Gao Xingjian - One Man

"Then your maternal aunt is a high-ranking official?"

"You want to know everything."

"I don't even know if your name is real or not."

The woman was smiling again; this time, her whole body was shaking, and he could feel it with his hand. He grasped her thigh and could feel her flesh through her trousers.

"I'll tell you," she put her hand on his and shifted it from her thigh as she murmured, "I'll tell you everything…"

He took her hand in his, and it gradually became relaxed, soft.

Banging on the door! It was the front door of the inn.

The two of them went stiff, and, listening with bated breath, tightly clutched one another's hands. There was a commotion, and the front door opened; it was either a night search or a special investigation. A group of people loudly questioned the woman in charge, then went around knocking at each of the downstairs rooms. Some of them went upstairs, and their footsteps resounded above on the wooden steps. A door-to-door search was taking place on both floors. Suddenly, there was a loud thumping noise on the floor-boards, someone was running. Shouting and swearing immediately followed, then total chaos. There was a dull thud, like a heavy burlap bag falling to the ground, a man howling, and then a confusion of footsteps. The howling abruptly turned into a piercing scream then gradually faded.

They sat on the bed, their hearts pounding wildly, as they waited for someone to knock on the door. There was another period of agony as the search was repeated upstairs and downstairs. However, no one came to their door, either they had overlooked this small room under the stairs, or the details he gave upon registering meant that he was of no interest to their investigation. The front door was locked, the woman grumbled for a while, then silence prevailed again.

In the darkness, she was suddenly shivering. He swept her trembling body into his arms and kissed her sweaty cheeks and soft lips. Their perspiration and tears mingled as they lay in the bed. He ran his hand over her sweat-covered breasts, unbuttoned her trousers, and put his hand between her legs, she was wet, couldn't move, and let him do whatever he wanted. When he entered her body, the two of them were naked…

Afterward, she said he had taken advantage of her momentary weakness to possess her, it wasn't love. But, he said, she had not resisted. Silent, when they had finished, he touched the sticky fluid between her legs and became anxious. At the time, university students were not permitted to marry, and becoming pregnant and having to get an abortion would bring disaster upon her. However, she put his mind at ease by saying, "I've got my period."

At this, he made love to her again. This time, she held nothing back, and he could feel her thrust herself forward to accept him. He realized that he had changed her from a virgin into a woman: he had had experience with women. However, if she only resented him and did not have tender feelings for him, as the morning sunlight came through the cracks of the door, she would not have let him wash the blood from her thighs with a wet towel, then, afterward, been so loving to him. He remembered, when he knelt on the brick floor and began kissing her erect nipples, that it was she who tightly embraced him and murmured "Don't make them go big" but she lay there on the bed with her eyes closed and again gave herself to him.

At the time, neither could have known what awaited them, or could predict what would follow. It was irrepressible wild passion, he kissed every part of her, and she did not try to stop him. His pent-up tensions violently discharged, and the two of them were covered in blood, but she didn't rebuke him. Afterward, when he came back with a basin of clean water, she asked him to turn around until she had tidied herself up.

She was stopped at the wharf on the river just as he got onto the ferry. They heard at the inn that trains were running but that people were only being allowed out of the station, not into the station. Those wanting to board the train had to take the ferry to the other side of the river, so a huge number of passengers had amassed at the wharf. A heavy morning mist clung to the river, and the sun was a red ball in the sky. It was like a painting of the Judgment Day. On the ferry, a sailor with a round-neck shirt and a badge on his chest shouted through a hand-held loudspeaker, "Let the nonlocal travelers get on first! Nonlocals should present their work identity cards and get on first!"

The crowd squeezing onto the wharf was not in a line, and, suddenly, there was chaos. The two of them became separated, and when he called out her name, the name she had used to register at the inn, she didn't answer to it. He still had her bag, which she had pushed into his hand. Maybe she wanted to get rid of the bag, for it contained her student card and that dossier of requests for help printed by her workplace. He was shoved onto the deck, but anyone who couldn't produce nonlocal identification was stopped on the wharf. She, with her two short plaits, was squashed in the jostling crowd. He looked down from the railing of the deck and shouted out to her again. It was still her made-up name, and she seemed not to have heard and just stood there in a daze, maybe she didn't understand in time that he was calling to her. The ferry drew away from the wharf.

A vast quagmire, reeds growing here and there, you're in a quagmire, you reek of stinking mud and want to crawl somewhere dry so you can stand up, you wash yourself, even your face, with the water lying on top of the mud, clearly knowing you won't be able to wash yourself clean, somehow you've got to get out of this swamp, you jump as hard as you can but still land in swampy water, you somersault and get yourself into a worse mess, muddy and wet, you have to crawl on…

A faint glow in the distance, there seems to be a light, you head for it, that is, you crawl toward it, light is coming through a crack, it's a house, there's a door, you crawl to the threshold, reach for the door, it suddenly opens, you hear wind but there's no wind, the large hall has a circle of light, you crawl into the circle of light, you finally stand up, it's a solid timber floor, then you find-fuck!-not a thing at all, you can't see a thing…

You need to adopt a posture, so you don't move, turn into a statue.

You need to be like a thread of gossamer, drift in the air, gradually disappear like clouds.

You need to be like a thorny branch on a jujube tree, like leaves frozen purple on a tallow tree in early winter.

You need to wade across a stream, need to hear bare feet squelching on cobblestones.

You need to drag heavy memories out of a vat of dye, make the floor wet.

You need a stark, white stage with bright lights, so that he and a woman, both naked, can roll about as everyone looks on.

You need to look down at them from high up, show your gaping eye sockets, two black holes.

You need to see the dark shadows of the bright, round moon in the lonely sky behind this door.

You need to couple with a she-wolf, put your heads up together and howl.

You need to take light quick steps, di-di-da, di-di-da, and pirouette right here.

You hope your dancer, he, will thrash and leap about like a fish out of water.

You hope a cruel hand will seize that big, slippery, thrashing fish, slash it open with a knife, yet you don't want it to die just like that.

You need a soprano voice using the highest pitch to narrate a forgotten story, like your childhood.

You need to be in darkness, like a sinking ship slowly entering the seabed, and you want to see a profusion of bubbles rising serenely and soundlessly.

You need to turn into a fish with a big head and swim about in the reeds, swishing your tail and moving your head.