Red Azalea (30 page)

I said that the new line was awkward. I said I did not know how to put those words in my mouth. He said it was not a matter of awkwardness. The awkwardness served a political purpose. The line had to be in there or there would be no
Red Azalea.
I said I knew no acting technique to get this right. I was incapable of filling the three syllables with emotion. He said that this was the point—I
must
have emotion. The syllables themselves carried no significance at all. The significance was beyond the words, beyond
Red Azalea
itself. I said that I didn’t see it, but I did see that the new line would ruin the movie. I said that people were going to laugh at it. He said, Who do you think people are? They are walking corpses, let me tell you. What do the people know? The only thing they know is fear. That is why they need authority. They need to be told what to do. They need a wise emperor. It’s been this way for five thousand years. They believe what rulers make them believe. That is why there were intellectual formulas. The operas were a way to shape their minds, to keep the minds where they should be. You see? I am showing you what I know. I am giving you my power. You see? Now someone else knows exactly what I know. Someone else is using my power to get what she wants too.

Looking at my confused face, he said, You know I envy you. I really do. I envy your naïveté, your pain, and your doubts. Because I do not have them, any of them. I
have no doubts, you see? My will is insuperable. Are you listening?

I asked him what made him do what he did. He got up and went to pull the velvet curtains closed. As he turned toward me, he switched off the light. In the dark he grabbed me against his chest. He embraced me. He made me want him. Then he told me in the dark, to my surprise, that he always thought that he knew women no less than I did, because he carried a female part in him as well. It was this persona that drove him to do what he did, to work for Comrade Jiang Ching, who made women heroines; to work for himself. He said by having me play Red Azalea, he could play a woman whom he had been admiring himself.

I felt the spasmodic movement of fury and painlike excitement run through his frame. Let’s be gone, he whispered in my ear. A few moments later as we caught our breath, we heard the sound of steps in the hallway. The sound of wooden sandals. Though I was prepared, I still felt horror. They were the steps of the doorman coming from the end of the hallway, coming closer. The Supervisor switched the light back on and quickly straightened his jacket. He went to open the door a slit and sat back on a chair opposite me. He pulled out a newspaper and pretended to be reading. I grabbed a pen and pretended to take notes. The steps stopped by the door. I looked at the Supervisor. He was as calm as a lake on a windless summer day. The door was pushed open. The doorman’s head popped in. He looked at us, then stepped in. He was carrying a teapot and two enamel mugs. He came by the table and poured the tea into the mugs. He did not say
anything. The Supervisor began to say to me, So I want you to memorize these new changes. You must be able to perform well tomorrow.

My pen made scratches on the paper. Yes, I said. I looked at the doorman from the corner of my eye. His face was expressionless. He filled up my hot-water container, then left the room and closed the door. We heard his steps disappear at the end of the hallway.

The Supervisor said that the doorman was a sign. A sign of urgency, a sign of danger. We were being watched. He said, Now it is time for me to tell you something important. Something I must tell you before it is too late. The Supervisor’s voice trembled as the sentence landed. A strange light brightened his almond eyes. A devotee’s eyes. He took a sip of the tea and asked me whether I cared to hear a story, the true story of Red Azalea. I said, I am waiting.

She was the daughter of a woman who was abandoned by her husband, the Supervisor began. She was taught that to be born a girl was a shame. She tried to believe this the same way her mother did. But she could not. She was sixteen. She was a Communist. She joined a local opera troupe and went to Shanghai. She played Nora. She was Nora. She heard about Mao and his Red Army. His ideals were exactly hers. She went to meet her hero in a remote mountain area, in Yanan cave. She carried nothing with her but her youth. She was twenty-three and she was an actress. There she met Mao, the heavenly dragon, the red sun, the hope of China, the hope of
women. She met her soul mate. He became her life and she never loved again after that. She could not forget him. She could not forget the passion in the midst of gunfire. She could not forget their bodies climaxing next to a bomb explosion. She could not forget the smashed pieces of the roof showering down on their naked bodies at midnight. They saw through the roof. There was the black-velvet sky. The sky of the Middle Kingdom.

