The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (23 page)

Night fell. On the hills, under the catalpas, in the moss, in the field of micanthus they slept. Through the irregular rows of tents a lanky man clambered carefully in the dark without a lantern, slipped a little way down the hill, pranced into the valley: he was the band’s night watchman. He walked through the pitch blackness, peered right, peered left, carried a little box in his hand. He called himself the “Twilight Man”; no one knew his proper surname. He was greatly esteemed in the band, this elderly man who had attached himself to them a few li outside Chengting. There were days when he was quite agitated, roared, ran behind the column holding a little metal mirror, barked at it like a dog, drove stragglers on, warned, pointed at his mirror yelling. Under his tunic around his neck a sword hung, woven from horsehair, long and thin, its handle a piece of wood decorated with little tassels of hair;
it was thought to possess great powers. In the box he carried the “King of the Left Side”: this was one of his shadows, which a base deceiver had once stolen away from him. The Twilight Man intercepted the shadow late one afternoon when it was playing tricks on him again, locked it up in the little box; if the King of the Left Side escaped, its triumphant owner would fear for his life.

The man slept only a few hours each evening. He spent the night searching for one of his shadows, called Hai-ling-t’ai, which became visible only under special precautions in the thickest darkness.

The Twilight Man went on tiptoe around the burnt-out barque through the bushes, bent soft stems aside, crouched down tensely watchful. Now and again a broad stem nodded; then he would grip it with his foot, feel it suspiciously, keep watch. As the night advanced, he heard immediately behind him a shout: “Twilight Man, Twilight Man!” He stayed rooted to the spot, felt for his hair sword. After a silence it came again, testily: “Twilight Man!” He got up, strutted, head hunched between his shoulders, after the voice. Hailing-t’ai wanted to negotiate with him.

Glided into a narrow gangway between two rows of huts. There on a stick an uncovered lantern blinked; a little man stood in the gangway, called “Twilight Man!” It was Ma No that the old soothsayer was approaching. Ma No whispered to him to watch his hut tonight. As soon as dawn broke, he was to go in; Ma No had a little errand for the Twilight Man.

While outside the peering about, the striking at the air began again, inside the event was consummated which decided the fate of those sleeping on the two hills and in the valley.

When the Twilight Man saw a grey gleam in the sky he marched stiffly into the hut, where Ma No was lying on a sack of straw but quickly stood up. He embraced the old man and clung
to his breast. The old man smiled menacingly over the bent head, waved his sword threateningly in the eight heavenly directions. The little priest mumbled, “Twilight Man, you will bring joy to your brothers. Go to all the huts and tents of the men and wake each and every one. Ma No asks them to assemble in the open place where we celebrated the Perfected Buddha. They must come at once. Before the sun rises, this poor brother beseeches them.”

They crept down from the hill. Milling of lanterns between coalblack trunks. Chattering teeth, subdued voices, yawning, lame bones, pushing, tramping. When they stood in the open place in the valley, there was a wooden snapping and creaking. Disturbed by the jostling the remains of the barque collapsed. The half charred mast swished sideways, splinters flew, tore holes in lanterns. The men stacked up planks, squatted, waited.

Ma No came in his torn bright gown. Behind him the Twilight Man swaggered solemnly; on his arm he brandished Ma’s clerical gown, sash and cap. When an elevated space was cleared for Ma on the pile of planks, his companion put the clothes down next to him, first stabbing with his index finger in the eight heavenly directions. Ma’s eyes were swollen and red, his bleached face bloated from crying, bloody scratch marks on hands and forearms.

The multitude and their leader, the invincible sorcerer, sat dumbly facing each other, wall facing wall. Those sitting nearest looked at Ma’s sash. Their unease conveyed itself to those farther away. They roused him, called to him. He must speak.

He stood up, turned his priest’s cap in his hands. He explained haltingly that for years up on Nank’ou Pass he’d served the golden Buddhas in vain. The man from Hunkang-ts’un appeared, and now he was on the right track. But Wang Lun had been away for months, he hadn’t come back, he wasn’t coming back, and if Wang Lun came back now, he’d be too late. That’s what he wanted to say to them.

Ma No relapsed into himself. When he lifted his eyelids he looked out exhausted, from overlarge bleary eyerings. His voice sounded completely changed, soft, close, like the voice of an intimate friend.

“What’s happened? Has someone hurt you? What have they done to you?”

