Soul Mountain (61 page)

It is on Wudang Mountain that I see possibly the last Daoist of the Pure Unity Sect. He is the embodiment of this sort of evil. I heard about him on the way up the mountain at a place I made my camp site. An old Daoist nun has made her home in a ramshackle hut outside the wall of the Courtyard of Steles of the sacked Ming Imperial Palace. I ask her about this famous Daoist mountain in those better times of long ago and she starts to talk about the main school of Daoism. She says there is only one old Daoist of the Pure Unity Sect alive. He is over eighty and has never come down the mountain, preferring to stay all year round keeping guard at the Gold Top. No-one dares to provoke him.

I rush to catch the first bus early in the morning to South Cliff, then make my way on foot up the mountain track to the Gold Top. Already past noon, it is overcast and bleak on the mountain and there are no tourists about. I go right around the cold winding corridors and find that the doors are either bolted from the inside or have iron padlocks hanging on the outside. Only one thick and heavy door fitted with iron bars is slightly ajar. I push hard and finally get it open. An old man with dishevelled hair and bristling whiskers in a long gown, turns and stands up at the side of the brazier. He is large and tall and his dark ruddy face shows a violent streak. He barks ferociously, “What are you up to?”

“May I ask if you are the custodian of the Gold Top?” The tone of my voice is very polite.

“There is no custodian here!”

“I know the Daoist temple here hasn’t yet resumed activities, but would you be the former head Daoist?”

“There is no head Daoist here!”

“Then may I ask if you, venerable elder, are a Daoist?”

“What if I am a Daoist?” His black eyebrows which have a sprinkling of white hairs also bristle.

“May I ask if you are a member of the Pure Unity Sect? I heard that it is only at the Gold Top that there is still–”

“I don’t belong to any sect!”

Without letting me finish he opens the door and chases me out.

“I’m a journalist,” I hasten to say. “The government is now implementing religious policies, I can help you get a report through.”

“I don’t know what a journalist is!” And with that slams the door shut.

At the time, I saw an old woman and a young woman sitting by the brazier, they were probably his family. I know that the Pure Unity Sect can marry and have children and even join with all sorts of men and women to practise sexual techniques. I can’t help imagining the most wicked things about him. His eyes shone like bronze bells under his bushy eyebrows and his voice was gruff and booming. His whole presence was menacing and he was clearly an exponent of the martial arts: it is little wonder that for years no-one has dared to provoke him. Even if I knocked on the door again the outcome would not necessarily be any better, so following the narrow path with the iron hand rail I make my way up to the golden temple cast in yellow bronze.

The mountain wind impregnated with fine rain is howling. I come to the front of the temple where I encounter a middle-aged woman with big hands and feet. She has her hands clasped in prayer before the bronze temple. She is dressed like a peasant but her threatening stance is that of a drifter who has travelled around. I amble away and holding onto the iron railing threaded through stone posts pretend to be looking at the scenery. The wind howls and the dwarf pines growing from crevices in the cliff shake violently. Gusts of clouds and mist brush over the mountain path below, from time to time revealing the sea of dark forest there.

I look around. She is right behind me in the martial arts iron post stance, her eyes narrowed to slits and devoid of expression. They have their own closed world which I will never be able to enter. They have their own methods of survival and self-protection and roam beyond the fringes of what is known as society. However, I can only return to pass my existence in what people are accustomed to calling a normal life, there is no alternative for me, and probably this is my tragedy.

I make my way down the mountain path. A restaurant on a level part of the slope is still open but there are no tourists inside, just a few waiters in white jackets eating dinner around a table. I don’t go in.

On the slope, a big iron bell taller than a person is lying in the dirt. I hit it with my hand but it is solidly stuck and doesn’t ring. There must have been a temple here once but now as far as the eye can see there are only weeds trembling in the wind. I follow the slope down and before me is a steep rock path.

I can’t stop myself and go faster and faster and within ten minutes I am in the secluded valley. On both sides of the rock steps the forest blocks out the sky, the sound of the wind is muffled and I can no longer feel the drizzling rain. Probably the rain is only in the clouds and mist on the mountain top. The forest becomes darker and darker, I don’t know if I am in the dark forest I saw looking down through the mist and rain from the Gold Top, nor can I remember if I came along a path like this on my way up. I look back at the many steep rock steps I have come down: to climb back up to look for the way I came would be just too exhausting, so I keep going down.

Here the rock steps have deteriorated, unlike the path up which has had some repairs. I realize I have reached the dark side of the mountain and just let my legs carry me down: when people are about to die their souls probably rush unstoppably to Hell like this.

At first I hesitate and from time to time look back, but afterwards, beguiled by the sight of Hell, I no longer bother. The round tops of the stone posts along the gloomy mountain path look more and more like bald heads. Further down in the valley it is damper and the stone posts are all askew. They are badly eroded and look more like two rows of skulls on top of the posts. I fear that my impure thoughts about the old Daoist have incurred his curses and that he is using his magic on me to make me lose my way. Terror suddenly rises from the depths of my heart and I become confused.

Swirling mists and vapours spread around me. The forest becomes even darker and the damp stone slabs lying askew and the lurid grey-white stone posts are like skeletons. I make my way through the white bones, my feet disregarding my commands. Unable to stop myself I plunge headlong into the abyss of death, sweat oozing from my spine.

