Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather

by Gao Xingjian

  "He didn't do it deliberately…"

  "If this had happened to anyone, they would…"

  "The man had a child with him? What happened to the child? What happened to the child?" someone who has just arrived asks.

  "The child wasn't hurt, it was very lucky."

  "Luckily the child was saved."

  "The man was killed!"

  "Were they father and child?"

  "Why did he have to hook a buggy to his bicycle? It's hard enough not to have an accident even with just one person on a bicycle."

  "And he'd just picked up the child from kindergarten to take home."

  "Kindergartens are hopeless, they won't let you leave children for a whole day!"

  "You're lucky if you can get into one."

  "What's there to look at! From now on, if you run without looking across the road – " A big hand drags away a child who is trying to squeeze between people in the crowd.

  The Hong Kong star has stopped singing. People are crowded on the steps of the radio repair shop.

  Red lights flashing, the ambulance has arrived. As medical personnel in white carry the body to the ambulance, the people in doorways of all the shops stand on their toes. The fat cook wearing an apron from a small eatery nearby has also come out to watch.

  "What happened? Was there an accident? Was someone killed?"

  "It was father and son, one of them is dead."

  "Which of them died?"

  "The old man!"

  "What about the son?"

  "Unhurt."

  "That's shocking! Why didn't he pull his father out of the way?"

  "It was the father who had pushed his son out of the way!"

  "Each generation is getting worse, the man was wasting his time bringing up the son!"

  "If you don't know what happened, then don't crap on."

  "Who's crapping on?"

  "I wasn't trying to start an argument with you."

  "The child was carried away."

  "Was there a small child as well?"

  Others have just arrived.

  "Do you mind not shoving?"

  "Did I shove you?"

  "What's there to look at? Move on! Everyone move on!"

  On the outer fringes of the crowd people are being arrested. Traffic security personnel with red armbands have arrived and they are more savage than the police.

  The driver, who is pushed into the police car, turns and tries to struggle, but the door shuts. People start to walk away and others get on their bicycles and leave. The onlookers thin out, but people keep arriving, stopping their bicycles or coming down off the pavement. The second trolley bus leads a long line of sedans, vans, jeeps, and big limousines slowly past the buggy with the torn red-and-blue checkered shade in the gutter on this side of the road. Most of the people standing on shop steps have either gone inside or left, and the long stream of cars has passed. At the center of what has become a small crowd in the middle of the road, two policemen are taking measurements with a tape measure, while another makes notes in a little notebook. The blood under the wheels of the bus has begun to congeal and is turning black. In the trolley bus with its doors open, the conductress sits by a window staring blankly across to this side of the street. On the other side of the street, the faces in the windows of an approaching trolley bus look out and some people even poke their heads out. People have finished work: it is peak traffic time, and there are even more pedestrians and people riding bicycles. However, shouts from the police and traffic security personnel stop people from going to the middle of the road.

  "Was there an accident?"

  "Was someone killed?"

  "Must have been, look at all that blood."

  "The day before, there was an accident on Jiankang Road. A sixteen-year-old was taken to the hospital, but they couldn't save him – they said he was an only son."

  "Nowadays, whose family doesn't have only one son?"

  "Ai, how will the parents survive?"

  "If traffic management isn't improved, there'll be more accidents!"

  "Well, there won't be any fewer."

  "Every day after school, I worry until my Jiming gets home…"

  "It's easier for you with your son – daughters are more worry to parents."

  "Look, look, they're taking photographs."

  "So what if they are, it's not going to help."

  "Did he deliberately run over the man?"

  "Who knows?"

  "It couldn't have been attached, otherwise it would have been hit for sure."

  "I was just passing by."

  "Some drivers drive like maniacs, and aggressively. If you don't get out of the way, they certainly won't make way for you!"

  "There are people who work off their frustrations by killing people, so anyone could be a victim."

  "It's hard to guard against such occurrences, it's all decided by fate. In my old village there was a carpenter. He was good at his trade but he liked to drink. Once he was building someone a house and, on his way home at night, rotten drunk, he tripped and cracked his head open on a sharp rock…"

  "For some reason, the past couple of days my eyelid has been twitching."

