知其不可为而为
——悼念一位异议勇士的生命
（中英对照）
骆基南（ Kyn rubin 美国） 汉译：梁因莲
“一出戏剧可能摧毁一个政权么”？异议作家王若望闪着晶亮的眼睛问。这是在一九七九年王若望回应当时被共产党禁止，但却在上海秘密流传的剧本(“假如我是真的”)的一句话。
这出戏剧的年轻作者，是王若望乐于鼓励栽培的类型。他以欢闹的手法揭露当时腐败愚昧的共产党员，被一个冒充将军之子的无名小卒蒙骗，而敞开权势与名利大门的故事。
当时，我在复旦大学的学生宿舍里刚刚偷偷地读完折角发皱了的旧剧本，一位美国同学上气不接下气地跑进我的房间，告诉我他在挤满了只容站立的演讲厅里，王若望问观众的这句话。
只在上海研读现代文学没几个月，我们就强烈地注意到王若望大胆夸张的质问。“一定要见见这个家伙”！我告诉我的同胞，他回答说，“你别做梦透过大学的管道吧，他们绝不可能安排你和他会面的”。他们的确没有，但是我透过朋友的朋友的关系见到了他，那似乎是当时中国境内有趣接触的唯一办法。
八十三岁时，王若望-------一个足足让中国两任政府头痛的顽强固执针刺，在被放逐美国九年后的二零零一年十二月十九日，病逝于纽约艾姆赫斯特的一家医院里。
回顾一九七九年，这位作家和他的第二任妻子冯素英，住在上海市西南边一栋典型水泥地的简陋公寓里(他的第一任妻子，七个孩子的妈，在丈夫被迫害的压力下，精神崩溃后，病逝于一九六五年)，当时，冯素英对于外国人接触抱着极小心保留态度，因为他丈夫的名誉刚刚重新恢复，但是王若望却在我的第一次拜访就张开温暖的手臂欢迎我。他全然不娇柔做作的直爽态度立即震撼了我，他，虽然在上海年轻人间的英雄地位以及知识分子间的名望，他却完全没有架子。这位六十二岁的长者，拥有一头银亮白发，却以其孩子般的热情和顽童般的恶作剧挑战政权，后来我才发现这就是他赢得“老天真”和“大炮”等绰号的原因。
“赤子之心”和“过人的胆识”可以引导我们去做伟大的事，他们当然激起王若望对民主理想的顽强决心，但是却无法让他应付尔虞我诈的政治环境，他以浓重的江苏口音告诉我：“我永远也没有办法掌控政治游戏的互相欺诈和阴谋”。
他的目标是“平等自由，每个人努力追求共产主义的理想，同时彼此友爱互助”，他的短篇小说和批评政府的讽刺文章，从基层一路上达邓小平，企图在无意于政治改革的系统里实行他的理想。但现实对他却是残忍的，在中国是这样，而十年后在被放逐的美国也是一样。
在我停留上海的一年当中，我和王若望会面过许多次，回到美国以后，我写了一些有关王和他从事工作的文章，同时把他的小说《饥饿三部曲》翻译成英文。这个自传体的故事，对于共产党在文化大革命期间，对待政治犯的残暴，做了直接大胆的控诉，根据他的描述，比起一九三零年代他亲身经历的国民党监狱更加残暴。
王若望是第一位描写毛泽东时代监狱暴行的作家，直到一九八零年，那些暴行非但让人惊讶，而且仍然鲜活地让大部分人真切地感受到。
从小他就显现了向各种威权挑战的傲骨，小学以后，曾经因为参与学生运动而被一个教师训练营开革。少年时代，他参加了共产党的青年会，出版了所谓的厕所文学，利用工厂里的工人手册，书写讽刺蒋介石的文章，张贴在工厂的职员厕所墙上，以避免管理阶层的耳目。一九三七年，当他从国民党的监狱被释放之后，他以朝圣的心情，渴切地来到了共产党的基地延安，他在那里加入了共产党，但是这并没有阻止他在陕西的共产基地办墙报(当时当地人称“轻骑队”)，批评当地神圣不可侵犯的政治人物的生活。
一九八零年代，我持续拜访王若望，欣见他搬进一间有冰箱和电话的较大公寓，而冯素英那时对我来说像个老大姐一般，利用工作之余为我做我最喜欢的饺子。有一次，王还让我在他所住的法国区骑他外形怪异的女士脚踏车，他同时帮我刚出世的儿子取了一个中国名字。那段时间，他继续以短篇小说和杂文的方式揭发政权的伪善而激怒领导阶层。他巧妙地运用广为大众熟知的语言和典故，因此他的杂文受到群众极大的共鸣与回响。
这位终身以文字为职志的言论家，在每一次的政治运动中都拒绝坐在板凳上，一九八九年的民主运动当然也不例外，那一片“赤子之心”无疑地又像往常一样使他把所有的顾忌全抛诸脑后。六月四日以后，他以积极支持学运的罪名再度入狱，一年后，在国际压力下，他以保外就医的方式获释。之后，他以访问学者的名义，在哥伦比亚大学滞留一年。从此，流亡美国，在现有政权下，不准回到中国。
一些幻灭在西方等待着王若望，他对西方社会的言论和出版自由感到震撼兴奋，但是对于海外民主运动的支离破碎却感到极度失望。一九九三年，维吉尼亚水晶市(美国首都华盛顿近郊)举办了一场选举，意图合并两个民主运动的团体， 重组一个新组织并选出领导人。王辞掉了他的主席候选资格，以抗议这个被他形容为“毛泽东式暗箭伤人”的集会，一针见血地描绘了当时混乱的场面。
放逐美国的头几年，他持续多产的写作，发表在台湾、香港以及美国地区的中文报刊上。一九九五年，他获得美国的政治庇护，终于确定了落脚海外的生活。在一次到华盛顿的官方访问旅程中，他和冯素英造访了我和我的家人。我们在我父母位于纽泽西的海边别墅里度过了一个宁静的周末，他喜欢美国，“这里的人真是客气有礼”，在海边的微风里，我们坐在阳台的椅子上喝着饮料，他如此的告诉了我的父亲。
虽然满意于他的生活现状，但是王仍然参加了一些政治活动，比如在纽约街上游行，抗议江泽民访问美国。
他和冯素英节俭地住在纽约皇后区(离曼哈顿三十分钟地铁路程)的一栋小公寓里，他们依赖冯帮人家照顾小孩的收入过日子，因为有限的经济使他们买不起医疗保险。
每天，王拿着网球和球拍漫步到附近的球场对墙击球，有时候则走路到附近设有政府补助，优惠年长市民早餐的食堂用餐。偶尔读读古书或听几段他挚爱的京剧录像带，带给他平淡生活无限的快乐。
就像许多中国男人一样，王若望几乎吸了一辈子的烟，朋友们都已经习惯了他沙哑的声音和频繁的咳嗽。二零零一年十二月三日，医生发现了他的肺有了癌细胞。
几年前，我和其它朋友就曾试着怂恿他戒烟，但是他或许觉得无伤，或许根本不在乎，毕竟，他一生经历了这么多次生死攸关的绝境，不都挺过来了吗？再一次，又算什么呢？！