He repeated three, five, ten times that he wanted to speak to them, choked on his spittle, hunched his arms, turned aside from a lantern that someone held to his face, whispered, “Amitofo, Amitofo, Amitofo.” And then he cried out loud in a voice that cut to the heart, “I want to leave. I have no part in you, as you voyage across the foamy white sea. I wasn’t taken into the Circle of Piety. I must sacrifice myself for you, I know I must, because anything else is denied me. But this poor brother who is not your brother can no longer live. I want to leave. Curse me, or don’t curse me. Your poor brother is bound beyond salvation to the Wheel of Existence, and so weeps before you.”

The men prayed. Clear heads were filled with deep dismay. “What do you want?”

“You don’t have to lead us anymore. We’ll take turns.”

“Be patient, Ma No. Wang Lun’s only two hundred li behind us.”

“Ma, a demon’s got hold of you. Believe me, it’s a demon.”

“You’re our brother. We’re no purer than you. You mustn’t despair. Stay here, stay with us, Ma!”

“What do you want?”

Ma’s agitation increased. Their calls did not reach him.

“I want to leave. I’m bound to the Wheel of Existence. It will drag me through all the impure animals and plants. I shan’t resist, no, I shan’t resist any more. I’ve resisted fate up to this moment, when I heard the Twilight Man searching for his Hai-ling-t’ai in the field of micanthus. My shadow has been stolen from me. I
wasn’t as clever as the Twilight Man. I haven’t a sword as good as his. I haven’t a box like him. I don’t keep such a good lookout. My shadow is not the King of the Left Side, I’ve lost my Hai-ling-t’ai too, and my Lu-fu and So-kuan and Tsao-yao. Whoever loses all his shadows must seek them or die. Forgive me, my brothers, for not resisting any more, for submitting to my fate. Not in silence, for I’m not capable of that, but groaning, howling, rending my flesh. I must go to the light that shines on me. Forgive me, my brothers.”

The men sat there stupidly. Ma was cudgelling them. Most heads were lowered; they held their breath.

“I’ve summoned you here before daybreak because on this day of the glorious Sakyamuni’s Perfection I want to have done with you. For myself I don’t want perfection, merely an ending. Your poor brother no longer believes in perfection for himself. He didn’t throw a slip bearing his name to the hundred-armed lady in the barque, for he has long known that she wouldn’t take him with her. Look at me, a man who sighs, and groans, and so—goes in freedom.”

He twisted his swollen mouth so that he appeared to be smiling. He bent down, searched with his hands on the boards, lifted up his yellow cowl, rocked it in his arms. Ma No was frantic with distress. “Better for me if I’d never met Wang Lun! Oh that I’d never seen Wang Lun, my yellow silken flower. In my hut on Nank’ou I spat on myself, here I must tear my own entrails.”

Took a lantern from the man next to him, held it in front of him, above him, stretched forward, cocked an ear towards the black silent crowd. Cranes flew over from the swamp. Then with both arms he swung the cowl around like a banner and cried, “Do you know where he’s going to, Ma No the priest of Kuan-yin from P’ut’o-shan, friend of the Wu-wei, teacher of the precious laws? Where he’s fleeing to? I’ll tell you gladly what I’ve known for weeks
already, ever since Wang Lun made me come along with you. Ever since he gave me pot and beans and was too busy to tell me how to cook them. He’s forsaken me. He’s no right to set evil spirits on me if I forsake him. Yenlo-wang, king of the Underworld, knows the bitterness I taste in forsaking Wang. Do you know what this freedom is that Ma No is going to? Twilight Man? Sui, Tuan, Chang, any of you?”

Now he gave a feverish laugh that burst like a soap bubble, trilled in the soft cadence that today he discovered for the first time.

“I am going—to a woman on the other hill, who may already be waiting for me, dear brothers. So now you know. The secret is out.”

A sobbing and roaring of that terrible kind when old men cry erupted from the dark crowd. No one moved, raised his head. The little priest stepped down from the boards. He went past the front row of squatting men, no one looking at him. At the stem of the barque where the broken rudder lay someone plucked at his gown. Ma stood still. Out of the dark a gigantic man loomed over him, spoke down at him in a hard voice: “Brother, we’ve a branch waiting for you.”

Disdainfully Ma pulled his gown free. Ten hands grasped at the giant, who snarled in a cold voice, “He’s betraying us. The rules don’t mean a thing here. He’s for the nearest tree, brothers.”

