Du Yun ZOLLE libretto

Zolle

<Italian: A chunk of (Earth)> Story: DU Yun

The train stopped at a remote station. I saw them walking down from the train. Two men; an older and a younger. One of them is my father, the other my son.

They stood on the platform of the train station, overlooking the crop-fields facing the north-west. I knew they were looking at the village, I knew my father was telling my son that at the end of the crop-field is our home-village. I saw my father and my son stand on our home-earth, one full of gusto, one nonchalant. I heard the home-earth of our village then spill a sigh ://: my tears fell down.

-------------For many years I have imagined my returning day of coming home. I imagined the day of the glory. I could imagine I was leading my entire family –––– my parents, my husband and all of my children, bringing eighteen pieces of luggage, eighteen pieces of luggage full of crackers cloths soaps pens food and liquor, full of gifts for my village-relatives. I could imagine bringing Copyright © 2005 by Du Yun (ASCAP).

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my children to our ancestors’ tombs, the ancestors under the tomb would run to each other hysterically, exhilaratingly inform each other of the good news of my home-coming. But it’s all a dream. I never guessed our first returning home would be this lonely. My father and my son had no more than a little box with them and I, could no longer bring anything back to my homevillage, for I am already, a wandering ghost.

-----------------I remember from my previous life of my first time visiting my home-village. That summer, I turned eight years old.

After trains, buses, rick-shaws and walkings, my father led me to a field of crop and mule dumps.

The smell of mule dumps, pungent, sweet, filled of fresh grasses that nearly jumped out –– the cleanest smell seeped into my memory at eight years old. the sights of the land, the curve of the stones at the edge of the field; the nights I fell sound asleep, sinking into the smell of the mule dumps.

The bed was huge, made of bricks that beneath it, was the cooking fire coming from the kitchen next door. In the bed, I fell sound asleep, dreamt of nothing. My eight-year-old-body was a welcoming home for the Page 2

returning spirits. My eight-year-old-body beckoned the spirits back into me, for the first time in my living life. I remember the sound of their returning, the presence of them on those nights still vividly alive in my memory as a ghost.

The next day my father and I paid a visit to my grandparentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tombs that sat just behind the house. I saw two yellow mounds sticking out from the earth. I kneeled down. I heard my grandma sighed. Later, my grandpa murmured back to me. Tears poured out.

Tears that didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t belong to my eight-year-old body.

They were cultivated from many life-long times. Some Ancient and Ageing tears. They came out so strong that my eight-year-old-body could hardly contain; nor could it stop the wailing. Then my eyes wandered to elsewhere; they saw my shoulders trembling and yet didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand why. My eyes felt dry. Then my knees failed me; my eight-year-old-body collapsed. ...

-----------Our entire village bears the same surname as I. My family name has its own temple. Because girls are not allowed there, my father and I had to sneak into Page 3

there. My father unfolded a painting in front of me telling me that is the painting of our family tree. A very old man looked at me. Under his seated feet, are the names of his sons grandsons and great grandsons and their sons grandsons and great-grandsons. Their wives’ names are put into the left column. Throughout the years their names looked over their husbands’ names, as though the last attempt to renew their marriage. I saw the name of my grandpa’s on the right and my grandma’s on the left. They sat at the fourth column to the last one. There are only three more spaces on the family tree. After they are filled, there is no space on that crumpled painting for newcomers anymore.

The blank spaces were dancing, frantically, in front of my eyes, hurting me.

It was the fourth to the last column. I counted to make room for my uncle and my father. And there was only one left. I was in a panic. I have to die before my cousins. I have to die before them. The last one on the column. I have to make it.

From that day on, my eight-year-old-body aged quickly.

It could not await the day for its name to appear on the last column of that painting that was hung in a dark Page 4

temple in a remote village, a distant land somewhere there.

-----------Emphatically, I’m trying to renew my lease on life, as a ghost.

Looking down, I’m seeing full of zombies crawling on the ever-changing fast pace of living things.

I’m seeing what has been destroyed more quickly than the ozone layer is the layers of irony that categorizes us from being generalized. Our radiation of the remembrance has been disappearing.

No one cares. Nothing is worth mentioning.

I roamed along, wandered about; nowhere accepted me. The ghosts have their own communities to which I don’t belong. I forgot to bring a registration number onto this world. The tragic irony is, I still remember my life on the earth. I still remember the smell of my land.

The pulse of my land yet vibrates; the blood of which yet circulates; breathes of which, intoxicated.

----------I stepped into someone, a man. He sang in his own dialect; which I would not understand had I not been a ghost. Another land-watcher. He showed me his land; Page 5

beautiful: … <enters in the Aria I> Then I saw my father stride towards me. Then came my son. I waved to them. I ran after them. And yet, neither of them recognized me. They were so happy.

They ran to the paradise. In the space that above the living world, once again, I was left behind.

I don’t belong to anywhere, not even in this ghost world.

I couldn’t make myself disappear. My land is calling me; I can still hear it. Faintly, I could feel the outline of the land, but I couldn’t tell the exact shape --- Which one is it. Which one.

I floated to the eastside of the town where I spent the last couple decades of my living life; the skyscrape has been changed; it then took me three years to sail to where I was born; and yet I couldn’t remember any of the faces that are on the land. The water spins in opposite directions, a different hemisphere after all.

The smell of the land from my memory bothered me; it has been too long. what is it; which one; where is it; What Is It. ---------------Page 6

The wind crashes me apart; the wind wails fanatically.

It breaks up the sunbeams, thinning and crispening the air; the broken rays frail upon the touch. My cloth has been worn out throughout my years of wandering --- I don’t have a decent outfit to go back to my land. And then I hear my buttons are wailing; and then my collar cried in echo; in a second, I’m soaked into my own tears; they fell into the clouds. The wailing wind sighs.

----------------I’m studying my shadow that projected onto the lamp post in the city. I realize the colour of my shadow has fainted, a threadbare shade. Time elapse, years have been evaporated. I’m hearing the sound of passing time, the passing wind. Those gray clouds, my teardrops mist.

All of sudden, I feel the urge to resign. And yet nowhere can accept my resignation. I have never imagined myself as an immigrant, even in this ghost world. A sudden failure, a sudden lapse of my will. Cracks emerged, by completion of a smallest nuance.

------Then I witnessed myself melting away; Page 7

rottened.

My legs turning into the soil; then my shoulders; then my memories … … from afar, my eyes saw them slipping, slipping… … my heart … has gradually frozen into a fossil of traces of my memory.

The fossil glows itself, a big chunk of earth

< The End >

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