Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain

She says this is the first time she has ever indulged herself, the first time she has used her body to love a man. She did not vomit, she is grateful to you, grateful that you have given her this kind of joy. She says she will get her revenge on him like this, get revenge on that boyfriend of hers, she will tell him she has slept with another man. A man a lot older than her, a man who knew how to enjoy her and in turn gave her enjoyment.

She says she knew it would be like this, that she would let you enter her. And she knew all her defence stratagems had been to deceive herself. But why did she punish herself like that? Why didn’t she just enjoy it? She says you have given her life, given her hope, she wants to go on living, and once again has desire.

She also says that as a child, her family had a dog which liked to nuzzle her with its wet nose to wake her up, sometimes it would even jump onto her bed. She loved putting her arms around this dog. Her mother who was still alive then, said that dogs had fleas and she wouldn’t let the dog into her bedroom. Once she had a red rash all over her body and her mother said she had been bitten by fleas from the dog. Afterwards people weren’t allowed to keep dogs in the city and when she wasn’t home the dog-catching squad took away the dog and killed it. She wept and didn’t eat dinner. She feels at the time she was very kind-hearted. She can’t understand why people in the world are so wicked. Why is there such lack of sympathy between people? She says she can’t understand why she is saying all this.

You ask her to go on talking.

She says she can’t understand why, it’s as if flood gates have opened and she can’t stop talking.

You say she is doing very well.

She says she never wants to grow up and yet she also wants to grow up. She wants to be loved, wants everyone to look at her, but she’s afraid of men’s looks. She thinks men’s looks are always salacious. When they look at someone they aren’t looking at the person’s beauty, they are looking at something else.

You say you’re a man.

You’re an exception, she says, you make her feel relaxed, she wants to be in your embrace.

You ask if she thinks you are salacious.

Don’t talk like that, she says. She doesn’t think you are, she likes you. Everything about you is so endearing, she says she now knows what it is to be living. But she says at times she is frightened and thinks life is a bottomless hole.

She thinks no-one really loves her, and if no-one loves her what meaning is there to living? She says this is what really frightens her. But a man’s love is so selfish, they always want to possess you, but what do they give in return?

Men do give, you say.

But only what they want to.

But don’t women also find men indispensable? You say it was Heaven’s will that joined the male and the female as the two parts of the grindstone, this is the innate nature of human beings. You say there’s no need to be afraid of anything.

She says you’re getting her excited.

You ask surely she is enjoying it?

As long as it’s so natural, she says.

Come, accept with all your body and heart. You arouse her.

Ah, she says she wants to sing.

You ask her what she wants to sing.

To sing of you and me, she says.

Sing whatever you like, you urge her to sing loudly.

She wants you to caress her.

You say you want her to abandon herself.

She wants you to kiss her nipples…

You are kissing her.

She says she also loves your body, nothing of your body is frightening anymore. She will do whatever you want her to do, oh, she says she wants to see you enter her body.

You say she has become a real woman.

Yes, she says, a woman owned by a man, she says she doesn’t know what nonsense she’s talking, she says she has never enjoyed herself like this before, she says she’s drifting on a boat and doesn’t know where she’s drifting, she is no longer in control. Let it drift, on the black sea, she and you, no, there is only her, she’s not really afraid but she feels terribly empty, she wants to die, death is seductive, she wants to fall into the sea, let the black sea drown her, she needs you, the warmth of your body, even your oppressiveness gives her a sense of security, she asks if you’re aware of it, that she desperately needs !

Need a man? You bait her.

Yes, I need a man’s love, need to be owned. She says, yes, she longs to be owned, she wants to abandon herself, forget everything, ah, she is grateful to you, she was anxious the first time, yes, she says she wanted to, she knew she wanted to, but she panicked, didn’t know what to do, she wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she wanted to be carried away by a storm in the wilds, to be stripped naked by it, to be flailed with a branch until her flesh was torn apart, to succumb to the pain, to be ripped apart by wild animals! She says she saw her, that wanton woman dressed in black, fondling her own breasts, that smile on her face, the way she walked swinging her hips, a licentious woman, she says, you don’t understand, you don’t understand this, you don’t understand anything, you simpleton!

I get on a bus from the Yi nationality district on the Yunnan-Guizhou border, arrive in Shuicheng, and spend most of the day waiting for the train. The station is some distance from the county town and the whole area is neither town nor farm villages and gives me a sense of instability. This is especially so when I see, in what looks like a street, this couplet: “If children are playing outside the window, the people inside and outside are safe.” It is pasted on the windowsill of an old house whose rafters and supports have gone black with age. I no longer seem to be walking forward but am returning to my childhood, moving backwards on my heels. It’s as if I haven’t gone through the war, haven’t gone through the revolution, haven’t gone through the endless sessions of struggle-meetings, haven’t gone through the criticisms and counter-criticisms and the about-turn but not quite about-turn reforms of the present. It’s as if my parents are not dead and I haven’t endured any sufferings. It is in fact before I have grown up and I am moved to the verge of tears.

Afterwards, I sit myself down on a pile of logs which has been unloaded alongside the railway tracks to reflect on the happenings in my life. A woman about thirty or so who seems distressed comes up to me. She asks me to help her buy a train ticket. She probably knew I wasn’t a local when she heard me talking just now at the ticket window in the railway station. She tells me she wants to go to Beijing to file a lawsuit but doesn’t have the money for a ticket. I ask her what sort of lawsuit she intends to file. She talks at length without making it any clearer but it amounted to an unjust trial which had resulted in someone bringing about her husband’s death. Up to now no-one has accepted responsibility and she hasn’t received a cent of compensation. I give her one yuan and send her off, then go some distance further on to sit by the river where I spend several hours looking at the scenery on the opposite bank.

Some time after eight o’clock at night I eventually arrive in Anshun. I must first get a locker to deposit my backpack which has become quite heavy. I have in it a Han Dynasty brick with a design on it. I came across it in Hezhang where peasants were constructing pig pens with bricks taken from the Han Dynasty tombs. The lights are on in the locker deposit window but there’s no-one there. After I knock on the window for some time, an attendant emerges, pins a ticket on my backpack, takes the money, puts the bag on an empty shelf, and goes inside again. The big waiting room is empty and it doesn’t look anything like a station. Stations usually have people noisily milling around, sitting on their haunches by walls, lying on benches, sitting on luggage, or just wandering about, and there are always people selling or re-selling things to make a bit of money. Leaving this deserted station, I hear my own footsteps.