Speaking in Severed Tongues

Ma Jian’s collection of stories “Stick Out Your Tongue”. The title itself is a little provocative and maybe off-putting. One wonders what it refers to. A suggestion to offer childlike resistance? A doctor’s request?
It is a collection of stories set in Tibet. Ma Jian is Chinese (currently living in exile in Europe) and he travelled in Tibet for several months where, as he writes in a very disillusioned but still inspired preface, he wanted to see the “true Tibet”. He quickly and rather mercilessly deals with all the preconceptions that people in the West have of Tibet, offering that there is very little romanticism to a poor and downtrodden country, one that is as filled with cruelty and corruption as any other country. Curiously enough his stories belie his sober preface, for they are filled with mysteries and with a sense of divinity. The divine, in Ma Jian’s stories, mostly takes on threatening and terrible forms. His protagonists are haunted by specters of loneliness or guilt or ill-handled sexual desires. Tibet creeps into his stories as something spiritually overpowering and frightful. One gets a clear sense of someone who has wandered into a country of unfriendly ghosts. A country that wants to see him gone. And so the preface and the disillusionment take on the form of personal disappointment – albeit the disappointment of an intelligent man – the grumblings of someone who finds only closed doors. It is not hard to imagine that the Tibetans would treat a Chinese traveler with less than kindness.
The stories are very dark. They are filled with death. A minute description of the dismemberment of a woman before a sky burial that is almost as cleansing as it is cruel. A man searching for his family, which might be long dead, and crossing into the realm of spirits through his exhaustion. A woman monk who dies after ritual rape. They are a fascinating look at rituals and superstitions from a completely unromantic set of eyes. But the rationality that we Westerners usually pair with lack of romanticism is absolutely lacking, so there is no attempt to defuse the mystic and divine aspect of Tibet which explodes into the text from time to time. Ma Jian’s dreamlike language does not question, it describes and meanders from one reality into the next, leaving the reader as baffled and willing a follower to the strange powers evoked as the protagonists.
Some of the stories almost read like supernatural horror. The story about the man who dissolves during the search for his family shows man at the supreme mercy of a cruel nature and the people often seem like the landscape. Barren, with hidden and treacherous depths. Most impressive, though, is the tale of the female monk. It is a mixture of wild superstition and spiritual reality – a woman, after long study to take up a high rank in the monastic hierarchy has to undergo a ritual sexual union with a senior monk. After the ritual she is required to sit in freezing water for a period of several days, to confirm that her nature has gone past the human. Her yogic powers, though, desert her and she freezes to death. It is too easy and convenient to see it as a condemnation of spiritual practices, I think. The author has no interest in condemnation. There is the beautiful inevitability of myth in this story, alongside an all too real cruelty and inhumanity. Both exist side by side, without denying each other or intervening with each others powerful effect. The idea to go past the human into the reality of angels is as real in Tibetan spirituality as the idea to go past the human into the reality of dogs.

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The Light Heart of Darkness

After finally watching the magnificent Apocalypse Now I found myself correcting one of the many holes in my literary knowledge and picked up J. Conrad's Heart of Darkness (my school curriculum of books was limited to Goethe, Gerhard Hauptmann and Bert Brecht). One of the characters that struck me most - in both film and book - was the Harlequin...

Maybe even more than the meeting with Kurtz, Marlowe’s meeting with the young Russian that he calls the Harlequin is the part of Heart of Darkness that holds the most fascination for me. He seems a strange and oblique mirror image of the narrator. Marlowe is driven by an unalterable and undeniable internal world – he, too, is a kind of fanatic and more than anyone else’s heart his own is filled by the eponymous darkness. He is introduced to the reader as an almost Buddha-like figure and as such he exemplifies a man who makes sense out of the world through his suffering. The fever of his trip to the heart of the jungle almost always borders on the edge of what can be borne, yet he remains, even through his anger, impassive, unattached to everything but his aim. The world is a horror only to be met by resistance and contempt and supreme thought.

Now enters the Harlequin. The holes in his clothes patched up by mismatched coloured rags, exalted and – to Marlowe – almost admirable, insane and dangerous, he seems like a clown saint, someone who has come to terms with his own fundamental ridiculousness and fickleness. Marlowe sees his devotion to and exaltation of Kurtz as the most dangerous part of him – yet it is what makes him seem invincible to the primal world around him, just as Marlowe’s own dark exultation drives him all the way to Kurtz’s camp. Marlowe seeks invincibility in his fear and the heightened sense it brings to him, and so someone who ignores fear almost entirely or uses it merely to fuel his sense of devotion, can only arouse suspicion in him.

But, in fact, those two have come here in the same manner and for the same reason. One could even say that Marlowe is the more devoted of the two, since his entire voyage is steered by thoughts of Kurtz, while the Harlequin was brought here completely by chance and simply took up the devotion where he found it.

To me the Harlequin is Marlowe turned inside out. Marlowe fearfully guards his human core against the primal assault of the river and the jungle and the Harlequin nervously, thoughtlessly spills this core in order to be able to go on. He is Marlowe without a fear of death. A mad mystic, half swallowed by wilderness, in stark contrast to the sad thinker who strongly clings to his sense of civilization and contempt.

