One Man’s Bible

by Gao Xingjian

  “Aren’t you married?” the woman said, staring with her eyes wide open.

  He made no response. He felt humiliated and wanted revenge, but he couldn’t understand why. He roughly pulled away the bedding and threw himself on the woman’s body. What came into his mind was the body of that other girl in the production-brigade storehouse by the road, all his repressed violence poured into this woman’s body. . . .

  Her eyes closed, Xiao Xiao said, “You can relax, even if I were to become pregnant you wouldn’t need to worry about it. I’m used to abortions.”

  He examined the skin and flesh of this woman who was a stranger to him. The pink nipples and the protrusions dotting the dark-brown aureoles were hard, but the breasts were white and soft. It was then that he saw the inch-long, pale-brown scar below the breast. He didn’t touch it, and stopped himself from asking how she had got it.

  Xiao Xiao said nothing frightened her anymore, and it didn’t matter to her if the neighbors wanted to talk. However, he said he was married, and if the neighborhood committee reported him to his work unit, his application for divorce would fall through. When he put on his clothes, Xiao Xiao was still lying in bed, she seemed to be smiling, but the corners of her mouth were turned down.

  “Will you come again?” Xiao Xiao asked. “I never see any of my former school friends and I’m very lonely.”

  He didn’t ever go back to Xiao Xiao’s home and even avoided going past Drum Tower. He was afraid of bumping into her and not knowing what to say to her.

  56

  It was with difficulty that he pulled off the mask he had put on his face. This false skin was a sheath of molded plastic, mass-produced to standard specifications, elastic, and able to stretch and contract as required. Wearing it gave the appearance of an upright, correct, positive character, which could be deployed in various roles—whether for the masses, such as workers, peasants, shop personnel, university and office personnel, or intellectuals, such as teachers, editors, and reporters. By putting on a stethoscope, one became a doctor, by replacing the stethoscope with a pair of glasses, one became a professor or a writer. The glasses were optional, but the mask was obligatory. Only bad elements in society, such as thieves, hooligans, and public enemies of the people, were entitled to rip off this mask. This was the most commonly used mask, probably made of high-density polyethylene and indestructible even if hammered.

  He toyed with the mask, scrunched up his eyes, uncertain if he was still capable of normal human expressions. However, he refused to put on some new mask, such as political dissident, cultural broker, prophet, or member of the new rich.

  Having removed the mask, he could not help feeling somewhat awkward. He was tense and didn’t know what to do, but, for better or worse, he had discarded hypocrisy, anxiety, and unnecessary restraint. He had no leader, because he was not controlled by the Party or some organization. He had no hometown, because his parents were dead. And he had no family. He had no responsibilities, he was alone, but he was free and easy, he could go wherever he wanted, he could drift on the wind. As long as others did not create problems for him, he would resolve his own problems, and if he could resolve his own problems, then everything else would be insignificant, everything else would be inconsequential.

  He no longer shouldered any burdens, and had cancelled emotional debts by purging his past. If he again loved or embraced a woman, it would only be if this was what she wanted, and she accepted him. Otherwise, at most, it would be going for coffee or beer in a café, having a chat, a bit of a flirt, then each going their separate ways.

  He wrote because he needed to. It was the only way he could enjoy total freedom; he didn’t write for a livelihood. He also did not use his pen as a weapon to fight for some cause, and he didn’t have a sense of mission. He wrote for his own pleasure, talking to himself so that he could listen to and observe himself. It was a means of experiencing those feelings of the little life that remained for him.

  The only thing in his past he didn’t break with was the language. He could, of course, write in another language, but he didn’t abandon his language, because it was convenient and he didn’t need to look up words in a dictionary. However, conventional language did not suit him, and he had to look for his own voice. He wanted to listen intently to what he was saying, as if he were listening to music, but he found language always lacking in refinement. He was certain that one day he would abandon language and rely on other media to convey his feelings.

  He admired the agile bodies of some performers, especially dancers. He would love to be able to use his body to freely express himself: to casually stumble, fall over, get up, and go on dancing. However, age was unrelenting, and he could very well end up injuring himself. He was no longer capable of dancing, and could only somersault about in language. Language was light and portable, and it had him under its spell. He was a carnival performer in language, an incurable addict, he had to talk, and even alone he was always talking to himself. This inner voice had become the affirmation of his existence. He had already formed the habit of transforming his feelings into language, and not to do so left him feeling unfulfilled, but the joy it brought him was like groaning or calling out when making love.

  He is sitting in front of you, looking right at you, and laughing loudly in the mirror.

  57

  The place is New York. On the first day, it is ten degrees below zero, and snowing, and the very next, it suddenly turns warm. Dirty lumps of ice are everywhere, your shoes become soggy, and you have to buy a pair of heavy boots because of the lousy weather. . . . You prefer the mild Paris winter. There are large numbers of Chinese here, and, from time to time, on the streets, you hear the speech of Beijing, Shanghai, Shandong, and even the He’nan village dialect spoken near the reform-through-labor farm where you were once sent. Also, there is every kind of Chinese food you can think of, even crab-roe dumplings and hand-shaved noodles. Chinatowns are everywhere, whether downtown in Manhattan, or in Flushing, Queens. This is China, more Chinese than China, as Chinese New Yorkers construct their own virtual hometowns.

