by Yunte Huang
In the rainy season the turbid water of the rising river was filled with desire.
“Come on, get drunk, drink yourself to death.” A man gave B a bowl of wine. A fish, stuffed with vegetables and chilies, was being roasted in the fire.
The “singing spirits” had bright, childlike eyes, eyes that made you want to cry.
This one made a move to leave as soon as he saw us.
“No more for me, I’m going back,” he said to the host, his mouth full of fish.
“Wait, do please sing us a song first,” I said. “Wouldn’t you like to have your voice here?” I showed him the cassette recorder. B just sat there, poking the fire.
“It couldn’t stay long there.” He pointed at his throat and went over to the side of the mat to get his shoes.
I stood up. “Where are you from?”
“Don’t eat the grain I sow, or the eagles will come and eat you whole.” He looked at me and winked mischievously.
Like one bewitched, I put on my shoes and followed him out of the bamboo hut, out of the stockaded village. Though it was past midnight, one could still hear the clopping of cows’ hooves and the screeching of rusty wheels. The children were all asleep; the river continued to rise.
He walked so fast that I soon lost him in the fog. Through the fog there appeared pairs of dark bright eyes, thick dark brows, and long thick eyelashes. It was a group of women, short and small-built. They were carrying heavy bundles of firewood and examining me quizzically with raised heads.
“What do you want?”
“I want to record his voice.” I pointed at the thick fog ahead.
“The temperature of your tongue is different from his. The two of you can’t have children.”
“I want to record him.”
“Hens hide their heads, pigs lie on the ground, bulls point their horns at the sky, people sleep with their legs crossed. . . .” They disappeared, laughing loudly.
I ran back to the hut.
“Is this rosin the fragrance of pine? Just pine. No fragrance.”
The “singing spirits” had bright, childlike eyes, eyes that made you want to cry.
There was nothing transcendental about B’s music. One would probably have to break away from one’s body before one could “transcend.” When I was traveling in the long-distance bus, I kept getting the feeling that my head was weighing me down. I only wanted to find some way of holding my head up, and didn’t care a damn about worry, resentment, music, or happiness. Perhaps that was what transcendence means? B’s music made me think immediately of the mountains; the mountains made me think of the bus; the bus made me think of the heavy feeling in my head. What if I held my head up and simply walked? I would end up huffing and puffing, no doubt. Oh, the mountains, the mountains!
Hanna said that “B, the young composer” should be printed in large archaic calligraphy on the program—how daunting, I thought! B wasn’t around, so it was impossible to ask him to write his own introduction and provide a synopsis of his career. I had to make use of my feeble command of the language and write about him. In the style of pop-music lyrics, I wrote: “B is a man. Years have passed since he went away and disappeared into the foggy highlands of the south. Praise him, damn him. It’s up to you. He can’t hear you anyway.”
It was the middle of the night. When I switched off the cassette recorder, there was no sound, only a cat scratching the floor upstairs. From out of nowhere came a sweet fragrance. Strange, for I never kept any plants. I switched on the light and looked around. The smell was coming from the cupboard. But there were only a few bottles and glasses, a tray and an opened packet of tea leaves there. It was the tea leaves. When I drank the tea during the day, it had no fragrance at all, and now, in the dark of night, it gave off a fragrance that filled the entire room. Hell, it was really late. All of a sudden, I felt extremely sad. Soon it’d be another day. Day is the space for facts and people. I could only think about the next step, the next step, and the next step. It’s often said that man relies on his hands and a dog on its hind legs. I never could understand what connection there is between a man’s hands and a dog’s hind legs. After all, every living thing wants to triumph over something and possess something. What is it that I want to triumph over? What is it that I want to possess? Do I want to triumph over the King of Singers? Impossible! Do I want to possess B? Equally impossible! Why did I organize this concert, then? I had to. For B, for myself; not for B, nor for myself.
