The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (19 page)

Through western Chihli the name Wu-wei blew softly as a moth: whirring, fading between valleys.

A twinge went through western and southern Chihli, a rheumatic discomfort in the arm, in the shoulder, over the feet, painful stabbing in a tooth, throbbing nerve above the left eye.

Western and southern Chihli felt this spring the warm disquieting effluvium around the Nank’ou beggars.

The hundred who pulled out of the hamlet of Pat’a-ling grew within a few weeks to several thousand. What they brought to tramps, sneak thieves, victims was nothing less than an avowal of misery. There had been a change since the mountains of Nank’ou:

Wang Lun, the tall, dangerous fellow from Hunkang-ts’un in Shantung, has told amazing things of the golden Fos; he’ll help us, he knows magic, we’re going along with him. Now the crowd preached for itself. Dwellers in remote villages, pilgrims away down in the plains heard of the multitude who left Pat’a-ling after the great frost and pushed southwards begging, working, praying. At first people declared it was those vagabonds and ruffians who’d been infesting the passes to Wut’ai-shan; such talk evaporated quickly. Wang Lun, they said, had ridden off to the K’unlun on a blue horse, to inform the Queen of the Western Paradise of the founding of their league. He had gone to Shantung to fetch the goldwater and pearls of eternal life. This opinion was the most tenacious. People formed a curious picture of him from the tales of the older men. He was seen as a mild man, endowed with an enormous
physical strength that he didn’t know what to do with. From time to time he was seized by strong demons, which he had learned to control by means of a dreadful charm. He had a good heart for the poor p’ing-min; they would all partake of his fabulous gifts.

Wang Lun had left his shadow behind, and it shrouded the league. Quite without design a few men were pushed to the forefront, and the crowd followed them. To be sure some here or there tried to impose themselves, but this was by the way. Everyone accepted his own role.

Through his skill at horsemanship and archery and his fine figure Ngo, a native of Taku in Chihli, though only thirty had attained the rank of You-ch’i in one of the senior Banner regiments. He wore proudly but without ostentation the moonstone in his cap, the tigercat on his breast; when at chess he raised his soft right hand and the mother-of-pearl ring on his thumb glinted dully his opponents had no idea what strong soul sat across from them. For years he had kept up a friendship with an effeminate rouged actor lad, a young fop as people called him. The Emperor thought highly of Ngo; but Ch’ien-lung always displayed a preference for refined, elegant men who did not talk back, knew how to shoot and go through their paces, were hard and unyielding.

The intrepidity he demonstrated during an incident that was much spoken of at the time gained Ngo entry to the innermost circle of courtiers in the Vermilion City of Peking. He was stationed with his detachment opposite the northern gate, where the Gate of Wu-ti leads to the broad moat surrounding the Imperial city. Hard by this part of the wall, so that Ngo and his men could peer across from their watchtowers, lay the palaces of the Imperial wives and concubines. One autumn, at a season when the waters of the moat are covered with small frogs and flies, rumours spread that the little child of a concubine had died of a cramp, and another child,
a baby, was lying ill. Doctors and priests strove to exorcize the fever demon from the baby, which cried a great deal but did not betray the name of the demon.

Ngo’s guard were alarmed one night by the loud shrieks of several women. Rushing into the gardens up to the concubine’s pavilion Ngo heard that the sick child’s demon had just been seen inside in the shape of a little bat that lunged at the mother’s hair and then fluttered over the baby’s hot face and flew out of the door. Ngo recognized from the description-the size of the creature, the white belly, the direction of its flight-that this was a shade he himself had often noticed near the moat in the company of a dragonfly and two brown toads. At nightfall next evening he posted six stout men of his troop at the Gate of Wu-ti, armed with shields, bows and arrows. He himself took up position with sword drawn at the entrance to the threatened pavilion.

