Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather

by Gao Xingjian

  Are we going to run into wolves?

  Mm.

  Are we going to run into black bears?

  Mm.

  Grandfather, have you ever killed a black bear?

  Grandfather grunts loudly but you can't tell whether it's a yes or no. I worshipped my grandfather because he had a shotgun, and it was really exciting when he filled his empty cartridges with gunpowder for it; I would pester him nonstop until he got cross. He seldom lost his temper, but once he did. He stamped his feet and yelled at me in a loud voice, Go away! Go away! I went inside, then suddenly heard an explosion. I was frightened and almost crawled under the bed, but finally I peeked out the door and saw that one of my grandfather's hands was covered with blood; his other hand was frantically wiping his face, which was all black. He was hurt, but he didn't cry.

  Grandfather, are you also going to shoot a tiger?

  Stop talking so much!

  It was only after I grew up that I learned that real hunters don't talk much. My grandfather's hunting friends probably talked all the time, and that's why they didn't ever shoot anything; they also kept my grandfather, who didn't talk much, from shooting anything. When my grandfather was young, he came upon a tiger; it was in the mountains, not in a zoo. This happened in his old home, which was also my father's home, so it was my home, too. Back then, there were thick forests, but one time I passed my old home in a bus while on a work assignment. There were only bare brown slopes, and even the mountains had been turned into terraced fields. Those fields were once forests. The tiger looked at my grandfather and walked away. On television they say that in south China tigers have been extinct for more than ten years, except for those in zoos. Not only has no one ever shot a tiger in the wild, no one has even seen one. In the northeast there are still tigers: the experts estimate that there are at most a hundred of them. It's not known where they've hidden, and hunters would count themselves lucky if they saw one.

  Grandfather, when you saw the tiger were you scared?

  Bad people scare me, not tigers.

  Grandfather, have you ever run into bad people?

  There aren't many tigers but lots of bad people, only you can't shoot people.

  But they're bad!

  You can't tell right away whether they're good or bad.

  What about when you can tell, can you shoot them then?

  You would be breaking the law.

  But aren't bad people breaking the law?

  The law can't control bad people, because bad people are bad in their hearts.

  But they do bad things!

  You can't always be sure.

  Grandfather, do we have far to go?

  Mm.

  Grandfather, I can't walk anymore.

  Just grit your teeth and keep walking.

  Grandfather, my teeth are falling out.

  You bad boy, stand up!

  Grandfather gets down on his haunches and the naked child climbs onto his back. With the boy on his back, he totters a step at a time in the sand, his feet turned outward. The boy whoops with joy and kicks his little feet, as if spurring on an old horse. You watch your grandfather's back gradually recede into the distance and sink behind a dune. Then there is only you and the wind.

