One Man's Bible (39 page)
The place is New York. On the first day, it is ten degrees below zero, and snowing, and the very next, it suddenly turns warm. Dirty lumps of ice are everywhere, your shoes become soggy, and you have to buy a pair of heavy boots because of the lousy weather. . . . You prefer the mild Paris winter. There are large numbers of Chinese here, and, from time to time, on the streets, you hear the speech of Beijing, Shanghai, Shandong, and even the He’nan village dialect spoken near the reform-through-labor farm where you were once sent. Also, there is every kind of Chinese food you can think of, even crab-roe dumplings and hand-shaved noodles. Chinatowns are everywhere, whether downtown in Manhattan, or in Flushing, Queens. This is China, more Chinese than China, as Chinese New Yorkers construct their own virtual hometowns.
You don’t have a hometown, and, in America, you do not have to put on a play with Chinese actors. You wanted local Western actors, and had hoped they would find a uniquely American woman to play the lead role. But it was after the premiere that you again saw the beautiful Linda. She was one-quarter Turkish, and you first met her at a drama festival in Italy, at the dinner following the performance of your play. She came over to your table, embraced you, kissed you passionately on both cheeks, and said, “I loved your play. If you ever come to New York to put on a play, don’t forget to look me up!” You were delighted to see her so visibly moved, and had not forgotten to give the theater group her telephone number and address. However, nobody called her, and she also missed the advertisement for auditions. There are just so many beautiful women in New York, and plenty of good actors. She came to the performance, and wept after it had ended, but you were not sure whether it was because she had seen you, or the play, or because she was sorry she had missed the chance to perform in the play. In any case, you, too, were deeply moved.
You are, in fact, not so alone in the world, and have many close friends, as well as some you have just made. You find it is often easier to communicate with them than with some of your fellow Chinese. You can be more direct, and when you make love with Western women, there are fewer obstacles. In the middle of the night, you answer a telephone call from Paris, and you say that you had just been thinking of her. “What about?” she says on the phone. You say you had been thinking of the smell of her body. “Then what if I send it wet and sloppy over the phone?” she laughs. “It wouldn’t be enough.” You say you had been thinking of her, the whole of her, from top to bottom. “Don’t you have another woman in your bed?” she asks. “Not right now, but who knows, maybe there will be one along any moment,” you say. “You rascal!” she says. “But I’ll still kiss you, kiss you all over!”
You’re not an “upright gentleman,” and don’t have to put on an act of being virtuous. What you want to do is to spray your lust all over the world, turn it awash! Of course, that is sheer fantasy, and you can’t help feeling a sort of sadness. But you know your sadness has been diluted, in fact, you rejoice in having salvaged your life. You belong now to that rascal, you. But you have allowed yourself
to be enjoyed by the French filly that called you a rascal, you willingly gave yourself to her so that she, too, gets all wet, and you can enjoy her.
Everything in the past already seems so remote and far away, you have wandered all over the world and you are not really sad. You like jazz and the freedom of the blues. That was how you had come to write that play. One day among the props in the theater storeroom, you found an old picture frame, and you hung on it the plastic leg of a display model. You wrote on the leg “what” in fancy lettering, and it counted as your signature. You poke fun at the world, and you poke fun at yourself, and it is by offsetting the one against the other that life is fun. You would like to become a piece of jazz, like that classic recorded by the black singer Johnny Hartman:
They say that falling in love is wonderful
It’s wonderful. . . .
At rehearsal, the actors say that a black singer was shot when he got out of his car on the highway to fix something. The newspapers that day have photographs of the person killed, and, although you have never heard the man’s songs, you can’t help feeling sad.
It would be hard for you to love a Chinese woman again. When you left China, you dumped the little nurse, but now you no longer reproach yourself for it, you no longer spend your days reproaching yourself.
Gentle moonlight, hazy mountain, shadowy thatched huts, paddy fields after harvest in the valley, a dirt track crawling over the slope past the door of a storehouse. A rustic poem so old that it has lost its impact. You seem to see this dream scene, see the shut door of that tamped-earth building. It was there that your student was raped, no
one could have saved her. She had no choice, she was hoping to earn merit points for a work permit so that she would not have to go on growing her own grain in order to be able to eat. That was the price she had to pay. She is far away, on the other side of the world, and has long since forgotten that a person like you ever existed. You lament in vain, but it is lust, rather than fond memories, that is evoked.
