One Man’s Bible

by Gao Xingjian

  “I wouldn’t have had the money,” you say.

  “I’m not a prostitute,” she says.

  You say it was she who started talking about Italy.

  “I’ve never been back.”

  “Then let’s stop talking about Italy.”

  You look at her and feel dejected.

  You return to the hotel and go to your room.

  “How about if we don’t make love?” she says.

  “All right, but the double bed can’t be separated.”

  You don’t make a move.

  “We can each sleep on our sides of the bed and we can sit up to talk.”

  “Talk until morning?”

  “Haven’t you ever slept with a woman without touching her?”

  “Of course, with my former wife.”

  “That doesn’t count, that was because you no longer loved her.”

  “It wasn’t only a case of not loving her, I was also afraid she’d expose—”

  “Your relationships with other women?”

  “At the time it was impossible to have other women. I was afraid she’d expose my reactionary thinking.”

  “It was also because she didn’t love you.”

  “It was also because she was terrified; terrified I would bring disaster upon her.”

  “What kind of disaster?”

  “It’s impossible to explain in a few words.”

  “Then it’s best not to try. Haven’t you ever slept with a woman you loved or liked and not made love?”

  You think about it and say, “Yes.”

  “That was the right thing to do.”

  “How was it the right thing to do?”

  “You must have respected her, respected her feelings!”

  “Not necessarily. If you like a woman and don’t touch her—that is, when you are sleeping in the same bed—it’s very difficult.” For you, anyway.

  “You’re quite honest,” she says.

  You thank her.

  “No need, there’s no proof yet, let’s see.”

  “It’s the truth, it actually happened. Afterward I regretted not having touched her but I was no longer able to find her.”

  “In other words, you respected her.”

  “No, it was also because of fear,” you say.

  “Fear of what? Fear that she would report you?”

  You say it was not that former wife of yours, it was another woman. She would not have reported you. She was the one who had taken the initiative and, of course, you wanted to, but you were too afraid.

  “Why?”

  “I was afraid of being discovered by the neighbors. Those were terrifying times in China, I don’t want to talk about those old happenings.”

  “Talk about them, you will feel better after you talk about them.”

  She seems to understand something of the human mind.

  “But just don’t talk about women.” You think she’s acting like a nun.

  “Why not talk about women? Whether it’s a man or a woman, they’re human in the first instance and it’s not only a sexual relationship. You and I should be the same.”

  You don’t know what you should talk about with her. In any case, you can’t immediately get into bed, so you try studying the well-ordered strokes in the set of color woodcut prints in gilded frames on the wall.

  She removes the clasp in her hair, and her hair tumbles down. While taking off her clothes, she says her father went back to Germany afterward. Italy was poor, and it was easier to make money in Germany.

  You don’t ask about her mother, you remain carefully silent and try not to look at her. You think it’s impossible to relive the beautiful dream of yesterday.

  She takes a robe into the bathroom, leaving the door open, and, running the water, goes on to say, “After my mother died, I went to Germany to study Chinese; the Chinese programs in Germany are quite good.”

  “Why did you study Chinese?” you ask.

  She says she wanted to distance herself from Germany. When a new fascism reared its head, they would again report her. She was referring to the neighbors in her street, the cultivated ladies and gentlemen she had to acknowledge with an insipid hello when they met outside. If she came upon them on weekends, while they were polishing their cars—their cars were as shiny as leather shoes—she’d have to stop to say a few words to them. But some day, as happened in Serbia not long ago, they or their children would betray, expel, gang-rape, and murder Jews.

  “Fascism wasn’t only in Germany, you never really lived in China. Fascism was no worse than the Cultural Revolution,” you say coldly.

  “But it wasn’t the same. Fascism was genocide, it was simply because one had Jewish blood in one’s body. It was different from ideologies and political beliefs, it didn’t need theories.” She raises her voice to argue.