At the end of the first night watch the men saw something whirr up out of the water. They shot arrows; the women, made nervous by the noise, released firebrand after firebrand to frighten off the ghost; the rockets streamed green and white through the dark gardens. The demon, which was only dazzled, pressed through, flew around the cypresses. Ngo saw it by the light of a firebrand fluttering about as if dazed. He struck out at it; there was a croaking and screeching. The creature turned, flew back. Ngo pursued it roaring, brandishing his sword. They came to the house of the Director of Imperial Music, a eunuch; all at once the creature disappeared behind the wall of the house. As the women came running up and the light from swaying lanterns grew brighter the official awoke, came in his nightgown astonished to his door, asked what the matter was. Ngo cried, “The grey batdemon has flown over your wall.” Horrified the ponderous eunuch ran with Ngo and others into the house. After they had shone their lights in
every corner the Director of Music struck himself on the forehead, whispered that they should quickly look beside the hearth in the living room.

And there sat a little female with green eyes, blood dripping from her breast, with the face of an ape. She was grey and said she didn’t know how old she was. She was questioned more closely, her hands gripped tight. Tu-hsi, the renowned exorcist of the Vermilion City, who had been waiting all night by the endangered pavilion and had rushed into the house with the others, signed a warning to the people holding the grey witch, but it was too late. She transformed herself into a black cat, scratched their hands and arms. Tu-hsi threw himself on her. In the very moment that he fell upon her he changed himself with one glance in his octagonal hand mirror into a white tiger that tore at the cat. They scratched and bit bloodily on the floor amid the howling of the women; then Ngo struck off the witch’s head.

He stood there laughing, rejoiced bloodthirstily over the little red puddle on the floor, while the others ran back along the dark paths to wash and free themselves from the glance of the dead demon.

The concubine’s child was saved. Ngo received a little bag of peppermint as a gift from the Emperor.

His new duties in the inner court quickly estranged Ngo from his weapons. He had to immerse himself in the intrigues, the gossip mongering, the eunuch atmosphere. There was already a certain playful, passionate tendency in him, to which he now gave full rein. He fell in love with the fourteen year old son of a poor gardener’s widow, called Ching-tsung, fitted him out with everything necessary, took him into his lodgings, addressed many fine poems to him. The rooms of this former soldier were strewn with rouge pots, perfume bottles, embroidered shawls. The vain youth, who
had a feminine nature and was not without a certain grace, lay in the lap of the demon conqueror and smiling let himself be kissed by meek lips, and fed sweets.

They loved each other until the youth, strutting like a prince in silken gowns, accused Ngo of paying more attention to another boy than to him, and ran away. For days Ngo wept distracted in his rooms. The gardener’s widow brought the boy back; he’d been playing her up horribly. Ngo forgave him, even after he confessed that a eunuch was interested in him and he’d already accepted presents from him. Little by little Ngo found out details of this friendship, found out who was involved, and was so grieved and disgusted that he began once again to request a posting to guard duty on the walls. He was not at all cross with him, but still the boy noticed a change in his friend’s manner.

And perhaps because his long association with Ngo had refined him, made him more sensitive, he became visibly quieter, fell into a melancholy, for weeks ate almost nothing, lay in a constant abstraction. The captain sat gnawed with pain beside his beloved’s couch, throughout the long weeks of his illness kept to the house. At last the boy recovered. Their friendship glowed, they were devoted to each other as never before. Although human foibles were usually overlooked in these exotic circles, everyone laughed at bold grave Ngo’s infatuation. Ching-tsung was a great pampered lad; the captain treated him as if he needed guarding against every draught, started nervously at every hard look from the boy.

It was not the captain, too deeply immersed in his own feelings, who noticed the turned up noses around them. The boy, still irritable after his illness, berated Ngo angrily for making him a laughing stock, determined to leave him, let himself to be commandeered by another captain who spoke mockingly of Ngo with him. Ngo wandered mindlessly on the walls of the Tartar City, in
the palace fell into a long swoon, raged; friends held the homicidal man back. They calmed him with difficulty, his eyes not yet opened to the sentimentality of his behaviour.

Once he had fought down his desperation he considered what was left for him. Army and uniform were hateful to him; he could not remain in the Vermilion City. He secured a transfer to the Office of River Traffic at Hsuanhua on the Yang-ho. There he passed his time in strenuous activity, riding, sailing, writing verses, at his own request was retained for a further three years, received a promotion, during his period in office increased the traffic and the state revenues not inconsiderably.

