by Gao Xingjian
He could only guess that something had happened to the landlord’s family. It seemed that the whole place had been confiscated as public property and that the family had been relegated to occupying a side apartment. The hatred in the girl’s eyes would now be even harder to erase, but he lacked the courage to return to the courtyard to look for her again.
In the early spring, in March, he went to Xiehejian in the Western Hills on the outer fringe of Beijing. He got on a train at Xizhimen, a station mainly for freight trains. It was a slow train to the outer suburbs in the mountain area of the northwest, and two hard-seat carriages had been coupled at the rear. The high tide of endless streams of students had passed, and the empty carriages were left with just a few passengers at the front and back. He sat down by the window of an unoccupied compartment. The train went through a series of tunnels and then began to wend its way through valleys. Out the window, he could see the old steam engine at the front puffing smoke and steam as it pulled a string of freight cars and this empty hard-seat carriage swaying at the back.
At a small stop called Goose Wings, where there was no platform, he jumped off and watched the long-distance train continue around the side of the mountain. The stationmaster waved the flag and blew the whistle, then went into the small hut by the shoulder of the road, leaving just him standing on the gravel by the side of the railway tracks.
While at university, he had come here as a volunteer laborer to dig holes and plant trees on the mountain. It was also in early spring, and the ground was still frozen. Each time he swung his pickax, he would not bring up two inches of soil, so, in a few days, his palms were covered in blood blisters. Once he was almost killed when he jumped into the bone-chilling river to recover the hemp bag containing the saplings he was to plant. He had it soaking in the river and it was swept away by the fast-flowing current. For this, he was commended, but the Communist Youth League still did not want him. He and some fellow students, all of whom had been refused membership, called one another “Old Reject.” They formed a theater group and had just put on two plays when cadres of the student association at the university sought them out and spoke with them separately. They were not ordered to stop, but the theater group could no longer function, and, as a matter of course, disbanded.
They had performed Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. It had old-fashioned charm, with a sweet and kindly country girl from a small farm saying nostalgically that everything should be beautiful, with beautiful people in beautiful clothes and also with beautiful hearts; it grieved for a past that was like the old photographs he had burned.
He walked along the railway sleepers for a while, but, seeing a train coming from the distance, he went down the shoulder of the road and headed for the rock-covered riverbed. The water in the Yongding River was clear, unless it was swollen with rain or the sluices of the government dam upstream had been shut off.
He had brought Lin here and taken photographs. Lin had a beautiful figure, and she stood barefoot in the water with her skirt scooped up in her arms. Afterward, among the bushes on the mountain, they picnicked, kissed, and made love. He regretted not having photographed her nude as she lay in the grass, but all that was now beyond his reach.
What else could he do? What else was there to do? There was no need for him to go back to his office desk to arrange those virtually identical propaganda documents as he was meant to, as no one was in charge of him. Also, there was no need for him to rebel: that strange righteous indignation, too, had passed. For several months, he had headed the assault on the opposition, but now the thrill and excitement had completely vanished, or, rather, he had tired, had had enough of it. He should bravely retreat while he still could; there was no need for him to play the role of a hero.
He took off his shoes and socks, and walked barefoot in the clear icy current. As the water gently trickled in shining broken ripples and sparkled in the sunlight, he suddenly started thinking clearly. He should go to see his father because he had not received a letter from home for a long time, and he should also take the opportunity, when no one would notice, to travel south to clarify this business in his file about his father having “hidden a gun.”
He rushed back to the city by early afternoon, went home to get his bankbook, cycled to withdraw money before the bank closed, then went to Qianmen Railway Station to buy a ticket for that night. He returned home to lock his bicycle in his room, and, carrying the satchel he normally took to work, he boarded the express train south at eleven o’clock.
Father and son had not seen one another for two years, and, when he suddenly turned up, his father was overjoyed. His father went off to the free market and bought fresh fish and live shrimp, and went to the kitchen to gut the fish. When his mother died, his father became morose and seldom spoke, but now he was a different person, doing the cooking, cheerful and talking a lot. Then came his father’s concerns about politics, and he kept asking questions about the Party and the national leaders who had vanished from the papers. Not wanting to upset his father straight away, he sat at the table, drinking, and talked about things that couldn’t be read in the newspapers. He told his father there was an internal struggle going on in the highest echelons of the Party, but that it was something about which ordinary people would not be able to find out anything. His father said he knew, he knew; in the provinces and the cities, it was the same. His father also said that he had joined the rebels and that the head of the personnel department, who had denounced a string of people, had been overthrown. He held back for a while but felt he had to warn his father.
“Father, you mustn’t forget the lesson of the anti-rightist period—”
“I did not oppose the Party! I only raised some views about a particular person’s work!”
His father became agitated. His hand began to shake, and he spilled the liquor from his cup onto the table.
“You’re not young, and you have problems with your personal history, you can’t join such groups! You don’t have the right to take part in such campaigns!” He was also very agitated. He had never spoken in that tone of voice to his father before.
