by Gao Xingjian
Wu had put on a miserable look just to get on good terms with him, he thought at the time. It was a year later that he began to pity this old man for whom nobody dared to show any concern. The old man swept the yard with a big bamboo broom every morning, always head bowed and wearing a dirty, old, blue jacket with patches. Nobody who went by even so much as glanced at him. Obviously, he had aged a great deal, his shoulders drooped and the skin around his eyes and on his cheeks had become flaccid. It was only then that he began to feel sorry for Wu Tao, although he didn’t ever speak to him again.
The struggles that allowed for only one survivor turned everyone into enemies, and hostility blanketed people like an avalanche. Waves of intensifying winds pushed him to confront one party bureaucrat after another. He did not hate them as individuals, but he wanted to have them branded as the enemy. Were they all enemies? He could not decide.
“You are being too soft on them! They showed no mercy when they oppressed the masses. Why don’t you have the whole lot of those accomplices hauled onto the dais?” Big Li was reprimanding him at an internal meeting of the rebel group.
“Can you overthrow all of them?” He paused, then retorted, “Can one totally reverse things so that every person who had unjustly denounced others is branded the enemy? People have to be allowed to correct their errors. To win over the masses, some thought has to be given to a strategy for differentiating how people are to be treated.”
“Strategy, strategy, you’re just an intellectual!” Big Li, bad-tempered and pushy, said this with derision.
“Why are we joining up with and taking in just about anyone who comes along? The rebel group isn’t a plate of stir-fried vegetables! That’s the rightist opportunist line, and it will snuff out the revolution!” This older sister, a Party member, had recently joined their command department and she was challenging him. She had studied the history of the Party and was quite radical. The “correct line” struggle had started within the rebel group. “The revolutionary leadership authority must be firmly controlled by authentic leftists and not by opportunist elements!” This Party-member older sister of the rebel group was all worked up and her face was like a red rag.
“What are you getting up to!” He banged the table. Being in this motley group had made him tough, but he was worried.
He could not remember how he got through those days and nights of so much endless argument, righteous anger, inflammatory revolutionary words, lust for personal power, stratagems, plotting, collusion and compromise, indignation with ulterior motives, unthinking recklessness, and wasted emotions. Unable to resist, he allowed himself to be manipulated into arguments to challenge the conservative forces and also into endless quarrels within the rebel group.
“Political power is vital for the revolution. If we don’t seize power, our rebelling will be so much wasted effort!” Big Li, enraged, also banged the table.
“Can you hold onto power if you don’t unite with the majority?” he retorted.
“Unity will only last if it is unity created by struggle!” Little Yu held up Mao’s little red book of Sayings to shore up his own weak class origins. “We can’t listen to you, because at critical times the intellectuals will always waver!”
They all regarded themselves as blood-lineage proletariat and believed that this red country should belong to them. Revolution or rebellion, it finally came down to seizing power. This fact was so simple that it surprised him. But, at the time, he did not know what he wanted, and even his rebelling was a path he had strayed onto by mistake.
“Comrades, Chen Duxiu failed to seize political power at a critical point of the revolution! He was a rightist opportunist!” The Party-member older sister dismissed him with this reference to Party history, then began shouting slogans to the people at the meeting.
“All of you who are not for the revolution can get the hell out of here!” the more radical among them shouted along with her. As a latecomer, she was trying to maneuver herself into a leadership position.
“If you want to be the leader, then go for it!”
He rose to his feet angrily and left the smoke-filled meeting room where forty or fifty people had been puffing on cigarettes the whole night. In the office next door, he pulled together three chairs and went to sleep. He was upset and confused. If he wasn’t a fellow traveler of the revolution, was he then an opportunist rebel? Probably he was, and this was unsettling.
On the night of that New Year’s Eve, the meeting thus unhappily dispersed. In the New Year, sporadic war began between Big Li’s crowd and the most radical members of the Battle Corps that had announced a takeover of the paralyzed Party committee and political department.
“Smash the Party committee! Smash the political department! Revolutionary comrades, do you support or oppose the New Red Political Authority? There is a clear line of demarcation between being revolutionary or not!”
Little Yu was shouting into the broadcast system. Offices had been fitted with speakers, and the announcement of the political coup blared through all the corridors and rooms. Escorted by Big Li, Tang, and some service personnel, a group of old cadres and some young Party branch secretaries all wearing placards on their chests were paraded through the corridors of the entire building. In the lead was Wu Tao, beating on a gong.
What were they up to? Probably this was precisely how revolutions began. Those once dignified leading cadres who were the embodiment of the Party now filed past, one after the other, heads bowed, abject and wretched. The Party-member older sister led the rebel group with her fist raised and, shaking it, she loudly shouted, “Down with the capitalist road elements in positions of power! Long live the New Red Political Authority! Long live the victory of Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line!”
In imitation of the national leaders at reviews, Tang waved at the people squeezed in the corridors and blocking office doorways. This made some laugh, but made others look grim.
“We know you are opposed to their seizing power—” the former field officer said.
