Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain

You hasten to point around the room. “Make yourself at home, feel free to do whatever you like. By looking at this room you can tell that the owner doesn’t have rules and regulations.”

She sits herself down by the desk, glances around and says, “The place looks like it needs a woman owner.”

“If you’d like to be, but it would only be owning the owner of the room, because the property rights to the room don’t belong to the owner of the room.”

Each time you meet you engage in verbal sparring, but you mustn’t lose to her.

“Thanks.” She takes the tea you have made and smiles. “Let’s talk about something serious.”

She’s ahead again. You only have time to say, “All right.”

After you fill your own cup and sit on the chair at the desk, you relax and turn to her.

“We can start by discussing what to talk about. By the way, are you really a model?”

“I was an artist’s model but I’m not anymore.” She blows away some strands of hair hanging on her face.

“May I ask why?”

“He got sick of painting me and found someone else.”

“Painters are like that, I know. They can’t spend a whole lifetime painting the one model.” You have to defend your artist friend.

“Models are the same, they can’t live just for the one painter.”

She’s right, of course. You must get off the topic.

“But are you actually a model? I’m asking about your occupation, is that job?”

“Is that so very important?” She laughs again, she’s quite ingenious, always one step ahead of you.

“It’s not all that important. I’m just asking so that I’ll know what to talk about, so that I can talk about something which might be of interest to both you and me.”

“I’m a doctor,” she says with a nod. And before you get a chance to follow up, she asks, “Can I smoke?”

“Of course, I smoke too.”

You move the cigarettes and ashtray across the table to her.

She lights a cigarette and inhales the smoke.

“You don’t look like one,” you say, starting to catch onto her game.

“That’s why I said what I do is unimportant. When I said I was a model, did you think I really was?” She tilts her head back and slowly exhales the smoke.

And when you say you’re a doctor are you really a doctor? But you don’t articulate this.

“Do you think all models are frivolous?” she asks.

“Not necessarily, modelling is serious work, and there’s nothing bad in exposing one’s body, I’m talking about nude modelling. If nature endows one with beauty, then to present nature’s beauty can only be considered magnanimous, it has nothing at all to do with frivolity. Furthermore a beautiful human body is superior to any artwork. Art is invariably pale and insipid compared to nature and only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.”

You prattle away with passion and conviction.

“Then why are you involved in art?” she asks.

You say you haven’t got the expertise for art and are just a writer, saying what you want to say and whenever you want to.

“But writing is also a form of art.”

You insist that writing is a technical skill.

“It just requires learning the technique, like you for example, you’ve learnt how to operate with a scalpel. I don’t know if you’re a surgeon or a physician but that’s not important. As long as you acquire the technique anyone can write just like anyone can learn how to use a scalpel.”

She laughs.

You go on to say you don’t believe that art is sacrosanct, art is just a way of life. People have different ways of life, art can’t represent everything.

“You’re very intelligent,” she says.

“You’re not exactly stupid yourself,” you say.

“But some people are stupid.”

“Who?”

“Artists. They only perceive with their eyes.”

“Artists have artists’ modes of perception, they rely more on visual perception than writers.”

“Can visual perception allow one to understand a person’s intrinsic value?”

“I don’t think so, but the crux of the matter is what is value? This differs according to the individual, people have their own ways of looking at this. It is only for those with similar values that different values have any meaning. I won’t be ingratiating and say that you are beautiful and I don’t know whether you are all beautiful inside, but I can say that it is enjoyable talking with you. Don’t people exist in order to have some pleasure? Only fools go out looking for unhappiness.”

“I also feel happy when I am with you.”

While saying this she unthinkingly picks up your key from the table and starts toying with it. You can see she is unhappy, so you start talking about the key with her.

“What key?” she asks.

“The key in your hand.”

“What about the key?”

You say you lost it.

“Isn’t it here?” She shows you the key in her hand.

You say you thought you had lost it but right now it is in her hand.

She puts the key back on the table suddenly stands up and says she is leaving.

“Is there something urgent?”

“Yes,” she says, then adds, “I’m married.”

“Congratulations,” you say with a tinge of bitterness.

“I’ll come again.”

That’s a relief. “When?”

“When I’m feeling happy. I won’t come when I’m unhappy and make you unhappy. Nor when I am particularly happy—”

“That’s obvious, suit yourself.”

You also say you’d like to believe she will come again.

“I’ll come and talk to you about the key you lost!”

She tosses her head and her hair falls about her shoulders, then with an enigmatic smile she walks out the door and goes down the stairs.

This old schoolmate of mine whom I haven’t seen for more than ten years takes out a photo from a drawer. It’s of him and another person in front of a broken-down temple with a vegetable patch next to it. The person could be middle-aged, elderly, or in between, and could be a man or a woman. He says it’s a woman. He asks if I know the Woman Warrior of the Desolate Plains.

I do. When I had just started junior high school a classmate used to bring from home old righteous warrior novels, which were banned at school, like Seven Swords and Thirteen Righteous Warriors, Biography of the Swordsman of Emei and Thirteenth Younger Sister . If you were a friend you could take the book home for the night and if you weren’t a friend you had to put it in the drawer of your desk and surreptitiously read it during class.

I also remember when I was even younger, I had a picture-book set of Woman Warrior of the Desolate Plains and lost some of the pages at a game of marbles. The set was broken and I was really upset.

And I recall it was this Woman Warrior of the Desolate Plains or Thirteenth Younger Sister or some other woman warrior who had something to do with my awakening from youthful ignorance about sex. It was probably an illustrated book in a second-hand bookshop. Early in the book a picture showed a branch of peach blossoms scattered by a storm with a caption below, something like “Untold misery after a night of wind and rain”, implying that the woman warrior had been raped by some rogue who was also an exponent of the martial arts. On a later page the woman warrior has sought out an expert from the highest ranks of the martial arts world and she has learnt the secret art of the flying knives. Her mind set on revenge, she eventually tracks down her enemy. Her flying knives pin him by the head but for some reason she is sad and simply cuts off one of his arms and leaves him with a means to go on living.

“Do you believe that women warriors still exist?” my old schoolmate asks.