She could not forget his laugh. He was a born poet, a born lover and ruler. He told her that it was the best performance he ever gave in his life. He did it again and again with her, in gunfire. He told her that she was his war empress. He told her that she was his life, his goddess of victory. He said that they must unite spiritually and physically. She must grant him the wish to marry her for the sake of battling for a new China, a China where a girl’s birth was cause for celebration. They joined together in the cave of Yanan. The whole Red Army celebrated the union with rice wine, peanuts and sweet potatoes.

It was the time of the Red Army in the 1930s. His troops were few. He was recruiting men, women and horses. The new couple fought together side by side. They went through fire and water, braved countless dangers. She went through battles with him. Battles which almost cost her her life.

When she walked out of one long battle in the West, her stomach was filled with leaves. Her thighs were the size of arms, her chest was a washboard. Her horse was the size of a big dog. They killed her horse to fill the stomachs of the starving Red Army leaders. Soldiers died of
wounds and hunger. They died on the road. Women and babies. She survived. Her blood count was so low that she could barely stand. It was the faith of her ideals that carried her along the death-packed road. She could not describe her happiness on the day—October 1, 1949—when her man stood on the top floor of the Heavenly Peace Gate declaring to the world that China had come to the era of independence.

The Supervisor’s tone changed. His voice became hoarse. His eyes looked like two red spiders. He continued: She did not know him the way she thought she did, however. When she was presented with a contract, it was already too late for her to realize her naïveté. She was forced to sign a contract with the Party in which she was given no right to be a part of China’s political decision-making. Her battles meant nothing to the Party. She was shocked. She did not want to believe it. She turned to Mao, to the man of her strength.

Mao said that it was the Party’s decision and he must set an example for his comrades. He said that the individual must obey the decision of the group. It was the principle on which the Party was based. And she, as he emphasized it, should be no exception. She never understood his excuse. She only knew that he owned this kingdom. She began to realize that he was in the mood for a change. His love for her had faded with the smoke of the roaring cannon. She was thrown away. He moved out of their bed and never came back. She waited day and night for him, for the love she used to have. She never doubted his love. She wrote. He never answered. She went to see
him but was stopped at the door by his bodyguard. His words were knives. She phoned because she did not believe his bodyguard. A young nurse, his mistress, answered the phone. She was polite but the words pierced her heart. The nurse said, Mao would like to see his wife rest quietly at the East Wing Palace. Mao said that you must remember to take your medicine on time.

She did not allow herself to cry. Her heart bled at midnight when she remembered the sky of Yanan. She could not bear to sit in the maddening house. She needed to work, to balance herself. She demanded to be with her people. But her mouth was shut by the Party’s central bureau. She was sent to Moscow under the guise of recuperation. She never liked Moscow. The cold froze her breath. She ordered Hollywood movies shipped to Moscow. She watched the movies until the last winter leaf fell on the ice. She sang her favorite old operas to get through the white nights. She never stopped petitioning. Year after year.

One day in the early 1960s she was allowed to go back to her motherland. But her husband refused to see her. He did not care how her nights went. He did not care whether she would go mad. He did not care. He told the Party that she was mad and he had nothing to do with a madwoman nor should any other members of the Party.

How
did
her nights go by? The Supervisor repeated the question with a voice of frightening sarcasm. The red spiders shrank in his eyes. It was like being buried, the Supervisor smiled, buried alive. But she did not accept what fate had brought her. She believed she was a heroine. She would crawl out of the grave with her bare bloody
hands. Her one-time comrades had become her enemies. In fact, they had never liked her. They had never liked the actress from Shanghai. They could never trust that woman. She was too wild for them. She was never tame, never quiet; she bothered Mao after she had seduced him, they said. She had seduced China. The country was at war with her. She was attacked but she never surrendered. She did not know how. She refused to vanish. She was a reed shooting up under a heavy stone. She learned the art of war. She began her public speeches with the phrase “I am bringing you greetings from Chairman Mao.” She held the Little Red Book and shouted, “A long, long life to Chairman Mao! A long, long life to revolution!” She played it well. She was the greatest actress of her time.

