by Gao Xingjian
“I am asking you to write her life into a work of fiction. I can tell you everything about her, you have a good writing style. Fiction–”
“Is existence produced from nothingness,” I say with a smile.
“I don’t want you to make it up, you can use her real name. I can’t afford a writer, I can’t pay the manuscript fee. If I had the money, I would willingly pay. I’m seeking your help, asking you to write about her.”
“This is–” I sit up to show that I appreciate her hospitality.
“I’m not bribing you. If you think this girl has been unjustly treated and is worthy of sympathy, then you can write about her. It’s a pity you can’t see her photo.” Her eyes look blank. The dead girl clearly weighs heavily in her heart. “I was born ugly so I always admired pretty girls and wanted to be friends with them. I wasn’t at the same school but always ran into her on the way to school or on my way home, but these were always fleeting encounters. Her oval face moved not just men but also women. I wanted to get to know her better. I saw that she was always on her own and one day I waited for her coming back from school, followed her and said I wanted to talk with her and hoped she wouldn’t mind. She agreed and I walked with her. Thereafter on my way to school, I would always wait for her near her house and in this way got to know her. Don’t hold back, drink up!”
She serves up the stewed eel, the soup is delicious. As I eat, I listen to her telling how she became a member of the girl’s home. The mother treated her like her own daughter and often she didn’t go home and just slept with her in the same bed.
“Don’t go thinking that sort of thing was going on. I only knew about sexual matters after she was sentenced to ten years in prison. She had a big argument with me and didn’t want me to visit her. Afterwards I just found some man and got married. She and I had the purest love, that which exists between young girls. You men wouldn’t understand, a man’s love for a woman is like an animal’s. I’m not talking about you, you’re a writer. Have some crab!” She breaks up into pieces the strong smelling raw crab marinated in salt and spices and piles some into my bowl. There are also cooked clams with a sauce dip. It is another battle between men and women, a battle between the spirit and the flesh.
Her friend’s father was a military officer in the Guomindang and when the Liberation Army came south, her mother was pregnant with her. Her father sent word but when she rushed to the wharf, the troop ship had already left. It is one of those old stories again. I lose interest in her friend and simply apply myself to eating the crab.
“One night when we were in bed together, she threw her arms around me and started crying. I was alarmed and asked her what was wrong. She said she missed her father.”
“But she’d never seen him.”
“Her mother burnt all the photos of him in military uniform but they still had wedding photos of her mother in a white net gown with her father. Her father was wearing a Western-style suit and was quite dashing. I tried my best to comfort her and I felt really sorry for her. Afterwards I hugged her tight and sobbed with her.”
“That’s understandable.”
“If everyone thought that, it would have been fine. However, people didn’t understand, they treated her as an anti-revolutionary and said she was hoping for a reactionary restoration and was planning to flee to Taiwan.”
“The policies of those times aren’t like they are today. It’s changed now and people are being urged to come back to the mainland to visit their relatives.” What else can I say?
“She was a young girl and although she was in high school at the time she couldn’t understand all this. She wrote about missing her father in her diary!”
“If this was seen and reported she would certainly have been sentenced,” I say. I am interested in knowing if there were certain changes when the girl’s infatuation with her father got mixed with lesbian love.
She starts talking about how, because of her family background, the girl couldn’t go to university but was selected by the Peking Opera Troupe as a trainee performer, how she was instantly a big hit when the lead woman performer was sick and they put her in as a temporary replacement, how the lead woman performer was jealous, how when the girl’s opera troupe went on tour the woman secretly read her diary and reported her, how when the opera troupe returned to the city the public security officials got her mother in for questioning, asked her to urge her daughter to confess and to hand over the diary, how the girl was afraid of the public security officials ransacking her home and had transferred the diary to her home. However she too was afraid of the public security officials coming in to search so she took the diary to the home of the girl’s maternal uncle. During questioning the mother testified that her daughter only ever went to her home and the home of her maternal uncle. The maternal uncle was summoned and, afraid of being implicated, handed over the diary. The public security officials then turned to the girl, who of course was terrified, and made a full confession. At first she was isolated in the opera troupe and not allowed to go home and then later she was indicted on the criminal charge of writing a reactionary diary and recklessly planning restorationist anti-revolutionary activities. She was put under arrest and imprisoned.
“Are you saying that everyone informed on her and exposed her, even her mother and uncle?” The crab is too strong, I can’t eat anymore and put it aside. My fingers are covered in crab meat and there’s nothing to wipe my hands on.
“We wrote confessions exposing her and put our thumb print to it. Even her uncle who was much older was so frightened he didn’t even dare to see me again. Her mother insisted it was I who had led her daughter astray, that it was I who had fed her those reactionary ideas, and she forbade me to enter her home again!”
“How did she die?” I am anxious to find out the outcome.
“Listen to what I’m saying–” she seems to be defending herself.
