Free The Mao Case by Qiu Xiaolong

had to work his butt off cutting stencils, copying passages from a number of books, proofreading all of it by himself, and paying for it out of his own pocket. I gathered together the information he had collected, including that concerning Mao’s second wife, Kaihui, and third wife, Zizhen. The material Teng distributed to his students was from official publications — and all written in an effort to eulogize Mao’s revolutionary spirit, no question about it.
    “But here was the problem. One of the students read through the material and said in the class, ‘Teacher Teng, there’s a mistake. Chairman Mao couldn’t have married Zizhen that year.’ Now Teng was a very bookish and stubborn man. He happened to have the original book in his bag, so he took it out and double-checked the date in front of the class. ‘That’s correct. Study hard and don’t bother me.’ The student, being exasperated by Teng’s response and overly influenced by Mao’s theory of class struggle, reported him to the Mao Thought Propaganda Team in school, saying that Teng represented Mao as having married Zizhen when Kaihui was still alive.
    “Now, in most official publications, there was no mention of the date of Mao’s marriage to Zizhen. It was taken for granted that he married her after the death of Kaihui. But in the sources Teng assembled, one text had a paragraph mentioning the date of Mao’s marriage to Zizhen, and another had a sentence containing the date of Kaihui’s death. The overlap of dates was unmistakable.”
    Old Hunter paused for dramatic effect, picking up the teapot, but to his dismay, no water was left. He decided to go on without asking for more hot water. It was a crucial juncture in his story.
    “It became evident that Mao was guilty of bigamy. And that meant a disaster for Teng. If he hadn’t been so devoted to accurate scholarship, he could have claimed that it was a typo. But confronted with the Mao Thought Propaganda Team, he insisted that he had carefully proofread all the material. What’s more, he produced the very book that gave the date of Mao’s marriage to Zizhen.”
    “Who wrote the book?”
    “Someone who had worked under Mao — Mao’s personal orderly. So the Mao Thought Propaganda Team had to put Teng in isolation interrogation, lest he keep blabbing. They sent a report to the police bureau, passing the problem on like a burning hot potato. And then the case came to me.
    “After researching everything, I proposed to Li that we write to the author, asking for his cooperation. Li gave me a dressing down, declaring that I didn’t understand the complexity of the class struggle and that there was no possibility of contacting the author. Teng had to confess he slandered Mao, Li insisted, or at least to admit that it was a gross typo on his part. So I had no choice but to go on ‘investigating,’ turning myself into a mouthpiece for Mao’s famous quotation: ‘Leniency to those who confess their crime, and severity to those who resist.’ I tried to give advice to Teng by citing what proverbs I could think of, such as ‘A hero cuts his losses, for the moment’ and ‘You have to hang your head low under other’s eaves,’ but he wouldn’t listen. A couple of days later, he committed suicide, leaving a will written in blood, with only one sentence: ‘A long, eternal life to Chairman Mao!’ ”
    He paused again to take a sip from the empty cup, feeling his throat suddenly dry.
    “Now, that was as an acceptable conclusion according to Li. ‘The criminal committed suicide, aware of the punishment for his crime.’ So that was the end of the Mao case. About two or three months later, Mao himself passed away.”
    “What a case!”
    “It was a case I could never get out of my mind. It was just an assignment , I’ve told myself Old Heaven alone knows how many times. After all, millions and millions of people died like ants, like weeds, during the Cultural Revolution. Apart from shouting