One Man’s Bible

by Gao Xingjian

  At daybreak, when he returned to his small room, the stove-heater had long since gone out. The room was chilly, and his fervor, too, had subsided. He got into bed to reflect upon the significance and consequences of their actions, but, overcome by exhaustion, fell fast asleep. When he woke up, it was already twilight, but his head was still fuzzy. The accumulated pressure of staying vigilant day and night for months had dispersed, and he went on to sleep for a whole night.

  He was up early, and went to work not expecting to see poster responses pasted everywhere upstairs and downstairs. Suddenly, hero or not, he was indeed a fighter who was in the limelight. The tense atmosphere in the office had relaxed, and people who had been avoiding him a few days ago now all greeted him with a smile and spoke to him. Old Mrs. Huang, under investigation at the time, held his hand and would not let go. Tears streaming down her face, she said, “You have spoken the thoughts in the minds of the masses. You people are Mao Zedong’s true Red Guards!” She was simpering like the old villagers greeting the Red Army that had come to liberate them, as shown in revolutionary movies, and even the stage words were much the same. Even Old Liu who never revealed his emotions smiled as he looked at him, nodding to indicate his respect. This superior of his, too, was waiting for him to liberate him. No one knew that they were only five hastily assembled youths, and their suddenly becoming an unstoppable force was due to the fact that they also wore red armbands on their sleeves.

  Some put signatures to their announcement of withdrawal from the old Red Guards, and Lin was among them. This gave him a ray of hope that maybe they would resume their former liaison, but at noon, when he looked around in the dining hall, he did not see her. He thought that probably, at this time, she was keen to avoid him. In the corridor upstairs, he came face to face with Danian, who pretended not to have seen him and quickly walked past, but he was no longer swaggering with his head arrogantly cocked.

  The somber workplace building, with its individual offices, was like a giant beehive, and operating procedures were built up in layers of authority. When the original authority was shaken, the whole hive started buzzing. People deep in discussion stood in groups in the corridors, and wherever he went, people nodded at him or stopped him for a chat whether he knew them or not. They were flocking to talk to him just as they had flocked to talk to the Party secretary or political cadres during the eradication of Ox Demons and Snake Spirits campaign. In a few short days, almost everyone had indicated they were rebelling, and every section had discarded Party and administrative structures and formed combat teams. He, a low-level editor, had, in fact, become a prominent figure in this workplace building with its huge hierarchy of grades, and it was as if he was the leader. The masses needed a leader like a flock of sheep needed to stay near the sheep with a bell, but the lead sheep was itself driven by the loud crack of a whip and didn’t know where it was going. Anyway, he did not have to sit in the office all day, and he could come and go without anyone questioning him. People took the work from his desk, did his editing for him, and he was not allocated other work.

  He had gone home early, and, entering the courtyard, saw a grubby person with messy hair sitting on his stone doorstep. He gave a start when he saw it was Baozi, from the family next door. They were friends as children, but had not seen one another for many years.

  “You devil, what brings you here?” he asked.

  “It’s really great that I’ve found you, but it’s impossible to give you a one-word answer!” Baozi, king of the urchins in the alleys and lanes in those days, had now learned to sigh.

  He unlocked the padlock and opened the door to his room. The retired old man next door also had his door open and poked out his head.

  “He’s a schoolmate from my old home down south.”

  Now that he, too, wore a red armband, he took no notice of the old bugger and stopped him with one sentence. The old man’s face wrinkled up into a smile that exposed his sparse teeth as he chuckled approvingly before retreating into his room and closing the door.

  “I escaped without a towel or toothbrush and have been posing as one of the hordes of students who have come to Beijing. Do you have something for me to eat? I haven’t eaten properly for four days and nights. I’ve only got a handful of loose change and don’t dare spend any of it. By pretending to be a student, I’ve been able to get a couple of steamed buns and a bit of thin gruel in hostels.”

  As soon as he came into the room, Baozi slapped on the table a few Mao-head banknotes and some coins he had taken out of his pockets. He went on to say, “I escaped through the window the day before I was to be denounced by the whole school. A sports teacher, denounced for feeling a student’s breasts during gymnastics, was dragged out as a bad element and beaten to death by Red Guards.”

  Baozi’s forehead was creased with anxiety and he looked utterly wretched. Where was that mischief-making devil that went around stripped to the waist in summer as a child? Baozi could tread water, swim under water, and stand upside down like a dragonfly with his feet sticking up above the surface. When he went off to the lake to learn to swim without telling his mother, he had this companion to bolster his courage. Baozi was two years older, more than a head taller, and when it came to fighting he was really tough, so if he ran into boys looking for a fight, as long as Baozi was there, he was not afraid. It was unthinkable that this intrepid desperado would today travel so far to seek him out for protection. Baozi said that after graduating from teachers’ college he was sent to teach language at a county school. At the start of the Cultural Revolution, the Party secretary used him as a scapegoat.