The Harlequin does not have Marlowe’s staunch and almost fanatic moral convictions. He leaves with a few cartridges and his book on sailing in his mismatched pockets – a wandering fool, a strange breath of thoughtlessness and optimism in the dark tale.

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Wolf & Balloon, a melancholy tale of adventure

Wolf & Balloon is a small and private tale about a not entirely intended trip to the moon - I was inspired to write it by an illustration by an immensely talented Russian artist http://oooli.livejournal.com/




"I want to go to the moon," said the balloon. Later, he said, "I will go to the moon."
Wolf scratched his head, thinking about lice and how he hated them and ignored the balloon`s whiny and insistent tone. He was not exactly sure when the balloon had begun to talk to him, but it was an arrangement he found entirely to his discomfort. Wolf was very quiet by nature and he appreciated silence in others. He especially appreciated silence in things that were not supposed to speak at all. He had bought the balloon because it had seemed like a good idea, provided nobody rubbed it and made that squeaky, rubbery noise that made Wolf´s teeth tingle and his fur stand up like battalions of warlike soldiers. He had liked watching the balloon float across his cramped room and he had liked it very much to wake up in the middle of the night or too early in the morning and to see the balloon looming and turning like some indoor planet over his bed. Wolf remembered, he had been very sorry that one could not put a candle inside the balloon without melting it or having the flame eat up all the air inside. A floating light - such a thing he would have loved. A quiet floating light.
But then the balloon had begun to talk. The words had snaked halfway into his dream and upon waking Wolf had found his head swarming with words like so many ants, his skin crawling with them like so many lice. It was nonsensical babbling, so offensive to Wolf whose dreams were always filled with a clear and somwhat blueish silence.
"Take me for a walk," the balloon said.
"No," answered Wolf through gritted teeth. But eventually he did, hoping that outside, in the uncomfortable silence of the grey streets, the balloon would feel how misplaced it was, with its bright colour and its insistent voice lost in the fog and mortar, and be shamed into everlasting silence. When Wolf closed the door behind him, he felt himself swimming in silence, the streets were filled with the trickling moments when we consider a remark we never make and those moments lapped at Wolf´s fur like tiny waves. To Wolf, the silence seemed more substantial than the bricks and, indeed, if he could build a house from silence instead of bricks, he`d have done it in an instant. In this country, people called the wolf a melancholy beast, for its lonely howl it is assumed, but Wolf howled silence. He could open his mouth and scream silence across the world and for as long as his breath lasted him, all noise was lost. He screamed now and thought that even the snake-like slithering of the fog over the wet cobblestones fell silent. He was pleased with himself.
"Is it far to the moon? Do you think I could go there?"
The balloon floated above his head like a bright and merry offense. For a moment Wolf toyed with the idea of simply opening his paw, watching the nylon string slip through his claws and wishing the balloon a speedy end to his lunar voyage - at the beaks of curious birds, if he had his wish. But no, that was too simple a solution. Wolf was no coward. He shut his paw tight around the string and began to walk. He walked long, seething and boiling inside, the balloon happily bobbing in his wake, chitter-chattering from time to time. He walked long enough to reach that part of the city in which humans settled. Wolf disliked humans almost as much as balloons, but he thought that if somebody were to be interested in a mindlessly chattering toy, why, it certainly must be a human.
Wolf looked around. The houses here seemed more refined, the windows more glaring, the doors somewhat more shut that elsewhere. Everything seemed to be wearing a suit, even the mist that sauntered by, apparently ignoring Wolf who blew it away angrily. Wolf didn´t know it was possible to dislike mist, but he found he did. He disliked the very night around him.
"I have heard that you must cross a river if you want to go to the moon. Is that true?"
No human was on the streets, a fact that Wolf would have relished at any other time. Now he bit his lower lip. If he simply left the balloon here, he was certain it would return to him in mysterious ways. Caught by the drift of a passing plane and blown into a train carriage, caught by a little boy who gave it to a secret admirer of Wolf who then tied it to his doorknob, or something like that. Disgust is like a magnet.
There was one house that seemed less unsympathetic than the others, in fact the longer Wolf looked at it, the more he liked it. It was wedged between two big and haughty houses, small, a roof like a straw hat and tiles in wildly mismatched colours on the walls. It looked like it should not be allowed to dress itself alone. He looked up to where the balloon floated and noticed that the balloon seemed to look at that house as well. No further thoughts! Wolf loped towards the little house and hammered his paw against the door.
There came a clockwork sound from within, rattling machines, a metal cough, the crackle of electricity. Then the door swung inward and a tiny figure with an immensely heavy and immensely black frame of glasses and a goldfish bowl for a hat appeared. "You`re pretty hairy for a postman," the figure croaked and blinked, eyes and lids magnified to fascinating proportions behind the glasses. "And pretty late."
"This might coincide with the fact that I am not a postman," said Wolf who was eloquent and soft-spoken whenever dealing with humans. He thought to see a huge and possibly wild beast speak in the mildest of manners might scare them more than bared teeth. "Would you, perhaps, like to have this balloon as an apology for my disturbing you so late at night?"
