Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens: Reportage

A Dream in the Courtyard of the Guangji Si[177]

By now he is really tired and he has nowhere to go. He no longer wants to see any temples, any museums, or any exhibits. He wanders like a lost man around Beijing. He can’t stay home, nor can he sit forever next to Mama’s bed. So every day he comes out of the house, and he walks along the same streets, and he ends up in the same place: in the Guangji Si, a forgotten, abandoned Buddhist monastery situated amid a few remaining buildings — because no one is ever there, not a soul, just as there was no one here yesterday, neither monk, nor pilgrim, really, no one comes here. He finds his place, the place where he was yesterday, the day before yesterday as well, he goes to one of the inner courtyards at the back of the little temple, and there he sits down on the same step of the ruined pavilion, and he doesn’t do anything, he doesn’t think — nothing.

It’s afternoon, or twilight is already beginning to descend, the weak sunlight falls flatly. It warms him a little, and in that warmth he falls into a deep sleep.

Then suddenly he wakes up. Tang Xiaodu is sitting next to him. Stein is really surprised; he doesn’t understand how he could have ended up here. How could he have known that he comes here? For while he does not speak, he lights a cigarette, then slowly blows out the smoke. He doesn’t look sad but tired, like Stein. Before he could ask how he was able to find him, Stein begins to describe his situation. That he is no longer curious, he doesn’t want to see anything, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone, and that he was always comes here, into this protection; and then he confesses that he is in despair because he cannot find what he was searching for, and it now seems to him that he never will find it because it no longer exists, or nothing remains of it; and that, moreover, he believes he has only himself to thank for all this despair, because no one ever forced him to believe that what he was looking for was still here, anyone whose word he might have trusted never made any such claim; so that in all likelihood the whole thing was his concoction: he made up the idea that it still existed somewhere, and it was he who began to search, and of course he didn’t find anything at all, just a few sad people and a few sad places, and already this stream of words is beginning to gush forth; Xiaodu listens, he nods silently, and Stein just keeps on talking: he was here in 1998 as well, when he came in search of the entirety of classical China, and although he kept telling people that his quest was for Li Taibai, well, of course then too it was the idea of Chinese classical culture that was in his head, and you know, Stein tells him, that journey was still a happy one, he didn’t find anything back then either; still, in the end, there was something, and he formulated it like this: that the sky that clouded above him was the same sky that clouded above Li Taibai and all of Chinese classical poetry, and all of Chinese tradition, and this filled him with happiness just to know that it was the same sky; only now he feels so uncertain, so that he will place his trust in in his dear friend Xiaodu, may he be the one to tell Stein now: Are the heavens here above them still the same?

Tang Xiaodu does not reply for a long time.

No, these are not the same heavens, he answers very softly, all the while not looking at Stein. Here below, on the earth, everything has changed. There is no more Buddhism, no more Taoism, there are no monasteries, no painting and no music, no poetry and no tradition — everything here below has changed, so how could the heavens above us be the same?

He rises, takes a few steps back and forth, then walks around the entire courtyard, stopping here and there where there are still patches of sunlight; he stands, warming himself in the sun’s rays, and Stein watches him, and he feels that in a moment he will fall asleep in this peaceful silence, here in the innermost courtyard of the Guangji Si.

But he doesn’t.

He wakes up.

And there is no one beside him.

The sun has set.

The air is chilly now.

The courtyard is empty.