Soul Mountain. Gao Xingjian
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