1
In the pitch-black cave, a filthy knot of people huddles around the Priest. He is simmering a cauldron of brew. His hair is the longest, and the filthiest. Inside the stone cave are three men, one woman and the old Priest. They all look alike: the same clotted, dirty hair, none of it braided.
How are they to be told apart? One is the strongest; he must be the lead hunter. None has enough clothing to cover the body. The men wear leaves, the woman an animal hide.
Priest: (stirring the brew clockwise in the cauldron) All right, it’s done. Come on, everyone. Come over and drink.
Man 2: Hm? Does it really work? I’ve been here for ages, standing around all this time, and you ignored me. (hurls a rock into the valley with all his strength) This is driving me insane. What did you call me here for?
They drink the brew from skull bowls, and their eyes seem to brighten a little. Certain things—not enough to be called knowledge—pour into the simple, pitiful brains of primitive people, brains not yet developed. Before, they understood nothing. Now it is much the same.
Strong Man: These people are all so strange. Who are they? Priest: What do you see?
The Strong Man sits upright on a rectangular block of stone. Part of it protrudes like a turtle’s head. He stares intently into the valley ahead. The evening sun is level with the cliff. It is no longer round but a straight line; light strikes the precipice, and part of it slips into his eyes.
Strong Man: He keeps telling me about Soviet montage and the Czechoslovak New Wave. Do you know Lars von Trier?
Man 3: (his speech sways as much as his body) Hey, watch what you say. We are Chinese primitives—Zhoukoudian ape-men, or Peking Man.
Strong Man: He’s started trashing films back home. He wants to make avant-garde experimental films.
Man 2: Who?
Strong Man: The shadow.
Man 3: Then let’s shoot one too… (belches) Let’s shoot it now. (retches) A documentary.
Man 2: Like those modern Chinese films. Our lines have to be remembered, like, “Whoever has no house now will never build one…”
Man 3: Where would primitive men get houses? We all live in caves. Remember: art must not lose touch with reality.
Strong Man: (fiddling with his filthy hair, clotted and stuck together. He tears the tangles apart. It hurts.) If the lot of us cut off our long hair, there’d be enough to knit them a jumper.
Man 2: We’re still young. Young people have to make experimental avant-garde films. Let those old cunts make films. We’ll cut off all our hair and weave them three feet of white silk, grant it to them so they can hurry up and hang themselves. We’ll keep weaving until our hair turns white. By then they ought to be dead.
Strong Man: My brain is now loaded with cinema, poetry, literature and art.
Man 3: (takes another great swallow. His body feels lighter, but his mind is foggy, crowded with thoughts that do not belong to him) I remember now. Primitive people don’t have cameras.
Strong Man: Oh. Then shoot my dick. Stop talking about those shitty films of yours.
2
As always, the primitive people feel the call. Loaded with cinema, poetry, literature and art, they understand now. None of it is theirs; it is all too far ahead of them. It comes too quickly, too falsely. Cinema, poetry, literature and art that seem full of feeling arrive in them through external stimulation. They can never truly take hold of any of it.
The group sees the future. They are the worst actors, trying to act all of it out badly. It is all an illusion.
Man 3: Now we have a script. We can film it even without a camera.
The Strong Man looks left and right. A script… This is the first thing of its kind he has ever encountered. Before, there had been blood, adrenaline, running wildly, driven by himself. This time an outside force will drive him… He understands who he is even less now, and never will. He may be a fraud. In the script, all he does is fool other people and fool himself.
They may be in a car. That is how abruptly the script jumps. They do not need to understand it. Avant-garde experimental theatre? Once my hair is long enough, I’ll grant myself three feet of white silk.
Man 3: We have a leading lady!
Woman: Is it me?
The question feels as though it is being asked in some taxi, amid a bad smell. He asks, Can I smoke? The driver says yes. He says, Got a light? The driver says, Here.
Strong Man: The actress—does she look like someone from the twenty-first century? If she tried to hail a taxi on the street, would the driver refuse to take her?
Here is a secret: in China, the only time you can legally give the Nazi salute is when you are hailing a taxi. Raise your arm and shout, “Heil! Taxi!”
Man 3: Small round face, upturned eyes. Her eyes are diamond-shaped; their corners are as sharp as her nose. Yes, seen from the side, even the tip of her nose tilts up. Like those relatives when I was a child, coming back from the hunt smeared with blood and mud. Every time they went out, I thought they would die out there. Fine if they never came back. We had plenty of dried meat at home. I want to pinch the tip of her nose. Her hair is neither plentiful nor sparse. A thin veil of it lies across her cheeks.