Two men stood in his way, stolid peasants who had been a week with the group. They pulled his hands away. “You’re not a judge. We’re all brothers. If you hurt Ma we’ll cut your hands off.”

While the giant was still glaring at them they got him by the legs and tipped him onto the ground, pressed him down. He howled, scrabbled at their trousers. Torches, lumps of wood flew over them from behind. A crowd formed around the struggling figures, separated them. They were panting.

That dreadful crying rose convulsively from the dark crowd. “Where is Wang Lun? Why doesn’t Wang Lun come back to us?”

“Let us pray, dear brothers,” someone called out. “Let our circle form itself. The time of the Maitreya is not yet. Let us pray. We are lost.”

The men bent their backs, rubbed their foreheads on the wet moss. Over the grey field the imploring sutra of subjugation drained from a thousand mouths.

A young man, the engraver Hsi, unremarkable features, broad jutting chin, sprang long-legged through the rows, clambered clumsily over the backs of some, planted himself on the heap of planks, shrilled in ecstasy, gesticulated: “Only prayer can help us. Maitreya is coming. We must create the hour, the place, where Maitreya will come. Pray, for the sake of all five treasures, pray. Don’t lie there. Form the circle. You are my brothers. Stand by me.”

He grimaced fiercely, whirled his arms like windmills, threw himself foaming onto the boards, tumbled down from them in a spasm.

The dull weeping in the crowd deepened to a groan, to helpless wracking sobs. Necks craned towards the convulsing engraver. Eyes rolled the longer they stared; the field and the grey hill swam. Mouths gaped. They all smiled strangely and made faces as if they were excited and curious. Spittle dribbled down chins, they snuffled, they fell without noticing into a regular swaying to left and right. Then suddenly they all wanted to ask Hsi something. But when they stood up, their forearms, knees and necks started trembling. A shaking, sliding of limbs, rigidity, straining of necks backwards; their grins grew wider. It twitched pleasantly over thighs, abdomens, flanks, threw them about.

A red wave broke over the valley.

The Twilight Man and ten others wandered here and there through the field, the reed stalks, thorny twigs. They jumped on
the chests of the fallen, stroked hands and mouths, fanned the dangerous humours from them, stabbed them with thorns under the nipple, on the crown, babbling, warding off, swerving, pouncing.

The little bent man on the broken rudder turned his head to every side, looked long at this one and that one. He had no thoughts. He beamed. Why had they all fallen down. How cleverly that one leaped. They must take red hot needles and stick them under toenails, to wake them up. When he heard sobbing nearby his ribcage heaved like a mountain in an earthquake, his throat became hot, a smooth hand kneaded his oesophagus like a sausage, up and down, twisted it; he cried with them. Soft and gurgling, taking care not to stop, making it flow for ever, this unknown warm spring that trickled over his lips, fingertips, nails, that he dabbed on temples and ears, washed and washed his hands in.

The stony howling in the valley died away. Everywhere they exchanged hoarse cries, thrust themselves from one another. They had rolled in a tangle of bodies. One got up rubbing a crushed shinbone. One sat gazing, as if at jewels, at charred fragments of wood under his knees, put a sliver to his lips, licked with the tip of his tongue. They wiped spittle from chins with slow, broken movements, yawned, belched, spat. Slack bodies brooded next to each other, wrinkled gloomy brows. Suddenly, as if touched by a breath, they focussed eyes on each other in recognition, lumbered to their feet.

A buzz, hasty questions: “Ma No’s leaving. There he is on the rudder, crying.” Some wanted to throw themselves down before him, he must stay, desperate. But these were brief twitches, muscle-imaginings.

The crowd, fearful again, restrained itself once more in great urgent expectation. A hand movement, a watchful squint, a throat clearing might tip the scales. Several couldn’t stand the tension; weak still from the excitement just past they sought to cast the
burden from them somehow. It was best to consult the feng-shui, to determine the constellation of day, hour, place, wind, water, the vibrations of the land, win clarity from the throw of little wooden spills. A man sought at his belt for the spills in the midst of the silent throng; others saw, stood up at once, cleared a space for him. Others mistook this rising and movement, as if those consulting the future had declared for Ma No and were going to sit by him. They moved to join them. They were held back unsteadily; someone called out, “Speak up! Say what it is you want! Speak!”