Who was the fool who said reality was what women chased after? He’d certainly lost his head over a woman. Perhaps reality is what women are after in the first place, but then they learn pretense in order to attract men. Men learn pretense too in order to chase after women. In the end nobody cares about reality at all. Was it men or women who first chased after reality? Was it men or women who first invented pretense? One can never be sure which comes first, like the chicken-and-egg question. But pretense is spreading, everyone is doing things that distort reality. I’ve left B; I hated the King of Singers. Yet here I am, organizing a concert for B, that’s pretense enough. But what about B? He has left the city and gone to the wilderness, his mind filled with music scores and composition techniques, to become a disciple of the King of Singers. Isn’t that pretense too? Heavens! He must be very lonely, since he’ll be the only pretender in the wilderness, unless he’s forgotten all about musical notation and composition techniques. He wasn’t born a saint. Nurture and formal education turned him into a favorite with the people. Will he count at all, there in the wilderness? He’s left this place, where attention was paid him, where people called him a “composer”; what would the King of Singers call him? A sham, perhaps, or a loafer living off music, or a bullshitter, or . . . unless he’s forgotten everything here. What value will these scores have then? Won’t they be mere rubbish? We’ve raised him to the status of a great composer, but he might long have forgotten what composition means. Why bother to invite the reporters; what have reporters got to do with him? He’s gone chasing after reality, and here I am creating for him the biggest unreality of all.
Morning had come. A pigeon flew onto my balcony. It stood on the window ledge cooing; its red eyes were fixed on me and its concentrated stare made me uneasy, like the stare of a third-rate secret agent. I got up, opened the window, and scattered some beans on the window ledge. Go on, go and eat your beans. I began to plan what to wear and how to make myself presentable in order to pull a few more strings and fix up a few more performances. Money, the concert, B. B thought he could get away from material things by running away, but in fact he’d left behind him a long rope, one end of which was still fastened to him. The other end was fastened to the music that was created out of money. I always sang about “the birds, fishes, the wind,” but that pigeon irritated me no end. To make money with lyrics like “I love pigeons” was as synthetic as margarine, protein substitutes, nylon and polyester. “Don’t lose your natural self.” I made myself smart and trendy, there was nothing wrong with that, but there was less and less of the natural woman in me.
[. . .]
When the plane took off, I felt a great relief. I was finally on my way to a big show and I had also signed a recording contract. The profit would be considerable, certainly enough to hold the concert for B. I could leave all trivial matters behind. The plane carrying this lump of chaos that was me glided through the atmosphere. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” No matter where the shoes led you, surely there would have to be an end somewhere, wouldn’t there? This smartly dressed lump of chaos in a plane, was it flying back to its original form, or on its way to completing its rebirth? Who could tell? Once you started walking in this pair of shoes, you found yourself in a complete muddle. Confusion and clarity, clarity and confusion; contradiction and paradox, paradox and confusion—these would entangle you and throw you into turmoil; only the pair of shoes knew for certain; they’d tell you all hesitation was futile.
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The plane made its way through masses of clouds. I’m glad I’m a human being so I can sit so high up in the sky, and yet it’s also human beings alone that can sit so high up in the sky without being able to touch the clouds. But birds are not happy either: though they can fly, they’re held tightly in their own physical substance. This is the misfortune of those whose original form is clearly defined. The basest swallow and the noblest phoenix have a clearer conception of their own value than a lump of chaos. But neither heaven nor earth could do anything to disperse solid physical substance, or make it undergo various transformations. Chaos often envies clarity: little does it know that after it has been dispersed by an air stream, it can merge with the upper atmosphere and fly even higher than the birds, or dissolve into the mire and descend to the depths where ghosts and spirits dwell. Chaos doesn’t know itself for what it is, and it never knows what it should or should not do, whether it’s right or wrong; it always envies clarity but is always dispersed by the air stream.
I pretended to be a career woman and sat there with a rapt look on my face. Was B dependent on me for help? One moment I’d say yes, another, no. The B I knew was a living person and I rushed about on behalf of this living person. Everyone needs some sort of support to keep going. If B wasn’t dependent on me and if I wasn’t organizing this concert for him, I didn’t know what I should do. Surely B depended on me. As the plane flew higher and higher, so did my aspirations. How I wished I could move the King of Singers. But what for? To give B back to me?
The plane landed. My self-confidence was greater than that of all the passengers put together. I quickly got myself a taxi, asked the driver to take me to the hotel as quickly as he could, had the receptionist arrange a room for me as quickly as he could, took a hot shower as quickly as I could, dried myself as quickly as I could, slipped on my comfortable pajamas as quickly as I could, settled myself in bed as quickly as I could, and went over my songs.
