Soul Mountain Read online

  You say she can’t just stay in the mud and rain, there’s a house up ahead, and if there’s a house there’ll be a fire, and if there’s a fire there will be warmth, and she won’t feel so alone and will be more comfortable.

  But you know that behind the crumbling wall in the rain, the stove is in ruins and the pots have rusted away long ago. On this hillock, there are no weeping women ghosts among the clumps of bushes behind the graves decked with paper streamers. At this very moment you dearly wish to find a house to change into some clean clothes and, clean and refreshed, to sit by the fire on a bamboo chair, a bowl of hot tea in your hands, looking at the fine rain drizzling under the eaves outside, telling her a children’s tale which has nothing to do with her, you, or the chaotic human world. She would be like the good little girl of a family on this lonely mountain, sitting on your knee and snuggled in your arms.

  You say the god of fire is a prankish naked red boy who appears in forests where trees have been chopped down, stomping loudly on heaps of dry leaves and climbing bare-bottom over fallen branches.

  She then starts telling you about her first love, the romance of a young girl, or one could say before she knew about anything: it was a sort of yearning for love. She says he had just returned to the city from the reform-through-labour farm, and was dark and gaunt and looked older than his years with the deep lines on his face. Nevertheless, she had a crush on him and would listen entranced as he told about the hardships he had suffered.

  You say this is a very old story you’d heard about your great-grandfather. They said he saw the red boy crawling from under the oak tree he’d cut the previous year and jumping onto a camellia tree. He shook his head, thinking that his old eyes were playing tricks on him. He was on his way down the mountain, hauling a hawthorn log for a boat worker from Loud Water Beach. Hawthorn wood is light, stands up to soaking in water and is good timber for boats.

  She says at the time she was just sixteen and he was already forty-seven or forty-eight and could have been her father. He was at university with her father and had been a friend for many years. After the decision on his case had been corrected and he returned to the city, he didn’t have many friends and was always at her house drinking with her father and talking about his experiences during those years in the labour camp when he’d been declared a rightist. As she listened tears would come to her eyes. At the time he was very thin and hadn’t fully recovered, not like after he had been appointed chief engineer and looked quite dashing wearing a patterned wool suit and a white shirt with a starched and ironed collar which was always unbuttoned. But at the time she was totally besotted with him, she wanted to weep for him and wanted desperately to comfort him so that he would be happy the rest of his life. If at that time he had accepted the love of this young girl, she says, she really wouldn’t have worried about anything.

  You say your great-grandfather was coming down the mountain shouldering a hawthorn log that was two arm-spans around the girth when he saw the fire god climbing up the trunk of the camellia tree. He couldn’t stop abruptly and was afraid to keep looking. He got home, put the log by the door, and before going into the house was saying that bad fortune was upon them! Everyone at home questioned him. You say that at the time your grandfather was still alive and he asked your great-grandfather what was wrong. Your great-grandfather said he’d seen the red boy, the fire god Zhurong and that the good days were over!

  But he was totally oblivious to it, he was a simpleton, she says. She only told him after she had been at university for a few years. He said he had a wife and a son and that while he was in the labour camp his wife had waited twenty whole years for him; his son was even older than her. And her father has been a friend for many years, what would he think of him? You cowardly creep! You cowardly creep! She says at the time she wept as she swore at him. She says, even the date was her idea. She was with her father at the door saying goodbye to him when she made up an excuse and said she had to see a girl who used to live in the same building when she was little, and so they left together. She normally addressed him as Uncle Cai and she still called him this. She said, Uncle Cai, she had something to talk to him about. He said fine, we can talk now, we can talk as we walk along. She said no, she couldn’t on the street. He thought for a while and said they could talk in the park. He said there was a restaurant at the gate of the park and he invited her to have dinner with him.

  You say that afterwards disasters really came one after another. You say at the time you were too small to carry a blunderbuss and couldn’t go hunting with your father but could only take a hoe into the bamboo grove with him to dig up winter shoots. Your father said that by that time your great-grandfather’s back was already bent and he had a big fleshy tumour on his neck, caused by hauling logs since he was small. When your great-grandfather was young, your father said, he was a great hunter without peer, but within two days of seeing the red boy, he was dead – the bullet went through the back of his head and exploded in his left eye. He lay at the door of the house in a pool of blood, if he’d reached out he would have touched the doorsill. The root of the old camphor tree in the yard was splashed with purple-black lumps of blood. He had pulled himself up by the root of the tree, he didn’t have time to go around the bend to come up by the stone steps. He had crawled until he was almost in reach of the doorsill when he stopped breathing. Your great-grandmother discovered him when she got up early the next morning to feed the pigs, she hadn’t heard him call out during the night.

