I
watched as the censor scraped frost off the inside of the window and squinted
through the clearing at the grey mist that passed for Shanghai. I immediately
liked him. This man knew all the stories. They lined his walls in categories.
Some years he allowed more of one category, some years, more of another. I
sympathise with people mired in such absurdities.
“It’s the longest March ever,” muttered the censor, “In order to keep everyone in step with the ticking of the Universe, last night, scientists added an extra second. If they could also throw in an extra degree of heat, or at least make the central heating work, then I would applaud them. As it is, they merely make me older and colder. But as they say, timing is everything!”
Then he turned to the thousands of documents stacked upon the shelves covering his office walls and hauled out a script. He told me that he had not read it but if a speedy conclusion to the approval process was needed, he suggested that Professor Wu of the Shanghai University History Department should vet it for accuracy.
“If it’s accurate,” he said, “then maybe it’s acceptable, though I can’t guarantee anything. But why a story about Jesuits? What possible interest could they have to Hollywood?”
“It’s the star who’s fuelled the interest in the project,” I explained, shivering despite my black overcoat and scarf.
“A blonde blue eyed Jesuit, who also loves an imperial concubine with lotus feet?” he said, with raised eyebrows. “Spaniards and Italians are not known for being blonde. And as for loving the lotus foot…”
“If she’s a concubine,” I said, “Historically, she would have to have lotus feet. And some Italians are light…”
“Get Professor Wu to read it and then we’ll see. In the meantime though, you might be able to do something for us.”
He handed me a script with “The Long March” scribbled in ballpoint beneath the Chinese title.
“An auspicious title,” I said, trying to be amusing.
“Perhaps Trek is a better translation?”
“No no. March is fine.”
“If you find the English not very good, I would appreciate your corrections. But that’s not the reason I’m giving this to you. We have a role for a Westerner and if your star is interested in Chinese topics then we might be able to make some accommodations.”
I could see no problem in passing the script onto the star’s agent, so I asked what the story was.
“Essentially Mao, chased by his enemies, has to make the agonising decision to abandon his daughter leaving her to be brought up by a peasant. She enjoys an idyllic carefree childhood unaware of her inheritance. But when an East German documentary maker turns up during the Great Leap forward searching for the missing daughter, she realises that it must be her, but decides to hide her true identity. However, the German documentary maker - your star - falls in love with the beautiful girl and wants to make her an icon of heroic peasantry.”
“So it’s a communist propaganda movie with a big Hollywood Star?”
“Isn’t everything propaganda for some value system?”
“Is it a true story?”
“It will be,” said the censor with a smile. “Is yours true?”
“It will be,” I replied, “Especially once your expert has looked it over.”
“Excellent, we understand each other. By the way, I’m sure you will like Professor Wu. She taught oriental studies at UCLA.”
So ended my first interview with the censor, which I flattered myself went rather well. Next I went to Professor Wu. She was a stern faced lady with her hair tied back and was what I would call a tight little package. My theory about handling such people was that if one can pull the right string, everything will pop out in an interesting manner.
“Do you really expect me to read this?” she asked after the initial introductions at her office.
“The censor recommended you. In fact, insisted upon you.”
“He’s always doing this.”
As she sighed, her buttoned up jacket heaved interestingly and the subversive thought came across me that there must be a Chinese medicine shop selling her spit as an aphrodisiac.
“I don’t have the time,” she said, “to be reading inconsequential texts.”
“Why do you have it in for the inconsequential?” I asked, detecting a weakness in the armour.
For a moment, she looked as if she had just stepped in me, but I pressed on: “Think of the people whose livelihood depends upon this project. And I’m not just talking about the grotesquely overpaid stars, I’m also talking about the technicians, the cinema ushers, the…”
Professor Wu held up her hand for me to stop.
“I’ve a first class honours in bullshit,” I said, “How about we discus the script over dinner tonight?”
Her face froze.
“We can discuss the decline of Ming Society and the collapse of meaning in Confucian ritual,” I said giving the coup de grace.
“It had better be a very expensive dinner,” she mumbled.
“Then you’d better look expensive.”
She hesitated and I held my breath. Had I gone too far? She did not exactly melt, but we shook gloved hands, agreed upon the time, and suddenly I felt both guilty and needing to get my body in shape at the hotel gym. Seduction has that effect upon me.
After forty-eight minutes on the treadmill contemplating how many middle-aged men killed themselves trying to impress young women, I felt reasonably righteous. Then I dressed and awaited the call from the lobby, distracting myself by lying on the bed zapping TV channels seeking the beginning of a show instead of an endless series of trailers for things of no consequence. I discovered a Hong Kong station with a Singaporean Sit-Com about some fat woman living with a fish ball salesman. So much for the Cultural Revolution, I thought, and hooted with laughter, agreeing with the censor that timing really is everything. Then I saw that a folded note had been pushed under my door.
