One Man’s Bible

by Gao Xingjian

  After hesitating for a few days, he eventually spoke to Secretary Lu and asked him to do something for Sun Huirong.

  “Her mother has already come to me,” Lu said. “The girl has had the abortion, a contact in a county hospital was found, and her mother took her to have it done. The matter has been dealt with, and there is no need for you to be involved.”

  “But she is not yet an adult—” he tried to argue.

  “Don’t get involved!” Lu interrupted him, then followed with a stern warning, “There are very complicated relationships among the villagers. Does an outsider like you want to go on living here?”

  This silenced him but it made it clear that he was merely eking out an existence under the protection of Lu.

  “I’ve already taken care of the girl, I’ve sent her to another commune. When the affair cools down, in a year or so, and things have settled down, she will be given the merit points she needs for a work permit. Her mother has already agreed to it.”

  What else could he say? It was all a transaction, generations have rolled in this mud, what else can they do? For better or worse, this place had accepted him, and he had to comply, but he understood that he would always be an outsider.

  51

  Unlike Margarethe, Sylvie was bored when you spoke to her about these past happenings. She was not interested in your past. She was interested in herself, her love, her feelings, and she kept changing from one minute to the next. If you said more than three sentences to her about politics, she would cut you short. Race did not bother her, and her lovers were mostly foreigners, an Arab from North Africa, an Irishman, a quarter-Jewish Hungarian, a Jew from Israel, and, recently, you—if you counted as a lover. She said she preferred you as a friend rather than as a sex partner. Of course, there had also been French boyfriends or sex partners, but she said she wanted to get away from France, to go somewhere far away, to some place in the tropics like Indonesia or the Philippines, even Australia. She liked sunbathing, so she went to a sunny beach by the sea to start a new life, but fell into the same old trap again. She got pregnant by a boyfriend, not you, of course, and had her third abortion. At first, she wanted to have the baby, a woman had to give birth at least once, should she have it or not? The guy couldn’t come out with a definite answer, and, in a fit of anger, she had it aborted. It was only later that the man said if you don’t want an abortion then have the child. He wanted it! But wouldn’t that have meant she would have had to take care of it? It wasn’t a matter of her not wanting a child, she first needed a stable home, and she hadn’t yet found the right sort of man, so she was anxious. Her anxiety was deep-seated, but it was an anxiety caused by a conflict between freedom and restriction that everyone had. In other words, what were the limits of freedom? She didn’t have a money problem, because her parents had bought her a small apartment on the sixth floor at the top of a building. Outside the window were the red tiles of rooftops with chimneys, and beyond the rooftops, in the distance, was the pointed spire of a church. Paris was intoxicating, but on a rainy day it was sad, and there, in her apartment, you could only think of making love.

  Saying that her anxiety was deep-seated didn’t mean she couldn’t find a man she could love and who loved her, she certainly didn’t lack men. The men all loved her, at least for a certain period, and even after they had found someone else, they would still come from time to time. She said she wasn’t a slut, and she reminded you with those very words. She wanted to do something meaningful, or, to put it more precisely, something interesting. She referred to artistic creation as being akin to giving birth. She wanted a child she could put body and soul into, even a spiritual child, and that was at the crux of her problem. But what was worth putting one’s body and soul into? To be frank, only love. Yet being able to manage love was difficult, and not something determined by her alone.

  When you fucked her, or she got you to fuck her, she put everything into it. But with you, once you were satisfied, that was it, and she was left feeling compromised. Of course, there were plenty of men who were good at making love, but the problem was she didn’t love them all that much. What she was searching for was the ultimate in both love and sexual excitement. But that was an ideal, what people dreamed about, utopia. She was aware of this, but it made her sad, profoundly sad, it was the profound sadness of being human, an eternal sadness that could never be dispelled.