I hadn’t been in bed long when I noticed it was dinnertime. I changed and went down to the restaurant, which faced the hotel lobby on one side and the garden on the other. The garden was neither Chinese nor Western. It was vulgar, delicately refined, confused, glamorous, mean, and sumptuous all at once. The waiter came over to me and asked in English, “Tea?” I said yes in Chinese. A look of contempt flashed over his face. I said, “Could you take my order, please?” “Sorry, just a moment.” He then went straight over to a foreigner and asked respectfully, “Tea?” All the foreigners around me had been served, but I was still waiting “just a moment.”
A compatriot with a big nose was sitting by himself at a table across from me. He too seemed to have been kept waiting for a long while. He came over and said: “I know you. You’ve performed here, haven’t you? I really enjoyed it.”
“Thank you.”
“You see the way Chinese treat Chinese?” He looked at the waiter. “You won’t find this anywhere else in the world. No self-respect at all!”
I smiled a forced smile.
“I like the way you sing.”
“Thank you.”
“And your songs too.”
“Thank you.”
“They’re really marvelous.”
“Thank you.”
“Natural.”
“Thank you.”
“You are casual, unpretentious, not stagy. Some singers are too much like actresses I don’t like it songs must be sung with feeling must be sung naturally properly a singer must take the audience through many different emotions must express his distinctive personality in the singing must convey sentiments that are moving you want to make people feel as moved as you are you have to exert an influence over the audience you have to be natural to be real to reveal your true feelings to . . .”
In the valleys late autumn set in. Mountain winds entangled themselves with the evening light; tree branches disturbed the peace and quiet of the night. Still searching and still unsuccessful, we were each deep in our own thoughts. Lying on the ground beneath a starry sky, with the winds blowing around us, we felt relaxed, numb. The winds dispersed one’s spirit like an anesthetic; it was as if they wanted to take your physical substance and dissolve it into the vastness and haziness of the surroundings. Breath melted, conversations melted, gestures melted, leg wounds melted, desires melted, feelings too melted. The solid physical substance moved near the stars one moment, fell to the ground the next; the four limbs reached out into their surroundings one moment, retracted the next and disappeared. Perhaps all original forms were making themselves visible at this moment. The stars, trees, weeds, stones, human beings, hares, wolves, pheasants—none of these could actually talk, each was a particle in the air and each had simply borrowed a physical body in order to wander about the earth. Why do human beings insist they can talk? Why is it said that stars can talk? And why is it said too that wolves, hares, pheasants, and even the sea can talk?
At that time, there were only two colors on earth: darkness was trying with all its might to hold the atmosphere in its grasp, while a silver color poured down trying to save the living. All of a sudden, a strange sound came on the wind, came moving through the air currents. It seemed to have come from under the earth, it also seemed to have come from the sky. It seemed as if hundreds and thousands of spirits were there matchmaking for all things and for heaven and earth, bringing enlightenment to all living creatures and awakening them from oblivion and ignorance.
“Do you hear it?” B asked me.
“Yes.”
“He has finally come.” B’s eyes brightened with excitement.
We followed the sound and walked toward that place, we kept walking toward that place. The sound came intermittently, so did the silver color in the sky. B, you’ve finally found what you wanted. You’re going to win. You feel great, don’t you? You’ve found what you wanted. We can go home now.
A cliff appeared before us. At the top of the cliff a huge rock jutted out, forming a platform. A group of singing spirits were sitting in a circle; others were climbing up the cliff from the foot of the mountain. Those on the platform were swaying their bodies and calling sonorously, their eyes fixed on the moon. The slow crescendo of their calling was like the rising tide swallowing the dark night. There was no leader here and no audience; everyone was enveloped in the solemn atmosphere, the naked bodies reflecting the silver light.
I was still standing there stunned when I discovered that B was taking off his clothes. He stripped himself naked and ran toward the cliff. I wanted to shout after him, but was afraid that I might destroy the harmony of the night. B had gone over and climbed up onto the platform. He now stood among the singing spirits, and called sonorously to the moon.
