Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather

by Gao Xingjian

  Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather

  Gao Xingjian

  From China 's first-ever winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature comes an exquisite new book of fictions, none of which has ever been published before in English. A young couple on honeymoon visit a beautiful temple up in the mountains, and spend the day intoxicated by the tranquillity of the setting; a swimmer is paralysed by a sudden cramp and finds himself stranded far out to sea on a cold autumn day; a man reminisces about his beloved grandfather, who used to make his own fishing rods from lengths of crooked bamboo straightened over a fire! Blending the crisp immediacy of the present moment with the soft afterglow of memory and nostalgia, these stories hum with simplicity and wisdom – and will delight anyone who loved Gao's bestselling novels, Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible.

  ***

  These six stories by Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian transport the reader to moments where the fragility of love and life, and the haunting power of memory, are beautifully unveiled. In "The Temple," the narrator's acute and mysterious anxiety overshadows the delirious happiness of an outing with his new wife on their honeymoon. In "The Cramp," a man narrowly escapes drowning in the sea, only to find that no one even noticed his absence. In the title story, the narrator attempts to relieve his homesickness only to find that he is lost in a labyrinth of childhood memories.

  Everywhere in this collection are powerful psychological portraits of characters whose unarticulated hopes and fears betray the never-ending presence of the past in their present lives.

  ***

  "Beautiful… Suffused with the melancholy of nostalgia." – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  "[Gao's] narrators walk as if in a dream through a private landscape of memory and sensation." – Boston Globe

  "Precisely detailed and delicately suggestive: the best work of Gao's yet to appear in English translation." – Kirkus Reviews

  "Beautiful." – Village Voice

  "These spare, evocative pieces… offer a sample of Nobel-winner Gao's sharp, poetic early work." – Publishers Weekly

  "Observant… For variety of content, stylistic experimentation, graceful language, and poignant insight, Xingjian is a writer who does it all beautifully." – Booklist

  Gao Xingjian

  Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather

  Gao Xingjian (Gāo Xíngjiàn; Wade-Giles: Kao Hsing-chien)

  THE TEMPLE

  We were deliriously happy: delirious with the hope, infatuation, tenderness, and warmth that go with a honeymoon. Fangfang and I had planned the trip over and over, even though we had only half a month off: ten days of wedding leave, plus one week of additional work leave. Getting married is a major event in life, and for us nothing was more important, so why not ask for some extra time? That director of mine was so miserly: anyone who went to him requesting leave had to haggle; there were never instant approvals. The two weeks I had written in my application he changed to one week, including a Sunday, and it was with reluctance that he said, "I'll expect you to be back at work by the due date."

  "Of course, of course," I said. "We wouldn't be able to afford the salary deduction if we stayed any longer." It was only then that he signed his name, thereby granting us permission to go on leave.

  I wasn't a bachelor anymore. I had a family. I would no longer be able to go off to restaurants with friends as soon as I got paid at the beginning of the month. I wouldn't be able to spend so recklessly that by the end of the month I wouldn't have the money to buy a pack of cigarettes and would have to go through my pockets and search the drawers for coins. But I won't go into all that. I'm saying that I – we – were very happy. In our short lives, there hadn't been much happiness. Both Fangfang and I had experienced years of hardship, and we had learned what life was all about. During those catastrophic years in this country, our families suffered through many misfortunes, and to some extent we still resented our generation's fate. But I won't go into that, either. What was important was that we could now count ourselves happy.

  We had half a month's leave, and although it was only half a honeymoon, for us it couldn't have been sweeter. I am not going to go into how sweet it was. You all know about that and have experienced it yourselves, but this particular sweetness was ours alone. What I want to tell you about is the Temple of Perfect Benevolence: "perfect" as in "perfect union," and "benevolence" as in "benevolent love." But the name of the temple is not really of great importance. It was a dilapidated ruin, and certainly not a famous tourist attraction. No one knew about it other than the locals, and I suspect that even the locals who knew what it was called were few. In any case, the temple we happened to visit wasn't one where people burned incense or prayed, and if we hadn't carefully examined the stone tablet with traces of writing in the drain of the water pump we wouldn't even have known that the temple had a name. The locals referred to it as "the big temple," but it was nothing compared with the Retreat for the Soul Temple, in Hangzhou, or the Jade Cloud Temple, in Beijing. Situated on a hill beyond the town, it was little more than an old two-story building with flying eaves and the remnants of a stone gate in front of it. The courtyard walls had collapsed. The bricks of the outer wall had been carried off by peasants to build their houses or construct pens for their pigs, and only a circle of unfired bricks remained, overgrown with weeds.

  However, from a distance, from the small street of the county town, the glazed yellow tiles sparkling in the sunlight caught our eyes. We had come to this town quite by accident. Our train was still at the platform after the announced departure time, probably waiting for an express that was behind schedule to pass through. The chaotic scramble of passengers getting on and off had settled and, apart from the conductors chatting at the carriage doors, there was no one on the platform. Beyond the station was a valley with an expanse of gray roofs. Farther still, a chain of heavily wooded mountains gave this ancient town an exceptional air of tranquillity.

