Soul Mountain

by Gao Xingjian

  “That incident with the revolutionary committee happened some years ago, has anyone seen it recently?”

  “Lots of people come to carry out investigations on the Wild Man, several hundred every year. They come from all over the country, the Central Academy of Social Sciences, university teachers from Shanghai, and even someone from the political committee of the armed forces. Last year a pair came from Hong Kong, a merchant and a fire fighter, but we didn’t let them go in.”

  “Did any of these people see the Wild Man?”

  “Of course! The political committee person in the Wild Man investigation squad I mentioned is a military man and he had two guards in the car with him. Heavy rain had fallen all night and the road had washed away. The following day, there was a heavy fog. That was when they came face to face with the Wild Man!”

  “They didn’t capture it?”

  “Their headlights only had a range of two or three metres and by the time they got out of the car with their rifles the creature had run off.”

  I shake my head to indicate that it was a pity.

  “They’ve recently established a Wild Man Study Association and a former propaganda department chief of the party committee of the area is personally leading it. They have photographs of the Wild Man’s footprints as well as hair from the Wild Man’s body and head.”

  “I’ve seen all of this,” I say. “I saw an exhibition which was probably organized by the Wild Man Study Association and I have seen enlarged photographs of the footprints of the Wild Man. They have also published a book of Wild Man material ranging from records of the Wild Man in ancient texts to foreign accounts of the Yeti and Big Foot, including a number of eyewitness reports.” I indicate that I approve of all this. “In a local newspaper, I’ve even seen the photograph of a Wild Man’s foot which had been cut off.”

  “What was it like?” He leans forward to interrogate me.

  “It was like a dried bear’s paw.”

  “That’s not right,” he says, shaking his head. “A bear’s paw is a bear’s paw, the Wild Man’s foot is longer than a bear’s paw and is similar to a human foot. Why did I first tell you about the teeth of Ancient Ape Man? In my opinion, the Wild Man is an Ape Man which did not evolve into man. What do you think?”

  “It’s hard to be certain,” I say, yawning from the effects of the alcohol.

  He starts to weary and also yawns, he is quite tired from a whole day of meetings and eating.

  The following day the cadres resume their meetings. The driver comes to tell me that the road hasn’t been repaired and that I’ll have to stay put for another day. I seek out the section chief and say, “You’re all very busy with meetings and I don’t want to disturb you. Are there any retired cadres here who know about the history of the county? I can go and chat with them.”

  He thinks of someone, an acting county magistrate of the former Guomindang period who has returned after being released from a labour camp. “This old man knows everything, he’s an intellectual. When the county committee established the county record compilation group they always got him to check and verify materials.”

  In a damp muddy lane, I call at various homes and eventually come to his.

  This gaunt old man with piercing eyes invites me to sit in the main room. He coughs incessantly and keeps offering me tea one moment and melon seeds the next. I can tell he is agitated because he can’t work out why I am here.

  I tell him I want to write a historical novel which has nothing to do with the present and that I have come especially to seek his advice. At this point he relaxes, stops coughing, and his hands stop moving things about. He lights a cigarette, sits up straight with his back against the wooden chair and finally begins to talk confidently.

  “This was part of the state of Peng during the Western Zhou period, then during the Spring and Autumn period it belonged to the state of Chu. By the Warring States period it was territory contested by the states of Qin and Chu. The population was decimated during the wars and although that history is now remote the area remains sparsely populated, for when the Manchus came through the Pass the county’s total population of 3000 was cut down to one-tenth by the slaughter. In addition, from the time of the Red Turban Uprising in the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, local bandits have been rife.”

  It is not clear if he thinks the Red Turbans are local bandits.

  “It was in the second year of the Kangxi Emperor’s reign in the Qing Dynasty that Li Zicheng’s Ming Dynasty forces were finally crushed. But later on, in the first year of the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor, this area was overrun by the White Lotus Sect; and later still it was attacked and occupied by Zhang Xianzhong and the Nian Army. There was also the Taiping Army and then in the Republican period there were hordes of bureaucrat bandits, local bandits and soldier bandits.”

  “So this place has always been a bandit hide-out?” I ask.

  He smiles but doesn’t respond.

  “In times of peace, people came from other places, or were born here and grew up here and the population multiplied and even prospered. It is recorded in historical texts that King Ping of Zhou came here to collect folk songs which means that in 700 BC folk songs were in abundance.”

  “That’s too long ago,” I say. “May I ask you to talk about your personal experiences? For example, what sort of havoc was wreaked by the bureaucrat bandits, local bandits and soldier bandits during the Guomindang period?”

  “With bureaucrat bandits, I can give an example, one of these, who was in charge of two thousand men, rebelled. They raped several hundred women and abducted two hundred adults and children for ‘leaves’: leaves is bandit jargon for flesh vouchers or ransom notes. Rifles, ammunition, cloth and electric torches were required to redeem someone – one person was usually worth one or two thousand silver yuan, and there was a deadline. People had to be hired to take the ransom in baskets to a designated spot and if the families were as much as half a day late, even the vouchers for kidnapped children were torn up and only an ear would be redeemed. As for local petty bandits, they just carried out murder and robbery and then absconded.”

