Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain

I pat them and ask softly, “Can you hear? What’s he singing?”

Both move, they weren’t asleep.

“Hey, old man, what are you singing?” The lawyer pulls up his legs to sit up and loudly directs his question outside the canopy.

There is the flapping of wings as a startled bird flies with a screech over the top of the canopy. I open the canopy a little and see the boat is travelling close to shore and the grey tangles growing along the ridges of the furrows on the embankment are probably bristle-pod beans. The old man has stopped singing and a chilly wind is blowing. I am fully awake and ask very politely, “Venerable elder, were you singing a folk song just now?”

The old man doesn’t respond and just plies the punt-pole, and the boat moves ahead at an even speed.

“Take a break, come in to have a drink with us and sing something for all of us!” The lawyer also tries to win him over.

The old man remains silent and continues to punt.

“Relax, come on in for a drink and get warm. How about singing something for us and I’ll give you another two yuan ?” The lawyer’s words, like rocks cast into water, fail to produce echoes. The old man may be embarrassed or cross, but the boat glides in the water to the accompaniment of the gurgling eddies as the pole enters the water and the lapping of the waves on the boat.

“Let’s go to sleep,” the lawyer’s woman friend says gently.

We are all disappointed but all we can do is lie down. This time the three of us all sleep on our backs and the cabin seems even narrower. Our bodies are pressed closer together and I feel the warmth of her body. Either from lust or kindness, she grasps my hand. This is all that happens, there is a reluctance to further spoil the disturbed and mystical pulsations of this night. No sounds come from her or the lawyer. I sense a quiet tenseness building up in the soft body transmitting the warmth, and as the stifled excitement heightens the night resumes its mystical pulsations.

After a long while I vaguely hear the wailing again, the groans of a distorted soul, unrealizable desires, weary and laboured, in ashes fanned by the wind is a sudden spark then darkness again. There is only the warmth of her body and the rich reverberating sensations, her fingers and mine grip one another tightly at the same instant. Neither of us makes a sound, neither dares to further provoke the other, and with bated breath we listen to the howling tempest raging in our blood. Fragments of that hoary old voice sings of a woman’s sweet-smelling breasts and the wonderful feel of a woman’s legs but there isn’t a complete sentence I can properly hear so I can’t grasp the full meaning of the song. The singing is indistinct but it has life and texture, sentence is piled upon sentence, none exactly the same… stamens of flowers and a blushing face… don’t fondle the stem of the lotus… dazzling white skirt on a slender waist … taste of the persimmon is a bitter taste… waves with a thousand eyes… roaming dragonflies skimming the water… don’t, oh don’t entrust yourself to…

He is clearly absorbed in his memories and is using all sorts of phrases to give them linguistic expression. The words don’t necessarily have specific meanings but transmit direct perceptions to arouse sexual feelings which flow into the song, it seems both like wailing and lamenting. A long piece finally ends and she pinches my hand, then lets go. No-one moves.

The old man is coughing and the boat is heaving. I sit up and open the canopy a fraction. The surface of the river is infused with pale lights, the boat is passing a small town. On the shore the houses are huddled close to one another and under the streetlights the doors are all shut, there are no lights in the windows. The old man is coughing continuously and the boat is rocking badly. I can hear him urinating into the river.

You go on climbing mountains. As you near the peak and are feeling exhausted you always think it is the last time but when the exhilaration of reaching the peak subsides you feel the urge again. This feeling grows as your weariness vanishes and looking at the rising and falling lines of the peaks in the hazy distance your desire to climb mountains resurges. But once you climb a mountain you lose interest in it and invariably think the mountain beyond will have things you haven’t encountered. When you eventually get to that peak the wonders you hoped for aren’t there, and once again there is just the lonely mountain wind.

After some time you get used to this loneliness and climbing peaks becomes an obsession. You know you will find nothing but are driven by this blind thought and keep on climbing. However, while doing this you need to have some distraction and as you fabricate stories for yourself, images are born.

You say you see a cave at the bottom of the limestone cliffs. The entrance is almost completely sealed off by a pile of stone slabs. You think it is the home of Grandpa Stone and that living inside is the legendary figure talked about by the Qiang mountain folk.

You say he is sitting on a plank bed, the wood is rotted and crumbles at your touch and the rotten bits of wood in your hands are soggy. It is very damp inside and there is even water running by the plank bed set on rocks. There is also moss growing everwhere you put your feet.

He is leaning on the rock wall and when you enter he is looking right at you. His eyes have sunken deep into their sockets and he is emaciated like a piece of firewood. His rifle hangs above his head on a branch wedged into a crack and is within his reach. Oiled with bear fat which has turned to black grease, there is no rust on it.

“Why have you come here?” he asks.

“To see you, venerable elder.” You assume a respectful demeanour, look frightened even. He doesn’t have the childish petulance of senility and it seems that being respectful works. You know that if he were to get upset he could very well grab the rifle and shoot you, so it is important to show that you are afraid of him. Confronted by his cavernous eyes you do not dare to look up even a little lest you give the impression of coveting his rifle.

“Why have you come to visit me?”

You can’t say why nor can you say what you want to do.

“No-one has visited me for a very long time,” he drones, his voice seeming to come out of the emptiness. “Hasn’t the plank road rotted away?”

You say you climbed up from the River of Death down in the gully.

“You’ve all forgotten me, I suppose.”

“Not at all,” you hasten to say, “the mountain folk all know about you, Grandpa Stone. They all talk about you when they’ve had something to drink but they don’t have the courage to come and visit you.”

It is not courage but curiosity that has brought you here. You came because you had heard about him but it is of course not appropriate to say this. Now that the legend has been verified and you have seen him, you still have to think of something else to say.

“How much further is it to Kunlun Mountain?”

Why do you ask about Kunlun Mountain? Kunlun Mountain is the mountain of our ancestors, the Queen Mother of the West lived there. Bricks with carved pictures of her with a tiger’s face, human body, and leopard tail have been excavated from Han Dynasty tombs.

“Oh, go straight ahead and you’ll come to Kunlun Mountain.” He says this like someone saying go straight ahead and you’ll come to the lavatory or to the movie theatre.

“How much further ahead?” You pluck up the courage to ask.

“Go straight ahead—”

While waiting for him to continue, you furtively look into his cavernous eyes. His sunken lips move a couple of times and then close again, but you can’t decide whether he has spoken or is about to speak.