58 LAST DAYS
58 最后的日子
(1974–76 AGE 80–82)
1974～1976 年 80～82 岁
HATRED, FRUSTRATION AND self-pity dominated Mao's last days. Mao expressed these feelings, long prominent in his character, in unique ways. He was very fond of a sixth-century poem called “The Sere Trees,” which was a lamentation and elegy about a grove of sublime trees that ended up withered and lifeless. The poet, Yu Xin, attributed the trees' ill fortune to their having been uprooted and transplanted, which echoed his own life as an exile. But on 29 May 1975, Mao told the scholars annotating poems specially for him that the fate of the trees had “nothing to do with being transplanted.” It was, he asserted, “the result of the trees being battered by harsh malevolent waves and hacked by human hands.” Mao was thinking of himself as someone who was being (in his wife's words) “bullied” by Deng Xiao-ping and Deng's allies. Days before, they had forced Mao into an unprecedented climb-down by having him cancel his media campaign against them, and concede that he had “made a mistake.”
仇恨、失意、自怜，笼罩着毛泽东最后的日子。这些早就在他的性格里躁动的情绪，在生命临近终结时，由毛赋以特殊的表现方式。他喜欢六世纪庾信的《枯树赋》， 为一度繁盛的大树枯萎凋零感怀伤情。按诗人的原意，大树所以没落，是因为在移植中伤了根本，作者借此感慨自己飘零异地的身世。但一九七五年五月二十九日，毛对注释诗文的学者提出异议，说大树的遭遇“不是移植问题”，“是由于受到了急流逆波的冲荡和被人砍伐等等的摧残所造成的”。以树喻人，毛当然想的是自己。几天前，邓小平和他的同盟者刚逼着他屈辱地当众认错，说“我犯了错误”，取消了针对他们的政治运动。用江青的话来说，邓等人是在“欺负主席”。
After he had to release Deng from detention in July 1976, which made him furious, Mao had the “The Sere Trees” read aloud to him twice. He then began reciting it himself, very slowly, in his strangulated voice, brimming with bitterness. After this, he never asked to hear, or read, another poem.
而毛在一九七六年七月还不得不放邓回家。就在这时，他让秘书把《枯树赋》给他读了两次，然后自己开始背诵，用微弱、吃力不清的声音慢慢地背，句句都是伤感之情：“……前年种柳，依依汉南；今看摇落，凄凄江潭；树犹如此，人何以堪。” 这是毛一生中所读、所听的最后一首诗词。
Deng was only one of many old Party foes whom Mao took to scourging in his head in his last years. Another was Chou En-lai. In June 1974, Chou finally had the cancer operation that Mao had been blocking for two years. Mao had only finally consented because his own enfeebled physical condition had made him feel insecure himself. While Chou was in the hospital, Mao dug out some old diatribes he had written against Chou and other opponents back in 1941. They were full of insults, and Mao had never felt it was wise to publish them. Now, thirty-three years later, he spent a lot of time reading them, cursing Chou in his mind.
在大限将临的岁月里，毛痛恨的不只是邓，周恩来也在其中。早在一九四一年，毛曾写过九篇痛骂周恩来等人的文章，语言尖酸刻薄，毛一直不便发表它们。一九七四年六月，毛不得不让周做了第一次手术。他由于自己病重而不敢把周逼狠了，
唯一泄愤的方法是重读那九篇文章。毛死前一个月，又让人把这些心爱之作读给他听，回味宣泄的快感。
Going over them was also a way for Mao to vent his hatred for another foe, Liu Shao-chi, who had died five years before, at Mao's hands, but whose death Mao had still not dared to announce publicly. When Mao had originally written the articles, Liu had been his ally, and he had praised Liu in them. Now he made a point of crossing out each reference to Liu.