None of the singing spirits looked at him; no one paid him any attention. All the silver light of the universe was gathering there on the platform. A group of dark naked bodies were swaying and dancing: it was impossible to tell B from the others. Fatigue, cold, damp, and the insects began to attack me. I stood in the shadows, enveloped by darkness. I did not have the courage to go naked to that platform where the light was, and I could not go back. The singing spirits never stopped swaying, never stopped calling. Everything was singing, was the spirit of the universe. This lasted until the darkness gradually faded and the calling of the singing spirits, and their human forms, gradually disappeared into the clouds. Then the fog rose, everything was enveloped in white. Suddenly, the light of dawn and B appeared together before me. He was the only one on the platform who was still looking at a moon that had long lost its luster. Down in the valley, the sun had risen; people were up and about. Up here, everything was still enveloped in white.
“Well, here comes your food. Time I went and had mine.” Noticing my strange look, Big-Nose returned, embarrassed, to his table.
I wanted to say, “Sorry, I was distracted.” But I said nothing and just leaned slightly forward; the words wouldn’t come.
IT WAS A huge stadium. Since the show featured all the top performing artists, i
t was completely sold out, and the stadium was now packed. The singers, male and female, were all gorgeously dressed, everything they were wearing was a masterpiece created by a top craftsman. A female singer was noisily complaining about her pleated skirt not being properly ironed. A big-eared, fatheaded male singer, who’d just had plastic surgery to give him double-fold eyelids, kept rolling his eyes at people. Electronic sounds darted back and forth, whistling through the auditorium. Flashes of laser light dazzled the eyes. The footlights kept on changing color. I sat alone on the floor in a corner backstage, my head buried between my knees. I felt more nervous than I ever had before, not knowing what this performance would bring. Perhaps it was time to seek my fortune with cards or by divination; but at this moment I wouldn’t have taken anybody’s word for anything. I had a protective talisman from Lin Xi—he had given it to me as a gift specially for this occasion, wishing me success. Gu Peng had given me a photo which he took of me five years ago, you could read that face at a glance. I had even brought B’s photo along. I took all these things from my pocket. At first I had wanted to go onstage wearing this coat with large pockets. I had bought it from a peasant in the mountains. It was made of coarse hand-woven cotton, printed and dyed with large decorative patterns by the peasants. I took all my things from the pockets to reduce my burden. Then, after careful consideration, I took off the coat too. My trousers were also made of homespun cloth. With the coat off, I was left with a printed short-sleeve jacket—the type worn by peasants. The only fancy thing I had on was a gold chain with a purple spar on it. It was my turn now. I went out in my short-sleeve jacket and the trousers made of homespun cloth. The minute I went onstage, there was a commotion in the audience; I couldn’t help but take a step back. Electronic music roared like thunder in my ears. I looked at the vast crowd before me, but felt only emptiness in my heart. I forced a wry smile, then I drifted toward the microphone. Still the same songs, the same stereotyped songs that earned loud applause. People never seem to tire of these songs. They’re so easy to learn. All you need to make a living as a singer is to control the tone color, stay in tune, and sway a bit with the music. I swayed gently and looked around me. There was no one I knew. Everyone was smiling; everyone was enraptured. When the first song came to an end, there was applause and loud whistling. Same for the next one. How long would I have to sway like this? How long would I have to smile like this? My throat went dry. My eyes swept over the audience, but I saw no one I knew, no one whatsoever; there would be no miracles. Amid the applause, I retreated backstage, but was invited by the announcer to take a curtain call. I took a deep bow, hoping that the audience would stop applauding. After all, I only wanted to make some money for B’s concert. The songs I sang were all “crap.” But people were still whistling and applauding, and the electronic music rang out again. I gestured to the band and they stopped playing, looking at me in bewilderment. The audience too suddenly became quiet. I walked up to the microphone and said, “Please switch off the overhead lights; please switch off the footlights too. Thank you.” There was darkness everywhere. Then I said, “Please give me a spotlight over there.” A beam of white light appeared to my left. “Thank you, thank you.” There was complete silence. I really wanted to walk naked into the white light, as B had done, but I hesitated. I didn’t move. Standing in the dark, outside the white light, I felt surrounded once more by the cold, the damp, and the insects. I saw innumerable singing spirits calling to the moon. I would never walk into that beam of silver light; I would always have to stand on the outside, in the dark; I would never be a singing spirit, never see the King of Singers; all I could do was stand here, waiting, waiting. B, will you appear again with the light of day?