“Is this really true?” asked the censor, steam curling from his mouth as he spoke.
“I’ve no idea,” I told him.
“How did she send you a note if they arrested her?”
“Perhaps she asked someone to pass it on as they marched her away.”
“Where did they march her away to?”
“I don’t know. It’s your country!”
“Was she carrying anything she shouldn’t have been? Had you asked her to bring you something hidden inside the pages of something so irrelevant nobody would suspect?”
“There you people go with this irrelevance kick again! Perhaps Hotel security just thought she was a prostitute? I mean, she was hot!”
“Hot? It’s twelve degrees below zero! It is freezing! I am frozen! The stupid heating system is set permanently at 1950 when it should be 2004!”
“And March at that, when all government offices have their winter heating cut off!”
“You think this is amusing?”
I could tell that the censor was not taking this well, but then neither was I.
“Now I’m going to have to read this rubbish,” he groaned.
“Well, that’s the way it goes sometimes. But, since you’re someone reasonably in with the authorities, can’t you make inquiries about Professor Wu?”
“Why should I?”
“Because Professor Wu is a friend? A colleague? A hot lay?”
“It’s of no concern of yours.”
“It’s your country, I know, but I wish you’d sometimes act that way.”
“It might create more trouble.”
How real his fears were I could not say, but I knew when not to push the point too far. I left to find a Pizza Hut. They had heating, as well as pizza. As I walked over Suchow Creek I looked down at the murky frozen water and could swear there was a face peering up from below the ice. I tried to decide whether it was a trick of the light or just my paranoia, but there it was, the pale frozen face of someone not long dead. I imagined explaining to those excellent linguists, the Shanghai police, that despite my association with that known traitor, Professor Wu, I had merely discovered the body and not put it there. There was no way of predicting their response so I walked on wondering why I felt so angry. I had only met Professor Wu once and for me she was just another challenge. Even if I got her drunk, she would have remained unimpressed by me. When I returned to the office, the censor had read some of the story
“This character Qu Tai Su is a mad man!”
“Well, even by the standards of his day he was a tad eccentric. He did convert to Christianity when natural attrition reduced his wives to one.”
“And when the Concubine disappears you insinuate that she ends up boiled down for the essence of her eroticism and mixed into the holy water that the priest sprinkles upon Qu’s head! This is absurd!”
“Where does this happen exactly?”
“Her bones are placed in a bag and thrown into the water of the Huangpo. This did not happen.”
“Doesn’t happen in the script either!”
The censor showed me the scene and true there was a body floating in the Huangpo but it was not little Plum Blossum. She unfortunately was thrown live into a well and last seen frantically splashing around in the dark, clawing the walls and staring up to the light at the end of the funnel where a couple of laughing eunuchs could be heard casually walking away.
“It’s a metaphor for the decline of meaning that the Jesuits were attempting to exploit,” I explained.
“So what is the point of her having sex with the priest?”
“She doesn’t! That’s a dream. It’s sparked by her watching him put a key in one of the tribute clocks and winding it before presenting it to the Emperor.”
I realised that the censor did not read English very well and used Professor Wu to help him. So I agreed to clarify the script to avoid any more misunderstandings and resigned myself to another week in Shanghai, hoping Professor Wu would turn up.
Back at the hotel I found a message from the studio telling me what a great job I had done on the rewrite but had turned the project into an art house picture where some unknown would play the German Documentary Maker who journeys back in time to make love to Mao’s daughter. My transforming the Qu character into Mao’s daughter was apparently a masterful, bold leap that must surely please the censors.
I immediately phoned and spoke to their answering machine: “You’ve either discovered irony or you’re insane. If you wish to pursue that script, you need to make a deal. Otherwise, please closely read the covering letter!” Then I phoned the censor and told him how the studio was impressed with his script but thought it more art house than mainstream.
“But Mao’s daughter must be seen with a sexy westerner.”
“Art house can be sexy. In fact, art house means everyone’s having it off! It’ll win a prize in Berlin.”
“Berlin! We want Hollywood. Finding liberal intellectuals to admire our work is easy.”
“Because you throw them in prison if they don’t?”
There was a long silence on the other end and then the censor coldly quoted from his script: “My daughter is of no importance.”
“Professor Wu?”
“She is merely under administrative detention.”
“Why?”
“It is all a mistake. It will be sorted out in a few months.”
“A few months!”
“This is our business not yours.”
“Then make sure you do the business!”
“Timing is…”
“Bull!”
“Let’s move on. Have you made the changes I require?”
I almost told the censor what he could do with his changes, but we both knew the script was a meaningless ritual. We’d make whatever movie we liked once we had the go ahead.
THE END