I am not judging. If this had happened to me at that time I wouldn’t necessarily have been more level-headed. As a child I had seen my mother pulling out the roll of land deeds from the bottom of my grandmother’s chest and burning them in the stove, and I saw this as destruction of criminal evidence. Fortunately no-one came to investigate. If at the time investigations had involved me, there is no doubt that I would have denounced my maternal grandmother who had bought me the spinning top and my mother who had raised me. It was the way things were in those times.
It isn’t just the strong-smelling crab marinated in brine which is disgusting, it’s also me. I can’t eat anything else and just kept drinking.
She suddenly starts sobbing and covers her face with her hands, and next she is wailing loudly.
I can’t comfort her with my hands covered in crab roe, so I ask, “May I use a towel?”
She points to the basin containing clean water on the rack behind the door. I wash my hands and it is only after I give her a rinsed hand towel that she stops crying. I detest this ugly woman and have no sympathy for her.
She says at the time she was confused. A year later she gradually recovered and made enquiries about the girl’s whereabouts, bought a whole lot of foodstuffs and went to visit her at the prison and the girl had been sentenced to ten years and didn’t want to see her. The girl accepted the things she had brought only after she said she wouldn’t marry and would work to support her after she had served out her sentence.
She says the happiest days in her life were those spent visiting her friend. They swapped diaries, spoke lovingly as if they were sisters, swore never to marry and always to be together. Who would be the husband? Who would be the wife? Of course she would be the wife. Together in bed they would tickle one another until they couldn’t stop laughing, she was happy just to hear the sound of her laughter. However I prefer to imagine the worst of her.
“Then why did you get married?” I ask.
“It was she who changed first,” she says. “Once when I went to see her, her face was swollen and she was very cold to me. I was puzzled an
d kept questioning her. Right at the end of visiting time, it was always twenty minutes each time, she told me to get married and not to come again. Only after I pressed her about it did she say she had someone. I asked her who it was and she said another prisoner! I did not see her again after that. I wrote her many letters but never got a reply, it was then that I got married.”
I want to say that she had harmed her, that her mother justifiably hated her, otherwise the girl would have loved normally, married normally, had children, and not have ended up like this.
“Do you have children?” I ask.
“I didn’t want any.”
A mean woman.
“I separated after less than a year, then we squabbled for about a year before going through a divorce. Since then I have lived alone, I hate men.”
“How did she die?” I change the subject.
“I heard that she tried to escape and was shot by the guards.”
I don’t want to hear anymore and just want her to quickly finish the story.
“Shall I reheat the soup?” She looks at me apprehensively.
“Don’t bother.” She shouldn’t have got me here, to give vent to her frustrations, eating this meal disgusts me.
She also tells me how she tried all means to seek out a fellow inmate who had been released after serving out her sentence, and found out that her friend had been caught passing notes to a male prisoner and deprived of going out into the open and of having visitors. She had also tried to escape but by that time she was already deranged and would often laugh and weep for no apparent reason. She says that later she found out the address of the male prisoner who had been released. When she arrived at his place there was a woman there and when she asked him about the girl’s circumstances, either because he was afraid of the woman being jealous or because he was quite callous, he said he didn’t know. They didn’t exchange ten sentences and she departed in a rage.
“Can you write this up?” she asks, her head bowed.
“I’ll have to see!” I eventually say.
She wants to take me back or let me ride her bicycle back but I flatly refuse. On the way, gusts of cool wind blow from the sea and it looks like rain. When I get back to my lodgings in the middle of the night I have an attack of vomiting and diarrhoea. I imagine the seafood wasn’t fresh.
They say along the sea coast that strange music with bells and drums can always be heard at night coming from this mountain – it is the Daoist priests and nuns holding their secret ceremonies. He and she witnessed one of these by accident and reported it as soon as they got back. However, if people go up the mountain during the day to look for the Daoist temple they can’t find it. As they recall, it was on a cliff facing the sea. He says it was almost at the peak. She disagrees, it was up a small path on a cliff facing the sea but it would be halfway up the mountain.
Both say it was a beautiful Daoist temple built inside a crack in the cliff and the only access was this narrow mountain path, so in the daytime it couldn’t be seen by fishermen on the boats at sea or people climbing the mountain for medicinal herbs. It was while they were travelling at night and following the sound of the music that they stumbled onto a Daoist ceremony. They suddenly saw in a blaze of light the temple with its doors wide open and incense smoke curling up.
He saw a hundred or so men and women, all with painted faces, wearing Daoist robes and holding flying knives and flame torches as they sang and danced with their eyes half closed and wailed with tears streaming down their faces. The men and women intermingled freely as they went into trances of ecstasy and hysteria, throwing back their heads and stamping their feet.
She says the time she went there weren’t as many people but they were all dressed in bright colours. There were young girls and old women but no men present. They had rouged faces, lips painted blood red and eyebrows blackened with charcoal. Their hair was combed into buns which were tied with red cloth and decorated with garlands of jasmine. Some wore copper earrings but she can’t remember whether they had rings in their noses. They were singing, dancing, and waving their hands. It was a lively scene with some extraordinary chanting.
