by Gao Xingjian
You want to cry, to throw yourself onto her firm breasts wet with perspiration and smeared with semen, and to cry uncontrollably, like a child needing the warmth of his mother. You don’t just enjoy yourself with women, but also seek their warmth, forgiveness, and acceptance.
Your mother was the first woman you saw naked, through the half-closed door of her lighted room. You were sleeping in the dark on the cool bamboo bed, heard the splashing water, and wanted to take a proper look. When you propped yourself up on your elbows, your bed creaked. Your mother, with soap all over her body, came out, and you quickly lay down and hid your face, pretending to be asleep. She went back to the tub, but the door was left open, and you stealthily looked at the breasts that had fed you, and the black bushy place from which you had emerged. At first, you held your breath, then your breathing quickened, and after that you fell asleep in a state of stirring lust and confusion.
She said you were just a child, and, instantly, your lust settled. Contented and sleepy, you were her obedient child. She gently stroked you, and you placidly allowed her to examine you all over with the palm of her hand. That shriveled thing between your legs, she called it her little bird. Her eyes were gentle as she stroked your head, and, deeply moved, you wanted to nestle against her, nestle against this woman who had given you life, happiness, and comfort. You equated this with love, equated this with sex, equated this with sadness, equated this with unsettling lust, and equated this with language. The need to express and narrate is a form of joy in pouring out, has no connotations of morality, and contains nothing hypocritical. It is a soaking deluge that totally cleanses you, so that you are transparent, like a thread of meaning in life, like light from behind a door behind which there is nothing, like a hazy surge of moonlight behind the clouds. You hear seagulls flapping their wings in the night sky, and see, from the depths of the darkness, the sea surging up into a line of white foam on the tide. In Italy, at Viareggio, the sea is flooded with searchlights, but the beach is deserted. You stand there, motionless, for a long time in front of the red-and-white-striped beach umbrellas.
* * *
However, at present, on this night in New York, the icy snow on the pavement is dirty and slushy. This is citizen-conscious New York, garbage-strewn New York, New York soaring into the clouds on its accumulated wealth, breathtaking New York, New York where people have to stand on the street in the cold to smoke a cigarette. The performance has ended, and you come out with her to look for a bar where you can smoke and have some drinks. She is the Japanese performer who, without speaking a word on stage, has just performed several roles in your play: a young girl just becoming sexually awakened, a dissolute woman, the mother’s corpse, a nun, and a female ghost.
Walking from Eighth or Ninth Street in Manhattan to some streets past Thirtieth Street, finally, at Third, or Fifth, or maybe even Sixth Avenue—you can never remember numbers—you find a Brazilian or Mexican bar. It has a good atmosphere, and there are candles on the table, but the rock’n’roll music is too loud and not conducive to flirting. You have to shout across the table to hear what the other is saying, as you talk about art, serious art. She says she is really happy to have been able to play so many roles in one play, it was a satisfying experience, and the play seemed to have been written just for her. You curse the New York Times. The theater publicity person told you repeatedly that a reporter would definitely be coming, but no one had turned up even by the end of the performance. She says that with off-Broadway theaters it’s always like that, it’s very hard to get into their pages. Anyway, she has no regrets about having been able to work with you.
“I’ll miss you,” she says as she looks at her dark-blue fingernails.
The conversation turns to life. You say her nails were painted a tea color a couple of days ago. She says she often paints them different colors, and that each of the nails could be painted a different color. She also asks you how you would have liked them painted. You say blue-gray would have been best. On the stage, it would look colder, even though the play is dance and the focus is on the arms and legs. The conversation returns to art.
“Then what about lipstick?” she asks.
“Do you have black lipstick?” you ask.
“I’ve got all colors. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“That’s the job of the makeup artist, I can’t do everything,” you say.
“But we’ve already had the last performance!” she sighs.
“What new performances are coming up for you?” you ask, changing the topic.
