Becoming Madame Mao

Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min Page B

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Authors: Anchee Min
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what kind of pain I must undertake in order to write this way. You have no idea how I suffered in order to save both of us. I need to leave in order to live. That is what I am telling myself. Banging my head, for I am numb, deaf, blind, and dead inside.
    I'm trying to explain the contradiction of my feelings. How hard it is to tear myself away from this relationship. Our love operates in a very strange way. The darkness that didn't end until I met him. I explain what the departure means to me. Moments during which my nerves almost break down. Moments in which it is clear to me that life was not worth living.
    You know how I tried. I lived to please you. I can't believe that this is the way I am supposed to feel happiness. To please you. I can't forget how we fought. The nastiness of it. Our selfishness. The moment that comes to me as an ending.
    I break down every time I recall how you used to love me. The words you said when we walked along Nan-yang Boulevard in the evenings. It pulls me back, tells me to go on, to stick with you
until the end of time. It tells me not to allow this pain to spoil my future. The pain is like a fish bone stuck in my throat—can't take it out yet can't swallow it. This is where I am. A fish bone stuck in the throat.

    She feels the passion. The passion of speaking in a familiar voice, Nora's voice. The sensation of being on a real-life stage keeps her going. She is her role again. Like Nora she is struggling to break away. She tells Tang Nah-Torvald that she must depart.
    I live to be recognized, to leave a trace, to be someone, mean something. I had expected to see the same effort from you, for you are a talented man. You ought not to waste your life. You ought to perform to your highest capacity. To show the world who you are. I hate it when I see you opiumed by those who you call friends. You claim to be an artist only to excuse yourself from obligations. It gives you a reason to be lazy.
    Isn't it true even when writing that you are a last-minute person? You never turn your papers in before the printer begins to roll. To me it is a sign of weakness. I am shown here a man of no action, no goal. Worse, a man who, instead of confronting his shortcomings, hides them. You love to say that you're misunderstood, mistreated by society—you don't hesitate to make yourself a victim of fate. But you forget that I am in the same boat. By acting weak you are drowning me.
    At any rate, I have suffered enough. You have made your problem mine. Don't think I am strong. It is just that I don't allow myself to be fragile, for I know I will break. I am sorry that I must leave. It's time for you to learn to walk on your own legs, learn to fix problems with your own hands. Or else it would be a shame to even mention that you and I were once lovers.
    At last she mentions Aixia—she has finally found out the name of the girl in a poem he wrote inspired by her.
    Although you have denied the affair and the poem, you have forgotten that I have learned my lesson. I am twenty-three, not
thirteen. I know what love is, for I have loved and been loved. I know what it is like. You can't fool me. I can easily imagine the lines you two speak. The lines that you used to lure me. Believe me I know. Nevertheless I will always remember you as a man of warmth and kindness. Your feelings of love, even toward your enemy. Sometimes you are kind beyond reason. It always amazes me, because I am not at all like that. I don't put up with my enemy.

    In a twist of fate, as if to compensate her, after dissolving her relationship with Tang Nah Lan Ping's career takes off. The hatred for the Japanese suddenly means that anti-Japanese movies are getting financed and produced and are becoming hits. Roles start to come her way. First the movie
Blood on Wolf Mountain.
She is cast as the wife of a soldier. Alone she fights a pack of wolves on screen. The vulnerable yet brave woman who fights without knowing whether she will ever win. Fights,

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