photograph in the ‘metal’ category (next to a picture of a man tied to a post with a black, bleeding hole in his chest). I went right up it: it was a black-and-white photo of a decapitation. The executioner had sliced the kneeling victim’s neck, the body had slumped and the head was about to touch the ground. Something pale, like a glimmer of light, was dropping from his mouth. I called my friend over. With a shudder he told me he thought it was a cigarette.
“Later that same evening—an evening which already seemed so distant that years might have passed—I had to admit which of us, Ma and myself, had thought of playing games with death. Whatever I said, despite all my twelve-year-old’s efforts to defend myself, the police remained convinced I was the one who had set up the hideous torture with the premeditated intention of extracting information about my father from my friend.
“I confessed in order to bring the interrogation to an end, and because a hint of amnesia clouded my mind, but the cause and scope of that amnesia are still a mystery to me. So much happened in that exhibition hall for instruments of torture and death, but all I remember are sentences, or rather a few words, particularly his, and those words brought with them (and continued to do so with terrible clarity through the period of my punishment) a unique sense of disgust which eclipses everything else: confessions made to please the police, incarceration, depression …
“In fact, it was Ma who instigated our game. He started by giving me a title, attributing it to me for the first and last time that evening: The Chairman. ‘Mister Chairman, would you have a look at this cage, which I’m not sure should be classified in the wood category. Naturally, you don’t remember my name, being such a busy man. Everyone calls me Old Deng. I’m the Assistant Security Manager. From Sichuan. If you’d like to watch, I’ll give you a little demonstration of how this cage works. I’ve got everything ready. First, a strong rope. Like this. Could someone tie me up like a condemned man? Thank you. Squeeze a little tighter, please, Mister Chairman. The prisoner’s in exactly this position with his hands and feet tied, inside the cage, held up entirely by his head, his neck clamped tightly between the bars at the top. Ouch! My Adam’s apple! Do you see? The victim then dies, slowly. Why? In my humble opinion, Mister Chairman, it’s intended to prolong his suffering. Look closely. My feet are on the wooden floor. But what a floor! A movable floor, which the executioner lowers one notch every day so our poor man dies of strangulation on the eighth, as the sign I’ve just read indicates. It’s the exact count: eight days for his vertebrae to snap under the weight of his own body hanging in the air. Would you like to have a go? Well done! Go ahead, Mister Chairman, and again, go down one more notch! Can you see my Adam’s apple going up and down? Your prisoner’s suffering at this very moment, Mister Chairman. No, despite all the respect I have for you, I can’t communicate any information about your father. I don’t know where he is. No one’s told me anything. Stop! Help! I’m … suffocating … can’t … breathe … Let me go … Fucking bastard, that hurt, I nearly died. You’re a cruel bastard like your father … I … I … He … Help! I’ll tell you everything I know. Your father married your mother in order to inherit a manuscript which belonged to Seventy-one, but the old man had already sold it to an exiled poet, who’d since died. The poet’s son agreed to sell the scroll to your father, but not for money, or a house, or land, just in exchange for your mother your mother your mother your mother your mother your mother your mother your mother … So what if you don’t want to hear any more, I’m the one who wants to keep going now. Go on, cry! Your father sold your mother with you inside her for the sake of a manuscript! He was condemned to twenty-five years in prison for trafficking a human being. It was your mother who denounced him, after she escaped from Manchuria, to drag him through the courts.’
“I still remember Ma’s last scream. I wanted to kill him. I wanted him