“I’ll just have to wait and watch out for opportunities. There is a musical that requires actors who can dance. Next week, I’ve got two auditions. My father told me to come back to Japan a long time ago, but, unless I joined the workforce there, I would have to get married. My father says I won’t be able to make a living by dancing, and I should be satisfied, now that I’ve amused myself with it for so long.”
She also says her father would soon retire and couldn’t support her all her life. However, her mother says it is up to her to choose; her mother is Taiwan-born Chinese, and is quite open-minded. She says she doesn’t like Japan, because women in that society have no freedom. You say you like Japanese literature, especially the women in Japanese writings.
“Why?”
“They’re very sexy and very cruel.”
“That’s in books, it’s not true. Haven’t you ever had a Japanese woman?” she asks.
“I’d really like to have one,” you say.
“Then you will have one.” Having said this, she glances over to the bar.
You pay the bill and she thanks you.
You separate at the Grand Central Station subway entrance at Forty-second Street. You clearly remember Forty-second Street, because you changed trains here for rehearsals and performances every day. She says if she comes to Paris, she will look you up, and that she would write. However, you never get a letter from her. In your case, it’s not until several months later, when sorting a batch of papers from the New York trip, that you see the address she has left on a torn-off piece of paper napkin. You send her a postcard, but nothing happens, so you don’t know if she ever went back to Japan.
58
He came upon a crowd. There was great excitement and a din of gongs and drums.
“Run, run, run!” the crowd shouted.
He said he was busy, he had personal matters to deal with.
“Personal matters? No matters are as important as this! Run, run with us, run with all of us!”
“Why are you running?” he asked.
“We’re going to see the good times, the good times will be here soon, we’re going to greet the good times! How can your piffling personal matters be as important?”
Everyone was jostling one another, jubilant, forming ranks, shouting slogans.
“Where are the good times?” he couldn’t help asking.
“The good times are ahead! If we say they’re ahead, then they’re ahead! If we say they’re ahead, then ahead they will be!”
Everyone was saying it with growing enthusiasm and conviction.
“Who said that the good times were ahead?” He was jostled, and had to run as he asked.
“If everyone says they’re ahead, then they’re ahead. If everybody says it, it can’t be wrong. Run with us, the good times are definitely ahead!”
The crowd loudly sang good-times songs. As they sang, their spirits were uplifted, and, as they sang, their morale rose. He, who was stuck in the crowd, also had to sing; if he didn’t sing, he would be eyed with suspicious stares all around.
“Hey, what’s the matter? Is something wrong with you? Are you a deaf-mute?”
If he wanted to show he didn’t have a physical disability, the only thing he could do was to sing loudly with the crowd, he had to sing as well as keep in step. He had to keep in step, because, if he were half a step slower, the heel of his shoe would be trodden on, and he would lose his shoe. If he were to get under people�
�s feet to pick up his shoe, wouldn’t people’s feet run over his head? He would just have to leave behind the shoe he had lost. The foot that had lost the shoe would be trodden on, so his other foot could only hop and stumble along. Anyway, he would have to keep up, keep singing with everyone, and keep singing loudly in praise of the good times.
“The good times are ahead, the good times will soon be here! And the good times are simply good, and the good times will always be ahead!”
As the singing became more rousing, the good times became even better. With the hot waves of the good times seething, and the singing more fervent, the good times would come faster.
“The good times will be here soon! Let’s go and welcome the good times! Charge into battle for the good times! Die without regret for the good times!”
Everyone had become feverish, gone crazy, and he, too, had to go crazy, even if he wasn’t, he had to pretend to go crazy.
“Trouble, there’s shooting!”
“Who’s shooting?”
“Is there shooting up ahead?”
“Rubbish! The good times are up ahead, how can there be shooting up ahead?”
“Rubber bullets?”
“Flame throwers?”
“Tracer bullets!”
“Arrgh—”
“Blood? People are getting killed!”