She says that right now she has no lust. She says she wants to cry, and, immediately, tears are streaming from her eyes. You say you are full of uncontrollable lust. But she says she doesn’t want to be a substitute, says it’s not she that you want to penetrate, and she can’t penetrate your heart, because you’re somewhere far away. You say you’re by her side, that it’s because tonight you’re in bed with her, want to excite her, that you’re telling her this story. But she says not to use her to pour out the secret pains in your heart. You say you didn’t think that a French filly like her would be like that. She says so what if she is? You ask how can she possibly not know about male wickedness? But she says lying together like this is so good, she treasures her relationship with you, don’t make this beautiful feeling into something dirty, just let her lie there peacefully. She goes on to say she, too, can be wild. If it was a man she didn’t know, she would have let him go ahead, it’s because she loves you and doesn’t want suddenly to ruin her relationship with you. You remind her that she had said she was a whore. She says she did say this, and she still is your little whore, but not right now. You ask when she would be. She says she doesn’t know when, but she would be your little whore, and, at that time, she would give you anything you wanted. But you haven’t brought a condom, and she’s afraid of getting some disease. Don’t get cross with her. She says who told you to come unprepared? Where can one of those things be found in the middle of the night? If you really must, you can spray it over her, but definitely not into her. You embrace her, sniff her, and fondle her all over. You rub your semen, her tears, and your
mixed sweat onto her belly, breasts, and nipples. You ask her if she’s happy. She says you can do anything you like, only don’t ask. She embraces you, lets you press against her swelling breasts, and says no matter what, she loves you. Her murmuring and her breathing are right by your ear.
You open the curtains to another day. Afterward, at a café, you are sitting outside under a big umbrella. It is a Sunday, and the afternoon sun is a golden yellow. She came especially to see your play but has to rush back to Paris for the opening of her boyfriend’s exhibition at six o’clock. She says she has to be loyal to him, but she also loves you. You’re happy, put your hand into the sun, say you can catch a handful of sunlight. You tell her to have a go, but she throws back her head and laughs. The waiter comes out, apologizes, lunch finished some time ago, and the cook’s gone. Then what is there to eat? Only ham and eggs. Then ham and eggs it is!
You say you want to write about all this, and she says it will be very beautiful. You say it was she who had given you these feelings and had helped you to turn suffering into something beautiful, all of this had weighed heavily on you. She says after suffering has passed, it, too, can become beautiful. You say she’s a genuine French filly. A woman! She says this both as a correction and an affirmation. You say she’s also a witch. She says she probably is. She wants you to discharge all your suffering, so that you will be a wiser person. Yes, you feel purified inside and outside, as if you’ve been washed and scrubbed right through. She says she wants you to have exactly this feeling, don’t you think it’s something very precious? You say this feeling is what she’s given you, she says what she wants is you as a person and not your lust. You say you really want to rip her apart and swallow her. Then I’d no longer exist, she says, and don’t you think that would be a pity?
You go with her to the railway station, and she holds your arm. You say you love her, and she says she loves you too. You say you love her very much and she says it’s the same with her. Life is worthwhile,
you say. Now pay attention, you’re going to sing! She laughs so hard that she doubles over. She says come on the train with her! You say there is still another performance in the evening, and you can’t just abandon the actors, you do have that amount of responsibility. She says she knows, not to listen to her, she just had to say it. The carriage door closes, and, as the train moves off, she mouths three words: I love you. You know she’s just saying this, and, as she says, she has to stay loyal to her boyfriend. You truly love her, but you can still love other women.
You’re light, and float up as if you’re weightless. You wander from country to country, city to city, woman to woman, but don’t think of finding a place that is home. You drift along, engrossed in savoring the taste of the written language, and, like ejaculating, leave behind some traces of your life. You achieve nothing and no longer concern yourself with things in life and in afterlife. As your life was plucked back from death, why should you be concerned? You simply live in this instant, like a leaf on the brink of falling from a tree. Is it a tallow tree, a white birch, or a linden? Anyway, it’s a leaf, and, sooner or later, it has to fall, but while it’s fluttering in the breeze, it must strive for freedom. You are, after all, the irredeemable prodigal son of a family that was destined for destruction. You want to be free of the ties, complications, perplexities, anxieties of ancestors, wife, and memories, and to be like music, like the jazz of that black man: “They say that falling in love is wonderful, it’s wonderful. . . .”
