Excerpt from “Party Activists”
When Yu Shan had matters near my home, he would often drop by my mother’s place. He told my mother that I was in good health; after returning, he would tell me about my mother’s situation.
I left home quite suddenly, so secretive even from my own mother, and went underground. That evening around six, I went out as usual to contact a comrade. At that time, although I was engaged in illegal activities, I was also a member of a reactionary union, broadly leveraging my legitimate position to work from the inside of the union as part of the opposition.
That day, the comrade who met me at six said that F, who worked with me, had suddenly been arrested; the exact reason was unclear, but I was the person who directly connected with him, so I had to go underground immediately. I froze for a moment. In my relationship with F, he knew I was not only a revolutionary opponent inside the reactionary union, but also had the “old man” (the then party’s direct leadership relationship).
I planned to go home to prepare a bit before leaving. I thought there would still be some leeway. But that comrade (the one with a beard) said:
“Stop joking around here!”
He seemed to be joking, but spoke very seriously:
“You absolutely must not go home. If there’s anything to prepare, you can have others do it; there’s no choice but to leave immediately wearing only your usual clothes!”
And he laughed:
“This isn’t a school trip!”
The beard was one of the few people who could speak firmly and decisively in a gentle tone. He gave a few examples: some comrades, because they had nowhere to go, thought “maybe it’s not urgent tonight,” went back home to stay, and were arrested the next morning; others went out to deal with urgent matters without fully considering that they were being hunted, and were arrested as soon as they stepped out.
He didn’t explain why it wouldn’t work; he only gave some similar facts as examples. This was probably because he had various experiences and knew this kind of thing very well.
I borrowed the five yuan I had on me from the Beard and ran to the home of a friend and his wife. Later I heard that early the next morning, four undercover agents from the Public Security Bureau and the S Bureau indeed came to my home to arrest me. My mother had no idea beforehand and was greatly startled, telling them that I had gone out last night and hadn’t returned. One of the heads said I must have fled at the news.
From then I never returned home.
When Yu Shan brought word of me to my home, my mother treated him as if he were her own child returning home, invited him into the inner room to sit, served tea, and watched his face intently, making Yu Shan so unsettled that he scratched his head and ears in embarrassment.
He told my mother what had happened after I ran away from home, and when he paused, my mother urgently asked:
“And then? And then?”
My mother never slept well at night. Her eyes were red, cheeks sunken, her head swaying, and her neck thin and wrinkled.
Finally, my mother asked:
“When will An Zhi come home?”
This question stumped Yu Shan. When? Looking at my mother’s thin neck, he could hardly bring himself to tell the truth and finally said:
“Um, I don’t think it will be very long.”
My mother, aware of my multiple arrests and several stays in detention totaling twenty-nine days (under the law then, police detentions had to be brought before a court within thirty days; and to prolong detention and interrogations, the police would secretly transfer the detainee from one police station to another on the twenty-ninth day, thus technically not breaking the “law”), had already grown accustomed.
Especially the year before, I stayed in prison for eight months, and my mother would often send me things, so she could understand my work better. She just couldn’t understand why I’m not as frank as before to let the police seize me; she worried that if I escaped and was caught again, it would be worse.
Maybe I made my mother too sad, but I could only treat my mother with the actions I had to take. I understood that my sixty-year-old mother was gradually drawing closer to me, and the inner struggle she endured would be far more difficult than our doing this work ourselves.
My mother, originally a rural poor farmer who had never even attended primary school, began to learn letters when I was at home. Wearing old-lady glasses, bending over, pushing her feet into a quilted bed with a woodboard laid on it, she gathered my messed-up manuscript and did homework on the back of the manuscript with a pencil.
I laughed and asked her:
“What do you plan to do?”
When I was in prison the previous year, because she couldn’t write, she didn’t write a single letter to me; whenever she remembered, she would say:
“This hurts my heart!”
After I was released, my mother saw that I had gone even deeper into the revolutionary movement, and that I would surely be arrested again. Even if not arrested, since I was released on bail that time, after a sentence I would still have to go in. To prepare for a time when I would go back to prison, so that I could write to me, my mother began to learn literacy.
Before I went underground, the letters my mother wrote were large and untidy, but still readable, which surprised me.
—My mother asked Yu Shan:
“Can I see you once?”
Yu Shan said it would be better not to see each other. My mother then said:
“Then can’t you write me even a letter?”
Hearing Yu Shan tell me this, I thought about my mother’s mood and I was deeply moved. I became sad.
When Yu Shan was about to leave my home, my mother handed him a quilted jacket, a shirt, underwear, and socks. Then, she asked him to wait a moment and went to the kitchen. There, she busied herself for a while, and then brought out five boiled eggs.
She asked Yu Shan to tell me: a catty can buy three or four eggs, I want you to choose fresh ones and certainly eat eggs.
While Yu Shan, I, and Ito were eating eggs, Yu Shan smiled and said:
“Ito, we’ll each just eat one, otherwise the old lady will complain.”
Ito pretended not to understand him, simply dabbed at his eyes.
