My Name is Number 4 (8 page)

M
id-September brought disturbing reports from Beijing. In Tiananmen Square, another massive Red Guard rally had been reviewed by Chairman Mao and Lin Biao, minister of national defense, who had praised the Guards’ nationwide beatings, lootings and burnings. “The direction of your action has always been correct,” Lin Biao said. He applauded their revolutionary battles against “reactionary scholastic authorities,” “bourgeois bloodsuckers” and “capitalist roaders who operated in a socialist environment but took the capitalist path in their thinking and policies.” His words were a signal telling them whom to attack next.

Within a week the Red Guards’ assaults had veered in the new direction, aiming at capitalist roaders. Families in our lane whose goods had been put under seal to be hauled away waited
for weeks, but the trucks didn’t arrive. The guards had lost interest and moved on to the new victims. Some of the braver neighbours began to unpack their “confiscated” belongings.

Meanwhile the railway station in downtown Shanghai was jammed with trains from other provinces, each car crammed with enthusiasts who had come to “exchange revolutionary experience” in a city they would otherwise never have had a chance to visit. These interlopers demanded free food and accommodation as well as unrestricted access to public buses, school campuses, office buildings and even some private homes. Neighbourhood committees supplied thousands of steamed buns to the young travellers. At the same time the Red Guards from Shanghai boarded every available train and ship bound for Beijing, leaving passengers who had bought their tickets stranded in stations and on docks because the Guards always had priority. The city authorities met every request laid down by the Guards, for fear of being branded capitalist roaders.

With Mao and Lin Biao fanning the flames, the Cultural Revolution burned like a wildfire out of control. Authorities in offices and factories who had provided the Red Guards with information on the class backgrounds of their employees now found themselves sweeping floors and scraping out toilets with those they had helped to denounce. Abandoning their livestock and neglecting their crops, peasants flooded into the cities demanding bonuses and benefits. The supply of produce in our local market dwindled and I was afraid that the “three hungry years,” when I was eight to eleven, would return. While the rest of us idled at home because classes had been cancelled,
Number 2 fought in pitched battles against Rebels who had vowed to seize power from the city government. All across the city, factory production declined rapidly.

In mid-October I walked to school to collect my monthly ¥9 welfare allowance, worried that the collapse of the school system might interrupt my stipend.
⁷
Except for a few girls skipping in the yard, there was nothing going on. Nervously, I entered the office and asked the accountant, a pleasant, gray-haired woman in her fifties, about my stipend.

“Don’t worry, Xiao Ye, the teachers are still getting paid even though there are no classes, so why shouldn’t you get your welfare allowance?”

As she counted out the cash she added, her voice low, “Did you hear? Poor Old Uncle Zhang’s ashes are still in a box in the shed where he hanged himself. No one has claimed them.”

Old Uncle Zhang was not the only one. In those days there were many suicides. I was shocked by the way my neighbours gossiped about them in public. They sounded as if they were telling a thrilling story or describing a scene from the movies. Big Fatty, who lived below us, calmly related one day that he had almost become a “cushion for a flying-down person” who had thrown himself from a high-rise on Nanjing Road. Bloated corpses were regularly fished out of the Huangpu River; people gassed themselves; others jumped from high windows, leaving their blood and guts hanging on window frames or ledges that projected from the buildings.

All suicides were condemned by the authorities as “alienating oneself from the Party and the people.” The papers announced that the victims deserved to be dead, and the messier the death, the better. At fourteen I could hardly imagine what would drive a person to take her own life. But I would soon learn.

Even though the new political wind had put capitalist roaders at the top of the hate list, thus pushing bourgeois families like ours to second place, I was still shocked when Number 1 announced one evening that he and seven other students at the university had formed a musical band, the Spreading Mao Ze-dong Thought Group, and planned to go to Beijing. “We’ve even made ourselves red armbands,” he added, his eyes dancing.

Their choice of name, he explained, would keep them safe from harm. All of them were from capitalist families, so calling themselves Red Guards was strictly forbidden. But the name of their band was ideal. It echoed the posters seen everywhere: “Making Mao Ze-dong Thought known to everyone and every household is a sacred duty of each Chinese citizen.”

