Gao Xingjian - One Man

"If you want to come and investigate further-" the old man said.

"That won't be necessary," he cut the old man short. He no longer felt the same as he did prior to this visit: there was no sense in blaming either this old man or his father.

"I'm already nearing the end of my life. Just finish listening to me," the old man insisted.

"The thing no longer exists, does it? Surely it has totally rusted away?" He stared at the old man.

The old man's mouth opened wide, showing a few sparse teeth, as he burst into loud laughter. A tear fell from his droopy eyelid.

The old man and his wife began preparing food and suggested that he stay for a meal. But, saying he had to get back to the city to return his bicycle then catch the night train, he firmly declined.

Uncle Fang saw him out of the building to the main road. Waving him off, he said to convey regards to his father, then said, "Take care! Take care!"

He got on his bicycle. When he looked back and could no longer see the old man, he suddenly thought: I've gone to all this trouble, but what fiickin' use is it going to be?

So you can, in fact, turn back to look at him, that unfilial son of a doomed family, a family that was not destitute but by no means rich, a family that was in-between being proletarian and capitalist. Born in the old world but growing up in the new society, he somewhat superstitiously believed in revolution, then from half-believing and half-doubting, he rebelled. However, he grew weary of the futility of rebelling, then discovered that it was nothing more than a toy cooked up by politics, so he refused to be a foot soldier or make any more sacrifices. But escape was not an option. He was forced to don a mask and somehow got along by losing himself in the crowd.

Thus he became a member of the two-faced faction, and wore a mask that he put on when he went out, like putting up an umbrella when it rained. Back home, behind the closed door, where he wouldn't be seen, he took off the mask to have a break. Worn too long, the mask would stick to the face, fuse with the flesh and the nerves, and he would not be able to remove it. It should be noted that this condition was prevalent everywhere around him.

His real face only came into existence later on, when, finally, he Was able to take off the mask. But taking it off was not an easy matter, because the face and the facial nerves had become stiff from wearing the mask, and it took much effort to laugh with joy or to grimace with pain.

He was probably born a rebel; not a rebel with a clear objective, direction, or ideology, but simply one with a basic instinct for self-preservation. Later on, when he realized that his act of rebellion was being orchestrated, it was already too late.

From then on, he was devoid of ideals, but he did not want others to spend time thinking them up for him. He would not be able to pay for them, and he was afraid of being duped again. He no longer daydreamed, so he did not need to use fancy words to deceive others or himself. He no longer entertained any illusions whatsoever about people and the world.

He did not want comrades, and did not want to make plans with anyone to achieve goals, so there was no need to seize power. All that was too painful, and the endless struggles were psychologically draining. It was a blessing to be able to avoid big families and organized groups.

He refused to smash the old order but he was not a reactionary. If someone wanted a revolution, then let them go ahead, so long as it was not a revolution that made life impossible for him. To sum up, he could not be a fighter. He preferred to be away from revolution and rebellion, in a place where he could eke out a living and look on from a distance.

In fact, he had no enemies. It was the Party that was intent on making an enemy of him, and he couldn't do anything about it. The Party gave him no choice and was intent on making him conform to a pattern, and his failure to conform meant that he was the enemy of the Party. Moreover, in order to lead, the Party needed to make a target of people like him to arouse the will and spirit of the people, to whip up the masses into displays of righteous indignation. So he was made an enemy of the people. But he had no quarrel with the people, he only wanted to be able to live his own insignificant life without having to depend for his livelihood on being used as a practice target.

He was this sort of a loner, and had always wanted to be like this. It may now be said that he had no colleagues, no one above or below him, no leader, no employer; he led and hired himself, and everything he did he did cheerfully.

But he was not a misanthrope. He continued to eat at the hearth of human society and was fond of the food of his ancestral land, a taste he had acquired as a child because of his mother's wonderful cooking. Naturally, he also liked Western food, French haute cuisine, of course, and also Italian pasta, supposedly brought by Marco Polo from the Tang Empire, but sprinkled with Parmesan cheese that didn't exist in China. Japanese raw fish laced with hot raw mustard was excellent, and so was Russian caviar, especially the black variety. Also, if Korean barbecued beef and kimchi were served with Indian rhoti, it was a perfect dish. Kentucky fried chicken was the only thing he couldn't eat; for him it was bland and tasteless. He was fussy about food because he had gone through some good times in his childhood.

And he was also fond of women. As a youth, he had sneaked a look at his mother's youthful body while she was having a bath. From then on, he deeply appreciated beautiful women. In those times, when he was without a woman, he would write about them, and what he wrote contained a lot of sex; in this respect, he was not a virtuous gentleman. Furthermore, he had great admiration for Tang Yin and Casanova, but he was never as lucky, so all he could do was to consign his sexual fantasies to his writings.

This is the report you have written for him to replace his file in China, which, no doubt, still exists, but which he will never see.

He looked at the cracks in the papered ceiling. The rats running around and fighting all night had widened the cracks, and had left his bedding covered in strips of black dirt. He had never been so idle, there was nothing to do, he did not have to get up early to get to work on time, and he no longer had to busy himself with rebelling. He did not read, because all the books that were readable – had been put into wooden boxes or cardboard cartons, and he did not commit anything to writing. He had to stay awake so that he would not slip back into a nightmare. The old retired worker in the next room was up early and had his radio turned on full blast, tuned to the revolutionary opera Red Lantern. It was really irritating, and even while he masturbated under the bedcovers with his eyes closed, striving again to enjoy Lin's hot naked body, he was not able to block out the solemn, virtuous words of that high-pitched singing. He was left feeling miserable.

He thought about getting a ladder to mend the cracks in the ceiling. But if he were to make a mistake, that brittle sagging paper shell could collapse, and it would be impossible to clean up the filthy mess of years of accumulated dust. It would take an expert to paper a ceiling. Instead, he moved the things piled on Old Tan's bed into a corner of the room, moved his own bedding there, then dismantled his own bed. Old Tan definitely would not be coming back.

If he wanted to go for a walk, there was nowhere he could go but to buy one of the bulletins put out by the people's organizations. These, in fact, contained much revealing information, and back home he would cook dinner and read as he ate. From the leaders' speeches to various people's organizations, he detected different views, hidden meanings. The many vehement pronouncements changed continually, like pictures in a magic lantern. A day earlier, a leader could be interpreting Mao's newest directive, then, tomorrow or the day after, sure enough, the secret killing machine would fall on that leader, who would suddenly be transformed into an anti-Party criminal. His righteous indignation had cooled, and doubts kept springing up in his mind, although he did not dare to acknowledge this.