Soul Mountain. Gao Xingjian

He was pulverized before he could yell out.

      “Are you listening?” you ask.

      “Yes,” she says.

      You say the husband’s cousin was frightened out of his wits and absconded, not daring to report the accident. The woman saw the hessian shoes hanging on the carrying pole of a man bringing charcoal down from the mountain, he was calling as he went for someone to identify a corpse. How could she not recognize the red string woven into the soles and heels of the hessian shoes she had made with her own hands? She collapsed and kept banging her head on the ground. She was frothing at the mouth as she rolled around, shouting: Let all the ghosts of the dead and the wronged all come back, let them all come back!

      “I also want to shout,” she says.

      “Then shout.”

      I cant.

      Her voice is pitifully muffled. You earnestly call out to her but she keeps saying no from the other side of the wall. Still, she wants you to go on talking.

      “What about?”

      “Her, the mad woman.”

      You say the women of the village couldn’t subdue her. It took several men sitting on her and twisting her arms before they managed to tie her up. From then on she became crazy and always predicted the calamities which would befall the village. She predicted that Ximao’s mother would become a widow and it really happened.

      “I want revenge too.”

      “On whom? That boyfriend of yours? Or on the woman who’s having an affair with him? Do you want him to discard her after he’s had his fun with her? Like he treated you?”

      “He said he loved me, that he was only having a fling with her.”

      “Is she younger? Is she prettier than you?”

      “She’s got a face full of freckles and a big mouth!”

      “Is she more sexy than you?”

      “He said she was uninhibited, that she’d do anything, he wanted me to be like her!”

      “How?”

      “Don’t be inquisitive!”

      “Then you know about all that went on between the two of them?”

      “Yes.”

      “Then did she know all that went on between the two of you?”

      “Oh, stop talking about that.”

      “Then what shall I talk about? Shall I talk about the shaman?”

      “I really want revenge!”

      “Just like the shaman?”

      “How did she get revenge?”

      “All the women were frightened of her curses but all the men liked chatting with her. She seduced them and then discarded them. Later on she powdered her face, installed an altar, and openly invoked ghosts and spirits. Everyone was terrified of her.”

      “Why did she do this?”

      “You have to know that at the age of six she was betrothed to an unborn child in the womb — her husband in the belly of her mother-in-law. At twelve she entered her husband’s home as a bride, when her husband was still a snotty-nosed boy. Once, right on these floorboards upstairs she was raped in the straw by her father-in-law. At the time she was just fourteen. Thereafter, she was terrified whenever there was no-one else in the house but the father-in-law and her. Later on, she tried cuddling her young husband but the boy only bit her nipples. It was hard waiting years until her husband could shoulder a carrying pole, chop wood, use the plough, and eventually reach manhood and know that he loved her. Then he was crushed to death. The parents-in-law were old and were totally dependent upon her to manage the fields and the household, and they didn’t dare to exercise any restraints on her as long as she didn’t re-marry. Both parents-in-law are now dead and the woman really believes she can communicate with the spirits. Her blessings can bring good fortune and her curses can bring disaster, so it’s reasonable for her to charge people incense money. What is most amazing is that she got a ten-year-old girl to go into a trance, then got the girl’s long-dead grandmother, whom the girl had never seen, to speak through the child’s mouth. The people who saw this were petrified …”

      “Come over, I’m frightened,” she pleads.