The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (24 page)

The little priest from Nank’ou at first only half noticed what was happening. He had been afraid they’d abuse and beat him. But that no one had a thought of leaving him—him, the little penitential misfit, who cast his consecration from him and accepted hopeless banishment to the Cycle of Rebirth—this could not easily come through to him. And when it came through, it crashed over him. It burst his breast with elbows from within, heaved from his entrails over his heart that stood still, pulsated in a wild rhythm, bells rang, judgement trumpeted, spread through arms and throat; and when it tried to play about his lips his head nodded, dangled onto his breast. He swooned, came slowly to with ears full of hymns, clung to the Twilight Man. He was radiant. Warm water flowed again over his face.

He let the old man go, clambered onto the heap of planks. “Brothers, are we free?” he stammered, swallowing the tears. “Until today I’ve been carrying around a stone, an evil unruly spirit that stole me away. I pray to Kuan-yin, who has not heard me, I call to Maitreya, who shall hear me. I will stay poor, little, one of the Truly Powerless who does not avert fate; I will nourish no demons within me and become prey to werewolves. I will remain a poor son of the poor Eighteen Provinces. You do not revile me; ah, you do not revile me; you are good. I don’t know what I’m saying. I
don’t even know myself; it’s too dark. Whoever’s soul is free can find the Western Paradise. I haven’t yielded to the cravings of the flesh; I’ve purified myself for a joyous heaven; I’ve forced my imprisoned souls onto the path of the Supreme Lord and want to go and teach them and want to follow them. And find the magic key to K’unlun. With you, my brothers.”

He exulted much more in this vein. The morning field was quite empty. A multitude surrounded him, embraced him, kissed his feet, tore his gown to pieces.

Dazzling stripes coursed over the black clouds to the east. The universal smoky grey lightened rapidly. It was mined from within, sprung and blown away. The lush landscape widened. It flashed with little ponds. In the southeast, by the swamp of Talu, there was already a slender thread-thin gleam; now the sun bored a hole, a cylinder, a funnel, and long rays streamed down through it, igniting more and more fiercely the green of grass and trees.

The eyes of the younger men flickered over the stalks of grass up to the women’s hill. “Our sisters, our sisters,” they said, looked full of doubt at one another with quaking knees; several embraced trembling, stood there, comforted one another as if misfortune were about to fall.

A gigantic village schoolmaster stroked the boyish fellow who snuggled up to his sleeves. “You will seek,” whispered the schoolmaster, “Chi, the peach blossom.”

“Chi—I won’t seek her, I won’t. Oh, what is happening to us.”

Several stretched their bodies in the grass, threw themselves face down, chewed stalks, expressions dangerous; they grappled with uncovered memories, waited impatient on the tumult that would restore desire to them.

Many climbed to the summit of the men’s hill and lurched
about beneath the green clouds of the catalpas: smiled, prayed, dreamed, never took their eyes from the women’s hill. Heaped up riches! A wave dashed over breasts, against hips.

A few of them stood up as a faint tinkling came from the women’s hill. Without a word they set off one behind the other, kept looking round at the rest. They reached the foot of the hill half running. In the tall grass black lumps with clothes, skulls, knees heaved groaning, opened eyes wide and shut them. They ran surefooted as forest creatures. Their eyes enticed. They called the lumps by name, showed their faces alight with promise; their smiles pumped hot throbbing blood into temples, eyes, feet.

The engraver Hsi ran ahead of the others along a path that led around a pond and avoided the camp road. Not far from the foot of the women’s hill they clumped together. Hsi called, “How shall we do it? Let’s trick them, brothers. Let’s pray with them.”

“Send someone to them, tell them to assemble.”

They heard someone call out, “This is terrible.” Someone pushed through the rest; it was the young man. He ran from them. Hsi crowed, “I’ll call them, you come behind me.” As he zigzagged ahead, the brothers seethed meekly, arms folded, heads bowed, ball by pigtailed ball, up the hill. The strident chirping of crickets accompanied their murmured “Amitofo, Amitofo.”

