One Man's Bible

Read One Man's Bible for Free Online Page B

Book: Read One Man's Bible for Free Online
Authors: Gao Xingjian
Tags: Fiction, General
but didn’t say a thing all night.”
    “Like you.”
    “That night was very special, I had never seen a Chinese home with that sort of atmosphere. . . .”
    “It was special because a white German girl with bright red lips had suddenly arrived. . . .”
    “And there was also a barefoot little Beijing girl who was lovely and slender. . . .”
    “Flickering candlelight. . . .”
    “We sat drinking in your warm, cozy apartment as we listened to the howling wind outside.”
    “It was unreal, just like it is now, and probably there are also people watching. . . .”
    You again think that the room is probably being videotaped.
    “Is it still unreal?”
    She clamps you with her legs and you close your eyes to experience her, hugging the fullness of her body and mumbling, “There was no need to go before morning. . . .”
    “Of course, there wasn’t. . . .” she says. “At the time, I didn’t want to leave. It was a bitterly cold winter night and we had to cycle for an hour. Peter wanted to go, and you didn’t try to get us to stay.”
    “Yes, that’s right.” You say that it was the same with you. You had to cycle back with her to the barracks.
    “What barracks?”
    You say that she was a nurse in the army hospital and she couldn’t stay out overnight.
    She lets go of you and asks, “Who are you talking about?”
    You’re talking about her army hospital being in the barracks in theouter suburbs of Beijing. She used to come every Sunday morning, and on the Monday morning before three o’clock you had to set off and cycle for more than two hours to get her back to the barracks before dawn.
    Shrinking back, she pushes you away, sits up and asks, “Are you talking about that Chinese girl?”
    You open your eyes and see her glaring at you. You apologize and explain that it was she who started talking about the little lover you had at the time.
    “Do you long for her a lot?”
    After pondering, you say, “That’s in the remote past. We lost contact long ago.”
    “And you’ve had no news about her?” She sits on her haunches.
    “No.” You also move away from her and sit on the edge of the bed.
    “Don’t you want to look for her?”
    You say that China is already very distant from you. She says she understands. You say you have no homeland. She says her father is German but her mother is a Jew, so she has no homeland either. But she can’t get away from her memories. You ask her why not? She says she isn’t like you, she’s a woman. You say oh, and stop talking.

3
    He needed a nest, a refuge, he needed a home where he could be away from people, where he could have privacy as an individual and not be observed. He needed a soundproof room where he could shut the door and talk loudly without being heard so that he could say whatever he wanted to say, a domain where he as an individual could voice his thoughts. He could no longer be wrapped in a cocoon like a silent larva. He had to live and to experience, be able to groan or howl as he made wild love with a woman. He had to get a space to exist, he could no longer endure those years of repression, and he needed somewhere to discharge his reawakened lust.
    At the time his small partitioned room could only hold a single bed, a desk and a bookshelf, and in winter, when he put in a coal stove with a metal pipe for warmth, it was hard to move around with another person in the room. The worker and his wife having intercourse, or their baby having a pee, on the other side of the very basic partition, could be heard clearly. Two other families lived in the building and they all shared the tap and drain in the courtyard, so whenever the girl visited his small room, she was observed by the neighbors. He had to leave the door partly open as they chatted and drank tea. His wife—a woman he’d married ten years earlier and from whom he’d been separated for almost as long—had gone to the Party committee of the Writers’ Association, which

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