He had somehow managed to save his clarinet from the fire at the university—Western musical instruments were destroyed by the Guards—and that night I heard him practising out on the terrace. The clarinet stopped; and he started to sing.

The vast universe and boundless land
Are not as great as the kindness of the Communist Party
.
The love of your mother and father
Is not as deep as that of Chairman Mao for you
.

“How can you utter those disgusting words after all we’ve been through?” I yelled through the open window “What has Chairman Mao’s love done for us?”

Number 3 rushed over and dragged me away. “Are you out of your mind, Ah Si? Someone might hear you! Why are you angry at him? They’re just songs, empty words. They don’t mean any more than anything else nowadays. Come on, you’ll get us all in trouble.”

That was typical of my elder sister. Nothing mattered to her as long as the sky didn’t fall down. Number 1 left for Beijing the next day with his clarinet hidden in his bag.

At home, life was dull, the days long and uneventful. Only Number 2 and Great-Aunt came and went. There was no school to attend, no homework to do. We three girls were too young to attend the neigbourhood meetings with Great-Aunt, and because of the factional wars, the streets were dangerous and unpredictable. Libraries and movie houses, which we couldn’t afford to go to in any case, had been shut down. Even the radio offered no relief—only incessant propaganda announcements echoing the bulletins that blasted from loudspeakers mounted on poles along our lane.

We received no news from Number 1, even after a few weeks. I was worried about him—he was not street-smart—but I envied him his adventure. Desperate for something to do, I asked Great-Aunt to teach me needlepoint. I slept late in the mornings and took naps each afternoon.

Beijing continued to be a sea of political turmoil, with rallies so massive that they had to be divided between Tiananmen Square and the capital airport while Mao, along with his wife, Jiang Qing, and Lin Biao, shuttled back and forth to review the throngs of Red Guards from every province. Hearing all this, I felt even more envious. All those Red Guards—some the same age as me—were able to travel to Beijing for free, and to see the country along the way. Never having travelled farther than my grandfather’s house near Wuxi, I fantasized about taking the train to Beijing and visiting the palaces and temples I had heard so much about in school.

Late one night at the beginning of November, about three weeks after Number 1 left, I heard someone calling my name from the lane. “Ah Si, Ah Si.” Then another voice. “Ye Ting-xing!”

Great-Aunt sat up, startled. “The Red Guards!” she whispered. “What do they want?”

She scrambled out of bed and tottered on her bound feet to the window, throwing it open. Terrified, I squeezed in beside her, peering down into the darkness. I was barely able to make out two girls from my school, Xiu-fang and Guo-zheng, standing in the backdoor lane.

“I know them,” I said, relieved. “They’re all right.”

Both girls were members of the Red Guard sub-unit in my school. We had not been close before the Cultural Revolution, but circumstances had given us something in common and they were among the few who had not been hostile to me.

I headed out of our apartment and downstairs before Great-Aunt had a chance to object, and as soon as I opened the back door, Xiu-fang said excitedly, “We thought you might want to come with us.” Each of them had a small bundle slung over her shoulder. “We’re on our way to the railway station to catch a train to Beijing,” said Guo-zheng.

I pulled them inside and closed the door. “How can I go to Beijing if I’m not even allowed to use the front gate at school?” I asked, knowing that you had to be “pure” to make the pilgrimage to the capital.

“There aren’t many Red Guards at the station at this time of night,” said Guo-zheng, pulling strips of red cloth from her pocket. “We can wear these until we get on the train. As soon as we are out of Shanghai, we’ll be just as good as anyone else. Who’ll know what our parents used to be?”

“Brilliant!” I exclaimed, excitement surging through me. I poked Guo-zheng’s bundle. “What do you have in here?”

“Not much. My winter stuff and a change of clothes. My mother said it’s much colder in Beijing.”

Mention of her mother made me remember I had left Great-Aunt standing by her window. How could I persuade her?

