Soul Mountain

by Gao Xingjian

  You also recall that you once lived in a courtyard complex with a round gateway. Yellow chrysanthemums and crimson cockscombs grew in the courtyard and perhaps because of these flowers it was always bright and sunny. There was a little gate at the back of the courtyard and behind it, at the bottom of the stone steps, was the lake. On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival the grown-ups opened the gate and laid out a table with moon cakes and melon seeds and, with the lake before them, they admired the moon as they ate and drank. A bright full moon hung in the sky over the deep, serene, far side of the lake while in the lake its elongated reflection wobbled. One night you passed by there on your own and pulled open the bolt: you were terrified by the lonely deep waters of the lake, its beauty was too deep, more than a child could bear, and you ran away as fast as you could. Thereafter, whenever you passed by the gate at night you were always very careful and did not again ever dare to touch the bolt.

  You also recall that you once lived in a house with a garden but you can only remember the patterned brick floor of your big downstairs room on which you used to play marbles. Your mother wouldn’t let you play in the garden. You were sick and spent much of your time in bed and could only play in your room with your box of marbles. When your mother wasn’t home you would stand on the bed and, holding onto the windowsill, look at the colourful flags on the steamers and on the wharf. There were always strong winds blowing along the Yangtze.

  You revisit these old places but find nothing. The rubble heap in front of the small two-storey building is not there, nor is the heavy black door with the metal ring-latch, nor even the quiet little lane in front of the house, and certainly not the courtyard compound with the carved screen. Probably that place has already been turned into a bitumen road heavy with traffic – trucks with full loads honking their horns and sending up dust and ice-block wrappers, and long distance buses with missing windows carrying on the roof an assortment of bags of local products, clothing and foodstuffs to be resold elsewhere – and itself covered in melon seed husks and chewed up sugar cane spat from bus windows. There is no moss, no round gateway, no yellow chrysanthemums or crimson cockscombs, no elongated moon in the lake, nor terrifying stillness and loneliness. Instead, there are only the same standard red brick buildings with economy-coke stoves lining narrow corridors like sentries at the door of each apartment. Along the banks of the Yangtze the noisy flapping of flags in the wind can no longer be heard. Instead there are only warehouses, warehouses, warehouses, silos, warehouses, silos, cement in tough paper bags, chemical fertilizer in thick plastic bags and loud shouting or singing blaring from speakers.

  You wander in a daze like this from city to city, county town to district capital then to provincial capital, then from another provincial capital to another district capital, then one county town after another. Afterwards you pass through a certain district capital then return to a particular provincial capital. Sometimes, in some small lane which city planners had missed, or couldn’t be bothered with, or had no intention of doing anything about, or which they couldn’t do anything about even if they wanted to, you suddenly see an old house with the door open, and you stop there and to look into the courtyard where clothes are drying on bamboo poles. It is as if you have only to enter and you will return to your childhood and those dim memories will be resurrected.

  When you go in you discover that wherever you go it is possible to find remnants of your childhood. Ponds with floating duckweed, small town wineshops, windows of upstairs rooms overhanging the street, arched stone bridges, canopied boats passing under arched bridges, stone steps at back doors of houses leading to a river, and a dried up old well are all linked to your childhood memories and evoke irrepressible sadness, and it doesn’t matter whether or not you had actually stayed in these places as a child. The old slate-roof houses in a small seaside town and the little square tables outside where people sit drinking cold tea arouses this homesickness of yours. The tomb of Lu Guimeng of the Tang Dynasty, probably containing nothing but his clothes and headwear, is a grave covered with creepers and wild hemp in the back courtyard of some anonymous old school next to fields and a few old trees, yet the slanting rays of the afternoon sun are stained with your inexplicable grief. The lonely compounds in the Yi districts and the wooden houses on pylons of the remote Miao stockades halfway up mountains, which you had never dreamed about, are telling you something. You can’t help wondering whether you have another life, that you have retained some memories of a previous existence, or that these places will be your refuge in a future existence. Could it be that these memories are like liquor and after fermentation will produce a pure and fragrant concoction which will intoxicate you again?