  Voller has three of his team protecting him. Their solid bodies form a barrier, and it won't be easy to take the ball from him. At the edge of the sand, a line of yellow smoke rises, and like an invisible hand it brushes the big dune into a roll of unfurling silk. You are in a desert. It is a dry sea to the horizon, burning red, still as death. You seem to be flying in a plane over the great Taklamakan Desert. The towering mountain range looks like the skeleton of a fish. The vast mountains will certainly be swallowed up in this burning, dry sea, yet in March the Taklamakan can be extremely cold. Those few blue circles are probably frozen lakes and the white edges are shallow beaches. The dark green spots that look like the eyes of dead fish are where the water is deep. In the second half of the match everyone can see that West Germany has stepped up its attack and is in the lead. Argentina will have to strengthen its defense; everything depends on how they counterattack and take advantage of gaps in the other side. Good kick! Valdano has the ball and he scores! There is no wind, just the gentle rocking of the motor. Outside the cabin window, there seems to be no horizon. The Taklamakan looms up diagonally in so straight a line that it could only be replicated on a blueprint; it divides the window into two. Following the line of vision and direction of flight, it moves clockwise from 0:50 to 1:20 or 1:30. At the end of the needle is a dead city. Is it the ancient city of Loulan? The ruins are right below and you can see the collapsed walls. The palaces have all lost their domes: here the ancient cultures of Persia and China once fused, then sank into the desert. Look everyone! Argentina is making a rapid counterattack and the other side can't keep up. Argentina scores a goal. In fifty-one matches in the series 127 goals were scored, and if you count the penalties in extra time, 148. In today's match, there were 2 more goals. Not counting the penalties in extra time, the 128th and 129th goals have been kicked. Now Maradona has the ball. Shifting sands and the ball. With is a loud howl, yellow shifting sand slowly forms a mound, then trickles down in waves – waves that rise, fall, and ripple outward, like breathing, like singing. Who is singing with a kind of sobbing under the shifting sands? You want desperately to dig it out, the sound right below your feet. You want to make a hole to let out this sound tinged with sadness, but as soon as you touch it, it twists and bores downward, refusing to come up. It's like an eel, and you catch only what seems to be a slimy tail that you can't hold on to. You dig furiously with both hands into the sand. On the riverbank you had to dig only a foot deep and water would percolate up – cool, pure, sparkling river water – but now there is just cold grit. You put your hand into it and feel a tingling sensation, then touch something sharp and cut your finger, although it doesn't bleed. You are determined to find out what it is. You dig and scrape and finally pull up a dead fish. The head was pointing down and it's the tail that cut you. Stiff and hard, the fish is as dry as the river: mouth clamped shut, eyeballs shriveled. You prod it, squeeze it, step on it, throw it, but it doesn't make a sound. It is the sand that makes a noise, not the fish, and it whispers to mock you. The dead fish, stiff in the blazing sun, sticks up its tail. You look away, but its round eye continues to stare at you. You walk off, hoping that the wind and sand will bury it. You won't dig it up again. Let it never see the daylight; let it stay buried in the sand. Burruchaga is offside, loses a great opportunity, and the defense kicks the ball out. In the second half Argentina gets a third corner but West Germany takes it, goes for a goal, and scores! At the twenty-seventh minute Rummenigge kicks it right at Maradona. The score is 1-2, and everyone sees Maradona taking his team toward the goal -

  Grandfather, can you kick a soccer ball?

  It's the soccer ball that's kicking your grandfather.

  Who are you talking with?

  You're talking with yourself, with the child you once were.

  That boy without clothes?

  A naked soul.

  Do you have a soul?

  I hope so. Otherwise this world would be too lonely.

  Are you lonely?

  In this world, yes.

  What other world is there?

  That inner world of yours that others can't see.

  Do you have an inner world?

  I hope so. It's only there that you can really be yourself.

  Maradona is taking the ball past everyone. There's a goal! Whose is it? The score is 2- 2, a draw for the first time. Doves of peace soar in the stadium. Seventeen minutes to the end of the match: time enough to have a dream. They say it only takes an instant to have a dream; a dream can be compressed into hardtack. I've eaten hardtack, dried fish in a plastic bag – without scales, eyes, or pointy tails that can cut your fingers. In this lifetime you can't go exploring in Loulan, you can only sit in a plane and hover in the air above the ancient city, drinking the beer served
by the stewardess. The sound in your ears is music, eight channels on the armrest. Screeching rock and roll or a husky mezzo-soprano purring like a cat. Looking down at the ruins of Loulan, you find yourself lying on a beach; the fine sand flowing through your fingers forms a dune. At the bottom of the dune lies the dead fish that cut your finger without drawing blood. Fish blood and human blood have an odor, but dried fish can't bleed. Ignoring the pain in your finger, you dig hard and uncover a collapsed wall. It's the wall of the courtyard of your childhood. Behind it was a date tree, and once you sneaked off with your grandfather's fishing rod to knock down dates that you shared with her.

  She walks out of the ruins and you follow, wanting to be sure that it is the girl with whom you had shared the dates. You can only see her back. Excited, you pursue her. She walks like a light gust of wind, but you can never catch up. Maradona is looking for a path, a path where none exists, and the other team watches him closely. He takes a fall, charges on, and now they are trying for a goal. It's in! You give a loud yell, and she turns around. It's the face of a woman you don't want to recognize. There are wrinkles on her cheeks, eyes, and forehead: a flabby old face without any color. You find it painful to keep looking. Should you smile? A smile might mock her, so you grimace, and of course it's not a pleasant sight.

