Gao Xingjian - One Man

At a small stop called Goose Wings, where there was no platform, he jumped off and watched the long-distance train continue around the side of the mountain. The stationmaster waved the flag and blew the whistle, then went into the small hut by the shoulder of the road, leaving just him standing on the gravel by the side of the railway tracks.

While at university, he had come here as a volunteer laborer to dig holes and plant trees on the mountain. It was also in early spring, and the ground was still frozen. Each time he swung his pickax, he would not bring up two inches of soil, so, in a few days, his palms were covered in blood blisters. Once he was almost killed when he jumped into the bone-chilling river to recover the hemp bag containing the saplings he was to plant. He had it soaking in the river and it was swept away by the fast-flowing current. For this, he was commended, but the Communist Youth League still did not want him. He and some fellow students, all of whom had been refused membership, called one another "Old Reject." They formed a theater group and had just put on two plays when cadres of the student association at the university sought them out and spoke with them separately. They were not ordered to stop, but the theater group could no longer function, and, as a matter of course, disbanded.

They had performed Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. It had old-fashioned charm, with a sweet and kindly country girl from a small farm saying nostalgically that everything should be beautiful, with beautiful people in beautiful clothes and also with beautiful hearts; it grieved for a past that was like the old photographs he had burned.

He walked along the railway sleepers for a while, but, seeing a train coming from the distance, he went down the shoulder of the road and headed for the rock-covered riverbed. The water in the Yongding River was clear, unless it was swollen with rain or the sluices of the government dam upstream had been shut off.

He had brought Lin here and taken photographs. Lin had a beautiful figure, and she stood barefoot in the water with her skirt scooped up in her arms. Afterward, among the bushes on the mountain, they picnicked, kissed, and made love. He regretted not having photographed her nude as she lay in the grass, but all that was now beyond his reach.

What else could he do? What else was there to do? There was no need for him to go back to his office desk to arrange those virtually identical propaganda documents as he was meant to, as no one was in charge of him. Also, there was no need for him to rebel: that strange righteous indignation, too, had passed. For several months, he had headed the assault on the opposition, but now the thrill and excitement had completely vanished, or, rather, he had tired, had had enough of it. He should bravely retreat while he still could; there was no need for him to play the role of a hero.

He took off his shoes and socks, and walked barefoot in the clear icy current. As the water gently trickled in shining broken ripples and sparkled in the sunlight, he suddenly started thinking clearly. He should go to see his father because he had not received a letter from home for a long time, and he should also take the opportunity, when no one would notice, to travel south to clarify this business in his file about his father having "hidden a gun."

He rushed back to the city by early afternoon, went home to get his bankbook, cycled to withdraw money before the bank closed, then went to Qianmen Railway Station to buy a ticket for that night. He returned home to lock his bicycle in his room, and, carrying the satchel he normally took to work, he boarded the express train south at eleven o'clock.

Father and son had not seen one another for two years, and, when he suddenly turned up, his father was overjoyed. His father went off to the free market and bought fresh fish and live shrimp, and went to the kitchen to gut the fish. When his mother died, his father became morose and seldom spoke, but now he was a different person, doing the cooking, cheerful and talking a lot. Then came his father's concerns about politics, and he kept asking questions about the Party and the national leaders who had vanished from the papers. Not wanting to upset his father straight away, he sat at the table, drinking, and talked about things that couldn't be read in the newspapers. He told his father there was an internal struggle going on in the highest echelons of the Party, but that it was something about which ordinary people would not be able to find out anything. His father said he knew, he knew; in the provinces and the cities, it was the same. His father also said that he had joined the rebels and that the head of the personnel department, who had denounced a string of people, had been overthrown. He held back for a while but felt he had to warn his father.

"Father, you mustn't forget the lesson of the anti-rightist period-"

"I did not oppose the Party! I only raised some views about a particular person's work!"

His father became agitated. His hand began to shake, and he spilled the liquor from his cup onto the table.

"You're not young, and you have problems with your personal history, you can't join such groups! You don't have the right to take part in such campaigns!" He was also very agitated. He had never spoken in that tone of voice to his father before.

"Why can't I?" His father slammed his cup on the table. "There's nothing wrong with my history, I didn't join with reactionaries, I have no political problems! That year, the Party called upon people to speak out, and I simply said that the wall between the masses should be torn down. I was referring to that person's work style. I did not say a word against the Party. It was his revenge! I said this at the meeting, and many people were present, they all heard and can testify to this! That blackboard document of mine with more than a hundred characters had been requested by their Party branch!"

"Father, you're too naive-" he went to argue, but his father cut him short.

"I don't need you to lecture to me! Just because you've done a bit of study! Your mother overindulged you, she spoiled you rotten!"

After his father had calmed down, he had to ask him. "Father, did you ever have any guns?"

His father was stunned. It was as if he had been struck on the head. Slowly his head drooped, and he stopped talking.

"Someone has divulged that my file has this problem," he explained. "I made this trip to see if you were all right. Is there any truth in the matter?"

"Your mother was too honest…" his father mumbled.

In other words, it was true. His heart went cold.

"It was a year or two after Liberation. Census forms were issued for people to fill out, and there was a column for weapons. It was your mother's fault, she was asking for trouble, she insisted that I honestly write down that I had sold a gun to a friend…"

"What year was this?" he asked, glaring. His father had become the object of his interrogation.

"It was a long time ago, during the War of Resistance. It was still the Republican Period, before you were even born…"

People all testified like this, they had to, he thought. However, the matter of the gun was already an incontestable fact, and he had to struggle to pull himself together and to curb his anger. He could not interrogate his father, so he said quietly, "Father, I'm not blaming you, but where is this gun?"

"I passed it on to a colleague at the bank. Your mother said she couldn't understand why I was keeping the thing, but I had it for protection, because of the social unrest in those times. She said I wouldn't know where to aim it, and what if it went off by accident? So, I sold it to a colleague at the bank!" His father laughed.

But this was not a laughing matter, and he said sternly, "But it is recorded in my file that you had hidden a gun."