Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather

by Gao Xingjian

  In the underground cellar, the mattress is soaked in the black water. The white sheet is also saturated, and the man with a hat over his face is stiff and looks like a corpse. Water keeps dripping from above, and there is now also the pop of bursting bubbles.

  With the bicycle parked nearby, he lies on his side in the shade of a tree, looking at this neglected apple orchard. Here and there among the branches are a few red apples that had escaped being picked. Not too far away is the gurgling of a creek.

  A barefoot girl appears under the apple trees ahead. She is carrying a bucket of water that seems too heavy for her. Her purplish red jacket has a single slanting lapel, and the legs of her blue floral-print trousers are rolled up to just below the knees. She has two long plaits, and her bright black eyes look too big for her small face. She gives a start, uncertain whether or not to keep walking. Suddenly it is lonely all around.

  A small tree is drifting in the wind. Dirt splashes up, and billowing clouds of thick black smoke and dust suddenly spread through the sky. Then, as planes swoop overhead, the strafing of machine guns, exploding bombs, and, immediately afterward, the crying of babies and the wailing of women can be heard.

  Several small boys squat around an iron spade, watching it sink into the ground as a foot treads down on it. A clod of earth is dug up and flattened into small pieces with the spade, then another clod of earth is dug up and flattened, and yet another. A big boy stoops to pick up a machine-gun bullet, brushes it on his shirt, puts it into his trouser pocket, then takes the spade to another hole nearby to dig. One of the small boys surrounding him shakes his head as he looks at the row of holes in the ground.

  The murky black water makes a gurgling sound as it flows down all the stone steps, unstoppably.

  A match is struck in the dark and a yellowing, slightly faded old photograph is set alight. It is the photograph of a young man in a suit and tie and a young woman in a qipao together with a three- or four-year-old boy. Their shoulders pressed together, both the adults have posed smiles on their faces. The eyes of the boy between the parents are rounded, and he has a surprised look. The flames on the edge of the photograph are burning toward his parents. The photograph is shrinking and beginning to curl up, then – whoosh! – the whole photograph is burning, his parents are alight and the child is charred.

  A bubble keeps growing as it is blown. The soapy surface is moving faster and with the sun shining on it, the colors become brighter, more colorful, more sparkling, until it can't get any bigger. It silently bursts as amazement lights up the face of the little boy blowing bubbles.

  The mattress in the black water slowly begins to float up. It tilts slightly, wobbles back, sways a few times, each time becoming steadier, and eventually it is floating on the water.

  Water is dripping everywhere. He looks up at the rainwater coming down from the eaves; outside on the ground there are some abandoned iron plows and farm machine parts. Two dogs charge at him with their jaws wide open. He retreats into the granary, where the ceiling is high and bundles of fodder are stacked right up to it. There is a long wooden bench in the middle of the dark granary and young women are sitting around it. All of them have flour sticking to different parts of their faces: eyelids, nose, eyebrows, cheeks, lips, ears. Heads bowed, they shape lumps of dough in their hands as they chant, engrossed in grief. However, a young woman with long plaits has an oil lamp with a shade in front of her. She is looking into a mirror at her woman companion behind who has untied her plaits and is combing her hair for her. Without realizing it, he is right by the mirror and sees the scissors cut her long hair short. Immediately, the barking of dogs is heard.

  Rainy weather, an empty lane in a village that is so lonely, it is hard even to hear the rain. Above the stone wall is a row of tightly shut old wooden windows. A small wooden door reinforced with iron strips set into the stone wall stands as tall as a person on the cobblestone road. Dried by wind, the rough grain sticks out on the timber. The sad song of a girl weeping at being married seems to seep faintly through the cracks of the door. As one approaches the door, everything becomes more and more hazy.

  Hands slowly push open a heavy door, inside is a church. The rows of empty pews retreat in the midst of the reverberating footsteps echoing on the stone floor. On the walls are the remains of medieval murals. The lines are blurred, the colors blackened with grime, and none of the crumbling faces of the disciples can be made out.

