One Man's Bible (4 page)

Many years later, he developed an interest in Chan Buddhism, and on rereading those Chan conundrums, he realized that the old monk had probably given him his first lesson in life.

He did have another sort of life, only afterward he simply forgot about it.

2

The curtain is partly open. Against the black shadow of the mountain, blocks of lit apartments loom. The sky above the mountain is gray, and the brilliant mass of lights from the night market shines onto the ledge of the window. The insides of the transparent postmodernist building opposite can be seen distinctly, and as the elevator slowly rises in its tubular frame to the level of your room you can even make out the figures of the people in it. With a long-range lens, from over there, it would certainly be possible to photograph the inside of your room, even how you make love with her could be photographed.

However, you do not have to hide, and there is nothing you must avoid doing. You are not a movie star or a television star, or an important politician, or a local Hong Kong magnate who’s afraid of being exposed in the newspapers. You hold French travel documents as a political refugee and have been invited for this visit, your room has been booked and paid for by someone else. You presented your documents on checking into this big hotel, bought by the Mainland government, so your name has been entered into the computer at the reception desk in the lobby. On hearing your Beijing accent, the
supervisor and the girl at the desk looked embarrassed but, in a few months, after Hong Kong is returned to China, they will also have to speak with a Beijing accent, and are probably taking lessons right now. It is their duty to keep tabs on what guests are doing, now that the proprietor is the government, so this episode of lovemaking in the nude that you have just indulged in will certainly have been videotaped. Also, for security reasons, in a big hotel, installing a few more video cameras would not be money wasted. Sitting on the bed, you have stopped sweating, feel cold, and want to turn off the buzzing air-conditioner.

“What are you thinking?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“Then what are you looking at?”

“The elevator going up and down in the building opposite. You can see the people inside the elevator, there’s a couple kissing.”

“I can’t see them,” she sits up in the bed.

You’re talking about using a long-range lens.

“Close the curtains.”

She is lying on her back, her white body completely bare except for the luxuriant clump of downy hair between her legs.

“They wanted to make a video but the hairs were too stark,” you tease.

“Who are you talking about? Here? Who’s making videos?”

You say it’s a machine, that it’s automatic.

“Impossible, this isn’t China.”

You say that the Mainland authorities have bought the hotel.

She sighs softly, sits up, and says: “You’ve got a phobia.” She puts out her arm and runs her fingers through your hair. “Switch on the table lamp, I’ll go and switch off the main light.”

“No need. Just now we were in too much of a hurry for me to have a good look.”

You utter sweet words, bend down to kiss her lustrous white belly in the bright light, and ask, “Do you feel cold?”

“A little,” she laughs. “Want some more cognac?”

You say you’d like some coffee. She gets out of the bed, switches off the air-conditioner, plugs in the electric kettle and puts instant coffee into a cup. Her full breasts sway weightily.

“Don’t you think I’m fat?” she says with a laugh. “Chinese women have better figures.”

You say, not necessarily. You adore her breasts, their solidity, their sensuousness.

“Haven’t you ever had . . . ?”

Facing you, she sits in the round chair by the window and leans back, tilting her head and letting you look as much as you want. She is blocking the illuminated building with the elevator, and the mountain behind looks darker. On this wonderful night, you say that her body is incredibly white, as if it’s not real.

“And you want coffee so that you will be more awake?” There is scorn in her eyes.

“So that I can hold onto this instant better!”

You say that life, at times, is like a miracle and you are lucky to be alive. All this is pure coincidence and yet it is real and not a dream.

“I’d like always to be dreaming but it’s just not possible. I prefer not to think of anything.”

She sips the cognac and closes her eyes. She is a white German woman with very dark hair and long eyelashes. You get her to part her legs so you can see clearly and have her deeply imprinted in your memory. She says she doesn’t want memories, only to feel this instant. You ask if she can feel you looking at her. She says she can feel you roaming over her body. Where have I roamed? you ask. She says from her toes to her waist, oh—she’s gushing again, she says she wants you. You say you want her, too, but you also want to see how this body, so full of life, twists and turns.

“For a better photograph?” she asks, her eyes closed.

“Yes.” Your eyes are fixed on her and scour her entire body.

“Can you photograph everything?”

“Nothing is left out.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Of what?”

You say you have no inhibitions. She says she has even less. You say this is Hong Kong, and China is now far away from you. You get up and press against her. She asks you to switch off the main light, and you again enter her moist body.

“Are you deeply attracted to me?” She is slightly breathless.