毛在“九篇文章”中对当时的盟友刘少奇曾称赞有加。重读时毛把对刘的赞词从文章中全部划掉。
There was yet another man whom Mao was flaying in his head, and that was his chief rival at the time the articles were written: Wang Ming, who had died in exile in Russia on 27 March 1974, two months before Mao reread his old tirades. Mao had tried to murder Wang Ming by poisoning him in the 1940s, but then had had to allow him to take refuge in Russia, where Wang had remained something of a time-bomb. Khrushchev and Wang Ming's son both confirmed that Mao tried to poison Wang Ming in Russia. The attempt was unsuccessful, but only because the vigilant exile tested the food on his dog, Tek, which died. In Moscow, Wang Ming turned out anti-Mao material which was broadcast to China, and during the Cultural Revolution he started planning a return to China to set up a base in Xinjiang, near the Russian border, and then try a coup against Mao (a proposal that got short shrift from the Kremlin).
重读这些文章，毛脑子里或许还转着文章攻击的主要对象王明。一九七四年三月二十七日，王明死在莫斯科。四十年代，毛曾想毒死王明，后来不得不放王明移居苏联。据赫鲁晓夫和王明的儿子王丹之说，毛还下过一次手，结果王明没死而他儿子的爱犬被毒死了。王明对于毛是一颗定时炸弹，他不时做反毛的对华广播，文革中还计划飞返中国，在新疆建立根据地，以图推翻毛。这个计划由于苏联不支持而未实行。
Wang Ming's death had been long drawn-out, and came after decades of ruined health, the legacy of Mao's attempts to kill him. He was bedridden in his final years, and it took him three hours to swallow enough tiny morsels of food to constitute a meal. But his painful death did not assuage Mao's grievance, just as the similarly agonizing deaths of both Liu and Chou brought Mao little relief. A month before he himself died, Mao had his old tirades read to him again, to bring himself the temporary pleasure of savaging all these foes one more time.
从四十年代中毒以后，王明就不断生活在病重、病危之中，最后几年，生命更似一缕游丝。他的内脏全被腐蚀坏死，到后来什么都不能消化，一点点东西，要嚼三、四个小时，算一顿“饭”。
By the end of Mao's life, almost all his former close colleagues were dead, most of them thanks to him. Yet their deaths had somehow not quite satisfied him. Those of Liu and Peng De-huai, his two main victims in the Cultural Revolution, he had to keep secret for fear of public sympathy. Chou's death had been made public, but the outcome was to rock Mao's rule. Wang Ming had died in Russia, out of his reach. Zhu De he had been unable to purge. Lin Biao, Mao's chief collaborator in setting up the Great Purge, had managed to flee the country before the plane that carried him across the border crashed; moreover, Lin had bequeathed a legacy that haunted Mao—a plot to assassinate him. Deng was alive, and more than just alive: Mao had had to give in and let him live in the comfort of his own home, among his family. On his deathbed, Mao's thirst for revenge was unslaked.
毛几乎所有从前的同事都已魂归西天，多数的死同他有关。然而，这些死对他都有些“美中不足”。王明死在他鞭长莫及的苏联。刘少奇、彭德怀死了，毛不敢公诸于世。周恩来的死激起天安门广场大示威。林彪逃出了国境，差点就安然无恙，而且留下一道摆脱不了的暗杀他的阴影。邓小平呢，还活着，享受着天伦之乐。
DISSATISFACTION CONSUMED MAO. He had not risen to be a superpower, in spite of his decades of craving. Although he had the Bomb, he could not cash it, not least because the delivery system could barely loft it over China's border. The country's industrial bases were a shambles, turning out heaps of defective equipment—including fleets of planes that could not fly, even though an aircraft industry had topped his agenda from the very beginning of his rule, and the Korean War had been fought partly to acquire it. Nor was the navy much better. Mao's last words to his navy chief in 1975, a year before his death, were: “Our navy is only like this!,” sticking out his little finger, looking immensely disconsolate. That October, Mao remarked ruefully to Kissinger that he did not belong to the major league. “There are only two superpowers in the world … We are backward …” Counting on his fingers, he said: “We come last. America, Soviet Union, Europe, Japan, China—look!” When US president Ford came to China a few weeks later, Mao told him: “We can only fire … empty cannons” and “curse.”
