Ghostwritten Read online

  The days lengthened, the year swung around the hot sun and deep skies. Near the cave I found a source of wild honey.

  ‘Your family are surviving,’ a monk from the Village told me, ‘but only because of money sent by your daughter’s people in Hong Kong. A husband was found for your daughter after New Year. He works in a restaurant near the harbour. And, a baby is already coming. You are to become a grandmother.’

  My heart swelled. My family had done nothing but heap shame onto my daughter since her birth, and now she was saving their skins.

  Autumn breathed dying colours into the shabby greens. I prepared firewood, nuts, dried sweet potatoes and berries and fruit, stored up jars of wild rice, and strengthened my Tea Shack against blizzards, patching together clothes made of rabbit fur. When I went foraging, I carried a bell to warn away the bears. I had decided in the summer that I was going to winter on the mountain. I sent word down to my village cousins. They didn’t try to persuade me. When the first snows fell, I was ready.

  The Tea Shack creaked under the weight of icicles.

  A family of deer moved into the glade near by.

  I was no longer a young woman. My bones would ache, my breath would freeze. And when the deep midwinter snows came, I would be trapped in my Tea Shack for days on end with nobody except Lord Buddha for company. But I was going to live through this winter to see the icicles melt in the sun, and to kiss my daughter.

  When I saw my first foreigner, I didn’t know what to feel! He – I guessed it was a he – loomed big as an ogre, and his hair was yellow! Yellow as healthy piss! He was with a Chinese guide, and after a minute I realised that he was speaking in real language! My nephews and nieces had been taught about foreigners in the new village school. They had enslaved our people for hundreds of years until the communists, under the leadership of Mao Tse Dong, had freed us. They still enslave their own kind, and are always fighting each other. They believe evil is good. They eat their own babies and love the taste of shit, and only wash every two months. Their language sounds like farting pigs. They rut each other on impulse, like dogs and bitches in season, even in alleyways.

  Yet here was a real, living foreign devil, talking in real Chinese with a real Chinese man. He even complimented my green tea on its freshness. I was too astonished to reply. After a few minutes my curiosity overcame my natural revulsion. ‘Are you from this world? My nephew told me there are many different places outside China.’

  He smiled, and unfolded a beautiful picture. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is a map of the world.’ I’d never seen such a thing.

  I looked in the middle for the Holy Mountain. ‘Where is it?’ I asked him.

  ‘Here. This is where we are now. The mountain is here.’

  ‘I can’t even see it.’

  ‘It’s too small.’

  ‘Impossible!’

  He shrugged, just like real people shrug. He was good at mimicry. ‘This is China, you can see that, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said dubiously, ‘but it still doesn’t look big enough. I think someone sold you a broken map.’

  His guide laughed, but I don’t think being ripped off is anything to laugh about. ‘And this is the country I’m from. A place called “Italia”.’

  Italia. I tried to say this place, but my mouth couldn’t form such absurd sounds so I gave up. ‘Your country looks like a boot.’ He nodded, agreeing. He said that he came from the heel. It was all too strange. His guide asked me to prepare some food.

  While I was cooking the foreign devil and his guide carried on speaking. Here was another shock – they seemed to be friends! The way they were sharing their food and tea . . . How could a real person possibly be friends with a foreign devil? But they seemed to be. Maybe he was hoping to rob the devil when he was sleeping. That would make sense.

  ‘So how come you never talk about the Cultural Revolution?’ the devil was saying. ‘Are you afraid of police retaliation? Or do you have wind of an official revision of history proving that the Cultural Revolution never actually happened?’

  ‘Neither,’ said the guide. ‘I don’t discuss it because it was too evil.’

  My Tree had been nervous for weeks, but I hadn’t known why. A comet was in the north-east, and I dreamed of hogs digging in the roof of my Tea Shack. The mist rolled down the Holy Mountain, and stayed for days. Dark owls hooted through the daylight hours. Then the Red Guard appeared.

  Twenty or thirty of them. Three quarters were boys, few of whom had started shaving. They wore red arm bands, and marched up the path, carrying clubs and home-made weapons. I didn’t need Lord Buddha to tell me they were bringing trouble. They chanted as they marched near.