  She appreciated art the way she loved men, but she could not apply herself to the creation of art. That would mean sacrificing oneself to one’s work, and she thought that was stupid. She was not so stupid as to sacrifice herself for art. She wanted to live artistically, but not to be an art object for the enjoyment of others. However, she was just that, she had an abundance of youthful feminine attraction, few men could resist her, but she was not a toy for men. It was the opposite, she enjoyed men, she believed that love had to be enjoyed to be worthwhile, but love often brought her disappointment.

  You could not resolve matters for her, but thought you understood her, and, striving to overcome your jealousy, told her to go and enjoy the man she loved! Like the Devil teaching Eve to seduce, you were the snake. But she didn’t need you to teach her, she already knew, she knew long ago how to seduce and be seduced. She was much younger than you were when you were just struggling for your basic right to exist as an individual. At the age when you had not yet tasted the forbidden fruit, she was already satiated by its bitter aftertaste. At the age when you were an idiot, or striving not to be an idiot, she was already overly clever. She could not tolerate the slightest suffering unless it was for her own masochistic pleasure; she would accept suffering only if it gave her pleasure.

  But don’t think she was a feminist. She, like you, had no “isms,” and when there was talk about feminism, she would purse her lips. You did not dare recklessly voice an opinion about feminism. You have never personally experienced male oppression, and only a woman could understand the suffering this brought, and the significance of resisting it.

  In any case, Sylvie wasn’t a feminist. She most definitely was not a feminist, and she said she could, in fact, be a very good wife. She could spend a wonderful sleepless night with you, be up early, and have coffee and toast made for you. Barefoot, she would bring these on a tray to you in bed. She would sit cross-legged in front of you, and be happy just watching you enjoy it. Her smiling face would beam like the sun shining into the room with the curtains open, and she would show no sign of weariness after being up all night. At such times, she would be a lovely girl, or, more accurately, a little woman with a beaming face. That is, if she was in a good mood.

  But if her anxiety flared up, you wouldn’t be able to do anything right, and all your glib talk wouldn’t be able to placate her. So, you knew you could not marry her, the two of you could only be lovers, possibly lifelong friends. According to her, the two of you could not be partners, and this depressed you. Therefore, her severe anxiety also severely affected you, but you could do nothing about it.

  You were afraid that she might commit suicide, like her friend Martina. The week before Martina died they recorded a conversation. There was an old, pocket-sized tape recorder on the table, and it was on while they were drinking and talking. Martina had put it on, but Sylvie didn’t know until she saw that the little red light was on and the tape was turning, and she asked, “Are you recording?”

  On the tape, Martina’s speech was slurred. She had been drinking all afternoon, and, when Sylvie arrived, there were already quite a few empty beer bottles on the table. Martina often just drank beer instead of eating and drinking water. She started laughing loudly, and her voice on the tape was hoarse. Sylvie said this woman friend of hers used to have a good voice, a natural mezzo-soprano, and, before she was admitted to the psychiatric hospital, she had been a reserve member of a choir. Once, when she sang Fauré’s Requiem at Saint-Germain Church, it was recorded by the France-Musique radio program and played on the air.

  You never met Martina. She died some month
s before you met Sylvie. The only thing she left Sylvie was this small cassette tape, and, in the second half, the battery had almost run out as the tape was being recorded. Their voices were muffled and barely audible, and Martina’s hoarse voice really sounded like a man’s.

  At the beginning, there wasn’t anything serious. “Have a drink?”—“All right.”—“I’ve also got half a bottle of red wine.”—“Won’t it have gone off?”—“No, it was only opened yesterday. . . .” After that, there was the sound of glasses, then some scratching noises, probably the table was being wiped. Sylvie said Martina’s home was a filthy mess, and there was nowhere to set your foot down. But it was only like that after she came out of the psychiatric hospital, it hadn’t been like that before. Martina said she hated the psychiatric hospital and hated her mother; it was her mother who had put her there. The tape also said that she came across this man on the street and took him home. Afterward, there were the two of them laughing, the high-pitched laugh was Sylvie’s and the throaty one was Martina’s. They laughed for a long time, and then there was the sound of glasses again. “What happened?” It was Sylvie asking. “Did I throw him out? He hung around until the afternoon of the next day, but was scared off after I said I’d call the police.” There was the sound of laughing again.

