by Gao Xingjian
He did everything but penetrate her, or, rather, he kept his promise. Although he didn’t penetrate her, he did everything else he could possibly do. Soon the girl was dispatched on a mission to accompany a senior officer on an inspection of the Chinese-Vietnamese border. After that he didn’t hear from her for a while.
Almost a year later, also in winter, the girl suddenly reappeared. He had just come home late at night after drinking at a friend’s home when he heard a quiet knocking on his door. The girl was wretched, crying, and said she had been waiting for a whole six hours outside and was frozen stiff. She couldn’t wait in the hallway because she was afraid people would see her and ask who she was looking for. She had hidden in the workers’ hut outside and it was awful waiting until she saw the light come on in the apartment. He quickly shut the door and had just drawn the curtains when the girl, still wrapped in her outrageously huge military overcoat and still not warm, said, “Elder Brother, take me!”
He took her on the carpet, rolling backward and forward, no, crossing rivers and seas. They were like two sleek fish, or, rather, two animals tearing at one another in battle. She began to sob, and he said cry as loudly as you want, you can’t be heard outside. She wept and wailed, and then shouted. He said he was a wolf. She said no, you are my Elder Brother. He said he wanted to be a wolf, a savage, lustful, bloodsucking, wild animal. She said she understood her Elder Brother, she belonged to her Elder Brother, she wasn’t afraid of anything. From now on she belonged only to her Elder Brother, what she regretted was that she had not given herself to him earlier. . . . He said, don’t talk about it. . . .
Afterward, she said she wanted her parents to somehow think of a way of getting her out of the army. At the time, he had an invitation to travel overseas but wasn’t able to leave. She said she would wait for him, she was her Elder Brother’s little woman. He finally got a passport and visa, and it was she who urged him to leave quickly in case they changed their minds. He did not realize it would be a permanent separation. Maybe he was unwilling or refused to think about it so that the pain would not strike him right to the core of his heart.
He would not let her come to the airport to see him off, and she said she would not be able to get leave. Even if she got the first bus from the barracks into the city, then changed several buses to get to the airport, it was unlikely that she would get there before his plane took off.
Before that, it had not occurred to him that he might leave this country. On the runway, taking off at Beijing airport, there was an intense whirring as the plane shuddered and was then instantly airborne. He suddenly felt that maybe—at the time he felt only maybe—he would never return to the land below the window. This expanse of gray-brown earth that people called homeland was where he was born and had grown up, it was where he had been educated, had matured and had suffered, and where he never thought he would leave. But did he have a homeland? Could the gray-brown land and ice-clad rivers in motion under the wings of the plane count as his homeland? It was later that this question arose and the answer gradually became quite clear.
At the time he simply wanted to free himself, to leave the black shadow enveloping him, to be able to breathe happily for a while. To get his passport, he had waited almost a year and had made the rounds of all the relevant departments. He was a citizen of this country, not a criminal, and there was no reason to deprive him of the right to leave the country. Of course, this reason was different for different people, and it was always possible to find a reason.
As he went through the customs barrier, they asked what he had in his suitcase. He said he had no prohibited goods, just his everyday clothes. They asked him to open his suitcase. He unlocked it.
“What’s in there?”
“An ink stone for grinding ink, I bought it not so long ago.” What he meant was that it was not antique, that it was not a prohibited item. However, they could still use any excuse to detain him, so he couldn’t help being tense. A thought flashed through his mind: this was not his country.
In the same instant, he seemed to hear, “Elder Brother—” He quickly held his breath to calm himself.
Finally he was allowed through. He fixed his suitcase and put it on the conveyor belt, zipped up his hand luggage, and headed toward the boarding gate. He heard shouting again, someone seemed to be shouting his name. He pretended not to hear and kept going, but still he looked back. The official who had just searched his luggage had been checking a few foreigners in the sectioned-off corridor and was in the process of letting them through.
At that moment, he heard a drawn-out shout, a woman was calling his name, it was coming from far away and floated above the din of the people in the departure hall. His gaze went above the partition at the entrance to customs, searching for where the sound was coming from. He saw someone in a big army overcoat and an army hat, hunched over the marble railing of the second floor, but he couldn’t see the face clearly.
The night he said good-bye to her, as she gave herself to him, she said over and over into his ear, “Elder Brother, don’t come back, don’t come back. . . .” Was this a premonition? Or was she thinking of him? Could she see things more clearly? Or could she guess what was in his heart? At the time he said nothing, he still hadn’t the courage to make this decision. But she had awakened him, awakened him to this thought. He didn’t dare to confront it, was still unable to cut the bonds of love and hope, unable to abandon her.
He hoped the person in the green army uniform hunched over the railing wasn’t her, turned and continued toward the boarding gate. The red light on the flight indicator was flashing. He heard behind him a forlorn scream, a drawn-out “Elder Brother—” It must be her. However, without looking back again, he went through the boarding gate.
