Creation (77 page)

“Do not try to train those who are already worthy. Do not promote the incompetent.”

Fortunately, the conversation was interrupted by a mournful Ts’ai ballad. But when it ended, Baron K’ang began again his respectful if challenging questions. “As you know, Master, crime has increased enormously since you served with such distinction as under-minister of police. I myself—the humble slave of the duke—have had my own house robbed three times. What would you do to stop this epidemic of lawlessness?”

“If people were not acquisitive, Prime Minister, you couldn’t hire a burglar to rob anyone. On the simple ground that there would be nothing to take.”

The baron ignored this—savagery. There is no other word to describe the master’s response. Confucius was plainly outraged by the display of wealth that the baron saw fit to flaunt at a time when the state was impoverished. “Yet it is wrong to steal, Master. And those of us who rule—well, how should we go about making the people obey the law?”

“If
you
follow a straight road, who will follow a crooked one?”

We were all most uncomfortable at this point; and somewhat drunk. But the baron showed no sign of distress. “I believe, Master, that each of us is set upon a road which
appears
to him to be straight. Those who choose to take the crooked road—well, what should the ruler do about them? Should they be put to death?”

“You are supposed to be a ruler, Prime Minister, not a butcher. If you honestly want what is good, the people will want the same. A gentleman is like the wind, and common people are like grass. When the wind passes over a meadow, the grass always bends.” Confucius was once more his usual serene self.

The baron nodded. I had the impression that he was actually listening. But for what? Treason? I was most uncomfortable. We all were, except Confucius, whose mind, as opposed to stomach, seemed for the moment to be at peace.

“But do the common people understand the way of the gentleman?”

“No. But they can be induced, by proper example, to follow it.”

“I see.” The baron had a fit of hiccups, which the Cathayans regard as an audible manifestation of inner wisdom. Even Confucius looked less stern, as he realized that he was being listened to carefully by his antagonist. “Tell me, Master, is it possible for a ruler who does not follow the way to bring peace and prosperity to his people?”

“No, Prime Minister. It is not possible.”

“Then what about the recent duke of Wei? He was a thoroughly disreputable man who allowed himself to be manipulated by his concubine, a woman you once visited, I believe.”

At this most unpleasant dig, Confucius frowned. “If I have ever done wrong,” he said, “I pray that heaven will forgive me.”

“I am sure that heaven has. But explain to me why heaven did not punish this disreputable ruler? Ten years ago, he died old and prosperous and content.”

“The late duke saw fit to engage the services of the best foreign minister, the most devout high priest, and the finest general in the Middle Kingdom. That was the secret to his success. In his appointments, he followed heaven’s way. This is rare,” added Confucius, staring pointedly at the dictator.

“I daresay that few rulers have ever had at hand such good and virtuous servants as the late disreputable duke.” The dictator was bland.

“I daresay that few rulers have ever been able to recognize what is good and virtuous when they see it.” Confucius was sublimely—and devastatingly—at his ease.

We were all quite nervous except for the master and the dictator. They seemed to be enjoying their duel.

“What is good government, Master?”

“When the near approve and the distant approach.”

“Then we are honored that you who were far away from us have now approached.” This was very smooth indeed. “It is our prayer that your presence among us means approval of our policies.”

Confucius stared rather rudely at the prime minister. Then he made his stock—and somewhat disingenuous—answer. “He who holds no office in a state does not discuss its policies.”

“Your—little ones hold high rank.” The baron indicated Jan Ch’iu and Fan Ch’ih. “They help us to make good laws, sensible decrees—”

Confucius actually interrupted the dictator. “Prime Minister, if you insist on governing the people with rules, regulations, decrees and punishments, they will simply evade you and go about their business. On the Other hand, if you were to govern by moral force and personal example, they will come to you of their own accord. They will be good.”

“What, Master, is goodness?”

“It is the way of heaven as practiced by the divine sages.”

