by Gao Xingjian
He ripped her panty hose under her skirt, thinking it was the last time. Lin hugged him tight, she was shaking all over. However, it was not the last time, but they no longer spoke at work. Each time before parting, they had to decide the location for their next date: in the shadows where streetlights did not reach, by which wall, or under which tree. Once on the street, they would get onto their bicycles separately, and cycle ten or twenty meters apart. The greater the secrecy the greater was the feeling that it was an illicit affair, and, more and more, he sensed that the relationship would end sooner or later.
12
The telephone wakes you and you wonder if you should answer it.
"It's probably a woman, have you forgotten a date?" She is sitting propped against the pillow and turns to look down at you.
"More likely it's for some reception," you say.
"Someone was knocking while you were asleep." She sounds tired.
You raise your head to look up. The sun behind the velvet drapes is shining through the gauze curtains onto the back of the sofa, a newspaper had been pushed under the door. You reach out to pick up the phone, but it stops ringing.
"Have you been awake long?" you ask.
"I feel rather hollow. You started snoring as soon as you fell asleep."
"Why didn't you give me a shove and wake me up? Didn't you sleep at all?" You caress the curves of her shoulders; her body is familiar and intimate, even the warm smell of her body.
"You were so fast asleep. Go back to sleep, you haven't had a decent sleep for two nights." Her dull eyes have dark shadows beneath them.
"Isn't it the same for you?" Your hands glide down her shoulders, grab her breasts and squeeze them hard.
"Do you still want to fuck me?" She looks at you with a wretched expression.
"What are you saying! Margarethe…" You can't understand.
"As soon as you had ejaculated, you fell fast asleep right on top of me."
"That's awful, just like an animal!"
"It's really nothing, people are animals. But what a woman needs even more is a feeling of security." She gives a weak smile.
You say you feel very relaxed when you are with her, she is very generous.
"It depends on who it is. Not everyone who wants it, gets it."
"You didn't have to say that!" You say that you are deeply touched by how kind she has been to you.
"But you will forget sooner or later," she says. "The day after tomorrow, no, it should be tomorrow-another day has gone by and it's probably already midday-I'll go back to Germany and you'll go back to Paris. We can't live together."
"We are sure to see each other again!"
"Even if we saw each other again it would only be as friends. I don't want to be your lover."
She takes your hands from her breasts.
"Why, Margarethe?"
You sit up in bed and look at her.
"You already have a woman in France, it's not likely that you don't."
Her voice is harsh and you don't know how to respond. The sun has moved from the back of the sofa to the armrests.
"What time is it?"
"I don't know."
"But surely you also have a boyfriend? You must." This is the only response you can come up with.
"I don't want to keep up this sort of sexual relationship with you, but I think we can be friends, no doubt, good friends. I didn't think it would suddenly become so complicated."
"What do you mean?"
You say that you love her.
"Don't, don't say that, I don't believe it. Men always say that when they make love with women."
"Margarethe, you are very special." You want to reassure her.
"Is it because I am a Jew, and you've never had one before? It was just a whim, you don't understand me at all."
You say you want to understand her, but that she keeps everything to herself. You have told her a great deal about yourself, but she won't open up. You remember how she kept mumbling something while you were making love.
"All you want is my flesh, not me." She shrugs.
But you say that you really want to understand her, her life, her thoughts, you want to know everything about her.
"For something to write about?"
"No, as a good friend, if I don't count as a lover."
You say she has revived many feelings in you, not just sexual feelings. Memories you thought you had forgotten have come back to life because of her.
"You just thought you had forgotten, it's just that you had not thought about them. However, pain can't be obliterated and forgotten."
She is lying on her back and her eyes are wide open. Without eye makeup, her eyes look a deeper gray-blue. Her nipples are pale red, and the aureoles an even paler red. She covers herself with the sheet and says not to look at her like that. She hates her body. She had said this while making love.
"Margarethe, you are truly beautiful and so is your body!"
You say you like the sensuous women in Klimt's paintings and that you want the sun shining on her so that you can see her more clearly.
"Don't open the curtains!" she stops you.
"Don't you like the sunlight?" you ask.
"I don't want my body to be seen in the sunlight."
"You're really unusual. You're not like a Western woman, you're more like a Chinese woman."
"That's because you don't understand me."
You say you really want to understand her, totally, not just her body, or, as she puts it, her flesh.
"That's impossible. A person can't totally understand another person, particularly if it is a man regarding a woman. And when a man thinks he has the woman, he does not need to understand her."
"Of course." You are frustrated and, holding your head in your hands, look at her and heave a sigh. "Would you like to have something to eat? We could get them to bring something to the room or we could go to the coffee shop."
"Thanks, but I don't eat in the morning."
"Are you on a diet?" you ask pointedly. "It's already midday!"
"If you want to, get them to bring something. Don't mind me," she says. "I just want to hear you talk."
This moves you. You kiss her on the forehead, then pull up your pillow, lean back, and sit next to her.
