Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain

Enjoying yourself?

Yes.

Don’t you think it’s wonderful?

I don’t know, I can’t say, don’t ask me.

You lean against her arm and she leans towards you, you look down to her, you can’t see her features but you sense her small nose and you again smell that familiar warmth. Suddenly she comes to a halt.

Let’s go back, she mutters.

Back where?

I have to get some rest.

I’ll take you back.

I don’t want anyone with me.

She is quite adamant.

Do you have relatives or friends here? Or are you here on your own?

She doesn’t answer. You don’t know where she’s from nor where she’s going back to. Still, you escort her to the main street and she walks off on her own, vanishing at the end of the street, as if in a story, as if in a dream.

In the 2500-metre giant panda observation compound at Haiba, water drips everywhere and my bedding is damp. I’ve spent two nights here. During the daytime I wear the padded clothes issued by the camp but still feel perpetually damp. The most comfortable time is in front of the fire drinking hot soup and eating. A big aluminum pot hangs on a metal wire from a rafter in the kitchen shed and the log in the stove isn’t cut into sections but just burns its way down, sending up sparks two feet into the air and providing light. When we’re sitting around the fire a squirrel always comes and sits by the shed rotating its round eyes. It’s only at night that everyone gathers around and there’s a bit of joking. By the end of the meal it’s completely dark, the camp is surrounded by the pitch-black forest, everyone retreats into the shed and in the light of kerosene lamps is preoccupied with his own business.

They’ve been deep in the mountain all year and have said all they have to say, and there’s no news. They hire a Qiang from Sleeping Dragon Pass, 2100 metres from Haiba and the last village after entering the mountain, to come every couple of days with a basket on his back filled with fresh vegetables and slabs of mutton or pork. The ranger station is even further off than the village. They only take turns to go down the mountain for a couple of days’ leave every month or every few months, to go to the ranger station for a haircut, a bath and a good meal. Their normal days off accumulate and when the time comes they take the reserve car to Chengdu to see their girlfriends or go back to their homes in other cities. For them this is the way to live. They don’t have newspapers and don’t listen to radio broadcasts. Ronald Reagan, the economic reforms, inflation, the eradication of spiritual pollution, the Hundred Flowers Movie Award, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera — that noisy world is left to the cities, for them it’s all too far away. However, a university graduate sent here to work just last year always has headphones on. It was only after I got close enough that I discovered he was learning English. And there’s also a young man who reads by the kerosene lamp. Both are studying for research postgraduate exams so that they can get away from here. There’s another man here who picks up wireless signals, locates and plots them onto an air navigation tracking chart. These are signals transmitted from giant pandas which have been captured, tagged with wireless neckbands and then returned to the forest.

The old botanist with me has already spent two days wandering around in the mountains; he’s been in bed for some time but I can’t tell whether or not he’s asleep. I just can’t get warm in this damp bedding and lying here fully clothed even my brain seems to have frozen, yet down the mountain it’s May and the middle of spring. My hand comes upon a tick which has lodged itself on the inner part of my thigh. It must have crawled up my trouser leg during the day while I was walking through tall grass. It’s the size of my little fingernail and as hard as a scab. I hold onto it and rub myself but can’t pull it out. I know if I pull any harder it will break off and the head with the mouth which has a good bite on me will remain embedded and grow into my flesh. I get help from the camp worker in the bed next to me. He gets me to strip, gives my thigh a hard slap and squeezes out the blood-sucking little bastard. Tossed into the kerosene lamp it smells like the meat stuffing in a pancake. He promises to get me a bandage in the morning.

It’s quiet both inside and outside the shed, but everywhere in the forest there is the sound of water dripping. A mountain wind blows from afar but doesn’t reach the mountain and instead recedes and lingers noisily in faraway valleys. Afterwards the planks above me also start dripping and seem to drip right onto my quilt. Is there rain leaking through? Mindlessly, I get up. It’s as damp inside as it is outside. So let it just drip, drip, drip… Later on, I hear a rifle discharge. It’s clear but muffled and reverberates in the valley.

“Over there near White Cliff,” someone says.

“Fuck. Poachers,” another person swears.

Everyone is awake, or it might have been that no-one had been asleep.

“See what time it is.”

“Five to twelve.”

Then nobody says anything. It’s as if they’re waiting for another shot, but there isn’t one. In the shattered yet suspended silence, there’s only the dripping of water outside the shed and the reverberation of the wind imprisoned in the valleys. Then you seem to hear wild animals. This world belongs to wild animals but human beings persist in interfering with it. The enclosing darkness hides anxiety and restlessness, and this night seems to be even more perilous, awakening your phobia that you are being spied upon, stalked, about to be ambushed. You can’t get the spiritual tranquillity you crave…

“Beibei’s here!”

“Who?”

“Beibei!” the university student yells.

It’s total chaos in the shed and everyone’s up and out of bed.

There’s a loud snorting and grunting outside. It’s the baby panda they saved when it came fossicking for food, sick and starving! They’ve been waiting for it to come, they were certain it would come. It had already been ten days and they’d been counting the days. They said it would definitely come before the new bamboo shoots started to sprout. And here is their pet, their treasure, clawing on the timber walls.

Someone opens the door a crack and slips out with a bucket of corn mush and the rest quickly troop out after him. In the murky night this huge dark grey thing lumbers about. Corn mush is quickly poured into a dish and this thing comes up to it, snorting and grunting noisily. The torches are all trained on this animal with black semi-circles around its black eyes. This doesn’t worry it at all, it’s completely engrossed in eating and doesn’t look up even once. They are madly taking photos so there’s a constant glare of flashlights, and everyone takes a turn to go up to it, to call it, to tease it, and to touch its fur which is as hard as pig bristle. It looks up and everyone runs to take refuge back inside the shed. It is after all a wild animal and a healthy panda can wrestle a leopard. The first time it came it chewed up the aluminum container and ate it as well as the food, and then excreted a trail of undigested aluminum pellets which they had all followed. There was a journalist who kept going on about the giant panda being as cute as a pet cat and got into the enclosure to have his photo taken with his arms around one they’d caught in the ranger station at the foot of the mountain. He got his genitals torn off and was immediately driven to Chengdu, fighting for his life.

It eventually finishes eating and, grabbing a piece of sugar cane and chewing on it, saunters off towards the clumps of Cold Arrow Bamboos and bushes at the edge of the camp.