  ‘What can be smashed—’ chanted half . . .

  ‘Must be smashed!’ answered the other. Over and over.

  I recognised the leader, from the winter before the Great Famine. He was a dunce at school, who rarely moved a muscle except to do occasional bricklaying work. Now he swaggered up to my Tea Shack like the Lord of Creation. ‘We are the Red Guard! We are here in the name of the Revolutionary Committee!’ He yelled as if hoping to knock me over by the power of volume.

  ‘I know exactly who you are, Brain.’ ‘Brain’ was his Village nickname, because he didn’t have any. ‘When you were a little boy your mother used to bring you to my cousin’s house. I cleaned your arse when you shat yourself.’

  I thought these children were like bears: if you show fear they attack. If you act as if they’re not really there, they carry on up the path.

  Brain slapped me across my face!

  It stung, my eyes watered, and my nose felt caved-in, but it wasn’t the pain that shocked me – it was the thought of an elder being slapped by a youth! It ran against the laws of nature!

  ‘Don’t call me that again,’ he said, casually. ‘I really don’t like it.’ He turned round. ‘Lieutenants! Find the hoard that this capitalist roader has leeched out of the masses! Start looking in the upstairs room. Mind you search thoroughly! She’s a devious old leech!’

  ‘What?’ I touched my nose and my fingers came away scarlet.

  Boots thumped up the stairs. Banging, ripping, laughing, smashing, spintering.

  ‘Help yourself,’ Brain told the other Red Guards, pointing to my kitchen. ‘This saggy corpse stole it from you in the first place, remember. Destroy that religious relic first, though. Smash it to atoms!’

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort—’

  Another blow felled me, and Brain stood on my face, pushing my head down into the mud. He stamped on my windpipe. I thought he was trying to kill me. I could feel the imprint of his boot. ‘Just you wait until I tell your mother and father about this.’ I barely recognised my voice, it sounded so strangled and weak.

  Brain tossed his head back and barked a short laugh. ‘You’re going to report me to my mummy and daddy? I’m pissing my pants at the prospect. Let me tell you what Mao says about your parents: “Your mother may love you, your father may love you, but Chairman Mao loves you more!”’

  I heard Lord Buddha being smashed.

  ‘You’re going to be in trouble when the real communists hear about this!’

  ‘Those revisionists are being liquidated. The Village Party Females have been found guilty of whoring with a Trotskyite splinter group.’ He dug his big toe into my navel, and looked down at me from the dimness. A spoonful of saliva splashed onto the bridge of my nose. ‘Whoring, a subject you’re no stranger to, I’ve heard.’

  I was still strong enough to feel anger. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Spreading your thighs for that feudalist! The Warlord’s Son! Runs in the family, no doubt! We know all about your mongrel whelp sucking the imperialists’ cocks in Hong Kong! Conspiring to overthrow our glorious revolution! Don’t look so shocked! The villagers were falling over each other to denounce class traitors! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how good it felt to have a man up you!’ He bent down to whisper in my ear. ‘Maybe you need a little reminder?’ He squeezed
my breast. ‘That hairy pouch between your legs still has a splash of oil in it, has it? Maybe—’

  ‘We found her money, General!’

  That probably saved me. The Red Guard certainly wouldn’t. He stood up again, and opened my strongbox. In the background the destruction of my Tea Shack was continuing. The youths were stripping my Tea Shack of food like locusts.

  ‘I’m appropriating your stolen goods in the name of the People’s Republic of China. Do you wish to lodge an appeal with the People’s Revolutionary Tribunal?’

  He knelt on my shoulder blades and peered into my face. My face was still pressed sidewards into the dirt, but I stared straight back. I could see right up his nose.

  ‘I’ll take that as a “no”. And what is this? Speak of the devil? Your suckling runt, unless I’m very much mistaken.’ He twirled the photograph of my daughter between finger and thumb. Brain clicked open his lighter and watched for my reaction as he fed a corner to the flame. Not my daughter! The lily in her hair! Grief was rattling in me, but I suffered in silence. I wasn’t going to give Brain the pleasure of a single tear. He flicked my blackening treasure away before it burnt his fingers.

