Soul Mountain (33 page)

She says she also wants to see blood. She wants to stab her middle finger with a needle. The fingers are connected to the heart and the pain will go straight there. She wants to watch the blood ooze out, swell, spread, soak the whole finger red, run right to the base of the finger, flow between the fingers, along the lines of the palm to the centre. The back of the hand will also be dripping with blood . . . 

You ask her why.

She says because you’re oppressive.

You say the oppression comes from herself.

She says you are also causing it.

You say you are only telling stories, you aren’t doing anything.

She says everything you talk about is stifling, suffocating.

You ask whether she has some pathological illness.

She says it was induced by you!

You say you can’t understand what it is you have done.

She says you’re a hypocrite! And saying this she starts laughing crazily.

The sight of her frightens you, you admit you wanted to arouse her lust, but you find a woman’s blood repugnant.

She says she wants to make you see blood. She wants her blood to run down to her wrist, along her arm, to her armpit, onto her chest. She wants blood to flow all over her white breasts, bright red tinged with purple and black. She will be soaked in the purple-black blood so you will be forced to look . . . 

Stark naked?

Stark naked, sitting in a pool of blood, the lower part of her body, between her legs and her thighs, all covered in blood, blood, blood! She says she wants to sink, become utterly depraved, she can’t understand why it is that she lusts, lusts for the tide to soak her. She sees herself lying on the sandy shore, the tide surging, the sandy shore rustling but unable to suck it all up before another tide irrepressibly surges in. She wants you to come into her body, to thrust and to pull relentlessly. She says she no longer has shame, nor fear. She used to be afraid, then when she wasn’t she still said she was, even though she really wasn’t. But she’s afraid of falling into the black abyss and endlessly drifting down. She wants to sink but is afraid of sinking, she says she sees the black tide slowly swelling, swelling up from some unknown source. The black tide is swallowing her, she says she comes slowly but when she does, she can’t stop. She can’t understand why she has become so wanton, oh, she wants you to say she is wanton and she wants you to say she is not. From you, only from you does she have this need. She says she loves you. She wants you to say you love her but you never say this, you are so cruel. What you want is a woman but what she wants is love, and she needs to feel it with her whole body and heart, even if it means following you to hell. She begs you not to leave her, not to abandon her, she is afraid of loneliness, afraid of only being afraid of the emptiness. She knows all this is temporary but wants to deceive herself. Can’t you say something to make her happy? Tell a story to make her happy?

Oh! It’s rowdy as they quaff the liquor from the big bowl passed from hand to hand. They are sitting cross-legged opposite one another before woven bamboo mats laid with a long line of black pig’s blood, white bean curd, red chillies, tender green soya beans, soya sauce pig trotters, stewed pork ribs and broiled fatty pork. The stockade village is celebrating – nine pigs and three oxen have been slaughtered and ten big vats of aged liquor have been opened. Everybody’s face is flushed and shiny, noses drip with greasy sweat. The crippled chief stands up and starts to shout in his raspy drake’s voice. Hemp Flower Peak has been theirs for many generations, how can they let outsiders burn down the forests to plant corn? He has lost all his front teeth and splutters. Don’t get the idea that this decrepit old man who is like a piece of straw is all they have in head stockade, don’t get the idea that the head stockade can be easily duped. He can’t handle a spiked carrying pole or a blunderbuss anymore but the young men of the head stockade are no cowards! Mother of Big Treasure, you wouldn’t keep back your son, would you? The silver bangles on the woman fly up with her arms. Venerable old chief, don’t say that, the whole stockade has watched my son Big Treasure grow up, he is not respected by outsiders and he’s also the butt of the village. Don’t just pick on my Big Treasure. Mine isn’t the only family in the head stockade. Which of the families produce only daughters and no sons? Suddenly all the women sulk off. Mother of Big Treasure, why are you changing the subject? If the head stockade doesn’t stand up to the outsiders how can we not lose face? Flushed with alcohol, the young men open their jackets and beat their chests: Old chief, the blunderbusses we have aren’t vegetarian! Venerable elder, just give the order, but don’t listen to your daughters-in-law and keep your eldest son and second son locked up in the house, leaving us young people to fight in the vanguard. The daughters-in-law panic at hearing this, and retort: You spoke barbed words even before you started getting hair on your face, your parents don’t mind parting with you, so why should we? A young man suddenly stands up, his eyes bulging. Little Two, you’re being rash, it’s not your turn to interrupt in the head stockade! Are you still listening?

Keep talking, she says, she just wants to hear your voice.

So you muster the energy and go on. Everyone starts clamouring. With a toss of the head he braces himself into a straddle stance, seizes a rooster and snaps its neck, and with its wings still flapping, he sprinkles the hot blood into the bowl of liquor and shouts in a loud voice: Whoever doesn’t drink is a son of a bitch! Only a son of a bitch won’t drink this! The men roll up their sleeves, tread on the saliva they spit in the dirt, make oaths to Heaven and fiery-eyed turn to their weapons – knives are sharpened and firearms cleaned. The aged parents of each household light lanterns and go to the ancestral burial grounds to dig graves. The women stay at home and with the scissors they had used to cut their hair after marriage and to cut the umbilical cord when they gave birth, they cut streamers for the graves. At dawn when the morning mists are about to rise the chief limps out and pounds on the big drum. The women, wiping away tears, emerge from the houses to keep guard at the gates of the stockade and to watch their menfolk, armed with knives and blunderbusses and striking gongs and shouting, charge down the mountain. For their ancestors, the stockade, the earth, the forests, their sons and grandsons, they go into battle then silently return with the corpses. The women weep and wail to Heaven and Earth, then silence returns. Then there is ploughing, seeding, replanting, harvesting and threshing. Spring passes and autumn comes, then after many winters when the graves are covered in grass and the widows have stolen men and the orphans have grown up, the grief is forgotten and only the glory of the ancestors is remembered. Until one evening, before the annual feast and sacrifice to the ancestors, the old people start talking about the sworn enemies of many generations and the young people have been drinking, and hot blood again boils up . . . 

