say. “But surely he is the best son.”
The mother sighs with great satisfaction. She remembers how in the first few years after her son was born, women of her age produced baby after baby, putting framed certificates of mother heroes on their walls and walking past her with their eyes turning to the sky. Let time prove who is the real hero, she would think and smile to herself.
Then she tells us about her son, every bit of information opening a new door to the world. He rode in the first-class car in a train to the capital, where he and other candidates have settled down in a luxury hotel, and are taken to the dictator’s memorial museum every day, studying for the competition.
“Are there other candidates?” we gasp, shocked that she may not be the only woman to have studied the dictator’s face during pregnancy.
“I am sure he is the one they want,” the mother says. “He says he has total confidence, when he looks at the leader’s face, that he is going to be the chosen one.”
In the years to come, some among us will have the chance to go to the capital and wait in a long line for hours to take a look at the dictator’s face. After his death, a memorial museum was built in the center of our nation’s capital, and the dictator’s body is kept there in a crystal coffin.
Let
our great leader live for ten thousand years in the hearts of a
hundred generations
is what the designer has carved into the entrance of the museum. Inside the entrance we will pay a substantial fee for a white paper flower to be placed at the foot of the crystal coffin, among a sea of white flowers. For a brief moment, some of us will wonder whether the flowers are collected from the base and resold the next day, but instantly we will feel ashamed of ourselves for thinking such impure thoughts in the most sacred place in the world. With the flowers in hand we will walk into the heart of the memorial, in a single hushed file, and we will see the dictator, lying in the transparent coffin, covered by a huge red flag decorated with golden stars, his eyes closed as if in sleep, his mouth in a smile. We will be so impressed with this great man’s body that we will ignore the unnatural red color in his cheeks, and his swollen neck as thick as his head.
Our young man must have walked the same route and looked at his face with the same reverence. What else has passed through his heart that does not occur to us? we will wonder.
He must have felt closer to the great man than any one of us. He has the right to feel so, chosen among tens of candidates as the dictator’s impersonator. How he beat his rivals his mother never tells us in detail, just saying that he was born for the role. Only much later do we hear the story: our young man and the other candidates spend days in training, and those who are too short or too weak-built for the dictator’s stature (even they, too, have the dictator’s face) are eliminated in the first round, followed by those who cannot master the dictator’s accent. Then there are the candidates who have everything except a clean personal history, like those born to the landlord class. Thanks to the Revolution Committee in our town, which has concealed the history of our young man being the son of an executed counterrevolutionary, he makes it into the final round with three other men. On the final day, when asked to do an improvised performance, the other three candidates all choose to quote the dictator announcing the birth of our communist nation (which is, as you remember, also the beginning of our young man’s own journey), while he, for reasons unknown, says, “
A
man cannot conceal his reactionary nature forever, just as a
widow cannot hide her desire to be fucked.
”
For a moment, he is horrified by his blunder, and feels the same shame and anger he once felt as a dead sparrow turned cold between his fingers. To his surprise, he is chosen, the reason being that he has caught the essence of the dictator,
The mother sighs with great satisfaction. She remembers how in the first few years after her son was born, women of her age produced baby after baby, putting framed certificates of mother heroes on their walls and walking past her with their eyes turning to the sky. Let time prove who is the real hero, she would think and smile to herself.
Then she tells us about her son, every bit of information opening a new door to the world. He rode in the first-class car in a train to the capital, where he and other candidates have settled down in a luxury hotel, and are taken to the dictator’s memorial museum every day, studying for the competition.
“Are there other candidates?” we gasp, shocked that she may not be the only woman to have studied the dictator’s face during pregnancy.
“I am sure he is the one they want,” the mother says. “He says he has total confidence, when he looks at the leader’s face, that he is going to be the chosen one.”
In the years to come, some among us will have the chance to go to the capital and wait in a long line for hours to take a look at the dictator’s face. After his death, a memorial museum was built in the center of our nation’s capital, and the dictator’s body is kept there in a crystal coffin.
Let
our great leader live for ten thousand years in the hearts of a
hundred generations
is what the designer has carved into the entrance of the museum. Inside the entrance we will pay a substantial fee for a white paper flower to be placed at the foot of the crystal coffin, among a sea of white flowers. For a brief moment, some of us will wonder whether the flowers are collected from the base and resold the next day, but instantly we will feel ashamed of ourselves for thinking such impure thoughts in the most sacred place in the world. With the flowers in hand we will walk into the heart of the memorial, in a single hushed file, and we will see the dictator, lying in the transparent coffin, covered by a huge red flag decorated with golden stars, his eyes closed as if in sleep, his mouth in a smile. We will be so impressed with this great man’s body that we will ignore the unnatural red color in his cheeks, and his swollen neck as thick as his head.
Our young man must have walked the same route and looked at his face with the same reverence. What else has passed through his heart that does not occur to us? we will wonder.
He must have felt closer to the great man than any one of us. He has the right to feel so, chosen among tens of candidates as the dictator’s impersonator. How he beat his rivals his mother never tells us in detail, just saying that he was born for the role. Only much later do we hear the story: our young man and the other candidates spend days in training, and those who are too short or too weak-built for the dictator’s stature (even they, too, have the dictator’s face) are eliminated in the first round, followed by those who cannot master the dictator’s accent. Then there are the candidates who have everything except a clean personal history, like those born to the landlord class. Thanks to the Revolution Committee in our town, which has concealed the history of our young man being the son of an executed counterrevolutionary, he makes it into the final round with three other men. On the final day, when asked to do an improvised performance, the other three candidates all choose to quote the dictator announcing the birth of our communist nation (which is, as you remember, also the beginning of our young man’s own journey), while he, for reasons unknown, says, “
A
man cannot conceal his reactionary nature forever, just as a
widow cannot hide her desire to be fucked.
”
For a moment, he is horrified by his blunder, and feels the same shame and anger he once felt as a dead sparrow turned cold between his fingers. To his surprise, he is chosen, the reason being that he has caught the essence of the dictator,
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