  ‘We’re all done here, General,’ a girl said. A girl!

  Brain freed my windpipe at last. ‘Yeah. We should be pushing on. There are more dangerous enemies of the revolution than this abomination higher up the mountain.’

  I leant against my Tree and looked at the wreckage of my Tea Shack.

  ‘The world’s gone mad,’ I said. ‘Again.’

  ‘And it will right itself,’ said my Tree. ‘Again. Don’t grieve too much. It was only a photograph. You will see her before you die.’

  Something in the wreckage gave way, and the roof thumped down.

  ‘I live here quietly, minding my own business. I don’t bother anybody. Why are men forever marching up the path to destroy my Tea Shack? Why do events have this life of their own?’

  ‘That,’ answered my Tree, ‘is a very good question.’

  I was one of the lucky ones. The following day I went down the path to the Village to borrow supplies. The monastery had been looted and smashed, and many of the monks shot where they knelt in the meditation hall. In the courtyard of the moon gate I saw a hundred monks kneeling around a bonfire. They were burning the scrolls from the library, stored since the days Lord Buddha and his disciples wandered the Valley. The monks’ ankles were tied to their stretched-back heads. They were shouting ‘Long Live Mao Tse Dong Thought! Long Live Mao Tse Dong Thought!’ over and over. Gangs of Red Guard patrolled the rows, and stoned any monk who flagged. Outside the school the teachers were tied to the camphor tree. Around their necks hung signs: ‘The more books you read, the more stupid you become.’

  Posters of Mao were everywhere. I counted fifty before I gave up counting.

  My cousin was in her kitchen. Her face was as blank as the wall.

  ‘What happened to your tapestries?’

  ‘Tapestries are dangerous and bourgeois. I had to burn them in the front yard before the neighbours denounced me.’

  ‘Why is everybody carrying a red book around with them? Is it to ward off evil?’

  ‘It’s Mao’s red book. Everyone has to own one. It’s the law.’

  ‘How could one bald lard-blob control all of China like this? It’s—’

  ‘Don’t let anyone hear you say such things! They’ll stone you! Sit down, Cousin. I suppose the Red Guard dropped by on their way up to burn the temples at the summit? You must drink some rice wine. Here you are. One cup. Drink it all down, now. I’ve got some bad news. Your remaining relatives in Leshan have gone.’

  ‘Where? To Hong Kong?’

  ‘To Correction Camps. Your daughter’s presents aroused their neighbours’ envy. The whole household has been denounced as class traitors.’

  ‘What’s a Correction Camp? Do people survive?’

  My cousin sighed and waved her hands. ‘Nobody knows . . .’ No more words.

  Three sharp knocks and my cousin cringed like a mantrap had snapped on her gut.

  ‘It’s only me, Mother!’

  My cousin lifted the latch, and my nephew came in, nodding a greeting at me. ‘I came back from a Self-Criticism Meeting in the market-place. The cow farmer got denounced by the butcher.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Who cares? Any crap will do! Truth is, the butcher owed him money. This is a handy way to wipe clean the slate. That’s nothing, though. Three villages down the Valley a tinker got his knob cut off, just because his grandfather served with the Kuomintang against the Japanese.’

  ‘I thought the communists fought alongside the Kuomintang against the Japanese?’

  ‘That’s true. But the tinker’s grandfather chose the wrong uniform. Chop! And outside Leshan, there’s a village where a pig roast was held two days ago.’

  ‘So?’ said my cousin.

  My nephew swallowed. ‘They haven’t had pigs there since the famine.’

  ‘So?’ I croaked.

  ‘Three days ago the Commune Committee were shot for embezzling the People’s buttercream. Guess what – guess who – they put in the pot . . . Attendance at the pig roast was compulsory on pain of execution, so everyone shares in the guilt. Pot or shot.’

  ‘It must be quiet down in hell,’ I thought aloud. ‘All the demons have come to the Holy Mountain. Is it the comet, do you think? Could it be bathing the world in evil?’

  My nephew stared at the bottle of rice wine. He had always supported the communists. ‘It’s Comrade Mao’s wife’s doing! She was just an actress, but now all this power has gone to her head! You can’t trust people who lie for a living.’

