Soul Mountain Page 8

  Do I have an aura of bad luck? she asks.

  You just make it hard for yourself, you have a masochistic streak. You’re deliberately teasing her.

  Hardly, living is such agony!

  You then hear her screaming again.

  The moss on the trunks, the branches overhead, the hair-like pine lichen hanging between the branches, even the air, everything, is dripping. Big bright, transparent drops of water, drop after drop, slowly drip onto my face, down my neck, icy cold. I tread on thick, soft, downy moss, layer upon layer of it. It grows parasitically on the dead trunks of huge fallen trees, grows and dies, dies and grows, so that with every step my sodden shoes squelch. My hat, hair, down-lined jacket and trousers are wet through, my singlet is soaked in sweat and clings to me. Only my belly feels slightly warm.

  He has stopped just up ahead but doesn’t turn around, the three-section metal aerial at the back of his head is still swaying. As soon as I clamber over a mass of fallen trees and get close, he takes off again before I have time to catch my breath. He is not tall and is lean and agile like a monkey. He thinks it’s too much trouble to zigzag and I have no choice but to make my way straight up the mountain. Since setting out from the camp early in the morning, we’ve been going for two hours without a break and he hasn’t spoken so much as a sentence to me. It seems he’s using this strategy to put me off, thinking I’ll find it’s too hard and turn back. I struggle desperately to follow close behind but the distance between us keeps widening, so from time to time he stops and waits for me. While I catch my breath he puts up the aerial, dons his earphones, tracks the signals and makes a record in his notebook.

  Weather equipment has been installed in a clearing. He inspects it, takes notes, and tells me the humidity is already at saturation point. These are his first words to me all this time and may count as a sign of friendship. A little further on he beckons me to follow him into a clump of dead Cold Arrow Bamboos. Standing there is a big pen fenced with round wooden stakes taller than a man. The bolt isn’t in place and the gate is open. The pen is for trapping the pandas which are shot with an anaesthetic rifle, tagged with a transmitter neckband, and then released. He points to the camera I’ve got hanging on my neck. I hand it to him and he takes a photo of me outside the pen, thankfully not inside it.

  Going through the gloomy linden and maple groves, mountain birds trill in the nearby flowering catalpa bushes so there’s no sense of loneliness. Then at an altitude of two thousand seven or eight hundred metres we come into a conifer belt – patches of scattered light gradually appear and giant black hemlocks soar up, their branches arched like open umbrellas. However, at a height of thirty or forty metres they are surpassed by grey-brown dragon spruce which soar to heights of fifty or sixty metres and are majestic with their peaked crowns of grey-green new leaves. There is no longer any undergrowth and it’s possible to see quite a distance. In between the thick spruce and hemlock trunks are some round alpine azaleas. They are about four metres high and covered in masses of moist red flowers. The branches bow with the weight and, as if unable to cope with this abundance of beauty, scatter huge flowers beneath to quietly display their enduring beauty. This unadorned splendour and beauty in nature fills me with another sort of indescribable sadness. It is a sadness which is purely mine and not something inherent in nature.

  Up ahead and down below are huge dead trees which have been snapped by the assault of the elements. To pass by these towering crippled remains reduces me to an inner silence and the lust to express which keeps tormenting me, in the presence of this awesome splendour, is stripped of words.

  A cuckoo which I can’t see is calling – it’s further up then down below, to the left then to the right. It somehow keeps circling around me, as if it’s trying to make me lose my bearings, and seems to be calling out: Brother wait for me! Brother wait for me! This brings to my mind the story of the two brothers who went into the forest to sow sesame seeds. In the story the stepmother wanted to get rid of the son of the first wife but fate rebounded upon the person of her own son. I also think of the two university graduates who got lost. A feeling of disquiet grips me.

  He comes to a sudden halt, raises an arm to signal me, and I rush over to him. He pulls me down hard. I crouch there with him and start to get tense: then I see through a gap between the trees two large grey-white speckled birds with red feet running on the slope. When I make a quiet move, the pervading silence is instantly shattered by a disturbance in the air.

  “Snow cocks,” he says.

