Naked Earth (New York Review Books Classics) by Eileen Chang

Author:Eileen Chang [Chang, Eileen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590178348
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2015-06-15T22:00:00+00:00

16

THE NEWSPAPERS had stepped up the campaign for the “extermination of imperialist elements wearing the cloak of religion.” The latest figure in the limelight was a Father Riberi, a native of Monaco who had just been arrested. Ko Shan was sent to the reference room to search for all available material about him, proof of his Anti-People Crimes. Where exactly was Monaco, she wondered.

As Riberi was not a well-known figure, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. The only time Ko Shan could find that his name had appeared in the newspapers was when he had been sent to China as Minister from Monaco. A blurred photo showed him presenting his papers to Chiang Kai-shek. The entire letter of state was quoted. Monaco hoped that the friendship between the two nations would be ever on the increase, expressed admiration for Chiang, the head of the Chinese national government, and felt confident that China was marching toward a brilliant future under his leadership. It was a routine letter, worded in the usual diplomatic phrasing. But since that was all there was, she brought it to the chief’s room. He had told her that it was very urgent, that “the top level is placing great importance on the Riberi case.”

She knocked on the door. “Come in,” Lin I-ch’ün’s voice said.

When she pushed the door open, she found that he had a guest, Shen K’ai-fu, the head of the Hsin Hua News Agency. Shen nodded at her without rising from his seat.

“How are you, Comrade Ko?” he said smiling, looking at her a little curiously. He must have heard that one about her linguist eyes, she thought. His brief appraising glance cut sharply through the pale dough of his good-natured plump face, which closed up again smoothly after it. He was tall and stout, wearing a summer suit and fashionable rimmed glasses. His hair was balding at the back and worn long at the sides, probably from a sense of compensation.

“Have you been to see Chao Yen-hsia, Comrade Ko?” he said lightly, graciously including her in the conversation but not really expecting an answer. They had apparently been discussing the Peking Opera actress who was the latest hit in town. With Chairman Mao a Peking Opera fan, going to the opera was the thing to do among persons of rank.

“You’ve seen her in Yu T’ang Ch’un, haven’t you? That’s the limit,” Lin said chortling to Shen. “When she’s singing about her husband being poisoned by his other wife—you know that line: ‘All seven holes bleeding, he went to Hades’—she points quickly to her two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and one mouth, one after the other, quick as lightning. Then when she comes to ‘he went to Hades’ she sticks out her tongue quickly, between notes, as if he’d been strangled and his tongue left hanging out. Never a single line without hamming it up with gestures. When she sings ‘I’ she must point to her nose.”

Shen smiled. “Well, don’t

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