The man looked at the balloon, the goldfish in his hat pressed its side against the glass and stared at it one-eyed. "Is it filled with helium?"
Wolf was a bad salesman and seeing that his politeness failed to scare it failed him altogether. He stared at the man with disgust and grunted, "What do you care?"
"Well," began the man, leaning back as though he had to inhale a particularly large amount of air. There was a pause. The pause went on longer and Wolf realized abjectly that it was meant for dramatic effect. He hated dramatic effect.
"Yes?" Wolf asked with badly faked interest.
"It so happens," said the man, obviously happy that he was asked. "That I am building a rocket in my backyard. It is a good rocket, as you may well believe, but for a reason I have not yet discovered, it won´t fly. A helium-filled balloon, however, might help it rise a bit, just a bit, you see, until it has enough confidence in the thrust of its rockets." He leaned forward, grubby fingers outstretched towards the balloon and whispered furtively, "It is a question of confidence, you see. It is a very sensitive rocket."
Wolf snatched away the balloon just in time before the man`s fingers closed around the string. A second later he wondered why he had done it. "And where, dear man, do you mean to fly this sensitive rocket of yours?"
"Why, to the moon, of course!" The man sounded insulted.
Wolf was horrified. He looked up at the balloon which seemed to swell in size and grow deeper in colour. "The moon," it said in a dumb, lowing voice. It sounded like a cow. "The moon." The word was stretched out so long Wolf thought the balloon was emptied of all its air by the effort, but it kept on growing.
"Why this is perfect!" cried the man, full of delight. "Come, quickly, before it has any second thoughts!" He snatched Wolf by the wrist, dragged him through a few cluttered and claustrophobic rooms into an equally claustrophobic yard, where the rocket stood. It seemed to be made from various kitchen appliances, scrap metal and assorted garbage. "I wonder if he doesn´t misjudge the situation," muttered Wolf, "It must take an awful lot of confidence to hold something that frail together."
"No time to waste. Hurry." The man took the balloon, climbed up a shaky structure next to his rocket and knotted it fast on the rocket´s nose, which was the handle of an umbrella. As quickly as he had climbed up, he slid down again, grabbed Wolf and ushered him, through a creaking hatch, inside the rocket. "We must encourage it to grow more. You must help me."
If that means I get rid of it, thought Wolf, I`ll play along with the lunatic. He was doubled over, sourrounded by blinking lights and frayed wires. It smelled of burnt toast. The man took a piece of a garden hose and spoke inside it. "The moon. To the moon. To the moon. To the moon." He took a break from his litany to explain. "I installed the speaker, in case I need to communicate with other rockets. If we speak through here, the balloon can hear us. We have to make it grow larger."
Wolf took a deep breath. The man was excited, the damned goldfish on his head was excited, even the sensitive rocket seemed to hum with excitement - and of course the balloon who swelled and swelled. Its excitement could hardly be any greater. So Wolf bit down on his sarcasm and began to mutter, "The moon. To the moon," along with the man. In his mind he already saw himself on a beautiful and very solitary walk home. The lunatic would be so smitten with the balloon that he would pay any price in order to keep it and Wolf would, after some deliberately exaggerated consideration, graciously give in to him and the two would sit next to their pile of rubble called a spaceship and low at the moon like dumb and stricken beasts. It was a pleasing image.
But then the cramped room began to sway, light at first but soon stronger. The floor felt very light and some feathery weight pressed on Wolf´s head. The lunatic gave a wild scream and hugged Wolf who simply coughed and looked away. His gaze fell on a bulkhead not larger than his head which, it seemed, had been the door of a washing mashine not long since. Wolf was puzzled about this for a moment, but he was even more puzzled about the dwindling rooftops he saw through that window. He bit his lip, listenend to the low chant, "the moon, the moon, the moon," that came through the cardboard-thin walls. The thoughts that they had actually lifted from the ground and were rising, on an uncertain route, pulled by a monomaniac balloon, together with a man who built a rocket in his backyard, refused to enter his brain. He opened his mouth to say something and was unsure whether to be surprised when it turned out to be, "Say, when do we cross the river to the moon?"
The journey was, if such a journey can be said to be, uneventful. They reached the moon. The lunatic was blissfully prostrating himself on the pockmarked ground. The moon circled its way along the craters, driven by a slow and dumb joy that nevertheless was quite pleasing to look at and even Wolf found what he had always wished for - absolute silence, in the pit of a crater where the burnt and consumed piece of a meteor still smouldered as a source of light and warmth in what was to be his new home. Taking the rocket back to earth, proved to be impossible for, it´s confidence all used up, it fell apart while it landed, scattering kitchen appliances and household wares across the white dust. Wolf patiently picked them up and decorated his home with them. Sometimes, when he goes for a walk, he sees the balloon and the lunatic whose joy seems to be unending and then, when he is certain that they are not looking his way, he allows himself a little private smile and saunters on, often until earthrise or later.

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