“Come upstairs,” I said, “but wait for me in the hall.”

Great-Aunt was sitting up in bed, and as soon as I entered the room she gave me a look that was only too familiar—the corners of her eyes curved downwards at the same degree as her mouth. Ignoring her scowl, I took a direct approach.

“Great-Aunt, I am going to Beijing. I am going no matter what you say.”

“Is that what they are here for?” she shouted. “Are they missing an arm or a leg that they need you to help them travel? Or are they anxious to see
you
lose one of
your
limbs?”

Her outcry brought my two sisters rushing. “What’s the matter?” Number 3 cried. “Have the Red Guards come back?”

“Your foolish sister wants to join them! She wants to go to Beijing! With two other brainless girls!”

Number 3 grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard. “Which one of your bones is itching, Ah Si?”

“I know where you should go,” Number 5 piped up. “To the hospital, to get your head examined. Have you forgotten what Number 1 told us? It isn’t safe for us to go out.”

“And where is Number 1 now?” I countered. “Beijing, that’s where!”

The arguments that followed brought to mind the scene when the five of us saw Auntie Yi-feng, my mother’s sister, off at the bus stop after Mother’s funeral. We couldn’t afford even one train ticket to Wuxi, so Mother had had none of her children by her side when she was put into the ground. Now, here I was, able to travel all the way to Beijing with no need to pay a cent.

Great-Aunt began to recycle the washing-area gossip—the turmoil in the streets, the beatings, the suicides—in an
attempt to scare my decision out of my head. She refused to provide me with winter clothes, warning that I would freeze to death in the frigid northern city she had never visited.

“That will be just fine with me,” I told her stubbornly. “People in Beijing will not allow me to freeze to death. Didn’t your newspaper readers tell you that the student-pilgrims are treated royally, as Chairman Mao’s guests?”

To support my point I called in Guo-zheng and Xiu-fang, who had been cooling their heels in the hall. Ignoring the embarrassed looks on their faces, I pointed at them. “Ask them if I need to take anything with me.” Guo-zheng’s mouth opened, then closed again without a sound. “You don’t think their parents would let them go if it isn’t safe, do you?” I argued, knowing I had scored a hit.

My two sisters fell silent as Great-Aunt got out of bed and hobbled to her dresser, saying nothing. That was typical of her. She knew that silence was the best medicine for my temper. When I saw her remove her long woolen scarf and a pair of wool gloves from a drawer I instantly wished I could take back everything I had said, even half of it, or that she would criticize my impertinence. I had never in my life acted like this, full of denial and allowing no discussion.

My eyes followed her every move, hoping she would ask me to help her. Silently she squeezed past me to the attic, where we stored our winter clothes. Number 3 helped her up the ladder. She let me stew in my own juice as she packed, playing her best game on me. Finally she spoke.

“Ah Si, take off your undershirt so I can sew a pocket on it.”

She put a five-yuan note into the pocket along with some special food coupons that could be used anywhere in the country and secured it with two large safety pins. Normal coupons could be used only in the locality where they were issued, a measure to keep people from moving outside their designated area.

“Don’t ever take this shirt off,” she warned. “And use the money and coupons only when necessary.” She then took out her purse and gave me some small money and local food coupons. “Buy some bread at the train-station store in case you can’t get food when you’re travelling.”

If anyone at that moment had said so much as a word to persuade me to stay I would have called the whole thing off. I had won the argument but didn’t want the reward. Ashamed as I was, I would have traded anything for a hug from Great-Aunt. But it didn’t happen. I couldn’t remember a single occasion when Great-Aunt showed me any physical affection, though I knew she had deep feelings for me. Showing emotion even among family members was criticized as non-proletarian.

As I said goodbye to Great-Aunt and my sisters, I pledged to myself that as soon as I arrived in Beijing I would jump on a return train. I missed them already and held back tears, determined they would not see me cry. In the lane, I walked backwards until the windows of our apartment disappeared.

7.
For anyone enrolled in middle school or university, welfare payments were administered by the institution rather than the neighbourhood committee.