  In barely an instant the air seemingly congeals again and the lively grey-white speckled snow cocks with red feet seem never to have existed, making me feel that I am hallucinating, for before my eyes there are only the huge unmoving trees of the forest. My passing through here at this moment, even my very existence, is ephemeral to the point of meaninglessness.

  He is friendlier and no longer leaves me too far behind, he goes for a bit, stops, and waits for me to catch up. The distance between us shortens but still we don’t talk. Afterwards, he stops to look at his watch and then turns to look up at the increasing patches of sunlight. He sniffs at the air, climbs up a slope and puts out a hand to pull me up.

  I am puffing and panting when we finally come to an undulating plateau. Before us lies a monotone of undiluted fir forest.

  “We’re more than three thousand metres up, aren’t we?” I ask.

  He confirms this with a nod then runs to a tree on a high part of the plateau, looks back, puts on his earphones, pulls up the aerial, and rotates in all directions. I also look all around and notice the surrounding trees are of the same girth, equidistant from one another, equally straight, branch out at the same height, and are all equally fine specimens. There are no broken trunks, the trees that have died have fallen down whole, none are exempt from rigorous natural selection.

  There are no pine lichens, no clumps of Cold Arrow Bamboo, no small bushes. The spaces between the trees are quite large so that it’s brighter and one can see quite far. Some distance away is a white azalea bush which stuns me with its stately beauty. It has an ethereal purity and freshness and as I get closer, it seems to get taller – it is swathed in clusters of flowers with petals larger and thicker than those of the red azaleas I saw earlier. Lush white flowers are scattered beneath the bush. They have not begun to wither and are so charged with life that they exude a lust to exhibit themselves. This is pristine natural beauty. It is irrepressible, seeks no reward, and is without goal, a beauty derived neither from symbolism nor metaphor and needing neither analogies nor associations. This white azalea with the purity of snow and the lustre of jade keeps re-appearing but it is always a solitary bush and appears and disappears, here and there, among the slender cold fir trees, like the tireless hidden cuckoo which captivates one’s soul and keeps leading one towards it. I take deep breaths of the pure air of the forest, inhaling and exhaling is effortless and I feel the very depths of my soul being cleansed. The air penetrates to the soles of my feet, and my body and mind seem to enter nature’s grand cycle. I achieve a sense of joyful freedom such as I have never before experienced.

  A drifting mist comes, just one metre off the ground, and spreads out right before me. As I retreat, I scoop it into my hands, it is like the smoke from a stove. I start running but I am too slow. It brushes past and everything in sight becomes blurred. It suddenly disappears but the cloudy mist following behind is much more distinct, coming as drifts of swirling balls. I back away from it without realizing I am going around in a circle with it but on a slope I manage to escape from it. I turn around to suddenly discover that right below is a deep ravine. A range of magnificent indigo mountains is directly opposite, their peaks covered in white clouds, thick layers of billowing churning clouds. In the ravine, a few wisps of smoke-like cloud are rapidly dispersing. The white line below must be the rushing waters of the river flowing through the middle of the dark forest ravine. This is not the river I passed a few days ago coming into the mountains
where there was a stockade village, stretches of cultivated land, and where from the mountain above there was an exquisite view of the cable bridge slung between two cliffs. This gloomy ravine is dark forest and jagged rocks, utterly devoid of anything from the human world. Looking at it sends chills down my spine.

  The sun comes out, suddenly illuminating the mountain range opposite. The air is so rarefied that the pine forests beneath the layers of cloud instantly turn a wonderful green which drives me into an ecstatic frenzy. It is as if a song is emerging from the depths of my soul and as the light changes there are sudden changes of colour. I run and jump about, struggling to photograph the transformations of the clouds.

  A grey-white cloudy mist sneaks up behind me again, completely ignoring ditches, hollows, fallen trees. I can’t get ahead of it and it unhurriedly catches up. It encloses me in its midst: images vanish from my eyes and everything is a hazy blur. But in my mind fragments of the images I have just seen linger. While in this predicament a ray of sunlight comes down over my head, illuminating the moss under my feet. Only then do I discover that underfoot is yet another strange organic plant world. It too has mountain ranges, forests, and low shrubs, and all of these sparkle brilliantly, and are a beautiful green. The moment I crouch down it is here again, that all-pervading obscuring mist and, as if by magic, instantly, everything is a grey-black blurred totality.

