Soul Mountain (32 page)

Behind this broken wall my dead father, mother and maternal grandmother are seated at the dinner table waiting for me to come and eat. I have been wandering endlessly and haven’t joined in a family gathering for a long time. I want to sit with them at the table to chat about ordinary family matters in the way that, when diagnosed with lung cancer, I would sit at my younger brother’s table talking about things one can’t talk about with strangers and can only discuss within the family. In those days, when it was time to eat, my niece would always want to watch television. She was too little to know that the programs were attacks on spiritual pollution, propaganda targeting all sections of society. Cultural celebrities would appear one after another to declare their position and to repeat the set slogans. They weren’t programs for children and certainly didn’t go well with eating. I’d had enough of television news and newspapers, I just wanted to return to my own life, to chat about forgotten family matters, like my crazy great-grandfather who, determined to satisfy his craving to be an official, gave away a whole street of houses. He couldn’t manage to get even half an official position and, realizing he’d been cheated, went berserk and torched all the houses, even the one he was living in. He was much younger than I am now when he died after just turning thirty. Confucius talked about establishing oneself at the age of thirty, but this is a young and brittle age and if one doesn’t succeed one can have a nervous breakdown. Neither I nor my younger brother have ever seen photos of this great-grandfather. At the time probably the art of photography hadn’t yet come to China or else it was only the nobility who could have their photos taken. However, both I and my younger brother have eaten the wonderful meals grandmother prepared. What I remember most vividly are the drunken prawns: the flesh of the prawns was still twitching and it took a long time to pluck up the courage to eat just one of them. I also remember my grandfather who had a stroke and was paralysed. To escape the bombs of the Japanese planes we rented an old house in the countryside from a peasant and all day long he lay on a reclining rattan chair in the hall. The door was left open and a breeze went straight through the main room so that his white hair was moving all the time. When the air raid sirens went off he became distraught and my mother could only crouch next to his ear and say over and over that the Japanese don’t have many bombs and if they are dropping them they will only be dropping them on the cities. At the time I was smaller than this little niece of mine and was just learning to walk. I remember that to get to the back courtyard I had to cross a high sill and after crossing, there was also a step. I couldn’t crawl over it on my own so the back courtyard remained a mysterious place for me. Beyond the front door was a big threshing square and I recall tumbling in the hay with the children of peasant families. A small dog drowned in the quiet and beautiful river right next to it. Some nasty person had thrown it in or else it had fallen in by itself. In any case the carcass lay on the shore for a long time. My mother sternly forbade me to play near the river, it was only when the grown-ups went to the river-bank to fetch water that I could go and dig in the sand. They would dig holes in the sand and scoop up clear filtered water.

I am aware that at this moment I am surrounded by a world of dead people and that behind this wall are my dead relatives. I want to be with them again, to sit at the table with them and to listen to them chatting about trifling things. I want to hear their voices, to see their eyes, to actually sit at the same table with them, even if we don’t have a meal. I know that eating and drinking in the world of ghosts is symbolic, a ritual, and that living people cannot partake of it, but it suddenly occurs to me that just to be able to sit at the table and to listen would be a blessing. I creep up to them but as I cross the ruins of the wall, they get up and quietly vanish behind another wall. I hear their departing footsteps, rustling, even see the empty table they leave behind. Instantly the table is covered in velvety moss, breaks, cracks, then collapses into a heap of rubble and bushes sprout all over it. I know right now they’re discussing me in another room in these ruins. They don’t approve of how I am living my life and are worried about me. There’s really no need but they insist on worrying, I think maybe the dead just like worrying about the living. They’re talking in whispers but as soon as I put my ear to the damp mossy wall they stop and communicate with their eyes. They say I can’t go on like this, I need a normal family. They should find me a good intelligent wife, a woman who can tend to what I eat and drink and manage the home for me – they think my prolonged illness is from improper eating and drinking. They’re plotting how to arrange my life. I should tell them there’s no need for them to worry, I’m already middle-aged and have my own way of life, it’s what I have chosen and I’m not likely to go back to what they have in mind for me. I can’t live the lives they lived, and in any case their lives weren’t particularly wonderful. Still, I can’t help thinking about them and wanting to see them, hear their voices, talk with them about past events in my memories. I want to ask my mother if she had taken me on a boat on the Xiang River. I recall being in a narrow wooden boat with a woven bamboo canopy. There were people closely packed on the wooden planks on either side, their knees touching those of the people opposite. The water could be seen coming up to the top of the sides and the boat lurched continuously, but no-one commented. Everyone pretended not to notice but they were clearly aware of it. The overloaded boat could sink at any moment but nobody gave this away. I also pretended not to know. I didn’t cry or make a fuss and fought not to think of the disaster which could happen at any time, I want to ask her if this was when we were refugees. If I can find a boat like this on the Xiang River it will confirm this memory. I also want to ask her whether or not we hid in a pig’s pen from bandits. That day the weather was like the weather today, fine rain was falling, and going up a mountain road the truck broke down on a sharp corner. The driver blamed himself and said if he’d turned the steering wheel a fraction harder the front and rear wheels on one side wouldn’t have got bogged in the soft mud at the edge of the road. I remember they were the wheels on the right because afterwards everyone got out and off-loaded all the baggage onto the left of the highway next to the side of the mountain and then went to push the truck. However, the wheels simply spun in the mud without moving out of it. The truck was fitted with a charcoal combustion stove, it was during the war and it was impossible to get petrol except for military vehicles. To start, each time the truck had to be cranked furiously until it could be heard farting before it would go. Motor vehicles in those days were like people and wouldn’t go unless they got rid of gas. However, the truck farted but the wheels only spun and splashed mud into the faces of the people pushing it. The driver kept trying to flag a passing vehicle but none would stop to help. In weather like this and as it was getting dark they were all in a hurry to escape. The last vehicle with yellowish headlights like the eyes of a wild beast sped past. Afterwards, we groped in the dark in the rain up the mountain, each holding onto the clothing of the person in front and slipping time and again on the muddy mountain path. We were old people, women and children and it was with much difficulty that we made it to a farmhouse. They didn’t have a lamp inside and refused to open the door so we had to squeeze into the pig pen to get out of the rain. From the ink-black mountain shadows at the back, in the middle of the night, came bursts of rifle shots and a string of burning torches could be seen. Everyone said bandits were going past and, terrified, no-one dared make a sound.