  “How old was she when she died?” you ask Sylvie.

  “She was older than me . . . by nine years, she was over thirty-eight when she died.”

  “That’s young. Was she ever married?” you ask.

  “No, the two of them lived together, then separated.”

  “How did she die?”

  “I don’t know, her mother phoned me four days after she died and said she had this tape. When I asked for it, her mother wouldn’t agree at first. I told her it had my voice on it and that I wanted it as a keepsake.”

  “Didn’t you ask her mother about it? How she had died?”

  “Her mother wouldn’t say much, except that she had committed suicide. She refused to see me, even though she knew me. Anyway, she sent the tape; Martina, of course, had my address in her phone book.”

  She showed you a photograph of Martina, a young woman with gentle eyes and clearly defined lips. Her mouth was wide-open, and she was laughing. Probably because of her makeup, her eyes looked more deep-set than Sylvie’s pale-brown eyes. It was taken the summer when they were traveling in Spain together, almost ten years ago. At Martina’s side was a lean man with deep-set eyes and a black stubble, Vincent. At the time, he was living with Martina. They had a small van and had taken along her and Jean, the good-looking young man behind Sylvie’s head. Sylvie had just started university, and Jean was two years older. Jean said Sylvie was his first real lover, and she preferred to believe him. But she knew that he’d had such experiences before, of course, sexual experiences. She showed you another album, there was a photograph of Martina taken a year before she died. The corners of her lips drooped, and she looked like an old woman. Sylvie said Martina looked much better in person, that she had the sensuousness of a mature woman, a sad weariness.

  It was hard for her to describe her feelings for Martina. They used to talk about everything, although, for a few years, they had avoided one another. It was after returning from Spain that she hated her, Sylvie said, she hated Martina. She and Jean had taken a tent with them, and one night it started pouring rain. They were totally wretched, and it was impossible for them to sleep, so Martina got them to come into the van. At first, Sylvie and Jean sat in the front and slept leaning against one another. Martina got her to come into the back, to sleep next to her, but then proceeded to make love to Vincent. Sylvie felt uncomfortable and pretended to be asleep. Afterward, Martina climbed into the front and left her sleeping with Vincent, she was half-asleep, and it was raining heavily outside. As it was just starting to become light, she heard Martina doing it with Jean; next, Vincent had put his hand into her clothes, and she and Vincent started doing it. The rain pelting down on the roof of the van had turned everything into a vast rustling chaos, and it all seemed so very natural. The next day, they took a room in a hotel, and Vincent requested an additional bed for the room. Martina gleefully gave the big bed to Vincent and her, she didn’t object, and Jean didn’t say anything. The first time she heard Jean call out while making love, she, too, called out. It was then that she started to engage in oral sex.

  Life is like that. Martina and Vincent split up, she didn’t love the man anyway. She never asked how long Martina had continued with Jean, but she herself no longer loved Jean, she wasn’t interested in what he was doing, she already had another boyfriend.

  “Do you want to go on listening?” she asks with a sarcastic look on her face.

  She also said she wondered if Martina had already made up her mind to commit suicide when she was making that recording with her. And why hadn’t she spoken to her about it? She no longer resented Martina for having killed herself, that had passed a long time ago, she was no longer sickened by feelings of disillusionment and anger. Was it Martina’s own rotten idea, or was it a trap Vincent had set? If it was a trap, Maritna had jumped into it herself, she hated no one. Martina had savored both the intoxication and the bitterness of life, for her guilt and ecstasy were above ethics. It was impossible for Sylvie to describe her feelings for Martina, yet it was only Martina in whom she could fully confide.