The Supervisor lit another cigarette. His mind was far away. His hands were as cold as death. His voice swept through me and I was carried away. He continued: Time went by and an iron bar was shaped into a needle. It was hard for her to tell then whether she was a living human or the living dead, nor could she tell if she was a man or a woman. She just played the roles and changed colors like a chameleon. She was alive and dead. She had mansions all over the Middle Kingdom, but she was scared to sleep in one bed, in one place, for too long. Each night she lay on the bed and was chewed up by deep loneliness. She was drowning. The waiting maddened her. She sharpened her teeth and she was ready to kill. She could wait no longer. She was truly mad. The operas she sang sounded shrill. She cursed. She prayed. She laughed. She cried and she was transformed.

One morning Mao woke up and realized that his political
bureau had become a capitalist’s headquarters. The dragon had become a bodiless creature. At an annual Party meeting his five-year great-leap plan received no support because his communes had starved thousands to death. His old cadres were going to throw him out. He was absolutely foundationless.

It was in this condition that he turned to her. When he had no one else to turn to. She said yes to him. She had her own plan. Both of them appeared on the Heavenly Peace Gate on a golden September day, in green army uniforms, inspecting millions of screaming Red Guards. It was here, at Tienanmen Square, that she felt her life come back to her. The old dragon was in madness. It was something she had been praying for. Mao was feverish once again, trying to make Communism a reality in China. Now the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution would reunite her with her past. She asked for his support. She created eight grotesque model operas. The operas of heroines. The operas of her deep emotions. She told him that they would secure his red kingdom. She made the population of billions watch the same operas for ten years. She made the children recite the lines and sing the arias. She allowed them to watch nothing but her operas. She tamed them, she had to, and they became her pets. Because she represented Mao. She was pleased to hear a popular slogan in Szechuan that said: Better to sing a model opera than to have a body full of bullet holes. A generation of youngsters attached themselves to her. She was almost voted in as the Chairman of the Communist Party of China. The masses, the millions of fans, worshiped
her opera heroines. And her. She had become their religion. The masses started to say, Long live Comrade Jiang Ching! in their morning ceremony before working. She was the morning star hanging over the rim of the nation’s world.

Mao became ill. His shaking tongue almost fell out of his mouth. Comrade Jiang Ching was the Yellow River overflowing. She stopped at nothing, destroying whatever was in her way. Mao’s empire was shaking. It had become his party and her party. She rose above his men. When she disliked a man, he would be jailed and his family tortured. The old sun was setting helplessly. Mao appealed to the congress. He wailed, “Unite and do not split, be open and aboveboard, do not intrigue or conspire.” In his Forbidden Palace he gathered his men and issued an open telegram to the public. His appeal was desperate. Watch out, comrades, I am not in her eyes, stated Mao. Jiang Ching wants to be the Party Chairman. I am not in her eyes. She respects no one. She will stir everyone’s peace. After I die, she will cause the country trouble. She will. I am warning you, my beloved countrymen. I want you to know that she does not represent me. She does not.

For half a century Mao ruled her. But she was stubborn. She was foolish that way. But she was such a heroine. Although her loneliness was thicker than the cocoon of a silkworm, she had no intentions of giving up her ideal. She wanted to see it passed on, even if one day she would turn to ashes.

It must happen her way, for the people, the Supervisor said. Mao is over eighty-three. The mud is reaching his
neck. His lower jaw hangs and his hands shake. We do not have any time. We must hurry. Comrade Jiang Ching is in a hurry. She must relieve the pain of her love for the people. We must lose no time. We must resurrect Red Azalea. You. The heroine. The fearless, the diabolical, the lustful, the obscene heroine. Red Azalea.

He drew away from my face with a nervous toss of his hair, then came again, darkly, near. The heat from his mouth touched my earlobe. As if in touch with a great power, his red-spider-like eyes glittered. Give yourself to the people, he whispered. Give yourself to Comrade Jiang Ching.