十二月初，中国官方透过非正式代表，告诉冯素英在上海的妹妹：“如果王能摆低姿态，不再讨论敏感话题，那么江泽民将允许王回国”。这种做法不禁让人怀疑中国政府的诚意，毕竟一个垂死的作家到底还有什么能力再去搅动言论呢？尽管王若望一生都深信他终将回到他挚爱的土地，在这最后关头，他还是以其傲骨拒绝了这个邀请。
王若望可能是对的，一出戏剧，甚至一连串的戏剧加起来，都不能推翻一个政权。一九八九年以后，政治异议人士，包括作家都没能成功地影响政治改革，但是经济的进步和中产阶级的诞生却带来了正面的改变。政治异议人士一直都占中国人口中的少数，因为大部分中国人，都记取了历史的教训，他们不相信挺身而出便可以使正义伸张。大部分的年轻新世代，宁肯手拿大哥大，脚踏高级餐馆，为自我的“钱途”奋斗，而不是为民主而战。
王若望是他那个时代的少数作家当中，胆敢有始有终拿着笔杆子开炮的人。“知其不可为而为之”，这个傻劲儿对于他自己和他的家人，影响不可谓不大。他所用的方法，成效多少，也许令人怀疑，比如江泽民访美期间，在纽约街头游行，似乎发挥极微小的效力，但是，这些丝毫不影响我对这位异议勇士之赤诚和胆识的敬仰，我对这位忠实战士的友谊，心存感恩。
12.26.2001. 马里兰
【作者Kyna
Rubin，汉名骆基南，美国国家地理协会研究员、翻译员，汉学家。汉译者梁因莲系台湾人。】
Damn the Consequences:
Remembering One Brave Dissident*s Life
By Kyna Rubin
"Is it possible that one play can topple a
government?" dissident writer
Wang Ruowang asked, with a
twinkle in his eye, in 1979. He was responding
toa script then secretly circulating in
Communist Party. The play, written by the type
of young person who Wang
liked to
nurture, exposed, in hilarious fashion, the gullibility and
corruption of Party officials, duped into opening doors of power and
prestige to a nobody posing as a military commander*s
son. I had just finished reading,
on the sly, a dog-earred copy of the text in my Fudan University dorm room when a fellow American student
ran in to share breathlessly this line that he*d just heard Wang ask the
audience at a standing-room only lecture. Only a few months into studying
modern literature in Shanghai, we were keenly aware of the daring of Wang*s
rhetorical query. "I*ve got to meet this
guy," I told my compatriot.
"Good luck going through university channels," he responded.
"They*ll never arrange a meeting for you with
him."
They didn*t, but I met him on
my own through a friend of a friend, the only way interesting contacts were
then made in China.
At the age of 83, Wang Ruowang--a
tenacious and perennial thorn in the side of China*s past two governments--died
in a hospital in Elmhurst, New York on December 19, nine years into his
life-in-exile in America.
Back in 1979, the writer and his second wife, Feng Suying, lived in a
Typical non-descript, cement-floor apartment in the
southwestern part of the city.
(His first wife, mother of his seven children, died in
1965 after a mental
breakdown from the stress of Wang*s persecution). Feng was
justifiably wary of contact with foreigners on that first visit-her husband*s
name had only just been restored--but Wang welcomed me warmly. What struck me at once was his utter
