Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather by Gao Xingjian Read Free Book Online Page A

like her: the older she got, the kinder she became and the more she had to say, by repeating herself. My grandfather wasn’t like that: the older he got, the less he had to say and the thinner he became, until he was like a shadow, coming and going without a sound. But at night he coughed, and once he started, he couldn’t stop, and I was afraid that one day he wouldn’t be able to catch his breath. Still, he kept on smoking until his face and fingernails were the color of histobacco, and he himself was like a dried tobacco leaf, thin and brittle, and it worried me that if he wasn’t careful and bumped into something, he might break into little pieces.
    My grandfather didn’t just fish; he also loved to hunt. He once owned a well-greased shotgun made out of steel tubing. To make the shotgun was a lot to ask of anyone, and it took him half a year to find someone who would do it. I don’t recall his bringing home anything except for a rabbit. He came in and threw a huge brown rabbit onto the kitchen floor. Then he took off his shoes, asked my grandmother to fetch hot water so he could soak his feet, and immediately started rubbing some tobacco he’d taken from his pouch. Wild with excitement, I hovered around the dead rabbit with our watchdog, Blackie. Unexpectedly my mother came in and started yelling. Why didn’t you get rid of that rabbit like I told you to? Why did you have to buy yourself that shotgun? My grandfather muttered something, and my mother started yelling again. If you must eat rabbit, ask the butcher to skin it before you bring it into the house! My grandfather seemed very old then. After my mother left, he said German steel was good, as if with a shotgun made of German steel he could shoot something more than rabbits.
    In the hills not far from the city, he told me, there used to be wolves, especially when the grass started to grow in the spring. Crazed with hunger after starving all winter, the wolves came into the villages and stole piglets, attackedcows, and even ate young cowherd girls. Once they ate a girl and left only her pigtails. If only he’d had a German shotgun then. But he wasn’t able to keep even the shotgun he’d had made locally from steel tubing. In the book-burning era of the Cultural Revolution they called it a lethal weapon and confiscated it. He sat on a little wooden stool just staring ahead without saying a word. Whenever I thought about this, I felt sorry for the old man and dearly wanted to buy him a genuine German-made shotgun. I didn’t, but I once saw a double-barreled shotgun in a sporting goods store. They told me I would need a letter of introduction from the highest-level sports committee in the province as well as a certificate from the public security office before they could sell it. So it was clear that I would be able to buy my grandfather only a fishing rod. Of course I also know that even with this imported ten-piece fiberglass fishing rod he won’t catch anything, because our old home turned into a sandy hollow many years ago.
    There used to be a lake not far from our home on Nanhu Road. When I attended primary school, I often passed the lake, but by the time I started junior secondary school, it had turned into a foul pond that produced only mosquitoes. Later, there was a health campaign and the pond was filled in. Our village also had a river. As I recall, it was in an area far from town, and when I was a child, I went there only a couple of times. Once when my grandfather came to visit, he told me that the river had dried upwhen a dam was built upriver. Even so, I want to buy him a fishing rod. It’s hard to explain, and I’m not going to try. It’s simply something that I want to do. For me the fishing rod is my grandfather and my grandfather is the fishing rod.
    I step into the street shouldering a fishing rod with all its black fiberglass pieces fully extended. I can feel everyone looking at me and I don’t like it. I’d like to get on a bus,