  Suddenly I had an idea. I said, "Should we take a look at this town?"

  Fangfang, sitting opposite and looking at me lovingly, gave a slight nod. Her eyes seemed to speak, and, sensitive to each other, we communicated on the same wavelength. Without a word, we took our bags from the luggage rack and rushed to the door of our carriage. As soon as we had jumped onto the platform, we both laughed.

  I said, "We'll leave on the next train."

  "I don't mind if we don't leave at all," Fangfang answered.

  After all, we were traveling, and it was our honeymoon. If we fell in love with a place, we would go there, and if we went on liking the place, we would stay longer. All the time, wherever we went, the happiness of newlyweds accompanied us. We were the happiest people in the world. Fang-fang was holding my arm; I was holding our bags. We wanted the conductors on the platform and the countless pairs of eyes on the other side of the train windows to look at us with envy.

  We no longer had to drive ourselves mad trying to get transferred back to the city. Nor did we have to keep begging our parents for help. And we didn't have to worry about our residential status or our jobs anymore. We even had our own apartment, our own home; it wasn't very big, but it was comfortable. You belonged to me and I belonged to you, and, Fangfang, I know what you want to say: Our relationship was no longer immoral! And what does that mean? It means that we want everyone to share in our happiness. We've had so many problems, and we've troubled all of you with them, and you have all worried because of us. How can we repay you? With some candies and cigarettes after our wedding? No, we are repaying you with our happiness. There's nothing wrong with what I'm saying, is there?

  That was how we came to this quiet old town in the valley. But it
turned out that the town was nowhere near as tranquil as it had seemed when we were looking out the train window. Below the gray roof tiles, the lanes and alleys throbbed with activity. It was nine in the morning, and people were selling vegetables, rock melons, and freshly picked apples and pears. Streets in county towns like this one aren't wide, so mule carts, horse carts, and trucks were all jammed together, with drivers cracking their whips and honking their horns. Dust filling the air, dirty water tossed out beside vegetable stalls, melon rinds all over the ground, squawking hens flapping in the hands of their buyers: these were sights that made us feel close to the town.

  It all felt so different from the time when we were graduates sent to work in the countryside. Now we were just visitors passing through, tourists, and the complicated relationships between the people here had nothing to do with us. Inevitably, this made us city dwellers feel somewhat superior. Fangfang clutched my arm tightly and I leaned close to her, and we could sense people's eyes on us. But we didn't belong to this town; we were from another world. We walked right past them, but they didn't gossip about us; they only gossiped about the people they knew.

  Eventually, there were no more vegetable stalls and very few people. We had left behind the bustle and din of the market. I saw from my watch that it had taken us only a half hour to walk the length of the main road from the railway station. It was still early. It would be an anticlimax just to return to the station and wait for the next train, and Fang-fang was already thinking about spending the night here!

  She didn't say so, but I could see her disappointment. A man was heading toward us, ostentatiously swinging his arms as he walked. He was probably a cadre.

  "Excuse me, could you tell me how to get to the county hostel?" I asked.

  He looked at Fangfang and me for a moment, then enthusiastically pointed it out to us. "Go that way," he told us, "then head left. The red three-story brick building is the county hostel." He asked whom we were looking for, and seemed to want to take us there himself. We explained that we were tourists passing through and asked if there were any sights worth seeing. He patted his head: this, it seemed, was a problem.

  After giving the matter some thought, he said, "There actually aren't any scenic spots in this county. But there's a big temple up on the hill to the west of town, if you want to go there. You'll have to climb the hill, though, and it's steep!"

  "That's not a problem. We've come here to do some hiking," I said.

  Fangfang hastened to add, "That's right. We're not afraid of climbing a hill."

  At this, the man led us to the corner of the street. The hill was now directly in front, and at the top was the old temple, its glazed tiles sparkling in the sun.

  But then the man glanced at the high-heeled shoes Fangfang was wearing and said, "You'll have to wade across a river."

  "Is the water deep?" I asked.

  "Above the knees."

  I looked at Fangfang.

  "That's nothing. I'll manage." She didn't want to let me down.

  We thanked him and began walking in the direction he had indicated. When we turned onto the dusty dirt road, I couldn't help but feel bad as I looked at the new high-heeled shoes with thin straps that Fangfang had on. Still, she charged ahead.

  "You're really a crazy little thing," I said, catching up with her.

  "As long as I'm with you." Do you remember, Fang-fang? You said this as you nestled against me.

  We followed a path down to the riverbank. On both sides, corn grew straight, taller than a man, and we walked through the green gauze canopy, with no one in sight either ahead or behind. Taking Fangfang in my arms, I gently kissed her. What's wrong with that? She doesn't want me to talk about that. So let's go back to the Temple of Perfect Benevolence. It was on the other side of the river, at the top of the hill. We could see tufts of weeds growing between the glistening yellow tiles.

  The river was clear and cool. I held Fangfang's shoes and my leather sandals in one hand and Fangfang's hand in the other, while she scooped up her skirt with her free hand. Barefoot, we felt our way across. It had been a long time since I'd walked barefoot, so my feet were sensitive to even the smooth stones on the riverbed.