毛自我感觉是个失败者。几十年苦苦追求也没能称霸世界。原子弹有了，可是“有弹无枪”，已有的导弹能把它准确地射过边境就不错了。巨额投资的中国军工产品质量差得一塌糊涂，而且浪费奇大，效益奇低。毛一九七五年接见海军负责人时伸出小指头，万般遗憾地说：“我们的海军只有这么大！”毛会见基辛格时，扳着指头数着说：“世界上只有两个超级大国。我们落后。美国、苏联、欧洲、日本、中国、我们是倒数第一。美国、苏联、欧洲、日本，中国--你看看。”福特总统访华时，毛对他说：“我们只能放空炮”，“骂骂人”。
Mao had made a last-ditch effort to promote himself as a world leader in 1974, by trying to capitalize on something that did not require military prowess, and was the one point where he could claim to lead the world: poverty. He proclaimed a new way of defining “Three Worlds,” announcing that the “Third World” meant countries that were poor, excluding Russia, and dropped heavy hints that he should be seen as the leader of the Third World. But although he was regarded, in a very general way, as a leader of the Third World, it did not take orders from him, and he provided no tangible leadership. Besides, as one hard-nosed American diplomat put it, “would it really make all that difference?”
一九七四年，毛生前最后一次努力要争做世界领袖。这次毛仰仗的不是军事实力，而是中国人民的贫困。他重新划分“三个世界”， 把贫困作为“第三世界”的定义，这样一来他便是当之无愧的第三世界领袖。毛的确被恭维为第三世界领袖，但享有此称号的人不少。第三世界并不听命于毛，毛也没起什么领导作用。就像一位美国外交官所说：“是与不是有什么两样呢？”
Even his own creatures refused to acknowledge his authority. Mao had played a vital part in installing the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in 1975. Pol Pot, its leader, under whom up to one quarter of the Cambodian people perished in the space of a few years, was a soul-mate of Mao's. Immediately after Pol Pot took power, Mao congratulated him face to face on his slave-labor-camp state: “You have scored a splendid victory. Just a single blow and no more classes.” What Mao meant was that everyone had become a slave. And Mao sent Prince Sihanouk, who had been living in luxurious exile in China, back to Cambodia, where the prince was put under house arrest and his name was exploited by Pol Pot. But though Mao was Pol Pot's sponsor and mentor, he got no gratitude. A colleague of Pol Pot's called Keo Meas, who had referred to Mao in eulogistic terms, was tortured to death. Written on the dead man's dossier were the words: “This contemptible Mao who got the horrible death he deserved was worthless. You shouldn't think, you antique bastard, that the Kampuchean Party has been influenced by Mao.”
即使毛培植起来的人也拒绝接受他的领导。柬埔寨的红色高棉一九七五年夺权没有毛的援助是办不到的。导致柬埔寨人口四分之一死亡的波尔布特掌权后来见毛，毛夸奖他的奴隶营式的统治，说：“你们取得了伟大的胜利，一举消灭了阶级。”住在中国享福的西哈努克亲王被毛送回柬埔寨，在软禁的环境里给红色高棉作招牌。尽管毛给了波尔布特无穷的好处，波尔布特却完全不领情。亲毛的柬埔寨领导人克·米(Keo Meas)被拷打致死，档案上这样写着：“这条可怜虫的死是罪有应得。你这个腐朽的杂种，竟胆敢说柬埔寨共产党是在毛的影响之下。”
On the world stage, Mao had to cling to a vague halo. When Nixon's daughter Julie turned up wearing a Mao badge, “he reacted with a childlike delight and impulsively clasped my hand,” she wrote. To sustain his profile, he continued to “receive” foreign statesmen until three months before his death. But he often rather spoiled the effect of these audiences. Thailand's leaders found him “snoring” as they entered the room. Singapore's premier Lee Kuan Yew, Mao's penultimate foreign visitor, described an almost inarticulate Mao grunting, head lolling against the back of his armchair. Indeed, as the last photos of him confirm, Mao looked anything but a world leader. Dribbling saliva, waxen-faced and slack-jawed, he projected an image of senility and wretchedness. When he saw how bad he looked in photos with Pakistan's prime minister Bhutto at the end of May 1976, Mao stopped meeting foreigners altogether.