  ‘I’m going back to my Tea Shack,’ I said. ‘And I’m never coming down from the Holy Mountain again. Visit me sometimes, Cousin, when your ankles let you climb the path. You’ll know where to find me.’

  The eye was high above. It disguised itself as a shooting star, but it didn’t fool me, for what shooting star travels in a straight line and never burns itself out? It was not a blind lens, no: it was a man’s eye, looking down at me from the cobwebbed dimness, the way they do. Who were they, and what did they want of me?

  I can hear the smile in My Tree’s voice. ‘Extraordinary! How do you tune yourself into these things?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It hasn’t even been launched yet!’

  Once again, I rebuilt my Tea Shack. I glued Lord Buddha back together with sticky sap. The world didn’t end, but hell did empty itself into China and the world was bathed in evil that year. Stories came up the path, from time to time, brought by refugees with relatives at the summit. Stories of children denouncing their parents, and becoming short-lived national celebrities. Truckloads of doctors, lawyers and teachers being trucked to the countryside to be re-educated by peasants in Correction Camps. The peasants didn’t know what they were supposed to teach, the Correction Camps were never built in time for the class enemies’ arrival, and the Red Guard sent to guard them slowly grew desperate as they realised that they had been sent into exile along with their captives. These Red Guard were children from Beijing and Shanghai, soft with city living. Brain had been denounced as a Dutch spy, and sent to an Inner Mongolian prison. Even Mao’s architects of his Cultural Revolution were denounced, their names reviled in the next wave of official news from Beijing. What kind of a place was the capital, where such things were loosed from their cages? The cruellest of the ancient emporers were kittens alongside this madman.

  No monks prayed, no temple bells rang, not for many seasons.

  Like the guide told his foreign devil, it was all too evil.

  Summers, autumns, winters and springs swung round and around. I never went down to the Village. The winters were sharp-fanged, to be sure, but the summers were bountiful. Clouds of purple butterflies visited my upstairs room during the mornings, when I hung out the washing. The mountain cat had kittens. They became semi-tame.

  A handful of monks retur
ned to live at the summit of the Holy Mountain, and the Party authorities didn’t seem to notice. One morning I awoke to find a letter pushed under the door of my Tea Shack. It was from my daughter – a letter, and a photograph, in colour! I had to wait until a monk came by, because I can’t read, but this is what it said:

  Dear Mother,

  I’ve heard that some short letters are being allowed through at the moment, so I’m trying my luck. As you can see from the photograph, I’m almost a middle-aged woman now. The young woman to my left is your granddaughter, and do you see the baby she is holding? She is your great-granddaughter! We are not rich, and since my husband died we lost the lease on his restaurant, but my daughter cleans foreigners’ apartments and we manage to live well enough. I hope one day we can meet on the Holy Mountain. Who knows? The world is changing. If not, we will meet in heaven. My stepfather told me stories about your mountain when he was alive. Have you ever been to the top? Perhaps you can see Hong Kong from there! Please look after yourself. I shall pray for you. Please pray for me.

  A trickle of pilgrims slowly grew to a steady flow. I could afford to buy chickens, and a copper pan, and a sack of rice to see me through the winter. More and more foreigners came up the path: hairy ones, puke-coloured ones, black ones, pinko-grey ones. Surely they’re letting too many in? Foreigners mean money, though. They have so much of it. You tell them a bottle of water is 20 yuan, and often they’ll pay up without even doing us the courtesy of haggling! That’s downright rude!

  A day passed near by, not long ago. In summer, I hire the upstairs room for people to sleep in. I set up my father’s hammock in the kitchen downstairs and sleep in that. I don’t like doing it, but I have to save money for my funeral, or in case a famine returns. I can make more money from a foreigner this way than in a whole week of selling noodles and tea to real people. This night a foreigner was staying, and a real man and his wife and son from Kunming. The foreigner couldn’t speak. He communicated in gestures like a monkey. Night had come. I’d boarded up the Tea Shack, and lay in the hammock waiting for sleep to come. My visitors’ son couldn’t sleep, so the mother was telling him a story. It was a pretty story, about three animals who think about the fate of the world.