“But since you yourself are a divine sage—”

“No! I am not a divine sage. I am imperfect. At best, I am a gentleman. At best, I have one foot on the path, and no more. My Lord Baron, goodness is a recognition of the likeness of all things, and he whose heart is in the smallest degree set upon goodness will be aware of this likeness and so he will find it impossible to
dis
like any man.”

“Even the bad?”

“Especially the bad. To pursue righteousness is a life’s work. In fact, the basic disposition of a true gentleman is righteousness, which he puts into practice according to ritual, modestly setting it forth and faithfully bringing it to completion. Certainly, to attain wealth and power by unrighteous means is as far from the ideal of a gentleman as a floating cloud.”

The baron was every bit as unrighteous as most rulers; yet he bowed his head, as if in awe. “Nevertheless,” he said to the silken mat on which he sat, “for a humble servant of the state, what, practically speaking, is righteousness?”

“If you do not already know, I cannot tell you.” Confucius sat up very straight. “But since I am sure that, deep in your belly, you know what is right as well as any gentleman, I will remind you that it involves two things: consideration for others and loyalty to others.”

“When I am considerate, Master, what do I do?”

“You do
not
do to others what you would not like them to do to you. That is simple enough. As for loyalty, you owe that to your sovereign if he is righteous. If he is not, you must transfer your loyalty, even though you may suffer by so doing.”

“Tell me, Master, have you ever met anyone who cared deeply for goodness, who truly hated wickedness?”

Confucius looked at his hands. I was always struck by his unusually long thumbs. When he answered, his voice was low. “I cannot think of anyone who ever managed to do good with all his might, even for a single day.”

“Surely,
you
are entirely good.”

Confucius shook his head. “If I were entirely good, I would not be here with you, Prime Minister. We dine in luxury while your people starve. That is not good. That is not righteous. That is not seemly.”

Anywhere else on earth, Confucius’ head would have been promptly separated from his body. We were all of us terrified. But, curiously enough, Confucius had done the wisest thing possible. By openly attacking the dictator on moral grounds, he made it clear that he was in no way politically dangerous to the Chi family. At worst, he was an annoyance. At best, he was an ornament to their regime. The truculent wise man who finds fault with everyone is often the safest man in the realm—rather like a court jester, and as seldom heeded. It had been Baron K’ang’s fear that Confucius and his disciples were in league with Key; that they were working, secretly, for the overthrow of the baronial families and the restoration of the ducal powers. As it turned out, Confucius’ performance at the forest shack convinced the dictator that he had nothing to fear from the Confucians.

At length, Baron K’ang explained to Confucius why the state needed new revenues. He also apologized for the lavishness of his establishment on the ground that “it was built by my father, not by me. And much of it was a present from the government of Ch’u.”

Confucius was silent. The storm had passed. As the conversation became general, the dancers became more and more erotic in their movements. I have no memory of how I got to bed that night. I only recall awakening the next morning in a red-walled bedroom with vermilion woodwork inlaid with jet. As I sat up in bed a beautiful girl pulled back the long blue silk bed curtains. She offered me a basin whose interior showed a golden phoenix rising from the flames—the best of omens, I thought, as I vomited. I have never been so ill—or in such beautiful surroundings.

The next few days were idyllic. Even Confucius seemed at ease. For one thing, with much pageantry, Baron K’ang had invested him as a minister of state and it now looked as if, finally, the bitter gourd was to be taken down from the wall and used.

Or so everyone thought except Tzu-lu. “It is the end,” he said to me. “The long journey is over. The master will never be given an opportunity to govern.”

“But he is minister of state.”

“Baron K’ang is kind. And clever. Confucius has been publicly honored. But he will never be used. It is the end.”

On our last day at the forest shack, I was summoned to Baron K’ang’s office. He was entirely genial. “You have served us well,” he said. For an instant a smile was actually perceptible on the egg-smooth face. “Thanks, in part, to your good offices, our divine sage is no longer at odds with us. There is also peace in a land whose borders are as quiet as the eternal sleep of Mount T’ai.”

