Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain

It is said that the monks carrying the altar on which the old monk in the sitting position had transformed himself were escorted under a canopy of embroidered satin banners. Two monks flourishing dusters and sprinkling mind-and-body cleansing Buddha water cleared the path before them. The devout men and women charging through the mountain pass fought desperately to catch a lucky glimpse of the old monk. Those who saw him praised his kindly visage so that those who hadn’t caught a glimpse became even more desperate. There was a chaotic surging mass of people standing on tiptoe and craning their necks, all crowding against one another. Hats were knocked off, shoes were trodden on and lost, incense burners were pushed over, and sacred precincts were violated.

It is said that the altar was covered and placed on the brushwood pyre in front of the Hall of Magnificent Treasures. Before the lighting of the pyre there was still to be a session of fervent sutra chanting. None of the rituals could be missed, the smallest oversight was intolerable under Buddha’s law. However even a larger monastery could not have withstood the pushing and shoving of ten thousand people, even stronger men could not have stemmed the surging throng of people. Those who fell and were injured couldn’t help screaming and shouting and in this commotion emerged the tragic event! No-one could say for sure how the conflagration started, nor how many were burnt or trampled to death, so that whether more burnt to death or more had been trampled to death was never established. In any case for three days and three nights the vast inferno raged until the Lord of Heaven was filled with compassion and sent forth timely rains which left an expanse of ashes. Remaining after the catastrophe were only these ruins and part of a stone tablet for later generations of busybodies to carry out investigations.

Behind this broken wall my dead father, mother and maternal grandmother are seated at the dinner table waiting for me to come and eat. I have been wandering endlessly and haven’t joined in a family gathering for a long time. I want to sit with them at the table to chat about ordinary family matters in the way that, when diagnosed with lung cancer, I would sit at my younger brother’s table talking about things one can’t talk about with strangers and can only discuss within the family. In those days, when it was time to eat, my niece would always want to watch television. She was too little to know that the programs were attacks on spiritual pollution, propaganda targeting all sections of society. Cultural celebrities would appear one after another to declare their position and to repeat the set slogans. They weren’t programs for children and certainly didn’t go well with eating. I’d had enough of television news and newspapers, I just wanted to return to my own life, to chat about forgotten family matters, like my crazy great-grandfather who, determined to satisfy his craving to be an official, gave away a whole street of houses. He couldn’t manage to get even half an official position and, realizing he’d been cheated, went berserk and torched all the houses, even the one he was living in. He was much younger than I am now when he died after just turning thirty. Confucius talked about establishing oneself at the age of thirty, but this is a young and brittle age and if one doesn’t succeed one can have a nervous breakdown. Neither I nor my younger brother have ever seen photos of this great-grandfather. At the time probably the art of photography hadn’t yet come to China or else it was only the nobility who could have their photos taken. However, both I and my younger brother have eaten the wonderful meals grandmother prepared. What I remember most vividly are the drunken prawns: the flesh of the prawns was still twitching and it took a long time to pluck up the courage to eat just one of them. I also remember my grandfather who had a stroke and was paralysed. To escape the bombs of the Japanese planes we rented an old house in the countryside from a peasant and all day long he lay on a reclining rattan chair in the hall. The door was left open and a breeze went straight through the main room so that his white hair was moving all the time. When the air raid sirens went off he became distraught and my mother could only crouch next to his ear and say over and over that the Japanese don’t have many bombs and if they are dropping them they will only be dropping them on the cities. At the time I was smaller than this little niece of mine and was just learning to walk. I remember that to get to the back courtyard I had to cross a high sill and after crossing, there was also a step. I couldn’t crawl over it on my own so the back courtyard remained a mysterious place for me. Beyond the front door was a big threshing square and I recall tumbling in the hay with the children of peasant families. A small dog drowned in the quiet and beautiful river right next to it. Some nasty person had thrown it in or else it had fallen in by itself. In any case the carcass lay on the shore for a long time. My mother sternly forbade me to play near the river, it was only when the grown-ups went to the river-bank to fetch water that I could go and dig in the sand. They would dig holes in the sand and scoop up clear filtered water.