  I stand up, at a loss, and just wait there. I shout out but there is no reply. I shout out again but hear my own muffled trembling voice immediately vanish without even echoing. I am instantly filled with terror. This terror ascends from my feet and my blood freezes. I call out again, but again there is no reply. All around me are only the black shapes of the fir trees and they are all exactly the same, the hollows and slopes are all the same. I run, shout out, suddenly lurching from one side to the other, I am deranged. I must immediately calm down, return to the original spot, no, I must get my bearings. But in every direction are towering grey-black trees, I can’t distinguish anything, I have seen everything before, yet it seems I haven’t. The blood vessels in my forehead start throbbing. Clearly, nature is toying with me, toying with this unbelieving, unfearing, supercilious, insignificant being.

  Hey – Hello – Hey – I yell out. I did not ask the name of the person who brought me into the mountains so I can only hysterically shout out like this, like a wild animal, and the sound makes my hair stand on end. I used to think there were echoes in mountain forests, even the most wretched and lonely of echoes wouldn’t be as terrifying as this absence of echoes. Echoes here are absorbed by the heavy mists and the humidity-laden atmosphere. I realize that my shouting probably doesn’t transmit and I sink into utter despair.

  The grey sky silhouettes a strangely-shaped tree. The sloping trunk branches into two parts, both similar in girth and both growing straight up without further branching. It is leafless, bare, dead, and looks like a giant fish-spear pointing into the sky. This is what makes it unique. Having got here, I would be at the edge of the forest, so below the edge of the forest should be that dark ravine, at this moment enshrouded in heavy mist, a path straight to death. But I can’t leave this tree, it’s the only sign I can recognize. I scour my memory for sights I saw along the way. I have first to find identifiable images like this and not a string of images in a state of flux. I seem to recall a few and try to arrange them into sequence to serve as signposts I can follow back. But what I recall is useless, like a deck of shuffled cards and the more I try to arrange some sort of order the more scrambled it all becomes. I am absolutely exhausted and can only sit myself down on the wet moss.

  I have become separated from my guide just like that, lost in the three thousand metres of ancient forest in the 12M band of the aviation chart. I don’t have the chart on me, nor do I have a compass. The only thing I find in my pockets is a handful of sweets given to me a few days ago by the old botanist who has already gone down the mountain. At the time he was passing on to me what had been his experience – when you go into the mountains it’s best to take along some sweets in case you happen to get lost. I count how many I have in my trouser pocket: there are seven. I can only wait for my guide to come and find me.

  The stories I have heard over the past few days of people dying in the mountains all transform into bouts of terror which envelop me. At this moment I am like a fish which has fallen into terror’s net, impaled upon this giant fish-spear. Futile to struggle while impaled upon the fish-spear: it will take a miracle to change my fate. But haven’t I been waiting for this or that sort of miracle all of my life?

  She says, later she says, she really wants to die, it would be so easy. She would stand on the high embankment, close her eyes and just jump! But if she landed on the steps of the embankment, it would be awful, she doesn’t dare imagine the sight of dying horribly with her brains splattered everywhere – it would be ghastly. Her death must be beautiful so that people will feel sorry for her, pity her, and weep for her.

  She says she would go along the embankment upstream, find a sandy bay and walk from the foot of the embankment into the river. Of course she wouldn’t be noticed and no-one would know, she would walk into the dark river at night. She wouldn’t take off her shoes, she doesn’t want to leave anything behind. She would just walk into the river with her shoes on, one step at a time, right into the water. By the time the water was waist high, even before it came up to her chest and breathing was hard, the fast-flowing river would suddenly have sucked her into the current and she wouldn’t be able to resurface. She would be powerless, and even if she struggled, the instinct to live wouldn’t be able to save her. At most her arms and legs would thrash about in the water for a while but it would all be quick, painless: it would be over before there was time for any pain. She would not shout. That would be futile, if she shouted she would immediately choke with water and nobody would hear anyway, much less rescue her. Thus her superfluous life would be totally obliterated. As she cannot eliminate her suffering, there is no choice but to let death resolve it. This act would resolve many things. It would be neat and it would be death with dignity, that is if she could really die with dignity like this. After dying, if her bloated corpse washed onto a sandbank downstream and started to rot in the sun, swarms of flies would settle on it. She feels sick again. Nothing is more nauseating than death. She can’t get rid of the nausea.