  "Which one?"

  "When you're walking you shouldn't be so engrossed in thought all the time. Quite a few times I've seen you…"

  "Nothing's ever happened."

  "If something had, it'd be too late and I wouldn't be able to bear it."

  "Stop it! People are looking at us…"

  The lovers look at one another and, holding each other's hands even more tightly, walk off.

  They finish taking photographs of the scene of the accident, and the policeman with the tape measure takes a shovelful of dirt and spreads it over the blood. The wind has died down completely and it is getting dark. The conductress sitting by the window of the trolley bus has put on the lights and is counting the takings from the tickets. A policeman carries the wreckage of the bicycle on his shoulder to the car. Two men with red armbands get the buggy from the gutter, put it into the car, and leave with the policemen.

  It is time for dinner. The conductress is left standing at the door of the trolley bus and looks around impatiently while waiting for the depot to send a driver. Passersby only occasionally glance at the empty bus stopped for some reason in the middle of the road. It is dark and no one notices the blood covered with dirt in front of the bus that can no longer be seen.

  Afterward, the streetlights come on and at some time the empty bus has driven off. Cars speed endlessly on the road again and it is as if nothing has happened. By around midnight hardly anyone is about. A street -washing truck slowly approaches from the intersection some way off where traffic lights flash from time to time next to an iron railing with a blue poster. There is a row of words in white: for your own safety and that of others, please observe traffic rules. At the spot where the accident had occurred, the truck slows down and, turning on its high-speed sprinkler jets, flushes clean any remaining traces of blood.

  The road cleaners don't necessarily know that a few hours ago an accident had occurred and that the unfortunate victim had died right here. But who is the deceased? In this city of several million, only the man's family and some close friends would know him. And if the dead man wasn't carrying identification papers, right now they might not even know about the accident. The man probably was the child's father, and when the child calms down, it will probably be able to say the father's name. In that case, the man must have a wife. He was doing what the child's mother should have been doing, so he was a good father and a good husband. As he loved his child, presumably he also loved his wife, but did his wife love him? If she loved him, why wasn't she able to carry out her duties as his wife? Maybe he had a miserable life, otherwise why was he so distracted? Could it have been a personal failing and he was always indecisive? Maybe something was troubling him, something he couldn't resolve, and he was destined not to escape this even greater misfortune. However, he wouldn't have encountered
this disaster if he had set out a little later or a little earlier. Or, if after picking up the child he had pedaled faster or slower, or if the woman at the kindergarten had spoken longer to him about his child, or if on the way a friend had stopped him to talk. It was unavoidable. He didn't have some terminal illness but was just waiting to die. Death is inescapable for everyone, but premature death can be avoided. So if he hadn't died in the accident, how would he have died? Traffic accidents in this city are inevitable, there are no cities free of traffic accidents. In every city there is inevitably this probability, even if the daily average is one in a million; and in a big city of this size there will always be someone encountering this sort of misfortune. He was one such unfortunate person. Didn't he have a premonition before it happened? When he finally encountered this misfortune what did he think? Probably he didn't have time to think, didn't have time to comprehend the great misfortune that was about to befall him. For him, there could be no greater misfortune than this. Even if he was that one in a million, like a grain of sand, before dying he had clearly thought of the child. Supposing it was his child, wasn't it noble of him to sacrifice himself? Maybe it was not purely noble but to a certain extent instinctual, the instinct of being a father. People only talk about a mother's instinct, but there are some mothers who abandon their babies. To have sacrificed himself for the child was indeed noble, but this sacrifice was entirely avoidable: if he had set out a little later or earlier, if at the time he had not been preoccupied, and if he were more resolute by nature, or even if he were more agile in his movements. The sum total of all these factors had hastened his death, so this misfortune was inevitable. I have been discussing philosophy again, but life is not philosophy, even if philosophy can derive from knowledge of life. And there is no need to turn life's traffic accidents into statistics, because that's a job for the traffic department or the public security department. Of course a traffic accident can serve as an item for a newspaper. And it can serve as the raw material for literature when it is supplemented by the imagination and written up as a moving narrative: this would then be creation. However, what is related here is simply the process of this traffic accident itself, a traffic accident that occurred at five o'clock, in the central section of Desheng Avenue in front of the radio repair shop.

