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''Do you mean Liu Shaoqi?'' I asked. ''I assure you I have never met him.'' ''Liu was one of them.'' It occurred to me that when a Communist leader fell from grace, all who had ever worked with him were disgraced. So there must exist in the No. 1 Detention House a number of men and women whose fate was linked to Liu's and who would be sympathetic to him. If my defending Liu would earn me better treatment, it was worth doing. Assuming an air of innocent stupidity, I said, ''Honestly, I still don't understand what Chairman Liu Shaoqi did wrong.'' ''You are not allowed to refer to a traitor as 'chairman'!'' they all shouted. When they quieted down, I said, ''I wonder if the material on which the Central Committee based its judgment was reliable. You know how easily people can be frightened into making false confessions.'' I couldn't resist this dig. I was sure they at least suspected that the case against Liu was manufactured. (After Mao's death an official Central Committee document described how activists selected by Jiang Qing and Lin Biao tortured Liu's associates to make them provide false evidence.) In the spring of 1969, after nearly three years in prison, I was handcuffed and taken back to that same building where I had watched the crowd ''struggle'' against Shell's chief accountant, Tao Feng. I was half-thrown, half-dropped onto the floor. One man kept his hand on my head so that I could not look around. The other people in the room were shouting slogans demanding my downfall and destruction. ''Here she is!'' shouted the meeting's leader. ''We have brought her here so that she will be exposed for what she is. We'll let her see that we know all her secrets.'' Tao Feng stood up and began speaking in a faltering voice. ''I was a spy for the British imperialists,'' he said. ''I joined the British spy organization through this woman's husband. After he died, this woman became my boss. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, she warned me not to confess and promised me a large sum of money if I would hold out.'' I felt I must put a stop to this farce. I jerked my head up and laughed uproariously. There was a moment of stunned silence. The man behind me pushed my head down again. Another man shouted, ''What are you laughing at?'' ''If you put on a comedy play, you must expect the audience to laugh,'' I answered. ''Take her out! Take her out!'' the young leader yelled. I was dragged out and pushed into the waiting car. A woman Revolutionary kept her hand over my mouth to prevent me from speaking, but I was lighthearted. I thoroughly enjoyed breaking up their carefully planned meeting.
ANGRY VOICES, HOSTILE FACES