You ask her whether she could have dreamt it. She says a classmate was with her; they had gone up the mountain for the day, got lost, and couldn’t get back before dark. When they heard the music, they moved towards it in the dark and came upon the scene. The Daoists didn’t mind and the temple doors were wide open.
He says it was also like that with him, except that at the time he was on his own. He was used to travelling on mountain roads at night and wasn’t afraid. He was on guard against bad people but these Daoists were only carrying out their rituals and weren’t out to hurt anyone.
Both of them say they had seen it with their own eyes otherwise they wouldn’t have believed it. Both have tertiary education, are sound of mind, and don’t believe in ghosts and spirits. If they had been hallucinating they would have known.
Neither knew the other before and take turns telling you about it. In both cases they say it was on this mountain by the sea. Although it is the first time you meet with them, it is as if you are old friends and they talk quite candidly with you. There is no struggle for advantage so there is no need to be on guard, there is no blaming or boasting on either side, and they have no motive for getting you to fall into a trap. They have thought a lot about their experience and are puzzled by it, but they are obviously neither disgusted nor think it funny.
They say that as you have come all the way to this coast in search of the bizarre it is worth going there. They would like to accompany you but are afraid if they go there specifically for that purpose, they won’t necessarily find it. This sort of thing occurs when you’re not looking for it and when you set out expressly to seek it, your efforts will be futile. You can believe it or not but when they saw it with their own eyes in the blazing light of red candles, their weariness instantly vanished. They can swear to it under oath. If it would convince you they could immediately swear to it, but their swearing to it is still no substitute for you yourself going there. It is impossible for you to doubt their sincerity.
You end up going up the mountain and reach the peak before sunset. You sit there watching the fiery red sun withdrawing its rays and sinking into the vast horizon of the sea. It leaps up on striking the surface of the water then with a tremble plummets into the watery regions which have turned grey-blue. Golden lights writhe like water snakes and the lopped off semi-circular bright red crown floats on the black water like an oval hat, bobs up and down a couple of times, and is swallowed by the vast sea leaving only a red haze.
You begin to descend the mountain and very quickly are overtaken by dusk. You pick up a branch to use as a walking stick and a step at a time tap on the steep stone path. Before long you have plunged into a dark valley and can see neither the sea nor the road.
You stick close to the cliff face which is covered in small trees and bushes, terrified of losing your footing and falling into the abyss on the other side of the path. Your legs gradually turn to jelly and you rely on the stick in your hand to feel the way. You do not know whether or not the next step is safe, and it seems that this turbid darkness is growing from the bottom of your heart. You lose confidence in your stick and remember the lighter you have in your pocket. Even if it can’t help you get onto the level main path, it will be able to light a part of the way, but the sparks of the lighter can only produce a flame which shakes violently as if in fright and you have to use your hand to block the wind. A step away looms another black wall which makes you suspect it is certainly luring you to make that step into the abyss. The flame goes out in the chilly wind and like a blind person, with nothing to rely on but the branch in your hand, you tap a little at a time near your feet and tremble as you anxiously shuffle along the path.
Somehow you make your way into a hollow in the mountain which seems to be a cave and you see a dim light as if it is a crack in a door. When you get to it, this is what it is, you push but it
is bolted. You press your eye against the crack in the door and see a solitary lamp in an empty hall honouring statues of the Three Supreme Purities – Lord Daode, Lord Yuanshi and Lord Lingbao.
“What are you up to?” a stern voice shouts from behind. You are startled but it is a human voice and you relax.
You say you are a tourist lost in the dark and need somewhere to stay for the night.
Without saying much he leads you up some wooden stairs into a room lit with an oil lamp. It is only then that you see he is wearing a Daoist robe and trousers with the legs tied at the calf. His deep-set eyes glow with energy, he is clearly an old master. You don’t dare say you’ve come to spy on the secrets of the Daoist temple and repeatedly apologize for disturbing him, beg to stay the night, and promise to leave at dawn.
He hesitates for a moment, but then gets a bunch of keys from the timber wall and picks up the lamp. You obediently follow him up another flight of stairs. He opens a room and without a word goes downstairs.
You flick your lighter and see there is a bare wooden bed and nothing else. So you lie down fully clothed, curl into a ball, and don’t dare think about trying to do anything else. Afterwards, you hear from the floor above the tinkling of a bell. Accompanying the tinkling there seems to be the faint sound of a woman chanting. You are surprised and start wondering if this is one of the strange ceremonies they had told you about. You think perhaps upstairs some secret ritual is taking place. You want to find out but in the end don’t move. It is a relaxing sound which induces sleep and in the darkness weariness unceasingly assails you. You seem to see the back of a young girl wearing her hair tied up in a bun. She is sitting sedately, legs crossed, and is striking a bell. The delicate sound spreads out in waves like light, you cannot stop yourself believing in destiny and fate, and pray that in the nether world your soul will have peace . . .