Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain

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.