People had been talking about this for a long time, but Zhou took no notice. He had three masks: the mask of a leader, the mask of one who obeys, and the mask as cold as ice. The first two he usually wore to government and Politbureau meetings or committees. The third he kept for occasions when he had to appear in public.
The clock on the wall behind him struck six. This was the first time he had gone out without one of his three masks. They were all out of date now. Instead he now wore a fourth. A death mask.
On the chest of drawers below the mirror lay the envelope containing his will, which he intended to send to Mao that evening. How many people would have given anything to know its contents! Especially those who were waiting to step into his shoes. But it was not what they expected. It set out only a few general observations, followed by a request that his ashes be scattered in the sky over China.
A handful of dust, he thought — that’s how everything will end. Other people would have liked his will to contain a list of names suggesting his successor, together with accusations and settlings of old scores. But he had left all that far behind. He had no connection with the world any more. All he had to do was go to the concert, and wait for the curtain to fall. Then nothingness.
The invitation card lay just beside the will Perhaps I’ve already ceased to exist, he thought. Perhaps it’s only my ghost that’s going to the concert…
Yes, perhaps so. The concert was other people’s affair — he was merely a visitor, a visitant, half living and half dead. It was his first and last concert. The last of his life, the first of his after-life.
He would scarcely be any more present at tonight’s event than at future ones that might be attended by his ghost. There, that’s where he used to sit, people would say afterwards, looking at his empty box. (Would it really be empty?) Actually, he rather relished his present detachment. He would listen to this concert as if from a box in the beyond, set free at last from the passions and rivalries of the power struggle.
The clock struck again. Sometimes the ghost, sometimes the real man seemed to prevail within him. Why don’t I go for one last walk round Peking before the concert, he thought, before dismissing the idea. He felt as if he could do anything he liked. As if he had only to wish himself in his box and he would be there without any need for a car or a journey or an escort.
It was natural enough. A ghost had no use for such things. But still, he thought at last, I’d better get there somehow or other, or someone else might go and sit in my box. The box is occupied … Where had he heard that before?
Juan Maria Krams took out his invitation again to check that he hadn’t made a mistake about the time of the concert. No, he still had plenty of time, he thought, settling back in his chair by the window. But he didn’t stay there long. He suddenly realized he hadn’t noticed any other figures but 19.30 on the card. He checked. Yes, it didn’t say the number of the seat, and as far as he could tell, with his meagre knowledge of Chinese, it didn’t say whether it was in a box or in the stalls. This seemed very odd, for an official concert.
Juan Maria hurried out of the room and ran downstairs. As usual, one of his guides was waiting for him in the lounge on the ground floor of the villa. Juan Maria showed him the invitation and pointed out that the seat number wasn’t specified. To his surprise, the guide didn’t react.
“Don’t worry, comrade Jean,” he said with a smile. “I know the numbers of the seats.“
“You mean…?”
“Yes, everything’s as it should be.”
Krams went upstairs again, more slowly. It seemed very strange. His guide, though he hadn’t stopped smiling, had nevertheless refrained from telling him the number of his seat. This was obviously something to do with the security measures taken for an event at which top leaders were to be present, but still Krams was rather offended. Why were they showing so little confidence in him, Chairman Mao’s “European godson”, as friends and enemies alike called him, half-joking, half-serious? He’d learned to forgive the Chinese their little unpleasant surprises, but this time he thought they were going too far. But then, he reflected, this mystification probably applies to everyone. And in the present tense situation, extreme. precautions might really be necessary.
Yes, that would be it. He mustn’t be too touchy. There were much more serious things than the number of his seat to worry about in connection with the concert. It gave him an opportunity to guess which of the two factions in the struggle for power had the best chance of getting the upper hand — which, for the moment, enjoyed to however small an extent the favour of Mao. It was upon the outcome of this confrontation that his attitude to China depended, together with that of his group.
The Chinese guests were also getting ready to go to the concert. There were about seven hundred of them, all official figures — senior civil servants for the most part, ministers, members of the Central Committee, representatives of different nationalities, veterans of the Long March, members of the mysterious Zhongnanhai or General Bureau, and so on.
The member of the Politbureau who always wore a towel wound round his head like a turban looked at his invitation, and sighed. His seat was in box number y. He wondered where his rival would be sitting — “Double-Barrel”-as he was called, the man who claimed to live on two barrels of chick-peas. It was some comfort to know that as all the top leaders took their places in the concert hall, dozens of others would be straining their eyes to find out the answer to this question.
But it was only one preoccupation, and a small one it that, among the many that would be engaging the guests. The pulses of the Chinese would be beating fast over much more serious mysteries as they entered the hall. As most of them belonged to one or other of the various rival factions, secret or otherwise, such questions were a matter of life and death. They knew that all those rows of heads rising above the red plush seats were seething with plots, coups, putsches and massacres. All these projects depended on different eventualities: the death of Mao, the death of Zhou Enlai, or both, a seizure of power by Deng Xiaoping, or by Jiang Qing and her gang. Three deaths together, a single night of slaughter, or a blood-bath lasting for years?…There were other factors, too, that might trigger off a plot or coup — developments at home or abroad, natural phenomena. These categories might include provocative acts on the part of the United States or the U.S.S.R., a reversal of the situation in Vietnam, a famine decimating the population of India, a drought in northern China, floods, earthquakes, epidemics of cholera or smallpox, a plague of rats or locusts…
Many of the guests “at the concert would be seeking signs that evening as to how they should take advantage of such events. They would look for symbols in the movements and gestures of the dancers, the dark red of the prima ballerina’s cloak, the white of the cloak worn by the dancer next in seniority, the undulations of the dragon’s tail, the antics of the little monkey, the horses sweeping through the dreadful desert and finally exiting covered in gore.
But these signs wouldn’t be at all easy to decipher. You might easily get it wrong.
* * *
Ail the lights were on in the guest-houses for important foreign visitors built in the western part of a large park. Two kings, four sheikhs, a sick imam, two regents living in exile and a widowed queen were all getting ready for the concert, together with their guides and bodyguards and concubines, Powerful whiffs of perfume floated out towards the cars that waited outside with their engines already turning over.
In the last and most modest of the villas, set slightly apart from the others, Pol Pot, the master of Cambodia, was poring over a hefty volume about symbols, leafing through the pages impatiently. In the course of the last few days he’d been secretly thinking up a new massacre, greater in scope than anything that had gone before,not only in his own country but also in the whole of Asia, if not the world itself. He hadn’t told anyone about the scale of this project; this evenings at the concert, he would try to make out if the time was ripe for it. He’d started consulting this venerable tome as soon as he received his invitation, but there wasn’t much time, and the subject was extremely complex. He had a feeling that the answer to his question was to be found in the movements made and the colours worn by the second woman dancer, as these related to the figure of the ancient serpent; but he wasn’t quite sure. And if his interpretation was wrong it might cost him dear a few days later when he asked for Chinese backing for his plan.