by Gao Xingjian
A local from the village then said, “There isn’t anyone who hasn’t enjoyed her favors!”
“Get rid of that filthy mouth of yours!” The teasing put Zhao’s wife in high spirits. Straightening her apron, she put her hands on her hips and told everyone off, “All of you are gluttons, go get yourselves stuffed on green-feed slops!”
There was no end to the coarse talk, and there was the stench of alcohol all over the place. He could tell from the banter that not one of them had a bad pedigree. Otherwise, how else would they have managed to become village cadres?
“If it wasn’t for the kindness of Chairman Mao, would the poor and lower-middle-class peasants enjoy what they do today? How else would we have girl students coming from the city to settle in our villages?”
“Stop all this indecent thinking!”
“It’s only you who’s fuckin’ decent. Have you ever had it off with them? Come on, out with it!”
“There’s a teacher present, surely he’s disgusted by all this talk!”
“The teacher’s not an outsider, he respects us, we people with mud on our legs. Didn’t he sleep on the ground with us?”
You had, indeed. You slept with them on paddy-rice hay spread on the floor of a granary, and every day after military training you watched them compete in strength, wrestling, and tumbling, after which the loser had to let the winner grope in his trousers. When the village women watched, they joined in the cheering, some would even go up to tug at the loser’s belt, and it would all end up with the men and women getting into a huddle. At such times, Maomei would stand aside, cover her mouth, and just laugh. Everyone was jolly until the whistle signaled for the lights to be put out.
You came out of the main hall; a cool breeze was blowing gently. There was no nauseating stench of alcohol, and the pure fragrance of paddy grass wafted in gusts through the air. In the moonlight, the villages became fused with the shadows of the undulating mountains. You sat down on the stone mill by the house and lit a cigarette.
You rejoiced that you had won their trust. There were no more suspicious noises outside, and no longer figures silhouetted on the windows in the moonlight. You were no longer being spied on. It seemed that you had settled permanently here, and that, from now on, you would mix with these men. They have lived like this for generations. They rolled in the mud and on women’s bodies, when they were tired or drunk they fell fast asleep, they did not have nightmares. You could smell the moist air of the mud and felt relaxed, drowsy.
“Teacher, are you still up?”
You turned and saw Maomei come out the back door of the kitchen and stop by the pile of firewood. The hazy moonlight perfectly revealed her feminine charm.
“Teacher, you’re really relaxed. Are you looking at the moon?”
She smiled at you. She had a sweet voice with a lilt. She was a sexy girl, her pointed breasts were firm, and you thought they had been touched by men. She was radiant and healthy, without worries or fears. This was the soil that had given birth to her. She would receive you, and seemed to be saying this, but did you want her? She was waiting for your response. In the darkness, her glinting eyes were fixed upon you without embarrassment or fear, once again arousing your lust for women. She was boldly confronting you, late at night, as she leaned against the pile of wood, but, unlike those men, those bandits, you didn’t dare flirt with her or approach her, you didn’t dare be frivolous, you lacked the courage.
47
A day of rain and another day of rain, fine continuous drizzle. School finished some time ago, after the two afternoon classes, because students must go home to work. Your room near the teachers’ office is made of brick, and there is a timber ceiling, so you do not need to worry about rain leaking in. Your mind is at peace, you like rainy days, and you no longer have to put on a big bamboo hat to work with your legs soaking in the paddy fields. With your door shut, there is the sound of the wind, the sound of the rain, as well as the sound of your reading. But not all of these sounds are audible, because you are only silently reading or writing in your mind. However, you are finally living the life of a normal human being, even if you do not have a family. You no longer want a woman to share your roof, you would prefer to live alone rather than run the risk of being exposed. If you feel the urge, you just write about it. By doing this, you win freedom for your imagination, and any woman you want can come to you via your pen.
“Teacher, Secretary Lu wants to see you!” a girl student was calling from outside his room.
