Soul Mountain (7 page)

“The Snake Lord gives instructions and in all four quarters are activities which immediately transform the Palace of Blue Vastness with colourful decorations and a medley of wind and string instruments.” He suddenly raises his voice, “And, when the frog heard, it croaked loudly and the owl waved his conductor’s baton.” He deliberately imitates the recitation style used by TV performers and makes the audience roar with laughter.

You look at her and both of you laugh. This is the happy face you’ve been hoping for.

Shall we go in and sit down? You’ve found something to say. You lead her past wooden benches and peoples’ legs, find a bench which isn’t full and squeeze in. Just look at the storyteller trying to get the audience worked up. He’s standing up and banging his clapper again, very loudly.

“The birthday salutations now begin! All the lesser demons –” he gaily hums as he turns to the left performing the actions of bowing with hands cupped together in salutation, then turns to the right to wave his hands and sing in the voice of the old seductress, “Thank you, thank you.”

They’ve been telling this story for a thousand years, you say close to her ear.

And they’ll still go on telling it. She seems to be your echo.

Will they go on telling it for another thousand years? you ask.

Mmm, she replies, pursing her lips like a cheeky child. You feel very happy.

“Let’s go back to Chen Fatong. He makes it to the foot of Donggong Mountain in three days, a journey normally taking seven times seven equals forty-nine days, where he encounters the Daoist Wang. Fatong bows in salutation and says: I have a request of the Venerable Master. The Daoist Wang responds with a salutation and Fatong asks: May I ask where the Palace of Blue Vastness can be found? Why do you ask? The demons there are really fierce. Who would dare go there? My surname is Chen and my name, Fatong, means ‘comprehending Buddha’s laws’. I have come especially to capture the demons. The Daoist Master heaves a sigh and says, young boys and girls have just been sent there today, they may already be in the Snake Lord’s belly. On hearing this, Fatong exclaims, I must go quickly to their rescue!”

Bang! You see the storyteller raising his drum stick in his right hand and rattling the tambourine in his left hand. His eyes open wide until they show the whites and as he recites a chant his whole body begins to shake . . . You smell something, a subtle fragrance in the midst of the strong smell of tobacco and sweat, it’s coming from her hair and from her. There is the cracking of melon seeds as people eat the seeds with their eyes fixed on the storyteller, who has donned a monk’s robe. He is holding a magic sword in his right hand and a dragon’s horn in his left and talking faster and faster, as if he is spitting out a string of pearls.

“Laying down three times the magic tablet, one-two-three, three troop-summoning amulets instantly muster the divine troops and the generals of Lu Mountain, Mao Mountain and Longhu Mountain,
o-ya-ya a-ha-ha da-gu-long-dong cang-ng-ya–ya–ya–wu-hu.
Emperor of Heaven, Emperor of Earth, I am the younger brother sent by the True Lord Emperor to exterminate demons. Holding the precious magical sword and treading on the wheel of wind and fire I wheel to the right and wheel to the left –”

She turns and stands up, you follow after her, stepping over people’s legs. They all glare at you.

“Quick, quick, you’ve got your orders!”

A roar of laughter follows the two of you.

What’s the matter?

Nothing.

Why didn’t you want to stay?

I was feeling sick.

You’re sick?

No, I feel better now, it’s stuffy inside.

You walk outside and the people sitting on the street chatting look up at the two of you.

Should we look for somewhere quiet?

Yes.

You lead her around a corner into a small lane, the sound of people and the lights of the street fall behind you. There are no streetlights in the lane, just the weak glow coming from the windows of the houses. She slows down and you think back to what has just happened.

Don’t you think you and I are like the demons being pursued?

She chuckles.

Then you and she can’t stop laughing. She laughs so much that she doubles over. Her heels clatter noisily on the cobblestones. You emerge from the lane and before you are paddy fields bathed in faint glimmering light. In the hazy distance are a few buildings, you know it’s the one middle school in town. A little further off are sprawling hills beneath the grey star-lit night sky. A breeze starts up, bringing ripples of cool air which sink into the clean fragrance of the paddy rice. You draw close to her shoulder, and she doesn’t move away. Neither of you say anything but go wherever your feet take you along the greyish paths between the fields.

Enjoying yourself?

Yes.

Don’t you think it’s wonderful?

I don’t know, I can’t say, don’t ask me.

You lean against her arm and she leans towards you, you look down to her, you can’t see her features but you sense her small nose and you again smell that familiar warmth. Suddenly she comes to a halt.

Let’s go back, she mutters.

Back where?

I have to get some rest.

I’ll take you back.

I don’t want anyone with me.

She is quite adamant.

Do you have relatives or friends here? Or are you here on your own?

She doesn’t answer. You don’t know where she’s from nor where she’s going back to. Still, you escort her to the main street and she walks off on her own, vanishing at the end of the street, as if in a story, as if in a dream.

In the 2500-metre giant panda observation compound at Haiba, water drips everywhere and my bedding is damp. I’ve spent two nights here. During the daytime I wear the padded clothes issued by the camp but still feel perpetually damp. The most comfortable time is in front of the fire drinking hot soup and eating. A big aluminum pot hangs on a metal wire from a rafter in the kitchen shed and the log in the stove isn’t cut into sections but just burns its way down, sending up sparks two feet into the air and providing light. When we’re sitting around the fire a squirrel always comes and sits by the shed rotating its round eyes. It’s only at night that everyone gathers around and there’s a bit of joking. By the end of the meal it’s completely dark, the camp is surrounded by the pitch-black forest, everyone retreats into the shed and in the light of kerosene lamps is preoccupied with his own business.

