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tell me that he has to move on.
    I take off his coat, shirt and pants. I push him toward the wall side of the bed. He doesn't wake up. Maybe he just knows that it is me and knows what I am going to do.

    He has told her that he loves it, loves what she does when he is dreaming. He says that she always knows when he has a steaming dream. He is too busy to feed his body, and the desire comes in his dreams. She knows the timing—when, exactly, he needs her.
    It usually begins with a towel. For he is covered with dust and sweat. She rubs him with the cloth. A few strokes, the towel turns brown. She moves around, tosses the towel in hot water. Sometimes he turns around, in half sleep, as if to help her out. A born pleasure seeker, he used to describe himself. It has to do with his background, a bourgeois family spoiled with comforts. What makes him a revolutionary? She has no idea. There are such people in the Communist Party. What do they risk their heads for? It isn't food, she is sure. The power to control? The love of country? Or just following an instinct—to be a bigger man than the rest?

    The smooth body, the golden flesh. He is a naked god who doesn't know shame. I can't stop myself from tasting him. I taste him alongside the dishes I have prepared for him, next to his dirty clothes. I unbutton my blouse. I have the urge to feed him.
    He opens his mouth, like an infant. Smiles, sweetly. I touch him gently as I take off my underwear. It is at this moment I feel his hands coming.
    In his desire I hear the singing of a storm as it breaks across a river.

    The time-mountain will be there, left there, years later. It remembers the passion of the storm and the river.
    ***
    We are walking in the dark. Three of us. A friend of Yu Qiwei walks a half block behind us. This is going to be our ceremony, he says, a spirit union. I smile, nervous but excited. I thank him for the guidance. We slow down to allow the friend to catch up. Yu Qiwei then passes me to the friend—- a secret Communist agent. He talks to the friend again about safety, instructs him to take the alley behind the silk factory on Yizhou Road, not the cross street, Xin-ming Road. Be careful of the spies. The man nods. Congratulations, Yu Qiwei whispers to me.

    I follow the man, my heart a rabbit in a bag. We walk quickly toward a small park where the bushes are thick. The man takes the alley. Before we make a turn the man looks back. There is no tail.
    A half-hour later, I am pronounced a member of the Communist Party. I have just completed my oath and registration.

    As Yunhe raises her right fist above her head, facing a cigarette-pack-size red flag with a crossed sickle and hammer, she thinks of Yu Qiwei. She thinks that they are now soulmates and she is his partner. She will be entitled to have access to all his activities. She will get to go out with him, to secret meetings and places. They will risk their lives for China together. She still doesn't know enough of Communism itself. This doesn't bother her. She believes in Yu Qiwei, and that is enough. She believes in the Communist Party the same way she believes in love. In Yu Qiwei she finds her own identity. If Yu Qiwei represents the conscience of China, so does she. That is how she looks at herself in 1931. It matches her image of herself, the heroine, the leading lady. Later on, the same pattern repeats itself. When she becomes Mao's wife, she thinks, logically, that if Mao is the soul of China, so is she.

3
    I T HAPPENS ONLY A FEW MONTHS after we have been together. One week Yu Qiwei is out traveling from place to place and then he disappears. No one is able to locate him. The next thing I learn is that he has been arrested, jailed, said to be killed. Yu Shan comes to me and tells me the news.

    I am afraid to open the door. The way Yu Shan knocks tells me that something terrible has happened. I stare at Yu Shan's tear-washed face. My mind goes blank—it can't comprehend.
    I want to do something but Yu