Fatigue finally overwhelmed the rebellious enthusiasm. We were brought back to the house. Since they found nothing, they seemed to feel quite humiliated, so they were all irritated and furious. I think I have to give them a step to let them down, otherwise, they will be angry with me. If I could let them get the rings and bracelets of gold and so on, at least they would be able to speak in face. I remembered that all my jewelry was sealed in the study.
“My gold rings, gold bracelets, etc. are sealed by the Red Guards. You can go and contact the Red Guards to unseal them and take them away.” I said to the woman.
“Don’t pretend, we’re looking for the gold bars.” She said.
We all stood in the aisle. The man with the dark glasses removed them to reveal a pair of red, murderous eyes covered with red silk. He glanced at the servants cowering by the kitchen door, at the men clustered around him, and finally at me with a fierce glare, yelling suddenly, “Where did you hide the gold weapons?” As he spoke, he approached me with a vicious step.
I was so tired that I could not stand up anymore, but I managed to pull myself together and replied, “I really don’t have it. If there were, you would have found it long ago.”
He was embarrassed by the fact that he had been proven wrong. He stared at me through gritted teeth and said, “You must be premature to conclude that we haven’t cracked the wall yet.”
He was standing face to face with me, with a look of contempt and mockery that I could see clearly. That face made me sick, and I wanted to get away from him, but I didn’t. Because then he would think that I was afraid of him. I just said calmly in a normal tone of voice, “You have to be reasonable. If I want to hide something in the walls, I can’t do it alone. I have to hire a plasterer to remodel the walls. Now that all the workers are working in the state enterprises, they will report such works to their party branches.” I was extremely tired, and I was really speaking with all my strength.
The guy jumped up because I was insinuating that he was unreasonable. He was white, his lips were quivering with anger, and the veins on his temples were all rippling. He swung his fist to hit me.
At that moment, Mampin’s Persian cat, Frosa, came in from the kitchen and jumped up behind the man on his leg, biting him so hard that he cried out in pain and jumped up on one foot in an attempt to chase him away. Other people helped to catch Frosa, but the smart kitten, has a “whoosh”, lightning seems to jump out of the open French window frame. Everyone rushed outside the house again, and by now Frosa was sitting firmly on the mullein tree that she loved the most. It was impossible to climb up. Frosa peacefully high up, meowing. The guy who was bitten almost went crazy. His pants were scratched and blood was dripping from his hind legs. He rushed furiously to shake the trunk of the tree, trying to shake the kitten down, but Frosa jumped to a higher tree, only to see him glance down contemptuously, and then jumped to the neighbor’s roof and disappeared in the darkness of the night.
Everyone re-entered the house. The guy was sitting on his butt on the sofa that had been destroyed by the Red Guards and he himself had trashed. I wanted to ask Chen’s mother to get some red salve or iodine to apply to his wounds, but she said that the Red Guards had poured it out.
The rebels felt embarrassed to collapse for that little farce of their own head. Their head was seen covering his leg with a handkerchief, so annoyed that he was only breathing out, not in. My maids obediently retreated to the kitchen. I remained there and watched his mess with cold eyes. A woman pulled the sliding door between the living room and the dining room and pushed me in, saying, “We don’t need you to cry about rats and mice and pretend to be kind. You have bred a beast to fight against the rebels. You will not have good consequences. As for the cat, we have asked the help of the nearby committee to find it and put it to death. You are mistaken if you think you can stop the search by letting the cat out to bite us. We will continue to search for gold and weapons.” She turned and locked the door behind her and listened as she peddled down the aisle, locking all the other doors one by one. This left me confined to the dining room again.
I wondered if they had really decided that I was hiding a golden weapon. Or were they just following top instructions? If their intention was the latter, then they had done their best.
Old Zhao called me softly from the garden. I went to the window, and he said to me.
“The First Secretary has gone to the factory to inform Man-ping that she is not to return tonight. Do you think it’s okay?”
“Thank you so much, Lao Zhao. You’re so thoughtful, it’s best if she’s not here.”
Someone was pounding on the door again. Old Zhao rushed to open the door, and when he returned he told me that the Red Guards who had come to raid the house for the first time had come again.
“Please bring Chen’s mother to your room.” I said to Lao Zhao. I was ready to face even heavier doom and disaster.
Then I only heard the stairs stomping up and down in what seemed to be a large number, and they were shouting. Upstairs there seemed to be people arguing in anger, followed by the sound of a brawl. I had no other choice but to prepare for them to completely destroy my home. I put the three dining room chairs together, put some cushions on them, and lay down with a cross body. Perhaps because I was so tired, I fell asleep to the sound of their noise.
At dawn, a few Red Guards and rebels opened the door to the room. It seemed that their argument had been settled. A young woman yelled at me, “Get up! Get upl”
Another rebel told me to go quickly to the kitchen for something to eat, and then went upstairs to wait for orders. I went downstairs to the checkroom to wash up. The reflection of me in the mirror startled even me. A messy hair, pale and puffy face, forehead and cheeks splattered with mud. I stepped back to take a look again and found myself covered in mud. In fact, I looked like a female zombie, just like the female corpse picked up from the ruins in the streets of Chongqing during the war. Since seeing that female corpse, I felt uncomfortable and restless for several days, unable to rest. To “her”, everything in the world had come to an end. She could no longer stand up and walk around, or even appeal to her own misfortune. Now when I remember this woman’s body, I have more confidence to live. In my mind, the Cultural Revolution was only a struggle to clear my name. Not only do I want to live, but I want to live as strong as granite. No matter what harsh blows I was under, I had to cleanse myself and keep myself. My face is puffy because I have not been dripping water for a long time, and I have only one kidney left. It is no longer able to function properly. I had to drink some water immediately.
I went into the kitchen and drank two full glasses of water before eating the rice porridge and vegetarian dishes that Lao Zhao had prepared for me. It’s amazing how food, so quickly in the body to stimulate calories, and calories will stimulate and strengthen the human will. All of a sudden, I felt refreshed.
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