4
Warm and moist, writhing flesh. Memories start returning but you know it’s not her, that sensitive delicate body that had let you do anything you wanted. The big, robust body pressing hard on you with unrestrained lust and abandonment totally exhausts you. “Keep talking! That Chinese girl, how did you enjoy yourself with her and how did you abandon her just like that?” You say she was a perfect woman, the girl wanted only to be a little woman, and wasn’t wanton and lustful like her. “Are you saying you don’t like it?” she asks. You say of course you like it, it’s what you dream about, this sheer, total abandonment. “You also wanted to make her, that girl of yours, become like this?”—“Yes!”—“Also turn into a spring?”—“Just like this,” you convulse, breathless. “Are all women the same for you?”—“No.”—“How are they different?”—“With her there was another sort of tension.”—“How was it different?”—“There was a sort of love.”—“So you didn’t enjoy yourself with her?”—“I enjoyed her but it was different.”—“Here it is just carnal lust.”—“Yes.”—“Who is sucking you?”—“A German girl.”—“A one-night prostitute?”—“No,” you call out her name, “Margarethe!”
At this she smiles, takes your head in her hands and kisses you. She is straddling you, kneeling, but her legs relax as she turns to brush aside a loose tangle of hair hanging over her eyes.
“Didn’t you call out the wrong name?” There is an odd ring in her voice.
“Aren’t you Margarethe?” you ask back, not comprehending.
“It was I who said it first.”
“Don’t you remember? When you asked, your name had already come to my lips.”
“But it was I who said it first.”
“Didn’t you want me to guess? You could have waited a second more.”
“I was anxious at the time, I was afraid you wouldn’t remember,” she admits. “When the play finished, people from the audience were at the theater door waiting to talk with you; I was embarrassed.”
“It was all right, they were friends.”
“They left after a few words. Why didn’t you go for drinks with them?”
“It was probably because I had a foreign girl with me that they didn’t hassle me.”
&nb
sp; “Did you want to sleep with me then?”
“No, but I could tell that you were excited.”
“I lived in China for years and, of course, understood the play. But do you think Hong Kong people would?”
“I don’t know.”
“A price has to be paid.” She looks moody again.
“A very moody German girl,” you say with a smile, trying to change the atmosphere.
“I’ve already told you that I’m not German.”
“Right, you’re a Jewish girl.”
“Anyway, I’m a woman,” she says wearily.
“That’s even better,” you say.
“Why is it better?” That odd ring in her voice returns.
You then say you had not had a Jewish woman before.
“Have you had lots of women?” Her eyes light up in the dark.
“I guess quite a lot since leaving China,” you admit. There’s no need to hide this from her.
“When you stay in hotels like this, do you always have women to keep you company?” she goes on to ask.
You’re not as lucky as that. And when you stay in a big hotel like this, the theater group that invited you would be paying for it, you explain.
Her eyes become gentle and she lies down next to you. She says she likes your frankness, but that is not you as a person. You say you like her as a person and not just her body.
“That’s good.”
She says this with sincerity and she presses against you. You can feel that her body and her heart have softened. You say, of course, you remember her from that winter night. After that she came especially to see you, she said she happened to be passing. She was on the new bypass of the city ring road, saw your apartment block, and for no apparent reason dropped in. Maybe it was to look at the paintings in your apartment, they were unusual, just like a dream world. It was windy outside, the wind in Germany didn’t howl, everything in Germany was sedate, stifling. That night, in the light of the candles, the paintings seemed to have something mystical about them and she wanted to see them clearly during the daytime.
“Were those all your paintings?” she asks.
You say you didn’t hang other people’s paintings in the apartment.
“Why?”
“The apartment was too small.”
“Were you an artist as well?” she goes on to ask.
“Not officially,” you say. “And, at the time, that was indeed the case.”
“I don’t understand.”
You say, of course not, it’s impossible for her to understand. It was China. A German art foundation had invited you to go there to paint, but the Chinese authorities would not agree to it.
“Why?”
You say even for you, it was impossible to know, but at the time you went everywhere trying to find out. Finally, through a friend, you got to the relevant department and found out that the official reason was that you were a writer and not an artist.
“Was that a reason? Why couldn’t a writer also be an artist?”
You say it’s impossible for her to understand, even if she does know the language. Things in China can’t be explained by language alone.
“Then don’t try.”
She says she remembers that afternoon, the apartment was flooded with sunlight. She was sitting on the sofa examining the paintings and really wanted to buy one of them, but at the time she was a student and couldn’t afford it. You said you would give it to her as a gift, but she refused, because it was something you had created. You said you often gave paintings as gifts to friends. Chinese people don’t buy paintings, that is, among friends. She said she had only just met you, and couldn’t really count as a friend, so it would be embarrassing to accept it. If you had a book of your paintings, you could give her a copy, or she could pay for it. You said paintings like yours couldn’t get published in China, but, as she liked your work so much, it was all right to give her one of them. She says the painting is still hanging in her home in Frankfurt. For her, it is a special memory, a dream world, and one doesn’t know where one is. It is an image in the mind.
