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Nightmare--Notes from a Mother's Hand (1979)

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution began so quickly that I scarcely had time to give it any thought. My son, in ninth grade at the time, had donned the armband of the Red Guards and set about the task of "Destroying the Four Olds and Establishing the Four News." (2)

Just as I got in the door one day, Jiping handed me a fistful of cash and said, "Mom, I've straightened up the book cabinet and sold all the Four Olds books to a waste station.(3) Here's the money I got."

Flabbergasted, I opened up the book cabinet and looked inside; except for the works of Marx, Lenin, Mao Zedong, and Lu Xun, the shelves were bare! Not to speak of all the other things that were gone, the missing books I had treasured most were the old edition of Romain Rolland's Jean Christophe and a folio of beautifully painted reproductions entitled A Collection of Ruben's Oils. This was the first time I ever lost my temper with my son. "Even when 'Destroying the Four Olds,' you ought to talk it over with your mother first. Do you really think those books are nothing by waste paper?"

He had never heard me use such a tone of voice with him, which is probably why he lowered his own voice as he answered. There was, however, not the slightest trace of hesitancy in his words: "Mom, those were bad books. I looked through all of them and they were bad books--honest. Take Rubens, for instance, he never painted the heroes of the proletariat--honest." He squinted his eyes just a bit as though expecting that those two "honests" should have been enough to convince me.

For the moment I couldn't think of anything to say. It was true that although one could find Volga boat pullers in Rubens's works, there were also many aristocrats and rich people as well--"honest." And yet those books were also a crystallization of mankind's collective wisdom. Could they simply be dismissed as "bad books"? But how could I possibly explain this to my son? Wasn't I the one who had seen to it that he never came into contact with any of those books lest they exert an unwholesome influence on him? It pained me that he had sold my books, but I was even more concerned about his present way of thinking. Were "good" and "bad" to be so easily distinguished?

All the schools had long since taken the advice of the slogan to "stop classes and shake things up with a revolution." And my son? Well, in the afternoons he still came bursting in like a spirited colt; the only difference was that his schoolbag no longer contained books and notebooks but was now packed with handbills. They contained mimeographed slogans, all advising people to burn this or bombard that.(4)

After everything imaginable had been "burned" or "bombarded," the youngsters who had "set the fires" and "shot the guns" then divided into two factions, each holding religiously to its own "viewpoint." Xiaoning from next door had originally been the best of friends with Jiping, but now, because their "viewpoints" differed, they didn't even greet each other when they met on the street. What's more, this factionalism spread like a contagious disease, and the merest contact was enough to spread the infection.

Auntie Liu had had to leave her job because of it and was now recuperating at home; yet even she had become a faithful disciple of her son's faction and lectured me endlessly with words and phrases that were quite obviously straight from him. People like me were labeled the "disinterested faction."

Questions which could not be worked out verbally were settled with fists. And then the time arrived when even fists were insufficient and weapons were brought into play--lethal ones which would quiet one's opponents once and for all.

After the first bullet sliced through the clear blue sky of summer, I called Jiping to me and told him to stay out of armed conflict, no matter what. He agreed. Since Jiping had never been one of those rough children who liked to play with toy guns and clubs, I thought that he really would stay out of it.

After a few days the fighting seemed to escalate. From dawn until dusk there was nothing but gunfire. It was especially bad after sundown. All the shooting and explosions kept the windowpanes rattling in their frames, and once, as I peered into the fathomless depths of night, I actually began to feel that the world was coming to and end. I heard Auntie Liu say that Xiaoning and his faction had already been driven out of the classroom building. Recently Jiping had been leaving earlier and coming back later with every passing day. It looked as though I would have to catch him "on the run" between his conferences.

As I walked into his room that evening, he had just gotten back from school and was noisily washing up in the kitchen. I fluffed the pillow on his bed while I planned what to say. Suddenly, my fingers bumped against something hard and ice cold--a gun, a real gun! Dumbfounded, I stood staring at that awful thing and wasn't aware of Jiping's approach until he was already standing beside me. I don't know why, but I was the one who felt guilty. It was as though he had discovered me in some awful secret.

"Mom, don't be afraid. Our policy is 'Attack with Words and Defend with Weapons.' If anyone starts anything, it will be them!" Cool and collected as you please, it was Jiping who started the conversation.