  “Your theories are dog shit! You don’t understand China at all and you haven’t experienced the Red Terror. It was an infectious disease that made people go mad!” You suddenly lose your temper.

  She says nothing, and, wearing a loose gown and holding the bra she has taken off, she emerges from the bathroom, shrugs her shoulders at you, and sits on the bed, head bowed. With eye makeup and lipstick removed, her face is pale but it has a more feminine softness.

  “Sorry, sexual repression,” you explain with a bitter smile. “You go to sleep.” You light a cigarette.

  She stands up, walks over to you, presses you against her soft breasts, fondles your head, and says quietly, “You can sleep next to me but I don’t have any lust, I just want to talk with you.”

  She needs to search for historical memories, and you need to forget them.

  She needs to burden herself with the sufferings of the Jews and the racial humiliation of the Turks, but you need to receive from her body a confirmation that you are living at this instant.

  She says, right now she has no feelings.

  9

  Late at night, after the criticism meeting at the workplace had ended, he went back to his room. Old Tan, who shared the room with him, had been locked up for interrogation in the meeting room of the workplace building, and would not be returning. He locked the room, lifted a corner of the curtain to see that all the lights were out in the neighboring homes of the courtyard, closed the curtain and carefully checked that there were no gaps. He then opened the coal stove, put a bucket next to it, and began to burn his manuscripts: a pile of diaries, and notes in several dozens of books of all sizes that he had kept since his university days. The belly of the stove was very small, and he had to pull apart a few pages at a time, then wait for the scorched paper to burn thoroughly and become white ash, before shoveling it into the bucket. The ash was ground to a paste: not the smallest fragment of unburned paper must remain.

  An old photograph taken with his parents fell out of a diary. His father was wearing a suit and tie, and his mother was wearing a qipao. When his mother was alive and took out the clothes from the chest to air them, he had seen this silk qipao with orange-yellow flowers on an ink-blue background. In this faded photograph his parents were leaning against one another and smiling, and in between them was a skinny child with thin arms whose eyes were round with bewilderment as if he thought a bird would fly out of the box camera. Without hesitating, he stuffed the photograph into the fire. With a dull crackle, the edges began to burn. His parents had started curling up by the time he thought to retrieve it, but it was already too late, and he watched the photograph curl and then flatten out. His parents’ image had turned into black-and-white ash, and the skinny child in the middle had started to go yellow. . . .

  The way his parents were dressed, they would have counted as capitalists or managerial employees of a foreign firm. He had obliterated whatever he possibly could, done everything he could to cut off his past, wipe out his memories. Even recalling those times was a heavy burden.

  Before he burned the manuscripts and diaries, he had witnessed a crowd of Red Guards beat an old woman to death in bro
ad daylight. He was riding his bicycle near the soccer grounds of bustling Xidan around midday during the lunch break, so there were lots of people out on the main street. Ten or so teenagers, fifteen- or sixteen-year-old middle-school students—a few girls among them—wearing old army uniforms and red armbands with black writing on them, were using leather army belts to beat up an old woman who was sprawled on the ground. The old woman had a wooden placard with the words reactionary landowner’s wife tied with wire around her neck. She could no longer move but was still wailing. People passing by all kept a certain distance and watched in silence. Not one person stepped forward to stop them. A civilian policeman wearing a blue hat and swinging his white gloves walked past and seemed to look with unseeing eyes. A girl in the group, who had her short hair tied into two little bunches and looked quite elegant in glasses with a light-colored frame, also started wielding her belt. The brass buckle struck a mass of disheveled gray hair with a thud, and the old woman’s hands went up to clutch her head as she collapsed onto the ground. Blood oozed between her fingers, but she could no longer make a sound.

  “Long live the Red Terror!” The Red Guard patrol riding in formation on their new Eternal brand bicycles shouted this slogan all the way along Chang’an Avenue.