“Why can’t I?” His father slammed his cup on the table. “There’s nothing wrong with my history, I didn’t join with reactionaries, I have no political problems! That year, the Party called upon people to speak out, and I simply said that the wall between the masses should be torn down. I was referring to that person’s work style. I did not say a word against the Party. It was his revenge! I said this at the meeting, and many people were present, they all heard and can testify to this! That blackboard document of mine with more than a hundred characters had been requested by their Party branch!”
“Father, you’re too naive—” he went to argue, but his father cut him short.
“I don’t need you to lecture to me! Just because you’ve done a bit of study! Your mother overindulged you, she spoiled you rotten!”
After his father had calmed down, he had to ask him. “Father, did you ever have any guns?”
His father was stunned. It was as if he had been struck on the head. Slowly his head drooped, and he stopped talking.
“Someone has divulged that my file has this problem,” he explained. “I made this trip to see if you were all right. Is there any truth in the matter?”
“Your mother was too honest. . . .” his father mumbled.
In other words, it was true. His heart went cold.
“It was a year or two after Liberation. Census forms were issued for people to fill out, and there was a column for weapons. It was your mother’s fault, she was asking for trouble, she insisted that I honestly write down that I had sold a gun to a friend. . . .”
“What year was this?” he asked, glaring. His father had become the object of his interrogation.
“It was a long time ago, during the War of Resistance. It was still the Republican Period, before you were even born. . . .”
People all testified like this, they had to, he thought. However, the matter of the gun was
already an incontestable fact, and he had to struggle to pull himself together and to curb his anger. He could not interrogate his father, so he said quietly, “Father, I’m not blaming you, but where is this gun?”
“I passed it on to a colleague at the bank. Your mother said she couldn’t understand why I was keeping the thing, but I had it for protection, because of the social unrest in those times. She said I wouldn’t know where to aim it, and what if it went off by accident? So, I sold it to a colleague at the bank!” His father laughed.
But this was not a laughing matter, and he said sternly, “But it is recorded in my file that you had hidden a gun.”
These were Lin’s exact words, and he could not have heard them wrongly.
His father shook and almost shouted, “That’s impossible! It happened more than thirty years ago!”
Father and son looked at one another. He believed his father more than the file, but he had to say, “Father, they are sure to investigate.”
“In other words . . .” His father was wretched.
“In other words, who would now admit to having bought the gun?” He, too, despaired.
His father covered his face with both hands. He had finally realized the implications, and was weeping. The food on the table, hardly touched, had gone cold.
He said he did not blame his father, and, whatever happened, he was still his son, there was no question of his not acknowledging him as his father. During the great famine in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward period, his mother had also been naive. She responded to the call of the Party and went to a farm to be reformed through labor; excessive fatigue led to her drowning in the river. He and his father were left to depend upon each other, and he knew his father loved him very much. When he came home from university swollen from malnutrition, his father used two months of meat-ration coupons to buy pork fat to make lard for him to take back with him. His father said it was cold up north and impossible to get hold of anything nutritious, whereas here carrots could be bought from the peasants. He could never forget his father pouring the boiling fat into a plastic jar, which immediately shriveled up and melted; the fat ran from the table to the floor. In silence, they got on their haunches to scrape up the solidified lard, bit by bit, with a spoon from the floor.
He went on to say, “Father, I’ve come back to clear up this business about the gun, for your sake and for mine.”
It was only then that his father said, “I sold the gun to an old colleague at the bank more than thirty years ago. After Liberation, I have only had one letter from him. If he is still alive, he will be working at the bank. Do you remember him? You used to call him Uncle Fang. He was very fond of you and would never betray you. He didn’t have any children and said he wanted to have you as his godchild, but your mother refused.”
There was an old photograph at home, if he hadn’t burned it, he recalled. This Uncle Fang was bald and had a fat round face. He was like a Buddha, but in a suit and tie. The child in a knitted pullover who sat on the lap of this living Buddha in a suit was holding a gold Parker fountain pen and wouldn’t let go of it. The pen was later given to him, and he treasured it as a child.
After spending a day at home, he continued south by train another day and night. When he found the local bank and made inquiries, the youth at reception turned out to be a member of a rebel group. Then, after asking the cadre in charge of personnel, he found out that a certain Fang had been transferred twenty years earlier to a savings office in the suburbs. This was probably because old personnel who had been retained were not trusted.
He rented a bicycle and found the savings office. They told him that Fang had retired, and gave him his address.
At the end of a passageway of a simple two-story building, was an old woman in an apron washing vegetables at the communal tub. She gave a start at his inquiry, and asked instead, “What do you want him for?”
“I was passing through on a business trip and came to pay a visit,” he said.
