Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain

Reading this chapter is optional but as you’ve read it you’ve read it.

When I arrive in this small city on the coast of the East China Sea a middle-aged single woman insists that I go to her home for dinner. She comes to my lodgings to invite me and says that before going to work she had gone out and bought all sorts of seafood for me — crab, razor clams and even wonderful fat saltwater eel.

“You’ve come from far away to this port and must sample some seafood. It’s not just difficult to find inland, but you can’t always get it in the big coastal cities.” She is very earnest.

It is difficult to refuse so I say to the owner of the house, “How about coming with me?”

He knows her well and says, “This is a special invitation for you. She gets bored living on her own and she’s got something to discuss with you.”

They have evidently worked it out between them so I have no choice but to follow her out the door. She wheels her bicycle over and says, “It’s some distance and will take a bit of time to get there, get on and I’ll double you.”

People are coming and going in the lane, and I am not a cripple.

“What if I double you and you tell me the way?” I say.

She gets on the back seat. We attract a great deal of attention as we weave through the crowds the handlebars swaying and me ringing the bell continuously.

It is great getting an invitation to dinner from a woman but she is past the best years of her life. She has a pale sallow complexion and prominent cheekbones, and the way she talks and how she wheels out the bicycle and gets on is devoid of feminine grace. I glumly pedal away and try to find something to talk about.

She says she is an accountant in a factory. No wonder. She’s a woman in charge of money, I’ve had dealings with such women. You could say that every one of them is bright but they never pay a cent more than they have to for anything. Of course, this is a habit resulting from that line of work, it isn’t a basic trait of women.

Her apartment is one of several around an old courtyard and she parks the old bicycle which will barely stand upright under her window. A huge padlock hangs on the door which opens into a small room with a big wooden bed occupying half of the room. At one side is a square table laid out with liquor and food. Two big wooden chests are stacked one on the top of the other onto bricks on the floor and there are some cosmetics on a slab of glass on top of the chests. There is a pile of old magazines at the bed head.

She notices me looking around and hastily says, “I’m so sorry, it’s all a terrible mess.”

“Life is like that.”

“I just muddle through life, I’m not very fussy about anything.” She puts on a light and gets me to sit at the table, goes to the stove by the door to put on the pot of soup then pours me a drink and sits down opposite. Propping her elbows on the table, she says, “I don’t like men.”

I nod.

“I don’t mean you,” she explains. “I’m talking about men in general. You’re a writer.”

I don’t know whether to nod or not.

“I got divorced long ago and live on my own.”

“It’s not easy.” I am referring to life being hard and that it is like that for everyone.

“I had a girlfriend, we were very good friends from primary school days.”

It occurs to me that she is probably a lesbian.

“She’s dead now.”

I make no response.

“I invited you here to tell you her story. She was very beautiful. If you saw her photo you’d like her, everyone who saw her fell in love with her. She wasn’t beautiful in a normal sense, she was extraordinarily beautiful — a melon-seed shaped face, a small cherry mouth, willow frond eyebrows, big crystal-clear almond eyes. Her figure, needless to say, was like that of classical beauties described in the fiction of the past. Why am I telling you all this? Because, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to keep a single photo of her. At the time I wasn’t prepared, when she died her mother came and took away everything. Drink up.”

She has a drink as well and I can immediately tell by the way she drinks that she is experienced. There are no photos or paintings on the walls and certainly none of the flowers and little animals women usually like. She is punishing herself and probably most of her money is converted into something which goes from a cup into her stomach.

“I am asking you to write her life into a work of fiction. I can tell you everything about her, you have a good writing style. Fiction—”

“Is existence produced from nothingness,” I say with a smile.

“I don’t want you to make it up, you can use her real name. I can’t afford a writer, I can’t pay the manuscript fee. If I had the money, I would willingly pay. I’m seeking your help, asking you to write about her.”

“This is—” I sit up to show that I appreciate her hospitality.

“I’m not bribing you. If you think this girl has been unjustly treated and is worthy of sympathy, then you can write about her. It’s a pity you can’t see her photo.” Her eyes look blank. The dead girl clearly weighs heavily in her heart. “I was born ugly so I always admired pretty girls and wanted to be friends with them. I wasn’t at the same school but always ran into her on the way to school or on my way home, but these were always fleeting encounters. Her oval face moved not just men but also women. I wanted to get to know her better. I saw that she was always on her own and one day I waited for her coming back from school, followed her and said I wanted to talk with her and hoped she wouldn’t mind. She agreed and I walked with her. Thereafter on my way to school, I would always wait for her near her house and in this way got to know her. Don’t hold back, drink up!”

She serves up the stewed eel, the soup is delicious. As I eat, I listen to her telling how she became a member of the girl’s home. The mother treated her like her own daughter and often she didn’t go home and just slept with her in the same bed.

“Don’t go thinking that sort of thing was going on. I only knew about sexual matters after she was sentenced to ten years in prison. She had a big argument with me and didn’t want me to visit her. Afterwards I just found some man and got married. She and I had the purest love, that which exists between young girls. You men wouldn’t understand, a man’s love for a woman is like an animal’s. I’m not talking about you, you’re a writer. Have some crab!” She breaks up into pieces the strong smelling raw crab marinated in salt and spices and piles some into my bowl. There are also cooked clams with a sauce dip. It is another battle between men and women, a battle between the spirit and the flesh.

Her friend’s father was a military officer in the Guomindang and when the Liberation Army came south, her mother was pregnant with her. Her father sent word but when she rushed to the wharf, the troop ship had already left. It is one of those old stories again. I lose interest in her friend and simply apply myself to eating the crab.

“One night when we were in bed together, she threw her arms around me and started crying. I was alarmed and asked her what was wrong. She said she missed her father.”

“But she’d never seen him.”

“Her mother burnt all the photos of him in military uniform but they still had wedding photos of her mother in a white net gown with her father. Her father was wearing a Western-style suit and was quite dashing. I tried my best to comfort her and I felt really sorry for her. Afterwards I hugged her tight and sobbed with her.”

“That’s understandable.”

“If everyone thought that, it would have been fine. However, people didn’t understand, they treated her as an anti-revolutionary and said she was hoping for a reactionary restoration and was planning to flee to Taiwan.”