A Loyal Character Dancer

Wen’s past.” He took a gulp from the bottle. “Sorry, it’s difficult to read my handwriting. I did not have the time to type it.”
     
    She seated herself beside him on the couch. “Could you read it for me.”
     
    As she leaned over to look at the poem, he thought he smelled the scent of the soap on her skin, still wet from the shower. Taking a breath, he started to read, in English:
     
    “Fingertip Touching
     
    We are talking in a jammed workshop
    picking our way, and our words,
    amid all the prizes, gold-plated statuettes
    staring at the circling flies. ‘The stuff
    for your newspaper report: miracles made
    by Chinese workers,’ the manager says.
    ‘In Europe, special grinders alone
    can do the job, but our workers’ finger-
    polish the precision parts.’
    Beside us, women bending over the work,
    their fingers
    shuttling under the fluorescent light,
    My camera focusing on a middle-aged one,
    pallid in her black homespun blouse
    soaked in sweat. Summer heat overwhelms.
    Zooming in, I’m shocked to see myself
    galvanized into the steel part
    touched by Lili’s fingertips,
    soft yet solid
    as an exotic grinder.
     
    “Who is the reporter in the first stanza?” she asked with a puzzled expression.
     
    “Let me explain after I finish.
     
    Not that
    Lili really touched me. Not she, the prettiest
    leftist at the station, July, 1970.
    We were leaving, the first group
    of ‘educated youths,’
    leaving for the countryside,
    ‘Oh, to be re-re-re-educated by
    the po-or and lo-lo-wer middle class peasants!’
    Chairman Mao’s voice screeched
    from a scratched record at the station.
    By the locomotive Lili
    burst into a dance, flourishing
    a red paper heart she had cut, a miracle
    in the design of a girl and a boy
    holding the Chinese character — loyal’
    to Chairman Mao. Spring
    of the Cultural Revolution wafted
    through her fingers. Her hair streamed
    into the dark eye of the sun.
    A leap, her skirt
    like a blossom, and the heart
    jumped out of her hand, fluttering
    like a flushed pheasant. A slip —
    I rushed to its rescue, when she
    caught it — a finishing touch
    to her performance. The people
    roared. I froze. She took my hand,
    waving, our fingers branching
    into each other, as if my blunder
    were a much rehearsed act, as if
    the curtain fell on the world
    in a piece of white paper
    to set off the red heart, in which
    I was the boy, she, the girl.
     
    ‘The best fingers,’
    the manager keeps me nodding. It’s she.
    No mistake. But what can I say,
    I say, of course, the convenient thing
    to myself, that things change, as
    a Chinese saying goes, as dramatically
    as azure seas into mulberry fields,
    or that all these years vanish — in a flick of your cigar.
    Here she is, changed
    and unchanged, her fingers
    lathered in the greenish abrasive,
    new bamboo shoots long immersed
    in icy water, peeling, but
    perfecting. She raises her hand, only
    once, to wipe the sweat
    from her forehead, leaving
    a phosphorescent trail. She
    does not know me — not even
    with the Wenhui Daily ’s reporter
    name label on my bosom
     
    ‘No story,’
    the manager says.
    ‘One of the millions
    of educated youths, she has become
    “a poor-lower-middle class peasant” herself,
    her fingers — tough as a grinder,
    but a revolutionary one, polishing up
    the spirit of our society, speaking
    volumes for our socialism’s superiority.’
    So came a central metaphor
    for my report.
    An emerald snail
    crawls along the white wall.
     
    “A sad poem,” she murmured.
     
    “A good poem, but the translation fails to do justice to the original.”
     
    “The language is clear, and the story is poignant. I don’t see anything wrong with the English. It’s very touching indeed.”
     
    “ ‘Touching’ is the very word. I had a hard time finding English equivalents. It is Liu Qing’s poem.”
     
    “Who? Liu Qing?”
     
    “That classmate of Wen’s—her brother Lihua mentioned him—the upstart who sponsored the reunion?”
     
    “Yes. ‘The wheel of fortune turns so quickly.’ Zhu also mentioned him, saying he was a nobody in high school. Why is his poem suddenly so important to us?”
     
    “Well, a poetry anthology was found in Wen’s house. I think I mentioned it to you.”
     
    “It is mentioned in the file. Hold on, the revolutionary grinder, the commune factory, the workers polishing the parts with their fingers, and Lili—”
     
    “Now you see. That’s why I want to discuss the poem