Strong Man: I hunt like the grown-ups do. Priest, watch. Watch her, old bastard! Stop recording everything!
Man 2: Hair like that lets light through, like the lightest garment in the world unearthed at Mawangdui—the plain unlined gauze gown, forty-nine grams, roughly two ounces. They are our descendants. We need to breed as much as possible. Her hair falls across her face like this, and now the sunlight turns it into the wafer-thin rice-paper coating around a candied hawthorn. Makes you want to bite it.
Strong Man: None of that casting-couch shit. This is the set of an avant-garde experimental film. What, are you going to pick consorts like those old cunts?
Man 3: We’re shooting an avant-garde film. And off set we’ll fuck more and breed more. Otherwise where would Mawangdui come from?
Strong Man: (thinking furiously with his undeveloped brain about how to make his possession of the female legitimate) She and I are the pair, got it? A little social Darwinism. I’m the strongest.
The Priest only watches. His back can never straighten. His eyes bulge and show no whites. They are like black holes, fixed on the others. Look closely and the whites are green. Every day he bends over and stares into his medicine.
Strong Man: This is the set of an avant-garde experimental film. Be casual. Deliberately casual. Deliberately mad. This is the set of an avant-garde experimental film, nothing like those old cunts.
Woman: (her voice trembling, probably regretting ever being born) What are we doing now?
Strong Man: What are you wearing? Off. Take it all off. Hurry up and strip.
Man 2: (he does not understand what everyone intends to do. He picks up the stone axe, ready to smash the back of the Strong Man’s skull at the moment he comes) Category III? B-movie? What does that mean?
Man 3: Off, all of it. This is only a process. Are they really doing it or pretending? You’ll have to ask whether he has the nerve.
An animal hide covers the pair from the waist down. The Woman sits slumped on the earth, feeling the bewildered Strong Man make symbolic thrusts with his hips. Everyone watches. The Priest is still watching too.
The Priest’s eyes are trained on him, as though they can see through the hide.
He thinks: “According to Dr Alice Bunker Stockham, Karezza signifies ‘to express affection in both words and actions’. It springs from deep affection and, through this idea and technique, achieves the utmost union of body and mind, as though the two were one. In practice it requires not only self-control, but mutual coordination between sexual partners. When the expression of love in one’s sexual life meets with difficulty at the individual level, this idea can serve as a key to overcoming it. Dr Stockham’s true intention, therefore, was to apply to men the same principle of orgasm control originally applied to women.”
Woman: (she has abandoned resistance. The Strong Man holds her; she is merely a spoil of war. She feels only disgust) An actor? Is an actor only an object? What have I ever played? I have always been manipulated.
Man 2: Carry on, then. I’m the weakest one here. What can I do? The Priest and I have been watching all along, like cameramen. The only things I can manipulate are dead men and stone men.
Oh, poor twenty-first-century woman. Is this really all right? He’s gone. Here’s your phone. He’s already left. Order yourself a 1.5 mg Yuting morning-after pill for delivery.
Priest: (he finally speaks) I record. I am half god, half man, half beast. A cameraman? My eyes. I was trained:
1:1 In the beginning, the photographer vowed to violate neither law nor regulations nor morals.
1:2 The album was without form and void, and darkness lay upon the interface.
1:3 Let there be photographs, and photographs were taken.
1:4 The photographs were good, and so the photographs were printed.
1:5 Works: commercial works, artistic works, private works.
1:6 Let there be commissions. And art was divided from commerce.
1:7 Integrity: earnestly fulfil the responsibilities set out in reasonable and lawful agreements with others.
1:8 Works must satisfy both sides. Copyright protection must be taken seriously.
1:9 Do not infringe another person’s portrait rights. Do not record their likeness upon any medium in the form of photographs, drawings or video.
1:10 Money is a necessity. For its sake, art may be abandoned.
1:11 A citizen’s likeness must not be used for profit.
1:12 Everything was very good. It was decided to shoot some avant-garde experimental cinema.
Man 3: (apparently persuaded, his body relaxing) Put down the axe! You know, the twenty-first century is a B-movie. The kind we make. Whenever you hear someone say he loves the world of the twenty-first century, it is a sign that he expects to be rewarded for it. Men and women are both disgusting. Love of life is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
The bewildered Strong Man lowers his head. He knows that he is about to become the representative of the damned, hateful, irresponsible, decadent twenty-first-century man: strutting inside the patriarchal order on borrowed authority, feasting on the dividends of his era, passing through a thousand flowers without letting a single petal cling to him.