“Charge into battle for the good times, break the enemy ranks for the good times! What greater glory than to sacrifice oneself for the good times! Become martyrs for the good times! Uggh—”
The crowd did not think that assault rifles, machine guns, would strafe and fire in bursts, fire in bursts and strafe. It was like frying soybeans, like letting off crackers. Everyone was like a homeless dog, and ran off in all directions, some were killed, others injured. Those who were not killed or injured fled like birds and animals. . . .
Agitated and grief-stricken, he managed to escape to a dead-end alley, where the bullets couldn’t reach. Gradually, he again heard voices in the distance. Sure enough, it was another crowd of people beating on gongs and drums and, faintly in the distance, they also seemed to be shouting slogans. When he listened carefully, they, too, seemed to be talking about the good times, but, when he listened again, they seemed to be arguing. The good times will soon be here, no, for the time being they have been delayed, but they will come. The good times are sure to come. Sooner or later, they will come. . . . He hurried away. The good times terrified him, and he would rather sneak off before the good times had come.
59
You are in the military port of Toulon on the Mediterranean coast, a place you had learned about in geography lessons in middle school. You’re sitting in a big tent erected on the harbor for the book fair. Like the hundred or so invited writers seated behind rows of bookstalls, you’re next to your own book, holding a pen and waiting for book buyers who want a signature. But all the people passing by are looking at the books and don’t notice the writers whose names are hanging there on the placards. For writers, it’s not the same as with singing stars. Hysterical fans queuing for autographs mob Johnny Hallyday when he gets off the helicopter, and his bodyguards and the police have to yell and shove to keep order. You are beyond the pairs of roving eyes, and people look but don’t see you. They pass right in front of you, sometimes stopping to leaf through the books with your name printed on the cover. But what does your name signify? People inevitably seek self-identification in books, the light from their eyes is refracted from the book to a person’s heart.
Luckily, you don’t have anything to do, and have time to amuse yourself by taking in all these pairs of worried, or blank, searching eyes. A good-looking young woman is moving in the crowd, her chestnut hair casually swept into a bun, but there is a deep frown on her forehead and a startling sadness in her face. Her big eyelids droop wearily, probably from a sleepless night. Maybe she couldn’t get the man she was in bed with to stay, but, in the case of such a fine-looking woman, it was more likely that the man wasn’t able to get her to stay. Otherwise, she would not be on her own, wandering at the book fair early on Sunday morning. She eventually comes over to your stall, but picks up a book by someone else alongside, then, without looking at the introduction on the back cover, puts it down, then leafs through another book. She is not thinking of buying a book, maybe she doesn’t know what she wants to do. She puts down the book and picks up your book, but she is looking somewhere else. Her eyes eventually return to your book, the book in her hand, and turn to the back cover, but, without reading more than a couple of sentences of the brief back-cover blurb, she puts it down, not noticing that the author is right next to her. She is right in front of you, the deep frown still on her forehead. The sad expression delicately roaming her face is wonderful to look at, and is more alive than any book.
What sort of people would read your book? When you wrote it, you couldn’t have imagined that you would one day be sitting at this seaside book fair, facing potential readers. These people don’t need to be concerned about, or go to the extent of buying, your perplexities. Luckily, the person selling the books is the owner of the stall, and you are merely a live decoration. Having lost your vanity too early, you are too much of a bystander, you are just an idler. Anyway, there are so many books in the world, and they are still being mass-produced, so whether there is one more or one less is not important. You don’t rely on selling your books for a living, and it is because you don’t make a living from it that you wrote it. Still, this is a book you had to write.
You clip the pen in the top pocket of your jacket, get from the proprietor a few sheets of writing paper, which you stuff into your coat pocket, then set off for a stroll around the harbor. The bright sunshine in Toulon seems to resonate, yet the cafés, bars, restaurants, and outside seafood stalls along the little street by the old port are virtually empty. However, this Sunday, on a main street into town, there are crowds at the morning market where they are selling all sorts of everyday items ranging from fruit and vegetables to clothing. There are large numbers of Arab vendors, and also a Chinese take-out kitchen. These people do good business, and this probably annoys the extreme-right National Front municipal government. In the center of town, they, too, have a book fair, and it is having a slugging match with the book fair organized by the leftist regional government that has invited you. You can’t escape politics, can’t escape it anywhere. Suddenly, you sense Margarethe’s anxiety, it is as palpable as the bright resonating sunshine, and you can feel it by snapping your fingers.