He had fitted a spring lock so that people couldn’t just walk into his room. If he had to talk to his students, he went to the teachers’ office next door, especially in the case of girl students. The headmaster, who lived on the other side of the basketball field, was always watching his door. He had been headmaster of the primary school for twenty years, but now that it had suddenly been converted into a middle school, he was afraid of being replaced by this outsider under the protection of Secretary Lu. He wanted to catch this outsider in some act of impropriety with a girl student, so that he could be made to roll up his bedding and go away. However, he could not convince the headmaster that all he wanted was a place to stay in peace.
This student, Sun Huirong, was a pretty and lively girl. Her father had died of some illness a long time ago, and her mother sold vegetables at the cooperative in town in order to somehow bring up three daughters, Huirong being the eldest. Huirong was always trying to be nice to him: “Teacher, I’ll wash your dirty clothes for you!” “Teacher, I’ve brought you some amaranth fresh from our vegetable garden!” Whenever he passed by the Sun house, if the girl saw him, she would always run out and greet him, “Teacher, come in and have some tea!” He knew almost every family in the small street, and had visited their homes, either sitting for a while in the main hall or else having a cigarette on the doorstep. He had made this town his hometown and was now a local, but he had never been into this girl’s home. The girl said to him, “Our home is a women’s domain.” Probably she wanted a father and didn’t necessarily want a man.
The girl had come in from the rain, and her hair was all wet. He got an umbrella and told her to take it home with her, but when he went back inside to get a bamboo hat, the girl had run off. When he had almost caught up with her, he called out. She turned around in the rain and shook her head. The front of her shirt clung to her, revealing her small, developing breasts. She was happy and laughing as she ran off, probably pleased she had delivered such an important message to her teacher.
Lu lived in a rear-courtyard compound of the commune complex, and he went in through the side gate opposite the river embankment. The yard was clean, paved with cobblestones, and there was a small well. At the time when that powerful landlord was executed, the man’s mistress was living in this small, secluded, peaceful compound. Lu was lounging on a bamboo couch cushioned with a piece of deerskin. A pot of meat with a delicious pungent aroma was stewing on the brazier that stood on the brick floor.
“It’s dog meat with chili. Old Zhang at the police station brought it, he said he had trapped a wild dog. Who can tell if it’s a wild dog or a domestic dog, anyway, that’s what he told me.” Lu didn’t get up. “Get a bowl and a pair of chopsticks, and pour some liquor. My back is no good, it’s an old gunshot wound and it gives me trouble whenever it rains. At the time, we were fighting a war, and no doctors were around, so just to stay alive counted as being lucky.”
He poured himself some liquor, then sat on the little stool by the brazier to eat and drink. Lu talked a lot as he lay on the bamboo couch.
“I’ve killed people, shot them dead myself, it was war, but I won’t go into all that. More people died at my hands than can be counted, and not all of them deserved to die. Instead, those who deserved to die didn’t.”
Lu suddenly reverted to his normal silence and indifference. He didn’t know what Lu was getting at, and this intrigued him.
“That old bastard, Lin Biao, plunged to his death, it’s been reported, ha
sn’t it?”
He nodded. The deputy chairman of the Party was trying to flee the country, and his plane had crashed in Mongolia. Well, that was how it was reported in official documents. The villagers were not particularly surprised, and they all said that by looking at Lin Biao’s monkey face, one could tell he would come to a nasty end. What if he had been handsome? In that case, the villagers would have thought he should be emperor.
“There are some people who didn’t plunge to death.” Lu came out with this statement, then put down his drink. He could tell, Lu was angry and frustrated, but this statement was non-committal. Lu was experienced, and had been through political upheavals; it was not likely that he would tell him what was really on his mind. As for him, it would be unwise to jeopardize their relationship, because as long as Secretary Lu kept out of trouble, he, too, would be able to survive under his protective umbrella. Come on, drink some liquor to go with the dog meat. And stop worrying about whether it’s wild or domestic.
Lu got up and gave him a sheet of paper with a classical poem written on it. It followed the lüshi pattern for five-character lines, and expressed Lu’s joy over a certain person, Lin, plunging to his death. “Could you check if I’ve chosen words with the correct tones?”