  “Men don’t understand, men aren’t capable of understanding. Don’t go misconstruing the feelings between two women.” She said she wasn’t a lesbian, that with Martina there was never what all you men imagine, she knew what you were thinking. But she could tell you that she had a sort of longing for Martina. She knew why she had killed herself; she didn’t have a mental problem, but her family insisted on her being treated for a mental disorder. It was because of the family’s reputation, her mother couldn’t allow her daughter to be a slut. But she wasn’t a whore, she never was. It was just that no one could understand her, people just were not willing to try and understand her.

  52

  “The people are victorious!”

  This had been announced on all the walls in Tiananmen Square. However, the victory was not the people’s, it was still the Party’s, the Party had smashed yet another anti-Party organization. Less than one month after Mao’s death, his widow, Jiang Qing, had been arrested, and the people had been summoned to Tiananmen Square to celebrate the victory. The Party is forever right! Forever glorious! And everlasting, because it was still Mao Zedong who was sleeping peacefully in a crystal coffin for people to view.

  After a deluge of old cadres were exonerated, reinstated, and promoted, some cadres he had once protected, especially Comrade Wang Qi, had given some thought to old friends, and he, this insignificant person, was brought back to Beijing. It was on that old narrow street in Dashanlan, beyond Qianmen, that he ran into Big Li, who, back then, had been in the rebel Red Guards with him. During the military-control period, Big Li was interrogated in isolation for over two years, then put into a mental institution for two or three years before being released. Big Li recognized him and grabbed him with his big hands, very strong hands, and looked at him gleefully. The people in his former workplace said he had gone crazy, and that whenever he saw anyone, he would just laugh, and this was exactly how he was. They were blocking the footpath of the narrow street, and people were bumping and knocking into them, but Big Li hung onto him and wouldn’t let go, all the time with this silly smile on his face. Unable to keep looking at him, he made some idle conversation, then pulled his arms free and hurried off.

  After the disbanding of the Army Control Commission, Danian was handcuffed and arrested for committing “wrong-line errors.” He was interrogated by the new army officer, and, afterward, declared his crimes at a public meeting: two people had died by his own hands. In the case of Old Liu, he got together a few thugs at night, and, in the underground room of the workplace building, had tortured him to extract a confession. They had used rubber-coated electrical cables on him, and had pulve
rized his internal organs. Afterward, they carried him upstairs and threw him out of a window to make it look like a case of suicide. The other person killed by similar tactics was a Chinese woman who had returned from abroad. She was given electric-shock treatment, to extract a confession. A transformer with the voltage turned down had been used to get her to confess into a tape recorder that she had been sent by a Taiwanese spy organization. She was forced to give the names of the people she had recruited as well as the people in the upper and lower ranks of the spy organization. The names supplied enabled them to proceed with purging cadres in the opposition faction. The former army officer who had taken part in all this was arrested at the same time.

  Wang Qi’s husband, who had formerly been denounced as an anti-Party black element, was useful again, and, reinstated in the central apparatus of the Party, now took part in the investigation and punishment of new cases of anti-Party organizations. Wang Qi was promoted, but was the same as before, and seemed to be even kinder. During the army-control period, she, too, had been interrogated in isolation and kept in solitary confinement in a small room of a warehouse for half a year. The hundred-watt globe in the ceiling was kept on day and night. The light switch was outside, and the window had been nailed with cardboard from the outside, with no gaps, so she didn’t know if it was day or night. She had to write testimonies over and over on the underground student movement in Beijing, known in those days as Beiping. She said she was disoriented and, if she shut her eyes, she would feel that she was hanging by the feet and spinning upside down. Nevertheless, she said she had been treated leniently and had not been subjected to physical abuse or humiliation. This was probably because she was old, and also because some of her old comrades still held important positions in the army and, to some extent, they had looked after her.