I step over a crumbling wall. On the other side is a little-leaf box sapling with a trunk as skinny as a little finger shivering in the wind in the middle of these ruins of a roofless house. Opposite, part of a window remains, and leaning there I can look out. Among the azaleas and clumps of bamboo are some mossy black stone slabs which from a distance look soft, like human bodies lying there, bent knees sticking up and arms outstretched. In those times, Gold Top, with its one thousand rooms of temples, halls and monk dormitories, had iron roof-tiles to protect it from the onslaught of the mountain winds. In the Ming Dynasty, a multitude of monks and nuns practised the faith alongside the ninth concubine of the father of the Wanli Emperor. There must be some remnants of the grandeur of the morning bells and evening drums. I search for some relic of those times but only turn up the corner of a broken stone tablet. Could it be that within the space of five hundred years even the iron tiles have completely rusted away?

Now what will I talk about?

I’ll talk about what happened five hundred years later when this monastery, which had been reduced to ruins, was turned into a hideout for bandits. They slept in the caves during the daytime and at night came with flaming torches down the mountain to pillage and loot. It so happened that living at the nunnery at the foot of the mountain was an official’s daughter who, without shaving her hair, had devoted herself to Buddhist cultivation and was keeping watch over the ancient black Buddha lamp to atone for a sin in a previous life. However, she was seen by the bandit chief, taken up the mountain, and forced to be housekeeper for the camp. The girl refused, even under the threat of death, so she was first raped and then killed.

What else will I talk about?

I’ll go back fifteen hundred years, to a time before the ancient monastery existed when there was only a grass hut. A famous scholar had hung up his cap of office and retired here to live as a recluse. Every morning just before dawn he would face the east and practise Daoist life-prolonging breathing exercises, inhaling the essence of the purple profoundness. Then, head high, he would produce a sustained whistle. The pure sound would reverberate in the empty valley and monkeys climbing on the sheer cliffs would respond with their cries. Occasionally friends would come and they would drink toasts with tea instead of liquor, play chess or engage in pure talk debate in the light of the moon. Although old age was upon him he thought nothing of it, and passing woodcutters in the distance would point at him in wonder. That is why this place is called Immortal’s Cliff.

And what else can I talk about?

I’ll talk about one thousand five hundred and forty-seven years later, when beyond this mountain a warlord lived. After spending most of his life in the army he eventually became a commander and returned to his village to offer sacrifices to his ancestors. There he fell in love with the servant girl who looked after his mother and in due course an auspicious day and hour were chosen for him to take her as his concubine . . .  in order of succession she was the seventh. One hundred and one tables of food and liquor were laid out to make an ostentatious show for the villagers. Friends and relatives filled the tables and of course couldn’t avoid sending vast amounts of gifts, for how could this feast not come at a cost? While everyone was celebrating, a beggar came to the door. His clothes were tattered rags and his head was covered with ringworms. The gatekeepers gave him a bowl of rice but when they tried to send him away he refused to go and insisted on entering the hall and going up to the main table to congratulate the groom. The commander was enraged and ordered his aide to hit the man with his rifle and chase him off. Late that night when everyone was asleep and the groom was lost in happy dreams, fires broke out everywhere, destroying the larger part of the old ancestral home. Some said it was the Living Buddha Jigong using his magic to punish the wicked on behalf of Heaven. Others, however, said that the beggar was none other than the infamous Mottle Head who was cruel and mean. Beggars great or small a hundred
li
around all gave their allegiance to him, so how could he tolerate such an insult? Brigade commander or army commander made no difference at all. If they didn’t show respect, he’d get his ruffians to tie fuses on bundles of incense sticks and, in the middle of the night, shoot them over the high wall into the dry grass and piles of firewood. Even a general with a thousand troops and ten thousand horses wouldn’t be able to defend himself against this insignificant person. It’s as the old saying goes – the powerful dragon is no match for the snake crawling on the ground.

Now what else can I talk about?

It was more than half of a century afterwards, also on this mountain. This big mountain may look grand and majestic but because of the turmoil in the human world, it too has never known peace. The ugly daughter of the newly-appointed director of the revolutionary committee of a certain county fell in love with the grandson of a former landlord and, against her father’s orders, was determined to marry him. The couple eloped after stealing ration coupons for thirty-eight catties of grain and a hundred and seven
yuan
in cash from a drawer. They hid in the mountains confident that they would be able to survive by farming the land. The father, who spent every day preaching about class struggle, had had his own daughter abducted by the offspring of a landlord, so understandably he was righteously indignant. He immediately gave orders for the public security bureau to circulate the man’s photo and the entire county was alerted to arrest him. It was impossible for the young couple to escape the armed people’s militias scouring the mountains and when the cave they were hiding in was surrounded, the terrified youth used the axe he had stolen to first kill his lover and then himself.