Soul Mountain (64 page)

You go on climbing mountains. As you near the peak and are feeling exhausted you always think it is the last time but when the exhilaration of reaching the peak subsides you feel the urge again. This feeling grows as your weariness vanishes and looking at the rising and falling lines of the peaks in the hazy distance your desire to climb mountains resurges. But once you climb a mountain you lose interest in it and invariably think the mountain beyond will have things you haven’t encountered. When you eventually get to that peak the wonders you hoped for aren’t there, and once again there is just the lonely mountain wind.

After some time you get used to this loneliness and climbing peaks becomes an obsession. You know you will find nothing but are driven by this blind thought and keep on climbing. However, while doing this you need to have some distraction and as you fabricate stories for yourself, images are born.

You say you see a cave at the bottom of the limestone cliffs. The entrance is almost completely sealed off by a pile of stone slabs. You think it is the home of Grandpa Stone and that living inside is the legendary figure talked about by the Qiang mountain folk.

You say he is sitting on a plank bed, the wood is rotted and crumbles at your touch and the rotten bits of wood in your hands are soggy. It is very damp inside and there is even water running by the plank bed set on rocks. There is also moss growing everwhere you put your feet.

He is leaning on the rock wall and when you enter he is looking right at you. His eyes have sunken deep into their sockets and he is emaciated like a piece of firewood. His rifle hangs above his head on a branch wedged into a crack and is within his reach. Oiled with bear fat which has turned to black grease, there is no rust on it.

“Why have you come here?” he asks.

“To see you, venerable elder.” You assume a respectful demeanour, look frightened even. He doesn’t have the childish petulance of senility and it seems that being respectful works. You know that if he were to get upset he could very well grab the rifle and shoot you, so it is important to show that you are afraid of him. Confronted by his cavernous eyes you do not dare to look up even a little lest you give the impression of coveting his rifle.

“Why have you come to visit me?”

You can’t say why nor can you say what you want to do.

“No-one has visited me for a very long time,” he drones, his voice seeming to come out of the emptiness. “Hasn’t the plank road rotted away?”

You say you climbed up from the River of Death down in the gully.

“You’ve all forgotten me, I suppose.”

“Not at all,” you hasten to say, “the mountain folk all know about you, Grandpa Stone. They all talk about you when they’ve had something to drink but they don’t have the courage to come and visit you.”

It is not courage but curiosity that has brought you here. You came because you had heard about him but it is of course not appropriate to say this. Now that the legend has been verified and you have seen him, you still have to think of something else to say.

“How much further is it to Kunlun Mountain?”

Why do you ask about Kunlun Mountain? Kunlun Mountain is the mountain of our ancestors, the Queen Mother of the West lived there. Bricks with carved pictures of her with a tiger’s face, human body, and leopard tail have been excavated from Han Dynasty tombs.

“Oh, go straight ahead and you’ll come to Kunlun Mountain.” He says this like someone saying go straight ahead and you’ll come to the lavatory or to the movie theatre.

“How much further ahead?” You pluck up the courage to ask.

“Go straight ahead–”

While waiting for him to continue, you furtively look into his cavernous eyes. His sunken lips move a couple of times and then close again, but you can’t decide whether he has spoken or is about to speak.

You want to flee but are afraid he will suddenly get angry, so you just look at him reverently, as if waiting to receive his instructions. But he gives no instructions or maybe there are no instructions to give. In this predicament you feel that the muscles on your face are very tense so you quietly draw in the corners of your lips, allow your cheeks to relax, then put on a smiling face. He doesn’t react, so you move a leg and shift your weight. Your body lurches forward and you see close up into his sunken eye sockets: the eyeballs are blank, as if they are fake. Maybe he’s a mummy. You have seen such undecomposed ancient corpses excavated from the Chu tombs at Jiangling and the Western Han tombs at Mawangdui. He must have died in a sitting position.

You move forward a step at a time, not daring to touch him in case he collapses, and reach out for the hunting rifle covered in grime and bear fat on the rock wall behind him. However, as soon as you grasp the barrel it crumbles as if it had been fried to a crisp. You immediately retreat, undecided as to whether you still want to go to see the place of the Queen Mother of the West.

Overhead there is an explosion of thunder, the Heavenly Court is angry! Heavenly soldiers and generals are pounding with the thigh bones of the Thunder Beast on huge drums made from the hides of walrus from the Eastern Ocean.

Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine white bats shriek and fly about the cliff cave. The mountain divinities have all awoken, huge boulders roll from the mountain top in an avalanche and the cliff completely collapses. It is as if a thousand mounted soldiers are galloping up from the earth and the whole mountain turns to smoke and dust.

Oh, oh, suddenly nine suns appear in the sky! The five rib-bones in men and the seventeen nerves in women are struck and pulled and no-one can help screaming and groaning . . .