  A mountain creek with rounded pebbles and a fast-flowing current. He looks back. In the gray drizzling rain, opposite, on the mountain slope is a village connected by stone steps; it has a church with a prominent bell tower. The rain is falling even more heavily.

  He is walking on the village highway, his clothes almost soaked through, and water is running down the back of his head. As a car drives past, he signals. It has gone ten paces past him, but stops. He quickly runs up and a door opens.

  A woman is driving. From the rearview mirror the woman's profile can be seen: she has wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She asks him something and he answers. The woman turns to look at him. She really knows how to use her makeup. The woman asks him something again and he answers again. The woman looks away, but in the rearview mirror there is the suggestion of a smile at the corners of her mouth. The car windows swept by the rain are dripping with water.

  The murky seawater goes over the steps behind the doors and continues to surge inside. In the light behind the doors it looks more like black satin running off a roll and cascading down.

  Looking down, he sees naked men and women on a long table. They are huddled in couples and move up and down and turn around endlessly, as drops of milk white flour and water splash onto the table and their bodies, making a sound like pattering rain. All around are bundles of straw; it seems to be a granary, yet from time to time there is snorting, and it seems to be a stable.

  He is sitting at an old round table wearing a pair of dark blue swimming trunks. Both of his hands are on the shiny grain-patterned hardwood surface, one of them turning a glass half filled with red wine. A hanging lamp with a metal shade casts a yellow light that shines only on his hands. In the circle of light there is also a highly polished stone ball that leaves a distinct shadow on the table. He withdraws the hand with the wineglass from the circle of light, and his other hand moves the stone ball so that from that position the shadow is extended. Music instantly starts up. It seems to be jazz blues, trembling and restrained, intermittent, powerful yet weak, seemingly far and yet near, and finally it stops abruptly, yet seems still to be suspended there… He gets to his feet and walks around the table, observing the endless positions of the stone ball and its shadow in the circle of light.

  Next to the white curtain, a wall lamp illuminates the portrait of a woman on the wall, with black lips, fair skin, black hair piled high on the head, eyes looking down, lips slightly parted, and looking almost asleep. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that one eye is open and the other is shut, and if one takes a step back, it would seem that one eye is higher than the other. To look up at an angle, one would see that the lower lip is thick and fleshy. But looking at it sideways, one would see that the lips are pouting. Another look would make it seem like the wide-open mouth of a bird. An upside-down look would make the tongue seem to stick out. Away from the light, there are knife marks all over the cheeks: it is a shaman with an evil look. A look with eyes narrowed and with an air of indifference would return the sexiness to the face. There is a pop as the light goes out.

  A gurgling sound, water is flowing down the stone steps in places. Now and then a dim light flashes a few times.

  The curtains open noisily. A woman's bare back appears in front of the curtains. She opens the window, and outside is a mass of gray rooftops. Farther off, one after the other, are endless balconies and apartments of old buildings. The dark blue sky is unusually clear, but it could be morning or dusk. The woman turns and leans on the laced wrought-iron railing outside the window, wearily. Her face and body
are in the dark and only her eyes glint, like a cat's eyes in the dark. A bracelet on the wrist of her hand that grips the railing also has a faint glint. A car speeding by brings with it the rumbling of the waves.

  Seagulls circle the sea, screeching, as if they have found something and are following the rising and falling of the waves. The waves are huge, and between the crests are expanses of smooth, deep blue sea.

  Underfoot is withered grass, swaying in the strong wind, soundlessly. He is walking on a mountain slope and he goes behind the ruins of a wall where a few young people are waiting for him. One of them is wearing glasses, and the thick lenses for severe shortsightedness look like fish eyes. Another, a young woman with short hair and dark complexion, is eating melon seeds. She spits out the shells that float and then drop into the clumps of grass. Seeing him arrive, without a word, they head down the slope together. Below is a cluster of houses, a bell tower, and a football field.

  In the underground cellar that has filled with seawater, the mattress soaked in murky water slowly floats up. The faint rumble of cars driving past sounds like the wind.