  Alone in the middle of the ruins of Loulan, you look around. You make out the brick room in the courtyard with the gate screen depicting Good Fortune, Prosperity, Longevity, and Happiness. It is where Blackie used to sleep and where my grandfather kept his little iron bucket for the worms: it is my grandfather's room. Before the wall collapsed, my grandfather's shotgun hung on it. That should be the passageway leading to the back courtyard, to Zaowa's home. Staring at me without blinking is a wolf crouched in the window frame of the collapsed wall of the back courtyard. This does not come as a surprise. I know that in the wilderness there is often little sign of human settlement, only wolves. But these crumbling walls around me are crawling with wolves. They have taken over the ruins. Don't look back, my grandfather once told me. A person attacked from behind in the wilderness must never look around. If he does, Zhang the Third will tear out his jugular.

  I am scared stiff: these crouching Zhang the Thirds, treacherous bastards that attack from behind, are going to pounce, but I mustn't show that I'm frightened. The cunning animal at the window frame stands up like a person, resting its head on its right forepaw and watching me out of the corner of its left eye. All around, the wolves loudly smack their long tongues; they are losing patience. I recall how it was when my grandfather, as a young man, came face-to-face with a tiger in the paddy fields of his old home. Had he started to run, the tiger would have pounced and made a meal of him. However, I can neither retreat nor go forward, and can only bend quietly to feel in the earth with my hand. I find my grandfather's shotgun. Without hesitation, I raise the shotgun and slowly level it at the wolf before me. I must be like an experienced marksman, must not give them reason to think otherwise, must shoot them dead one at a time, not allowing my feet to get confused. I will start by shooting the wolf at the window, then turn left in a circle. Between each shot, I must work everything out in my mind. I can't hesitate or be careless. There were 132 goals in the 13th World Cup competition. The match is over; Argentina has beaten West Germany 3-2 and is the winner of the World Cup. I pull the trigger, and just as with the cornstalk shotgun my grandfather made for me when I was a child, the trigger breaks. The wolves roar with laughter, hooting and guffawing. Joyful shouts crash like waves at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, each wave higher. I am embarrassed, but I know that the danger has passed. These Zhang the Thirds are only people dressed as wolves, playacting. Look, the players have been surrounded like heroes and are being lifted over everyone's heads. They're protecting Maradona, and he is saying, "Let me kiss all the children of the world." I hear my wife talking, and her aunt and uncle, who have come from far away. The soccer match, broadcast from early morning, is finished. I should get up to see if that ten-piece fiberglass fishing rod that I bought for my grandfather, who died long ago, is still on top of the toilet tank.

  18 July1986, Beijing

  IN AN INSTANT

  He is alone, with his back to the sea, sitting in a canvas deck chair on the beach. There's a strong wind. The sky is very bright, without a trace of any cloud, and in the dazzling sunlight reflected against the sea, his face can't be seen clearly.

  Big iron doors wet and streaked with rust, water from the top somewhere keeps dripping. The thick, heavy doors slowly open to either side and the gap in the middle widens. Police car sirens can be heard. Through the gap in the doors are towering buildings that block off the sun. One police car after another, and the nonstop sound of sirens.

  In the dark passageway of the hall is a woman's back. Without switching on the light, she puts on an overcoat, hesitates, and puts her hand on the knob. She quietly opens the door and goes out. The knob turns softly and clicks as the door shuts.

  The warm sun makes him drowsy. He closes his book, leans back in the chair, and puts on sunglasses: the two round lenses screen his eyes from the sunlight. Afterward, he covers his face with a broad-brimmed black hat, and he can hear nothing but the noisy waves of the sea.

  The tide surges onto the beach, but before it can recede, the sand soaks it up with a long hiss, so that all that is left is a line of yellowish froth.

  His arms, hanging down, start to itch. Ants – first one, then one after another – are crawling up his arms.