At the end of his posting in Hsuanhua he took a little trip to visit an uncle in Tat’ung; failed to return. After half a year’s search he had to be struck off the official rolls. It was assumed he had fallen victim to the bandits on Nank’ou. But Ngo had gone to the Truly Powerless, just at the time when they were pulling out of the village and Wang left them.

The strange band that wended around the cliff called Shen-yi on its way east to the famous pass of Nank’ou experienced their first moment of fear and astonishment when the solitary elegant man on his mule trotted along behind and struck up a conversation with two of them. They trailed through the long narrow valley; the rider followed. Ngo followed unsure of himself; it was really just the sight of a young lad he had glimpsed in the middle of this ragged, burdened vagabond train that held and unsettled him. He did not know that this boy bore a resemblance to his faithless friend in the Vermilion City. The men talked a lot. It seemed they were sectarians, who would cause problems for the authorities. At midday he halted, amused at himself but somehow happy, full of hope, among these fellows who treated him as one of their own.

It was a bizarre company he now found himself in; he was
calmed; in some unfathomable way he belonged. His visit to Tat’ung was no pressing matter; you have to catch fish when they come your way; and the weather was glorious, heavy with snow, as when a child leans over a precipice, his silken cloak, thin scarves are blown baggy by the wind, up over his head, you see only billowing streamers, cloths, bright swellings, think you see among them merry waggish eyes, clapping hands, and now and then the smell of real ginger wafts down to a twitching nose.

Ngo in his mandarin’s hat, thick brown furs, furtrimmed shoes crouched on the ground beside a tea kettle, his mule beside him. A single cup made the rounds of the six men; Ngo drank with vivid pleasure. Before it grew dark and they lit little fires in caves, he said in a low voice that he’d like to stay with them.

The next day he was faced with the necessity of deciding. Ma No explained carefully to him that they’d eaten up all the presents from the village; everyone had to fend for himself and some of the frailer ones; perhaps he’d sell his furs in the next village and exchange them for rice and beans, if he wanted to stay with them. As he said this, the priest wondered how the distinguished man with bold eyes sitting there on his mule would look when he walked like them in thick padded rags and held out a begging bowl.

Ngo did not say no; he asked for a day to think it over. He requested only a day because he had a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to bear any lengthier reflecting on his situation; he wanted to break through this wall. He withdrew gloomily into himself. All Mencius’ erudition was of no avail; he knew the poems of the
Shih-ching
by heart, with their commentaries. They hadn’t saved him from the betrayal and scorn of a slender-limbed boy with large eyes.

It broke out roaring in him like a tiger, ran down the road before him; he would have struck it down in numb fury if only he had his sword in his hand. It sprang on him like a tiger that he
throttled with splayed fingers, held in his hands a corpse for half an hour and flung aside. A large-eyed boy with rouged cheeks: Ching-tsung. He wrestled with him, lay breathless on the frosty earth. They let him lie there.

He ground his teeth, jaws clamped tight so that he felt the play of the muscles in his cheeks, stared closely at two green sharpedged stones that looked like uncut jade.

But it wasn’t likely that uncut jade would lie here on the road; perhaps someone had lost it.

But it was uncut jade; no one here had anything to do with uncut jade.

Ngo felt carefully past his mouth first towards one and then to the other, felt them over in his closed hand, wanted to keep them in any case, have them cut in Hsuanhua, where there were skilled lapidaries.

If they proved suitable, he’d have them worked into a sash in a manner he’d thought of some years before, between green and lilac embroidery.

Yes, that was how he’d use these remarkable stones.

The last two men of the train turned a bend in the winding road, even with the best of wills were no longer to be seen. They might be going straight ahead, then right and left, right and left.

Ngo searched.

They might be going right and left.

This snowladen air, this misty grey on the bare slopes, wagonhigh above the stones they walked on, this pale ghostly mass that did not want to be poured away and cleansed. You could shovel it up in your arms, press it to your ears.

Suddenly there came to him:
Lotus flower lamps, lotus flower lamps, today you glow so strong, tomorrow your glow’s gone
. The nursery rhyme glimmered steadily in him, enabled him to unclench his
left arm, crook his knee, put his left leg forward, to walk. And now he too was around the bend in the road, ran as fast as he could after column.