Your soul flees through the orifices of your body and you see countless toads with their big mouths gaping at the sky. They are like a flock of headless tiny people with arms outstretched to the hoary sky, calling out in despair: Give my head back! Give my head back! Give my head back! Give back my head! Give back my head! Give back my head! My head give it back! My head give it back! My head give it back! Give me back my head! Give me back my head! My head give it back to me, my head give it back to me, give back my head to me, give back my head to me, to me give back my head, my head to me give back . . . give back to me my head, to me give back my head . . .

Startled from a dream by the sound of urgent bells and drums, for a moment I don’t know where I am. It is pitch-black and only gradually do I make out a square window which seems to have a grille on it, though I can’t be sure. I must find out if I am still dreaming and forcing my heavy eyelids to open, I manage to read the phosphorescent dial on my watch. It is exactly three o’clock in the morning. I realize morning prayers have started, then remember I am lodging in a temple. I quickly roll over and get out of bed.

I open the door and go into the courtyard. The drums have stopped and each peal of the bell is more distinct. The sky is grey against the shadows of the trees and the sound of the bell is coming from the direction of the Palace of Magnificent Treasures behind the high wall. I feel my way along the serpentine corridor to the door of the vegetarian hall but it is bolted on the other side. I turn and go back to the other end of the corridor, and groping about find there is a high brick wall all around and that I am locked like a prisoner in this courtyard. I shout a few times but no-one answers.

During the day I had begged to be allowed to stay in this Temple of National Purity. The monk who accepted my incense donation looked me over but was dubious about the sincerity of my devotion. But, I obstinately refused to leave and when the monastery gates were about to close, after seeking instructions from the old monk in charge, they installed me all on my own in this side room in the back section of the temple.

I refuse to be locked up and am intent on seeing if this big temple, whose incense burners have been burning for over a thousand years, still preserves the rituals and ceremonies of the Tiantai Sect. I do not believe I have transgressed the temple’s rules of purity and I go back to the courtyard. I discover in one corner a sliver of weak light coming through a crack. I touch it. It turns out to be a small door which immediately opens. This is after all a Buddhist temple so there are no prohibited areas.

I go around the screen behind the door and enter a medium-sized sutra hall with a few candles burning and incense smoke curling into the air. In front of the incense table hangs a piece of purplish-red brocade embroidered with the four characters “incense burners very hot” which makes my heart jump. It seems foreboding. In order to demonstrate the purity of my heart and that I haven’t come to spy on the secrets of the Buddhist world, I take a candle in a holder. There are ancient scrolls of calligraphy and painting on all the walls. I didn’t imagine there would be such an elegant and secluded inner room within the temple, probably it is a place reserved for the Buddhist masters. Having come in uninvited, I can’t help feeling a bit guilty and do not spend time seeing if they still have the works of the two eminent Tang monks collected by Han Shan. I return the candle and, following the sound of the bell for morning prayer, go out through the main door of the hall.

I enter another courtyard. The side rooms on all four sides are ablaze with candles and are probably the monks’ dormitories. A monk in a black cassock brushes past and overtakes me. I give a start then think he is probably leading the way, so I trail behind him and pass through several corridors one after the other. Then in an instant he vanishes. I am a little perplexed and can only look for somewhere with some candlelight. Just as I am about to cross a threshold, I look up and see a four- or five-metre high guardian of the Buddha wielding a demon-subduing cudgel. He is charging right at me, his fierce eyes glaring, and I am bathed in cold sweat from fright.

I flee along the dark corridor and see a dim light. Nearing it I see a round doorway, and going through I realize it is the large courtyard below the Palace of Magnificent Treasures. The palace roof has flying eaves and two green dragons, one on each side, guarding a bright mirror in the centre. The dark blue of the night sky before dawn, showing through the towering old cypresses, looks extraordinary.

Behind the huge incense burner at the top of the stairs the sound of the giant bell pours out of the hall lit with a blaze of candles. The monk in the black cassock is striking this enormous bell with a big wooden pole suspended from the ceiling. It does not so much as quiver but, as if in response, from the ground beneath, the sound of the bell slowly ascends to the rafters and fills the hall – booming reverberations gush through the doorway, engulfing my body and mind in its sound waves.

Some monks light the red candles in front of the eighteen arhats lining the two sides and plant whole bunches of burning incense sticks into each of the burners. The monks surge into the hall, all wearing the same dark grey cassocks, serene figures slowly moving to their positions in front of the individual rush cushions, each of which is embroidered with a different lotus design.

Two resounding booms of the drum follow with tones so deep and penetrating that it makes a person’s insides reverberate. The drum is located on the left of the hall and is mounted on a drum stand the height of a person. The round drum skin is a head higher than the monk standing on the platform of the ladder. The drummer, the only person not in a cassock, is wearing a short sleeveless jacket, trousers trussed at the calves and hemp shoes. His hands are raised high above his head.

Da-da

Boom! Boom!
Another two times.