Later Yu Shan wanted to go to my home again, and I asked him to clearly tell my mother: for four or five years I cannot return home. I cannot go back not because we are engaged in left-wing activities, but because the capitalists’ running dogs—the police—will not let me return; do not hate me, hate this unjust society!
Rather than muddling along, it’s better to let her understand, so that resistance can arise from there. I know some comrades, after being arrested, had wives or mothers say after hearing that this was related to the Communist Party, things like:
“My husband or son was not that kind of ‘bad person’; it’s because the police pinned this crime on him, saying he is a Communist.”
This would cause relatives to say: the Communist Party is “bad,” the Communist Party is criminal.
My sixty-year-old mother should not think or speak like this. Her fifty years of life were spent in the abyss of poverty; if you explain the reasoning to her in detail, I think she could understand.
According to Yu Shan, my mother quietly listened to these words. But she asked, she is already sixty, and if she gets sick, perhaps today or tomorrow she could die; then could she not come back for a visit?
Yu Shan did not expect her to say this and didn’t know how to answer.
After hearing this, I told Yu Shan to tell her:
Then you also cannot come back.
“No, I can’t say that,” Yu Shan said, troubled.
I thought it would be cruel to tell my mother this, but it was unavoidable. We must, in every matter, make my mother hate the ruling class for life (in fact, my mother’s life has always been like that).
I instructed Yu Shan to repeatedly explain to my mother:
If I cannot come home even at my mother’s deathbed, this is all forced by the ruling class.
—but when I later saw Yu Shan, my heart was unsettled. I asked him:
“How is it?”
“I told her what you said—it’s done.”
Yu Shan said my mother had grown thinner lately, her face pale. She only asked Yu Shan:
Can we see each other just once?
I suddenly remembered the matter with Watanari (Katsutada). When Watanari went underground, his mother (now she’s not just Watanari’s mother but the mother of the whole proletariat) told the comrades:
Can’t we see Watanari again?
The comrades answered:
We can’t see him again.
So I told Yu Shan about this.
“I know this. Do not tell her where you live; find a place to meet her once.”
In fact, Yu Shan had seen the look on my mother’s face, and his heart had already been moved.
“But, agents are looking for me; if we don’t do this, it’s already dangerous enough. If something happens, what then?”
Nevertheless, I was finally persuaded by Yu Shan. We decided on a place we had never been to, and let Yu Shan take my mother there by car.
On the appointed day, at the agreed time, I went to that very small restaurant. My mother sat across the table from me, away from the edge of the table, with a calm, restrained expression.
Seeing my mother in her best clothes on that day, I suddenly felt an indescribable sadness.
We didn’t say many words. My mother pulled a small bundle from under the table, produced bananas and loquats, and also boiled eggs. Yu Shan started to leave, but my mother insisted that he hand over the eggs and bananas to her.
After a moment, my mother began to speak intermittently:
“Your face looks a bit fatter today than when we were at home; I’m relieved!”
She said she had been dreaming almost every night recently that I was very thin, that the police had captured me, that the police “rebuked” me (my mother always called interrogation a “rebuke”). Every day she woke up from such dreams.
My mother also said that my son-in-law in Ibaraki would come to look after her more often, and told me not to worry about her.
As such matters went, I repeated what I had said to Yu Shan to my mother aloud again. My mother smiled and said:
“I understand!”
I suddenly noticed my mother’s state of mind was not quite stable, as if she could not sit steadily; her speech was not smooth.
Later, my mother finally said:
When I did not see you, I was uneasy day and night; now that I see you, I think about not letting you get arrested because of this encounter, and I feel unsettled. Now it’s time to go back.
Indeed, whenever she saw other customers at another table, she quietly said:
“That guest doesn’t seem to be in danger…”
When she saw another guest, she would say:
“That person looks very fierce!”
Conversely, when I spoke as loudly as at home without trying to hide it, she told me to lower my voice.
My mother said that rather than meeting you in such a worried state, it would be better not to meet you at all—so long as you are well and working, that is enough for me.
When my mother was to return, she said:
I’m sixty years old this year. I’d like to live another twenty years, till eighty, but I’m already sixty, and who knows—tomorrow I may die.
Knowing that it would be dangerous for you to come home on my deathbed, I wouldn’t tell you then either.
For ordinary people, there may be nothing bigger than not seeing their son on their deathbed, let alone a sixty-year-old mother!
My mother’s resolve shook me to the core. I remained silent, and had to keep silent. …
When we left, my mother spoke behind me:
“I can go back by myself; you be careful and go back.”
Then suddenly, in a very uneasy voice she said:
“Your shoulders have a bit of a problem… People who know you can tell from behind you; you should stop walking with that shoulder-shrugging habit…”
“Everyone says so.”
“Yes, it’s obvious at a glance.”
Until we parted, my mother kept muttering to herself several times:
“It’s obvious at a glance.”
From then on, I cut off the last remaining individual life line of the past—my physical bond with my mother.
In the coming years, before the new world arrived (which is why we fought), I would not be able to live with my mother again!