"You're very gentle," she says. "I like you, I've given you what you wanted, but I don't want to fall too deeply, I'm afraid…"
"What are you afraid of?"
"I'm afraid of longing for you."
You feel sad and stop talking. You think you should have a woman like this, maybe you should live with her.
"Go on with your story." She breaks the silence.
You say that, for the time being, you would like to listen to her talk about herself, her life, or anything. She says she does not really have anything to tell. She has not had complicated experiences like you.
"The experiences of every woman, written up, constitute a book."
"Maybe a very ordinary book."
"But with unique feelings."
You say you really want to know, particularly want to know, about her feelings, her life, her private life, and her psychological secrets. You ask her, "Were the things you said while we were making love true?"
"I couldn't have said anything. Maybe." She adds, "One day I'll tell you. I really want to communicate with you, not just sexually. I can't bear loneliness."
You say you are not afraid of loneliness and that it was through loneliness that you were not destroyed. It was this inner loneliness that protected you, but at times you longed to sink, sink, into that hole in a woman.
"That isn't sinking. To regard women as bad is a male prejudice. What is disgusting is that men use but don't love."
You are trying to get her to reveal her secrets.
"You think they love you then you find out it's a fraud. When men want women, they say wonderful things, but once they've finished, that's it. But women need to be deceived like this so that they can deceive themselves," she sa
ys. "You still only think of me as a novelty and you haven't had enough, I can tell."
"The Devil is in everyone's heart."
"But you're fairly sincere."
"Not necessarily."
She cackles with laughter.
"Now this is Margarethe!"
You also relax and start laughing.
"A prostitute?" she asks, sitting up.
"It was you who said that!"
"A slut who brought herself to your door?"
Her eyes are looking right at you, but you can't see behind those eray-blue eyes. She suddenly starts laughing so violently that her shoulders shake, and her big, pendulous pearlike breasts tremble. You say you want her again and push her down onto the pillow. The phone rings as she closes her eyes.
"Take your call. Soon you will have a new woman," she says, pushing you away.
You pick up the phone. It's a friend inviting you to Lamma Island for dinner. You say to hold on and put your hand over the mouthpiece to ask if she will come. If not, you will postpone for a day, so you will be able to spend the time with her.
"We can't spend all the time in bed! If we do, you will turn into a skeleton and your friends will blame me for it."
She gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom. The door isn't shut and there is the sound of splashing water. You put down the phone and lie there lazily. It is as if she is your partner, and you can't be away from her. You can't resist calling out loudly, "Margarethe, you're a wonderful woman."
"I offered you a gift, but you didn't take it!" she shouts back above die sound of the splashing water.
You call out loudly that you love her. She also says she wants to love you but that she's afraid. You instantly get out of bed to get into the bath with her, but the door slams shut. You look at your watch lying on the table and open the curtains. It is already after four o'clock.
Coming out of the underground at Sheung Wan station, you see a line of wharves along the coast. The air is crisp and fresh. The boats in the harbor are tinged with the gold of the setting sun and there is a bright glare. A barge with the waterline almost right up the sides is cutting through the waves and churning up white foam. The texture of the concrete and steel buildings on this side of the water can be seen clearly, and the outline of the buildings seems to be shining. You want to have a cigarette to confirm that it is not an illusion, and you tell her everything underfoot seems to be floating. She draws close to you and gives a chuckle.
There is a row of food stalls below a huge Marlboro advertisement, but once through the iron gates, "No Smoking" posters are everywhere, like in America. Work has just finished, and every fifteen or twenty minutes, there is a ferry to each of the islands. Most of those going to Lamma Island are young, and there are quite a few foreigners. The electric buzzer sounds and is followed by the clatter of hurried but orderly footsteps. On board, people doze off or take out a book to read, and it becomes so quiet that only the sound of the motor can be heard. The ferry quickly leaves the noisy town, and the clusters of tall and even taller buildings gradually recede into the distance.
A cold wind starts up, and the boat gently rocks. She's tired. At first she leans on you but then draws up her legs and lies down in your arms. You feel relaxed. She is asleep in an instant, docile and peaceful, and you cannot suppress a feeling of sadness. There are no signs in the cabin apart from the "No Smoking" signs and, with its mixture of races, it does not look like Hong Kong and it does not look like it is soon to be returned to China.
Beyond the deck, the night scene gradually grows hazy, and you become lost in thought. Maybe you should live with her on some island and spend your days listening to the seagulls and writing for pleasure, unencumbered by duties or responsibilities, just pouring out your feelings.
After disembarking and leaving the wharf, some people get onto bicycles. There are no cars on the island. Dim streetlights. It's a small town with narrow streets, shops and restaurants one after another, and it's quite lively.
"If you had a tea room with music, or a bar, it would be easy to make a living here. You could write and paint during the day and open for business at night. What do you think?" Dongping, who comes to meet you, bearded and tall, is an artist who came from the Mainland a year or so ago.