  The young people go into a long corridor where sections of sunlight broken by pillars appear unusually bright. It is a classroom with the doors and windows wide open but empty of people. It is filled with tables and chairs that pass them, one by one, as their footsteps sound after they have passed.

  At the end of the corridor is a room. The door is shut but there is a sign. They come to a halt and look at the sign that has nothing written on it, hesitate, seem to be having a discussion, then knock on the door. It opens instantly, soundlessly. Inside the room, teachers are sitting at desks as if they were students, all busy marking homework. While they are wondering whether to ask someone, a young teacher appears behind them. She is as young as she was in those times, only her face is pale and she looks to be made of wax. Fatigue shows all over her face; her eyes are puffy and have grayish shadows. She says she will escort them to the principal and also says she is delighted that, so many years after graduating, they have come to visit their old school. She says she remembers the class, back then they were all children but full of mischief. As she talks and jokes, her voice is coming from a paper person. Of course she remembers the time when there was a cruel struggle right on those very desks. Someone had started banging on a desk and everyone unthinkingly followed, so that every desk was banging. As she mounted the dais, textbooks under her arm, her rounded eyes swept the class, but she couldn't isolate the ringleader. Confused, she threw down her textbooks and ran out in tears. Everyone was scared stupid, then suddenly it was quiet and nobody made a sound.

  There is a red-colored cross on the door of the medical clinic in the passageway. She points to the window. The small, dark room is piled with junk as well as some musical instruments – erhu, pipa, gongs, and drums – all of them covered in dust. He knows that this used to be where students were kept after class as punishment for failing to hand in homework. Those passing the window can see that miserable desk scarred with knife cuts and covered in ink stains and pencil marks.

  He stares at the desk for some time and, from where he is looking, there clearly emerge, one on top of the other, pencil drawings of little people and little crooked houses as well as Chinese characters carved with a penknife. Some of the character strokes have been inked in, and some inked characters where the ink couldn't be scrubbed clean had been penciled in and again carved with a penknife. It is a jumbled picture but it conjures up fantasies.

  The sound of water dripping, dripping in the cellar filled with seawater, dripping on the floating mattress, dripping and soaking the sheet. And the ink black seawater keeps rising, soundlessly. The floating mattress hits a soggy wall, bounces, and changes direction.

  The principal, who has a dark, ruddy complexion, a big Adam's apple, and a husky voice, tells them the history of the school. His low drone reverberates around the ridgepole and rafters of the big temple-like ceiling above the auditorium, filled with long wooden benches. Bells start ringing, and the sparrows fly off in fright.

  Below the ceiling are several Taoists clad in long gray cotton gowns, their hair in topknots. Heads bowed and hands clasped in front, the one in the lead swinging a horsetail whisk, they are chanting scriptures around a coffin.

  The lid of the coffin is open and he almost guesses that the corpse in the coffin, with its head wrapped in the shroud, is himself. Apparently confused, he turns and looks around, although he doesn't know what it is he is looking for. However, he sees behind him two big heavy doors that are half-open, and outside in the sun, on the stone steps, a little wooden bucket with peeling paint. A lizard is crawling on the stone step in front of the wooden bucket.

  He walks out of the auditorium, or maybe it was originally a temple that had been converted into a school auditorium, or maybe it was in fact a temple hall. In the shadows of the covered walkway stands an old stone tablet with parts missing. It looks like the wild-grass calligraphy of Mi Di, but the inscription in very standard regular script reads: "Written by Meng Chun in the ding-mao year of the reign of Yuanyou of the Great Song Dynasty." Long ago, ink rubbings were made of it, but later the main piece of calligraphy was engraved over and now can barely be made out and is completely undecipherable.

  He walks out into the sun. A boy in a vest and shorts, riding on a brand-new Dinglan junior bicycle, passes by. He asks the boy something. The boy stops and, with a foot on the grass, points ahead, then speeds off.

  He walks on ahead and passes a piece of neatly trimmed lawn. Past the lawn, in a mass of weeds, are the shiny handlebars of a bicycle. He goes over to have a look, and covered with weeds in the ditch is the frame of a Dinglan bicycle.

