Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens: Reportage

Two Pilgrims

They have been travelling for more than four hours when suddenly the asphalt comes to an end. The bus proceeds along a bumpy dirt road, then half an hour later passes below a Communist-era triumphal arch made out of concrete, in the centre of which they can glimpse for a moment the red star high above, and on either side a few slogans, washed away by the rain, about the glory of work, until finally, teetering among the huge potholes, they turn into a larger bus yard situated between a few unspeakably wretched huts; the driver steps on the brake, the conductor opens the door and the vehicle, with a huge groaning sound, comes to a stop.

Stein and his companion don’t move, but when they see that the other travellers are lethargically beginning to gather up their things and, one after the other, getting off the bus, nothing remains for them to do but the same. They look over here, they look over there, but there is nothing remotely resembling a mountain anywhere in sight, all around them are flat cornfields, and across from them a grimy concrete building; the driver and the conductor wordlessly pack up their things and leave the bus so quickly that they can barely catch up.

‘This still isn’t Jiuhuashan, is it?’—they ask. ‘When will the bus be leaving again?’

Neither the conductor nor the driver utters a single word, they don’t even slow down; like people with some kind of urgent business, in one moment, they have already disappeared into the building. Jiuhuashan — they try again, here with one traveller, there with another, but no one answers. Jiuhuashan, they say to a few young men standing beneath the eaves of the building, but they too just look at them, then, sniggering, turn away in confusion. Then they notice a small group: there is something unusual about them, because suddenly they pick up their belongings and set off for the rear corner of the muddy yard where it seems there are a few battered minivans waiting. Nothing indicates that they might be utilized for any purpose whatsoever, nonetheless there are one or two people sitting in each, and if they are not doing anything, if they are not giving any kind of sign of waiting for passengers, it’s still as if the people surging towards them somehow know better — so it seems to the two Europeans that it would be best if they too joined the back of the small group, in other respects not too reassuring looking, straining towards the minivans, and to try yet again:

‘Jiuhuashan?’

A woman of about 60 looks back at them with a cheerful, friendly gaze, nods and points at a battered vehicle.

‘Jiuhuashan!’

The group immediately begins to talk to a man sitting behind the steering wheel of one minivan but he just gazes indifferently ahead, as if he were completely alone in the universe. The people in the group, however, don’t give up, they just keep talking and talking and talking until the man slowly turns his head, looks them up and down, then climbs out with difficulty and, as if he wasn’t really in the mood for this, with a surly expression, fiddles for a long time with the lock and finally opens the door and the usual battle for seats begins, and although this time they encounter considerably more difficulty, everyone behaving as if everything were perfectly normal, and already gazing ahead readily and confidently, the man looks them up and down one by one, or in the best-case scenario as if he were counting them, then mutters something to the person sitting next to him and starts up the motor.

Inside the van are two rows of seats, and there are eight seats altogether, but, as it turns out, there are 15 people in the bus, so that, compared to the large bus in which they had travelled up to this point, an even more impossible situation is now presented: 15 people and their packages for nine places, but no one raises the question of what if, for example, another minivan from among at least the three would undertake the task of transporting the passengers, there is no grumbling, not one ill-intentioned word is spoken, on the contrary, a kind of satisfaction can be felt in the air, they press up against one another just as much as they can and, if it seemed inconceivable at the beginning, within a minute everyone is in their place, piled on top of one another, tightly squeezed against one another, but everyone is in — Stein and his companion are of course once again at the very back, although directly in front of them is the woman with the cheerful, friendly gaze as well as someone else who is clearly travelling with her, she too looks to be about 60, they are, in the strictest sense of the word, their neighbours, and the proximity of these two among the invariably none-too-reassuring faces is immediately comforting because, beyond the obvious reassurance of their presence, on the one hand, they provide a kind of guarantee that the direction in which the two foreigners wish to go is the correct one; on the other hand, they shore up the belief that there will be something which they too will be able to understand in this country, operating amid opaque rules and regulations, as, for example, what is going on here, and what is the explanation here; because this is obviously a long-distance bus terminal, but in Nanjing no one said anything about how the Nanjing buses come only this far, and then you have to get onto a smaller vehicle if you wish to go further, as they wish to, and very much so; they sit silently, pressed up against the back seat, and they look ahead towards the driver to see if they are starting off yet, and in the meantime they feel more and more relieved, really, both of them, both Stein and his interpreter: look, they weren’t lost after all, they weren’t going in the wrong direction, and the sacred mountain they are seeking, the hoped-for goal of their journey, Jiuhuashan, cannot be so far away now.