As usual, the dictator’s elliptical style needed interpreting. Later Fan Ch’ih told me that that very morning, word had come the holy city of Chuan-yu had fallen to Chi family troops and the citadel had been dismantled. Best of all, from the dictator’s point of view, there had been no response at all from across the border. The rebellious warden was old. The rebellious Yang Huo was thought to be dead. The new duke of Key was preoccupied with internal matters. For the moment, Lu—and its dictator—were at peace. Although we had not known it at the time, our reception at the forest shack had been for Baron K’ang a celebration of the success of a long and tortuous foreign and domestic policy. The investiture of Confucius as minister of state was a symbolic if empty gesture, calculated to delight Confucius’ admirers and bring to an end the dissatisfaction of the knights and gentlemen who administered the state.

“But we are also in your debt for showing us the western way of making metal. Your name—barbarous as it is—has already been recorded with honor in the annals of Lu.” He looked at me as if I had just received at his hands a treasure of gold.

Tears in my eyes, I thanked him for this extraordinary show of esteem. He listened for a while as I turned one graceful Cathayan phrase after another, like a potter glazing a plate. When I finally paused for breath, he said, “I wish to establish once again the silk road to India.”

“Once
again
,
Lord Baron?”

The baron nodded. “Yes. It is not generally known, but in the days of the Chou—when the son of heaven looked to the south from Shensi—there was regular overland commerce between us and the barbarians of the Gangetic plain. Then came this long ... interlude. Without a true son of heaven, many things are not what they were. Although the silk road has never been entirely abandoned, regular commerce stopped nearly three hundred years ago. Now, I have always maintained—as did my immaculate father—good relations with Ch’u, the beautiful nation to our south. You may have looked with a favorable eye upon the Ch’u gardens that we have created here. Well, they are as nothing when compared to the entire land of Ch’u, which is one enormous garden, watered by the Yangtze River.” At some length the baron told me the history of Ch’u. Heart fluttering like a trapped bird, I pretended to listen.

Finally the dictator came to the point. “Now that we have peace within and without the realm, thanks in part to you, dear friend, our duke will conclude a treaty with the duke of Ch’u and together we shall sponsor an overland expedition to India and you will bear gifts from our ruler to the king of Magadha.”

Then, as if by magic, the room was filled with merchants. Two were Indians. One was from Rajagriha; the others from Varanasi. They told me that they had come to Cathay by sea. Just south of Kweichi, they had been shipwrecked. They would have drowned had they not been saved by two of the many mermaids who abound in the southern sea. These creatures live both under the sea and on the land—or at least on remote rocks, where they weave beautiful cloth from seaweed. Mermaids are notoriously well-disposed toward men, and when they weep—usually after having been abandoned by a human sailor—their tears form perfect pearls.

At length, we discussed the expedition. Although Baron K’ang had given the impression that the journey was being undertaken solely as a reward to me for services rendered the Chi family, I soon discovered that this was no more than usual Cathayan hyperbole. In fact, at least once a year a caravan would set out from Key and move on to Lu; and then proceed south to Ch’u. At each stop, new merchandise would be added. I soon realized, with some bitterness, that I could have left Lu years earlier than I did. But, to be fair to the dictator, he wanted me to earn my passage. When I had done so, he let me go. All in all, he was an admirable ruler. No doubt of that.

I don’t recall much about the rest of the time that we spent in the forest shack. I do remember that unlike the overjoyed Jan Ch’iu and Fan Ch’ih, Confucius seemed not at all elated by his high office. Tzu-lu was equally dour. I did not begin to understand why until we arrived at the city’s gate. As our wagon rolled past the inner gate, a sentry asked one of our guards, “Who’s the illustrious old man?”

“A minister of state,” said the guard officiously. “The premier knight, Confucius.”

“Oh, yes.” The guard laughed. “He’s the one who’s always saying that even though it’s no use, you have to keep on trying.”

Although Confucius’ face did not change expression, his entire body shuddered, as if from illness. The deaf Tzu-lu had not heard what the sentry said, but he did notice the shudder. “You must look to your health, Master. This is a bad season.”

“What season is not?” As it turned out, Confucius
was
ill. “And what does it matter?”