  “What about times of peace and prosperity, have you seen any of these?” I ask.

  “Peace and prosperity . . . ” He thinks for a while then nods. “Yes, there were such times and for the temple festivals on the third day of the third month this county had nine opera stages with painted rafters and carved pillars and there would be ten or so opera troupes performing non-stop day and night. After the revolution of 1911, during the fifth year of the Republic, this county had boys and girls in the same school and even large-scale sporting competitions where girls competed wearing shorts. By the twenty-sixth year of the Republic customs changed radically and from New Year’s Day to the sixteenth day of the New Year, scores of gambling tables were set up at every intersection. In one night one big landlord lost one hundred and eight local temples, so you can calculate the area of the fields and forests involved! There were more than twenty brothels. Signs were not put up but this was the business they carried out and people from far and near within a radius of several hundred li all came, and guests were received day and night. Thereafter came the battles between the warlords Jiang, Feng and Guan, and then the War of Resistance when the Japanese carried out further mass destruction.

  After that the gangsters took over and they were rampant just before the People’s Government was established. At the time, the town of Chengguan’s population of 800 had 400 members belonging to the Green Gang. They infiltrated every stratum of society from the secretaries of the county government down to the destitute. And they would stop at nothing – kidnapping brides, robbery, and selling widows. Even petty thieves had to pay homage to the gangster boss. At the weddings and funerals of big families there would be hundreds of beggars at the gate and if the beggar boss wasn’t located and bought off there would be no holding them at bay. Most of the Green Gang were youths in their twenties, whereas the members of the Red Gang were a bit older. Th
e bosses of the local bandits were mainly members of the Red Gang.

  “What secret signs did gang members use to communicate with one another?” My interest has been aroused.

  “The Green Gang used the surname Li inside the home but outside they used the surname Pan. If they met they addressed one another as ‘brother’ and this was known as the mouth keeps to Pan, the hand keeps to three.” He makes a circle with his thumb and index finger and spreads out the other three fingers. “This was the secret sign and in addressing one another, the men were called Elder Brother Five or Elder Brother Nine and the women were called Elder Sister Four or Elder Sister Seven. Where they were of different generations, they would refer to one another as father or son or teacher and teacher’s wife. The Red Gang addressed one another as master and the Green Gang addressed one another as older brother. If one of them went into a tea house and put down his hat with the brim upturned, his tea and cigarette bill would be paid.”

  “Were you a gang member?” I ask cautiously.

  He smiles and has a sip of tea. “In those times if I didn’t have connections, I wouldn’t have been an acting county magistrate.” He shakes his head. “It’s all in the past.”

  “Do you think the factions in the Cultural Revolution were something like this?”

  “That was between revolutionary comrades and can’t be compared.” He decisively rejects this suggestion.

  For a while there is an awkward silence. He gets up and again starts offering me melon seeds and tea. “The government treated me well by locking me away in prison, a criminal like me encountering those mass movements might not be alive today.”

  “Times of peace and prosperity are rare indeed,” I say.

  “Surely it is at present! Surely at present the country is prosperous and the people enjoy security of life?” he asks me guardedly.

  “There’s food and even liquor.”

  “What else does one want?” he asks.

  “Indeed,” I reply.

  “I’m happy being able to read books. Seeing people is troublesome and I appreciate my leisure,” he says looking up at the ceiling.

  Fine rain has started falling.

  When Nüwa created humans she also created their sufferings. Humans are created from the entrails of Nüwa and born in the bloody fluids of women and so they can never be washed clean.

  Don’t go searching for spirits and ghosts, don’t go searching for cause and retribution, don’t go searching for meaning, all is embodied in the chaos.

  It is only when people refuse to accept that they shout out, even while not comprehending what they are shouting. Humans are simply such creatures, fettered by perplexities and inflicting anxiety upon themselves.

  The self within you is merely a mirror image, the reflection of flowers in water. You can neither enter the mirror nor can you scoop up anything, but looking at the image and becoming enamoured of it you no longer pity yourself.

  You may as well resign yourself to being infatuated with that physical form and drown in a sea of lust, spiritual need is only self profanity. You grimace.

  Knowledge is an extravagance, a costly expense.

  You have only the desire to narrate, to use a language transcending cause and effect, or logic. People have spoken so much nonsense, so why shouldn’t you say more.

  You create out of nothingness, playing with words like a child playing with blocks. But blocks can only construct fixed patterns, the possibilities of structures are inherent in the blocks and no matter how they are moved you will not be able to make anything new.

  Language is like a blob of paste which can only be broken up by sentences. If you abandon sentences, it will be like falling into a quagmire and you will flounder about helplessly.

  To flounder helplessly is like suffering and the whole of humanity is made up of individual selves. When you fall in, you must crawl out yourself because saviours aren’t concerned with such trifling matters.

  Dragging weighty thoughts you crawl about in language, trying all the time to grab a thread to pull yourself up, becoming more and more weary, entangled in floating strands of language, like a silkworm spitting out silk, weaving a net for yourself, wrapping yourself in thicker and thicker darkness, the faint glimmer of light in your heart becoming weaker and weaker until finally the net is a totality of chaos.

