Ay Ling, also known of Whiff of Gunpowder, had always been a red. Jin Ling had always been a black. When, in a curious twist of fate, the revolution started, their roles were reversed. Ay Ling was brought to the compound to be denounced for her association with the blacks.
Ay Ling was made to kneel on a bench. The red leader, who was in Jin Ling’s class, began to question her.
“Is it true,” he said, “you are a black?”
Ay Ling shook her head and denied it furiously.
“You are lying!” shouted the red leader.
“I am not a black,” she retorted. “I am as red as you are. I will remind you of my service to the red cause.”
Ay Ling spoke eloquently of her time in the red camp, cleaning the latrines and giving red talks to the rest of the school.
The red leader called Jin Ling as a witness.
“Whiff of Gunpowder, tell us what you have seen and heard.”
One day, before the revolution, Jin Ling had gone to Ay Ling’s house. Ay Ling lived in a beautiful old house, a brick and timber mansion with reddish brown framed windows under curving eaves. The front garden had a thick vine trellis and a grove of oleander. Though he did not say it, Jin Ling’s feelings were a curious mixture of envy and nostalgia for a past that he little understood. Inside the house was a huge library with old Chinese texts of classical poetry and many classics of European literature. Ay Ling had also shown Jin Ling her grandfather’s collection of snuff bottles brought back from his studies in England.
“Snuff bottles!” shrieked the red leader.
All the reds in the room were outraged.
“Snuff bottles are black,” cried one.
“Black is decadence!” they all shrieked.
But Jin Ling was not listening to the accusations. In his mind’s eye he saw Ay Ling smiling as she handed him a snuff bottle. “Smell it,” she had said, and he had put his nose to the top of the bottle.
“Snuff bottles are black!” they chanted.
Under the strain Ay Ling fell forward off the bench. She landed on her face.
Two red guards picked her up and made her kneel again.
The red leader handed a pair of scissors to Jin Ling, who now had to prove his loyalty by giving Jin Ling a “yin and yang” haircut.
Ay Ling had beautiful black hair.
Jin Ling began to cut the locks on one side of her head. Ay Ling was in tears.
When he was finished, the red leader gathered them all around and said:
“Whiff of Gunpowder has shown his loyalty to the red cause.”
The red leader began to relate his plan to go to Ay Ling’s house and smash the snuff bottles. As he spoke, Ay Ling got up from the bench and ran towards the open window.
Not long after this, Whiff of Gunpowder was sent to the country for reform and correction. But he did not last long.
One day he ran away from the commune and escaped across the border to Laos where the red rebels were fighting the Americans.
When the Americans bombers flew over their training camp, Whiff of Gunpowder ran out of his tent and stepped on a mine planted by one of his red comrades.
In the split second before he was blown to smithereens, he saw Jin Ling smiling over her snuff bottle. “Neither blacks or reds can win,” he heard her say. “Only death wins.”