Soul Mountain

by Gao Xingjian

  I think this is in fact the case and I cease to be shocked.

  He says that in the Daliang Mountains he met a Nationalist officer who said, “I am a graduate of the Huangpu Military Academy, of such and such a year and from such and such a class, I was field officer of such and such a unit, of such and such a division of the Nationalist Army.” He was taken prisoner by a chieftain forty years ago and made a slave. He escaped but was recaptured, taken in manacles to the marketplace, and sold to another slave owner for forty taels of silver. Afterwards when the Communist Party came, he already had slave status and no-one knew of his former background, so he escaped several political campaigns. It is only now when they are talking about cooperation between the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party that he has spoken about his past history. The county officials wanted to give him the title of committee member for political cooperation, but he declined.

  He’s already over seventy and has five children borne to him by the two slaves his master allocated him when he was a slave. He fathered nine children but four died. The man still lives in the mountains and doesn’t want to find out what happened to his former wife and children. He asks if I write fiction – he can give me the story for nothing.

  After dinner when I emerge from his house it is pitch-black in the little street. There are no street lights and between the eaves on both sides there is just a narrow strip of grey night sky. If it hadn’t been a market day during the daytime, Yi turbans and Miao headscarfs would be thronging the streets. There’s not much difference between this street and those of little towns elsewhere.

  On my way back to the hostel I pass the movie theatre. I don’t know if a film is in session right now but a bright light beams on the voluptuous breasts and seductive eyes on a poster. The film probably contains either “women” or “love” in the title. It’s still early and I don’t feel like going back to the empty room with four beds so I make a detour to the home of a friend I had made after coming here. He had studied archaeology at university and for some reason was sent here. I didn’t ask him about it and he couldn’t be bothered complaining, and simply said anyway he didn’t have a doctorate.

  According to him, the Yi people are mostly located in the delta regions of the Jinsha River and its tributary the Yagong River. Their earliest ancestors are the Qiang people. During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, when the slave system crumbled on the Central Plains, their ancestors gradually moved southwards and came here. Later, during the Warring States period, when the kingdoms of Qin and Chu went into battle and seized the territory of Qianzhong, the six ancestors divided into groups and moved further south to Yunnan. This is recorded in the ancient Yi text Record of the Yi in the South West and cannot be refuted. However, last year at Caohai he discovered over a hundred Palaeolithic stone artefacts. Later on, at the same site, he discovered Neolithic artefacts ground into shapes very similar to the stone artefacts unearthed at Hemudu in the lower reaches of the Yangtze. In the neighbouring county of Hezhang he also discovered an ancient site of a criss-cross style building. Hence he maintains that during the Neolithic period this place was connected with the culture of the ancestors of the White Yue people.

  Thinking I’d come to look at stone artefacts, he brings out a basketful of rocks from under his child’s bed. We look at one another and burst out laughing.

  “I didn’t come for rocks,” I say.

  “You’re right, there’s something more important than rocks, come, let’s have something to drink!” He immediately puts the basket into a corner behind the door and calls out to his wife, “Bring us some liquor!”

  I say I have just been drinking.

  He says, “It doesn’t matter, you can drink as much as you like, and then just bed down here!”

  He seems to be Sichuanese. His Sichuan accent draws me closer to him and I start talking with him in Sichuan dialect. His wife instantly prepares a few dishes which bring out the full richness of the liquor. He is in high spirits and begins to hold forth on various topics – from the dragon bones he’d bought from a fish hawker which turned out to be a stegodon fossil unearthed in the marsh at Caohai to how local cadres could hold a meeting for a whole morning to discuss whether or not to buy an abacus.

  “Before buying it, they had to scorch it to see if the beads were cow horn or dyed wood!”

  “To see if it was authentic!”

  He and I kill ourselves laughing until our bellies hurt. It is a wonderful, happy occasion.

  When I leave his home my feet feel a lightness which is rare for this high plateau. I know that I have had the right amount of liquor, I am at eight-tenths of my capacity. Afterwards I remember I forgot to take from the basket the stone axe which had once been used by the descendant of someone with the surname Yuan. At the time he had pointed to the basket behind the door and shouted, “Take as many as you like. These magical treasures are the legacies of our ancestors!”

  She says she’s afraid of rats, even hearing them running on the floorboards terrifies her. And she is afraid of snakes. There are snakes everywhere on this mountain, she’s afraid of spotted snakes slithering down from the rafters and getting into the bed, she wants you to hold her tight, she says she is afraid of the loneliness.

  She says she wants to hear your voice, that your voice is reassuring. And she wants to pillow her head on your arm, this gives her something to lean on. She wants to listen to you talking, go on talking, don’t stop talking, so that she will not feel lonely.

  She says she wants to hear you tell her stories, she wants to know how Second Master came to take possession of the girl abducted by the bandits on the river-bank outside her house. How did the girl submit to Second Master and become the bandit chief’s wife? Afterwards how did Second Master die by her hand?