  BUYING A FISHING ROD FOR MY GRANDFATHER

  I walk past a new shop that sells fishing equipment. The different fishing rods on display make me think of my grandfather, and I want to buy him one. There's a ten-piece fiberglass rod labeled "imported," though it's not clear if it's the whole rod that's imported or just the fiberglass, nor is it clear how being imported makes any of it better. All ten pieces overlap and probably retract into the last black tube, at the end of which is a handle like a pistol's and a reel. It looks like an elongated revolver, like one of those Mausers that used to be in fashion. My grandfather certainly never saw a Mauser, and he never saw a fishing rod like this even in his dreams. His rods were bamboo, and he definitely wouldn't have bought one. He'd find a length of bamboo and straighten it over a fire, cooking the sweat on his hands as he turned the bamboo brown with the smoke. It ended up looking like an old rod that had caught fish over many generations.

  My grandfather also made nets. A small net had about ten thousand knots, and day and night he would tie them nonstop. He'd move his lips while he knotted, as if counting or praying. This was hard, much harder work for him than the knitting my mother did. I don't recall his ever having caught a decent-sized fish in a net; at most, they were an inch long and only worth feeding to the cat.

  I remember being a child, things that happened when I was a child. I remember that if my grandfather heard someone was going to the provincial capital, he would be sure to ask the person to bring back fishing hooks for him, as if fish could only be caught with hooks bought in the big city. I also remember his mumbling that the rods sold in the city had reels. After casting the line, you could relax and have a smoke as you waited for the bell on the rod to tinkle. He wanted one of those so he'd have his hands free to roll his cigarettes. My grandfather didn't smoke ready-rolled cigarettes. He ridiculed them as paper smokes and said they were more grass than tobacco, that they hardly tasted of tobacco. I would watch his gnarled fingers rub a dried tobacco leaf into shreds. Then all he had to do was tear off a piece of newspaper, roll the tobacco in it, and give it a lick. He called it rolling a cannon. That tobacco was really powerful, so powerful it made my grandfather cough, but that didn't keep him from rolling it. The cigarettes people gave him as presents he would give to my grandmother.

  I remember that I broke my grandfather's favorite fishing rod when I fell. He was going fishing, and I had volunteered to carry the rod. I had it on my shoulder as I ran on ahead. I wasn't careful, and when I fell, the rod caught in the window of a house. My grandfather almost wept as he stroked the broken fishing rod. It was just like when my grandmother stroked her cracked bamboo mat. That mat of finely woven bamboo had been slept on for many years in our home and was a dark red color, like the fishing rod. Although she slept on it, she wouldn't let me sleep on it, and said if I did, I'd get diarrhea. She said the mat could be folded, so in secret I folded it, but as soon as I did, it cracked. I didn't dare tell her, of course, I only said I didn't believe it could be folded. But she insisted that it was made of black bamboo and that black bamboo mats could be folded. I didn't want to argue because she was getting old and I felt sorry for her. If she said it could be folded, then it could, but where I folded it, it cracked. Every summer the crack grew longer, and she kept waiting for a mat mender to come; she waited many years, but no mender came. I told her people didn't do this sort of work anymore and that she'd had the mat so long, she might as well buy a new one, but my grandmother didn't see it that way and always said the older, the better. It was like her: the older she got, the kinder she became and the more she had to say, by repeating herself. My grandfather wasn't like that: the older he got, the less he had to say and the thinner he became, until he was like a shadow, coming and going without a sound. But at night he coughed, and once he started, he couldn't stop, and I was afraid that one day he wouldn't be able to catch his breath. Still, he kept on smoking until his face and fingernails were the color of his tobacco, and he himself was like a dried tobacco leaf, thin and brittle, and it worried me that if he wasn't careful and bumped into something, he might break into little pieces.

