“
I have done no wrong, sir,” the teacher whimpered. His right temple was bleeding. He’d used to teach
him math. He could still remember Mr Hu sneering at him for a wrong answer. Well, the good and oppressed
had now been elevated by Chairman Mao himself. He felt justified doing what he did now.
He addressed his comrades. “The reactionary denies everything.” He waited as it sank in. “You.” He
stabbed a finger at Lin, who shrank back. He’d never liked Lin. He always kowtowed to teachers. Traitor. “Do
you think this teacher is a liar?”
Lin dipped his head further.
“
Guang? It seems that we have –“
“
Yes! Yes, he is a traitor. Look at him. His hands are shaking; he’s crying. If he’s telling the truth, he’d
be calm. The Quotations says so.”
Hu had stopped whimpering. He knew what was going to come.
The commander smiled for his comrades, even as inside he recoiled at what they would do to Hu. Hu
didn’t deserve this. None of the teachers did. There had only been the news from Beijing. He knew that if he
didn’t take control, one of the rougher boys would and then everything would be worse. But it didn’t mean he
liked it.
With Hu gone, there would only be two left. It was almost a race with the neighboring schools to see
how many they could get rid of.
Two Guards dragged the limp man out. As commander, he would have to preside over the proceedings.
He did so. But when they began to hoist Hu up to the loop of rope hanging from the tree, he closed his
eyes.
He was seventeen.
*
A hand latches over his mouth and presses. He struggles.
The hand disappears.
He sees a face above him before he blinks, and it disappears. A face that used be clean and set in a
permanent frown, now dappled with dried blood and snot.
Hu.
He can no longer tell reality from dream.
The television has been burbling in the background. Ha. It is him on the screen. A prisoner of food
tubes and plush sheets. The scene changes and his children appear. They look grieved but he knows that they are
thankful he is near the end.
He presses the plunger for more painkillers.
The button is red. A red that he has seen before on flags, books and buildings.
Red fills his vision, and as he falls into another memory, he thinks: I am so close.
*
His words injected energy into them.
“…
shall destroy the relics of an ignominious past that have no place in our new future. Go forth,
comrades, and build a new world!”
His voice stirred the ocean of Guards as the moon stirs the tides. They roared their approval.
The newly arrived Red Guard roared with them, brandishing his little red book like a bayonet.
It had begun.
When Mao had ordered the closure of all schools, the boy hadn’t known what to do. Harvest time was
still two months away. Then Mao had called for a meeting of Red Guards in Tiananmen Square. The boy was
chosen by the townspeople to represent them.
It was the first time he had left the town. The train rocketed past fields at an astonishing 20 miles per
hour. The Great Wall, which had seemed so impossibly distant and vast, dwindled until his hand could shield it
completely. It was now a mere ribbon of stone.
He’d been a dutiful Guard. He participated in rallies and the burnings of Western things daily.
Then: “The Great Wall is a great irony of our country. It stands as a symbol of strength yet it has done
nothing to keep the invaders out. Let it not stand as an artifact of shame.”
That was all it took. By the next morning thousands of Red Guards, he included, flooded the trains
towards the Great Wall. They stormed the waiting brick and mortar, chanting and singing as they used hammers,
rocks, even their own hands to tear the Wall down. It bore this silently. And when they tired and retreated back
into the houses they requisitioned from their owners, it remained shining in the moonlight.