在世界舞台上，毛能抓住的只是一个模糊的光环。尼克松的女儿朱莉(Julie)来访时戴着一枚毛像章，她后来写道：“他的反应简直像个孩子，兴奋得不由自主地紧紧抓住我的手。”为了持续保持知名度，毛见外国政要一直见到临死前三个月。可这些会见有损他的领袖形象。泰国领导人说他们進房时毛在“打呼噜”。新加坡总理李光耀描绘道：毛说话哼哧嘟哝，头歪倒在沙发背上。从当时拍的照片上可以看到，毛脸如蜡像，两腮下坠，口角流涎。一九七六年五月底，毛看到他接见巴基斯坦总理布托(Zulfikar Ali Bhutto)的照片后，再不见外国人了。
WHILE FEELING DEEPLY discontented at having failed to achieve his world ambition, Mao spared no thought for the mammoth human and material losses that his destructive quest had cost his people. Well over 70 million people had perished—in peacetime—as a result of his misrule, yet Mao felt sorry only for himself. He would cry as he talked about anything he could connect with his past glory and current failure, even watching his own regime's propaganda films. His staff often saw tears flooding down his face, “like a spring” as one of them put it. Self-pity, to which Mao had always been prone, was the paramount emotion of the utterly unpitying Mao in his last days.
毛因未能实现做世界领袖的雄心而伤感。他的伤感不是为他的国家和人民。为追逐他的梦，为巩固他的权力，他给中国带来巨大灾难，造成七千万人在和平时期死亡。对此毛没有表示过任何遗憾。他心头只有自己。毛后期很爱哭，任何使他联想到征服中国的辉煌--像看宣传电影中中共军队進北京--和现在的失意，都能教他泪飞顿作倾盆雨。他身边工作人员常见他“激动得泪如泉涌”。自我怜悯，这就是毫无怜悯之心的毛泽东临终前最强烈的情绪。
Mao became very attached to some classical poems which convey a mood of great men brought down, kings fallen, and heroes' brilliant prospects in ruins. He empathized with the unfulfillled heroes and kings.
毛这时喜欢的古典诗词，抒发的都是英雄豪杰“壮志未酬身先死”的感情。这份感情使他与全世界的“壮志未酬”的大人物认同。
This state of mind led him to an extraordinary sense of fraternity with those he regarded as “fallen kings” around the world. Top of the list was former US president Richard Nixon, who had been forced from office by Watergate in August 1974. Time and again Mao went out of his way to proclaim his fond feelings for Nixon. Weeks after Nixon had been ejected from the White House, Mao asked Imelda Marcos of the Philippines to pass on his good wishes and an invitation to Nixon to revisit China. Nixon's daughter Julie and her husband, David Eisenhower, were given an astonishing welcome in December the following year. Mao told Julie: “Write to your father at once, tell him I miss him.” When Julie got back to America, Peking's envoy told her that Mao “considers you part of his family”—a remark that was absolutely unique.
