Soul Mountain (29 page)

The village is quiet and lonely, devoid of human sounds. The doors are all open and the uncovered rafters are crammed with dry grass, farm tools, wood and bamboo. I almost go in to have a look but suddenly a grey-black mixed-breed Alsatian appears, growling ferociously and coming right at me. I quickly beat a retreat and go straight back over the single-log bridge. Before me is the huge black-grey form of the mountain in the sunlight behind the small ranger station.

Jolly laughter comes from behind and looking around I see a woman coming across the single-log bridge. She is toying with a carrying pole in her hands on which is curled a big five- or six-foot snake with a length of wriggling tail. She is obviously calling me and I go up to the edge of the river before I can make out what she is asking me.

“Hey, want to buy a snake?” Quite unperturbed, she giggles as she comes toward me, one hand holding down seven inches of the snake and the other holding the pole with the writhing serpent coiled around it.

Luckily the ranger appears just in time, and from the other side of the river, scolds her, “Go back! Do you hear? Go back right away!”

The woman has to go back to the other side of the bridge as instructed.

“She’s crazy, this woman, as soon as she sees a stranger she always wants to get up to some sort of mischief,” he says. He tells me he’s found a peasant to act as a porter and guide. He’ll fix up a few things in his office and then arrange a few days provisions for me. I can go ahead as far as I like, the guide will follow after, the mountain people are used to travelling on these mountain paths and he’ll catch up right away with a basket on a carrying pole. There’s only the one path up the mountain so you can’t go wrong. Seven or eight
li
up is a copper mine which earlier on was half developed before it fell into disuse, if he doesn’t turn up by then I can stop there for a while.

He tells me to leave my backpack, the peasant can bring it for me. He also gives me a stick, saying it will help conserve energy going up the mountain and can be used for chasing off snakes. And he tells me to chew a piece of the dried root he gave me. I bid him farewell. He waves to me, turns, and goes inside.

I still think of him and his practical attitude of rejecting fame and wealth and also the gloomy other side of the single-log bridge in the bend of the river, the village settlement with the wooden houses which have gone black, the savage Alsatian with the grey-black fur, and the crazy woman with the snake on the carrying pole. These all seem to be hinting at something, just like the huge gloomy mountain behind the small building. There is something more to it all which I will never be able to fully understand.

You are walking in mud and fine rain is falling, it is quiet on the road except for the squelching of the mud sticking to your shoes. You say she has to walk where the mud is firmer but straightaway you hear a plop. You turn and see that she has fallen and is awkwardly holding herself up with one hand in the mud. You put out your hand to pull her up but her foot slips and the dirty hand which had been holding her up smears mud all over her. You say she really has to take off her high heels. She is crying miserably and plonks herself right into the mud. You say, come on, so you’re a bit dirty but that can be fixed up, there’s a house up ahead and you can have a good wash. But she refuses to go on.

This is women, you say, they want to go travelling in the mountains but don’t want any hardships.

She says she shouldn’t have come walking with you on these lousy mountain roads.

You say it’s not all scenery in the mountains, there’s also wind and rain, she’s already here so she should stop regretting having come.

She says you tricked her, there isn’t a tourist anywhere on this damn Lingshan.

You say if it’s people and not mountains she wants to see, hasn’t she seen plenty on the streets in the cities? If she hasn’t, she can take a trip to the department stores where there’s everything a woman needs, from cakes to cosmetics.

She covers her face with her muddy hands and starts crying like a child. You can’t take anymore, pull her to her feet and help her along.

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 sex. 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?