I must stop my feet and quickly get off this mountain path. Ignoring the brambles at a bend, I charge into the forest and by embracing the trunk of a tree, I finally come to a stop. My face and arms sting and hurt and probably it is blood that is running down my face. I look up and see a cow’s eye on the trunk observing me. I look around. All around, far and near, the trunks of the trees all have huge eyes and all of them are looking at me, coldly.

I must calm down – this is just a forest of lacquer trees. It is only after the mountain folk tap them for raw lacquer and abandon them that they develop this nether world appearance. I could also say that this is simply hallucination induced by my inner fears, my soul in the darkness is spying on me, this multitude of eyes is simply me scrutinizing myself. I always have the feeling of being spied upon which makes me feel uneasy all over, in fact this is only my fear of myself.

When I return to the mountain path, fine rain is falling. The stone slabs are all wet, I no longer look and just blindly charge down.

The initial reactions of panic, terror, struggling and wild thrashing pass, then there is confusion. You are lost in an eerie, primeval forest, standing bewildered under a leafless tree which is dead, withered and waiting to topple. For a long time you loiter about this strange fish skeleton pointing at an angle into the grey misty sky, reluctant to leave the only signpost you recognize, even if it’s just something in your hazy memory.

You refuse to be skewered to death on a fishbone like a fish out of water. Instead of wasting energy scouring your memories, why not discard this last thread to the familiar human world? Of course you will be more lost but you do still clearly have in your embrace a thread of life.

You find you are at the edge of the forest and the valley, and confronting you is yet another choice. Should you return to the endless forest or go to the bottom of the valley? On the cold dark mountain is a stretch of alpine grassland with the grey shapes of a few trees here and there, the black towering places would be bare cliffs. Somehow the churning foam of the river in the valley attracts you and without further thought, you stride towards it and run straight down to it.

You realize you will never return to the human world with its anxieties and warmth. Those distant memories are tiresome. You cannot stop yourself from giving a loud shout and charging towards this dark River of Forgetting. Running and yelling, roars of joy emerge from deep in your lungs and bowels like a wild animal. To start with you came fearlessly shouting and yelling into the world, then you were stifled by all sorts of customs, instructions, rituals and teachings. Now finally you have regained the joy of shouting with total freedom. Strangely, however, you can’t hear your own voice. You are running with arms outstretched, shouting, panting, shouting again, running again, but still there is no sound.

You see the line of churning white foam but cannot distinguish the upper or lower part of the river which flickers then vanishes in the mist. You are weightless, relaxed, and experience a never before experienced freedom. You feel a slight trepidation but you don’t know why you are afraid.

You seem to glide into the air, disintegrate, disperse, lose physical form, then serenely drift into the deep gloomy valley, like a thread of drifting gossamer. This thread of gossamer is you, in an unnamed space. All around is the stench of death, your lungs and bowels are chilled, your body icy cold.

You fall, scramble to your feet, howl, and start running again. The undergrowth gets thicker and it is harder going on. You plunge into bushes, keep pushing away branches and all this takes more energy than just charging down the mountain. You need to calm down.

You are utterly exhausted, come to a halt and pant, listening to the lapping of the water. You know you are close to the river-bank, and in the darkness can hear the greyish-white springs gurgling in the riverbed. The churned up beads of water shine like quicksilver. The sound of the water is not uniform, and listening carefully you hear countless droplets cascading down. You have never listened carefully to river water and as you listen you see its image glowing in the darkness.

You feel you are walking in the river, under your feet are river weeds. You are submerged in the River of Forgetting, in tangled river weeds, and you seem to be anxious. At this moment, however, the despair of not belonging vanishes and your feet simply feel their way along the riverbed. You tread on smooth pebbles and curl your toes tightly around them. It is like sleepwalking in the darkness of the River of Death, it is only where the spray is churned up that there is a dark blue glow tinged with beads of quicksilver. You can’t help being amazed, and it is amazement tinged with joy.

Afterwards you hear heavy sighing. You think it is the river but gradually you make out that it is not one but several women who have drowned in the river. They are wretched, groaning, and their hair is bedraggled, and one by one they go past, their faces waxen and devoid of colour. There is a girl who killed herself by jumping into the river where the water gurgles in the holes at the roots of the trees, and her hair drifts with the flow of the current. The river threads through the dark forest which blocks out the sun and not a glimmer of sky is visible. The drowned, sighing women drift by but you do not think to rescue them, do not even think to rescue yourself.

You know you are wandering in the nether world, that life is not within your grasp. You are still breathing because of your bewilderment and life is suspended from one moment to the next of this bewilderment. If your feet slip, if the pebbles under your toes start rolling and in your next step you can’t touch the bottom, you too will drown in the River of Death like the floating corpses, and you will sigh with them. It is as simple as that, so there is no need to be especially cautious and you just keep walking. Silent river, black dead water. The leaves of low-hanging branches sweep the surface and there are lines of currents, like bed sheets which were snatched off by the current as they were being washed in the river, or like the pelts of so many dead wolves.

There is not a great deal of difference between you and wolves, you have suffered many disasters and you were bitten to death by other wolves. There is no logic to it all and there is no greater equality than in the River of Forgetting – the resting place for humans and wolves is ultimately death.