  You don’t have a hometown, and, in America, you do not have to put on a play with Chinese actors. You wanted local Western actors, and had hoped they would find a uniquely American woman to play the lead role. But it was after the premiere that you again saw the beautiful Linda. She was one-quarter Turkish, and you first met her at a drama festival in Italy, at the dinner following the performance of your play. She came over to your table, embraced you, kissed you passionately on both cheeks, and said, “I loved your play. If you ever come to New York to put on a play, don’t forget to look me up!” You were delighted to see her so visibly moved, and had not forgotten to give the theater group her telephone number and address. However, nobody called her, and she also missed the advertisement for auditions. There are just so many beautiful women in New York, and plenty of good actors. She came to the performance, and wept after it had ended, but you were not sure whether it was because she had seen you, or the play, or because she was sorry she had missed the chance to perform in the play. In any case, you, too, were deeply moved.

  You are, in fact, not so alone in the world, and have many close friends, as well as some you have just made. You find it is often easier to communicate with them than with some of your fellow Chinese. You can be more direct, and when you make love with Western women, there are fewer obstacles. In the middle of the night, you answer a telephone call from Paris, and you say that you had just been thinking of her. “What about?” she says on the phone. You say you had been thinking of the smell of her body. “Then what if I send it wet and sloppy over the phone?” she laughs. “It wouldn’t be enough.” You say you had been thinking of her, the whole of her, from top to bottom. “Don’t you have another woman in your bed?” she asks. “Not right now, but who knows, maybe there will be one along any moment,” you say. “You rascal!” she says. “But I’ll still kiss you, kiss you all over!”

  You’re not an “upright gentlema
n,” and don’t have to put on an act of being virtuous. What you want to do is to spray your lust all over the world, turn it awash! Of course, that is sheer fantasy, and you can’t help feeling a sort of sadness. But you know your sadness has been diluted, in fact, you rejoice in having salvaged your life. You belong now to that rascal, you. But you have allowed yourself to be enjoyed by the French filly that called you a rascal, you willingly gave yourself to her so that she, too, gets all wet, and you can enjoy her.

  Everything in the past already seems so remote and far away, you have wandered all over the world and you are not really sad. You like jazz and the freedom of the blues. That was how you had come to write that play. One day among the props in the theater storeroom, you found an old picture frame, and you hung on it the plastic leg of a display model. You wrote on the leg “what” in fancy lettering, and it counted as your signature. You poke fun at the world, and you poke fun at yourself, and it is by offsetting the one against the other that life is fun. You would like to become a piece of jazz, like that classic recorded by the black singer Johnny Hartman:

  They say that falling in love is wonderful

  It’s wonderful. . . .

  At rehearsal, the actors say that a black singer was shot when he got out of his car on the highway to fix something. The newspapers that day have photographs of the person killed, and, although you have never heard the man’s songs, you can’t help feeling sad.

  It would be hard for you to love a Chinese woman again. When you left China, you dumped the little nurse, but now you no longer reproach yourself for it, you no longer spend your days reproaching yourself.

  Gentle moonlight, hazy mountain, shadowy thatched huts, paddy fields after harvest in the valley, a dirt track crawling over the slope past the door of a storehouse. A rustic poem so old that it has lost its impact. You seem to see this dream scene, see the shut door of that tamped-earth building. It was there that your student was raped, no one could have saved her. She had no choice, she was hoping to earn merit points for a work permit so that she would not have to go on growing her own grain in order to be able to eat. That was the price she had to pay. She is far away, on the other side of the world, and has long since forgotten that a person like you ever existed. You lament in vain, but it is lust, rather than fond memories, that is evoked.

  She says that right now she has no lust. She says she wants to cry, and, immediately, tears are streaming from her eyes. You say you are full of uncontrollable lust. But she says she doesn’t want to be a substitute, says it’s not she that you want to penetrate, and she can’t penetrate your heart, because you’re somewhere far away. You say you’re by her side, that it’s because tonight you’re in bed with her, want to excite her, that you’re telling her this story. But she says not to use her to pour out the secret pains in your heart. You say you didn’t think that a French filly like her would be like that. She says so what if she is? You ask how can she possibly not know about male wickedness? But she says lying together like this is so good, she treasures her relationship with you, don’t make this beautiful feeling into something dirty, just let her lie there peacefully. She goes on to say she, too, can be wild. If it was a man she didn’t know, she would have let him go ahead, it’s because she loves you and doesn’t want suddenly to ruin her relationship with you. You remind her that she had said she was a whore. She says she did say this, and she still is your little whore, but not right now. You ask when she would be. She says she doesn’t know when, but she would be your little whore, and, at that time, she would give you anything you wanted. But you haven’t brought a condom, and she’s afraid of getting some disease. Don’t get cross with her. She says who told you to come unprepared? Where can one of those things be found in the middle of the night? If you really must, you can spray it over her, but definitely not into her. You embrace her, sniff her, and fondle her all over. You rub your semen, her tears, and your mixed sweat onto her belly, breasts, and nipples. You ask her if she’s happy. She says you can do anything you like, only don’t ask. She embraces you, lets you press against her swelling breasts, and says no matter what, she loves you. Her murmuring and her breathing are right by your ear.

