"We're organizing a Mao quotation-singing rally!" Wild Ginger's voice came through a loudspeaker. "The Cultural Revolution is in its seventh year, and the struggle between the proletarian class and the bourgeois class has intensified ever more significantly. Defending Maoism and demonstrating the proletarian class's strength is not only important but absolutely necessary. We must sing loud, louder, and louder the Mao quotation songs. We must promote hard, harder, and hardest the ideas of Maoism! The rally will be held in the Shanghai Acrobatics Stadium!"
The city was mobilized. Hot Pepper led a thousand-member team and distributed leaflets at every street corner. People were ordered to put down whatever they were doing to join the event. The factories, labor collectives, and schools were required by the city committee to send a delegation of singers to the rally.
As the executive producer, Wild Ginger selected the delegations and scheduled their auditions. She discussed her ideas with the orchestra, stage designers, and technicians on sound, lights, and props. She conducted the practices, rehearsals, and run-throughs. On the surface her energy seemed inexhaustible, but I could tell beneath her smiling face she was falling apart. There was a detectable nervousness in her voice. People who worked with her talked about her unpredictable outbursts and mood swings. The way she shouted and yelled for no particular reason. Her habit of smashing things. Her use of profanity.
Although Evergreen and I had no interest in joining the rally, our names were called and we had no choice but to go to the Acrobatics Stadium for practice.
The practice was a three-week, daylong commitment involving fifteen thousand people from over five hundred work units. Each group was called to stand up and sing until Wild Ginger gave her approval. Some groups were good. The Shanghai Garrison was disciplined, with a tradition of singing, and had obviously been practicing. But the peasant groups were lousy. They were sent by the commune and had hardly sung in their lives. They sang off-key and confused Mao quotation songs with their folk songs. Wild Ginger did as much as she could to help them but finally she had to give up. "As long as you show me that you can follow the beat, I will pass you," she told them. The school groups were the best, but the young children had little patience. When it wasn't their turn, they sneaked around the bowl-shaped stadium and looked for their friends and neighbors to play.
Evergreen's group was about two gates away from me. I saw him sitting quietly, reading The Electrician's Guide. I didn't understand why Wild Ginger insisted on having us. It was awkward to meet like strangers.
Evergreen and I fought over whether or not to continue attending Wild Ginger's rehearsals. Encounters with her had become unbearable for him. I didn't want to go either, but I was concerned that we would be singled out in ways that would jeopardize our future. Evergreen disagreed.
We were in a vegetable patch somewhere in the suburbs. It was night. We were afraid of Wild Ginger's spies so we traveled as far as the public bus would take us. But still, we couldn't escape Wild Ginger. Whenever we opened our mouths, her name popped out. Even in the middle of passion my mind would slip and I would feel a wave of guilt wash over me. Evergreen was affected, but he couldn't loosen Wild Ginger's hold on my mind. Soon he was frustrated. "We'll leave Shanghai as soon as we can."
I was unsure about Evergreen's feelings about Wild Ginger. He wanted so badly to get away from her. But my conscience kept telling me that it was because he wanted her. Maybe we both wanted Wild Ginger so much that we couldn't stand it.
To avoid mentioning Wild Ginger we ceased talking. We would meet at the station, get on the bus, and sit silently until our destination. When we got off the bus I would follow him. We would walk miles until he located a quiet spot. Our usual place was in a cow shed behind fields of yecai. We would climb over the packed hay to hide ourselves. He would lay his raincoat down and I would offer him my body. It had become a ritual, a way to get the frustration out of ourselves.
I had trouble looking at him because Wild Ginger was so much on my mind. I kept seeing her eyes. Yet I dared not speak about my thoughts. I would get on my knees and look at the cows. I asked Evergreen to do whatever he liked with my body while I thought about my future with him, a future without Wild Ginger. And then I would be aroused.
I could feel his tension-his pleasure often came in the middle of our shared pain. Too many times I saw tears in his eyes. He wouldn't speak about his thoughts either. I knew he was thinking of her too. I told him that it was all right. Everything would be all right. It would be over soon and we would survive. At that moment he broke down and he was free. I received and calmed him until he became full of desire again.
One night things became unbearable for me. I asked him to call me by her name. Before he could react I started to talk like Wild Ginger. I started to recite Mao quotations the way Wild Ginger would. I copied her tone and style. I recited the quotations as I unzipped his trousers.
He took me as I continued to recite. It was Wild Ginger's favorite paragraph: "Volume three, page thirty, 'Rectify the Party's Style of Work.' 'So long as a person who has made mistakes does not hide his sickness for fear of treatment or persist in his mistakes until he is beyond cure, so long as he honestly and sincerely wishes to be cured and to mend his ways, we should welcome him and cure his sickness so that he can become a good comrade.'" I rode him as he moved gently inside me. Through the sound of his breath I stared out into the night. I envisioned Wild Ginger. She stood in uniform with her front buttons open. Her breasts were two steaming buns.
I took Evergreen's hands. I asked him to close his eyes. I asked him to touch me, to feel me, feel Wild Ginger. '"We can never succeed if we just let ourselves go and lash out at the comrade with shortcomings. In treating an ideological or a political malady, one must never be rough and rash but must adopt the approach of curing the sickness to save the patient, which is the only correct and effective method.'"
And then I closed my own eyes and once again I was in Wild Ginger's closet.