"And if you felt weary, you could go to the beach any time for a swim."
Dongping points to some small fishing boats and rowboats moored in the harbor at the bottom of the stone steps down the slope; he says a foreigner friend of his bought an old fishing boat and lives in it. Margarethe says she's starting to like Hong Kong.
"You can work here; your Chinese is good and English is your mother tongue," Dongping says.
"She's German," you say.
"Jewish," she corrects you.
"Born in Italy," you add.
"You know so many languages! What company would not pay a high salary to employ you? But you wouldn't have to live here; Repulse Bay over on Hong Kong Island has many grand apartments on the mountains by the sea."
"Margarethe doesn't like living with bosses, she likes artists," you say for her.
"Great, we can be neighbors," Dongping says. "Do you paint? We've got a gang of artist friends here."
"I used to paint because I liked it, but not professionally. It's too late to start learning."
You say you didn't know she painted, and she immediately says in French there is a great deal you don't know about her. At this point, she distances herself but still wants to maintain a secret language with you. Dongping says that he didn't study in an art college and was not officially recognized as an artist: that was why he left the Mainland.
'In the West, artists don't need official recognition and don't need to have studied in an art college. Anyone can be an artist. The main thing is whether there is a market, whether one's paintings can sell," Margarethe says.
Dongping says there is no market for his paintings in Hong Kong. What the art entrepreneurs want are copies of impressionistic concoctions with a foreign signature for Western galleries, and these are bought at wholesale prices. He does a different signature each time and can't remember how many names he has signed. Everyone laughs.
On the first floor, where Dongping lives, the sitting room adjoins the studio, and the residents are painters, photographers, poets, and columnists. The only person who is not an artist or writer is a foreigner, a good-looking young American. Dongping formally introduces the man. He is a critic, and the boyfriend of a woman poet from the Mainland.
Everyone has a paper plate and a pair of chopsticks, and they help themselves to the seafood hotpot. The seafood isn't alive but it is very fresh. Dongping says he brought it all home just before you arrived, but now, in the bubbling hotpot, it's curled up and no longer moving. The crowd is very casual. Some are walking about barefoot, and others are sitting on floor cushions. The music is turned on loud, it is a string quartet on big speakers, Vivaldi's vibrant Four Seasons. Everyone is eating and drinking, talking all at once and not about anything in particular. Only Margarethe is reserved and dignified. Her fluent Chinese instantly makes the young American's Western accent and intonation sound inferior, so he starts talking to Margarethe in English. He raves on to her and makes the young woman poet jealous. Margarethe later tells you that the guy doesn't know anything, but he was taken by her and kept hovering around her.
One of the artists says that he had been uprooted from East Village or West Village-you don't remember which-in the grounds of the Old Summer Palace. In the name of urban beautification and social security, the place was closed down by the police two years ago. He asks you about the new art trends in Paris, and you say that there are new trends every year. He says that he does art on the human body. You know that he had suffered a great deal in China because of his art, so it is best not to say that his sort of art is now history in the West.
In the course of things, people start talking about 1997. All the hotels have been fully booked for the day of the handover ceremony between Bri
tain and China, the day the People's Liberation Army would move in. There would be hordes of journalists from all over the world congregating here, some say seven thousand, and others eight thousand. On the morning of July 1, the birthday of the Chinese Communist Party, immediately after the handover ceremony, the British governor of Hong Kong would go to the naval base and leave on a ship.
"Why doesn't he take a plane?" It is Margarethe who asks.
"On the day, there will be celebrations all along the road to the airport, and it would be too sad for him," someone says. But no one is laughing.
"What will all of you do?" you ask.
"That day, don't go anywhere else. Just come here to eat seafood with me," Dongping says with a joyless smile. He seems to be very generous, not as rough as he used to be, and he has become wiser.
People stop joking and the music suddenly seems to be louder, and who knows what season Vivaldi has reached.
"It doesn't matter!" the American says in a loud voice.
"What doesn't matter?" his girlfriend retorts. She then rebuffs him, "You can never make yourself understood when you speak Chinese!"
After dinner, the American takes out a piece of opium the size of a fingernail to share around, but the two of you must catch the last boat back. Dongping says there is plenty of room, and the two of you can stay the night, then go for a swim in the morning. Margarethe says she is tired, and also that she will be flying out at midday tomorrow. Dongping escorts the two of you onto the ferry and, when it departs, he is left alone on the wharf, holding both hands high, and waving. You say to Margarethe that you were close friends in Beijing and had suffered together. He is a rare friend. He doesn't know any foreign languages and can't go anywhere. The police raided his home in Beijing. He often had parties with music and dancing, but the neighbors thought that there were indecent activities going on and reported him to the police. Afterward, through various strategies, he got to Hong Kong. This trip to Hong Kong is to say good-bye to him.
"It's hard making a living anywhere," Margarethe says sadly. You lean against one another by the railing on deck. The sea breeze is cool.