Hedging, the old woman wiped her hands incessantly on her apron, then finally said that he was not in. He suspected that she was Fang’s wife, so, with a smile, he explained that he was the son of Fang’s old friend so-and-so, and that he had come to visit his old uncle. The old woman quietly exclaimed, then took him to a door. She opened it to let him in, then brought tea and invited him to sit down. She told him her husband was working in the vegetable garden and that she would fetch him right away.
The old man came in with a hoe and placed it behind the door. His one droopy eyelid was twitching, and a few sparse strands of white hair sprouted from the sides of his shiny head. Addressing him as Uncle Fang, he again explained that he was the son of such-and-such a person, and conveyed his father’s regards.
The old man nodded, his droopy eyelid twitching, as he looked at him for a long time before slowly saying, “I remember, I remember, I remember. . . . My old colleague, my old friend. . . . How is your father?”
“He’s all right.”
“Ah, it’s good to know he’s all right, it’s good to know he’s all right!”
After chatting awhile, he said he was in trouble, or, rather, that he might be in trouble. It had to do with his father’s having sold a gun.
The old man lowered his head to look for something, then took his cup in his trembling hands. He said he didn’t want the old man to testify, but only wanted him to tell him what had happened. “Did my father ever get you to sell a gun for him?”
He stressed the word “sell” and said nothing about the old man having bought it. The old man put down his cup. His hands stopped shaking, and he went on to say, “This did take place, but it was decades ago, during the War of Resistance, when we were refugees; there was chaos and fighting in those times, and we had to protect ourselves from bandits. We had worked many years in the bank and had some savings, but, as banknotes depreciated, we converted our savings into gold and silver jewelry. We wore this on our persons, and carried a gun just in case.”
He said his father had told him all this, but that was not the problem. The problem was that what had happened to the gun was never resolved, and it had been entered into his file that his father had hidden a gun. He said this as calmly as he could.
“This is hard to believe!” The old man sighed. “People from your father’s work unit also came to investigate. It’s hard to believe that it’s also causing trouble for you.”
“It hasn’t yet, but it could, and I have to think of how to cope if something does flare up.”
He explained again that he had not come to investigate, and put on a smile to put the old man at ease.
“It was I who bought the gun,” the old man finally said.
“But my father said he got you to sell it for him—”
“But who did I sell it to?” the old man asked.
“My father didn’t say,” he said.
“No, it was I who bought the gun,” the old man said.
“Does he know?”
“Of course he knows. Later on, I threw it into the river.”
“Does he know?”
“How could he have known? By then, it was after Liberation, and there was no social unrest, so why would a person keep something like that? I secretly threw it into the river one night. . . .”
There was nothing he could say to this.
“But why did your father have to bring it up? He’s a troublemaker!” The old man was blaming his father.
“If he knew that you had thrown it into the river . . .” he tried to defend his father.
“The problem is, he’s just too naive!”
“He could also have thought the gun was still around and was afraid that if it was found and the owner traced—”
He wanted to defend his father, but his father had, in fact, made the report and had also implicated this old man. It was his father who was to blame.
“It’s hard to believe, it’s hard to believe. . . .” The old man sighed, again and again. “Who would have thought
something that happened over thirty years ago—before you were even born—would go from your father’s file into your file!”
This gun at the bottom of the river must have rusted away to nothing and no longer existed, but undoubtedly remained on this retired old man’s file, he thought but did not say. Changing the topic, he said, “Uncle Fang, you don’t have any children, do you?”
“No.” The old man sighed but said nothing.
The old man had forgotten that he had wanted him as a godchild. Luckily; otherwise he would have been as heavy-hearted as his own father.
“If you want to come and investigate further—” the old man said.
“That won’t be necessary,” he cut the old man short. He no longer felt the same as he did prior to this visit: there was no sense in blaming either this old man or his father.
“I’m already nearing the end of my life. Just finish listening to me,” the old man insisted.
“The thing no longer exists, does it? Surely it has totally rusted away?” He stared at the old man.
The old man’s mouth opened wide, showing a few sparse teeth, as he burst into loud laughter. A tear fell from his droopy eyelid.
The old man and his wife began preparing food and suggested that he stay for a meal. But, saying he had to get back to the city to return his bicycle then catch the night train, he firmly declined.
Uncle Fang saw him out of the building to the main road. Waving him off, he said to convey regards to his father, then said, “Take care! Take care!”
He got on his bicycle. When he looked back and could no longer see the old man, he suddenly thought: I’ve gone to all this trouble, but what fuckin’ use is it going to be?
26
So you can, in fact, turn back to look at him, that unfilial son of a doomed family, a family that was not destitute but by no means rich, a family that was in-between being proletarian and capitalist. Born in the old world but growing up in the new society, he somewhat superstitiously believed in revolution, then from half-believing and half-doubting, he rebelled. However, he grew weary of the futility of rebelling, then discovered that it was nothing more than a toy cooked up by politics, so he refused to be a foot soldier or make any more sacrifices. But escape was not an option. He was forced to don a mask and somehow got along by losing himself in the crowd.