  She says nobody knows her, nobody knows her name, even the name she wrote in the hotel register is false. She says nobody in her family would be able to track her down, nobody would think she would come to a small mountain town like this. But she could imagine how it would be with her parents. Her stepmother would telephone the hospital where she works, sounding all choked up as if she had the ’flu and even as if she were crying. Naturally she would only be doing this after her father had pleaded with her. She knows if she dies her stepmother wouldn’t really weep. She is just a burden to the family, her stepmother has her own son who is already a young man. If she spends the night at home her younger brother has to put up a wire bed in the corridor to sleep. They have their eyes on her room and can’t wait for her to get married. She really doesn’t like staying in the hospital because the dormitories for the night nurses always reek of antiseptic. All day long it is white sheets, white robes, white mosquito nets, white masks: only the eyes beneath the eyebrows are one’s own. Alcohol, pincers, tweezers, the clatter of scissors and scalpels, hands constantly being washed and arms soaking in antiseptic until the skin bleaches – first the shine goes, then the colour of the blood. The skin on the hands of people who work all year round in operating theatres is like white wax. One day she will lie there with a pair of bloodless hands on the river-bank, crawling with flies. She feels sick again. She hates her work and her family, including her father. If there are disagreements, her stepmother only has to raise her voice and her father has no opinion. Why don’t you shut up? Even if he objects he wouldn’t dare say so. Then tell me, what have you done with all your money? You’re going
senile early, how can I let you hold onto any money? A single sentence can bring forth ten from my stepmother and she always talks so loudly. So he never says anything. He once touched her legs. He started touching and feeling her under the table. Her stepmother and younger brother were not at home, there were just the two of them, he had had too much to drink. She forgave him. But can’t forgive him for being so useless, she hates him for being so weak. She doesn’t have a father she can respect, a masculine father she can depend on, can be proud of. She wanted to leave this home long ago and have a little home of her own, but this is so disgusting. She takes a condom out of her trouser pocket. For him she had regularly taken the pill and he didn’t ever have to worry. She couldn’t say it was love at first sight but he was the first man bold enough to seek her love. He kissed her and she began to think about him. They bumped into each other again and made a date. He wanted her and she gave herself, breathlessly, intoxicated. She was in a daze, her heart was pounding, she was afraid yet willing. It was all so natural, good, beautiful, shy, and pure. She says she knew she wanted to love him, that he loved her. Later she would become his wife. And in the future she would become a mother, a little mother. But it made her vomit. She says it wasn’t because she was pregnant. After he made love to her, she felt this thing in his back trouser pocket. He didn’t want her to take it out but she took it out anyway. It made her vomit. That day after work, she hadn’t gone back to the dormitory and hadn’t eaten but had hurried to his place. Without letting her catch her breath, the moment she was in the door, he began kissing her and immediately made love to her. He said youth should be enjoyed, love should be enjoyed, enjoyed to the full. In his embrace, she agreed. They wouldn’t have children right away so they could enjoy themselves for a few years free of worries, earn some money and travel. They wouldn’t set up a home yet, they only needed a room like this which he already had. As long as she had him they would be wild, unrestrained, for ever and ever . . . before she could appreciate all this, she felt sick. She couldn’t stop the nausea and kept vomiting up bitter bile. Then she wept, became hysterical and cursed men! But she loves him, that is once loved him, but this is in the past. She loved the smell of sweat in his singlets, even after they had been washed she could smell it. But he was not worth loving, he could casually do this with any woman, men are filthy like this! The life she had just started had become soiled. It was like the sheets in her little hotel, all sorts of people sleep on them, they aren’t changed and washed and reek of men’s sweat. She should never have come to such a place!