“Yes, I’m buried.” You say you are buried in her flesh.

“Flesh only?”

“Yes, and there are no memories, only this instant.”

She says she also needs to be fused like this in darkness, in nebulous chaos.

“Just to feel the warmth of a woman. . . .”

“Men also have warmth. It’s been a long time since. . . .”

“You’ve had a man?”

“Since I’ve had this sort of sensation, this trembling. . . .”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know why. . . .”

“Try to say why!”

“I wouldn’t be able to make myself clear. . . .”

“Is it because it happened so suddenly and was totally unexpected?”

“Don’t ask.”

But you want her to tell you! She says no. But you keep at her, keep taking it further, go on asking her. Is it because you’ve met by chance? Is it because you don’t understand one another? Is it more exciting because you’re strangers? Or does she simply seek after such thrills? She shakes her head each time to say no. She says she’s known you a long time; even though many years have passed and she’d only seen you twice, your image stayed with her and grew more and more distinct. She also says that just now, a few hours ago, when she saw you she became excited. She says she doesn’t casually
go to bed with men, she isn’t a slut, but she doesn’t lack men either. Don’t hurt her like this. . . . You’re moved by her, need to be intimate with her and not just sexually. Hong Kong is a foreign place for you and for her. That small association with her is a memory from ten years ago on the other side of the sea, when you were still in China.

“It was in your home, one night in winter. . . .”

“That home was confiscated a long time ago.”

“Your home was warm, special, it had a warm feeling.”

“It was warm air piped in by a generator. The pipes were always very hot. Even in winter, only a single layer of clothing was needed inside. The two of you arrived in big padded overcoats with upturned collars.”

“We were worried about being seen and getting you in trouble—”

“Yes, the regular plainclothes police were on duty at the front of the building. They finished at ten o’clock at night. It was pretty awful for the next shift in the howling winter wind.”

“It was Peter who suddenly thought to drop in on you, without phoning. You were old friends, he said, and as he was taking me to your home it was best going at night to avoid being stopped and questioned.”

“I didn’t have a line installed because I didn’t want friends talking carelessly on the phone, and also to avoid having anything to do with foreigners. Peter was an exception, he’d come to China to study Chinese. At the time he was passionate about Mao’s Cultural Revolution and we used to argue often, but he’d been a friend for some time. How is he?”

“We separated long ago. He was a representative in the China office of a German company, found a Chinese girl, married her, and took her back to Germany. I heard that he’s now the boss of a company he had started up. Back then, I’d only just arrived in Beijing to study. I didn’t speak much Chinese and it was hard to make Chinese friends.”

“I remember you, of course I remember you. As soon as you came through the door you took off your big padded coat and your scarf, and there stood a very beautiful young foreign woman!”

“With big breasts, right?”

“Of course, very big breasts. Blushing white skin and bright red lips even with no lipstick. Really sexy.”

“You couldn’t have known at the time!”

“You were so bright red, it was impossible not to notice.”

“It was because it was too hot in the room and we’d been cycling for more than an hour.”

“That night you sat quietly opposite me but didn’t say much.”

“I was struggling to understand what was being said. You and Peter were talking all the time, although I don’t recall what about. I didn’t know much Chinese at the time but I remember that night, I had a strange feeling.”

You, of course, also remember that winter night, you had candles burning, which added to the warmth, and you couldn’t tell if there was anyone downstairs watching your window. You had finally obtained a little apartment, a decent refuge, a home, and you had a fortress to protect yourself from the political storms outside. She sat on the carpet with her back against the bookcase. It was a clipped woollen carpet made for export, that had gone on the domestic market. Sold at a reduced price as a second-grade product, it was still expensive, exactly the amount of advance royalty you had received for your book. However, that book, which did not so much as touch on politics, stirred up a great deal of trouble for you. Her shirt collar was open and her skin was very white, and those long legs in sleek black stockings were enticing.

“Don’t forget, you had a girl in your apartment. She was wearing very little and, unless I’ve remembered wrongly, she was barefoot.”

“She was usually naked, and she was when the two of you came in the door.”

“That’s right, we had been sitting and drinking for some time before the girl quietly came out of the bedroom.”

“You two were obviously not going to leave right away. I asked her to join us, so she put on a dress.”

“She shook hands with us but didn’t say a thing all night.”

“Like you.”

“That night was very special, I had never seen a Chinese home with that sort of atmosphere. . . .”

“It was special because a white German girl with bright red lips had suddenly arrived. . . .”