  What in fact are childhood memories? How can they be verified? Just keep them in your heart, why do you insist on verifying them?

  You realize that the childhood you have been searching for doesn’t necessarily have a definite location. And isn’t it the same with one’s so-called hometown? It’s no wonder that blue chimney smoke drifting over roof-tiles of houses in little towns, bellows groaning in front of wood stoves, those translucent rice-coloured little insects with short forelegs and long hind-legs, the campfires and the mud-sealed wood-pail beehives hanging on the walls of the houses of mountain people, all evoke this homesickness of yours and have become the hometown of your dreams.

  Although you were born in the city, grew up in cities and spent the larger part of your life in some huge urban metropolis, you can’t make that huge urban metropolis the hometown of your heart. Perhaps, because it is so huge that within it at most you can only find in a particular place, in a particular corner, in a particular room, in a particular instant, some memories which belong purely to yourself, and it is only in such memories that you can preserve yourself fully. In the end, in this vast ocean of humanity you are at most only a spoonful of green seawater, insignificant and fragile.

  You should know that there is little you can seek in this world, that there is no need for you to be so greedy, in the end all you can achieve are memories, hazy, intangible, dreamlike memories which are impossible to articulate. When you try to relate them, there are only sentences, the dregs left from the filter of linguistic structures.

  I arrive in this bustling city ablaze with lights, streets full of pedestrians and an endless stream of traffic. At the change of traffic signals, like sluice gates opening, there is a surging tide of bicycles. And there are also the T-shirts, neon lights, and advertisements sporting beautiful women.

  I had planned to find myself a reasonable hotel near the train station so that I could have a hot bath, eat a decent meal, spoil myself a bit and then have a good sleep to recover from the accumulated weariness of the past ten days. I go from street to street but all the single rooms of the hotels are taken: it seems people are better off and are intent on having a room to themselves. As I have made up my mind to be extravagant tonight and refuse to sleep in a big shared room stinking of sweat or in a corridor with an added bed which must be vacated and dismantled at daybreak, I have no choice but to wait in a hotel lobby for people catching the night train to vacate their rooms. It is all very annoying. I suddenly remember I’ve got a phone number of a good friend of an old friend in Beijing who said that if I passed through I should feel free to contact this person.

  I decide to give it a try. The person who answers is curt and tells me to wait. I never like making phone calls, first I don’t have my own private phone and second I know that some people in positions which entitle them to have a phone installed at home often use this tactic on strangers who phone up, then when the other party gets impatient they say the person’s not in or just hang up. Only a few of my friends have their own telephones, so this friend of my friend must be an official. I’m not prejudiced against all officials, I haven’t got to the stage of giving up on human society but for me the phone lacks human feeling and I wouldn’t use it except under exceptional circumstances. I’m still waiting. Even if I hang up I’ll still have to
go on waiting in the hotel lobby so I may as well keep listening. Whatever the outcome it’s one way of passing time.

  A unfriendly voice eventually answers, questions me, then calls out in surprise and asks where I am. He says he will come right away to fetch me. He is indeed the good friend of my old friend who didn’t know me before but indeed acknowledges this friendship anyway. I instantly give up the idea of staying at the hotel, ask him what number bus to take, pick up my bag and leave.

  As I knock on the door I feel a bit anxious. The owner of the house opens the door, relieves me of my bags and, without shaking my hand or showing any formality, leads me in with his arm around my shoulders.

  What a comfortable house it is. The hallway leads on to two rooms which are arranged elegantly with cane chairs, glass-block coffee tables and a display cabinet with antiques and foreign ornaments. Painted porcelain plates hang on the walls and the brown-lacquered floors are so clean and shiny that I don’t know where to put my feet. I first become aware of my filthy shoes then in the mirror I see my messy hair and dirty face. I haven’t had a haircut for months and it is hard even for me to recognize myself.