“I don’t, but I oppose their method of seizing power,” he replied.
The person who approached him had transferred from the army to work as a political cadre. He was only a deputy department chief, and, in the chaos, was eager to advance himself. All smiles, he said, “You’ve got much more influence with the people than that mob. If you put yourself forward, we will back you. We hope that you will rally a contingent to work with us.”
This conversation took place in the confidential documents room of the political department, a room he had not previously entered. The workplace documents and personnel files, including his own file with a record of his father’s problem, were all kept in this place. When Big Li’s crowd seized power, they pasted paper seals on the metal security cupboards as well as the locked document cupboards. The seals could be torn off at any time but nobody would dare to destroy the files.
The former field officer had sought him out in the main dining hall and said he wanted to exchange ideas with him. However, his arranging to meet in this room indicated another motive and, entering the room, he somehow sensed this. He knew who was behind the former field officer, because a few days earlier, the Party-committee deputy secretary, Chen, had given him a signal by putting a big bony hand on his shoulder. Chen formerly headed the workplace political department and seldom spoke or laughed; after being denounced, he had turned stony and cold. Chen had come up to him from behind and, as no one was around, had actually called his name and even addressed him as “comrade.” Chen put his hand on his shoulder for one or two seconds, gave a nod, and walked past. This seemingly casual act, however, intimated extraordinary closeness, a pretense of having forgotten that it was he who had denounced Chen at a big meeting. This man far outstripped that motley crowd of rebels in political experience and meanness, yet here he was, stretching out a hand to him. He was by no means an old hand at playing politics, and was not as cunning as this man, but he knew he could not stand in their ranks. He reaffir
med his position, “I don’t condone how they have seized power, but that doesn’t mean that I am opposed to the general direction of those who have seized power. I definitely support rebelling against the Party committee.”
This pleased the former field officer, who was silent for a while before saying with a nod, “We’re also rebelling.”
It sounded as if the man were saying “We’re also drinking tea.” He laughed, but said nothing.
“We were just having a casual chat, treat our conversation just now as having never occurred.” Having said this, the former field officer stood up.
He left the confidential documents room, declined their deal, and severed links with them.
Less than ten days later, in February, after the New Year, the old Red Guards and some political cadres again organized a corps to oppose the seizure of power and smashed the workplace broadcasting station that was controlled by the rebels. The first armed conflict broke out between the two sides, and there were some injuries, but he was not present at the time.
24
Is it worth writing pure literature, that pure literary form where style, language, word games, linguistic structures, patterns simply follow their own course, but which is unrelated to your experiences, your life, the dilemmas of life, the quagmire of reality, or you, who are a part of the filth? Pure literature is a subterfuge, a shield, a limitation, and there is no need for you to crawl into a cage demarcated by others or yourself.
Your writing is not in the cause of pure literature, but neither are you a fighter using your pen as a weapon to promote truth. You don’t know what truth is, but you don’t need someone else to tell you what is. You know you are certainly not the embodiment of truth, and you write simply to indicate that a sort of life, worse than a quagmire, more real than an imaginary hell, more terrifying than Judgment Day, has, in fact, existed. Furthermore, it is very likely that when people have forgotten about it, it will make a comeback, and people who have never gone crazy will go crazy, and people who have never been oppressed will oppress or be oppressed. This is because madness has existed since the birth of humanity, and it is simply a question of when it will flare up again. Then are you trying to play the role of a teacher? Many have worn themselves out as teachers and preachers, but have people become any better?
It is best not to strive to make yourself despair, so why go on relating all this misery? You are distressed, but even if you wanted to, you can’t stop. You must have this release, it has become an affliction, and the reason, you suspect, is because you yourself have this need.
You vomit up the folly of politics, yet, at the same time, you manufacture another sort of lie in literature, for literature is a lie that hides the writer’s ulterior motive for profit or fame. However, what guides or stops the pen are not utilitarianism and vanity, but a deep, instinctual, animal drive, and differences within the species are due to the persistence of this drive, which is not affected by temperature changes, whether one is hungry or not, or the seasons. It is just like shit; if there is the need to, it is discharged. But it is unlike shit in that it is discharged in different places, and what is discharged must be endowed with sensuality and aesthetic beauty—for example, linking grief to your enjoyment of language. While exposing the land of your ancestors, the Party, the leaders, the ideals, the new people, and also that modern superstition and fraud—revolution—you use literature to create a gauze curtain, so that, viewed through it, that trash can at least be looked at. Hidden on this side of the curtain, in the dark with the audience, you derive pleasure; so doesn’t this provide satisfaction?
Lies are everywhere in the world, and you are similarly creating lies in literature. Animals do not tell lies but exist in the world no matter how it is, whereas humans need to use lies to adorn this forest of humanity, and it is this that distinguishes animals from humans. More cunning than animals, humans need to use lies to conceal their own ugliness in order to seek a reason for living: to articulate pain in order to alleviate pain seems to make pain bearable. In ancient times, the dirges at funerals in the villages had the effect of drugging the senses, and, like the singing of Mass in churches, the singing of these could be addictive.