“And there was also a barefoot little Beijing girl who was lovely and slender. . . .”

“Flickering candlelight. . . .”

“We sat drinking in your warm, cozy apartment as we listened to the howling wind outside.”

“It was unreal, just like it is now, and probably there are also people watching. . . .”

You again think that the room is probably being videotaped.

“Is it still unreal?”

She clamps you with her legs and you close your eyes to experience her, hugging the fullness of her body and mumbling, “There was no need to go before morning. . . .”

“Of course, there wasn’t. . . .” she says. “At the time, I didn’t want to leave. It was a bitterly cold winter night and we had to cycle for an hour. Peter wanted to go, and you didn’t try to get us to stay.”

“Yes, that’s right.” You say that it was the same with you. You had to cycle back with her to the barracks.

“What barracks?”

You say that she was a nurse in the army hospital and she couldn’t stay out overnight.

She lets go of you and asks, “Who are you talking about?”

You’re talking about her army hospital being in the barracks in the
outer suburbs of Beijing. She used to come every Sunday morning, and on the Monday morning before three o’clock you had to set off and cycle for more than two hours to get her back to the barracks before dawn.

Shrinking back, she pushes you away, sits up and asks, “Are you talking about that Chinese girl?”

You open your eyes and see her glaring at you. You apologize and explain that it was she who started talking about the little lover you had at the time.

“Do you long for her a lot?”

After pondering, you say, “That’s in the remote past. We lost contact long ago.”

“And you’ve had no news about her?” She sits on her haunches.

“No.” You also move away from her and sit on the edge of the bed.

“Don’t you want to look for her?”

You say that China is already very distant from you. She says she understands. You say you have no homeland. She says her father is German but her mother is a Jew, so she has no homeland either. But she can’t get away from her memories. You ask her why not? She says she isn’t like you, she’s a woman. You say oh, and stop talking.

3

He needed a nest, a refuge, he needed a home where he could be away from people, where he could have privacy as an individual and not be observed. He needed a soundproof room where he could shut the door and talk loudly without being heard so that he could say whatever he wanted to say, a domain where he as an individual could voice his thoughts. He could no longer be wrapped in a cocoon like a silent larva. He had to live and to experience, be able to groan or howl as he made wild love with a woman. He had to get a space to exist, he could no longer endure those years of repression, and he needed somewhere to discharge his reawakened lust.

At the time his small partitioned room could only hold a single bed, a desk and a bookshelf, and in winter, when he put in a coal stove with a metal pipe for warmth, it was hard to move around with another person in the room. The worker and his wife having intercourse, or their baby having a pee, on the other side of the very basic partition, could be heard clearly. Two other families lived in the building and they all shared the tap and drain in the courtyard, so whenever the girl visited his small room, she was observed by the neighbors. He had to leave the door partly open as they chatted and drank tea. His wife—a woman he’d married ten years earlier and from whom he’d been separated for almost as long—had gone to the Party committee of the Writers’ Association, which had in turn arranged for the street committee to report on him. The Party interfered in everything, from his thinking and his writing to his private life.

When the girl first came looking for him, she was dressed in an oversized, padded army uniform with a red collar-badge. Her face flushed, she said she’d read his fiction and had been deeply moved by it. He was on guard with this girl in an army uniform. Looking at her childlike face, he asked how old she was. She said she was studying at the army medical college and was an intern at the army barracks. She said she was seventeen that year. An age, he thought, when girls easily fall in love.

He closed the door to his room. When he kissed the girl, he had not yet received legal approval for a divorce from his wife and, fondling the girl, he held his breath. He could hear the neighbors walking in the courtyard, turning on the tap, washing clothes, washing vegetables, and emptying dirty water into the drain.

He was increasingly aware of his need to have a home, but not just so that he could possess a woman. What he wanted first of all was a roof that kept out the wind and rain, and four soundproof walls. But he did not want to marry again. Those ten years of futile, legally binding marriage were enough. He needed to be free for a while. Also, he was suspicious of women, especially young, pretty, seemingly promising girls with whom he could easily become besotted. He had been betrayed and reported more than once. At the university, he had fallen in love with a girl in the same class whose looks and voice were so sweet. But this lovely girl was ambitious, so she wrote a voluntary confession of her own thinking for the Party branch secretary, including in it his negative comments on the revolutionary novel
Song of Youth
, which the Communist Youth League was promoting as compulsory reading for young people. The girl
had not deliberately set out to harm him, and in fact had feelings for him. The more passionate a woman, the more she had to confess her emotions to the Party: it was like the religiously devout needing to confess the secrets of their inner hearts to a priest. The Communist Youth League considered his thinking too gloomy, but the charge was not too serious, and, while he could not be admitted to the League, he was allowed to graduate. In the case of his wife, the matter was serious. If what she had reported had been substantiated with a fragment of what he had written in secret, he would have been labeled a counterrevolutionary. Ah, in those revolutionary years even women were revolutionized into lunatics and monsters.