  My grandfather didn't just fish; he also loved to hunt. He once owned a well-greased shotgun made out of steel tubing. To make the shotgun was a lot to ask of anyone, and it took him half a year to find someone who would do it. I don't recall his bringing home anything except for a rabbit. He came in and threw a huge brown rabbit onto the kitchen floor. Then he took off his shoes, asked my grandmother to fetch hot water so he could soak his feet, and immediately started rubbing some tobacco he'd taken from his pouch. Wild with excitement, I hovered around the dead rabbit with our watchdog, Blackie. Unexpectedly my mother came in and started yelling. Why didn't you get rid of that rabbit like I told you to? Why did you have to buy yourself that shotgun? My grandfather muttered something, and my mother started yelling again. If you must eat rabbit, ask the butcher to skin it before you bring it into the house! My grandfather seemed very old then. After my mother left, he said German steel was good, as if with a shotgun made of German steel he could shoot something more than rabbits.

  In the hills not far from the city, he told me, there used to be wolves, especially when the grass started to grow in the spring. Crazed with hunger after starving all winter, the wolves came into the villages and stole piglets, attacked cows, and even ate young cowherd girls. Once they ate a girl and left only her pigtails. If only he'd had a German shotgun then. But he wasn't able to keep even the shotgun he'd had made locally from steel tubing. In the book-burning era of the Cultural Revolution they called it a lethal weapon and confiscated it. He sat on a little wooden stool just staring ahead without saying a word. Whenever I thought about this, I felt
sorry for the old man and dearly wanted to buy him a genuine German-made shotgun. I didn't, but I once saw a double-barreled shotgun in a sporting goods store. They told me I would need a letter of introduction from the highest-level sports committee in the province as well as a certificate from the public security office before they could sell it. So it was clear that I would be able to buy my grandfather only a fishing rod. Of course I also know that even with this imported ten-piece fiberglass fishing rod he won't catch anything, because our old home turned into a sandy hollow many years ago.

  There used to be a lake not far from our home on Nanhu Road. When I attended primary school, I often passed the lake, but by the time I started junior secondary school, it had turned into a foul pond that produced only mosquitoes. Later, there was a health campaign and the pond was filled in. Our village also had a river. As I recall, it was in an area far from town, and when I was a child, I went there only a couple of times. Once when my grandfather came to visit, he told me that the river had dried up when a dam was built upriver. Even so, I want to buy him a fishing rod. It's hard to explain, and I'm not going to try. It's simply something that I want to do. For me the fishing rod is my grandfather and my grandfather is the fishing rod.

  I step into the street shouldering a fishing rod with all its black fiberglass pieces fully extended. I can feel everyone looking at me and I don't like it. I'd like to get on a bus, where I won't be noticed as much, but I can't get the rod to retract. I hate it when people stare at me. Shy since childhood, I am uncomfortable in new clothes, and being dressed up is like standing in a display window; but it's worse carrying this long, swaying, shiny fishing rod. If I walk fast the rod sways more, so I go slow, parading down the street with the rod on my shoulder, feeling as if I've split my trousers or I can't zip up my fly.

  Of course I know that people in the city who go fishing are not after fish. The men who buy tickets to fish in the parks are out for leisure and freedom. It's an excuse to escape from home, to get away from the wife and children, and to get a little peace. Fishing is now regarded as a sport, and there are competitions with divisions according to the type of rod used; the evening newspapers rate the sport highly and carry the results. Fishing spots and party venues are designated, but there are no signs of any fish. No wonder skeptics say that the night before the competitions, people from the fishing committee come to put fish into nets, and that's what the sportsmen catch. As I am carrying a brand-new rod on my shoulder, people must think I'm one of those fishing enthusiasts. But I know what it will mean to my old grandfather. I can already see him. So hunched over that he can't straighten his back, he is carrying his little bucket of worms. It is riddled with rust and bits of dirt are falling out of it. I should visit my old home to get over my homesickness.