The plastic leg bearing your signature what in the old picture frame slowly rises on the stage. In the midst of singing, an old man with a sunken mouth is hoisting it up on a rope, solemnly, just like raising a flag. Your actress, a young Japanese performer, is standing elegantly at the front of the stage. She is very solemn, and presents a rose on a broken stem in both hands to the audience. Then, parting her lips, she erupts into laughter, revealing a mouth full of black teeth. This is wonderful, so wonderful!
You have already played around with revolutionary art and revolutionary people, and even if you were to play around more with them, you would not be able to come up with anything new. The world is like an unfurled, worn-out flag. In the early hours of the morning, while you are traveling by car from Provence to the Alps, a gentle stretch of mist comes toward you. You become formless and weightless, and, while mocking others and yourself, you vanish with the wind. . . .
You’re just a melancholic piece of jazz, greedy and insatiable in that moist, dark cavern between a woman’s thighs. So, why is this pitiful little bird of yours complaining?
You’re a saxophone, moaning when you want and shouting when you want. Ah, you have said farewell to revolution! If you think crying will make you feel better, you have a good cry. You’re not afraid of losing anything. If there’s nothing to lose, then you’re free, like a wisp of smoke, like the pure fragrance of marijuana mixed with the fishy smell of stinkweed. So, why are you still worried? Why are you still afraid? When you disappear, you will disappear. But disappearing between the voluptuous, moist thighs of a woman is wonderful and is to understand fully what is known as life. You don’t need to be sad or begrudging, you can squander everything, and this is wonderful!
Tough reeds blowing in the wind. The wind on the North Sea coast of Denmark is strong, but among the clumps of reeds on the undulating sand dunes is a circle of reeds moving against the wind. You think it is a pair of wild geese, but, coming closer, see that it is a naked couple, a man and a woman. You turn to leave, and hear them laughing behind you. Beyond the desolate beach, on the dark-green sea, white-crested waves tumble as they charge toward the seaweed-covered concrete bunker left from the Nazi occupation.
You want to cry, to throw yourself onto her firm breasts wet with perspiration and smeared with semen, and to cry uncontrollably, like a child needing the warmth of his mother. You don’t just enjoy
yourself with women, but also seek their warmth, forgiveness, and acceptance.
Your mother was the first woman you saw naked, through the half-closed door of her lighted room. You were sleeping in the dark on the cool bamboo bed, heard the splashing water, and wanted to take a proper look. When you propped yourself up on your elbows, your bed creaked. Your mother, with soap all over her body, came out, and you quickly lay down and hid your face, pretending to be asleep. She went back to the tub, but the door was left open, and you stealthily looked at the breasts that had fed you, and the black bushy place from which you had emerged. At first, you held your breath, then your breathing quickened, and after that you fell asleep in a state of stirring lust and confusion.
She said you were just a child, and, instantly, your lust settled. Contented and sleepy, you were her obedient child. She gently stroked you, and you placidly allowed her to examine you all over with the palm of her hand. That shriveled thing between your legs, she called it her little bird. Her eyes were gentle as she stroked your head, and, deeply moved, you wanted to nestle against her, nestle against this woman who had given you life, happiness, and comfort. You equated this with love, equated this with sex, equated this with sadness, equated this with unsettling lust, and equated this with language. The need to express and narrate is a form of joy in pouring out, has no connotations of morality, and contains nothing hypocritical. It is a soaking deluge that totally cleanses you, so that you are transparent, like a thread of meaning in life, like light from behind a door behind which there is nothing, like a hazy surge of moonlight behind the clouds. You hear seagulls flapping their wings in the night sky, and see, from the depths of the darkness, the sea surging up into a line of white foam on the tide. In Italy, at Viareggio, the sea is flooded with searchlights, but the beach is deserted. You stand there, motionless, for a long time in front of the red-and-white-striped beach umbrellas.