  You open the curtains to another day. Afterward, at a café, you are sitting outside under a big umbrella. It is a Sunday, and the afternoon sun is a golden yellow. She came especially to see your play but has to rush back to Paris for the opening of her boyfriend’s exhibition at six o’clock. She says she has to be loyal to him, but she also loves you. You’re happy, put your hand into the sun, say you can catch a handful of sunlight. You tell her to have a go, but she throws back her head and laughs. The waiter comes out, apologizes, lunch finished some time ago, and the cook’s gone. Then what is there to eat? Only ham and eggs. Then ham and eggs it is!

  You say you want to write about all this, and she says it will be very beautiful. You say it was she who had given you these feelings and had helped you to turn suffering into something beautiful, all of this had weighed heavily on you. She says after suffering has passed, it, too, can become beautiful. You say she’s a genuine French filly. A woman! She says this both as a correction and an affirmation. You say she’s also a witch. She says she probably is. She wants you to discharge all your suffering, so that you will be a wiser person. Yes, you feel purified inside and outside, as if you’ve been washed and scrubbed right through. She says she wants you to have exactly this feeling, don’t you think it’s something very precious? You say this feeling is what she’s given you, she says what she wants is you as a person and not your lust. You say you really want to rip her apart and swallow her. Then I’d no longer exist, she says, and don’t you think that would be a pity?

  You go with her to the railway station, and she holds your arm. You say you love her, and she says she loves you too. You say you love her very much and she says it’s the same with her. Life is worthwhile, you say. Now pay attention, you’re going to sing! She laughs so hard that she doubles over. She says come on the train with her! You say there is still another performance in the evening, and you can’t just abandon the actors, you do have that amount of responsibility. She says she knows, not to listen to her, she just had to say it. The carriage door closes, and, as the train moves off, she mouths three words: I love you. You know she’s just saying this, and, as she says, she has to stay loyal to her boyfriend. You truly love her, but you can still love other women.

  You’re light, and float up as if you’re weightless. You wander from country to country, city to city, woman to woman, but don’t think of finding a place that is home. You drift along, engrossed in savoring the taste of the written language, and, like ejaculating, leave behind some traces of your life. You achieve nothing and no longer concern yourself with things in life and in afterlife. As your life was plucked back from death, why should you be concerned? You simply live in this instant, like a leaf on the brink of falling from a tree. Is it a tallow tree, a white birch, or a linden? Anyway, it’s a leaf, and, sooner or later, it has to fall, but while it’s fluttering in the breeze, it must strive for freedom. You are, after all, the irredeemable prodigal son of a family that was destined for destruction. You want to be free of the ties, complications, perplexities, anxieties of ancestors, wife, and memories, and to be like music, like the jazz of that black man: “They say that falling in love is wonderful, it’s wonderful. . . .”

  The plastic leg bearing your signature what in the old picture frame slowly rises on the stage. In the midst of singing, an old man with a sunken mouth is hoisting it up on a rope, solemnly, just like raising a flag. Your actress, a young Japanese performer, is standing elegantly at the front of the stage. She is very solemn, and presents a rose on a broken stem in both hands to the audience. Then, parting her lips, she erupts into laughter, revealing a mouth full of black teeth. This is wonderful, so wonderful!

  You have already played around with revolutionary art and revolutionary people, and even if you were to play around more with them, you would not
be able to come up with anything new. The world is like an unfurled, worn-out flag. In the early hours of the morning, while you are traveling by car from Provence to the Alps, a gentle stretch of mist comes toward you. You become formless and weightless, and, while mocking others and yourself, you vanish with the wind. . . .

  You’re just a melancholic piece of jazz, greedy and insatiable in that moist, dark cavern between a woman’s thighs. So, why is this pitiful little bird of yours complaining?

  You’re a saxophone, moaning when you want and shouting when you want. Ah, you have said farewell to revolution! If you think crying will make you feel better, you have a good cry. You’re not afraid of losing anything. If there’s nothing to lose, then you’re free, like a wisp of smoke, like the pure fragrance of marijuana mixed with the fishy smell of stinkweed. So, why are you still worried? Why are you still afraid? When you disappear, you will disappear. But disappearing between the voluptuous, moist thighs of a woman is wonderful and is to understand fully what is known as life. You don’t need to be sad or begrudging, you can squander everything, and this is wonderful!

  Tough reeds blowing in the wind. The wind on the North Sea coast of Denmark is strong, but among the clumps of reeds on the undulating sand dunes is a circle of reeds moving against the wind. You think it is a pair of wild geese, but, coming closer, see that it is a naked couple, a man and a woman. You turn to leave, and hear them laughing behind you. Beyond the desolate beach, on the dark-green sea, white-crested waves tumble as they charge toward the seaweed-covered concrete bunker left from the Nazi occupation.