关于我的难友张谋的回忆录，我曾经为他英译，而且按我的理解在一些地方作了增补。我想干脆也把英语的version也贴出来，博友有兴趣可以介绍给英语朋友一读。

On My FUGITIVE Road

In 1958, as the notorious Anti-Rightists Campaign was drawing to an end, the Labor Reeducation Authority under the Public Security Bureau of Sichuan Province, with the purpose of punishing the vicious rightists (as they were called at that time), had established a Second Detachment of Railway Construction. Among the Sichuan local rightists, those healthier, stronger males, numbering to several thousands, were sent there, and thus they had fallen into an ordeal unheard-of in all their lives, if not in human history. According to the dictates of the authorities, they were all lazy exploiters, knowing nothing of the hardship of physical labor except chasing after physical pleasures, and the only way to turn their reactionary political standpoint around was to put them into hard labor. On the other hand, those newly branded rightists suddenly lost their original status and dignity, descended to the bottom of society, expelled and ordered about like pariahs, were in a state of psycho-shock, eager to recover their former status at any cost, and took this punishment as the only way for their redemption.

This being the case, those yesterday’s teachers, doctors, engineers , office workers and college students suddenly found themselves being delivered of their sins, willy-nilly, as new hands on the railway construction site. They became stone masons, dynamite detonators, carpenters, blacksmiths, or whatever trade needed. So for three years they had already worked might and main on the sites of two different railroads connecting Kunming with Chengdu and Neijiang, even some of them had fallen to the roadside and never to get up again. But under the then ‘blind direction’ of the Communist regime, all their work, just like so many  other grand and high-sounding projects undertaken by the CCP at that time, had been abandoned helplessly only to eventually become Mother Nature’s new orphans. Destructive and wasteful as it was, it was nigh unthinkable that the CCP still had not drawn the necessary lessons from the discredited “Great–Leap-Forward’, but still insisted on its ‘absolute correct leadership’. What looks unbelievable today is that, seeing the entire nation in such chaos and undergoing unprecedented difficulties, the rightists were still afraid to use their own reasoning and judgment to question the current situation, but still approved every propaganda in the newspaper, even if only lip service, so as to avoid repeating the crime of independent thinking they had committed in the previous campaign.

But at this time those bookish people gradually encountered a common hardship with no exemptions.  It happened that with their appetite growing immensely through hard labor, their food ration had decreased drastically, from 24 kilos of rice monthly in 1959 to only 17 kilos this time; meanwhile the amount of meat and edible oil provision was reduced to a paltry amount close to almost nothing. Since nothing could be more convincing than the feeling of one’s own stomach, when hunger sternly stroked everybody day after day, month after month, all the propaganda in the newspaper such as great achievements in agriculture, rice unit production 10 times or 20 times more than before, etc., all proved to be sheer lies. Mao Tzedong , under his insane ambition to make himself the number one in our planet , had committed the most stupid mistake not even an idiot could do, but had little problem in coercing  the whole country to follow his whims. Now the country was paying the price for his ambition. China as a whole was in a famine that not only her own country but through out the history of mankind had never experienced. To cover his own evil, Mao used our Mother Nature as his scapegoat, saying all problems he made were only the results of ‘natural calamity’. And, since the famine caused by him was so devastating, he skillfully crowned his excuse with four attributes, that this particular natural calamity was ‘severe’, ‘extraordinary’, ‘three-years-consecutive’ and ‘never-seen–in hundred- years’. They were repeatedly, shamelessly appearing in all Chinese newspapers, thus he also created the biggest lie in human history. On our way in transferring to new construction sites, we eye-witnessed skinny dying people by the road side; also some of us got letters from home cautiously hinted the effects of famine in town and city.  Li Linyuan, a former high school teacher got a letter from his daughter, telling him “ mother’s last wish before dying was to eat a stuffed bun”. Alas! How is it that the dignity of our millions of brothers and sisters were reduced to such a humble wish before breathing their last? Who deprived their paramount right of life!

Out of all the restrictions to which we were bound during the three years in the so-called Labor Reeducation, the worst thing was that we were never told when it would end. (The Regulations of Labor Reeducation promulgated in 1957 was without a time frame). Now that we realized the severe reality of the entire society through our own suffering, our sense of truthful reasoning had finally awakened and we began to dismantle the sanctity of the communist temple in our mind. By returning to the common sense of “Practice is the sole criterion of truth”, we woke up one morning determining to stare at the biggest fraud in Chinese history, and were courageous enough to declare: “I DON”T BELIEVE!”--- A taboo even thinking of it would cause a crime in the past!

