Red Azalea (27 page)

I was suffering. I couldn’t help myself. I began to pedal again. He let go of my bicycle and said, I want you to meet me at the Peace Park tonight at seven-thirty.

I sat by the window, my thought drifting. I did not hear my mother calling me for dinner. I did not hear anything but the crawling sound of my thoughts. I went to a desk and quickly pulled out a pen and a notebook. I tore a piece of paper from the notebook. I could not write what I wanted to. My mother came. She held my hands. She said, You are hot. She suggested I take off my sweater. I did. I looked at my mother and suddenly found that I was so much like her. I had inherited her stubbornness. I inherited her passion. That I must live for myself was in my veins. Even if it were only a dream, so be it.

The Peace Park was located next to Dragon Sight Crematorium. It was a park with few visitors. Most people who came here were mourners, the relatives of the dead. I felt safe in the dark. Getting off the bus, I looked around. The smell of incense wafted over from a nearby cemetery. I made sure that I was not followed. I paid five cents at the gate and entered the park.

The quietness was extraordinary. Trees and leaves were thick as walls. I wandered in between the trees as I fixed my eyes on the entrance. At eight o’clock I saw him. He came up to me from behind, dressed in black. We went into the shadow of the trees where the lights were like the eyes of ghosts. We stopped, facing each other, by a big tree trunk. He said he had been here since seven. He was glad that I had come. I said that I was glad too. We ran out of words to say. We walked toward the thick trees. I could hear my heart beat.

Have you packed? I searched for words. Yes, he answered.
His voice was unnatural. When does the train take off? Four o’clock in the morning. Well, I said. Well, he said. You must lead an exciting life in Beijing, I said. I did not know why I said it. Exciting, true, where murderous intentions lurk behind charming smiles. He shook his head. He slowed down his steps and said, You won’t understand that part of me. No one would. I asked, Not even your wife? Oh, my wife, he said. My wife is a very lovely person. But she wouldn’t be lovely to me if she knew the difference between the public self and the private self, the nature of my desire and my ambition. I want you to know me, though. He took my hands and said, I think you will. He stared at me. I could not see his eyes. I saw the shadow of his head. I was facing the light but he was cast in shadow. Looking at me, he put his arms around me and turned me around so that he was in the light and I was in shadow. I looked at him boldly because I knew he could not see my eyes. I looked at him. I looked at the contours of his face. It aged, second by second. He was penetrated by sadness. His expression sagged. I am a lonely person, he said. I thought I was used to it, but I am not. Can’t you see?

My arms went around him. I felt, as I felt him, Yan’s skin. I touched him and said, I am at your service. He quivered like a young tree in a storm. He embraced me. He said softly, Let me have it, let me have you.

His lips were tender. Tender like a naked lichee fruit. My heart drank its sticky juice. Do you want to know my name? he said. No, I said. I do not want to know your name because we don’t plan to see each other again.

He wet my cheeks. In his firm arms I found my thirst.
We stood under the thick osmanthus tree, covered by its sweet smell. There was noise rising in the distance. A group of people with flashlights approached our direction. They were guards of the city criminal-control patrols. We split and retreated into the shadows. I leaned against a tree trunk when the broom of flashlights swept past me. To my surprise, as I followed the movement of the beams of light, I saw human figures in the bushes. Not a few, but many. Heads glued together, whispering in the dark.

The Supervisor and I walked around the park like wanted criminals. After the patrols passed, we went behind the park’s bulletin board. The board was filled with pictures of the criminals, thieves, men and women caught in the action of infidelity. Around the pictures were articles of public criticism.

He walked behind me and kept about ten feet away. We tried to find a place to sit down. But all the benches in the wooded area, next to the bushes, in the shadows where the ghost eyes did not gleam, were occupied by couples. Each bench had three couples, facing in opposite directions. Nobody bothered anybody. They were all busy minding their fiery business, whispering and cuddling.

We finally discovered a quiet spot behind the public restroom. We crawled into the bushes and lay on our backs on the grass. The darkness beckoned me. I asked him to sing to me from a favorite opera. He hummed in my ear:

He said suddenly that he sensed I had a lover. He asked if I could describe him. I sat up. I was dumbfounded. Facing my uneasiness, he whispered, rubbed the words with his tongue. It’s all right, he said. He told me that ripeness was important to him, and anything I confessed would not change the way he saw me because he was boiling with desire for me. He desired to taste my hunger for passion.

He waited for my answer. He did not know that he was loading bullets in my gun. I smelled the smoke even before I pulled the trigger. I hesitated, then said that I’d had an affair but it was not with a man.

I heard a long silence. Slowly, I could feel him recover from the shock. Was she your choice? His voice was astringent. Yes, and no, I said. But it would not have made any difference if she were a man. Where is she? he asked. At Red Fire Farm. I don’t know exactly where. I owe her my life. He said, Is that so? I asked him whether I should confess the whole story. He said I did not have to. I said I didn’t mind. He said he would always be willing to listen but preferred to hear the story some other time. I told him I appreciated his understanding. He said it was too early to appreciate anything. Tea tasted the best at its second pouring.

A fever rose when hunger took its course. The hands,
though forbidden to go under the clothes, measured intimacy in body heat. The skin radiated. Pleasure swept over our flesh and made our souls sing.

