Then when will the next stage come about? he reverently asked.

"In seven or eight years, it will come again," Mao wrote in a letter to his wife, "the Cultural Revolution is a serious trial practice." The old man took another cigarette, paused for a while, then went on to write, "Moreover, after seven or eight years, there will be another movement to purge all Ox Demons and Snake Spirits. And, after that, there will be many more purges." After finishing the letter, he laughed, showing the black teeth in his mouth. According to the memoirs of Mao's doctor, he smoked three packs a day and never used a toothbrush, and this was apparent from the news documentaries of Mao in old age meeting with foreign guests.

The old man was really a great military strategist! He had hood-winked the people of China and many people in the world. This was also what he wanted to say.

Mao frowned.

He hastened to add: You defeated all of your enemies and won every single battle in your life.

"Don't let your brains be addled by victory. I am ready to fall down and be smashed to pieces, but this is of no consequence. Matter is not destroyed, it only disintegrates." Mao had written this in that no-longer-secret family letter subsequently made public by the Party.

Only your wife was smashed. You, old man, still enjoy good health. People still go to visit you in your mausoleum, and this is irrefutable testimony to your greatness, he said to Mao's spirit or shadow.

"Believing I will live two hundred years, I set out to swim three thousand li."

You wrote poetry from your early years, and it must be said that you were a great writer of classical poetry, but your tyranny is without precedent, you destroyed all the writers of the country, and it is in this that you were great. He said that he, too, did a bit of writing, but that he had to wait until after the old man was dead.

"In my person, I have, first, the spirit of the tiger, and, second, the spirit of the monkey."

He said that, in his case, he had, at most, a minute amount of the spirit of the monkey.

The old man gave the hint of a smile, as if he had squashed some insect. He stubbed out more than half of a cigarette, indicating that he wanted to rest.

Mao lay in the crystal casket, and it seemed that the Party flag covered his body, he couldn't remember too clearly. In any case, the Party led the country, and Mao led the Party, it really wasn't necessary for him to be covered with the national flag. In the long queue filing past Mao's remains, he probably had these unformed words in his mind, but didn't dare to pause. After he had walked past, he didn't dare look back, afraid that the people behind would notice the strange look in his eyes.

Writing freely about it now, this is what you want to say to this emperor who ruled as dictator over one billion people. Because you are insignificant, the emperor in your heart can only be the dictator of one person, and that person is yourself. Now that you have said this publicly, you have walked out of Mao's shadow, but this was not an easy thing to do. You were born at the wrong time, and encountered the era of Mao's rule, but your being born in that era had nothing to do with you, and was decided by what is known as fate.

54

You no longer live in other people's shadows, nor treat other people's shadows as imaginary enemies. You simply walked out of their shadows and stopped making up nonsense and fantasies. You are now in a vast expanse of emptiness and tranquility. You came into the world naked and without cares, there is no need to take anything away with you, and even if you wanted to, you wouldn't be able to.

Your only fear is unknowable death.

You recall that your fear of death began in childhood, and that your fear of death then was much worse than it is now. The slightest ailment made you worry that it was an incurable disease, and, when you fell ill, you would think up all sorts of nonsense and be stricken with terror. Your having survived so many illnesses and even disasters is purely a matter of luck. Life in itself is an inexplicable miracle; to be alive is a manifestation of that miracle. Is it not enough that a conscious physical body is able to perceive the pains and joys of life?

What else is there to be sought?

Your fear of death came about when you were mentally and physically weak. There was the feeling of not being able to breathe, and you were afraid that you would not be able to last long enough to take your next breath. It was as if you were falling into an abyss, this sensation of falling was often present in dreams during your childhood, and you would awaken in fright, drenched in perspiration. In those days, when there was nothing wrong with you, your mother used to take you for numerous hospital tests. Nowadays, even under your doctor's instructions to have tests, you often procrastinate.

It is clear that life naturally ends, and when the end comes, fear vanishes, because fear is itself a manifestation of life. On losing awareness and consciousness, life abruptly ends, and there can be no further thinking and no further meaning. Your affliction had been your search for meaning. When you began discussing the ultimate meaning of human life with the friends of your youth, you had hardly lived. However, it seems that having savored virtually all of the sensations to be experienced in life, you simply laugh at the futility of searching for meaning. It is best just to experience this existence, and, moreover, to look after it.

You seem to see him in a vast emptiness, with a faint light coming from some unidentified source. He is not standing on any specific or defined patch of ground. He is like the trunk of a tree, but has no shadow, and the horizon between the sky and the earth has vanished. Or, he is like a bird in some snow-covered place, looking here and there, occasionally staring ahead, as if deep in thought, although it is not clear what he is pondering. It is simply a gesture, a gesture of aesthetic beauty. Existence is, in fact, a gesture, it is striving to be comfortable, stretching the arms, bending the knees, turning to look back upon his consciousness. Or, it may be said that the gesture is actually his conscious mind, that it is you in his conscious mind, and it is from this that he is able to gain some fleeting happiness.

Tragedy, comedy, farce, do not exist but are aesthetic judgments of human life, which differ according to the person, the time, and the place. Emotional responses are probably also like this, and what is felt now and what is felt at some other time can fluctuate between being perceived as sad and being seen as absurd. And there is no longer any need for mockery, for it seems that there has been enough self-ridicule and self-purification. It is only in the gesture of tranquilly prolonging this life and striving to comprehend the mystery of this moment in time, that freedom of existence is achieved. It is through this act of solitarily scrutinizing the self, that others' perceptions of one's self lose relevance.

You do not know what other things you will do, or what else there is to do, but this is of no consequence. If you want to do something, you do it. It's fine if you do it, but it doesn't matter if you don't. And you don't have to persist in doing something. If, at a particular moment, you feel hungry and thirsty, you just go and have something to eat and drink. Of course, you still have your own opinions, interpretations, inclinations, and you even get angry, because you are not so old that you don't have the energy for anger. Naturally, you still become indignant, but it is with little passion. And while you still have the capacity for feelings and sensory pleasures, then so be it. However, there is no longer remorse. Remorse is futile and, needless to say, harmful to one's self.