  She says when she made love with two men in front of the fire, it was very exciting. She is lying across the bed with her head to one side, eyes closed, outside the circle of light. The light is shining only on her long hair, and on her underwear and panty hose on the floor.

  He senses the tide swelling. The seawater surges around the legs of the chair, swirls around, then recedes. An old tune fills the air. Beautiful and sad, it is like the wailing of a peasant woman at a funeral, and yet like the sobbing of a reed pipe.

  She moves her ankles to kick off her shoes and bends to put on a new pair. A shoe with the heel worn to the quick lies discarded at the side of the passageway near the door.

  A poster with a black-and-white photograph shows just the lower half of a woman holding up her long skirt and revealing her beautiful legs. She is standing on her toes. This is another advertisement for shoes, posted on the wall of the platform in the subway station. An old woman with a big empty bag is standing on the platform, a middle-aged man sitting on a bench is reading a newspaper. The train comes; some doors open and some don't. The people getting off head for the exit, and no one so much as looks at the advertisement. With his back turned, he is the only person left on the platform, and as others start to arrive, that back departs.

  The legs of the deck chair are already immersed in the lapping water and the sea keeps rising. That sad tune is still playing, but it has become somewhat vague and sounds more like a reed pipe.

  She says she wants a man twice her weight to bear down on her. In the dark she is lying on the bed, her eyes wide open. He is sitting at the desk, bare-chested, and without turning he asks if she will cope. She says she loves being squashed until she can't breathe and, having said this, she laughs. Doo – it's the computer.

  The tune becomes louder and louder, yet more vague as well. It sounds like the wind tearing the paper used for windows, but with the grating of grains of sand mixed in. The tune becomes more vague, yet still hurts the ears a little. The sea has risen to the seat of the deck chair and it is swaying.

  He is sitting at the computer with a cigarette in his mouth. A long sentence appears on the screen. "What" is not to understand and "what" is to understand or not is not to understand that even when "what" is understood, it is not understood, for "what" is to understand and "what" is not to understand, "what" is "what" and "is not" is "is not," and so is not to understand not wanting to understand or simply not understanding why "what" needs to be understood or whether "what" can
be understood, and also it is not understood whether "what" is really not understood or that it simply hasn't been rendered so that it can be understood or is really understood but that there is a pretense not to understand or a refusal to try to understand or is pretending to want to understand yet deliberately not understanding or actually trying unsuccessfully to understand, then so what if it's not understood and if it's not understood, then why go to all this trouble of wanting to understand it -

  A white-nosed clown in a circus troupe is playing an accordion, pulling and squeezing, pulling and pulling, squeezing and squeezing. He pulls the accordion out fully, gives a hard jerk, breaks the sound box, and the music instantly stops.

  In the air, there is only the sound of the wind, the noisy waves of the sea, and the brilliant sunlight.

  The ash on the cigarette is about to drop and, flicking it into the ashtray, he deletes each of the words of the uncompleted sentence one at a time.

  A pair of hands shuffles a pile of mah-jongg tiles, takes one, feels it; it's a "middle," then there's a "develop," and a "white," and these are put in the sequence "middle" "develop" "white." Next to be picked up are "develop" "middle" "white" "develop" "middle" "white" "east" "develop" "middle" "wind" "north" "east" "south" "wind" "west" "north" "bamboo no. 2" – he pushes over the tiles and starts shuffling them again.

  "Tell me a story!" He turns around and the table lamp shines on the back of his head, and in the dark, on the bed, he sees her naked body curled up like a fish.

  An empty chair is floating serenely on the water, as ripples of light are reflected on the waves. The sound of the tide can't be heard; only a long note vibrates in the air, sustained and monotonous.

  A small boy is leaning on a wall, weeping and wailing, but there is no sound. The stone wall is covered with everlasting spring creeper and the sun is shining halfway up the wall.

  On the clipped green lawn an elderly man wearing trousers with suspenders and a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar is pulling a length of rope. It is strenuous, but he is relaxed and unhurried.