  “I didn’t compile the teaching material, so how could I know which essay was problematical? I’d told some anecdotes and stories to liven up the teaching and I was attacked for doing most of the talking in the classroom. Could language classes be taught without talking? I was locked in a classroom and guarded day and night by Red Guards. I’ve got a wife and a child, and if there was a tragic outcome, even if I wasn’t killed but just maimed, how would my wife bring up a baby that was not even one month old? I got out through a window on the first floor and scaled down a drainpipe without any trouble. I did not go home, because I didn’t want my wife implicated. The train was crammed with students all the way here and it was impossible for tickets to be inspected. I’ve come to lodge a grievance, you’ve got to help me find out whether a low-level teacher like me with the significance of a sesame seed, and not even a Party member, could possibly be a member of the black gang within the Party.”

  After dinner, he took Baozi to the reception office for the masses located on the street to the right of the west gate of Zhongnanhai. The gate was wide open and the whole place lit up. The main courtyard was teeming with people who were pushing and shoving, and they were moved along slowly by the crowd. In a shed in the middle of the courtyard, military officials with cap and lapel badges were sitting at rows of desks, listening and taking notes, as people from all over the country lodged complaints. Baozi stood on his toes as he strained to hear in between people’s heads about the “thinking of the Party Center,” but it was too noisy. As soon as people got to the desks, they started shouting to be heard as they struggled to ask questions. The receptionists gave brief, discreet, standard responses, and in some cases simply took notes and answered without even looking up. The two of them were pushed away before they got anywhere near the desks, and were pushed, helpless, all the way into the corridor downstairs.

  Posters protesting against persecution and extracts of speeches by important officials covered the walls. The speeches of these Party Center leaders who had been newly appointed or had not yet fallen from power were full of malice and hidden meanings, and also contradicted one another. Baozi started to panic and asked if he had pen and paper with him. He told Baozi not to worry about copying it all down because he had collected lots of these notices as well as stenciled copies of speeches. When they got home, they could go through them carefully.

  All the offices
in the building were open and officials here were also dealing with complaints. It was not as crowded, but there were queues outside the doors. In one of the offices, a youth, holding an old army cap that was white from washing, wept loudly as he related his grievance; tears streamed down as he spoke in thick, almost incomprehensible Jiangxi or Hunan dialect. He was telling about a local massacre. Men and women, old people and even babies, had been herded onto the threshing square and, group after group, beaten to death with hoes, meat cleavers, and metal-tipped carrying poles. The corpses were thrown into the river, and there was a terrible stench. The youth, almost certainly a descendant of one of the Five Black Categories, clutched the old army cap as his credential, otherwise he would not have dared come to the capital to report this grievance. The people crammed inside and outside the door of the office listened in silence as an official took notes.

  After leaving the reception office and coming onto Chang’an Avenue, Baozi wanted to go to the Ministry of Education to see if there were directives for middle-school teachers. The Ministry of Education was located in the west of the city, just a few stops away, but blocking the road at the bus stop were schoolchildren from out of town, each carrying a school bag with an embroidered five-point red star. When the bus arrived, even before it came to a stop, they started surging on. The bus had already been full, so those getting off and those getting on had to grapple with one another. The doors unable to close, the bus started to move off with people caught in the doors. Although Baozi could scale drainpipes and jump out of buildings, he could not squeeze past these children who were as agile as monkeys.

  They made their way by foot to the Ministry of Education. The whole of the building had been converted into a hostel for students from out of town. From the main hall downstairs to the corridors of every floor, all the offices had been vacated, and everywhere there were wheat stalks, grass mats, gray blankets, plastic sheeting, and disorderly rows of bedding. Enamel basins, bowls, chopsticks, and spoons were strewn all over the floors, and there was an all-pervasive stench of sweat, preserved radishes, shoes, and unwashed socks. Boisterous students with nowhere to go in the harsh winter cold had fallen fast asleep from exhaustion as soon as they lay down. They were all waiting for the Commander-in-Chief’s seventh or eighth review the following day or the day after. There were around two million at each review, and youngsters started assembling in the middle of the night, first filling Tiananmen Square and then both sides of the square for ten kilometers from east to west along Chang’an Avenue. The Commander-in-Chief, accompanied by Deputy Commander-in-Chief Lin Biao holding his little red book of Mao’s Sayings, would drive in an open jeep past walls of frozen students, many layers deep on both sides. These youngsters, waving the precious little red book, hot tears streaming down their faces, screamed themselves hoarse, wildly shouting “long live” to wish a long life to Chairman Mao. Then, fired with revolutionary zeal, they all went home to smash up everything that was old—wrecking schools, destroying temples, and attacking workplaces.

  When he and Baozi got back to his room, it was very late and everyone was asleep. He opened the door of the coal stove, and the two of them warmed their frozen hands. As the wind blew through the cracks of the door and window, their faces glowed from time to time, reflecting the flames. Their meeting was unexpected, and neither of them had any intention of recalling childhood memories of what seemed to be another world.

  20

  “There’s a rock there,” the joker in front of you points out.

  You couldn’t fail to see a rock that size and are on the point of going around it, when you hear the joker say, “Try moving it!”

  Why waste the energy, you wouldn’t be able to move it anyway.

  “So, you think an insensate rock can’t be moved?” the joker says triumphantly.