  “I’ve come out of the mountains and look like a Wild Man,” I say, embarrassed about my grubby appearance.

  “If it wasn’t for this chance, it would be hard getting you to come,” my host says.

  His wife shakes my hand and busies herself getting cups of tea. His daughter, who is not yet ten, greets me with “hello uncle” from the door and looks at me with a hesitant smile.

  My host says his friend in Beijing had written so he knew I was wandering everywhere and he has been looking forward to seeing me for some time. He tells me all the news about the political and literary world – this person has reappeared and that person has fallen from power, who has given such and such a speech and who has put forward such and such a theory. There has also been an article referring to me by name and saying that this writer’s works are problematical but that it is wrong to beat him to death. I say that I am no longer interested in these things, what I need is life, for example, at this moment what I need is to be able to have a hot bath. His wife bursts out laughing and says she will heat some water right away.

  After I have a wash, my host takes me to his daughter’s room, which also serves as his study, and says if I am tired I can sleep for a while and then he’ll wake me to have something to eat. I can hear his wife frying something in the kitchen.

  I lie on his daughter’s small clean wire bed, my head resting on a pillow with a tabby cat embroidery and I think that it was lucky I made the phone call and that the phone is not such a bad gadget after all. I ask if he is an official and has joined the telephone-owning class. He says the phone is for public use in the office downstairs and someone is on duty to let people know when there is a call. He tells me he has some young friends who are keen to meet me. On these hot summer days everyone sleeps late, some just live in nearby buildings and some can be phoned, that’s if you’d like to see them. I am keen on the idea and soon hear him opening the door and footsteps on the stairs, I also hear talking in the lounge room through the closed bedroom door. They are discussing your writings and the disasters which have befallen you. You seem to have become a champion for social justice. You say you are not up to championing social justice, you say that absurdity does not apply only to those in official positions, the world and humanity itself is becoming more and more grotesque. You did not think there would still be some friends worried about you and it makes you feel that it is worth living after all. They then talk about getting the women to come the next day so you can all go dancing. Why not? it is you who say this and the women turn out to be a jolly crowd, either young performers or recent university graduates, they egg one another on and you all go to the pine forest to pick mushrooms, this is a brilliant idea but aren’t any of you afraid of getting poisoned? you try first, we’ll eat after you’ve tried them, who asked you to be a hero? heroes must sacrifice themselves for women! they won’t let you off, you say it is most fitting to die for women, they say that they are not so cruel, they are not Empress Wu Zetian or Jiang Qing, or Empress Dowager Cixi, they don’t care whether those old sirens are alive or dead, they want to keep you so you can light a fire to cook the mushrooms, and saying this they bring a big washbasin and firewood, you sprawl on the ground to blow at the dry pine needles and leaves, the smoke makes your eyes smart as flames suddenly start, they all shout for joy and begin to dance around the fire, someone starts playing a guitar and you are so happy you do a somersault on the grass, they all clap and shout bravo, a young man does a no-hands headstand then harasses one of the women to do somersaults in the air, she says she can do any dance anyone else can, what they want to see is her specialty, she says she is wearing a skirt, so what’s the problem with wearing a skirt, people aren’t interested in looking at the skirt, they want to see free-flying acrobatics, the young men won’t let her off, it’s her fault for winning the championship! the women also laugh and torment her so that she does a series of somersaults until she is out of breath, you say you learnt shaman magic in the mountains and can make the living die and the dead come back to life, they all say you are bullshitting, if you don’t believe then who’s game enough to try? they all point at her, this woman lying on the ground with her eyes closed and pretending to be dead, you break off a willow frond and flourish it and rolling up the whites of your eyes and chanting you circle around her, using the willow branch to chase off the demons on all sides, the young men all kneel around her, their palms pressed together in prayer, the women get jealous and all start shouting, quick