  They had also interrogated him. It was about ten o’clock at night, and he had just cycled past the front of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse with its armed sentries. Up ahead, under the bright streetlight, were a few motorbikes with sidecars. The road was blocked by a line of youths in military uniforms, wearing red silk armbands with the black inscription: beijing red guard united action committee.

  “Get off!”

  He braked suddenly and almost fell off his bicycle.

  “What background?”

  “Professional.”

  “What work?”

  He named his workplace.

  “Have you got your work permit?”

  Luckily, he had it on him, and he took it out to show them.

  Another person on a bicycle was stopped, a youth with a flat-top haircut, at the time a self-deprecating sign for “offspring of dogs.”

  “You should be at home so late at night!”

  They let him pass. He had just got on his bicycle when he heard the youth with the flat-top haircut behind mumble a few words and then being beaten until he was howling. He didn’t dare to look back.

  For several days on end, from late at night until early morning, he was in front of the stove and his eyes were red from the heat. During the day, he had to force himself to be wide awake to deal with the dangers that could crop up at any time. When the last pile of notebooks was burned, he stirred the ashes into a paste to make sure no traces remained, then poured a plate of leftover vegetables and half a bowl of noodles on top. Totally exhausted and unable to keep his eyelids open, he lay on the bed fully clothed but could not fall asleep. He recalled that at home there was still an old photograph that could stir up trouble. It was a group photograph of the War of Resistance National Salvation Theater Troupe of the YMCA, which his mother had joined when she was young. They were all wearing military uniforms that must have been presented to members of the troupe when they went to express their appreciation to officers and soldiers in the War of Resistance: the military caps had badges with the Nationalist insignia. If this photograph were seized it would definitely create problems, even if his mother had died some time ago. He didn’t know whether his father had dealt with the photograph, but it was unsafe to write to alert him.

  Among the manuscripts destroyed was a novel he had given a prominent elderly writer to read, hoping for a recommendation or, at least, approval of it. He did not expect that the old man would be stony-faced and without a word of encouragement to the younger generation. Finally, with a grave expression, the old writer sternly warned him: “Think carefully before committing anything to writing! Don’t submit manuscripts casually. You don’t understand the dangers of the written word.”

  He did not immediately understand. At dusk one day, in early summer, June, when the Cultural Revolution had just started, he went to the old man’s home to ask for news about what was happening. As soon as he came in, the old man quickly closed the door and, staring at him, asked in a hushed voice, “Did anyone see you come in?”

  “There’s no one in the courtyard,” he said.

  The old man was not like the old cadres; nevertheless, when he instructed young people, he was forever saying our Party this and our Nation that. He was, after all, a famous person with revolutionary credentials. He spoke with a vigorous voice, and what he said was always measured and lucid. But now his voice had suddenly turned reedy, and trembled deep down in his throat as he said, “I’m a black-gang element, don’t come here again. You’re young, don’t get involved. You’ve never been through the experience of struggles within the Party—”

  The old man wouldn’t let him finish his greetings, and, nervously opening the door a crack, peeped out and said, “Keep it for later, wait until all this passes, keep it for later, you don’t know about the Yan’an Rectification Movement.”

  “What was the Yan’an Rectification Movement like?” he went on to stupidly ask.

  “I’ll tell you later, leave quickly, leave quickly!”

  All this took place in less than a minute. One minute earlier he thought the struggles within the Party were somewhere far away, it had not crossed his mind that they were right in front of him.

  Ten years later, he heard that the old man had been released from prison. By then, he too had returned from the countryside and was back in Beijing, so he went to see him. The old man was reduced to skin and bones, and one of his legs had been broken; he was propped up in a reclining chair and had a black Persian cat on his lap. A walking stick stood by the armrest.

  “A cat’s life is actually better than a human’s.”

  The old man’s lips parted in what seemed to be a smile, revealing the few front teeth he had left. As he stroked the old cat, his beady eyes in their sunken sockets glinted strangely, just like a cat’s. The old man did not talk to him about his experiences in prison. It was not until he visited him in hospital, shortly before his death, that he said his greatest regret in life was that he had joined the Party.