lack of affect. Despite his hero status among Shanghai*s youth and his renown
among intellectuals, he was entirely unassuming; the thin 62-year-old with a
brilliant shock of straight, white hair emitted child-like enthusiasm and
prankish delight in goading the powers that be, which I later discovered led
some to call him a "na飗e old man" and a
"loose cannon."
But naivete and gall can drive
us to do great things; they certainly fueled
Wang*s dogged commitment to democratic ideals. "I
never could master the
Game of politics, the mutual trickery and intrigue,"
he told me then in his thick Jiangsu accent. His goal
was "equality and freedom, that everyone strives after communist ideals
and has friendly relations with one another." Wang*s short stories and satirical
critiques of government officials from the bottom all the way up the line to
Deng Xiaoping were attempts to force his ideals on a system uninterested in
political change. Reality was to be merciless to him, both in China and, a
decade later, in exile in America.
I was to meet with him many times during my year-long
stay in
After returning home, I wrote about Wang and his work and
translated into English his novella, Hunger Trilogy. The autobiographical story
was a bold indictment of the Party*s treatment of political prisoners during
the Cultural Revolution, which he portrayed as crueler than what he had
experienced in a Nationalist jail in the 1930s.
That Wang was the first to write about the barbarities of
Mao era-prisons,
still so rawly felt by many people in 1980, was no surprise. He had
taken
pride in
prodding the establishment, whoever they might be, from an early
age. After
elementary school he had been kicked out of a teacher*s training
program for participating in a student movement. As a teenager he joined the Communist
Party Youth League and published what he called "toilet
literature" in his factory-worker-directed tracts
pasted to the walls of the employee latrines, where management wouldn*t see them. He satirized Chiang Kai-shek.
After his release from a KMT jail in 1937, he eagerly
made pilgrimage to the Communist base of Yan*an. He
joined the Party there, but doing so did not stop him from editing a wall
newspaper in the Shaanxi enclave that criticized life
in the politically sacrosanct setting.
I visited Wang throughout the 1980s, happy to see him
move into a bigger
apartment, get a refrigerator, a phone. Feng Suying, by then "Older Sister
Feng" to me, took time out of her factory job to make my
favorite dumplings.