open your eyes to see how many are here wanting to be your lover! you give a yell, strip to the waist and go into battle, sticking out your tongue and shouting and dancing, everyone dances around her in a frenzy, they lift her up, sacrifice her to the spirits! cast her into the river to be the wife of the Lord of the River! she keeps screaming, spare me! spare me! she says she will dance, she will dance anything as long as she is not thrown into the river, the young men announce the penalty, she must do the splits and hold up her arms without swaying, sadists! sadists! the women protest, only then does it all stop, everyone rolls about on the grass laughing until their stomaches hurt, all right, all right, tell us about it then, what about? tell us about things that happened on your travels? you say you went looking for the Wild Man? oh, did you really see the Wild Man? you say you saw a panda? what’s special about a panda? there are plenty in the zoo, you say the one you saw came into the tent looking for food and poked its head into your bedding, you’re lying! you say you really want to get to Shennongjia, people say there are Wild Men there, you want to capture one, take it home and teach it to talk, don’t treat us like children, you say you tried to be a child and failed, you really wanted to return to your childhood and travelled everywhere looking for traces of your childhood, the women agree that childhood is better, that everyone has happy memories, not me a voice says, my childhood was totally boring, I only want to live in the present, to look at the stars above just like this, tell us about your writing, another woman’s voice says, everything written has been published and what hasn’t been published hasn’t been written, you’re never serious, you say you are too serious all the time and just want not to be serious for a while, you poor poor thing another voice sighs pityingly! lalalalala, hey listen, I’m going to sing! as if you’re the only one who’s beautiful, as if you’re the only who’s spiteful, you two fight it out, whoever wins is beautiful, I don’t want you to judge, you say people always want to judge you, your fault for wanting to be famous, you admit wanting a bit to be famous but didn’t think it would cause so much trouble, everyone laughs, someone says let’s all go to the other side of the river, everyone holds hands to go into a cave, the leader gives a yelp, he’s bumped his head, this sets everyone off in fits of laughter again, it’s pitch-black inside the cave, afraid of bumping our heads we have to bend down then bump into the backside of the person in front, this cave
is great for kissing! we can’t see one another, if you’re game enough you can kiss whoever you like, this is no fun at all, let’s go for a swim instead, everyone jumps into the little stream, careful don’t let him do anything bad! who? whoever is bad knows who it is! how about singing a song together? let’s have a palm tree, not palm trees all the time, let’s have a dragon’s messenger, who’s sending a message to whom? it’s you who is patriotic, it’s you who gets on people’s nerves, it’s you who is getting on my nerves, why don’t the lot of you stop bickering? father and brothers–I’m drowning! who’s being such a pest? picking mushrooms in the murky river of the nether world–what? what? there’s nothing here, you won’t be able to pick anything here except sadness, let’s play bridge, no it takes too much concentration, then let’s play a game of turtle with cards, who’s drawn . . . I’ve drawn a king! what luck, people who don’t think about being lucky are always lucky, that’s fate, hey, do you believe in fate? fate just plays games with people, to the Devil with fate! don’t talk about demons, it’s scary when people talk about demons at night, you’re walking along the murky river of the nether world, didn’t you go to Fengdu, the City of Ghosts? was it good fun? at the city gates there’s now a couplet exhorting the destruction of superstitions: “If you believe in them they exist, if you don’t believe in them they do not exist.” what sort of couplet is that? do lines have to be parallel and matching in length to be called a couplet? can’t there be couplets with uneven lines? you want to destroy everything, can you destroy truth? don’t threaten others with such a big hat, aren’t you an atheist who’s not afraid of anything? you say that you are afraid, what of? loneliness? a big man like you and a hero! hero or not, I’m afraid of beautiful women, what’s there to be afraid of in beautiful women? I’m afraid of being bewitched, what a useless idiot! hey, compatriots! what are you up to? do you want to save the nation? just save yourself, an unredeemable individualist! you get such a shock that you break out in a cold sweat all over, you want, you want, you want to return to the group but can no longer find anyone . . .