Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain

“What secret signs did gang members use to communicate with one another?” My interest has been aroused.

“The Green Gang used the surname Li inside the home but outside they used the surname Pan. If they met they addressed one another as ‘brother’ and this was known as the mouth keeps to Pan, the hand keeps to three.” He makes a circle with his thumb and index finger and spreads out the other three fingers. “This was the secret sign and in addressing one another, the men were called Elder Brother Five or Elder Brother Nine and the women were called Elder Sister Four or Elder Sister Seven. Where they were of different generations, they would refer to one another as father or son or teacher and teacher’s wife. The Red Gang addressed one another as master and the Green Gang addressed one another as older brother. If one of them went into a tea house and put down his hat with the brim upturned, his tea and cigarette bill would be paid.”

“Were you a gang member?” I ask cautiously.

He smiles and has a sip of tea. “In those times if I didn’t have connections, I wouldn’t have been an acting county magistrate.” He shakes his head. “It’s all in the past.”

“Do you think the factions in the Cultural Revolution were something like this?”

“That was between revolutionary comrades and can’t be compared.” He decisively rejects this suggestion.

For a while there is an awkward silence. He gets up and again starts offering me melon seeds and tea. “The government treated me well by locking me away in prison, a criminal like me encountering those mass movements might not be alive today.”

“Times of peace and prosperity are rare indeed,” I say.

“Surely it is at present! Surely at present the country is prosperous and the people enjoy security of life?” he asks me guardedly.

“There’s food and even liquor.”

“What else does one want?” he asks.

“Indeed,” I reply.

“I’m happy being able to read books. Seeing people is troublesome and I appreciate my leisure,” he says looking up at the ceiling.

Fine rain has started falling.

When Nüwa created humans she also created their sufferings. Humans are created from the entrails of Nüwa and born in the bloody fluids of women and so they can never be washed clean.

Don’t go searching for spirits and ghosts, don’t go searching for cause and retribution, don’t go searching for meaning, all is embodied in the chaos.

It is only when people refuse to accept that they shout out, even while not comprehending what they are shouting. Humans are simply such creatures, fettered by perplexities and inflicting anxiety upon themselves.

The self within you is merely a mirror image, the reflection of flowers in water. You can neither enter the mirror nor can you scoop up anything, but looking at the image and becoming enamoured of it you no longer pity yourself.

You may as well resign yourself to being infatuated with that physical form and drown in a sea of lust, spiritual need is only self profanity. You grimace.

Knowledge is an extravagance, a costly expense.

You have only the desire to narrate, to use a language transcending cause and effect, or logic. People have spoken so much nonsense, so why shouldn’t you say more.

You create out of nothingness, playing with words like a child playing with blocks. But blocks can only construct fixed patterns, the possibilities of structures are inherent in the blocks and no matter how they are moved you will not be able to make anything new.

Language is like a blob of paste which can only be broken up by sentences. If you abandon sentences, it will be like falling into a quagmire and you will flounder about helplessly.

To flounder helplessly is like suffering and the whole of humanity is made up of individual selves. When you fall in, you must crawl out yourself because saviours aren’t concerned with such trifling matters.

Dragging weighty thoughts you crawl about in language, trying all the time to grab a thread to pull yourself up, becoming more and more weary, entangled in floating strands of language, like a silkworm spitting out silk, weaving a net for yourself, wrapping yourself in thicker and thicker darkness, the faint glimmer of light in your heart becoming weaker and weaker until finally the net is a totality of chaos.

To lose images is to lose space and to lose sound is to lose language. When moving the lips can’t produce sounds what is being expressed is incomprehensible, although at the core of consciousness the fragment of the desire to express will remain. If this fragment of desire cannot be retained there will be a return to silence.

How is it possible to find a clear pure language with an indestructible sound which is larger than a melody, transcends limitations of phrases and sentences, does not distinguish between subject and object, transcends pronouns, discards logic, simply sprawls, and is not bound by images, metaphors, associations or symbols? Will it be able to give expression to the sufferings of life and the fear of death, distress and joy, loneliness and consolation, perplexity and expectation, hesitation and resolve, weakness and courage, jealousy and remorse, calm and impatience and self-confidence, generosity and constraint, kindness and hatred, pity and despair, as well as lack of ambition and placidity, humility and wickedness, nobility and viciousness, cruelty and benevolence, fervour and indifference, and aloofness, and admiration, and promiscuousness, and vanity, and greed, as well as scorn and respect, certainty and uncertainty, modesty and arrogance, obstinacy and chagrin, resentment and shame, surprise and amazement, lethargy, muddle-headedness, sudden enlightenment, never comprehending, failing to comprehend, as well as just allowing whatever will happen to happen.

I am lying on a spring bed made with clean sheets in a room with pale yellow print-patterned wallpaper, white crocheted curtains and dark red carpet. There are two lounge chairs with towelling covers and the bathroom has a bathtub. If I were not holding a stencilled manuscript of farm-work songs, Gongs and Drums to Accompany Weeding , I would find it hard to believe that I am in the forest of Shennongjia. This new two-storey building built for a team of American researchers who for some reason didn’t arrive has become a hostel for cadres to carry out investigations. Through the good auspices of the section chief, when I arrive I am again given special treatment and charged the cheapest rates for food and lodgings. Beer even comes with the meals, although I would would have preferred liquor. To be able to enjoy such cleanliness and comfort completely relaxes me and I could stay for a few extra days without any problem. After all, there is no real need for me to hurry on my journey.

There’s a sort of a buzzing in the room. At first I think it’s an insect but looking around there’s nowhere for an insect to hide as the ceiling is painted white and the light shade is a cream colour. The sound continues and hangs elusively in the air. When I listen carefully it is like a woman’s singing and it hovers around me. As soon as I put down the book it vanishes and when I pick up the book the sound is again in my ears. I think my ears must be ringing so I get up, walk around for a bit, and open the window.

The sun produces a glare on the gravel square in front of the building. It is almost noon and no-one is in sight, could all this be in my mind? It is an elusive tune without words but it seems to be familiar, a bit like the sad wailing of women I have heard in the mountain regions.

I decide to go outside to have a look, leave the room, and go through the main door and out to the square in front of the building. The small fast-flowing river at the bottom of the slope is green and clear in the sunlight and the green mountain peaks, although devoid of vast stretches of forest, are nevertheless covered in lush vegetation. A dirt road for motor vehicles stretches for a couple of kilometres down the slope to the little town in the middle of the reserve. On the left, at the bottom of a towering green mountain, there’s a school and an empty football field. The students are probably all in the classrooms: and the teachers in this mountain village wouldn’t be teaching their students dirges. It is quiet and there is only the sound of the wind on the mountain and the lapping of the river. There is a makeshift workers’ hut by the river but there is no-one outside the hut. The sound of the singing has vanished.