her; then everybody, except me, began to adore her.

I ate my rice cake in the dark in the smoking room. I felt like an animal who ate its own intestine. I could not eat any more. I could not endure watching Cheering Spear smile. I could not bear her happy singing. I could not escape from my jealousy of her success. Cheering Spear was working hard. Her performance was getting better and better. She was getting into the skin of her role. I was ordered to serve her. I had to remind her of her lines. I had to draw marks under her feet for the camera-man’s
purpose, to pass her a cup of water when she asked for a drink, to change her costume after shots, to button up her collar when she forgot.

Soviet Wong came to the set often. She would watch me as well. She watched me stand in for Cheering Spear when she was sent to fix her makeup. I stood under the spotlights for Cheering Spear. It was hard to bear. But I did not want to let Soviet Wong and Cheering Spear see my frustration, though Cheering Spear was too much into herself to notice me. I kept my face up there, between my shoulders, stuck on the front of my skull. I said good morning to Cheering Spear. I bent down on my knees to draw and redraw chalk marks for the camera movement. Sometimes my tears would come up without my being aware of it. Especially when Cheering Spear would say to me, Oh, you are so good at your job.

Though the Supervisor was the director, he came and went without announcement. He had a group of four associate directors working for him. They always whispered together. The Supervisor’s voice would suddenly reappear behind the camera after a few days of disappearance. He seemed to like Cheering Spear more and more. One day he said to her, I want you to be prepared, because the masses will want you so much that they will strangle you. Are you prepared? I was drawing chalk marks under Cheering Spear’s feet when the Supervisor said this. My fingers broke the chalk.

You did not eat all day. Are you all right? The Supervisor’s voice rose in the corner. You only have one stomach—can
you afford to abuse it? I said, I am afraid that I’m not feeling too well. He said, Don’t break your nerves, because it would not be worth it; no one really cares about what happens to you. Being egotistical is not a good idea. You can eat yourself up that way. He stood up and walked out the door.

I was suddenly afraid of sitting in the dark all by myself. I had a strange urge to end the present, to end my life. To escape from this thought I took the mop and went to the hallway. As I mopped the hall, I heard the Supervisor’s voice over the microphone. Let me hear the key melody! Let me hear the key melody! he yelled. I took a peek through a window on the stairs into the conducting room. With a set of headphones on his head, the Supervisor lay on a sofa. His feet were on a table. The orchestra played again. The Supervisor became furious. You rice worms have no ears! he yelled, and stepped down onto the studio floor. He ran to a grand piano and played a fast string of notes. Turning his back, he said, Take a break and we’ll play it one more time. If you do not get it right, I’ll make sure you all lose your rice bowls. The Supervisor came up the stairway. He saw me before I tried to step out of his way. He looked at me and said, Let out that bag of smelly gas in you. The day is bright. I made no response. He passed by and I heard his voice through the speakers singing the key melody.

I mopped the floor at people’s feet. Foot by foot. My hopes withered. I constantly thought of escaping. I asked Sound of Rain if he could assign me a job elsewhere. He
said, I can’t issue you permission because I know you have an impure purpose. I know leaving the studio is your true intention. You lied to me, you lied to the Party and that’s that. I stood there. Sound of Rain continued, How come you have failed to see that you have serious work to do here? How can you possibly be so selfish as to put the revolutionary business second in your mind? He took out his schedule book and told me that I was booked with work for the next five years. He said he did not make the rules, as he closed his book.

I smoked in the dark room. I had become a chain smoker. After a day’s work, the Supervisor came into the smoking room and sat by himself. We sat in silence as usual, about five feet apart, as if the other person were another prop. My senses sailed into a dark ocean. The dot light of the Supervisor’s cigarette reminded me of a buoy light.

The first rough cuts were highly praised by the upstairs. It was said that Comrade Jiang Ching was pleased. She wanted to show the cuts to Mao. The Chairman and his key men would view the cuts and endorse and promote the movie to the public.

Sound of Rain and Soviet Wong came to the set and announced that Comrade Jiang Ching would inspect the set and have dinner with the crew members in the evening. We were asked to keep the news secret for security reasons.
The crew members became excited, so excited that they went into corners and whispered loudly. They said in each other’s ears, It’s true! How lucky we are.

I cleaned the mop after everyone else had gone. I did not go to the dinner. I could only be reminded of my misery if I went. I decided to stay. I decided to be by myself. I went to the room to smoke. The Supervisor was not there. Strangely, at this moment, in darkness, I found my thoughts went to him. I wondered what kind of person he was, his background and purpose. I admired his devotion. If I had not been in such a bad situation, I would have made friends with him. I liked him. I liked his strange mind. I began to think, If we were friends, would I tell him everything? Would I talk to him about Yan? I wondered what made him, the creator of
Red Azalea,
so fond of Cheering Spear.

The doorknob turned. A familiar figure ducked in. Good evening, he said. You haven’t had your dinner, have you? No, I said. The cafeteria is closing, he said. I know, I said. But I am not hungry. Why didn’t you go to the dinner? he asked me. I am sure you were invited. Was it because you don’t care to meet our greatest standard-bearer? Of course I care, I said. But I am sure no one would be bothered by the absence of a set clerk. He said, You can never be too sure of that. Comrade Jiang Ching cares very much for ordinary people.