He could not trust this girl in an army uniform. She had come to ask him about literature. He said he was not permitted to be a teacher, and suggested that she go to night classes at a university. There were literature courses she could enroll in for a fee, and she would be issued with a certificate after a couple of years. The girl asked what books she should read. He told her it was best not to read textbooks; most libraries had reopened and all the books that had formerly been banned were worth reading. The girl said she wanted to study creative writing, but he urged her not to, because if she messed up it would set back her future prospects. He himself was having endless troubles, whereas a simple girl like her, in an army uniform and studying medicine, had a very secure future. The girl said that she was not so simple and that she was not what he thought. She wanted to know more, she wanted to understand life, and this didn’t conflict with her wearing an army uniform and studying medicine.

It wasn’t that the girl failed to attract him, but he preferred casual sex with uninhibited women who had already wallowed in the mire at the bottom of society. There was no need for him to waste his energy teaching this girl about life. Moreover, what was life? Only Heaven knew.

It was impossible to explain what life was and, even more so, what
literature was to this girl who had come to learn. It was as impossible as explaining to the Party secretary who managed the Writers’ Association that what he considered literature didn’t require the direction or approval of anyone. That was why he was running into trouble all the time.

Confronted by this refreshing and lovely girl dressed in an army uniform, he was unmoved and certainly did not have any wild thoughts. It had not occurred to him to touch her, and certainly not to go to bed with her. The girl was returning some books she had borrowed from his shelves to read. Her face was flushed and, having just come in the door, she was still slightly out of breath. As usual, he made her a cup of tea, then got her to sit on the chair against the bookshelf behind the door while he sat sideways in the chair next to the desk, as he did when editors came to discuss his manuscripts. There was a cheap sofa in the little room, but it was winter and a stove heater had already been installed, so if the girl sat on the sofa, the metal chimney of the stove would have blocked her face, and it would have been hard to talk. Both were sitting at the desk when the girl began stroking the novels, formerly banned as reactionary and pornographic, which she had returned. It seemed that the girl had tasted the forbidden fruit, or that she knew what forbidden fruit was, and was therefore uneasy.

He became aware of the girl’s flesh because her delicate hands, right next to him, were stroking the books. The girl saw him looking at her hands and hid them under the desk. She became even more flushed. He questioned the girl on what she thought of the protagonists, mainly the female protagonists. The behavior of the women in these books conformed neither to present social morality nor the teachings of the Party. But, he said, that probably was what was known as life, because life actually was without fixed measurements. If the girl wanted to report him later on, or if the Party at her workplace ordered her to confess her dealings with him, there were no
serious errors in what he had said. His past experiences constantly reminded him to be sure of this. Ah, and that was also called life!

The girl later said Chairman Mao had lots of women. It was only then that he dared to kiss her. The girl closed her eyes and let him fondle her body, so electrically sensitive to his touch inside the big padded army uniform. The girl asked if she could borrow more of such books to read. She said she wanted to know about everything, that it was not terrifying. At this, he said if books become forbidden fruit, society becomes really terrifying. That was why so many people lost their lives in the so-called Cultural Revolution that had now officially ended. The girl said she knew all this and that she had even seen someone who had been beaten to death: there were flies crawling on the black blood from his nose. He was said to have been a counterrevolutionary, and no one would collect the corpse. She was only a child then. But don’t think she’s a child, she is an adult now.

He asked what did being an adult imply? She said don’t forget that she is studying medicine, pouted, and gave a laugh. He then held her hand and kissed her lips that gradually yielded to him. Thereafter, she came often, returning books and borrowing books, always on Sunday, staying longer each time, sometimes from noon till dark. However, she had to catch the eight o’clock bus back to the military barracks in the outer suburbs. It was always in the evening, when the sound of vegetables being washed gradually died in the courtyard and the neighbors had shut their doors, that he shut his door and had some moments of intimacy with her. She would not take off her army uniform and always kept an eye on the clock on the desk, and, when it was almost time for the last bus, she would quickly button up.

