the floor to examine the pipes. All the while, they watched the facial expression of my servants and myself.
I had lost track of time but darkness had long descended on the city when they decided to dig up the garden. The sky was overcast and it was a dark night. They switched on the lights on the terrace and told Lao Chao to bring his flashlight. When they came to the coalshed, my servants and I were told to move the coal to a corner of the garden they had already searched. The damp ash-covered lawn had been trampled into a sea of mud; all the flowerbeds had been dug up and spades were sunk into the earth around the shrubs. They even pulled plants out of their pots. But they found nothing for nothing was there to be found. The Revolutionaries, my servants and I were all covered with mud, ashes and sweat.
In the end, physical exhaustion got the better of their revolutionary zeal. We were told to go back to the house. They were fuming with rage because they had lost face in not finding anything. I knew that unless I did something to save their face they were going to vent their anger on me. If only I could produce something in the way of gold such as a ring or a bracelet. I remembered my jewellery sealed in Meiping’s study.
‘The Red Guards put my gold rings and bracelets in the sealed room. Perhaps you could open the room and take them and let the Red Guards know,’ I said to the woman.
‘Don’t pretend to be stupid. We are looking for gold bars,’ she said.
We were standing in the hall. The man with the tinted glasses had removed them to reveal bloodshot eyes. He glanced at my servants cowering by the kitchen door and he looked at his fellow Revolutionaries around him. Then he glared at me. Suddenly he shouted, ‘Where have you hidden the gold and weapons?’ and took a step towards me threateningly.
I was so weary that I could hardly stand. Making an effort, I said, ‘There simply aren’t any. If there were, wouldn’t you have found them already?’
The fact he had been proven wrong was intolerable to him. Staring at me with pure hatred, he said, ‘Not necessarily. We did not break open the walls.’
He stood very close to me. I could see every detail of his sneering face. Although I found him extremely repulsive and would have liked to step back a pace or two, I did not move for I did not want him to think I was afraid of him. I simply said slowly, in a normal and friendly voice, ‘You must be reasonable. If I had hidden anything in the walls, I could not have done it alone. I would have needed a plasterer to put the walls back again. All workmen work for State-controlled businesses. They would have to report to their Party Secretary the sort of work they did.’ I was so tired that it was a real effort to speak.
The man was beside himself with rage for I had implied that he was unreasonable. His face turned white and his lips trembled. I could see the bloated veins on his temple. He raised his arm to strike me.
At that very moment, Meiping’s cat Fluffy came through the kitchen door, jumped on the man’s leg from behind and sank his teeth into the flesh of the man’s calf. Screaming with pain, the man hopped wildly on one leg, trying to shake the cat off. The others also tried to grab Fluffy but the agile cat was already out of the house like a streak of lightning through the French windows we had left open when we came in from the garden. We all rushed outside. Fluffy was sitting on his favourite branch of the magnolia tree, out of reach. From this safe perch, Fluffy looked at us and mewed. The wounded man was almost demented. With his trousers torn and blood streaming down the back of his leg, he dashed to the tree and tried to shake it. Fluffy hopped on to a higher branch, turned round to give us all a disdainful glance, ran onto the roof of my neighbour’s house and disappeared into the night.
We came in again. In the drawing room, the man sat down on the sofa the Red Guard had broken and he had slashed not long ago. When I asked Chen Mah for some mercurochrome or iodine, she reminded me that the Red Guards had already poured everything away.
The Revolutionaries were greatly embarrassed by the rather unheroic appearance of their leader who was now wiping his leg with a handkerchief, completely deflated. Tactfully my servants withdrew into the kitchen. I was left there to witness his discomfiture. One of the women pushed me out through the connecting door between the drawing room and the dining room, saying, ‘We don’t need your help or sympathy. You keep a wild animal in the house to attack the Revolutionaries. You will be punished. As for the cat, we will have the neighbourhood committee look for it and put it to death. You are very much mistaken if you think by making your cat bite us we will give up. We are going to look further for the gold and weapons.’ She turned the key in the lock and went round to the hall to lock the other door also. Again, I was incarcerated in the dining room.
Do they really believe I have gold and weapons? I wondered. Or, do they merely have to carry out the order of Chairman Mao to search for them? Surely they had done enough, if it were the latter case.
I heard Lao Chao calling me in a low whisper in the garden. I went to the window and saw him standing outside.
‘The cook has gone to the Film Studio to tell Mei-mei not to come home tonight. Is it all right?’
‘Thank you, Lao Chao. It’s very thoughtful of you. It’s best she is not here.’
Suddenly there was the sound of hammering on the front gate again. Lao Chao hurried away to open it. He came back to tell me that the Red Guards who had first looted my house had come back.
‘Please go to your room and take Chen Mah with you,’ I told him, anticipating more trouble.
There was the sound of many people running up and down the stairs and there was loud shouting. Angry arguments seemed to have broken out overhead, followed by fighting. There was nothing I could do. I resigned myself to the possibility of the total destruction of my home. Pulling three dining chairs together, I lay down on the cushions. I was so exhausted that I dozed despite the loud noise.
After daybreak, several Red Guards and Revolutionaries threw the door open. It seemed that their dispute, whatever it was, was resolved. A girl shouted, ‘Get up! Get up!’
A woman Revolutionary told me to get something to eat in the kitchen quickly and then ‘come upstairs to do some useful work’. I went into the downstairs cloakroom to wash my hands. Looking into the mirror over the basin, I was shocked to see my dishevelled hair and puffy white face, with smudges of mud on my forehead and cheeks. Stepping back, I saw in the glass that my clothes were spattered with mud. In fact, I looked very much like a female corpse I had seen long ago being dug out of the debris on a Chungking street after an air raid during the Sino-Japanese war. The sight of that dead woman had haunted me for days. She seemed so finished, unable to do anything or even to make the smallest gesture of protest against the unfairness of her own fate. The recollection of her dead body now made me resolve to keep alive. I thought the Cultural Revolution was going to be a fight for me to clear my name. I must not only keep alive but I must be as strong as granite, so that no matter how much I was knocked about, I could remain unbroken. My face was puffy because I had not drunk any water for a long time and my one remaining kidney was not functioning properly. I had to remedy that immediately.
In the kitchen, I drank two glasses of water before eating the bowl of steaming rice and vegetables Lao Chao provided me with. It was amazing how quickly food turned into energy and how encouraging was a resolute attitude of mind. I felt a great deal better already.
A Red Guard opened the kitchen door and yelled, ‘Are you having a feast? What a long time you are taking! Hurry up, hurry up!’
Lao Chao and I followed the Red Guards up the stairs. Chen Mah also joined us. We found that the Red Guards and the few remaining Revolutionaries required our help in packing up my belongings so that they could be taken away. Anxious for them to be out of the house, I helped readily. The presence of the Red Guards and the Revolutionaries was more intolerable to me than the loss of my possessions. They seemed to me alien creatures from another world with whom I had no common language.
In the eyes of the Red Guards and the Revolutionaries, Lao Chao was not a class enemy, even though they probably thought him misguided and lacking in socialist awareness to work for me. They chatted with him freely; I could see Lao Chao was doing his best to appear friendly too.