  She says that at dinner she only talked about inconsequential university things and didn’t raise the matter at all. Afterwards, he suggested going for a stroll in the park. In the darkness of the trees, he was happy from the alcohol and, just like any other man, wanted to kiss her. But she wouldn’t let him. She said, still calling him Uncle Cai, that she only wanted to let him know how she had once loved him and how she had punished herself: she had given herself to a man she didn’t love. It was a moment of confusion, she had let someone toy with her, yes, she says, she had used the words toy with on impulse. He said nothing and wanted to embrace her but she pushed him away.

  You say it was still before light that your grandmother, at that time pregnant with your father, stumbled, screamed and fainted. It was your grandfather who dragged your great-grandfather into the house and he said your great-grandfather had been murdered and that the cruel shot to the back of the head contained iron pellets for shooting wild pigs. Your father said soon after your great-grandfather died a forest fire broke out on the mountain and burnt for more than ten days on several fronts so that there was no way of stopping it. The flames leapt high into the sky, lighting up Huri Peak like a volcano. But your grandfather said it was right when the fire broke out that your great-grandfather was murdered. Later on your father said your great-grandfather’s death had nothing to do with the red boy who lit the fire. He had been murdered and right up until his death your grandfather wanted to find his father’s assassin. However, when your father told you about it, it was already a story, and you just heaved a sigh.

  She says, he also said he loved her and she said, you’re lying! He said in the past he really wanted her, she said it’s too late. He said why? She said need you ask! He asked why couldn’t he even kiss her? She said she can casually sleep with any man but not him. And she said, Go away! You’ll never understand. And she said she hated him and never wanted to see him again, pushed him away and ran off.

  You say she isn’t in fact some little nurse, and that she has been making up lies all along – she hasn’t been talking about a woman friend of hers, but about herself, her own experiences. She says you haven’t been talking about your great-grandfather, grandfather, father and yourself, you’re just making up a story to frighten her. You say you said it was a children’s story. She says she’s not a child and doesn’t want to listen to some children’s story, she just wants to live an honest life, she won’t believe in love anymore, she’s sick of it, all men are the same and just want s
ex. What about women, you ask. They are just as immoral, she says, she says she’s seen enough of everything, life is sickening, she doesn’t want so much suffering, she just wants a moment’s happiness. She says do I want her?

  Right here in the rain and mud?

  Won’t it be more exciting?

  You say she’s a slut. She says don’t men like it like that? It’s simple, no stress, and exciting. When it’s finished, you walk off and that’s it, there’s nothing to worry about and there are no complications. You ask how many men she has slept with. She says at least a hundred. You don’t believe her.

  What’s there to believe or not to believe? It’s really quite simple, sometimes it only takes a few minutes.

  In a lift?

  Why in a lift? You’ve been watching Western movies. Under trees, against walls, anywhere.

  With total strangers?

  That’s even better, then you don’t feel awkward when you bump into one another again.

  You ask if she does this regularly.

  Whenever the urge comes.

  What if you can’t find a man?

  They’re not hard to find, you only have to signal with your eyes and they come.

  You say if she signals with her eyes, you wouldn’t necessarily come.

  She says you might not necessarily dare, but there are plenty who do. Isn’t this all men want?

  Then you are toying with men.

  Why are only men allowed to toy with women? What’s so strange about this?

  You say she may as well say she is toying with herself.

  And why not?

  In this mud!

  She starts giggling and says she likes you but it is not love. And she says you should be careful, if she were to really fall in love with you . . .

  It would be a disaster.

  She asks, a disaster for you or for her?

  You say, a disaster for you and for her.

  You’re clever, she says, what she really likes is your clever mind.

  You say unfortunately it’s not your body.

  She says everyone’s got a body, and says she doesn’t want to get worn out by living and gives a long sigh. How about telling a happy story, she says.

  Shall I keep talking about the fire? The red boy with the bare bottom?

  If you like.

  You go on to say that this red boy, this fire god Zhurong, is the spirit of these nine mountains. The old fire god temple at the bottom of Huri Peak had long fallen into disrepair, people forgot to make offerings and were only concerned with enjoying the meat and liquor themselves. The neglected fire god became enraged and wreaked havoc. On your great-grandfather . . .

  Why don’t you go on?

  The night he died, when everyone was sound asleep, a line of fire emerged in the forest, burning brightly and slowly travelling through the black mountain shadows. The wind carried the smell of burning and people who were fast asleep felt they were suffocating and hurriedly got up. They saw the forest on fire but just looked on in a daze. By daylight, the dense smoke had descended upon them and it was too late to stop it or even to escape. Pursued by scorching flames, wild animals were also terrified and tigers, leopards, wild pigs and jackals all scurried to the river. Only the deep turbulent stream stopped the spread of the fire. The crowds on the opposite bank watching the fire saw a huge red bird with nine heads spitting out tongues of fire rise from its midst. It soared into the sky trailing a long golden tail and wailing like a baby girl. Giant thousand-year trees shot up into the air like so many feathers, exploding loudly, then lightly falling into the sea of fire . . .