  To lose images is to lose space and to lose sound is to lose language. When moving the lips can’t produce sounds what is being expressed is incomprehensible, although at the core of consciousness the fragment of the desire to express will remain. If this fragment of desire cannot be retained there will be a return to silence.

  How is it possible to find a clear pure language with an indestructible sound which is larger than a melody, transcends limitations of phrases and sentences, does not distinguish between subject and object, transcends pronouns, discards logic, simply sprawls, and is not bound by images, metaphors, associations or symbols? Will it be able to give expression to the sufferings of life and the fear of death, distress and joy, loneliness and consolation, perplexity and expectation, hesitation and resolve, weakness and courage, jealousy and remorse, calm and impatience and self-confidence, generosity and constraint, kindness and hatred, pity and despair, as well as lack of ambition and placidity, humility and wickedness, nobility and viciousness, cruelty and benevolence, fervour and indifference, and aloofness, and admiration, and promiscuousness, and vanity, and greed, as well as scorn and respect, certainty and uncertainty, modesty and arrogance, obstinacy and chagrin, resentment and shame, surprise and amazement, lethargy, muddle-headedness, sudden enlightenment, never comprehending, failing to comprehend, as well as just allowing whatever will happen to happen.

  I am lying on a spring bed made with clean sheets in a room with pale yellow print-patterned wallpaper, white crocheted curtains and dark red carpet. There are two lounge chairs with towelling covers and the bathroom has a bathtub. If I were not holding a stencilled manuscript of farm-work songs, Gongs and Drums to Accompany Weeding, I would find it hard to believe that I am in the forest of Shennongjia. This new two-storey building built for a team of American researchers who for some reason didn’t arrive has become a hostel for cadres to carry out investigations. Through the good auspices of the section chief, when I arrive I am again given special treatment and charged the cheapest rates for food and lodgings. Beer even comes with the meals, although I would would have preferred liquor. To be able to enjoy such cleanliness and comfort completely relaxes me and I could stay for a few extra days without any problem. After all, there is no real need for me to hurry on my journey.

  There’s a sort of a buzzing in the room. At first I think it’s an insect but looking around there’s nowhere for an insect to hide as the ceiling is painted white and the light shade is a cream colour. The sound continues and hangs elusively in the air. When I listen carefully it is like a woman’s singing and it hovers around me. As soon as I put down the book it vanishes and when I pick up the book the sound is again in my ears. I think my ears must be ringing so I get up, walk around for a bit, and open the window.

  The sun produces a glare on the gravel square in front of the building. It is almost noon and no-one is in sight, could all this be in my mind? It is an elusive tune without words but it seems to be familiar, a bit like the sad wailing of women I have heard in the mountain regions.

  I decide to go outside to have a look, leave the room, and go through the main door and out to the square in front of the building. The small fast-flowing river at the bottom of the slope is green and clear in the sunlight and the green mountain peaks, although devoid of vast stretches of forest, are nevertheless covered in lush vegetation. A dirt road for motor vehicles stretches for a couple of kilometres down the slope to the little town in the middle of the reserve. On the left, at the bottom of a towering green mountain, there’s a school and an empty football field. The students are probably all in the classrooms: and the teachers in this mountain village wouldn’t be teaching t
heir students dirges. It is quiet and there is only the sound of the wind on the mountain and the lapping of the river. There is a makeshift workers’ hut by the river but there is no-one outside the hut. The sound of the singing has vanished.

  I return to my room and sit at the desk by the window, thinking to select and copy some of this folk song material, but again I hear the singing. It seems to be the slow outpouring of irrepressible grief after the pain of excruciating agony has settled. Something odd is happening and I must get to the bottom of it. Is there someone singing or is there something psychologically wrong with me? I look up and hear it behind me, I turn around and it is suspended in the air like a strand of floating silk. A spider web blowing in the wind has form but this is without form, intangible. Tracking the sound, I stand on the armrest of the sofa and at this point discover that it is coming through an air vent above the door. I get a chair and stand on it. The glass vent is spotlessly clean and when I open it the sound goes out into the corridor. I get off the chair and open the door and the sound goes out under the eaves of the balcony. I move the chair out onto the balcony, stand on it, but can’t reach high enough. Below the balcony is the small sunlit cement courtyard where the clothes I washed in the morning hang on a wire. Of course they can’t be singing. I can’t see any tracks in the distance but there seems to be a fence along the mountain which cuts off a stretch of thick tangled undergrowth and brambles on the slope. As I come down from the balcony into the sunlight the sound becomes clearer and seems to be coming from the sun. I squint and look up and in the bright light hear the sharp, heavy thud of metal on stone. I can’t see a thing at first, then when the blinding sun becomes a blue-black image and I shade my eyes with my hand, I see small figures moving about halfway up the mountain on a bare cliff face. The metallic sound is coming from far away over there. I walk towards them and make out that they are quarry workers – one seems to be wearing a red singlet and the others are stripped to the waist and are hardly distinguishable from the brown dynamited cliff face. The sound of their singing flies up into the sunlight with the wind and is sometimes loud and sometimes indistinct.