You have no intention of going to see what new things they have at their book fair. The stereotypical tunes of nationalism are the same everywhere, so you go back to the harbor and sit in a café to write something.
Humans are frail, but what is so bad about being frail? And yours is precisely a frail life. The Superman aspires to replace God, and is fiercely arrogant in his ignorance, so you may as well be a frail, ordinary person. The almighty God created a world such as this without properly planning for the future. You do not plan anything, do not rack your brains thinking about futile things, but simply live in the present, not knowing how it will be from this instant to the next. But aren’t these instant-by-instant transformations beautiful? Nobody can escape death, and death provides an end, otherwise you would become an old fogy who, devoid of compassion or shame, would perpetrate heinous deeds. Death is an end that can’t be resisted, but the wonder of being human lies before that end, so squirm as you transform.
You are not Buddha or a reincarnated bodhisattva possessing three bodies and six faces, and capable of going through seventy-two transformations. Music, mathematics, and Buddha are all existences born of nonexistence. The concept of numbers, the organization of music, and the variations in scale, pitch, and beat, Buddha or God, and beauty are all abstractions drawn from nature’s myriad phenomena that defy description. All of these are intangible in their natural form. This self of yours, too, is an existence born of nonexistence. Saying that it exists brings it into existence, a
nd saying that it doesn’t exist turns it back into a mass of inchoate nebula. Is this self that you are striving to create so very unique? Or, in other words, do you have a self? You squirm in limitless karma, but where is all this karma? Karma, just like frustration, is your creation. So, there’s no need for you to busy yourself with creating this self, and even less to give birth to existence from nonexistence just in order to identify with that self. You may as well return to the source of life: this instant that is full of life. What is eternal is this instant. You perceive, and, therefore, you exist, otherwise you are nebulous unconsciousness. So, live in this instant and feel this gentle midautumn sunlight!
The leaves in the park are turning yellow, and, looking down from your window, you see the ground covered in fallen leaves that have become dry but have not yet rotted. You are getting old, but wouldn’t want to return to childhood times; the noisy children you see down below in the parking lot have no idea of what they want to do. Youth is precious, but by the time those children know what they want, they will also be old. You do not want to go through all the torment a second time, of struggling against vanity, anxiety, uncertainty, and chaos. You do not envy them, but you envy the freshness of their lives. However, the freshness of life of childhood ignorance is lacking in that limpidity of consciousness and self-awareness, and you deeply appreciate this instant in time and this solitude that is free of all sham. This limpidity, like the bright shapes reflected in a murmuring autumn stream, evokes a calm in your inner mind. You will not again charge forth to judge or to establish anything. Waves ripple, and leaves tremble on trees, then fall, so, for you, death should be a natural occurrence. You are heading toward it, but before you come right up to it, there is time enough to stage a play for a duel with Death. You have plenty of time to enjoy to the full this bit of life that remains to you, your body is still capable of feeling, and you still have lust. You want a woman, a woman whose thinking is as lucid as yours, a woman who is free of the bondage of the world. You want a woman who rejects the ties of a home, and does not bear children, a woman who does not follow vanity and fashion, a natural and totally wanton woman. You want a woman who does not want to appropriate anything from your person, a woman who will, at this instant of time, enjoy with you the joys of being a fish in water. But where is such a woman to be found? A woman as solitary as you, yet contented with being solitary like you, will fuse your solitude with hers in sexual gratification; it will fuse in caresses and one another’s looks, while you are examining and exploring one another. Where is such a woman to be found?