Can this represent the pitiful women of the twenty-first century? Or is it condemning the men of the twenty-first century? The Woman slumped on the ground, the Strong Man, the relieved Man 2, and Man 3 gripping his weapon with every muscle tense—the Priest has brewed the medicine again and gives each of them a bowl.
3
The eighties. Abroad. Any country will do—Europe or America. You wear leggings with an oversized off-the-shoulder T-shirt tucked into them. On your feet, glitter-covered PVC jelly shoes.
The Priest lifts the lid from another cauldron. It is full of clothes, swimming with abandon. One lively, glitter-covered PVC jelly shoe darts about like a catfish. The Strong Man changes into acid-washed jeans mottled with bleach, rips and holes. Above them, a jacket with enormous shoulder pads. Genuine Amekaji—American casual—which is in fashion now. Wear it properly. Look sharp.
The make-up artist paints the Woman in bright colours: heavy blusher, green eyeshadow stretching all the way to her eyebrows, blue mascara and eyeliner crowding the space above her eyes, pink gloss across her full lips. Only now has she crossed into the eighties. Put some rock on the soundtrack. Beer is the most important thing. They carry beer around the world, across America, into every corner of every city. Beer bottles everywhere. Janis Joplin’s rendition of “Summertime”.
Sour, bitter beers, some nearly impossible to drink—Belgian Kwak Amber, Trappist ale, Brooklyn Lager, brown ale, BrewDog Punk IPA, Rogue Chocolate Stout.
The Priest carries out four cases of beer.
Corney: (he has drunk the most; speaking on the phone) Hello, darling Marry, MarryChane. Come to the woods. A dark little grove, thin trunks, cypress trees. The trunks are white. The leaves huddle together like a pile of succulents; held in the hand, those plump leaves feel like plastic.
Marry: You said it! Plastic. I still remember the engagement ring you gave me. It was actually made of plastic. You could snap it in two!
Corney: (he has drunk the most; he dies rather quickly) Hello, my darling MarryChane. Come to the woods.
Corney gives her a knife. A switchblade: press it and the blade springs out. It has a single edge, perfect for throwing. Hold it backwards, palm against the blunt side, fingers resting loosely around the blade. Aim. Throw. Corney speaks to Marry from about ten metres away.
Corney: (breathing drunken fumes) Let’s fight. Let’s have an honest, open fight. Wait until I take off my coat. This time it’s a kimono. Not expensive, pure black. No one can tell except by the sleeves. I won’t wear it on the day of Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Ceremony, don’t worry. But first: no pulling hair. Knives are all right, yes?
Marry nods. She drives the point into Corney’s chest and pierces his heart. Corney should have died there and then. Time passes quickly for us, but slowly for him.
Corney feels a stone lodged in his chest. His body has already begun to harden; the stone of guilt grips the blade. Marry steps closer. The knife is rather valuable, after all. She cannot pull it free. Corney has turned to stone. Sometimes life works miracles.
Sometimes a tender shoot grows from a crack in stone. From Corney’s stone grows a switchblade whose handle is made of tiger maple—tiger-striped wood often used for fine Western guitars and violins.
Why won’t it come out?
Marry waits anxiously. She even calls two locksmiths. Both are Chinese, both surnamed Wang: Master Wang and Master Wang. Marry is anxious, but neither Master Wang can find the place. What is happening? They say the door to the forest will not open.
Marry: I’ll do it myself. Pull. Priest, help me pull. And Man 3, stop filming.
Marry: Do you like it faster or slower?
Corney: Don’t touch the handle. It feels dirty. I never let anyone else touch it before. Oh, I’m not stingy. A knife is evil—irresponsible evil.
The trees grow so densely. Curious, Marry plucks a few pine needles and holds them before Corney’s face. “Open your mouth. See what they taste like.”
Corney: I’ve already lost too much blood. You still want to carry on?
Marry: (coaxing her boyfriend, holding the leaves to Corney’s mouth) Ah… Taste them for me first!
Corney: (starts coughing; clearly choking) Not good.
Corney: I ate five. Spat out three. The other two are stuck in my throat. I can’t cough them up.
