Gao Xingjian - One Man

The plastic leg bearing your signature what in the old picture frame slowly rises on the stage. In the midst of singing, an old man with a sunken mouth is hoisting it up on a rope, solemnly, just like raising a flag. Your actress, a young Japanese performer, is standing elegantly at the front of the stage. She is very solemn, and presents a rose on a broken stem in both hands to the audience. Then, parting her lips, she erupts into laughter, revealing a mouth full of black teeth. This is wonderful, so wonderful!

You have already played around with revolutionary art and revolutionary people, and even if you were to play around more with them, you would not be able to come up with anything new. The world is like an unfurled, worn-out flag. In the early hours of the morning, while you are traveling by car from Provence to the Alps, a gentle stretch of mist comes toward you. You become formless and weightless, and, while mocking others and yourself, you vanish with the wind…

You're just a melancholic piece of jazz, greedy and insatiable in that moist, dark cavern between a woman's thighs. So, why is this pitiful little bird of yours complaining?

You're a saxophone, moaning when you want and shouting when you want. Ah, you have said farewell to revolution! If you think crying will make you feel better, you have a good cry. You're not afraid of losing anything. If there's nothing to lose, then you're free, like a wisp of smoke, like the pure fragrance of marijuana mixed with the fishy smell of stinkweed. So, why are you still worried? Why are you still afraid? When you disappear, you will disappear. But disappearing between the voluptuous, moist thighs of a woman is wonderful and is to understand fully what is known as life. You don't need to be sad or begrudging, you can squander everything, and this is wonderful!

Tough reeds blowing in the wind. The wind on the North Sea coast of Denmark is strong, but among the clumps of reeds on the undulating sand dunes is a circle of reeds moving against the wind. You think it is a pair of wild geese, but, coming closer, see that it is a naked couple, a man and a woman. You turn to leave, and hear them laughing behind you. Beyond the desolate beach, on the dark-green sea, white-crested waves tumble as they charge toward the seaweed-covered concrete bunker left from the Nazi occupation.

You want to cry, to throw yourself onto her firm breasts wet with perspiration and smeared with semen, and to cry uncontrollably, like a child needing the warmth of his mother. You don't just enjoy yourself with women, but also seek their warmth, forgiveness, and acceptance.

Your mother was the first woman you saw naked, through the half-closed door of her lighted room. You were sleeping in the dark on the cool bamboo bed, heard the splashing water, and wanted to take a proper look. When you propped yourself up on your elbows, your bed creaked. Your mother, with soap all over her body, came out, and you quickly lay down and hid your face, pretending to be asleep. She went back to the tub, but the door was left open, and you stealthily looked at the breasts that had fed you, and the black bushy place from which you had emerged. At first, you held your breath, then your breathing quickened, and after that you fell asleep in a state of stirring lust and confusion.

She said you were just a child, and, instantly, your lust settled. Contented and sleepy, you were her obedient child. She gently stroked you, and you placidly allowed her to examine you all over with the palm of her hand. That shriveled thing between your legs, she called it her little bird. Her eyes were gentle as she stroked your head, and, deeply moved, you wanted to nestle against her, nestle against this woman who had given you life, happiness, and comfort.

You equated this with love, equated this with sex, equated this with sadness, equated this with unsettling lust, and equated this with language. The need to express and narrate is a form of joy in pouring out, has no connotations of morality, and contains nothing hypocritical. It is a soaking deluge that totally cleanses you, so that you are transparent, like a thread of meaning in life, like light from behind a door behind which there is nothing, like a hazy surge of moonlight behind the clouds. You hear seagulls flapping their wings in the night sky, and see, from the depths of the darkness, the sea surging up into a line of white foam on the tide. In Italy, at Viareggio, the sea is flooded with searchlights, but the beach is deserted. You stand there, motionless, for a long time in front of the red-and-white-striped beach umbrellas.

However, at present, on this night in New York, the icy snow on the pavement is dirty and slushy. This is citizen-conscious New York, garbage-strewn New York, New York soaring into the clouds on its accumulated wealth, breathtaking New York, New York where people have to stand on the street in the cold to smoke a cigarette. The performance has ended, and you come out with her to look for a bar where you can smoke and have some drinks. She is the Japanese performer who, without speaking a word on stage, has just performed several roles in your play: a young girl just becoming sexually awakened, a dissolute woman, the mother's corpse, a nun, and a female ghost.

Walking from Eighth or Ninth Street in Manhattan to some streets past Thirtieth Street, finally, at Third, or Fifth, or maybe even Sixth Avenue -you can never remember numbers-you find a Brazilian or Mexican bar. It has a good atmosphere, and there are candles on the table, but the rock'n'roll music is too loud and not conducive to flirting. You have to shout across the table to hear what the other is saying, as you talk about art, serious art. She says she is really happy to have been able to play so many roles in one play, it was a satisfying experience, and the play seemed to have been written just for her. You curse the New York Times. The theater publicity person told you repeatedly that a reporter would definitely be coming, but no one had turned up even by the end of the performance. She says that with off-Broadway theaters it's always like that, it's very hard to get into their pages. Anyway, she has no regrets about having been able to work with you.

"I'll miss you," she says as she looks at her dark-blue fingernails.

The conversation turns to life. You say her nails were painted a tea color a couple of days ago. She says she often paints them different colors, and that each of the nails could be painted a different color. She also asks you how you would have liked them painted. You say blue-gray would have been best. On the stage, it would look colder, even though the play is dance and the focus is on the arms and legs. The conversation returns to art.

"Then what about lipstick?" she asks.

"Do you have black lipstick?" you ask.

"I've got all colors. Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"That's the job of the makeup artist, I can't do everything," you say.

"But we've already had the last performance!" she sighs.

"What new performances are coming up for you?" you ask, changing the topic.

"I'll just have to wait and watch out for opportunities. There is a musical that requires actors who can dance. Next week, I've got two auditions. My father told me to come back to Japan a long time ago, but, unless I joined the workforce there, I would have to get married. My father says I won't be able to make a living by dancing, and I should be satisfied, now that I've amused myself with it for so long."

She also says her father would soon retire and couldn't support her all her life. However, her mother says it is up to her to choose; her mother is Taiwan-born Chinese, and is quite open-minded. She says she doesn't like Japan, because women in that society have no freedom. You say you like Japanese literature, especially the women in Japanese writings.