Xu Xiaobin - Dunhuang Dream

“He said he had something to do.” Wuye took her backpack from her shoulders and went to hang it on the bicycle. “If you had asked, he would have come.”

“Nonsense.”

The bag was too big to hang on the bicycle, so she took it back, put it on her shoulders again, and sat on the back of the bicycle. They set off.

The rickety old bicycle creaked.

“This bag is a pain. My shoulders are about to break.” She felt the two narrow straps cut into her flesh.

The creaking suddenly came to a halt as he braked and put his feet on the ground. He turned around. His movements and his look of tenderness all seemed so familiar to her. Her heart thumped.

He got off the bike and took the bag from her shoulders and placed it on the back of the bike. “I told you not to carry it, why try to show off?” Suddenly he seemed more like an older brother. Without saying a word, he put her on the bar in front of him. “This won’t do.” She flushed red. His arms were like steel walls on either side of her. She felt his breath on her and felt herself melting in his warm embrace. She was powerless to resist. As she was thrust against the arms around her by the bouncing bike, she seemed to feel an electric current pass through her to her most secret place. She hadn’t felt anything like it for a long, long time. She closed her eyes and felt dizzy. She felt like dying at such a moment.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, looking down at her. He could feel her trembling.

“Let’s not go. I have a premonition. .”

“Don’t be so superstitious. Nothing will happen with me here.” He was once again a little boy. With a self-confident wave of his hand, he pedaled harder, making the bike fly.

15

The first thing they saw was the small shop.

The small shop stood alone on the mountainside. Two yellow dogs stared at them listlessly without making a sound.

“Hey, why don’t the dogs bark?”

“Perhaps they’re incarnations of the Buddha,” he laughed.

“You’re always so blaspheming of anything spiritual. Retribution will come.”

“I’ve already escaped beyond the three realms and have transcended the five elements.” Wuye then ran off to play with one of the dogs. The dog was unresponsive, its ears drooping. She snapped several pictures.

At that moment, a frail-looking young woman appeared in the door of the shop.

In the mist, her hair took on a seductive color. She was dressed in tight-fitting gray clothes and stood straight as a knife blade, harsh and beautiful.

She said something that neither one of them understood. Xingxing smiled at her, but she ignored her. The two of them set off for the entrance to the caves when suddenly she was there behind them, screeching at them. To Xingxing it was like steel on glass. She was scared out of her wits.

16

The Tantric cave was darker than the others. The cave, which was usually closed, was open for them. She praised Wuye, and he seemed proud of the way things had succeeded in opening for them. The appearance of the Buddhist images was not as mysterious as it was said to be. She felt they were of no importance at all, but what was important was the form of cultivation, which was mysterious. She noticed that while they were naked, they had not forgotten to wear their crowns or their long strands of bone beads. Perhaps it was just a sign of theirs. The appearance of the Buddha was conceived by man. Did this form of adornment have its origins with some clan in ancient India? She stood transfixed, praising the incomparable colors. But years later what remained fixed in her mind was the deep ocher and bright mineral green. She didn’t find the mineral-green Plague Spirit or the mineral-green goddess perched on him like a lizard at all aesthetically pleasing. That skinny ocher reptilian goddess that clung so tightly couldn’t be called beautiful. Good and evil, Yin and Yang, were inseparable, pressed close together. Once more she thought of the Taiji diagram. Yes, this was probably ancient India’s equivalent to the Taiji diagram. Although a man and a woman were embracing, there was nothing lascivious about it. This, then, was the mysterious sign of ancient India’s Taiji diagram. All the ancients were great dialecticians and long understood the unity of opposites and the principle of I in thou and thou in I. In the white part of the ancient Chinese black-and-white Taiji diagram, there was a black spot and in the black part, a white spot. The dancing deity Vaspa was even more mysterious and praiseworthy. His body was that of a man, but he had two faces — one was the ferocious face of a male deity, the other that of a charming female deity. Together, they actually formed a harmonious whole. It appeared as if the old topic of one divided into two parts and the joining of the duality into a single whole had been discussed and resolved by the ancient Indians. She recalled how the idea of one dividing into two and two joining to form one caused a great debate that led to revolution that took so many lives. It was all so funny! Yes, the moderns thought they were superior in understanding, but the ancients possessed even greater understanding. But that was normal. It was just like the younger generation being unable to believe in the experience of their parents’ generation. One couldn’t take the philosophy of the ancients on faith until one experienced its like and opposite principle.

However, it was more frightening to come to arrive at a principle that was neither the same as nor the opposite of an earlier one.

Xiao Xingxing stared at the complex of color composed of deep ocher and mineral green. She thought of how she often found herself between a rock and a hard place: she could choose between the bright mineral green and the deep ocher.

That skinny, lizardlike goddess perched on the Plague Spirit was painted in a lifelike fashion by a Chinese artisan.

It was the goddess localized.

When the Joyful Buddha lived in his own land, he certainly bore no resemblance, of this she was certain.

Later, when she had stopped dreaming of the young man who slit his wrists, she started dreaming a new dream in which she saw herself pacing back and forth in a strange land. The sunlight was so bright that all those walking became transparent shadows. The statues of that strange city, though sculpted out of bright light, were heavy and black. They were many pairs of bronze men and women making love under the sunshine.

Wuye had been ignored for an hour and a half. His attention was focused entirely on her. Her silhouette was graceful and full. Her hair, which was as stiff as wire, was puffed and shining. In the darkness of the cave her white T-shirt shone with a glow of moonlight. The nails of her fingers touching the wall of the cave became pink shells in a sea of mineral green. She only saw ocher and mineral green, but he saw pure white, which was her color, between those two colors. Standing there, she melted into the vast fresco and seemed to become a spirit in the human world to link good and evil.

“It’s strange,” she said.

“What?”

“I said it’s strange,” she said as if waking from a dream. He was much taller than her and was standing close by. For that reason all he could make out was her protruding lashes and delicate nose.

“Are you talking about this painting?”

She didn’t utter a word. She thought of Zhang Shu’s interest in Lakshmi. Beautiful Lakshmi had become something ferocious and frightening in this cave. Strangely, she found the ferocity more appealing than the beauty. Later in her dream about foreign carvings of the Buddha, the Buddha always possessed a ferocious mien.

Wuye held the flashlight for her and his arm was tired, but seeing her so obsessed, he continued to hold the light for her, changing hands as he shifted his feet.