Soul Mountain (20 page)

After dinner when I emerge from his house it is pitch-black in the little street. There are no street lights and between the eaves on both sides there is just a narrow strip of grey night sky. If it hadn’t been a market day during the daytime, Yi turbans and Miao headscarfs would be thronging the streets. There’s not much difference between this street and those of little towns elsewhere.

On my way back to the hostel I pass the movie theatre. I don’t know if a film is in session right now but a bright light beams on the voluptuous breasts and seductive eyes on a poster. The film probably contains either “women” or “love” in the title. It’s still early and I don’t feel like going back to the empty room with four beds so I make a detour to the home of a friend I had made after coming here. He had studied archaeology at university and for some reason was sent here. I didn’t ask him about it and he couldn’t be bothered complaining, and simply said anyway he didn’t have a doctorate.

According to him, the Yi people are mostly located in the delta regions of the Jinsha River and its tributary the Yagong River. Their earliest ancestors are the Qiang people. During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, when the slave system crumbled on the Central Plains, their ancestors gradually moved southwards and came here. Later, during the Warring States period, when the kingdoms of Qin and Chu went into battle and seized the territory of Qianzhong, the six ancestors divided into groups and moved further south to Yunnan. This is recorded in the ancient Yi text
Record of the Yi in the South West
and cannot be refuted. However, last year at Caohai he discovered over a hundred Palaeolithic stone artefacts. Later on, at the same site, he discovered Neolithic artefacts ground into shapes very similar to the stone artefacts unearthed at Hemudu in the lower reaches of the Yangtze. In the neighbouring county of Hezhang he also discovered an ancient site of a criss-cross style building. Hence he maintains that during the Neolithic period this place was connected with the culture of the ancestors of the White Yue people.

Thinking I’d come to look at stone artefacts, he brings out a basketful of rocks from under his child’s bed. We look at one another and burst out laughing.

“I didn’t come for rocks,” I say.

“You’re right, there’s something more important than rocks, come, let’s have something to drink!” He immediately puts the basket into a corner behind the door and calls out to his wife, “Bring us some liquor!”

I say I have just been drinking.

He says, “It doesn’t matter, you can drink as much as you like, and then just bed down here!”

He seems to be Sichuanese. His Sichuan accent draws me closer to him and I start talking with him in Sichuan dialect. His wife instantly prepares a few dishes which bring out the full richness of the liquor. He is in high spirits and begins to hold forth on various topics – from the dragon bones he’d bought from a fish hawker which turned out to be a stegodon fossil unearthed in the marsh at Caohai to how local cadres could hold a meeting for a whole morning to discuss whether or not to buy an abacus.

“Before buying it, they had to scorch it to see if the beads were cow horn or dyed wood!”

“To see if it was authentic!”

He and I kill ourselves laughing until our bellies hurt. It is a wonderful, happy occasion.

When I leave his home my feet feel a lightness which is rare for this high plateau. I know that I have had the right amount of liquor, I am at eight-tenths of my capacity. Afterwards I remember I forgot to take from the basket the stone axe which had once been used by the descendant of someone with the surname Yuan. At the time he had pointed to the basket behind the door and shouted, “Take as many as you like. These magical treasures are the legacies of our ancestors!”

She says she’s afraid of rats, even hearing them running on the floorboards terrifies her. And she is afraid of snakes. There are snakes everywhere on this mountain, she’s afraid of spotted snakes slithering down from the rafters and getting into the bed, she wants you to hold her tight, she says she is afraid of the loneliness.

She says she wants to hear your voice, that your voice is reassuring. And she wants to pillow her head on your arm, this gives her something to lean on. She wants to listen to you talking, go on talking, don’t stop talking, so that she will not feel lonely.

She says she wants to hear you tell her stories, she wants to know how Second Master came to take possession of the girl abducted by the bandits on the river-bank outside her house. How did the girl submit to Second Master and become the bandit chief’s wife? Afterwards how did Second Master die by her hand?

She says she doesn’t want to hear the story about the girl from the city who jumped into the river. Don’t talk about the bloated naked corpse pulled out of the water, she won’t think about suicide anymore, and she doesn’t want to hear the story about the ribs being stomped on and broken in the dragon lantern competition. She has seen too much blood in the operating theatre of the hospital. She says she wants to listen to interesting stories like the one about the
zhuhuapo
, but you mustn’t tell violent stories.

She asks if you have done this with other girls. She isn’t asking about what sort of things you have done with other women but about tricking girls to come with you into the mountains, is she the first? You ask her to say but she says how would she know? You ask her to guess, she says she wouldn’t be able to guess and that even if you had you wouldn’t tell her. Also, she doesn’t want to know, she realizes she has come of her own volition, so if she has been tricked she has brought it upon herself. She says she wants nothing of you at this moment except that you understand her, care about her, love her.

