“Most of them are here. For example, the most valuable emerald necklace, the diamond brooch, are all here. A few pieces are missing, but they’re not worth much.” I answered as gently as I could, trying my best to ease the girl’s situation a little.
“What exactly is missing?” The teacher looked impatient.
“A watch, a couple of rings, and a gold bracelet.”
“What watch? Where did it come from? Is it this style?” He said, reaching out and pointing to the Swiss watch he was wearing, which in China is very elegant and rare. He thought I’d be like one of those women who wear a men’s watch on purpose to compete with men for equal status.
“No, it’s a small women’s watch with diamonds and a white gold strap, from Ebel in France.”
“Be honest, don’t play tricks. Swiss watches are the most expensive, and where did you get this weird watch?” With that, he gestured to the Red Guards to go downstairs to the parlor to see if the watch was mixed up in the pile of cameras and binoculars. The Red Guard went down for a moment, i.e. came up and said he had not found it.
“That Ebel watch was purchased by me and my late husband in Hong Kong in 1957. It was the last gift he gave me. If you don’t believe me, ask Chan’s mother, she knows all about it. And she knows exactly how many belongings I have, including jewelry.” I argued.
There was a silence. The girl was almost crying out. Her face was miserably white and she looked fidgety. The teacher asked me again about the ring and bracelet, and while I described to them in detail their style and color, I suddenly came up with the best of both worlds. I noticed that on the floor of my study, especially around the writing desk, there were mountains of wrapping paper, torn old magazines, paper clips, unused letterheads, and other papers, including a large number of books that were waiting to be sent to the garden to be burned. I took a look at the girl sitting across from me and said, “Look at the mess of paper scraps and books here, could those things have gotten caught up in this?”
The girl looked a little more natural. She suddenly went under the writing desk, and several other Red Guards followed, searching through the piles of scrap paper. The teacher, still sitting there, frowned and looked at me silently, as if he had sensed the trick I was playing, but he did not understand why I was harboring the thief. Confucius said; “Compassion, all people have it.” But this saying in China at that time, it seems no longer work. People’s behavior has gradually tended to be driven by personal interests. The teacher probably thought that I was trying to please the Red Guards.
After searching for a while, the Red Guards finally found the ring and bracelet. The girl smiled with relief. But the watch could not be found after all, it might have been taken by someone else.
In the next room, the Red Guards were chopping up the furniture with great force. They smashed the records one by one in front of me. I bounced up from my chair and said with that teacher; “These are all classical music, the works of famous European musicians of the 17th and 18th centuries. They are not the popular music of dance clubs and nightclubs. Our music academy also uses them as teaching materials. Why don’t you keep them and give them to the musicians’ association?”
“You are from the old society.” He said, “Don’t you know that the Great Leader once said that any Western music is rotten and decadent? Only certain fragmentary chapters of them are the essence, not all of them.”
“Don’t all my pieces include the best of them?” I muttered in a low voice in defiance.
“Shut up! Anyway, would the working masses appreciate Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven or Tchaikovsky? Of course not. We have to compose the music of the proletariat itself. As for the Shanghai Musicians’ Association, it has long since been dissolved.”
That night was long. I was so exhausted that I couldn’t stand up straight anymore. I asked that teacher to let me rest.
“You can go to your daughter’s room. She is a self-supporting filmmaker. Her room, we don’t take action.”
I went into my daughter’s room and threw myself on her bed. It was not yet dawn, but outside the window, the east was beginning to faintly glow white. I closed my eyes and finally fell into a hazy sleep.
When I opened my eyes again, the room was full of sunlight. The house seemed much quieter, the radio was broadcasting the news, but the sound of furniture being dragged upstairs was no longer audible. I took a shower in the bathroom of my daughter’s room and changed into her pants and shirt. Outside the door of the room, the Red Guards were sitting in chairs and on the stairs, nibbling on buns that had been brought to them from their school. There seemed to be fewer people, and none of the teachers had disappeared. I went downstairs to the kitchen to have breakfast.
The cook was emptying the refrigerator. He told me that the Red Guards were taking the refrigerator cart away. I asked him to prepare some coffee and toast bread for me.
I sat down at the table in the kitchen and the cook put the coffee pot, toast, butter and a bottle of Gubb’s jam in front of me.
At that moment, a beautiful girl with two long braids and a slim figure came in. She sat down opposite me and looked at me. I finished my coffee and put down the cup, she picked up the empty cup and brought it to her nose, as there was still some coffee left in it, she sniffed it.
“What’s this?” She asked, a look of contempt on her face.
“Coffee!” I said.
“What do you mean, coffee?”
I told her it was a drink, similar to tea, only more stimulating than it.
“It’s a foreigner’s food?” She chuckled and put down her cup.
“I guess you could call it foreign food.” I picked up a slice of bread and prepared to spread the butter.
She glanced at the butter, and took the bottle of jam, which was marked with English words, and held it up. Then she stood up from her seat with a pair of large, dark pupils that burned: “Why do you want to drink foreign drinks? Why do you want to eat foreign things? There are so many foreign books, why are you westernizing everything? There are imported goods everywhere, but not a single portrait of the Great Leader. We have been to several capitalist houses, but you are the worst and most reactionary. Are you a Chinese or a foreigner?”
I only laughed at her impassioned expression of “what can be tolerated, cannot be tolerated”. It seemed that my home was not quite the same as some of the homes she had raided. When the Cultural Revolution first began, Zhao did say that he wanted to hang a statue of the leader. But at that time, many people said they could not buy his portrait, so they had to give up. At this point, I had a sudden idea to try to enlighten this beautiful girl.
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