  "Is it hurting your feet?" I asked Fangfang.

  "I like it," you replied softly. On our honeymoon, even having sore feet was a happy sensation. All the misfortunes of the world seemed to flow away with the river water, and we returned for a moment to our youth. We frolicked in the water like mischievous children.

  As I steadied her with one hand, Fangfang leaped from rock to rock, and from time to time she hummed a song. Once across the river, we started to run up the hill, laughing and shouting. Then Fangfang cut her foot and I was very upset, but she comforted me, saying that it was all right, it would be nothing as soon as she put on her shoes. I said that it was my fault, but she replied that she'd do anything to make me happy, even let her feet get cut. All right, all right, I won't go on about it. But because you are the friends we value most, who have shared our anxieties with us, we should also share our happiness with you.

  It was in this manner that we finally climbed to the top of the hill and arrived at the outer gate in front of the temple. Within the collapsed courtyard wall was a gutter with pure water from the pump running through. In what had been the courtyard, someone had planted a patch of vegetables, and next to that was a manure pit. We recalled the years we had spent shoveling manure with production units in the countryside. Those difficult times had trickled away like water, leaving some sadness but sweet memories as well. And there was our love, too. In the glorious sunlight, no one could interfere with this secure love of ours. No one would be able to harm us again.

  Near the big temple was an iron incense burner. It was probably too heavy to move and too thick to break apart, so it continued to keep the old temple company, standing guard in front of the main door. The door was padlocked. Boards had been nailed over the rotten wooden lattice windows, but they, too, had rotted. The place was probably now being used as a storehouse for the local production team.

  No one else was around, and it was very peaceful. We could hear the mountain wind moaning in the ancient pines in front of the temple, and as no one was there to disturb us, we lay down on the grass in the shade of the trees. Fang-fang rested her head on my arm, and we looked up at a thread of cloud about to disappear into the blue sky. Ours was an indescribable happiness, a true contentment.

  Intoxicated by this tranquillity, we would have gone on lying there, but we heard heavy footsteps on the flagstones. Fangfang sat up, and I got to my feet to have a look. A man was walking along the stone path from the gate toward the temple. He was a big fellow, with a mass of tangled hair on his head and an untrimmed beard covering his cheeks. He was scowling. From beneath bushy eyebrows, his stern eyes surveyed us. The wind had turned cool. Probably noticing our curious looks, the man raised his head slightly in the direction of the temple. Then, squinting, he studied the weeds swaying among the shiny tiles.

  He stopped in front of the incense burner and, striking it with one hand, made it ring. His fingers, gnarled and rough, looked as if they, too, were made of cast iron. In his other hand he held a tattered black cotton bag. He didn't seem to be a commune member who had come to tend the vegetables. He was sizing us up again, looking at Fang-fang's high-heeled shoes and our travel bags in the grass. Fangfang immediately put her shoes back on. Then, unexpectedly, he addressed us.

  "Are you from out of town? Are you enjoying yourselves here?"

  I nodded.

  "It's good weather," he said. He seemed to want to talk.

  The eyes under those thick eyebrows had become less stern, and he appeared well meaning. He was wearing leather shoes with soles made from rubber tires, and the seams had split in places. The legs of his trousers were wet, so it was obvious he had come across the river from town.

  "It's cool, and the view is quite beautiful," I said.

  "Sit down. I'll be leaving shortly."

>   It seemed that he was offering a kind of apology. He, too, sat down on the grass beside the flagstones.

  He opened his bag and said, "Would you like a melon?"

  "No, thanks," I immediately said. But he threw me one anyway. I caught it and was about to throw it back.

  "It's nothing. I've got half a bag of them here," he said, raising the heavy bag to show me and taking out another melon as he spoke. I couldn't say no, so I took a parcel of snacks from my travel bag, opened it, and held it out to him. "Try our snacks," I said.

  He took a small piece of cake and put it on top of his bag.

  "That's enough for me," he said. "Go on, eat it." He squeezed the melon in his big hands, cracking the brittle skin. "They're clean. I washed them in the river." He tossed away a piece of rind and shouted in the direction of the gate, "Take a break! Come and eat some melon!"

  "But there are long-horned grasshoppers here!" A boy's voice came from beyond the gate; then the boy himself appeared on the slope, holding a wire cage.

  "There are plenty of them. I'll catch some for you later," the man replied.

  The little boy came toward us, bouncing and jumping as he ran.

  "Is it school vacation?" I asked, and, copying the man, cracked our melon into pieces.

  "It's Sunday today, so I brought him out," he replied.

  We were so engrossed with our own holiday that we had forgotten what day of the week it was. Fangfang took a bite of the melon and smiled at me to indicate that he was a good man. There are, in fact, many good people in the world.

  "Eat it. It's from Uncle and Auntie over there," he said to the boy, who was staring at the cream cake on top of his bag. The boy had grown up in this town and had clearly never seen such a cake. He took it and ate it right away.

  "Is he your son?" I asked.

  The man didn't reply, but said to the boy, "Take some melon and go play. I'll catch grasshoppers for you later."