Gao Xingjian - One Man

After hesitating for a few days, he eventually spoke to Secretary Lu and asked him to do something for Sun Huirong.

"Her mother has already come to me," Lu said. "The girl has had the abortion, a contact in a county hospital was found, and her mother took her to have it done. The matter has been dealt with, and there is no need for you to be involved."

"But she is not yet an adult-" he tried to argue.

"Don't get involved!" Lu interrupted him, then followed with a stern warning, "There are very complicated relationships among the villagers. Does an outsider like you want to go on living here?"

This silenced him but it made it clear that he was merely eking out an existence under the protection of Lu.

"I've already taken care of the girl, I've sent her to another commune. When the affair cools down, in a year or so, and things have settled down, she will be given the merit points she needs for a work permit. Her mother has already agreed to it."

What else could he say? It was all a transaction, generations have rolled in this mud, what else can they do? For better or worse, this place had accepted him, and he had to comply, but he understood that he would always be an outsider.

Unlike Margarethe, Sylvie was bored when you spoke to her about these past happenings. She was not interested in your past. She was interested in herself, her love, her feelings, and she kept changing from one minute to the next. If you said more than three sentences to her about politics, she would cut you short. Race did not bother her, and her lovers were mostly foreigners, an Arab from North Africa, an Irishman, a quarter-Jewish Hungarian, a Jew from Israel, and, recently, you-if you counted as a lover. She said she preferred you as a friend rather than as a sex partner. Of course, there had also been French boyfriends or sex partners, but she said she wanted to get away from France, to go somewhere far away, to some place in the tropics like Indonesia or the Philippines, even Australia. She liked sunbathing, so she went to a sunny beach by the sea to start a new life, but fell into the same old trap again. She got pregnant by a boyfriend, not you, of course, and had her third abortion. At first, she wanted to have the baby, a woman had to give birth at least once, should she have it or not? The guy couldn't come out with a definite answer, and, in a fit of anger, she had it aborted. It was only later that the man said if you don't want an abortion then have the child. He wanted it! But wouldn't that have meant she would have had to take care of it? It wasn't a matter of her not wanting a child, she first needed a stable home, and she hadn't yet found the right sort of man, so she was anxious. Her anxiety was deep-seated, but it was an anxiety caused by a conflict between freedom and restriction that everyone had. In other words, what were the limits of freedom? She didn't have a money problem, because her parents had bought her a small apartment on the sixth floor at the top of a building. Outside the window were the red tiles of rooftops with chimneys, and beyond the rooftops, in the distance, was the pointed spire of a church. Paris was intoxicating, but on a rainy day it was sad, and there, in her apartment, you could only think of making love.

Saying that her anxiety was deep-seated didn't mean she couldn't find a man she could love and who loved her, she certainly didn't lack men. The men all loved her, at least for a certain period, and even after they had found someone else, they would still come from time to time. She said she wasn't a slut, and she reminded you with those very words. She wanted to do something meaningful, or, to put it more precisely, something interesting. She referred to artistic creation as being akin to giving birth. She wanted a child she could put body and soul into, even a spiritual child, and that was at the crux of her problem. But what was worth putting one's body and soul into? To be frank, only love. Yet being able to manage love was difficult, and not something determined by her alone.

When you fucked her, or she got you to fuck her, she put everything into it. But with you, once you were satisfied, that was it, and she was left feeling compromised. Of course, there were plenty of men who were good at making love, but the problem was she didn't love them all that much. What she was searching for was the ultimate in both love and sexual excitement. But that was an ideal, what people dreamed about, Utopia. She was aware of this, but it made her sad, profoundly sad, it was the profound sadness of being human, an eternal sadness that could never be dispelled.

She appreciated art the way she loved men, but she could not apply herself to the creation of art. That would mean sacrificing oneself to one's work, and she thought that was stupid. She was not so stupid as to sacrifice herself for art. She wanted to live artistically, but not to be an art object for the enjoyment of others. However, she was just that, she had an abundance of youthful feminine attraction, few men could resist her, but she was not a toy for men. It was the opposite, she enjoyed men, she believed that love had to be enjoyed to be worthwhile, but love often brought her disappointment.

You could not resolve matters for her, but thought you understood her, and, striving to overcome your jealousy, told her to go and enjoy the man she loved! Like the Devil teaching Eve to seduce, you were the snake. But she didn't need you to teach her, she already knew, she knew long ago how to seduce and be seduced. She was much younger than you were when you were just struggling for your basic right to exist as an individual. At the age when you had not yet tasted the forbidden fruit, she was already satiated by its bitter aftertaste. At the age when you were an idiot, or striving not to be an idiot, she was already overly clever. She could not tolerate the slightest suffering unless it was for her own masochistic pleasure; she would accept suffering only if it gave her pleasure.

But don't think she was a feminist. She, like you, had no "isms," and when there was talk about feminism, she would purse her lips. You did not dare recklessly voice an opinion about feminism. You have never personally experienced male oppression, and only a woman could understand the suffering this brought, and the significance of resisting it.

In any case, Sylvie wasn't a feminist. She most definitely was not a feminist, and she said she could, in fact, be a very good wife. She could spend a wonderful sleepless night with you, be up early, and have coffee and toast made for you. Barefoot, she would bring these on a tray to you in bed. She would sit cross-legged in front of you, and be happy just watching you enjoy it. Her smiling face would beam like the sun shining into the room with the curtains open, and she would show no sign of weariness after being up all night. At such times, she would be a lovely girl, or, more accurately, a little woman with a beaming face. That is, if she was in a good mood.

But if her anxiety flared up, you wouldn't be able to do anything right, and all your glib talk wouldn't be able to placate her. So, you knew you could not marry her, the two of you could only be lovers, possibly lifelong friends. According to her, the two of you could not be partners, and this depressed you. Therefore, her severe anxiety also severely affected you, but you could do nothing about it.

You were afraid that she might commit suicide, like her friend Martina. The week before Martina died they recorded a conversation. There was an old, pocket-sized tape recorder on the table, and it was on while they were drinking and talking. Martina had put it on, but Sylvie didn't know until she saw that the little red light was on and the tape was turning, and she asked, "Are you recording?"