  He strides quickly up the hill, begins to run, and then runs faster and faster, panting hard, but in his mind he seems more and more to understand that he is surely pursuing the self of his childhood. On the top of the hill is a sour-date tree, though not a very tall one, with its small leaves trembling in the wind.

  The child is running in his direction from behind the hill but stops in front of the sour-date tree and looks about with a worried look. Then, probably discovering something, he dashes off somewhere else. Not far from the top of the hill is a small, sparse forest where between two trees a white bed sheet is drying; something seems to be moving behind the sheet, and the child charges headlong into the sheet but gets wrapped in it and can't get free.

  The mountain wind is toying with the sheet. Out of breath and with great difficulty the child manages to lift the sheet and get out, only to find yet another sheet hanging between two trees and flying about.

  The child stares for a while, then quietly walks over to it. There seems to be the shape of a person behind the sheet. This time the child carefully and gently lifts a corner of the sheet. Nothing is there, but nearby, another sheet is hanging between two trees. Instinctively, the child looks behind himself.

  All around, far and near, sheets are swirling in the wind. Stopping in front of one, he sees the legs of a woman emerging on the white sheet, and he holds his breath to examine the heaving white breasts with protruding nipples. Then, roughly separating the sheets, he comes face-to-face with the child standing among the white curtains with a terrified look in his eyes. There is a loud scream, the sound of the suona, and he covers his face with his hands.

  Crawling from the front of the coffin covered in white streamers, the child runs off wailing and howling, and echoing this silent weeping is the long, drawn-out scream of the suona. When the sounds of the child and the suona vanish, there remain around the open coffin only white curtains and paper streamers drifting in the wind.

  The gloomy sea keeps rising and the wet mattress is partly floating on the water. The black hat over his face gets closer and closer to the ceiling of the room.

  He leaps out of the coffin that is covered in long paper streamers and, dragging the shroud with him, he staggers and stumbles as he flees this mountainside with paper streamers hanging all around
. He runs down to the expanse of green lake in the valley, enters the water, plunges into the lake, and somehow becomes tangled in weeds and is struggling. In the distance, ripples are spreading in circles, but it is hard to tell whether he is drowning or swimming out to the middle of the lake.

  The sea reaches the ceiling, gurgling like a drowning person who is swallowing water and giving off bubbles like a blocked underwater pipe.

  The watery passage grows bluer and bluer and eventually comes out at a seaport with sparkling waves. In the distance, the sea and the sky are virtually one color.

  A gray-black floating object is bobbing up and down on top of the waves. As the tide rises and falls, a naked man can be seen lying on a wet mattress that is about to sink.

  Lines of white crest surge upon the deep sea; it is ink blue, verging on black. The sky is so bright and the sea wind is so strong.

  The flat sea suddenly stands upright. In the trough of the waves, on the mattress about to be engulfed, the naked man, wearing only a narrow leather tie around his neck, is seen removing the black hat from his face with one hand and his sunglasses with the other. In that instant, when the tide crashes down, those dead-fish eyes and the frozen, ambiguous smile on his face can be seen.

  Seen through the window, facing the sun, in the distance, on the desolate beach, there seems to be a man sitting in a deck chair, his back to the sea, with a towel draped over him. With one hand he pushes aside the hat over his face and with the other he retrieves a book from the sand and starts reading it.

  TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

  Gao Xingjian's fiction, plays, and critical essays on literature began to appear in literary magazines for the first time in China during the early 1980s. His book Xiandai xiaoshuo jiqiao chutan (Preliminary Explorations on the Art of Modern Fiction, 1981) created a sensation in the Chinese literary world but was banned upon being reprinted in 1982. Arguably, the 1980s were much more liberal than the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), during which time Gao had burned all his manuscripts, diaries, and notes rather than allow them to be found and used as life-threatening evidence against him. Nonetheless, even while conscientiously exercising self-censorship, he found that his writings still caused him to be denounced for promoting the decadent modernism of Western capitalist literature. In December 1987, when the opportunity arose, he left China for Europe. Some months later he settled in Paris, where he has lived since.