More and more he needed a room to protect his privacy. With great difficulty, he had obtained a legal divorce, but the state ruled that for him to live with a woman, they had to be married. Furthermore, for a woman to register an application to marry him, he first
had to have proper housing. Including the years he had worked on a farm during the Cultural Revolution, he had already worked for twenty years and, according to the regulations, he should have been allocated housing long ago. However, it took two more years of suffering, and many quarrels and angry outbursts with housing cadres, before he was finally allocated a small apartment. It was just before a leader of the Party, more senior than the head of the Writers’ Association, targeted him for criticism. He got together all of his savings as well as an advance on part of the royalties for a book that it might or might not be possible to publish, and somehow secured a peaceful refuge.

The girl arrived at his newly allocated apartment, and the moment the spring lock on the door clicked, the two of them went wild with excitement. At the time, the painting wasn’t finished, bits of plaster were everywhere, and there was no bed. Right there, on a sheet of plastic with bits of plaster sticking to it, he stripped her down to her slim young girl’s body that had been hidden all this time under the loose army uniform. However, the girl begged him under no circumstances to penetrate her. The army medical college carried out a full physical examination once a year, and unmarried female nurses were tested to see if their hymens were intact. Before being enlisted, they had to undergo rigorous political and physical examinations, and, apart from routine medical duties, they could be sent at any time on missions to look after the health of senior officers. Her spouse had to be approved by her military seniors, and she could not marry before she was twenty-six, before which time she could not resign, because, it was said, state secrets would be involved.

He did everything but penetrate her, or, rather, he kept his promise. Although he didn’t penetrate her, he did everything else he could possibly do. Soon the girl was dispatched on a mission to accompany a senior officer on an inspection of the Chinese-Vietnamese border. After that he didn’t hear from her for a while.

Almost a year later, also in winter, the girl suddenly reappeared.
He had just come home late at night after drinking at a friend’s home when he heard a quiet knocking on his door. The girl was wretched, crying, and said she had been waiting for a whole six hours outside and was frozen stiff. She couldn’t wait in the hallway because she was afraid people would see her and ask who she was looking for. She had hidden in the workers’ hut outside and it was awful waiting until she saw the light come on in the apartment. He quickly shut the door and had just drawn the curtains when the girl, still wrapped in her outrageously huge military overcoat and still not warm, said, “Elder Brother, take me!”

He took her on the carpet, rolling backward and forward, no, crossing rivers and seas. They were like two sleek fish, or, rather, two animals tearing at one another in battle. She began to sob, and he said cry as loudly as you want, you can’t be heard outside. She wept and wailed, and then shouted. He said he was a wolf. She said no, you are my Elder Brother. He said he wanted to be a wolf, a savage, lustful, bloodsucking, wild animal. She said she understood her Elder Brother, she belonged to her Elder Brother, she wasn’t afraid of anything. From now on she belonged only to her Elder Brother, what she regretted was that she had not given herself to him earlier. . . . He said, don’t talk about it. . . .

Afterward, she said she wanted her parents to somehow think of a way of getting her out of the army. At the time, he had an invitation to travel overseas but wasn’t able to leave. She said she would wait for him, she was her Elder Brother’s little woman. He finally got a passport and visa, and it was she who urged him to leave quickly in case they changed their minds. He did not realize it would be a permanent separation. Maybe he was unwilling or refused to think about it so that the pain would not strike him right to the core of his heart.

He would not let her come to the airport to see him off, and she said she would not be able to get leave. Even if she got the first bus from the barracks into the city, then changed several buses to get to
the airport, it was unlikely that she would get there before his plane took off.

Before that, it had not occurred to him that he might leave this country. On the runway, taking off at Beijing airport, there was an intense whirring as the plane shuddered and was then instantly airborne. He suddenly felt that maybe—at the time he felt only maybe—he would never return to the land below the window. This expanse of gray-brown earth that people called homeland was where he was born and had grown up, it was where he had been educated, had matured and had suffered, and where he never thought he would leave. But did he have a homeland? Could the gray-brown land and ice-clad rivers in motion under the wings of the plane count as his homeland? It was later that this question arose and the answer gradually became quite clear.

At the time he simply wanted to free himself, to leave the black shadow enveloping him, to be able to breathe happily for a while. To get his passport, he had waited almost a year and had made the rounds of all the relevant departments. He was a citizen of this country, not a criminal, and there was no reason to deprive him of the right to leave the country. Of course, this reason was different for different people, and it was always possible to find a reason.