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Missing
Mao's Ear
By
Renée E. D’Aoust
“Y M C A,” I hummed the English words to the song on the train’s loudspeakers.
My friend Luc marked each alphabet letter with his arms. Outside, rice
fields stretched into the setting sphere of the sun, a discus of fiery
flaming red that the Buddha had thrown into the sky. The man next to
me, wearing a blue Mao hat, offered me more sunflower seeds.
“Do they know this song is sung by homosexuals?” asked Luc.
“Would they clap along if they knew?”
“What is homosexuals?” asked a man across the aisle.
We were traveling by “hard seat,” with the people, rather than by “soft
seat,” with party members and foreigners. Each green vinyl bench had
at least five people on it, yet passengers still overflowed off the
seats into the aisle.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
“Do you speak Chinese?” the man asked.
“Ni hao. Mi fan. Xie xie.” The words sounded like “knee how,” “me fan,”
and “shi shi.” Everyone around me clapped. I bowed my head.
“Hello. Rice. Thank you,” said the man. He continued, “English name:
Ned. President Reagan very good.”
“President Reagan very bad,” said Luc.
I pointed at Luc: “Luc.” At myself: “Renée.”
“What is homosexuals?” Ned repeated.
“The Village People,” I said.
“Kind of,” snapped Luc. He had been irritated with me ever since I had
fallen asleep while he instructed me on the history of Russo-Chinese
relations since the late 1800s. To Luc’s dismay, I was more interested
in learning about Mao’s body in Tiananmen Square. Mao’s left ear was
supposedly decomposing; I wanted to travel to Beijing to see it.
“Man and man together,” said Luc.
“Bad,” said Ned.
“Not bad,” said Luc. “Different.”
Ned wore women’s nylon knee-highs and plastic, strap-laced sandals with
open toes and backs.
He wore a T-shirt that I had also purchased: MINNIE LOVES MICKEY AND.
And Mickey loves Mickey, I thought, finishing the writing on
the T-shirt.
“Hopeless,” said Luc.
“Yes, hopeless,” said Ned.
It was 1985: Four years before Tiananmen Square. Luc’s father was a
guest professor of English literature at Nanjing University, and I was
their guest for the entire summer. We were on the outbound train from
Nanjing traveling to the sacred mountain of Jiuhuashan to visit monasteries
reportedly left alone during the Cultural Revolution.
We had returned the week before from Putuo Island in the East China
Sea where every statue along every path had hands cut off, faces of
the Buddha slashed in half, and white blotches of paint covering once
meaningful Chinese calligraphy. Luc’s father hoped Mt. Jiuhuashan, a
cherished pilgrimage for Chinese travelers, would restore his faith
in culture—or at least in nature. The Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai had named
Mt. Jiuhuashan the “mountain of the nine lotuses.”
My stomach lurched with each lurch of the train wheels.
“Still not well, are you?” Luc asked.
“Too many potstickers,” I said.
“You were humming.”
“The Village People are comforting.”
The streaks of the setting sun cut across the horizon and reached into
the earth itself. A heavy-set woman moved through the train with an
enormous kettle of boiling water. Ned offered me a paper bag of loose
green tea and nodded.
I reached into my backpack, feeling as if I was reaching through someone
else’s leg, and brought out my tin cup with its small lid. I took a
few tea leaves from Ned’s bag and offered my cup for hot water. Ned
held out the bag to Luc, but Luc lowered his head to decline.
“Xie xie,” I said. The people surrounding me nodded their approval.
I turned to Ned. “Mao’s ear. Do you know about Mao’s ear?”
Ned beamed. “Oh yes. Decomposing.”
“She wants to see it,” said Luc.
“Enter right side tomb,” said Ned.
“Then I see left ear?” I asked.
“See ear going away,” said Ned. He waved his right arm up and down.
“We all dance,” said Luc, waving his hands in the air.
Ned looked at me quizzically.
“Dance,” I said, waving one arm while trying to keep the cup of hot
tea steady.
The old man next to Ned spit out the hulls of his sunflower seeds onto
the floor.
Ned patted my knee. “Good you see Chairman,” he said.
I pointed out the window. The fiery ball of flame had disappeared. The
rice fields receded into the darkening horizon. The music blared on
the train’s loudspeakers. The Village People were playing again.
After
dancing professionally in NYC, Renée
E. D'Aoust graduated from Columbia University. D'Aoust
has received Idaho Arts Commission (NEA) grants, the Julie Harris Fellowship
for Emerging Playwrights from Food for Thought Productions, and the
2002 Midnight Sun Fiction Award. Publications include Apollo's Lyre
E-Zine, The Bathyspheric Review, Black Canyon Quarterly,
Canoe and Kayak Magazine, Permafrost, and elsewhere.
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