  I dream that the rock wall behind me creaks open and that within the crack is the fish-belly white sky. Beneath the sky is a small lane, lonely and deserted. To one side is the door of a temple, I know it is the side door of the big temple, that it never opens, and at the doorway is a length of nylon rope with children’s clothing hanging on it. I recognize it as somewhere I have been. It is the outside of the Two King Temple at Guanxian in Sichuan province and I am walking along a weir dividing the river which churns below my feet. On the other side there is also a temple which has been commandeered, I have tried to get inside but couldn’t ever work out how and could only look at the fish and snakes crawling on the high black curled eaves protruding over the wall. I am holding onto a cable and inching forward over foaming rapids. People are actually fishing there and I want to go up to them to have a look but the tide swells and I have to retreat. All around is the surging torrent, the me in the middle is just a child. The me of the present is standing at a back door overgrown with weeds looking at the me of my childhood years. I am wearing a pair of cloth shoes and am in a predicament – my shoes have cloth knot-buttons and those primary school classmates who use dirty language say I’ve got girls’ shoes and make me feel embarrassed. It is from the mouths of these wild street boys that I first learn the meaning of those words used for swearing at people. They say all women are sluts and that the fat woman on the corner who sells griddle-cakes griddle-cakes with men. I know all this is bad talk and has something to do with the bodies of men and women but only have a vague and hazy idea of just how. They say I like the dark skinny girl classmate who gave me a piece of scented paper and I blush, this is when I run into them at a special summer school cinema program after I have finished primary school and am in junior secondary school. They say she isn’t as dark as she used to be and is very sexy. She has asked them about me and they ask why I haven’t dated her. Afterwards, I am cast upon the flesh of women, struggling, I reach out and touch a woman’s moist lower body, before that I hadn’t dared be so bold, I know I have degenerated but am secretly happy, probably I know this is a woman I want but can’t have, I can’t see her beautiful face, I go to kiss her but the lips of another woman are kissing me. I know in my heart that I don’t love her but I derive pleasure from her nonetheless. I then see the worried eyes of my father, he is silent, I know he is dead and so know this is not true, in a dream I can be as wanton as I like. I then hear the banging of the door in the wind and remember that I am sleeping in the cave on the mountain, the wrinkled folds of the strange ceiling over my head is the rock wall lit by the hurricane lamp, I am sleeping in soggy bedding, fully clad, and the clothing which clings to me is also damp, my feet are still icy and haven’t warmed, the fierce mountain wind is howling on the other side of the banging wooden door like a blood-spattered wild animal crouching at the mouth of the cave blocked by the door. I listen carefully to the wind coming from the top of the cliff and tearing through the grassy marshland.

  No longer able to hold back the urge to urinate, I crawl out of the bed, turn up the hurricane lamp, take it down and pull on my shoes. As I remove the branch against the door made from lengths of tree trunk nailed together, the wind blows the door wide open with a bang. Outside the cave is the pitch-black curtain of night and the hurricane lamp only casts a circle of light at my feet. I take a couple of steps, undo the fly of my trousers, and looking up suddenly see before me a monstrous black shadow. I yell out in alarm and almost drop the lamp. The huge form sways along with me and I immediately realize that this is the “demon shadow” I have read about in Record of Fanjing Mountain. I swing the lamp and it also moves: it is in fact my own shadow in the night.

  My peasant guide who came into the mountain with me hears my yells and comes running out with his hacking knife in his hand. Traumatized, I can’t talk but just keep yelping, swaying the hurricane lamp and pointing. He also immediately begins yelping and takes the hurricane lamp from my hand. In the pitch-black thick curtain of night, two huge black forms prance wildly along with the jumping and yelping of two people. It is really strange to be terrified and then to discover that one has in fact been terrified by one’s own shadow! The two of us piss as we prance about like children making the black demon shadows prance with us, and also to steady our nerves and comfort our spirits which have been scared out of our bodies.

  Going back into the cave, I am so agitated
that I can’t get back to sleep, and he is tossing and turning too. So I ask him to tell me some stories about the mountains. He starts to burble away but now speaks in the local dialect and eight in ten sentences are incomprehensible. He seems to be saying that a cousin from a distant branch of the clan had been mauled by a bear and lost an eye because he had failed to pay homage to the mountain god. I can’t tell if he’s saying this to chastize me for having come on this trip.

  We get up early to go to Nine Dragon Ponds. There is a heavy mist. He is walking in front. Beyond three paces he is only a faint shape and five paces away he can barely hear if I shout. If the mountain mist is thick like this, it is not at all strange that last night the lamp cast shadows overhead. For me this is a new experience and if I breathe out, a white vapour curls up to fill the gap I have made in the mist. However, before we go a hundred paces from the cave, he stops and turns back to say we can’t go any further.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Last year it was also foul weather like this. A group of six went up the mountain to steal medicinal herbs and only three came back.”

  “Stop trying to frighten me,” I say.