  Back then, when he left the old man’s house, he thought about those manuscripts of his. They had nothing to do with the Party, but they could get him into trouble. Still, he hadn’t decided to burn them, so he carried them on his back in a big bag to the home of Big Lu, a friend he’d made while in hospital with dysentery. Big Lu, born and bred in Beijing, had a big build and taught geography in a middle school. Trying to impress a pretty young woman, Big Lu got him to draft a series of love letters. Then, by the time Big Lu’s newly wedded wife found out he’d been an accessory in the letter writing, she was already irreversibly married to Big Lu, so there was a special friendship between the three of them. Big Lu lived with his parents, and they had an apartment with a courtyard all to themselves, so it wasn’t hard to hide a bag of things.

  At the height of summer, August, the Red Guard movement started. Big Lu’s wife suddenly phoned him at the office and arranged to meet him at noon in a shop that sold milk drinks and Western-style cakes. He thought the couple must have had an argument, so he hurried on his bicycle to the cake shop. The old shop sign had been taken down and replaced with a new one, with the slogan: serving the workers, peasants, and soldiers. Inside the shop, above the seats, was a long slogan scrawled in black characters across the wall: out with all stinking capitalist offspring!

  At first, the “destruction of the four olds” by the Red Guards, which had started in the middle schools, seemed to be children having a ruckus. However, the Great Leader’s public letter addressed to them, affirming that “it is right to rebel,” incited the young teenagers to violent action. Anyway, not being a stinking capitalist offspring, he went in. They were selling milk drinks, as usual, but before he had found somewhere to sit, Big Lu’s wife came in, took his arm as
if she were his girlfriend, and said, “I’m not hungry yet, let’s go for a walk, there’s something I have to buy.”

  When they had left the cake shop and were on the street, she quietly told him that Big Lu had been so intimidated by the Red Guards at the school that he had shaved his own head in advance. This was because his family owned their apartment. They did not count as capitalists, but even as petty entrepreneurs, they could be searched at any time by the Red Guards. She asked him to quickly take away that bag of his from the coal shed in the courtyard.

  It was Lin who saved him. Early in the morning, soon after getting into work, Lin walked by several times in the corridor. His desk faced the corridor and he saw that Lin was signaling him. He came out of the office and followed Lin down to the end of the corridor, where there was a bend before the stairwell. As no one was coming, they stopped there. Lin quickly told him to hurry home to fix up his things, because the Red Guards from the workplace were about to set out to search the belongings of his roommate, Old Tan. He rushed down the stairs, cycled hard, and got back to his room in a lather of sweat. He piled all his own things onto his own bed and beside it. He also went through the drawers of Old Tan’s desk. He found an old, pre-Liberation photograph of Old Tan, taken at university with a group of students. Everyone was in student uniform, wearing caps with the twelve-point white-sun insignia of the Nationalist Party. He rolled it into a little ball, went out of the courtyard, and tossed it into the deep pit of the public lavatory on the street. When he got back to the courtyard, the car from the workplace had already arrived.

  Four Red Guards from the workplace entered the room, and Lin was among them. Lin knew he was a writer but had never seen any of his manuscripts. She was in love with him, and didn’t care about his writings. She, of course, had not come because of his manuscripts, but because he had taken lots of photographs of her, not naked but in provocative poses. They had been taken before and after the two of them had illicit sex in the woods at Badaling, in the western suburbs of Beijing. If any of those were found, it would be seen at a glance that their relationship had gone past being colleagues or revolutionary comrades. Lin was a deputy-minister’s daughter, and she was married. Her husband, from an old revolutionary family, was in the army, and worked in a research unit carrying out research on nothing less than rockets or some new weapons. He had not the slightest interest in defense secrets, but was infatuated with this beautiful woman. Lin had taken the initiative, and she was the more passionate.