  You prefer to believe that is so.

  “There’s no harm trying,” the joker’s baiting you, and his face is all smiles.

  You shake your head, not wanting to try something stupid like that.

  “It’s flawless and more solid than granite, a magnificent boulder!” The joker circles the rock, clucking his tongue.

  Even if it’s a boulder, it’s got nothing to do with you.

  “What a solid foundation it would make, such a pity not to make use of it!” The joker can’t stop himself from giving a big sigh.

  You’re not erecting a monument and you’re not building a tomb, what would you want it for?

  “Go on, try to move it!” The joker puts his arms around the rock and holds onto it.

  You wouldn’t be strong enough anyway.

  “It wouldn’t move even if you kicked it.”

  You’re quite sure that is so, but still touch it with your foot.

  This gets the joker all excited and he goes on baiting you, “Stand on it and have a go!”

  Have a go at what? But succumbing to his egging you on, you stand on it.

  “Don’t move!” The joker circling the rock is, of course, also circling you. You don’t know if he’s watching the rock or watching you. You can’t help following his eyes and, in so doing, you also turn a circle while standing on top of the rock.

  At this point, the joker looks you squarely in the face, his eyes narrowing as he smiles, and says in a friendly tone, “So, it can’t be moved!”

  Naturally, he’s talking about the rock and not you. You smile back at him and go to get down, but the joker puts up a hand and stops you, “Not so fast!”

  He sticks out the index finger of his raised hand and, watching his finger, you let him talk on.

  “Look, you’ve got to admit that this rock is solid and can’t be moved, don’t you?”

  You have no choice but to agree.

  “Feel it!”

  The joker’s pointing to the rock at your feet. You don’t know what he wants you to feel, but, in any case, your feet are standing on the rock.

  “Do you feel it?”

  Does the joker want you to look at the rock or at your feet?

  The joker’s finger suddenly moves upward; he’s pointing above your head, and you can’t help looking up to the sky.

  “The brightness and purity, transparency and boundlessness of the sky opens up the heart!”

  You hear the joker talking, but the sun is hurting your eyes.

  “What do you see?” the joker asks. “Try saying what you see, just say whatever you see!”

  You try to look at the sky but see nothing and only get dizzy.

  “Have a good look!”

  “What do I actually have to look at?” you find you have to ask.

  “The unblemished sky, the sky with its authentic, true light!”

  You say the sun is hurting your eyes.

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s right?” You close your eyes and there are gold stars inside your eyelids. Your feet are unsteady, and you go to get down off the rock again, but hear him next to you, reminding you: “What is right is that you are dizzy and not the rock.”

  “Of course. . . .” You’re getting confused.

  “You are not the rock!” the joker says decisively.

  “Of course I’m not the rock,” you acknowledge. “Is it all right to come down?”

  “You are far from being as solid as this rock! I’m talking about you!”

  “Right, so I may as well—” You give him the answer he wants and go to step down.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry. But standing on the rock you can see farther than if you came down, right?”

  “Of course.” You again give him the answer he wants, without even thinking.

  “In the distance right in front of you—don’t look at your feet, I said, look in front of you—what do you see?”

  “The horizon?”

  “What’s the horizon? There’s always a horizon! I’m talking about above the horizon, have a good look—”

  “At what?”

  “Surely you see it?”

  “Isn’t it ju
st sky?”

  “Look again carefully!”

  “It’s no good,” you say, blinded, “there are all sorts of bright colors. . . .”

  “That’s right, you can have any color you want. What a brilliant, beautiful sky, everything to be hoped for is right before your eyes, and you may be considered as having opened your eyes.”

  “Surely it’s all right to get down now, isn’t it?” You close your eyes.

  “Look at the sun again! This time look again at the sun in its golden brilliance, its magnificence! You will discover, listen to me, you will discover miracles! Unimaginable miracles, the most beautiful miracles!”

  “What miracles?” you ask as you cover your eyes with a hand.

  The joker takes your other hand, and you feel there is a bit of support as you hear wind pouring into your ears. The joker gives a clue, “The world has such brilliance!”

  The joker removes the hand you have over your eyes. You see in the sky an ink-blue-black bottomless pit and start worrying.

  “You’re worried, aren’t you?” This joker is experienced. “When people see miracles they always get worried, otherwise why would they be called miracles?”

  You say you want to sit down.

  “Hold on a bit longer!” he commands you.

  You say you really can’t hold on any longer.

  “Even if you can’t, you have to. If others can hold on, why can’t you?” he reprimands you.

  Your legs give way, and, doubling over, you sprawl on the rock seeking his help and wanting to vomit.

  “Open your mouth! If you want to shout then shout, if you want to call out then call out!”

  So, following his instructions, you give a mighty roar but can’t stop your nausea and chuck up a lot of bile.

  Whether the cause is justice, an ideal, virtue, the most scientific ideology, or a heavenly endowed mission, it will cause a person mental and physical anguish, endless revolutions and repeated sacrifices. And God or savior, or heroes on a lesser scale, or exemplars on an even lesser scale, and the nation on a grand scale, and the Party above the nation, are all built on such a rock.