Now he seemed to have dropped his conviction that he himself was the author. Somehow he couldn’t affix his mind to an idea for long; his thoughts rambled too much. I wondered whether there was a way to make his mind more focused and more coherent. Perhaps he should be treated by a psychiatrist; acupuncture or acupressure might help him too.
“Listen carefully,” he demanded, as if he knew I was wool-gathering — thinking about his brain instead of his views. He went on reciting huskily:
Then the wind subsides, murky clouds
Thickening while the sky turns misty and dark.
Our quilts, ragged for years,
Are hard as iron. Full of cracks
They can’t keep my kids warm in their sleep.
Again I fear that rain will fall in
Through the leaky roof, swaying like
Endless hempen threads and soaking our beds.
Ever since the war I’ve seldom slept.
How hard it is to pass such long dank nights!
He paused for breath, then commented, “I wrote these lines when I was ‘reeducated’ in the countryside. During the day we pulled plows in the fields like beasts of burden, or hoed soybean seedlings, or planted rice shoots, or cleaned latrines and pig-sties, or shipped manure to the fields. Although the work was backbreaking, it was not as nerve-racking as at night, because the hard labor could numb and vacate my mind. I could hardly think of anything while my body was busy. Once I started working, I just went on like a machine. Besides, when the work was heavy and urgent, we were often given better food, not as in the regular time when we had to eat sweet-potato strips and bran buns — both were indigestible and gave me heartburn and stomachaches. When we gathered in crops or loaded sun-dried bricks into the kiln or carried them out of it after they had been fired, we could eat as many corn buns as we wanted, and sometimes there were even slivers of pork belly in the vegetables. We were also given mung bean soup, which we could drink to our fill. But it was horrible at night. I suffered from insomnia. So many things came to mind that I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Once I didn’t sleep for thirteen days in a row. I begged the farm’s doctor to prescribe some soporific for me, but the leaders wouldn’t let him give me any, saying, ‘We ought to save the sleeping pills for the revolutionary masses. You can’t sleep because you haven’t worked hard enough.’ In the daytime I walked in the fields as if treading the clouds. My eyes ached and my head swelled with a shooting migraine. I was frightened that I was going to lose my mind, but the more fearful I was, the more sleepless the night became. I hated all the men around me for being able to sleep at night and get up refreshed the next morning. How often I envied the pigs in the sties behind our house, because they just ate and slept until one day they were hauled out to the butcher’s.”
He swallowed, then resumed: “The roof of our room was full of holes, through which night after night I listened to the wind whistle and watched the moon and the clouds move by slowly. In spite of my wakefulness, I dared not make any noise. If by chance my movement in bed woke somebody, he would curse me relentlessly and wake others up. Then all the people in the room would heap abuse on me. On the one hand, I wished the night would end sooner so that I could stop thinking; on the other, I wished daylight would never arrive so that I could stay in bed longer and rest my body more. In that state of mind I composed these lines.” He patted Brecht’s play in his lap and continued, “Genuine poetry originates from the author’s personal experience. It’s something that overflows from the soul.”
I prodded him, “But you once said in class that most poems came from other poems.”
He looked askance at me, then admitted, “Yes, most poems are small potatoes that come from big potatoes, the real poems from original, genuine human experience. The big potatoes, the real poems, are planted by some people first. Then the children of the big potatoes are planted; then the grandchildren are planted. Year after year the great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, great-great-great-grandchildren of the big potatoes grow smaller and smaller until they have shrunk to nothing. Then people must look for other big potatoes to grow.”
This was crazy. His analogy was wild, though refreshing. I asked without any irony, “So you think this is a big-potato poem?”
“Of course. It’s a piece in which authenticity overcomes artifice. Only after I had suffered all the miseries and abuse and the sleepless nights could I write such truthful lines. Listen, there’s not a single false sound here.” He recited again:
If only I had ten thousand mansions
To shelter all poor scholars on earth
And brighten their faces with smiles.
Look, the mansions stand like mountains
Unshakable in wind and rain!
Ah, once before my eyes arise such mansions,
I shall be happy, even though my own hut
Falls apart and I freeze to death!
“Oh, when can I see those mansions?” he cried and burst into sobs. His tears fell on the apricot-yellow cover of the book in his lap. “Where are those grand mansions?” he shouted. “Let me see them. Then I’ll die happy. Where, where are they?” He was wailing now, his mouth writhing.
I was choking with mixed emotions — pity, misery, and disgust were all welling up in my chest. He hadn’t written a single line of poetry in his whole life and had to rely on the ancient poem to express his aspiration, which was conventional and hackneyed, though not without lofty sentiment.
He blubbered again, “I only have a one-bedroom apartment. Give me one of those mansions! Where are they? I shall be a professor of the first rank, absolutely qualified for such a residence.”
What a lunatic! He made me want to laugh and weep at the same time, and my eyes misted over.
“Oh, Lord of Heaven, isn’t this a genuine poem?” he cried again. “Doesn’t it have truth in it? Truth must come true sooner or later like light that drives away darkness. But when? Why am I not allowed to see it materialize before I die? Why can’t I enter any of those high mansions to meet the happy faces of the poor scholars? If truth cannot come true, then what good can it do us? And what’s the use of a poem like this?” He pulled his right hand onto his belly, its back stained with tears. He chanted extravagantly:
Before I die, my aspiration
Is not yet realized—
Tears often wet the front
Of this hero’s robe.
He tried to reach his chest with his left hand, but couldn’t lift it that high. Suddenly with his right hand he swept the book to the floor and yelled, “I don’t want this stuff anymore! No, no more poetry, not a word of truth in it. It’s full of lies. I’ve been fooled by it all my life.”