by Gao Xingjian
“Friend,” Mao said. Mao sometimes addressed people as “friend” and not always as “comrade” because he had many young women friends, and, of course, he couldn’t be ranked with them. The only man in China who succeeded in having Mao address him as “friend” was Lin Biao. Later, when it was said that Lin Biao’s plane went down at Öndörhaan in Mongolia while he was fleeing the country, the Party took the unprecedented action of making photographs of the plane wreckage public. Among foreigners, there was Nixon. Mao had a lot to chat about with him, and, once they started talking, it went on for three hours. At the time, Mao, close to eighty, was being kept alive with injections, and talked and laughed with great gusto, so that even that intelligent Jew, Kissinger, while not adoring him, greatly admired him.
When Mao said “friend,” he certainly couldn’t have been addressing him, but he went forward regardless. What he wanted to ask was, “Did you really believe in the utopian state of Marx’s communism, or did you just use it as a front?” Back then, he had naively asked this question, but he wouldn’t have asked it later on.
“There are more than a hundred political parties in the world, and most of them no longer believe in Marxism-Leninism,” Mao said in a letter to his wife, Jiang Qing, during the early part of the Cultural Revolution. The letter, clearly also addressing the entire Party, was not bedroom talk between husband and wife, but, afterward, it was used as important evidence to purge Mao’s widow, and was presented before the entire Chinese people.
At the time, he preferred to think that since Mao had said this, probably he believed it. So, the old man did want to create this sort of a paradise on earth, if it didn’t count as hell. That was what he also wanted to ask at the time.
“It was only the initial stage,” Mao said.
Then when will the next stage come about? he reverently asked.
“In seven or eight years, it will come again,” Mao wrote in a letter to his wife, “the Cultural Revolution is a serious trial practice.” The old man took another cigarette, paused for a while, then went on to write, “Moreover, after seven or eight years, there will be another movement to purge all Ox Demons and Snake Spirits. And, after that, there will be many more purges.” After finishing the letter, he laughed, showing the black teeth in his mouth. According to the memoirs of Mao’s doctor, he smoked three packs a day and never used a toothbrush, and this was apparent from the news documentaries of Mao in old age meeting with foreign guests.
The old man was really a great military strategist! He had hoodwinked the people of China and many people in the world. This was also what he wanted to say.
Mao frowned.
He hastened to add: You defeated all of your enemies and won every single battle in your life.
“Don’t let your brains be addled by victory. I am ready to fall down and be smashed to pieces, but this is of no consequence. Matter is not destroyed, it only disintegrates.” Mao had written this in that no-longer-secret family letter subsequently made public by the Party.
Only your wife was smashed. You, old man, still enjoy good health. People still go to visit you in your mausoleum, and this is irrefutable testimony to your greatness, he said to Mao’s spirit or shadow.
“Believing I will live two hundred years, I set out to swim three thousand li.”
You wrote poetry from your early years, and it must be said that you were a great writer of classical poetry, but your tyranny is without precedent, you destroyed all the writers of the country, and it is in this that you were great. He said that he, too, did a bit of writing, but that he had to wait until after the old man was dead.
“In my person, I have, first, the spirit of the tiger, and, second, the spirit of the monkey.”
He said that, in his case, he had, at most, a minute amount of the spirit of the monkey.
The old man gave the hint of a smile, as if he had squashed some insect. He stubbed out more than half of a cigarette, indicating that he wanted to rest.
Mao lay in the crystal casket, and it seemed that the Party flag covered his body, he couldn’t remember too clearly. In any case, the Party led the country, and Mao led the Party, it really wasn’t necessary for him to be covered with the national flag. In the long queue filing past Mao’s remains, he probably had these unformed words in his mind, but didn’t dare to pause. After he had walked past, he didn’t dare look back, afraid that the people behind would notice the strange look in his eyes.
Writing freely about it now, this is what you want to say to this emperor who ruled as dictator over one billion people. Because you are insignificant, the emperor in your heart can only be the dictator of one person, and that person is yourself. Now that you have said this publicly, you have walked out of Mao’s shadow, but this was not an easy thing to do. You were born at the wrong time, and encountered the era of Mao’s rule, but your being born in that era had nothing to do with you, and was decided by what is known as fate.
54
You no longer live in other people’s shadows, nor treat other people’s shadows as imaginary enemies. You simply walked out of their shadows and stopped making up nonsense and fantasies. You are now in a vast expanse of emptiness and tranquility. You came into the world naked and without cares, there is no need to take anything away with you, and even if you wanted to, you wouldn’t be able to. Your only fear is unknowable death.
You recall that your fear of death began in childhood, and that your fear of death then was much worse than it is now. The slightest ailment made you worry that it was an incurable disease, and, when you fell ill, you would think up all sorts of nonsense and be stricken with terror. Your having survived so many illnesses and even disasters is purely a matter of luck. Life in itself is an inexplicable miracle; to be alive is a manifestation of that miracle. Is it not enough that a conscious physical body is able to perceive the pains and joys of life? What else is there to be sought?