I am aware that at this moment I am surrounded by a world of dead people and that behind this wall are my dead relatives. I want to be with them again, to sit at the table with them and to listen to them chatting about trifling things. I want to hear their voices, to see their eyes, to actually sit at the same table with them, even if we don’t have a meal. I know that eating and drinking in the world of ghosts is symbolic, a ritual, and that living people cannot partake of it, but it suddenly occurs to me that just to be able to sit at the table and to listen would be a blessing. I creep up to them but as I cross the ruins of the wall, they get up and quietly vanish behind another wall. I hear their departing footsteps, rustling, even see the empty table they leave behind. Instantly the table is covered in velvety moss, breaks, cracks, then collapses into a heap of rubble and bushes sprout all over it. I know right now they’re discussing me in another room in these ruins. They don’t approve of how I am living my life and are worried about me. There’s really no need but they insist on worrying, I think maybe the dead just like worrying about the living. They’re talking in whispers but as soon as I put my ear to the damp mossy wall they stop and communicate with their eyes. They say I can’t go on like this, I need a normal family. They should find me a good intelligent wife, a woman who can tend to what I eat and drink and manage the home for me — they think my prolonged illness is from improper eating and drinking. They’re plotting how to arrange my life. I should tell them there’s no need for them to worry, I’m already middle-aged and have my own way of life, it’s what I have chosen and I’m not likely to go back to what they have in mind for me. I can’t live the lives they lived, and in any case their lives weren’t particularly wonderful. Still, I can’t help thinking about them and wanting to see them, hear their voices, talk with them about past events in my memories. I want to ask my mother if she had taken me on a boat on the Xiang River. I recall being in a narrow wooden boat with a woven bamboo canopy. There were people closely packed on the wooden planks on either side, their knees touching those of the people opposite. The water could be seen coming up to the top of the sides and the boat lurched continuously, but no-one commented. Everyone pretended not to notice but they were clearly aware of it. The overloaded boat could sink at any moment but nobody gave this away. I also pretended not to know. I didn’t cry or make a fuss and fought not to think of the disaster which could happen at any time, I want to ask her if this was when we were refugees. If I can find a boat like this on the Xiang River it will confirm this memory. I also want to ask her whether or not we hid in a pig’s pen from bandits. That day the weather was like the weather today, fine rain was falling, and going up a mountain road the truck broke down on a sharp corner. The driver blamed himself and said if he’d turned the steering wheel a fraction harder the front and rear wheels on one side wouldn’t have got bogged in the soft mud at the edge of the road. I remember they were the wheels on the right because afterwards everyone got out and off-loaded all the baggage onto the left of the highway next to the side of the mountain and then went to push the truck. However, the wheels simply spun in the mud without moving out of it. The truck was fitted with a charcoal combustion stove, it was during the war and it was impossible to get petrol except for military vehicles. To start, each time the truck had to be cranked furiously until it could be heard farting before it would go. Motor vehicles in those days were like people and wouldn’t go unless they got rid of gas. However, the truck farted but the wheels only spun and splashed mud into the faces of the people pushing it. The driver kept trying to flag a passing vehicle but none would stop to help. In weather like this and as it was getting dark they were all in a hurry to escape. The last vehicle with yellowish headlights like the eyes of a wild beast sped past. Afterwards, we groped in the dark in the rain up the mountain, each holding onto the clothing of the person in front and slipping time and again on the muddy mountain path. We were old people, women and children and it was with much difficulty that we made it to a farmhouse. They didn’t have a lamp inside and refused to open the door so we had to squeeze into the pig pen to get out of the rain. From the ink-black mountain shadows at the back, in the middle of the night, came bursts of rifle shots and a string of burning torches could be seen. Everyone said bandits were going past and, terrified, no-one dared make a sound.