They stood on the women’s hill under the dense foliage. Under the foliage swarmed a throng, the sight of which made the hearts of these brothers contract deeper and slower and such full pulses surged through them that the soft forest floor beneath their feet swayed slowly with them, bore each surge onwards. Runaway wives looked out of curious and wondering eyes across at the brothers; it seemed to worry them still that the air had such unhindered access to their faces and everyone could see their mouths. Courtesans pushed forward, graceful among blind beggars, market
women, bright points in the field of radiant flowers, bringers of happiness, hua-k’uei, their gravity incomparable; about their gentle persons wafted the breath of the Pavilion of a Hundred Fragrances. Timid daughters of respectable families ducked their little protected bodies down in the moss; they hugged their rosaries, breathed prayers as if they were facing a dreaded classroom exercise from the
San-tzu-ching
.

Below the leaf dark hill Ma No walked along the path through the camp. With a dismissive gesture a broad hand pushed aside the grey dawn mass in the sky. The white swans of light rose in pomp into the sky.

How the women’s hill began to tremble

and a thousand-tongued crying and screaming swept across the valley, was thrown back from the other hill

and the horror repeated itself tenfold, a deep rumbling, cracking, roaring mixed with the piercing voices

and eye shutting dread tried to flee the shadow of the catalpas and was dragged back

and after minutes of this fury white and coloured clothing spurted over the crest, collapsed, dived into the moss, rolled noiselessly down

and on the hill a strange silence set in, interrupted by long saccadic cries, catlike penetrating yowls, music to breathless swooning that gnaws its fingers, shrivels its soul as if in vinegar, whirls its body about itself in a frenzy of despair.

Then men’s voices rang into the valley: “Ma No, Ma No, the dragon’s flying away! Ma No, our sisters!”

It hurtled over the narrow alley in the camp; heads cocked upwards, eyes looked at each other; they stopped their ears, pounded breasts. It shattered over Ma No. As people dashed about him he thought himself for longer than a moment a lord of the
underworld with a hundred arms, scourges, serpents, driving feverish souls within the walls of the Ice Hell, down and down from glassy smooth walls into the devouring acid bath; they rasped and grinned, he was bursting with joy, rocked his head. Running with blood it pressed in upon him. Already a weakness was daubing the entire inner surface of his skull. Half swooning he felt what was happening, groaned, propped himself up, balanced the load.

He looked about him with a cold glow. Realization, shock, with it a glittering sense of power leapt out of him, laid about him, coldly eyeing.

“It is willed. I shall take this upon myself.”

Two deep breaths. He turned round in a daze; the verdant landscape was unchanged. He discovered with concealed horror that something unknown had emerged from him, and conquered. That he had overcome Wang Lun. An intoxicating fear flowed through the marrow of his bones.

They lay distraught in the micanthus. Weak cries for help from the women’s hill. Ma No had led them into error.

Ma No’s empty, distant gaze wandered over them, turned away. They pressed their bodies into the ground. The hill crepitated back at them.

Immobility, hours long, sun-drenched wilderness. From the huts on the women’s hill sighs of enchantment rose unheard, stole faintly through the boards, curled like smoke, straying glance, dying notes of a tom-tom under the green overarching roof.

When the sun grew hotter the conches in front of Ma’s hut blew into the valley, five notes one after the other five times: the summons to a general assembly.

Bushes shook, leaves jostled together, backs bent, heads appeared.

For a long time nothing stirred on the women’s hill. Then spots
flickered white, bright-coloured, between the tree trunks. Shadow-black men running, mingled flecks of colour, noises scattering, voices, ragged shouts, surge of sound. Bright sisters embraced as they came down, brothers hip by hip. A jubilant lightsoaked cloud descended into the valley.

Now the sisters dispersed among the serious men laughing, with jaunty movements, in wide arcs filling the space where the charred ribs of the barque still speared the air. Ma No, sulphur yellow and red, strode quick and firm into the milling throng that sucked everyone into itself.

He moved not a muscle when, striking up somewhere, borne by female voices, a hymn of joy rose loud, clear and sweet over the flowery field, a song they all knew, sung by the tender inmates of the painted houses when they glide invitingly across pools in their carved boats.