Your fear of death came about when you were mentally and physically weak. There was the feeling of not being able to breathe, and you were afraid that you would not be able to last long enough to take your next breath. It was as if you were falling into an abyss, this sensation of falling was often present in dreams during your childhood, and you would awaken in fright, drenched in perspiration. In those days, when there was nothing wrong with you, your mother used to take you for numerous hospital tests. Nowadays, even under your doctor’s instructions to have tests, you often procrastinate.
It is clear that life naturally ends, and when the end comes, fear vanishes, because fear is itself a manifestation of life. On losing awareness and consciousness, life abruptly ends, and there can be no further thinking and no further meaning. Your affliction had been your search for meaning. When you began discussing the ultimate meaning of human life with the friends of your youth, you had hardly lived. However, it seems that having savored virtually all of the sensations to be experienced in life, you simply laugh at the futility of searching for meaning. It is best just to experience this existence, and, moreover, to look after it.
You seem to see him in a vast emptiness, with a faint light coming from some unidentified source. He is not standing on any specific or defined patch of ground. He is like the trunk of a tree, but has no shadow, and the horizon between the sky and the earth has vanished. Or, he is like a bird in some snow-covered place, looking here and there, occasionally staring ahead, as if deep in thought, although it is not clear what he is pondering. It is simply a gesture, a gesture of aesthetic beauty. Existence is, in fact, a gesture, it is striving to be comfortable, stretching the arms, bending the knees, turning to look back upon his consciousness. Or, it may be said that the gesture is actually his conscious mind, that it is you in his conscious mind, and it is from this that he is able to gain some fleeting happiness.
Tragedy, comedy, farce, do not exist but are aesthetic judgments of human life, which differ according to the person, the time, and the place. Emotional responses are probably also like this, and what is felt now
and what is felt at some other time can fluctuate between being perceived as sad and being seen as absurd. And there is no longer any need for mockery, for it seems that there has been enough self-ridicule and self-purification. It is only in the gesture of tranquilly prolonging this life and striving to comprehend the mystery of this moment in time, that freedom of existence is achieved. It is through this act of solitarily scrutinizing the self, that others’ perceptions of one’s self lose relevance.
You do not know what other things you will do, or what else there is to do, but this is of no consequence. If you want to do something, you do it. It’s fine if you do it, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t. And you don’t have to persist in doing something. If, at a particular moment, you feel hungry and thirsty, you just go and have something to eat and drink. Of course, you still have your own opinions, interpretations, inclinations, and you even get angry, because you are not so old that you don’t have the energy for anger. Naturally, you still become indignant, but it is with little passion. And while you still have the capacity for feelings and sensory pleasures, then so be it. However, there is no longer remorse. Remorse is futile and, needless to say, harmful to one’s self.
For you, only life is of value, you have a lingering attachment to it, it continues to be interesting because there are still things to discover and amaze you. It is only life that can excite you. That is just how it is with you, isn’t it?
55
One day, passing Drum Tower around dusk, he got off his bicycle and was about to go into a small eatery when someone called out his name. He turned. A woman stood there, looking at him. Uncertain about smiling, she was biting her lip.
“Xiao Xiao?” He wasn’t sure.
Xiao Xiao gave an awkward smile.
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what to say. “I didn’t think. . . .”
“You can’t recognize me, can you?”
“You’re more robust. . . .” In his memory, she was a young girl with a slight build and small breasts.
“I’m a peasant woman?” the woman asked sarcastically.
“No, you’re just more sturdy!” he hastened to add.
“I am, after all, a member of a commune. But I am not that flower turning with the sun; it withered and died!”
Xiao Xiao was caustic. She was referring to a song in praise of the Party, which compared the members of a commune to a sunflower that turned with the sun. He changed the topic, “Are you back in Beijing?”
“I’m trying to get a residential permit. I’ve put down that my mother is ill and needs me to look after her, I’m the only child in the family. I’m dealing with the formalities for getting back to Beijing, but I haven’t got my residential permit yet.”
“Is your family still at the same place?”
“The place is a shambles. My father is dead, but my mother has come back from the cadre school.”
He knew nothing of Xiao Xiao’s family circumstances and could only say, “I went to the hutong where your house is, I went to see . . .”
He was talking about ten years ago.
“How about coming to my house for a visit?”
“All right.” He agreed without thinking, although he hadn’t originally intended to. That year, he had cycled many times through that hutong in the hope of running into her, but he didn’t say this, and simply mumbled, “But I didn’t know your house number. . . .”
“I didn’t ever tell you.” Xiao Xiao remembered very clearly. She had not forgotten that winter night when she left before daybreak.
“It has been a long time since I’ve lived in that house. I was in a village for almost six years, and I am now living in a workplace dormitory.”
This explained things, but Xiao Xiao didn’t say if she had also tried to see him. He pushed his bicycle, walking for a while in silence beside Xiao Xiao, until turning into a lane. He had gone through this hutong on his bicycle many times, from one end to the other, then had gone into another lane, circled around, and come back from that end of the hutong. He had noted each of the courtyard gates, thinking that he might bump into her. He didn’t know Xiao Xiao’s surname, so he couldn’t make inquiries, he thought Xiao Xiao had to be a name her classmates and her family called her. The hutong was quite long when it came to walking through it.