Pasolini adapted for cinema Sade’s exposés of the evil of political power and human nature; by using only the screen to separate the audience from reality, he made people feel that they were viewing the violence and evil from the outside. That there can be a tantalizing quality in violence and evil is probably the wonder of art and literature.
Sincerity is the same for the poet and the novelist. The writer hides like a photographer behind the camera, affecting impartiality and detachment behind an objective camera, but what is projected on the negative is still self-love and self-pity, masturbation and sadism. That eye with its pretense of neutrality is driven by all sorts of desires, and what is manifested is tinged with aesthetic taste while claiming to look with indifference upon the world. It is best that you acknowledge that your writing strives for reality but that it is separated from reality by a layer of language. It is by cloaking naked reality with a gauze curtain, ordering language and weaving into it feelings and aesthetics that you are able to derive pleasure from looking back at it, and are interested in continuing to write.
You articulate in language your feelings, experiences, dreams, memories, fantasies, thoughts, assessments, premonitions, sensations, as well as providing the music and rhythms for linking these to the existences of real people. In the process of linguistic actualization, the present and past history, time and space, concepts and knowledge, all become fused and leave behind magical illusions created by language.
The magic of literature lies in willingness on the part of the author and the reader. Unlike political frauds that even the unwilling are forced to accept, literature may either be read or not, there is no coercion. You do not choose literature because of a belief in its purity; for you, it is simply a means of release.
Also, you are not polemical. You do not extend or amputate according to the other person’s height, do not tailor yourself to the framework of theories, do not restrict what you say to what interests others. Your writing is only to bring pleasure and happiness to your life.
And you are not a superman. Since Nietzsche, there has been a glut of both supermen and common herds in the world. You are, in fact, very ordinary, the epitome of ordinariness and practicality. You are relaxed and at ease, have a smile like Buddha’s, although you are not Buddha.
You absolutely refuse to be a sacrifice, refuse to be a plaything or a sacrificial object for others, refuse to seek compassion from others, refuse to repent, refuse to go mad and trample everyone else to death. You look upon the world with a mind that is the epitome of ordinariness, and in exactly the same way you look at yourself. Nothing inspires fear, amazement, disappointment, or wild expectation, hence, you avoid frustration. If you want to enjoy being upset, you get upset, then revert to this supremely ordinary, smiling, and contented you.
You do not detest the world and its ordinary ways that will always be fashionable. By not exaggerating your challenge to those in power, you have survived to enjoy freedom of speech. You have also received kindness from others and, as far as you are concerned, the principle “I don’t want others to owe me anything and I don’t want to owe others anything” is wrong. You are indebted to others, and others are indebted to you, but adding together all the kindness you have received from others, you have certainly received much more than you have given. Indeed, you are very lucky, so why are you complaining?
You are not a dragon, not an insect, not this, not that, so, “are not” is thus you, but rather than negation, “are not” is a sort of reality, a trace, a cost, or a result. At the end point, that is, at the brink of death, you are merely an indication of life—expression and speech that confronts “are not.”
You have written this book for yourself, this book of fleeing, your One Man’s Bible, you are your own God and follower, you do not sacrifice yourself f
or others, so you do not expect others to sacrifice themselves for you, and this is the epitome of fairness. Everyone wants happiness, so why should it all belong to you? However, what should be acknowledged is that there is actually very little happiness in the world.
25
He saw no future in the total chaos of the times, so it was best for him to get out of danger. He wanted to retrieve that lost world, the startling beauty he had seen in the person of the landlord’s daughter, the beautiful contour of her face and her slim figure. As the girl stood sideways outside his door, her pink fleshy earlobe was outlined in detail by the sunlight in the courtyard and her hair, eyebrows, and lips seemed to radiate light. Her beauty had entranced him, but the hatred in the girl’s eyes was daunting. He wanted to dispel the girl’s misunderstanding of him, so he went to the neighboring courtyard. He had imagined it to be a quiet courtyard complex with just the one family, which would be an isolated little paradise cut off from the chaotic world. The old man from next door had not come to collect rent for the street committee, so he went to pay his rent in the neighboring courtyard as an excuse to see the girl.
The small door on the street opened when he touched it, and the little courtyard inside the wall gave him a shock: it was a shambles, a clutter of odds and ends piled by the wall and under the eaves. An old woman was washing bedcovers in an aluminum basin at the top of the steps right in front of the main door, and there was a small child inside the house crying and making a racket. He thought he had come through the wrong door and was about to retreat when the old woman looked up and asked, “Who are you looking for?”
“I’ve come to pay the rent. . . .”
“What?”
“I live in the courtyard next door, and I’m looking for the landlord. No one has collected the rent for months.” He had come prepared with an explanation.
The old woman shook the soapsuds off her hands and pointed to the apartment at the side with a lock hanging on the door, took no more notice of him, and went back to washing the bedding in the basin.