其中最显着的是因水门事件下台的美国总统尼克松。毛一而再、再而三对他表示同情。尼克松离开白宫不久，毛托菲律宾的马科斯夫人给他带话，问候他，请他来中国。尼克松的女儿和丈夫戴维·艾森豪威尔(David Eisenhower)第二年来华受到惊人的热烈欢迎。毛对朱莉说：“马上给你父亲写信，说我想念他。”朱莉回美国后，中国驻美联络人员告诉她说，毛“把你看作一家人”。这样的话，毛一生中大概没有对第二个外国人说过。
When the disgraced Nixon came, in February 1976, Mao sent a Boeing 707 to Los Angeles for him, complete with the protocol chief of the Foreign Ministry, another unheard-of gesture. The fact that the plane ran the risk of being seized as collateral against US assets expropriated in China was immaterial for Mao. When he saw Nixon again, Mao clinked teacups with him, and when Nixon took his leave, Mao struggled to the door, standing unaided, to see him off, looking melancholy. Mao had invited him to China for what was, in effect, a private farewell. He personally selected an evening's entertainment for the former US president which included the singing of Mao's favorite classical poems set to music, which conjured up the mood of the tragic ending of great men.
一九七六年二月，尼克松再度来访。为了此行，毛派了架波音七0七，载上外交部的礼宾司长，专程到洛杉矶去接他。这个姿态也是闻所未闻的，特别是中国飞机很有可能被扣下，做为中国没收美国在华财产的抵押。与尼克松重逢时，毛以茶代酒，跟尼克松碰杯。尼克松走时，毛步履艰难地陪他到门口，无限惆怅地同他告别。毛就是把尼克松接来道别的，为尼克松上演的文艺节目里，毛特意安排了他心爱的古典诗词演唱，其中有王安石的《桂枝香·金陵怀古》：“念往昔，繁华竞逐。叹门外楼头，悲恨相续。”有萨都刺的《百字令·登石头城》：“一江南北，消磨多少豪杰。”有张元干的《贺新郎·送胡邦衡谪新州》，里面更叹道：“天意从来高难问，况人情老易悲难诉。”
The program meant nothing to Nixon, who showed he was tired—and bored. But Mao was expressing his own sentiments, for himself, even though he was not present at the performance.
对尼克松，这些都是对牛弹琴，他听得枯燥无味，疲倦已极。毛是在为自己抒发感情--尽管他不在场。
Another even more unlikely recipient of Mao's sentimental affinity was Chiang Kai-shek, the man he had deposed—and had slaughtered millions of Chinese to keep deposed. Chiang died in Taiwan on 5 April 1975 at the age of eighty-nine, leaving a will decreeing that his coffin was not to be buried in Taiwan, but kept in a shrine to await a return to the Mainland when communism collapsed. Around the time of Chiang's funeral, Mao mourned the Generalissimo for an entire day, in private.
毛的伤感情怀还有一个寄托者，他就是被毛赶到台湾的蒋介石。为了防止蒋卷土重来，毛屠杀了数以百万计的中国人。一九七五年四月五日，八十九岁高龄的蒋介石死在台湾，临终留下遗言，棺材不落土，要等到共产党垮台后葬到大陆去。令人想不到的是，毛泽东私下为他举行了一场个人的追悼仪式。
On that day, Mao did not eat, or speak. He had an eight-minute tape of stirring music played over and over again all day long to create a funereal atmosphere, while he beat time on his bed, wearing a solemn expression. The music was set specially for Mao to a twelfth-century poem, in which the writer bade farewell to a friend who bore an uncanny resemblance to Chiang—a patriotic high mandarin whose career ended tragically and unfulfillled, and who was being exiled to a remote part of China. The writer told his friend:
那天，毛只吃了一点点东西，沉默庄严地把张元干的送别词《贺新郎》的演唱录音放了一天。这首词只有几分钟长，反覆播放便形成一种葬礼的气氛。毛时而静静地躺着听，时而用手拍床，击节咏叹，神情悲怆。
词里写道：
You and I are men of history
目尽青天怀今古，
No little men chattering about minor affairs!
肯儿曹恩怨相尔汝！
This was exactly how Mao felt towards Chiang.
这两句意思是：你我都是胸怀古往今来和国家大事的人物，不是那些卿卿我我谈论儿女恩怨私情的人。毛在跟蒋介石谈心。
词的最后两句，原文是：“举大白，听金缕”，表示满腔悲愤，无可奈何，只能借饮酒写词听唱来消愁。
Days later, Mao rewrote the last two lines of the poem so that they read:
为蒋介石送葬后几天，毛仍念念不能释怀，下令把这两句改为
Go, let go, my honored friend,
“君且去，不须顾”，
Do not look back.