Xiao Xiao went ahead, through a gate leading into a big courtyard shared by a number of families. On the left, was a small door with a padlock hanging on it, and, next to it, a coal stove. She opened the door with a key. Inside was a big bed piled with folded bedding, the rest of the room was a mess. Xiao Xiao quickly grabbed the clothes from a chair and threw them onto the bed.
“Where’s your mother?” He sat on the chair, and the springs in the seat cushion squeaked noisily.
“She’s in a hospital.”
“Why is she in a hospital?”
“Breast cancer, it’s already spread to the bones. I hope she will last the year and a half it will take to get my residential permit issued.”
After such a response, he couldn’t ask anything else.
“Like some tea?”
“No, thanks.” He had to try to think of something to say. “Tell me about yourself—”
“What about? What’s worth talking about?” Xiao Xiao asked, standing right in front of him.
“About your years in the countryside.”
“Didn’t you also stay in the countryside, don’t you know?”
He started to regret having come. The cramped room was a total mess, and destroyed the image of the young girl he had cherished in his mind. Xiao Xiao sat on the bed and looked at him, frowning. He didn’t know what else he could say to her.
“You were my first man.”
All right. He thought of her left breast, no, it was his left hand, so the tender red scar was on her right breast.
“But you were so stupid.”
This hurt him. He immediately wanted to ask her about the scar on her breast to get back at her, but he asked instead, “Why?”
“It was you who didn’t want it. . . .” Xiao Xiao said calmly, her head hanging.
“But at the time you were only a middle-school student!” he explained.
“I became a peasant woman a long time ago. It was soon after I had been sent to the countryside, not even a year. . . . People in the village couldn’t be bothered with things like that!”
“You could have reported it—”
“To whom? You’re really stupid.”
“I thought . . .”
“Thought what?”
“I thought at that time you were a virgin. . . .” Thinking back to that time, he had thought this, and so he didn’t dare to defile her.
“What were you afraid of? It was I who was afraid. . . . You were just a coward! I knew that, with my family background, nothing good would come of me, it was I who presented myself at your door, but you didn’t have the courage to take me!”
“I was afraid of taking responsibility,” he was forced to admit.
“I hadn’t told you about my parents’ situation.”
“I could have guessed. It’s too late now, how can I put it. . . .” He said, “I’m married!”
“Of course, it’s too late. I can also tell you that I’m a slut. I’ve had two abortions, two bastards that I didn’t want!”
“You should have taken precautions!” He also needed to say things that would hurt her.
She snorted in derision. “The peasants don’t carry condoms. It was my own bad luck that I didn’t have good parents and didn’t have anyone to turn to for help. Anyway, I can’t keep going on like this in the village.”
“You’re still young, don’t be so negative and cruel to yourself. . . .”
“Of course, I have to go on living. I don’t need you to preach to me about that, I’ve had enough of being preached at!” She laughed, laughed really hard, her hands gripping the edge of the bed, her shoulders shaking.
He laughed with her, as tears welled in his eyes. Xiao Xi
ao stopped him. Suddenly, he seemed to see in her face the gentleness of that young girl of the past, but, in an instant, it had vanished.
“Would you like something to eat? I’ve only got dried noodles. Wasn’t it dried noodles that you made for me?”
“You made it,” he reminded her.
Xiao Xiao went outside to cook the noodles on the coal stove, shutting the door behind her. He cast his eyes over the mess in the room. Even her dirty underwear was among the clothes she had thrown onto the bed. He had to completely destroy the dreamlike image that evoked tender feelings in him, he had to be debauched, he had to treat the woman like a slut he had picked up, a whore who had been used by the villagers.
Shoving aside things like grain-coupon booklets, keys, and other odds and ends, Xiao Xiao put the noodles on the table. He embraced her from behind, pressing his hands onto her breasts, and got the back of his hands slapped, but it was not a genuine slap.
“Sit down and eat!”
Xiao Xiao was not angry, there was no emotional reaction. Her relationships with men were probably like this, and she had become used to it. Xiao Xiao ate her noodles with her head down and said nothing. He knew she had sensed what he had on his mind. There was no need to talk about it, there were no obstacles.
Xiao Xiao quickly finished eating, pushed away her bowl and chopsticks, and, head held high, stared blankly at him.
“Should I leave now?” he asked. That was how hypocritical he was.
“Do whatever you like,” Xiao Xiao said flatly, without moving.
He got up and went over to her. He took her head in his hands and tried to kiss her, but Xiao Xiao turned away and put her head down. She would not let him kiss her. He put his hand down her shirt and felt the woman’s breasts, which had become big and plump.
“Get into bed, then,” Xiao Xiao said, heaving a sigh.
He sat on the edge of the bed and watched the woman bolt the door. The switch was by the door, but the light hanging from the ceiling pasted with yellowing old newspaper did not go out. Xiao Xiao ignored him, and, straight away, stripped. He gave a start; for a moment, he did not see the scar in the shadow at the base of her breast. While he was untying his shoelaces, Xiao Xiao got on the bed, spread the bedding, then lay on her back and covered herself.