This was probably why he had been asked to come. He thought about it for a while, suggested changing one or two words, then said he could find no other problems. He said he had a book on the patterns for lüshi poems and that he would have it sent over, so that Lu could use it as a reference.
“I grew up herding calves,” Lu said. “My family was poor and couldn’t afford to send me to school. I used to climb the tree by the village teacher’s window to listen to the young students reading their lessons aloud, and that was how I learned to recite Tang poetry. The old teacher saw that I was eager to learn, so he didn’t charge me tuition fees. From time to time, I would bring him a load of firewood, and whenever I had free time, I attended classes and learned to read. When I was fifteen, I shouldered a musket and went off to join the guerrillas.”
This whole stretch of mountains used to be the territory of Lu’s guerrilla band in those times, and, although now it was where he had been sent, without his being appointed, he was regarded as the secretary of all the newly reinstated Party secretaries by the communes all around. Lu lived here as a recluse. Lu told him he had enemies—of course, not the local armies belonging to landlords, rich peasants, and local tyrants; they were all suppressed a long time ago. They were “some people up there.” He did not know where “up there” was, or who the “some people” he referred to were, but, clearly, the cadres in the county town wouldn’t be able to get rid of Lu. Lu could defend himself any time, the grass matting under his pillow concealed a bayonet, and, in a wooden box under the bed, was a light machine gun, which was in good condition and polished to a shine. There was also an unopened crate of ammunition. All this was commune militia equipment, yet he was storing it in his room with impunity.
Was Lu waiting for an opportunity to win back political power? Whether he had taken these precautions in case troubles should erupt, it was hard to tell.
“In times of peace, the people who live on these mountains cultivate the land, but in times of chaos, they are bandits. Beheadings used to be common, and I grew up watching them. Back in those times, the bandits were bound, but they held their heads high as they stood waiting for the ax, and they wouldn’t so much as flinch. It’s done differently nowadays. Those to be shot have to kneel, and their necks are tied. The guerrillas were bandits!” Another startling statement came from Lu’s lips: “But we had the political objective of overthrowing the powerful tyrants and dividing up the land.”
Lu did not say that the land divided up now all belonged to the state, and that, while a small amount of grain was allocated to each person, any surplus had to be handed over to the state.
“What the guerrillas wanted was money and grain. They kidnapped for ransom and tore their victims apart. If, at the designated time and place, a ransom was not delivered, they carried out the same acts of cruelty as the bandits. Two young bamboo saplings, the size of a rice bowl in girth, were held down, as a leg of the victim was tied to each sapling. With a cheer, they would let go of the saplings, and the victim would be catapulted up and torn apart!”
Lu had never done this, but he had obviously seen it done, and he was educating this bookish person, him.
“You’re a bookish outsider. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s easy to get by and that it’s peaceful here, in these mountains! If you don’t put down roots, you won’t survive!”
Lu didn’t talk the bureaucratic talk of the petty cadres who were doing their best to get promoted, and he completely swept away any lingering childhood fantasies he had about the revolution. Could it be that Lu would someday need him, and had to make him equally cruel and ruthless so that he could serve as a helper when this mountain king made his comeback to power? Lu also talked about the pale-complexioned intellectuals from town, who joined the guerrillas.
“What do students know about revolution? What the old man said was right.” The “old man” he was referring to was Mao. “Political power comes from the barrel of a gun! Which of those generals and political commissars doesn’t have blood on his hands?”
He told Lu he could never be a general, he was terrified of fighting. He wanted to make this quite clear in advance.
Lu said, “If that was not the case, why else would you have fled to these mountains? But you must be on guard against being butchered.”
This was the law of survival and this was based on Lu’s experiences in life.