He smiled and sat down opposite me. He laid two egg rolls in front of me. Eat while they are still warm, he said to me. I took an egg roll and stuffed it into my mouth. I
was starving. I did not know what made me so daring in front of him. Was it his praise of Cheering Spear that deadened my hopes, so I no longer cared to please him anymore?

The Supervisor sat down and took the cigarette I passed to him. It is a stifling world, indeed, he exhaled. You are not a bad person. Not bad? I sneered. What about not being bad? What about it is not significant, he said. You are serving a purpose. I wanted to know: What kind of purpose? He said, It’s better if you don’t know it. I turned to him and said, I do not care to know anything.

That is very well, he said. Let the sun keep shining. Let heaven and earth share … share the myth and beauty of the unknown. You see, it doesn’t make much difference, to know or not to know, he said, as if to himself. It is the nothingness that makes the ideal state of things. He turned and looked at me. He looked at me in the dark. I saw his glittering irises. He got up, switched on the light and left the room. He left me thinking about him.

S
ound of Rain and Soviet Wong came to the set the next day. A new document from the Central Party Committee was issued which said that the direction
Red Azalea
was going in had created some political problems. Comrade Jiang Ching was in the middle of decision-making. The shooting was not yet to be effected.

The last exterior scenes were to be shot in the West Lake district of Southern River province about two weeks later, in March. I came in just before the bus took off. The only seat left was the seat next to the Supervisor. I hesitated, but decided to take it. I could feel a strange tension between us. He passed me a cigarette. We did not speak on our six-hour journey. Cheering Spear and Soviet Wong sat in front of us. They sang operas along the way. One after another. The bus broke down right before we entered the West Lake district. When the other crew members went out to stretch their limbs, the Supervisor and I began talking.

I carefully asked if he had a family. He said yes, but he was basically alone by himself all these years. I asked him where he lived. Here and there, I go where my job takes me, he said. He asked how I had been coping with my life and whether there was some happiness in it. I said no and asked him the same question. To my surprise he said that he was as dry as a fish lying on salty land. He said he was tired, but obligated to a mission. What mission? To fight for the people, he said. People who have the same fate as mine, he added. I thought the statement was like some sort of slogan. I told him so. He laughed and said that he was impressed by my daring.

Why do you fight for the people? Who do you mean by the people? I asked. He said I should learn more about him. I said I would like to learn that. He began his revelation. His family was from the Mountain East province in the North. His mother was a maid before the Liberation. He never knew his father. Throughout his childhood he and his mother were kicked around by the rich and had
no roof over their heads. His mother had to prostitute herself to feed him. The rich kids beat him and had their dogs bite him. He’s hated dogs ever since. His mother died of syphilis when he turned twelve. His mother could not be buried in her own village with her ancestors. A man from the village said that her bad spirit would chase the village’s good fortune away. The man who said that had once taken pleasure from her body. She was buried right outside the village gate. Wild dogs raked her up and ate her to the bones.

Though charged with anger, the Supervisor was calm. After Mother died, I went to Shanghai, he said, to a relative who was an underground Communist. He introduced me to a left-wing theater organization in which I became the youngest opera singer. I joined the Party that same year. I missed my mother. She left with a great part of me. I have never escaped from loneliness since. In memory of my mother I produced and directed an adaption of a western play called
A Doll’s House.
It was the highest moment in my life. Raising his hand to touch the brim of his Red Army cap, he said, I played Nora.

Before I completed the picture he had painted in my mind, the Supervisor interrupted me. He asked me how I felt about being a female in this society. Seeing my hesitation, he said that it should be every female’s responsibility to promote righteousness. I disliked the question, because I saw that there wasn’t much righteousness being promoted. But I did not tell him so. I said, purposely, that I was confused by this question. I said that the Chairman had taught us everything about equal rights. Equal rights between men and women, equal rights among human beings.
Such equal rights as Cheering Spear and I had been given. The Supervisor smiled vaguely. You again are not speaking your true thoughts. I said, Maybe, but, well, why don’t you tell me your name? Why can’t you announce your true identity? Have you ever spoken
your
true mind? He said, But we are talking about you. We are talking about how you feel, how you have been bothered by your own resentment. The resentment you often dip yourself in, like a dumpling being dipped in vinegar sauce.

Sweet? Sour? He laughed. He touched my very unhappy nerves. I said, I am well and I am nobody else’s business.

You are a poor liar, he said. You can’t hide your feelings—that shows that you know nothing about the art of living. You are stressed. As stressed as a rabbit in a sack. Your eyes are telling me you dislike everything you have been assigned to do. You are miserable. You hate Sound of Rain and Soviet Wong. You hate them because they imprisoned your ambition. You are jealous of Cheering Spear. You can’t trace your ambition and you are tortured by it. You want to be somebody, you want to be history. You deserve to be capped as a bourgeois individualist. You can’t be better described. Tell me if you disagree with my description. Tell me the truth, will you? Would you? The Supervisor noticed my quietness and said, Watch out, your mind is too complicated.

In the basement of the West Lake Hotel, where we went to smoke every day after shooting, the Supervisor told me that Comrade Jiang Ching was getting criticized for her
creations. Her opponents say that when a female gets on a boat, the boat sinks right away. The Supervisor asked me if I was surprised. I said, In light of five thousand years of tradition, I am not surprised. Ah, yes, history, he said. All the wisdom is man’s wisdom. That’s Chinese history. The fall of a kingdom is always the fault of the concubine. What could be more truthful? Why should Comrade Jiang Ching be an exception?