  She says she doesn’t want to hear the story about the girl from the city who jumped into the river. Don’t talk about the bloated naked corpse pulled out of the water, she won’t think about suicide anymore, and she doesn’t want to hear the story about the ribs being stomped on and broken in the dragon lantern competition. She has seen too much blood in the operating theatre of the hospital. She says she wants to listen to interesting stories like the one about the zhuhuapo, but you mustn’t tell violent stories.

  She asks if you have done this with other girls. She isn’t asking about what sort of things you have done with other women but about tricking girls to come with you into the mountains, is she the first? You ask her to say but she says how would she know? You ask her to guess, she says she wouldn’t be able to guess and that even if you had you wouldn’t tell her. Also, she doesn’t want to know, she realizes she has come of her own volition, so if she has been tricked she has brought it upon herself. She says she wants nothing of you at this moment except that you understand her, care about her, love her.

  She says the first time she was penetrated, he was very rough. She isn’t talking about you but about that boyfriend of hers who didn’t care about her at all. At that time she was totally passive, demanded nothing, and felt no excitement at all. He had frantically pulled up her skirt . . . she had one foot against the floor all through it. He was utterly selfish, a swine who just wanted to rape her. Of course she had been willing. But it was very uncomfortable and he made her hurt awfully. She knew it would hurt, it was like fulfilling a duty, so that he would love her and marry her.

  She says when she did it with him, there was no ecstasy and that when she saw his semen running down her legs, she vomited. Afterwards, each time the smell would immediately make her want to vomit. She says she was purely something for him to discharge his lust into, and whenever that thing of his touched her she would feel disgusted with her own body.

  She says this is the first time she has ever indulged herself, the first time she has used her body to love a man. She did not vomit, she is grateful to you, grateful that you have given her this kind of joy. She says she will get her revenge on him like this, get revenge on that boyfriend of hers, she will tell
him she has slept with another man. A man a lot older than her, a man who knew how to enjoy her and in turn gave her enjoyment.

  She says she knew it would be like this, that she would let you enter her. And she knew all her defence stratagems had been to deceive herself. But why did she punish herself like that? Why didn’t she just enjoy it? She says you have given her life, given her hope, she wants to go on living, and once again has desire.

  She also says that as a child, her family had a dog which liked to nuzzle her with its wet nose to wake her up, sometimes it would even jump onto her bed. She loved putting her arms around this dog. Her mother who was still alive then, said that dogs had fleas and she wouldn’t let the dog into her bedroom. Once she had a red rash all over her body and her mother said she had been bitten by fleas from the dog. Afterwards people weren’t allowed to keep dogs in the city and when she wasn’t home the dog-catching squad took away the dog and killed it. She wept and didn’t eat dinner. She feels at the time she was very kind-hearted. She can’t understand why people in the world are so wicked. Why is there such lack of sympathy between people? She says she can’t understand why she is saying all this.

  You ask her to go on talking.

  She says she can’t understand why, it’s as if flood gates have opened and she can’t stop talking.

  You say she is doing very well.

  She says she never wants to grow up and yet she also wants to grow up. She wants to be loved, wants everyone to look at her, but she’s afraid of men’s looks. She thinks men’s looks are always salacious. When they look at someone they aren’t looking at the person’s beauty, they are looking at something else.

  You say you’re a man.

  You’re an exception, she says, you make her feel relaxed, she wants to be in your embrace.

  You ask if she thinks you are salacious.

  Don’t talk like that, she says. She doesn’t think you are, she likes you. Everything about you is so endearing, she says she now knows what it is to be living. But she says at times she is frightened and thinks life is a bottomless hole.

  She thinks no-one really loves her, and if no-one loves her what meaning is there to living? She says this is what really frightens her. But a man’s love is so selfish, they always want to possess you, but what do they give in return?

  Men do give, you say.

  But only what they want to.

  But don’t women also find men indispensable? You say it was Heaven’s will that joined the male and the female as the two parts of the grindstone, this is the innate nature of human beings. You say there’s no need to be afraid of anything.

  She says you’re getting her excited.

  You ask surely she is enjoying it?

  As long as it’s so natural, she says.

  Come, accept with all your body and heart. You arouse her.

  Ah, she says she wants to sing.

  You ask her what she wants to sing.

  To sing of you and me, she says.

  Sing whatever you like, you urge her to sing loudly.

  She wants you to caress her.

  You say you want her to abandon herself.

  She wants you to kiss her nipples . . .

  You are kissing her.

  She says she also loves your body, nothing of your body is frightening anymore. She will do whatever you want her to do, oh, she says she wants to see you enter her body.

  You say she has become a real woman.

  Yes, she says, a woman owned by a man, she says she doesn’t know what nonsense she’s talking, she says she has never enjoyed herself like this before, she says she’s drifting on a boat and doesn’t know where she’s drifting, she is no longer in control. Let it drift, on the black sea, she and you, no, there is only her, she’s not really afraid but she feels terribly empty, she wants to die, death is seductive, she wants to fall into the sea, let the black sea drown her, she needs you, the warmth of your body, even your oppressiveness gives her a sense of security, she asks if you’re aware of it, that she desperately needs!