Corney: (lying in the little wood, stroking a cypress’s white trunk) I like your barren trunk. Does anyone else like it?
4
Woman: (rolling across the ground, not caring that her robe trails through the mud) I’m not acting anymore. I’m not acting. It’s the Middle Ages now, or primitive times.
Woman: (looking at the innocent man lying on the ground, bleeding to death) I’m not acting anymore!
The Woman clutches her hair and touches his hand: still warm yet cold, soft but slowly stiffening, a red hand swollen with blood, blood flowing out like paint from a filled rubber glove.
Woman: (standing up and snatching the Priest’s computer) I’m deleting your After Effects, Premiere Pro, whatever else—CAD too. You’re not filming anything ever again.
Priest: (quietly to Man 3) Keep going, keep going. This is an avant-garde experimental film. Anything can happen. The Priest pretends to remain composed and sits down, a rational and calm man. If he took the MBTI personality test, he would certainly be an INTP. All that footage, all those unfinished commercial edits—what is he supposed to do now?
She goes on complaining without pause, holding the innocent dying man, feeling his body slowly turn cold. His arm keeps twitching.
Mad already? That quickly? She is like someone flinging cake wildly at a friend’s birthday party, smearing the greasy mess across the walls, the floor, people’s faces.
Woman: (crying out) When I die, then you’ll understand! Cream, strawberries and cheap coconut jelly all over the floor. I won’t clean it. I won’t!
How cruel. I am nobody! In this chaotic space there is nothing at all. Even poets do us humans no harm!
It is like this: “Please bless me.”
“In whose name?”
“In God’s name, of course.”
“We have no god. We have only poets.”
“I only record,” says the poet, though the poet before the screen cannot write poetry.
“In the name of animality, in the name of him-not-him, in the name of all things, bestow the blessing.”
The Prophet says, “I can bestow a blessing. I can see.
There is only a void. Nothing at all. Your gaze is pulled inside.”
“Are there poets there?”
“No, because there is nothing there to describe. But this world does.
Because we provide only fantasy.”
5
The Priest creates all things and puts everything in order. He has so much, and even after everything is deleted he still has so much. The little actor knows only how to delete shortcuts from the desktop. The shortcuts are still lying in the Recycle Bin.
The Priest clicks Restore All and the world returns. The Director pats the innocent man lying on the ground. Get up. You’ve been restored.
Strong Man: What has any of this got to do with me?
The primitive men are all in primitive times.
Every day the lighting technician carries the sun. I know the lighting technician has bipolar disorder. By day he is excited, shining on us in his excitement; at night comes the low. He despises the urge to outdo others, and at night he is nobody. He despises himself.
Us—the make-up artist created us, humankind, our faces. He strokes our faces, sometimes pressing too hard, and a nose takes shape. One pinch and there is a mouth.
The eyes, most sinful of all. The make-up artist never meant to give us two eyes. He only drew close and breathed a gust of wind into our ears, and we learned to sigh and complain.
His earrings fell by accident onto the dripping, unfinished mould. There were two. They landed in the middle of our faces. We saw. We could see that this was the worst possible ending.
With eyes came local ulceration and pus from damaged piercing wounds. Earrings stink when they have been worn too long. Everything we see is disgusting.
The props master works hardest of all. He gives us a place to settle, a reason to live. He creates spears, bows and swamps in which we can roll to our hearts’ content.
“It’s fine,” says the Director. “This is the set of an avant-garde experimental film. Anything can happen.” Man 3 holds a spear with a stone lashed to it, his body barely covered.
“I like your barren breasts.”
Disgusting. Everything my eyes see is this disgusting. I don’t know!
“She really has gone mad. She’s sick.” The Director sighs. “She isn’t sick. She has merely defeated truth with desire. She is looking inside herself for a character. And she is too ugly, although she can see and feel. She cannot possibly be loved, so her face cannot contort. She is like the opposite of beauty.”
“How could our eyes ever see beauty? All I can see are infected piercings oozing pus.” The Woman’s crying makes a soft, rustling sound.
“An actor should be the victor who overcomes ugliness. The most beautiful being in the world.”
“Stop playing with your own eyes. Eyes wander through private desire. They have the right to seek a place of greater pleasure.” The little actor drives a spear into Man 3’s abdomen. Through the wooden shaft she feels the sound of something writhing: the stomach. She stirs the spear and churns Man 3’s insides into a mess.
“Slow down. I’m about to transcend. How beautiful pain is!”