It was at this time, that’s the Spring of 1961, our detachment of rightists was sent to a town called Pleasure in the County of Wangtsang, to build a railway connecting  Wangtsang and Guangyuan County for their abundant coal deposits. We arrived at the Pleasure Town with low spirit despite its questionable name; and how sarcastic it is in such a miserable period of time. ‘Pleasure’ indeed! Because after all, “What’s in a name?”

A Weird Interlude

In the past three years, we used to live in makeshift sheds put up by ourselves wherever they happened to be, but here at the Town of Pleasure, since many peasants had either died from starvation or becoming roaming beggars, we were able to take two adjacent big dwelling compounds to accommodate our whole squadron, altogether two hundred plus, government workers included.  Most of the local peasants there were the Hous, with the same ancestral background. There was a small stream in front of our courtyard. Back to the courtyard, a hill rose up to some 350 meters above sea level. In the past, our projects were in mountainous area, our squadron was trained to specialize in digging and constructing tunnels. Here with no tunnels to build, our job was changed to excavation, wherewith working condition was less strenuous and consequently the stress from hunger somehow reduced. However, it was by no means to say bye-bye to hunger; we were still under the shadow of it. While now we were living among the local people, some of our Labor Reeducation elements (LR from now on,) got the opportunity to use our belongings like clothing to barter with local peasants for food.  Of course, trade was strictly under the table, for it was ‘illegal’. To us, anything could be done with, because food was of much more significance as related to our survival. Although squadron leaders announced again and again its prohibition, the underground barter market was flourishing.

One day, I ventured to swap my woolen sweater with a peasant woman for a chicken. It was arranged that she would cook it ready for me to eat at her home after I finished with my evening study session. Knowing it was against the rule to walk out of the dormitory at night, and one could be easily suspected of something as serious as trying to escape and this would bring about big trouble, I decided to ask my squad leader, (squad leaders were also LRs) to come with me to share my bird, hoping that his ‘leadership’ might somehow serve me as an umbrella if something did happen. Besides, we used to be in pretty good terms.

The woman was delighted when we arrived. She was no more than thirty with a radiant face as well as a good body shape. The fact that she could not only survive but also gave birth to a child was a rarity when the whole countryside was destitute under such famine.  Credit probably went to her husband who was working in the city, being better off than those in the countryside. Certainly he had secretly brought to her significant help.

On arrival, we noticed everything was ready.  She placed the cooked chicken in her bedroom, presumably to make this “sumptuous meal’ less detectable to outsiders. We devoured the bird in no time while she waited by the table asking questions like how do we like it, but only found the question completely pointless in such a time. As the chicken was quite finished, my squad leader possibly remembering my sacrifice of the precious sweater, walked out without asking, to leave the chicken broth for me to enjoy alone; which, I devoured with no hesitation to the last fatty drop.  At this time the peasant woman, all of a sudden, came up to me, held me tightly to her chest and pressed her burning cheek against mine. Soon after, she took off her pants to pee into a chamber pot by the bed and, with one hand holding her loosing pant, the other hand giving me a pull, went to lie down invitingly in her bed, stripping off everything with her. This made me extremely nervous: not only because I was aware of the consequences of indulging in such unlawful sexual behavior, especially of my LR status, but also because it simply wasn’t my idea

of love-making.

Shameful to say, I had been cut off from sexual contact with the fair sex for three years, I couldn’t be as hard as to be immovable to this kind of seduction.  With little uneasiness, I took off my underwear and was trying to venture my part in an extramarital sex act. But, alas, who could imagine that I myself, having fathered a healthy son not long before, and also looked as strong as an ox, was unable to make an erection at all just like an impotent person. While she subdued her voice encouraging me with “come on”, “try harder”, I on top of her only helplessly wriggled with no results. The sorry situation made me terribly ashamed of myself, I could only withdraw like an defeated cock. But I learned afterwards that this problem was among most male citizens of our nation; it again, was the aftereffect of the ‘natural calamity’.

Thereafter, I had never again come upon with her smiling face, but only her forever sad and melancholy eyes as if complaining: “You ungrateful impotent bastard!”

(To be coninued)