He once lent me his funny-looking girl*s bike to ride
around the French
quarter where they lived. He gave my newborn sons Chinese names. He
continued to incite the wrath of government authorities
by exposing their hypocrisies through short stories and zawen-a
traditional form of critical essay. Wang prided himself on popularizing zawen by using language and allusions that were easily
understood by the broad public.
The life-long agitator refused to sit on the bench for
any political
Campaign and the spring 1989 democracy movement was no
exception. "Naivete" no doubt moved him to
cast caution to the wind, as it always had. After June 4 he spent a year in prison
for actively supporting the students. His release for medical reasons, brought
about through international pressure, came with the understanding that he would
not be allowed back in China under the current leadership. He assumed a
year-long visiting professorship at Columbia University.
Some disallusion awaited Wang Ruowang in the West. He was thrilled by the
freedom to write and publish what he wished but greatly
disappointed by the fractious state of the overseas Chinese democracy movement.
At a 1993
meeting held in Crystal City, Virginia, to elect leaders
of a new organization comprising two of the movement*s contending groups, Wang
resigned his presidential candidacy to protest what he called the "Mao
Zedong-style backstabbing" that characterized the chaotic gathering.
Wang continued to be prolific in his early years in
exile, writing for
political asylum in 1996 and settled into life abroad. He stayed with my
family during trips to visit Washington officialdom, and
we enjoyed with him and Feng Suying
a quiet summer weekend on the beach at my parents* New Jersey home. He liked the United States-"people
are so polite here," he told my father as we sat on the porch one night
drinking in the ocean breeze. But he was painfully aware of his increasing
irrelevance within China-an inevitability that no doubt has motivated Chinese
leaders to issue passports to a number of prominent dissidents in recent years.
Being abroad brought him a more objective view of his homeland, he told me in
1997. But, as for many exiles, "watching the fire from the opposite side
of the river" left him little new material to write about.
Despite reasons for disappointment, Wang-ever the fiery ptimist—remained upbeat and content with his life. He took
part in some political activities-for example, taking to the streets to protest
Jiang Zemin*s trip to New
York. He and Feng
Suying lived very modestly in a small apartment in Queens,
New York, 30 minutes by subway from Manhattan. They relied on her income from
babysitting and did not have health insurance coverage. Tennis racket and ball
in hand, he strolled daily to a nearby playground to hit volleys against a
wall. A few mornings a week he walked to a neighborhood church serving
subsidized meals to area seniors. He read and found great joy in listening to
his beloved Peking Opera tapes.
Like so many Chinese men, Wang Ruowang
smoked cigarettes most of his life.
Friends came to expect his raspy voice and frequent
cough. Doctors
Discovered his lung cancer on December 3. Along with others, years ago I had urged
him to stop smoking, but he felt invulnerable or just plain didn*t
care. After all, he had survived so many near-death experiences in his life,
what was one more?
In early December someone informally representing the
Chinese government
Told Feng Suying*s
sister in Shanghai that Jiang Zemin
would allow Wang to return to China but only if he laid low by not discussing
"sensitive" topics. One wonders at that point just how much agitating
the dying writer would have been capable of. Though Wang had always been
certain he would return home one day, he refused the invitation.
***
Wang Ruowang was probably
right: one play, or even lots of plays together,
cannot bring down
a regime. Since 1989, political
dissidents, including
writers, in
Positive change has come, instead, from economic progress
and the birth of a middle class. Political dissidents in China have always
comprised a tiny minority of the population. Most Chinese, understandably
burned by experience, don*t believe in sticking their noses out to defend right
from wrong. All the more so among China*s young "me" generation, more
taken with cell phones and fine dining than with fighting for democracy. Wang Ruowang was
one of only a handful of writers of his generation who stuck to his guns from
beginning to end, who dared to speak out for those who could or would not, damn
the consequences-which were not small, for him or his family. I may have
doubted the efficacy of some of the tactics he used to remonstrate the government
for neglecting its people-for instance, marching through the streets of New
York against China*s premier seemed of limited value. But that never for a
moment eroded my admiration for the sheer grit of this "na飗e" dissident, and my gratification for the
friendship of this staunch warrior
[this appeared, with some
revisions, in the Asian Wall Street Journal,
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