She says the first time she was penetrated, he was very rough. She isn’t talking about you but about that boyfriend of hers who didn’t care about her at all. At that time she was totally passive, demanded nothing, and felt no excitement at all. He had frantically pulled up her skirt . . . she had one foot against the floor all through it. He was utterly selfish, a swine who just wanted to rape her. Of course she had been willing. But it was very uncomfortable and he made her hurt awfully. She knew it would hurt, it was like fulfilling a duty, so that he would love her and marry her.

She says when she did it with him, there was no ecstasy and that when she saw his semen running down her legs, she vomited. Afterwards, each time the smell would immediately make her want to vomit. She says she was purely something for him to discharge his lust into, and whenever that thing of his touched her she would feel disgusted with her own body.

She says this is the first time she has ever indulged herself, the first time she has used her body to love a man. She did not vomit, she is grateful to you, grateful that you have given her this kind of joy. She says she will get her revenge on him like this, get revenge on that boyfriend of hers, she will tell him she has slept with another man. A man a lot older than her, a man who knew how to enjoy her and in turn gave her enjoyment.

She says she knew it would be like this, that she would let you enter her. And she knew all her defence stratagems had been to deceive herself. But why did she punish herself like that? Why didn’t she just enjoy it? She says you have given her life, given her hope, she wants to go on living, and once again has desire.

She also says that as a child, her family had a dog which liked to nuzzle her with its wet nose to wake her up, sometimes it would even jump onto her bed. She loved putting her arms around this dog. Her mother who was still alive then, said that dogs had fleas and she wouldn’t let the dog into her bedroom. Once she had a red rash all over her body and her mother said she had been bitten by fleas from the dog. Afterwards people weren’t allowed to keep dogs in the city and when she wasn’t home the dog-catching squad took away the dog and killed it. She wept and didn’t eat dinner. She feels at the time she was very kind-hearted. She can’t understand why people in the world are so wicked. Why is there such lack of sympathy between people? She says she can’t understand why she is saying all this.

You ask her to go on talking.

She says she can’t understand why, it’s as if flood gates have opened and she can’t stop talking.

You say she is doing very well.

She says she never wants to grow up and yet she also wants to grow up. She wants to be loved, wants everyone to look at her, but she’s afraid of men’s looks. She thinks men’s looks are always salacious. When they look at someone they aren’t looking at the person’s beauty, they are looking at something else.

You say you’re a man.

You’re an exception, she says, you make her feel relaxed, she wants to be in your embrace.

You ask if she thinks you are salacious.

Don’t talk like that, she says. She doesn’t think you are, she likes you. Everything about you is so endearing, she says she now knows what it is to be living. But she says at times she is frightened and thinks life is a bottomless hole.

She thinks no-one really loves her, and if no-one loves her what meaning is there to living? She says this is what really frightens her. But a man’s love is so selfish, they always want to possess you, but what do they give in return?

Men do give, you say.

But only what they want to.

But don’t women also find men indispensable? You say it was Heaven’s will that joined the male and the female as the two parts of the grindstone, this is the innate nature of human beings. You say there’s no need to be afraid of anything.

She says you’re getting her excited.

You ask surely she is enjoying it?

As long as it’s so natural, she says.

Come, accept with all your body and heart. You arouse her.

Ah, she says she wants to sing.

You ask her what she wants to sing.

To sing of you and me, she says.

Sing whatever you like, you urge her to sing loudly.

She wants you to caress her.

You say you want her to abandon herself.

She wants you to kiss her nipples . . .

You are kissing her.

She says she also loves your body, nothing of your body is frightening anymore. She will do whatever you want her to do, oh, she says she wants to see you enter her body.

You say she has become a real woman.

Yes, she says, a woman owned by a man, she says she doesn’t know what nonsense she’s talking, she says she has never enjoyed herself like this before, she says she’s drifting on a boat and doesn’t know where she’s drifting, she is no longer in control. Let it drift, on the black sea, she and you, no, there is only her, she’s not really afraid but she feels terribly empty, she wants to die, death is seductive, she wants to fall into the sea, let the black sea drown her, she needs you, the warmth of your body, even your oppressiveness gives her a sense of security, she asks if you’re aware of it, that she desperately
needs
!

Need a man? You bait her.

Yes, I need a man’s love, need to be owned. She says, yes, she longs to be owned, she wants to abandon herself, forget everything, ah, she is grateful to you, she was anxious the first time, yes, she says she wanted to, she knew she wanted to, but she panicked, didn’t know what to do, she wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she wanted to be carried away by a storm in the wilds, to be stripped naked by it, to be flailed with a branch until her flesh was torn apart, to succumb to the pain, to be ripped apart by wild animals! She says she saw her, that wanton woman dressed in black, fondling her own breasts, that smile on her face, the way she walked swinging her hips, a licentious woman, she says, you don’t understand, you don’t understand this, you don’t understand anything, you simpleton!