"You mustn't go, you mustn't!" I grabbed his sturdy arm, feeling as if he might disappear on the spot. "Jiping, you're the only son your mother has, and bullets don't play favorites. My good, good son, give some thought to your mother!"

For just a moment the lines of my son's face were disturbed by a faint tremor and a gentle light began to appear in his eyes, but then he immediately recovered that cool and collected air of the previous moment and said, "Mom, wasn't it you who used to tell me all those stories about the heroes of the revolution? The mothers in those stories would never have said what you're saying now!"

"It's--it's not the same! Back then they were fighting the enemy!"

"We're fighting the enemy today!"

"What? Do you mean to tell me that Xiaoning is your enemy?"

My questions seemed to have put him at a loss. It was only after a long pause that he answered, with apparent difficulty and in carefully weighed tones, "Xiaoning belongs to the other faction, and that makes him an enemy! Chairman Mao has told us that the Cultural Revolution is the continuation of the long-term struggle between the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party. There used to be people who were duped into serving the Nationalists, but that doesn't matter. Whoever stands on the wrong side is one of the enemy!" He had become so impassioned as he spoke that the last words came between clenched teeth.

After a long silence, Jiping gently pushed my hand from his arm. Eyes radiant with idealism, he looked me full in the face and said, "I'll bet that ten years from now people will write of today's struggle just as they now write of the Huai-Huai Campaign.(5) Think how lucky we are to be able to take part personally in this epic revolution! Mum, there's no need for you to worry!"

I was unable to convince him, and when I awoke the next morning, he had already left. I found a small note under the clock: "I've moved into the school."

My emotions in utter disarray, I headed straight toward the rear gate of the school. Characters as large as bushel baskets were written across the high red brick wall surrounding the school compound: Fight for Chairman Mao--If We Wipe Out, We Wipe Out. On the wall of the administration building, occupied by the opposing faction, the exact same slogan appeared. Had anyone ever seen such a "war"?

An armed "gate guard" blocked my path. Despite the summer heat, this "warrior"--about the same age as my son--was wearing a heavy old army uniform. It was only the pitch of her voice that betrayed her sex, because her hair had been cut very short. When she heard that I wanted to see Jiping, she sternly surveyed me and then pointed self-importantly to a blackboard hanging at one side of the gate. I raised my eyes: Key Military Post--Idler's Keep Out! I was going to say something else, but the hard look in her eyes warned me in no uncertain terms: "You'll be wasting your time no matter what you say."

For a long, long time after reaching home, I sat completely still and depressed. Finally, around suppertime, I opened the door to go out. A note fell from the crack into which it had been wedged--it was that same note I have kept in my drawer and read and reread so many times.

I folded the note until it was as rough as a piece of dried bean curd. Then I unfolded it; and folded it again. The distant sound of gunfire ceased, but the silence which came in its wake was just as frightening. I decided that I would see Jiping the next day, no matter what! No gate guard was going to intimidate me. Tomorrow I would go to the school. I would beg, plead, scold, and raise such a ruckus that there would be no way for them to get rid of me. If people thought me an uncultivated old bitch, so be it. This time, I would bring my prestige as mother into play--something I hadn't resorted to yet. In sum, I would do anything it took to talk my son into coming back home.

All of a sudden I heard a faint, tentative knock at the door. My heart skipped a beat, for my son would never have knocked like that.

NOTES:

(2) Four Olds: Old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits--the targets of the Cultural Revolution campaigns to "Destroy the Four Olds and Establish the Four News."

(3) Waste stations were set up during the Cultural Revolution to pay people who turned in books containing any of the Four Olds.

(4) In the early sates of the Cultural Revolution referred to her, high school students used to "burn" and "bombard" to mean "attack verbally".

(5) The Huai-Huai Campaign was the second of three decisive campaigns between the Nationalists and the Communists during the civil war (1946-49) that preceded the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Translated by William A. Lyell. Originally published in Sichuan Wenxue (Chengdu), No. 4, 1979.

Credit: Excerpted from "Nightmare--Notes from a Mother's Hand" by Xu Hui, from the book Stubborn Weeds: Popular and Controversial Literature After the Cultural Revolution. Edited by Perry Link. Copyright © 1983 Indiana University Press. All Rights Reserved. Reprint courtesy Indiana University Press.

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