Someone came and pulled up another chair, and a boy pushed a long, white, pointed, paper hat onto the old man’s head. The crowd erupted in derisive laughter, pointing and shouting. The old man had turned so pale, it looked as if he would pass out. Scrawled on the dunce cap were the words, “I am an enemy of the People, a spreader of lies! I am a demon!”
Arms were lifted, the feverish chanting began again, drowning out the young woman who was still speaking. Sparrow could not move. Each chant seemed to hit the man’s body like a physical blow. Another person came and affixed a long sheet of paper to the man’s chest. The words read, “I teach shit, I eat shit, I am shit.” Howls of laughter rang out, and the young man who had affixed the poster was overcome by hilarity. “Wu Bei,” he cried, “we can smell your shit across Shanghai! You silly boy! Why don’t you clean yourself up?” The old man, who once had stood before a lectern and tried to unravel the codes of literature, just as he, Sparrow, tried to understand the shape of music, wept in fear and humiliation. He would suffer less, Sparrow thought, if they tied him up and beat him unconscious. But the crowd only continued to taunt him.
“I am an enemy of the People,” he was saying now.
They forced him to repeat line after line.
“I have corrupted the thoughts of the students entrusted to me.”
“I have fed foreign shit into their bright and beautiful minds.”
“I am a traitor to my country.”
“I deserve death.”
And then his own whimpering, “Have mercy, have mercy.”
A gap opened up beside Sparrow and he slipped through it, the knot of the crowd quickly closing behind him. Gap by gap, he pushed his way forward. “In a hurry?” someone asked him. He was shoved but did not shove back. “What’s your name and work unit?” the same voice asked. “I’m only trying to get closer,” Sparrow said, terrified. The person laughed, disbelieving. “Look at the monster, the monster!” someone else said. “Soon we shall be at every window, inside every home!” The fire had grown and the laughter grew louder and louder. The man’s personal papers were being displayed like trophies of war. Someone was reading the titles of books and each one was greeted with guffaws and insults. Words were hurled at him, bourgeois, capitalist, imperialist, wolf, and the young woman continued her rhythmic alternation between hitting him viciously and berating him. When it seemed as if she might tire, a young man took her place, and the chants escalated again. “There are no kings,” the young man said, “no aristocrats, no landowners, no teachers, no natural ruling class. There are only locusts like you, thieves and pestilence!” “Set him on fire,” the crowd begged. “Feed poison to the snake!” They threw ever more books and papers onto the fire, and even furniture and clothing. A child’s silk dress was found and paraded through the crowd. The young woman came back with a large bottle of ink. She climbed up onto the chair beside the old man, pulled off the paper hat, and emptied the bottle onto his hair. The man tried to pull away but the ink poured into his eyes, ran down his nose and mouth and slid in hideous shapes down his body. As the old man tried desperately to wipe the thick liquid from his eyes and mouth, the crowd screamed in hysterical laughter. “Write something!” they shouted. “Wu Bei, enlighten us with your sophisticated thoughts! Compose a profound essay!” “Please, we beg you! Tell us what to think!” The young woman said, “Wu Bei, you’ve made a mess again!” “Stupid, dirty child,” the young man said, raising the stick menacingly. The old man cowered and wept. “Don’t move, don’t move!” the young woman said. “You’re ruining my elegant calligraphy!”
Sparrow moved backwards, step by tiny step, the metal frame of the front wheel scratching against the ground. Wu Bei’s humiliation was a game that kept intensifying. Each person wanted to think up the next salvo. The crowd was giddy, even the moon above and the ragged summer trees seemed to shudder with elation. Wu Bei was completely alone, balanced clownishly on his wooden chair. Another young man had stepped forward with a razor in his hand and was proposing that he shave the old man’s head. “He thinks his white hair makes him respectable,” the young man said. “Shall we clip the butterfly’s wings?” “Melt the autumn frost,” another voice shouted. “Rip off his wings! Cut off his hair!” A wave of nausea overcame Sparrow. There was no more oxygen to breathe. “Why stop at his hair?” the man with the dull razor said. “Why should we allow His Excellency to belittle us?”
Sparrow forced himself to turn casually away from the crowd, bending forward as if to check the bicycle’s tire. He glanced towards the edge of the road where a dozen plane trees stood aligned. There, under the nearest one, he saw Zhuli, standing by herself, lost in thought. She stood out because she was the only motionless person in this crowd. Zhuli held her violin tightly in her arms and was listening to the chanting as if to an excessively complicated piece of music. They had taken the razor to Wu Bei. “Can’t you even find a decent barber, Wu Bei?” “You’re ready for the dance now! Put on your three-piece suit and wait for the orchestra!” “Come and waltz with me, Wu Bei! Don’t be shy…” Broken, the old man let out a howl of grief and the crowd erupted in jeering victory.
Sparrow walked calmly towards his cousin. Wu Bei slipped from his mind. Zhuli should not be here with her violin. He must get her home.
He walked towards her, lengthening his gait to appear confident and tall. “Cousin,” he said when he reached her. She turned and looked at him with keen eyes. For a moment, he faltered and then he repeated, more sternly, “Cousin.” She hardly seemed to breathe. He began walking Zhuli away, his bicycle beside them. More people were coming to join the frenzy. They carried bottles of ink and rolls of paper, and they wore red armbands that, in the dim light, glowed against their arms.
“No,” Zhuli said, turning back towards the noise. “Not this way. I’m going to the Conservatory.”
“Ling was supposed to see you home,” he said. He had to fight to keep his voice calm. “I never would have left you otherwise.”
“She did take me home, but I came out again, after the rain. I reserved the practice room, you see,” she said. “I must go. Room 103. It’s the best room, you know. Because the piano is very old, nobody plays it. But I told you that once, didn’t I? And I have my concert coming so soon, it’s less than three months away. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t seem to memorize the Ravel.”
“Come, Zhuli,” he said. “Let’s go home together. I’ll help you, I promise.”
She was looking at him now. She sighed and followed behind him. “Where are we going, cousin?”
He did not answer.
After a moment, she said again, “But where are we going?”
“Home. Give me your violin.”
She would not. They walked in the shadows.
Red Guards careening recklessly along the path barely noticed them. When one or two stared, Sparrow called out to them, “They’re bringing down that traitor Wu Bei! The coward has already pissed himself.” The Red Guards collapsed in laughter. They shouted, “Long live the Revolution!” and hurried on, afraid they had missed the show.
Behind them, the crowd had reached the crescendo of a poem by Chairman Mao, their voices ringing: “We wash away insects, and are strong.”
Sparrow and Zhuli arrived home, in the laneway. His brothers were in bed but Ba Lute was sitting at the window, in the darkness. He started when they entered.
“Ba,” Sparrow said.
“Door by door,” Ba Lute said softly. “They are going to every house.”
Zhuli had moved halfway into the cold room. “But, uncle, you’re a Party member…”
Sparrow almost said, “So is Wu Bei,” but when he saw his father’s face he said nothing.
“If it comes to unending revolution,” Ba Lute said, “even Party members and heroes must take their turn.” He smiled and seemed to laugh and Sparrow felt a trickle of fear running down his spine.
“Father, why don’t you go to bed? I’ll stay awake.”
“In bed or here or in the road, I won’t be able to sleep.”