Gao Xingjian - One Man

For you and for him, the interstices of time and circumstances provided distance, although you have had the advantage of time and location. With that distance-in other words, freedom-you were able to observe him at leisure. He was a spontaneous being, and his sufferings, in fact, were self-inflicted.

So, all right, you bid him farewell and go off. Or, rather, he must say good-bye to you. Is anything more to be said?

Buddhists talk about nirvana, Daoists talk about sprouting wings, but he says just let him leave.

At that instant, he stops, turns back to look at you, and, just like that, you and he go your separate ways. He had said that his problem was that he had been born too early and so brought much suffering to you. If he had been born a century later, for example, in the new century about to arrive, no doubt these problems would not have existed. But nobody can predict what will happen in the next century, and, furthermore, can one know if this next century is, in fact, new?

Perpignan is a city in the French border area adjoining Spain. A friend you have just met at the Mediterranean Literary Center asks if you get homesick, and you reply categorically that you do not. You say that you had cut off those feelings long ago, completely! In the square opposite the restaurant, a little cake-and-ice-cream shop celebrating its first day of business is decked out with lanterns and colored streamers to attract customers. A small brass band is playing with great gusto, it is jolly music, and an old woman is doing a local Catalan folk dance. The Southerners' passion and the heavy roll in their French make you feel close to them.

This early summer night brings a festive atmosphere, and, with the cheerful brass pipes as well, is it also celebrating your new life?

You have finally won joy in living. The proprietor of the restaurant comes to you with a book for your signature. He says his wife loved your novel and now wants to go on a trip to China. You smile.

You will not go back. Not even in future? someone asks. No, it is not your country. It exists in your memory only, as a hidden spring gushing forth feelings that are hard to articulate. This China is possessed by you alone, and has nothing to do with the country.

Your heart is at peace, and you are no longer a rebel. You are now an observer, and not anyone's enemy. If anyone wants to make an enemy of you, it no longer concerns you. For you, looking back has been a time of quiet reflection, so that you can get on with your life.

When you left China, you had brought with you a photograph that had been lost between the pages of a book. He was thin and had his head shaved. You look closely at the old yellowing photograph that you had somehow managed to keep. It had been taken thirty years ago in that reform-through-labor farm known as a May Seventh Cadre School. You want to see if his eyes will tell you anything. His shaved head, looking like a gourd ladle, was held high. He was proud, somewhat arrogant, even as a convict, and this had probably saved him from being crushed. But there is now no need for any arrogance. You are now a bird that is free and can fly wherever you want. There seems to be virgin land up ahead, well, at least, for you it is new. Luckily, you still have this sort of curiosity and don't want to be immersed in memories. He has already become footprints, which you have left behind.

Using this instant of time as the starting point, for you, writing is a spiritual journey, either in deep reflection, or talking to yourself, and you obtain joy and fulfillment in the process. Nothing frightens you anymore, for freedom eradicates fear. Let the sterile writings you leave behind erode with the passage of time. For you, eternity is not of pressing significance. This bout of writing is not your goal in life, but you continue to write so that you will be able to experience more fully this instant of time.

This instant of time is in Perpignan, after breakfast. As cars drive by under your window, illuminated shadows glide past the milk-white globular streetlights, but before there is time to see what sort of car it is, the illuminated shadow has vanished. Many shadows are illuminated in the world, but they will all vanish. You savor the shadows illuminated in this instant, so you also savored this he as a shadow that had been illuminated, and it amazed you. Oh, his shadow that was illuminated has flashed by and vanished!

It is beautiful music, Schnittke. Right now you are listening to Concerto Grosso No. 6. In this elegant piece, the frustrations of life are gracefully sublimated into high notes, which are released by the long chords of the violin streaking by like lightning. There is no need to try to understand the life of your contemporary Schnittke, but, from a conversation you had with him, each note he wrote echoed in harmony with the high notes of the violin.

Outside your window is the bright sunshine of early summer.

Eight hundred years ago, Perpignan, this city in the East Pyrenees, was a city-nation with a constitution that enshrined magnanimity, peace, and freedom. It was a city that received refugees, and the local Catalans took pride in this. However, the editorials of special editions commemorating the eight-hundredth anniversary of the city write about "eight hundred years of democracy and freedom, today under threat."

You didn't imagine you would ever come here, and, even less so, that readers would ask for your autograph. A youth asked you to write something in your book for his girlfriend, who, he said, couldn't come. You go to write, "Language is a miracle that allows people to communicate, but people often fail to communicate with one another." However, you only write the first half of it. You can't just write anything you feel like at the expense of another's good intentions. You are free to make fun of yourself, but you must not make fun of language.

Music must also be like this, and it is best to remove unnecessary ornamentation. Schnittke had a compulsive need to do this, he did not flaunt music, he was minimalist and left many spaces, every phrase conveyed genuine feeling, there was nothing contrived or gratuitous. You must only speak when you have something to say, if you do not, then best be silent.

The illuminated shadows of one car after another flash by the globular streetlights, and on the other side of the street, plane trees and palms grow in a quiet little park. This region is the home of the French plane tree, a species that roots from cuttings, and has virtually spread throughout the world. It also entered your memories and grew everywhere along the streets and in the parks in the city where you lived as a child. The first girl you kissed, Little Five, was leaning against the shiny trunk of a plane tree that had shed its bark. It was also summer, but hotter than here.

It is good to be alive, and you sing a hymn to life, sing it because life has not treated you badly in everything. But sometimes life still makes your heart tremble, like this music with its crisp, fine drum-beats and the sound of the horns.

Not long before Sylvie's friend Martina killed herself, she picked up a drifter from the streets and took him home for the night.

Finally, she killed herself. She said on the tape she had left behind that she could not bear the psychiatric hospital, and that her death had nothing to do with anyone. She was sick of life, killed herself, and that was the end. You do not know what your end will be like, and there is no need to plan an end. Should neofascists one day come to power, if it is still a magnanimous city that accepts refugees, will you escape here, to Perpignan? You are not going to fantasize about disaster.

To say that people are born to suffer, or that the world is a wasteland, is an exaggeration. Disasters have not been entirely your lot, so you are grateful to life, and this gratitude is akin to thanking God, but who is your God? Fate? Coincidence? You think that it is this consciousness of your self, this awareness of your own existence, that is to be thanked, for it was through this that you were able to save yourself from your predicament and suffering.