The road onto which they soon turn runs along a flat hillside and is much worse than any other road upon which they have travelled so far. Actually, it isn’t even a road, merely two kinds of travel-worn tracks in the mud, but the passengers don’t seem to be the least bit worried, on the contrary, when they are jolted around by an unavoidable pothole and the bus throws them all up against the roof, the response is loud laughter, or, when along one of these indescribable tiny roads the conditions become worse, and nothing remains except for a breathtakingly thin, serpentine strip from which the wheels on the right side practically hang off, the people do not grow anxious, saying oh my God, what will happen, we’re going to slip, we’re going to plummet into the abyss hardly visible in the ever-thickening fog, no, instead, a kind of liveliness spreads from the front to the back, and from the back to the front, and a conversation starts up, and even Stein immediately realizes that he is not preoccupied with the indisputable dangers and uncertainties but with the two women pressed up and squatting in front of them, because after about 10 minutes, as the passengers breathe into the bus and it begins to warm up, both of them push back their hoods onto their broadcloth coats, and their shaven heads become visible — and it can be seen that both have the same yellow travel bag, sewn from the same material, and nothing else — oh, Stein suddenly realizes, so, well, they are pilgrims, and he looks at them, particularly at the one with the more cheerful gaze who was so friendly and helpful at the bus terminus, he examines her features, and joyfully determines that the gaze is not only friendly and cheerful but also that within it is a kind of simple grace, a naive, innocent serenity, perpetually radiant, that is how she looks out of the window, that is how she observes the outburst of laughter at one huge jolt or another, that is how she looks back at him at times, at the Caucasian with that large nose — clearly amusing to her — that gaunt white man who is just now scrutinizing where and among whom he is travelling, and just who are these people in front of him, in these identical, long coats of broadcloth, with those identical yellow bags in their laps. Her companion is very different, Stein realizes: she has a serious, intelligent, thoughtful expression, as if she were examining the road to see if they are really going in the right direction in the now drizzling rain, and, despite her identical clothing and shaven skull, it is suddenly clear that she is a completely different kind of person. He observes her delicate glasses, her elegant, cared-for hands, the evident pride and resolution in her posture, and he thinks that, unlike the other one, she is most probably wealthy and educated, and it’s as if she were a little colder, or more stern, more peremptory, more worldly, one thing is certain, he establishes within himself, this woman comes from New China, the China that he, Stein, is trying to escape, so that, well, if they too are pilgrims, they are completely different from each other, and his attention keeps returning involuntarily to the more friendly of the two, as it were, betraying which one is more sympathetic to him, which of course is not so difficult: it isn’t difficult to choose, as in that naive, serene, friendly creature there is something disarmingly worthy of love — he sits at the very back of the bus, he too looks at what can be seen on the road and through the chasm among the shoulders and heads bouncing up and down, then he looks again at this serenity, at this forbearance, at this innocence, and he thinks, well, she represents someone — even here, even in China, where a traveller such as him can never be careful enough, according to prudent advice — to whom one would entrust everything.