“Go to the town and do a social survey, say that I sent you. You won’t need an official letter, just say it’s a job I’ve given you. I want you to write up historical materials on the class struggle in this town. Just listen to what people say, but, of course, don’t completely believe what anyone tells you. You don’t need to ask about what’s currently happening because you won’t get any answers. Let people prattle on, it will be just like listening to a story, and everything will become clear to you. Earlier on, there was no motor-vehicle access into this area, it was a bandits’ hideout. Don’t think that because the metal worker kowtowed to you he will obey you. He was let off and he was grateful, but, put under pressure, he would chop you down in the dark from behind! That old woman with the limp, operating the hot-water urn on the street, did you think she had bound feet? Having bound feet was never the done thing in these mountains. After being kidnapped by guerrillas, the woman had her shoes stolen in the middle of winter, so all her toes froze off. But she was a woman, and, at least, her life was spared. This house belonged to her family. Her father was executed, and her eldest brother died on a prison farm. They say that her other sibling escaped overseas.”
He thus instructed you, and life, too, thus instructed you. As a result, the moral indignation and righteous anger imperceptibly rising from your residual feelings of sympathy and sense of justice were completely snuffed out.
“We’ve had too much to drink!” Lu said. “Tomorrow, when you wake up, come for a walk with me up to Nanshan. There used to be a temple on the mountain, but it was razed to the ground by Japanese bombs. The Japanese didn’t get there, they only got as far as the county town. The guerrillas had hidden on the mountain, so the Japanese could only bomb the temple on top. A monk had built the temple after the defeat of the Heavenly Kingdom of the Taipings, the Long Hairs. Hadn’t the bandits provided just the right environment for the rebellion of the Long Hairs? Still, the Long Hairs couldn’t compete with the imperial forces, and, when they lost, they fled to this mountain and became monks. There’s a broken tablet on the mountain. Some of the words are missing, but come and have a look at it.”
48
If one views the world through a lens, the world instantly changes, and even the ugliest things can become beautiful. You had an old camera, and, during those years in the countryside, it always went with you in
to the mountains. For you, it was another eye. You photographed scenes of the mountains, a mountain of bamboo swaying in the wind, green waves like a mass of feathers fixed on the negative as the shutter clicked. At night, you developed the film in your room, and, even though the color was lost, the brilliance of light in the contrasting of black and white was intriguing, as if it were a dream world. You were using expired movie film, a big two-hundred-meter spool, bought through a friend from a film studio before you left Beijing. For thirty yuan, it was virtually a gift. Back in those times, film studios only made news documentaries celebrating the revolution, and it was always with a jubilant fanfare of gongs and drums: the Great Leader inspects the Red Guards, the hydrogen bomb is successfully exploded, and acupuncture is used for anesthesia. Mao’s Thought brought victory after victory. By studying Mao’s Thought, patients underwent operations on their chests or stomachs, or Mount Everest was climbed and red flags fluttered on the rooftop of the world. The film studios had all gone over to using the overly reddish color film they had started producing in China, but you preferred black-and-white photographs, and could look at them endlessly, without tiring of them.
You looked at the colorless houses of the village, a gray-black roof and a pond in drizzling rain, a log bridge with a hen on it. You were especially fond of the hen. This black creature in front of your camera was pecking on the ground and had cocked its head to look around. Not knowing what a camera was, it stared right at it. Those shiny beady eyes were amazing, and you saw endless meanings in its cocked head and stare.
There was also a photograph of ruins. The insides of the buildings were overgrown with weeds, and the roofs had collapsed. It was a village that had died, and no one since had settled there; it had fallen into total decay and not a trace of the Great Leap Forward of that year remained. That year, all the grain harvested was handed over to the state, and the whole village, including the village Party secretary, was reduced to starving corpses. But the Party was dismissive, and had people put on guard at the county-town bus stop to prevent anyone sneaking in to beg for food. Anyway, the people in the town also had fixed grain rations, and the villagers would not have found anything to beg for. On this mountain, the bigger children all remembered digging up the roots of kudzu vines to fend off hunger; then, when they wanted to shit, having to bend over with their trousers off and getting smaller children to help them dig it out with twigs. The kudzu formed shit pellets that were as hard as rocks, and it was agony to take a shit. All this has been related by the students, and, of course, couldn’t be seen in the photograph, but the desolation that could be seen was beautiful. Viewed through the lens of a camera, even disasters could possess aesthetic qualities.
