Gao Xingjian - One Man

The big leaves of the palms and the plane trees are trembling. A person cannot be crushed if he refuses to be crushed. Others may oppress him, and defile him but, as long as he has not stopped breathing, he will still have the chance to raise his head. It is a matter of being able to preserve this last breath, to hold onto this last breath, so that one does not suffocate in the pile of shit. A person can be raped, woman or man, physically or by political force, but a person cannot be totally possessed: one's spirit remains one's own, and it is this that is preserved in the mind. Schnittke was uncertain with his music, and he was groping in the dark; seeking a way out was like searching for light, but he relied solely on that small point of dim light in his heart, and it was this feeling that was indestructible.

Pressing his palms together to protect that point of dim light in his heart, he slowly moved through thick darkness, quagmire, not knowing where the path lay, yet carefully protecting that point of dim light. He was patient rather than obstinate. His tough resilience wove a cocoon; like a larva, he played dead and closed his eyes to endure the weight of the loneliness. But those delicate tinkling bells, that point of awareness of existence, that point of beauty of life, that gentle light, that spot of pulsating in the heart gradually began to radiate outward…

On the bare branches of the tallow tree in front of the door, a few frost-lashed, withered, dark-red leaves trembled. He felt compassion for the youthful glow of that helpless young woman, the gurgling of the stream, the black mother hen on the single log bridge, head down, pecking, then looking up to stare. They were all projections of his self. Even the lust aroused in him by that sexy girl flirting with him and mocking him had made him keep his grip on life, made him hold his breath to wait. While he could not find a way out, by seizing these beautiful specks of feeling, he was able to avoid spiritual collapse. Also, he comforted himself by masturbating, and obtained slow release by secretly writing.

There was the clean fragrance of the paddy-rice straw cushioning his plank bed in those years, and the smell of his sheets drying in the sun after they had been washed in the pond. And there was also the sweaty smell of her body, his tender excitement as he corrected her lipstick, and the tremor in his heart as, brushing her firm breasts, he seized her by her strong shoulders and pushed her out the door.

She had provided him with warmth and, in his imagination, he had been intimate with her. Moreover, he had articulated all these in language, put them into his writings, in order to obtain spiritual equilibrium.

You are filled with gratitude to women, and it is not just lust. You seek them, but they do not necessarily want to give themselves to you. You are insatiable, but it's impossible for you to have them all.

God did not give them to you, and you don't have to thank God, but, finally, you do feel a sort of universal gratitude. You are grateful to the wind and the trees swaying in the wind, grateful to nature, grateful to the parents who gave birth to you. You now have no hatred and are at peace. Maybe it is because you are getting old that you lose your breath when climbing a hill, and you are now frugal with what used to be inexhaustible energy. These are signs of getting old. You are going downhill, and a chilly wind suddenly starts blowing. No, you are not in a hurry to go down. The distant mountains in the mist seem to be at the same altitude, and you go down even if there is an abyss at the bottom, so, when you fall, you might as well think of the splash of the setting sun on the faraway mountain tops.

In the small harbor, on a jutting cliff, is a small church. Facing the Mediterranean Sea, stands a white cross with a black metal statue of Jesus Christ nailed to it. The wind is still and the waves are calm, there are people on the sandy beach, and children are running about. There is also a woman in a bathing suit, her eyes closed, lying in a nook in the cliff.

They say that Matisse once lived and painted here, where the sunlight is transparent and blinding. Light and color are in the paintings of Matisse, but you are walking toward darkness.

They drive you to Barcelona, the city with the bright-red Dali Museum decked with giant eggs on the roof. Spain had produced this old naughty child and the Spanish are a happy race. Crowds throng the streets. The black-haired Spanish women all have dark eyes and high nose bridges. Afterward, you go to a village restaurant that used to be a mill. Diagonally opposite is a family seated around a table: husband, wife, and their very pretty daughter whose rosy cheeks glow through her fair skin. The girl's long, black eyelashes are not fully-grown, but one day she will become one of the sturdy, voluptuous, big girls of Picasso's paintings. She is sitting across from her parents, sulking, engrossed in her own thoughts. Maybe she doesn't really know what she is thinking. That is life, she doesn't know what is in her future, and surely that is important? She doesn't know that she too will suffer, maybe she will get wiser, as she starts to worry. Her thick long black hair enhances her fair complexion and rosy cheeks. She is probably just thirteen or fourteen. For a young girl, thirteen or fourteen years of age, already to be sulking, surely, is one of the wonders of life, just like the suffering of Margarethe. Will she become a Margarethe?

Right now you are listening to a mass by Kodaly, a woman singing to an organ. People need prayer just like they need to eat and make love, and you, too, have religious feelings. Last night, the woman in the room above was crying out all the time. It was excruciating, and stopped you from sleeping the whole night. From midnight till three o'clock, she was screaming, panting, then laughing loudly. You couldn't tell if it was rape or ecstasy taking place. At first, you thought it was in the room next to your bed headboard, then you heard the noise on the floorboards above, and it seemed that they were playing sex games on the floor, maybe it was the sort of rape Margarethe had spoken about. But so what if this were the case, it was happening in the hotel room, and no one would ask questions. Afterward, you heard laughter, loud wanton laughter that even aroused your lust.

However, your heart is now at peace, and there is die organ and the wonderful choir of alto and tenor singers.

Earlier, at breakfast in the dining room downstairs, you only heard polite good mornings in German. It was a German tourist group of hefty, middle-aged and elderly couples at buffet breakfast, so everyone had a plate full of diced sausage and fried bacon. They eat a lot but aren't worried about putting on weight. The thought crossed your mind that it was unlikely that these women would have been crying out in bed. They were all engrossed in eating and seldom spoke, and their knives and forks made very little noise. At a table by the window was a young woman, sitting opposite an elderly man. They had finished eating and were drinking their coffee. They were not talking, but looking out at the street. The fine weather of yesterday had changed, the ground was wet, but the rain had stopped. They did not appear to be lovers, but were more like a father on vacation with a daughter who was still not financially independent. Probably the woman who was wailing and laughing loudly last night was still fast asleep in her room.

The organ and a choir. The hotel room has stylish old furniture, a heavy oak table, dark-brown carved wardrobes, and a wooden bed with round carved posts. Outside the window, no cars are flashing past the round streetlights. It is Sunday, late morning, and you are waiting for friends to take you to the airport to catch the plane back to Paris some time after noon.