  Need a man? You bait her.

  Yes, I need a man’s love, need to be owned. She says, yes, she longs to be owned, she wants to abandon herself, forget everything, ah, she is grateful to you, she was anxious the first time, yes, she says she wanted to, she knew she wanted to, but she panicked, didn’t know what to do, she wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she wanted to be carried away by a storm in the wilds, to be stripped naked by it, to be flailed with a branch until her flesh was torn apart, to succumb to the pain, to be ripped apart by wild animals! She says she saw her, that wanton woman dressed in black, fondling her own breasts, that smile on her face, the way she walked swinging her hips, a licentious woman, she says, you don’t understand, you don’t understand this, you don’t understand anything, you simpleton!

  I get on a bus from the Yi nationality district on the Yunnan-Guizhou border, arrive in Shuicheng, and spend most of the day waiting for the train. The station is some distance from the county town and the whole area is neither town nor farm villages and gives me a sense of instability. This is especially so when I see, in what looks like a street, this couplet: “If children are playing outside the window, the people inside and outside are safe.” It is pasted on the windowsill of an old house whose rafters and supports have gone black with age. I no longer seem to be walking forward but am returning to my childhood, moving backwards on my heels. It’s as if I haven’t gone through the war, haven’t gone through the revolution, haven’t gone through the endless sessions of struggle-meetings, haven’t gone through the criticisms and counter-criticisms and the about-turn but not quite about-turn reforms of the present. It’s as if my parents are not dead and I haven’t endured any sufferings. It is in fact before I have grown up and I am moved to the verge of tears.

  Afterwards, I sit myself down on a pile of logs which has been unloaded alongside the railway tracks to reflect on the happenings in my life. A woman about thirty or so who seems distressed comes up to me. She asks me to help her buy a train ticket. She probably knew I wasn’t a local when she heard me talking just now at the ticket window in the railway station. She tells me she wants to go to Beijing to file a lawsuit but doesn’t have the money for a ticket. I ask her what sort of lawsuit she intends to file. She talks at length without making it any clearer but it amounted to an unjust trial which had resulted in someone bringing about her husband’s death. Up to now no-one has accepted responsibility and she hasn’t received a cent of compensation. I give her one yuan and send her off, then go some distance further on to sit by the river where I spend several hours looking at the scenery on the opposite bank.

  Some time after eight o’clock at night I eventually arrive in Anshun. I must first get a locker to deposit my backpack which has become quite heavy. I have in it a Han Dynasty brick with a design on it. I came across it in Hezhang where peasants were constructing pig pens with bricks taken from the Han Dynasty tombs. The lights are on in the locker deposit window but there’s no-one there. After I knock on the window for some time, an attendant emerges, pins a ticket on my backpack, takes the money, puts the bag on an empty shelf, and goes inside again. The big waiting room is empty and it doesn’t look anything like a station. Stations usually have people noisily milling around, sitting on their haunches by walls, lying on benches, sitting on luggage, or just wandering about, and there are always people selling or re-selling things to make a bit of money. Leaving this deserted station, I hear my own footsteps.

  Dark grey clouds speed overhead but the night sky is bright. The high glow of sunset and the low dark clouds are richly coloured. Round mountains rise from the plains directly ahead. The tops of the mountains on this high plateau are like voluptuous breasts, but close up, they are huge and somewhat oppressive. I don’t know whether it’s because of the clouds speeding overhead but I have the sensation that the ground slopes and I have one long leg and one short leg . . . and I haven’t even been drinking! This night in Anshun gives me this odd
sort of feeling.

  I find a small inn opposite the railway station and in the semi-darkness I can’t make out how the building is constructed but the room is like a pigeon cage and my head seems to be touching the ceiling. It’s a room fit only for lying down.

  I go out onto the street which is lined with places to eat with tables on the pavement. There is a blaze of electric lights but strangely there are no customers about. It’s a crazy night and suddenly I am uneasy about eating here. However, at a square table some twenty or thirty metres away there are two customers, so I sit down at the table opposite and order a bowl of rice noodles with beef and chillies.

  The two men are both rather gaunt. One is guarding a pewter wine jar and the other has one foot on the bench. Each has a small patterned wine bowl in his hand but they don’t seem to have ordered any food. The ends of the single chopstick each holds touch and, in the same instant, one says “Dried prawns!” and the other says “Carrying pole!”. Neither wins and the chopsticks separate. They are playing “Execute Drinking Orders”. When both have psyched themselves up, the ends of the chopsticks meet again. One says “Carrying pole!” the other says “Dog!”. The pole hits the dog so the one who said dog loses. The winner takes the stopper off the wine jar and pours a little liquor into the small patterned wine bowl in the hand of his opponent. The loser drinks it in one gulp and the ends of the chopsticks touch again. Their slow and meticulous movements make me wonder if they aren’t immortals. However, looking carefully, I see that they are very ordinary people. Anyway, I expect immortals probably play “Execute Drinking Orders” just like this.