Gao Xingjian: One Man

"Have you had lots of women?" Her eyes light up in the dark.

"I guess quite a lot since leaving China," you admit. There's no need to hide this from her.

"When you stay in hotels like this, do you always have women to keep you company?" she goes on to ask.

You're not as lucky as that. And when you stay in a big hotel like this, the theater group that invited you would be paying for it, you explain.

Her eyes become gentle and she lies down next to you. She says she likes your frankness, but that is not you as a person. You say you like her as a person and not just her body.

"That's good."

She says this with sincerity and she presses against you. You can feel that her body and her heart have softened. You say, of course, you remember her from that winter night. After that she came especially to see you, she said she happened to be passing. She was on the new bypass of the city ring road, saw your apartment block, and for no apparent reason dropped in. Maybe it was to look at the paintings in your apartment, they were unusual, just like a dream world. It was windy outside, the wind in Germany didn't howl, everything in Germany was sedate, stifling. That night, in the light of the candles, the paintings seemed to have something mystical about them and she wanted to see them clearly during the daytime.

"Were those all your paintings?" she asks.

You say you didn't hang other people's paintings in the apartment.

"Why?"

"The apartment was too small."

"Were you an artist as well?" she goes on to ask.

"Not officially," you say. "And, at the time, that was indeed the case."

"I don't understand."

You say, of course not, it's impossible for her to understand. It was China. A German art foundation had invited you to go there to paint, but the Chinese authorities would not agree to it.

"Why?"

You say even for you, it was impossible to know, but at the time you went everywhere trying to find out. Finally, through a friend, you got to the relevant department and found out that the official reason was that you were a writer and not an artist.

"Was that a reason? Why couldn't a writer also be an artist?"

You say it's impossible for her to understand, even if she does know the language. Things in China can't be explained by language alone.

"Then don't try."

She says she remembers that afternoon, the apartment was flooded with sunlight. She was sitting on the sofa examining the paintings and really wanted to buy one of them, but at the time she was a student and couldn't afford it. You said you would give it to her as a gift, but she refused, because it was something you had created. You said you often gave paintings as gifts to friends. Chinese people don't buy paintings, that is, among friends. She said she had only just met you, and couldn't really count as a friend, so it would be embarrassing to accept it. If you had a book of your paintings, you could give her a copy, or she could pay for it. You said paintings like yours couldn't get published in China, but, as she liked your work so much, it was all right to give her one of them. She says the painting is still hanging in her home in Frankfurt. For her, it is a special memory, a dream world, and one doesn't know where one is. It is an image in the mind.

"At the time, why did you insist on giving it to me? Do you remember the painting?" she asks.

You say you don't remember the painting but you remember wanting to paint her, wanting her to be your model. At the time, you had never painted a foreign girl.

"That would have been very dangerous," she says.

"Why?"

"It was nothing for me. I'm saying it would have been dangerous for you. You probably didn't say anything at the time because right then there was knocking at your door. You opened it, and it was someone who had come to check the electricity meter. You gave him a chair and he stood on it to read the meter behind the door, then, after making a note, left. Did you think he had really come to read the meter?"

You don't answer, you can't remember any of this. You say life in China sometimes appears in nightmares and you deliberately try to forget them, but from time to time they charge out of the subconscious.

"Didn't they warn people in advance that they would be coming?"

You say that in China anything is possible.

"I didn't go again because I was afraid of getting you into trouble," she says softly.

"I didn't think…" you say.

You suddenly want to be affectionate, and put your hands on her abundant breasts.

She strokes the back of your hands and says, "You're very caring."

"You too, dear Margarethe." You smile and ask, "Are you leaving tomorrow?"

"Let me think… I could stay longer but I'll have to change my plane ticket to Frankfurt. When do you return to Paris?"

"Next Tuesday. It's a cheap ticket and hard to change, but if I pay extra I can still change it."

"No, at the latest, I'll have to leave by the weekend," she says. "A Chinese delegation will be in Germany for a conference on Monday and I'll be interpreting. I'm not as free as you, I work for a boss."

"Then there are still four days." You count up the days.

"Tomorrow, no, one night has already passed, there are only three days," she says. "I'll phone the boss and ask for leave, change my ticket, then go to my hotel and bring my luggage across."

"What about this boss of yours?"

"He can get lost," she says. "My job here has been completed."

It is already light outside the window, and clouds swirl above the big building with the white pillars opposite. The peak is shrouded in mist and the lush vegetation on the mountain is the color of black jade. It looks like rain.

He did not know how he had returned to his home in Beijing. He couldn't find the key in his pocket, couldn't open the door, and was anxious people in the building would recognize him. He heard footsteps coming down the stairs and quickly turned, pretending to be going down. The person coming from the floor above brushed past him: it was Old Liu, the department chief, his boss back when he was working as an editor years ago. Old Liu was unshaven and looked like he did when he was hauled out and denounced during the Cultural Revolution. He had protected this old cadre at the time and Old Liu wouldn't have forgotten this, so he told him that he couldn't find the key to his apartment. Old Liu hesitated, then said, "Your apartment's been reallocated." At this he remembered that his apartment had been confiscated. "Would you be able to find somewhere for me to stay?" he asked. A worried frown appeared on Old Liu's face, but, giving the matter some thought, he said: "It will have to go through the building management committee, it won't be easy. Why did you have to come back?" He said he had purchased a return plane ticket, he hadn't thought… However, he should have. After being overseas for many years, how easily he had forgotten the difficulties he had experienced in China. Someone else was coming down the stairs. Old Liu pretended not to know him and hurried downstairs and out the front door. He quickly followed to avoid anyone else recognizing him, but when he got outside Old Liu had vanished. The sky was filled with flying dust, it seemed to be one of Beijing's early-spring dust storms, but he couldn't be sure if it was spring or autumn. He was wearing a single layer of clothing and felt cold. Suddenly he remembered that Old Liu had jumped out of the office building and had been dead for years. He must quickly escape.

He went to stop a taxi on the street to take him to the airport but realized that the customs officials would immediately see from his documents that he was a public enemy. He was troubled about having become a public enemy and even more troubled that he had no place to stay in this town where he had spent more than half of his life. He arrived at a commune in the suburbs to see if he could rent a room in the village. A peasant with a hoe took him to a shed covered with thin plastic, and pointed his hoe at a row of cement kang inside. The place must have been a cellar for storing cabbages in winter, which they had converted with a layer of cement. Probably there has been some progress, he thought. He had slept on the ground at the reform-through-labor farm in a big communal bed: the ground was spread with straw and people slept one next to the other, each with a forty-centimeter bed space, not as wide as these kang. Here, it was one person to a kang, much larger than the single cement lot in the cemetery where he had buried the ashes of his parents together, so there was nothing for him to complain about. Inside, he found more kang downstairs. If he rented, he would choose a downstairs kang where it was more soundproof. He said his wife liked singing.