They’ve been deep in the mountain all year and have said all they have to say, and there’s no news. They hire a Qiang from Sleeping Dragon Pass, 2100 metres from Haiba and the last village after entering the mountain, to come every couple of days with a basket on his back filled with fresh vegetables and slabs of mutton or pork. The ranger station is even further off than the village. They only take turns to go down the mountain for a couple of days’ leave every month or every few months, to go to the ranger station for a haircut, a bath and a good meal. Their normal days off accumulate and when the time comes they take the reserve car to Chengdu to see their girlfriends or go back to their homes in other cities. For them this is the way to live. They don’t have newspapers and don’t listen to radio broadcasts. Ronald Reagan, the economic reforms, inflation, the eradication of spiritual pollution, the Hundred Flowers Movie Award, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera – that noisy world is left to the cities, for them it’s all too far away. However, a university graduate sent here to work just last year always has headphones on. It was only after I got close enough that I discovered he was learning English. And there’s also a young man who reads by the kerosene lamp. Both are studying for research postgraduate exams so that they can get away from here. There’s another man here who picks up wireless signals, locates and plots them onto an air navigation tracking chart. These are signals transmitted from giant pandas which have been captured, tagged with wireless neckbands and then returned to the forest.

The old botanist with me has already spent two days wandering around in the mountains; he’s been in bed for some time but I can’t tell whether or not he’s asleep. I just can’t get warm in this damp bedding and lying here fully clothed even my brain seems to have frozen, yet down the mountain it’s May and the middle of spring. My hand comes upon a tick which has lodged itself on the inner part of my thigh. It must have crawled up my trouser leg during the day while I was walking through tall grass. It’s the size of my little fingernail and as hard as a scab. I hold onto it and rub myself but can’t pull it out. I know if I pull any harder it will break off and the head with the mouth which has a good bite on me will remain embedded and grow into my flesh. I get help from the camp worker in the bed next to me. He gets me to strip, gives my thigh a hard slap and squeezes out the blood-sucking little bastard. Tossed into the kerosene lamp it smells like the meat stuffing in a pancake. He promises to get me a bandage in the morning.

It’s quiet both inside and outside the shed, but everywhere in the forest there is the sound of water dripping. A mountain wind blows from afar but doesn’t reach the mountain and instead recedes and lingers noisily in faraway valleys. Afterwards the planks above me also start dripping and seem to drip right onto my quilt. Is there rain leaking through? Mindlessly, I get up. It’s as damp inside as it is outside. So let it just drip, drip, drip . . . Later on, I hear a rifle discharge. It’s clear but muffled and reverberates in the valley.

“Over there near White Cliff,” someone says.

“Fuck. Poachers,” another person swears.

Everyone is awake, or it might have been that no-one had been asleep.

“See what time it is.”

“Five to twelve.”

Then nobody says anything. It’s as if they’re waiting for another shot, but there isn’t one. In the shattered yet suspended silence, there’s only the dripping of water outside the shed and the reverberation of the wind imprisoned in the valleys. Then you seem to hear wild animals. This world belongs to wild animals but human beings persist in interfering with it. The enclosing darkness hides anxiety and restlessness, and this night seems to be even more perilous, awakening your phobia that you are being spied upon, stalked, about to be ambushed. You can’t get the spiritual tranquillity you crave . . .

“Beibei’s here!”

“Who?”

“Beibei!” the university student yells.

It’s total chaos in the shed and everyone’s up and out of bed.

There’s a loud snorting and grunting outside. It’s the baby panda they saved when it came fossicking for food, sick and starving! They’ve been waiting for it to come, they were certain it would come. It had already been ten days and they’d been counting the days. They said it would definitely come before the new bamboo shoots started to sprout. And here is their pet, their treasure, clawing on the timber walls.

Someone opens the door a crack and slips out with a bucket of corn mush and the rest quickly troop out after him. In the murky night this huge dark grey thing lumbers about. Corn mush is quickly poured into a dish and this thing comes up to it, snorting and grunting noisily. The torches are all trained on this animal with black semi-circles around its black eyes. This doesn’t worry it at all, it’s completely engrossed in eating and doesn’t look up even once. They are madly taking photos so there’s a constant glare of flashlights, and everyone takes a turn to go up to it, to call it, to tease it, and to touch its fur which is as hard as pig bristle. It looks up and everyone runs to take refuge back inside the shed. It is after all a wild animal and a healthy panda can wrestle a leopard. The first time it came it chewed up the aluminum container and ate it as well as the food, and then excreted a trail of undigested aluminum pellets which they had all followed. There was a journalist who kept going on about the giant panda being as cute as a pet cat and got into the enclosure to have his photo taken with his arms around one they’d caught in the ranger station at the foot of the mountain. He got his genitals torn off and was immediately driven to Chengdu, fighting for his life.

It eventually finishes eating and, grabbing a piece of sugar cane and chewing on it, saunters off towards the clumps of Cold Arrow Bamboos and bushes at the edge of the camp.

“I said Beibei would come today.”

“It mostly comes at this time, round about two or three.”

“I heard it snorting and grunting and scratching on the wall.”