This change turned the poem into an unmistakable valediction. Mao was writing his own envoi to a fellow thwarted giant. It was re-recorded to music, and was one of the poems sung to Nixon when Mao brought the former US president over to say his personal goodbye.
重新演唱录音。这一改，使送别的意味达到高潮，送朋友流亡外地变成了生离死别。毛向蒋介石做了最后的告别。
尼克松、蒋介石都是被推翻的，在毛生命的最后岁月里，他最担心的，就是自己被推翻。
MAO SHOWED UNCOMMON sympathy in private for other ousted rulers. When the emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, whom he had met only once and very briefly, died in prison in 1975 after being dethroned by a military coup, Mao sank into melancholy. “The emperor was doing fine,” Mao kept saying. “Why did he have to come to this? Why did it have to end like this?!”
埃塞俄比亚的海尔·塞拉西皇帝他只见过短短的一次，没什么交情。可是，皇帝被军事政变赶下台，一九七五年死在监狱里时，毛着实伤心了一番，不断说：“做得好好的一个皇帝，为什么要把别人推翻呢？怎么会落到这个下场呢？”
This new empathy with deposed rulers was an extension of Mao's old fear of being toppled himself. In this final phase of his life, he was more obsessed than ever with a coup. It was to avert such a possibility that he intimated to Deng Xiao-ping and his allies in 1975 that they were welcome to crush Mme Mao and her Gang after his death.
正是这种担心，驱使他对邓小平等人暗示：别动他，尽可以在他死后清除江青一党。毛只求自己生前不出事，对他死后天塌地陷毫不关心。毛没有指定“接班人”。
It was partly for this same reason—fear of a coup—that Mao did not appoint a successor. He never bestowed that title on the head of his last coterie, Hua Guo-feng, as he had earlier on Lin Biao. He feared that an official heir apparent might be in too much haste to succeed, and would try to jump the gun. So, although Hua showed manifest loyalty (when Mao was fed through the nose for the first time, Hua took on Chou's guinea-pig role and tested a tube on himself first), and although Mao obviously trusted Hua enough to put him in charge, he declined to confirm that Hua would take over after he died.
毛其实根本就不相信他打的天下会长久。死前他只有一次对为他管事的华国锋等人说了几句关于未来的话。未来在他脑子里是“动荡”，是“血雨腥风”，是“你们怎么办，只有天知道。”
Mao did not care one iota what happened after his death. In fact, he had scant confidence in the staying power of his own “achievements.” On the only occasion he said a few words to his inner circle about the future, when he knew he was dying, he told them that there would be “upheaval,” indeed “blood rains and winds smelling of blood.” And then Mao said: “What's going to happen to you, heaven only knows.”
So Mao did not leave a will, even though he had been expecting death for at least a year, and had had ample time to prepare one.
毛没有留下任何遗书，也没有向任何人交代遗言--尽管足足有一年，他知道自己死期已近，有充裕的时间预备遗嘱。
THE LAST FEW weeks of Mao's life were spent in a nondescript building which had been specially built for him in Zhongnanhai, with all the usual security specifications, and was earthquake-proof. Characteristically, it only had a code-name, “202.” He was carried there at the end of July 1976, after Peking was shaken by a huge earthquake that measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and which flattened Tangshan, an industrial city 160 km to the east, where somewhere between 240,000 (official figure) and 600,000 (unofficial estimate) people were killed. In Peking and many other cities, tens of millions of people had to sleep out in the open. In true Mao style, the regime turned down foreign help, which could have greatly lowered the death toll. A media campaign was launched exhorting rescuers to “denounce Deng on the ruins.”