All night the rain continues and you watch the flame shrink to the size of a bean flower. At the base of the bright bean flower is a blue-white shoot which expands as the bean flower contracts and deepens from light yellow to orange and suddenly starts jumping on the wick. The darkness thickens, solidifies like grease, and extinguishes the trembling pale light. You break away from the woman clinging tightly to you, she is bathed in hot sweat and is fast asleep. You listen to the rain beating noisily on the leaves of the trees and the mountain wind groaning in the valley from the tops of the fir forest. The thatched roof, from which the oil lamp is hanging, starts to leak and the water drips onto your face. Huddled in the mountain-viewing shack put together with some thatch, you smell rotting grass and at the same time something sweet and fragrant.

I must get out of this cave. The main peak of the Wuling Range, at the borders of the provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan, Hubei and Hunan, is 3200 metres above sea level. The annual rainfall is more than 3400 points and in one year there are barely one or two days of fine weather. When the wild winds start howling they often reach velocities of more than three hundred kilometres per hour. This is a cold, damp and evil place. I must return to the smoke and fire of the human world to search for sunlight, warmth, happiness, and to search for human society to rekindle the noisiness, even if anxiety is regenerated, for that is in fact life in the human world.

I pass through Tongren. On its congested ancient little streets with overhanging eaves reaching to the middle of the road pedestrians and people with baskets on carrying poles collide. I don’t stay long, get on a bus right away, and at dusk arrive at a stop called Yubing. A number of privately-operated inns have recently sprung up by the railway station so I take a room which is just big enough for a single bed. The mosquitos unrelentingly harass me but when I let down the mosquito net it is hot and stuffy. The noisy honking of trucks and cars outside the window accompanies the drone of a teary conversation which gives me goose bumps – it seems to be coming from a movie which is showing on the basketball court. It’s the same old story of melodramatic separation and reunion, only the time has changed.

At two o’clock in the morning I board the train for Kaili and after some hours reach the capital of the Miao Autonomous District.

I hear there is a dragon boat festival at the Shidong Miao stockade. This is confirmed by a cadre of the prefectural committee. He says it’s a big event which hasn’t been held for several decades and he estimates there will be a gathering of some ten thousand Miao from the stockades far and near, as well as senior provincial and autonomous district officials. I ask how I can get there and he says it is about two hundred kilometres away and I wouldn’t be able to get there in time without a car. I ask if I can go with them in a prefectural committee car. He winces, but after much pleading on my part, says to come at seven o’clock in the morning to see if there’s room.

In the morning I get to the committee office ten minutes early but there is no sign of the big cars which were in front of the building the day before. The only person I find on duty in the empty building says that the cars set out long ago. I realize I’ve been tricked. However, anxiety breeds genius. I take out my Writers’ Association card, which has never been of any use and has only given me trouble, and put on a bit of a bluff. I make a fuss about having come expressly from Beijing to write about this event and ask him to immediately contact the prefectural authorities. He knows nothing about me, makes a series of phone calls, and eventually finds out that the prefectural head’s car hasn’t left. I run all the way to his office and am in luck. The prefectural head had been informed and without asking questions allows me to squeeze into his small van.

After leaving the city we travel down a potholed highway obscured by a dust haze thrown up by the stream of trucks and cars crammed with people – there are cadres and workers from the prefectural offices, as well as people from enterprises, schools and factories, all hurrying to join in the fun. This former Miao king who is now the prefectural head is probably in charge of some ceremony. The cadre next to the driver has the window down and is shouting out to cars to make way. We keep overtaking and pass through many stockades as well as two county towns but finally come to a stop because a large number of vehicles is jamming the road in front of the ferry crossing. A big car has failed to negotiate the ferry and its front wheels have slipped into the water. Also stuck in the morass of cars is a splendid black Volga which they tell me is the car of the party secretary of the prefectural committee and which appears to be carrying senior provincial officials. Large numbers of police bark orders and directions endlessly and after an agonizing hour or so the big car is partially pushed into the water to clear enough space to put down the plank. Our little van follows close behind the Volga and immediately after the police stop all the cars. The ferry winds up the cables and leaves the shore.

At noon this mighty contingent arrives at the Miao stockade on the broad banks of the Qingshui River. In the blazing sun the clear water sparkles with a dazzling brilliance. Both sides of the highway are awash in colour, teaming with the floral parasols and high silver head ornaments of the Miao women. Alongside the highway is a new two-storey brick building which houses the government offices, then all the way down to the river are the wooden houses on high pylons of the Miao people. Below the veranda of the government building a seething mass of heads, inlaid with round floral parasols and bamboo hats shiny with tung oil, slowly moves between the rows of white canopied stalls on the river-bank. A large number of dragon boats, heads rearing and decked with red streamers, glide about on the clear, green, flat surface of the river.