I asked him to tell me about Beijing, about his life. I asked if I could see him again. He said it would be very risky. I don’t want you to get hurt because of me. Many people get hurt because of me, he said. It can cost a life to … He stopped, raising his hand to touch my face. My little friend, he continued, I am afraid of your questions. I held him and said, I would do anything you want me to. To be a sweet dream for tonight, he said. Why not for tomorrow? I asked. No, just tonight, he insisted. Because when the day breaks, you will not know me. There will have been no tonight. Tonight never existed.

He said it would be like a moth trying to get to the filament of the bulb—I would only get burned if I insisted on keeping in touch with him. Any attempt to contact him was out of the question. Beijing is a square city, very square, he said. Because the sun rises there, it leaves nothing unexposed.

I looked at him. I knew he was speaking the truth. But yet my senses refused to trust him completely. Who was he? His mystery intrigued me. I held him tight but still he felt unreal. I pasted my face on the back of his neck, that beautiful feminine long neck. He still carried the smell of jasmine.

He asked me to freeze and listen carefully. He told me that someone was hiding in the bushes watching us. Who cou-ould … could it be? The fright made my words knot. The Supervisor said that he had no idea. Still holding me,
he continued, I hope he is not a secret cop. Let’s not alarm him. Turn with me to an angle where I can see his movements. As we slowly turned around, the shadow in the bush arched its back. He was moving toward us. What should we do? Who could he be? I asked, Have you heard about those lonely men and women, the masturbators? He held me and began caressing me.

I have heard reports, not once but many times, he continued. He was now drawing me into a frightening pleasure. His voice at my ear pulled all my nerves to arousal. I am sure he is a lonely one. No, wait a minute. I see two people. The other one is hiding over by the evergreen pine. I am sure there are more out there watching. Yes, I see the third one, and the fourth now. Watch with me. Don’t be afraid, because they are as afraid as we. Look behind that mint tree, and there, behind the osmanthus trees. I can see them groaning silently, their fronts and rears exposed like animals in mating season, begging for touch and penetration. I see the hills of youth covered with blood-colored azaleas. The azaleas keep blooming, invading the mountains and the planet. The earth is bitten and it groans, wailing nonsensically in pleasure-drive. Do you hear it? The passion they had for the Great Helmsman has been betrayed. Oh, how grand a scene! I wish our greatest Chairman could see it. He would be shocked but impotent … Oh, now I know, this is a place where lonely men and women gather each night to experience the essence of drama. They meet their gods and goddesses here. They carry the spirit of the dead whose flesh has just been cremated. They masturbate and ejaculate
their passion with a criminal guilt. Calm down, my little friend, look at the gigantic chimney of the Dragon Sight Crematorium, look at the red smoke it sends to heaven, look how it wafts away, look how it ascends. You must not close your eyes, you must watch, you must learn to appreciate the beauty given by nature. Watch with me, feel me in you, the excitement is far from over. The masturbators are making their moves with us, struggling with a fright that is so deep it has blinded their inner sight. They know they will be shot if caught—so do we. They regard this moment as their last performance—so do we. The fright sweetens the mood. We are so near to death as well as to heaven. Do you feel it?

I begged him to leave the place. To leave the forest of masturbators. He supported me with his shoulder, the strengthless me, and we made our way off into the velvet night. The thorns of the bushes slashed my clothes, scratched my limbs, leaving marks on my flesh. The shadows arched their backs. The bushes trembled in dense rhythm. The masturbators rocked, rising and falling monumentally and, as we passed, I heard the sound of them exploding one after another. I collapsed, half unconscious, in ecstasy.

I looked back when I stepped out of the Peace Park gate. I saw the patrols’ flashlights searching through the bushes. They shouted slogans as warnings: “Beware of reactionary activities!” “Let’s unite and get rid of bourgeois influences!” The park sunk back to the sound of death.

I went to the train station at two o’clock in the morning. It was as crowded as a bee’s nest. I turned sideways and squeezed my way into the Beijing Express zone. I looked in carriage after carriage, then I saw him. In carriage number twenty-four. The Supervisor was standing in between two familiar men in security-guard uniforms. He kept looking out the window. I came up to the train. But I did not wave my hand like all the other people did. Then he saw me, though his face was still expressionless. His eyes just stopped searching. He did not make a move to say goodbye to me. He could not. He was too important. We stared at each other. Then the train started to move. The men laid an off-white-colored embroidered tablecloth before him. A train hostess came with a mug of fresh tea. I tried to smile at him. He tried to smile back, but one of the men rose and rolled down the window curtain.

T
he almost completed production was shut down suddenly. It was said that Comrade Jiang Ching had problems with the cast. We were given stacks of readings on the Party’s policy on the arts by the National Cultural Bureau. We came to the studio at eight in the morning, sat through readings, engaged in self-examinations, discovered each other’s political errors and projected them for criticism. The meetings lasted until five in the evening. A cigarette, a cup of tea, a war of lips and teeth became the nation’s lifestyle.

In addition to mopping, I was ordered to fill up the office hot-water containers, copy the records of everyone’s speech and deliver them to the studio’s Party committee. I had been a set clerk for only a few months, but the emptiness in me had become intolerable. It felt like an ulcer that grew larger each day. After the day passed, when I lay down in bed at night, I would feel the ulcer spread.