毛生命的最后几个星期在中南海内一所其貌不扬的房子里度过。房子是专为他修的，可以防地震，只有代号，叫“二0二”。一九七六年七月底，北京被近邻唐山市的一场七·八级特大地震所震撼。毛身边工作人员把他匆匆抬進那里。
地震造成的死亡人数多达数十万，官方说二十四万，非官方估计是六十万。如果中国当局接受国际援助的话，伤亡本可以大为减轻，但毛政权对外国援助一概拒绝。在北京和其他城市里，千百万人睡在露天，“四人帮”控制的媒体却号召人民“在废墟上批邓”。
Mao was still giving orders. When Mme Mao wanted to go out of Peking on 2 September, she came to ask her husband for permission. He was peevish at being bothered, and refused the first time, but granted it when she persisted. Three days later, Mao suddenly lost consciousness, and she was summoned back by the new team headed by Hua. In the past weeks they had been taking turns to keep vigil by Mao's bed, and when Mme Mao got back, she joined them, but stood behind the bed, as he had shown annoyance before when he woke up and set eyes on her. None of Mao's children was present.
九月二日，江青要出北京，来征求毛的许可。毛先说不同意，后来她又要求，毛便答应了。三天后，毛突然丧失神志，江得到通知立即返京。这时毛床边有以华国锋为首的政治局成员昼夜值班，回来后的江也参加，但站在毛的床后，因为毛一清醒看见她，就显得烦躁反感。毛的儿女一个也不在身边。
On 8 September an unintelligible croak came from Mao's throat.
九月八日，毛从昏睡中醒来，喉咙一阵咯咯咯响，他想说什么话。
His barber and servant of seventeen years tucked a pencil into his trembling hand, and Mao laboriously drew three shaky lines, and then feebly touched the wooden edge of his bed three times. The barber figured out that Mao wanted to know what was happening to the Japanese prime minister, Takeo Miki (whose name in Chinese means “Three Woods”). Mao had never met Miki, and had shown no special interest in him until now, when Miki was fighting to prevent being toppled by a coup within his own party.
在毛身边十七年的理发师兼服务员周福明把一支笔塞進毛的手中，毛的手抖了半天，在理发师举起的纸上艰难地画了三条歪歪扭扭的线。喘息了一会儿，他又慢慢地抬起手，吃力地在木板床上点了三点。理发师猜到了毛要什么，原来是毛要看日本首相、自民党总裁三木武夫的消息。毛从来没见过三木，对他也没什么特殊兴趣，此时对三木的挂念，缘于自民党内正在進行一场激烈的权力斗争，要把三木赶下台。
One of Mao's two girlfriends-turned-nurse, Meng, held up the news bulletin, and Mao read it for a few minutes. This report about yet another leader on the ropes was the very last thing he read.
关于三木的材料拿来了，毛的女友兼护士孟锦云用手托着给毛看。
毛看了几分钟，昏迷过去了。这份关于又一个政府首脑将要倒台的材料是毛最后的读物。
Soon after this, Meng heard Mao say: “I feel very ill. Call the doctors.” These were the last words he spoke. Shortly afterwards, he slipped into unconsciousness. At ten minutes past midnight on the morning of 9 September 1976, Mao Tse-tung died. His mind remained lucid to the end, and in it stirred just one thought: himself and his power.
不久，毛声音微弱地对孟说：“我很难受，叫医生来。”这是毛说的最后一句话。以后他再也没从昏迷中醒过来。一九七六年九月九日零时十分，毛泽东死了。他的脑子直到临终都保持清晰，清晰地转动着一个念头：他自己，和他的权力。
EPILOGUE
尾 声
TODAY, MAO’S PORTRAIT and his corpse still dominate Tiananmen Square in the heart of the Chinese capital. The current Communist regime declares itself to be Mao’s heir and fiercely perpetuates the myth of Mao.
今天的中国，毛泽东的像仍然高挂在天安门城楼上，他的遗体停放在天安门广场的中心。中共现任领导人自称是毛的继承者，竭力维持着毛的神话。真实的毛，依然鲜为人知。