“At the time, why did you insist on giving it to me? Do you remember the painting?” she asks.
You say you don’t remember the painting but you remember wanting to paint her, wanting her to be your model. At the time, you had never painted a foreign girl.
“That would have been very dangerous,” she says.
“Why?”
“It was nothing for me. I’m saying it would have been dangerous for you. You probably didn’t say anything at the time because right then there was knocking at your door. You opened it, and it was someone who had come to check the electricity meter. You gave him a chair and he stood on it to read the meter behind the door, then, after making a note, left. Did you think he had really come to read the meter?”
You don’t answer, you can’t remember any of this. You say life in China sometimes appears in nightmares and you deliberately try to forget them, but from time to time they charge out of the subconscious.
“Didn’t they warn people in advance that they would be coming?”
You say that in China anything is possible.
“I didn’t go again because I was afraid of getting you into trouble,” she says softly.
“I didn’t think. . . .” you say.
You suddenly want to be affectionate, and put your hands on her abundant breasts.
She strokes the back of your hands and says, “You’re very caring.”
“You too, dear Margarethe.” You smile and ask, “Are you leaving tomorrow?”
“Let me think. . . . I could stay longer but I’ll have to change my plane ticket to Frankfurt. When do you return to Paris?”
“Next Tuesday. It’s a cheap ticket and hard to change, but if I pay extra I can still change it.”
“No, at the latest, I’ll have to leave by the weekend,” she says. “A Chinese delegation will be in Germany for a conference on Monday and I’ll be interpreting. I’m not as free as you, I work for a boss.”
“Then there are still four days.” You count up the days.
“Tomorrow, no, one night has already passed, there are only three days,” she says. “I’ll phone the boss and ask for leave, change my ticket, then go to my hotel and bring my luggage across.”
“What about this boss of yours?”
“He can get lost,” she says. “My job here has been completed.”
It is already light outside the window, and clouds swirl above the big building with the white pillars opposite. The peak is shrouded in mist and the lush vegetation on the mountain is the color of black jade. It looks like rain.
5
He did not know how he had returned to his home in Beijing. He couldn’t find the key in his pocket, couldn’t open the door, and was anxious people in the building would recognize him. He heard footsteps coming down the stairs and quickly turned, pretending to be going down. The person coming from the floor above brushed past him: it was Old Liu, the department chief, his boss back when he was working as an editor years ago. Old Liu was unshaven and looked like he did when he was hauled out and denounced during the Cultural Revolution. He had protected this old cadre at the time and Old Liu wouldn’t have forgotten this, so he told him that he couldn’t find the key to his apartment. Old Liu hesitated, then said, “Your apartment’s been reallocated.” At this he remembered that his apartment had been confiscated. “Would you be able to find somewhere for me to stay?” he asked. A worried frown appeared on Old Liu’s face, but, giving the matter some thought, he said: “It will have to go through the building management committee, it won’t be easy. Why did you have to come back?” He said he had purchased a return plane ticket, he hadn’t thought. . . . However, he should have. After being overseas for many years, how easily he had forgotten the difficulties he had experienced in China. Someone else was coming down the stairs. Old Liu pretended not to know him and hurried downstairs and out the front door. He quickly followed to avo
id anyone else recognizing him, but when he got outside Old Liu had vanished. The sky was filled with flying dust, it seemed to be one of Beijing’s early-spring dust storms, but he couldn’t be sure if it was spring or autumn. He was wearing a single layer of clothing and felt cold. Suddenly he remembered that Old Liu had jumped out of the office building and had been dead for years. He must quickly escape. He went to stop a taxi on the street to take him to the airport but realized that the customs officials would immediately see from his documents that he was a public enemy. He was troubled about having become a public enemy and even more troubled that he had no place to stay in this town where he had spent more than half of his life. He arrived at a commune in the suburbs to see if he could rent a room in the village. A peasant with a hoe took him to a shed covered with thin plastic, and pointed his hoe at a row of cement kang inside. The place must have been a cellar for storing cabbages in winter, which they had converted with a layer of cement. Probably there has been some progress, he thought. He had slept on the ground at the reform-through-labor farm in a big communal bed: the ground was spread with straw and people slept one next to the other, each with a forty-centimeter bed space, not as wide as these kang. Here, it was one person to a kang, much larger than the single cement lot in the cemetery where he had buried the ashes of his parents together, so there was nothing for him to complain about. Inside, he found more kang downstairs. If he rented, he would choose a downstairs kang where it was more soundproof. He said his wife liked singing. Good heaven! There was a woman with him. . . . He woke up. It had been a nightmare.