He tries to make out the landscape they are travelling through, as much as he can in a situation as difficult as this, because he can feel that they are headed upward, but for a while he sees more of the two dear female pilgrims than of the life-threatening, winding, serpentine road, plunged into ever-thicker fog, he hears the engine straining, as the driver struggles with the gearbox, because he keeps trying to force it into third gear but it can only go into second, the road is too steep and the bends are too sharp, he brakes, second, third, and quickly back into second, they tilt this way, they tilt that way; the people in front of him press down on him with such force that at times Stein feels as if it is he who is holding up the entire load, but he doesn’t bother with this, he isn’t interested in the difficulties because now the lively cheerfulness has infected him, and what if this is already Jiuhuashan, he thinks after a bend in the road, oh, he says loudly to the interpreter, maybe we are already in Jiuhuashan, maybe we are heading upward on Jiuhuashan — he sees that the passengers are taking out money and passing it on forward to the driver, so they ask the friendly pilgrim how much, 5 yuan per person she says, the interpreter counts out 10 for both of them, puts it in the pilgrim’s hand and gestures for her to pass it forward, the high spirits are general, clearly the two foreigners are not the only ones who have made a long journey up to this point, and it can be tangibly felt that they are now in the last kilometres, it is almost certain now that they will arrive shortly, everyone will be up there very soon, and if they have no specific idea of who this everyone is — and it would be difficult, because it is hard to determine from the dark, wretched faces why they have come, if they are tourists, or if they have come here to work, or if they live up here — still, it occurs to Stein that the two women who look like pilgrims are not pilgrims but nuns from one of the nunneries up there, my God, he tries to lower his head so he can see something out of the tiny window, so here he is in Jiuhuashan, and now, on the last part of the journey going upward: he thinks back to how they set off in Nanjing and the journey from Nanjing up to this point, he recalls how at the terminus they found the bus coming here completely by chance, and it suddenly comes to mind how hopeless it was, indeed, the journey here ever- and ever- and ever-more hopeless, as in a fairytale, but at once he feels certain that he did the right thing, yes, the right thing in designating Jiuhuashan as the first goal of his journey, his planned quest for the detritus of Chinese classical culture, yes, precisely this abandoned Buddhist mountain: everyone tried to talk him out of coming here, just what are you thinking, what will you find there, his Chinese friends asked him, there’s nothing there any more, nothing that you would hope for, no kind of hope at all, not least in Jiuhuashan, they noted disapprovingly and shook their heads; he however — precisely now in the perspective of this desolation — sees clearly that he is on the right path, that he had to come here, exactly here, on these muddy roads and these life-threatening serpentine bends, when some kind of movement starts up towards the front of the seats and his ear is struck by a fragment of an angrier conversation, it is the driver, he can tell with his companion, it is the driver repeating something in a rage, pointing at them, of course they don’t understand, it emerges only slowly, in the regional dialect, what he wants: it’s the money, they should pass it over to him, he says, the 10 yuan, he throws back threateningly, and the others explain and try to tell them that they, the two Caucasians, still haven’t paid, the driver is ever-more enraged but now they are too, because of course they paid, the interpreter answers, they sent the money forward earlier, the interpreter looks at the serene-faced pilgrim: she does not confirm anything but, to their greatest surprise, turns her head away, she does not intervene in the conversation which, because of the 10 yuan, is growing ever-more ominous, they keep repeating that they gave it to the female pilgrim, and the driver yells that their 10 yuan never made it over to him, and he steps on the brake, this is the last straw, everyone else has paid, the female pilgrim just sits there silently and stares out of the window with her unchanging serene gaze, this is impossible, the interpreter bursts out in rage, beginning to argue with the pilgrim that they certainly handed over — right into her hand — the 10 yuan, at which point the female pilgrim says to the driver that she has no idea what money these foreigners are talking about, and at this they are struck dumb, Stein, horrified, tries to catch her gaze, the interpreter tries ever-more vehemently to force her to hand over the money, and it goes on like this for a while when suddenly two things happen: on the one hand, the companion of the female pilgrim, the more serious one, the less sympathetic one, says something softly to the other, at which point the other takes out the 10 yuan and passes it forward without a word; and on the other, Stein comprehends that this pure naivety — this innocent serenity, this sudden object of his confidence and affection — is a thief, she wanted to steal the 10 yuan, he realizes, but only with difficulty, because he simply doesn’t want to believe it, but it did happen; the bus starts off again and in the ensuing silence — with the successful resolution of this affair, the people sitting in front of them become quiet — he must grasp, he must recognize, he must reconcile himself to the fact that this Buddhist pilgrim or nun cheated him, and how! — for there she sits in the same serene tranquillity, her back turned towards him, and looking out of the window with the same innocent gaze as if nothing at all had happened, as if she hadn’t stolen the money; she did, however, steal it, and that hurts the most, that she is a pilgrim, a nun, in this broadcloth coat, with a pilgrim’s bag, en route towards the Buddha, and that she tried to cheat a defenceless foreigner — but they are very close to the goal when, as if at the touch of a magic wand, the bus suddenly emerges from the fog, they can glimpse the peak of the mountain, and the sun is shining everywhere, it shines through the grimy windows of the minivan, every colour is sharp, deep, warm, and everything is floating in the green, it’s Jiuhuashan, says the interpreter reassuringly and, to get him out of this state, places a hand on his shoulder, Jiuhuashan, he nods, but it’s not so easy for him, he is still not able to recover from what just happened; out there, however, the sun is shining, they rattle alongside monks in yellow robes, yes, here they are, Stein grimly answers the interpreter, and then requests for something to be translated to the female pilgrim, because he has something to say to her — leave it, the interpreter tries to talk him out of it — no, he insists, please translate this:

‘So, how are you going to settle this with the Buddha? That lousy 10 yuan? are you going to split it?’

Shush, the interpreter tries to quiet him down, and points towards the buildings amassed on one side of the mountain, and on the other side the breathtaking chasm, stop it, really, the interpreter nods at something in front of them; and already the first monastery buildings are visible, clearly this is the main street, teeming with monks, shops selling devotional objects and even lodgings — and they stop exactly here, they get out of the bus exactly here, the sun shines into their eyes and, completely blinded, they try to make out where they are, but there is just this sudden illumination and the sense that somewhere over there on the left there could be the mountain’s steep slope and the famous peak, about half a minute goes by until, as their eyes grow used to the light, suddenly they see the entire thing as one whole, and everywhere there are countless monasteries, they just stare at the buildings thickly woven across the side of the mountain, the wondrous yellow monastery walls and the green and the green everywhere, they gaze at the monks flocking around them curiously, further on are the paths leading up from the main street towards the monasteries — and everything is forgotten, he will try to figure out later, Stein decides, what was intended by this insignificant petty theft, how to explain it, and in general: what did it mean, what was its import, had he really misunderstood, when suddenly the female pilgrim or nun with the serious face comes over to him and, in the friendliest possible manner, explains to the interpreter — when she sees that only he understands Chinese — that the entrance in front of which they are waiting is that of some lodgings, it is quite adequate, they can go inside, she shows them, this is not the case for all the lodgings in Jiuhuashan, she warns them good-naturedly, not every one is. . good, she tilts her head, but this one is, you can stay in this one, and so, smiling, she waves farewell with a delicate movement and as if a little in excuse for the unpleasantness which they had to suffer because of her companion, she sets off on one of the paths with quick tiny steps, up into the heights, towards a monastery, in order to reach her companion, the guilty one who, with a freshness belying her age, is already running, and for a while they can still see that naive, lovable, dear face which just shines and shines in this sharp pure sunlight, as she turns to look at them now and again as if she wanted to show them, until she is finally swallowed up by the green of the path, that nothing, but nothing will ever wipe away that admired, illusory innocence from that face — ever.