Ma No spoke: “May there be peace between us, dear brothers and sisters. May nothing weigh us down as we sail to the golden isles. Let us conclude that ancient peace between Yin and Yang. I rejoice that you have listened to me, and shall not forget it even were I to possess the Five Precious Things. We shall remain Truly Powerless. We shall follow the Tao, hearken to its course. Pray tirelessly, and you shall attain a miraculous power that will stay with you for ever. You shall not vainly build wooden horses like that old man in the state of Lu, driven by springs of metal, able to draw men and carts. You shall not make such wooden horses of your souls, the souls that dwell in your lungs, your sluicing blood, your soft quivering entrails. You play a flute across the land and warm the air to make the corn shoot tall. Yeah, with the blowing of your reeds you shall cause the clouds to pile up in the northwest; rain will flow, typhoons arise. Eight steeds are ready, the sun makes sixteen stations, you shall traverse them in one day.

“Remain poor, be happy, harbour no desires lest you regret and so become impure and full of care. I see you, my sisters, you queens of tender joy, much of it is your doing that our affairs have taken this course. That the openings of our hearts no longer flow into the universal void. I was a bad son of the Eighteen Provinces, to trust in the wisdom of alien Sakyamuni and accept his heaven in the place of your, of our, flowery heaven. We stand on the steps to the Western Paradise. What you Broken Melons have given to us, we receive. We owe you thanks. We owe you thanks. I call myself, with you, a Broken Melon. And so shall we all call ourselves, here at the swamp of Talu.”

Airjarring whoops and claps, sinking to the ground, embracing.

A thronging, wall-solid, around Ma No, whose enigmatic impassive face none saw. Words emerged from him like the chirping of a concealed songbird behind a crumbling temple. His face had taken on a new resemblance, the expression of a flying animal whose headshape, eyes, feathers are modelled entirely by the wind through which it travels; perched on a branch it has an inexplicable appearance: for wind and flight are absent.

Midday. They scattered, the fickle, the earnest, the joyful, high spirited, the blind, the weak, strong men, light dancing girls, the ardent prophets.

At evening for the first time the tents and board huts enfolded those who had teamed up together. They prayed side by side, their prayers lost themselves in the dark. It was not butterflies that rose up out of the grass, but two threads that drew themselves straight up, grew tangled and now were useless for weaving. Their folded arms parted slackly, they felt for each other in the dark with damp hands, slid over electric twitching faces. All pride was broken here, all discontent laid to rest. Those who had entered firm and upright
into the earnestness of the Truly Powerless bent under the happiness; the summer wind blew like a banner planted on one of the stages to K’unlun. How uniformly mild these faces grew in the dark of the huts under the catalpas, spirits and bodies loosened by a wide violent harrow that rolled across the entire earth and toiled, delved in the night.

In the swamp of Talu lotus flowers grew; they covered the motionless water with green shiny leaves as big as plates, red flowers appeared among them; long stems that gripped with thickveined leaves over rotting mussels; every stem was yarned with thin threads of algae that deep down formed mats; green hairy heads hung down. The swamp lay unfathomable, and steamed.

The night did not pass without a terrible incident. Several times through the stillness some men heard the lively scolding of the Twilight Man. They took no notice, assumed he was having a fight with one of his shadows. But he kept crying out, and it occurred to some who left their huts that the Twilight Man wasn’t doing his rounds and the cries came always from the same spot on the men’s hill. They were afraid he’d really caught hold of a shadow; shied from witnessing the struggle. But finally five men looked at one another uneasily, took courage, ran through the field and up the hill with lanterns. When they came to the source of the cries they found the Twilight Man working away in the grass and under him a man who didn’t move; the Twilight Man was waving his sword over the man’s swollen face. He called the motionless body by name, held a mirror to his ear. The men leaned over the body, shone a light in the goggling eyes. It was the despondent young man; he’d hanged himself from a tree. The Twilight Man had run into the corpse, and cut it down. One of the men took a little sharp stone, scratched the skin on his arm, dribbled hot blood into the clenched mouth that two men forced open. It was no use; the body was stiff. He hadn’t
sought Chi, the peach blossom. That evening as he walked back with her and stood in front of her hut, they had gazed earnestly at each other; the pupils of their steepslanting eyes widened, but they both remained calm and parted after standing there for a while. It appeared that the young man had first crawled through the micanthus, then he’d lurched from the field up the men’s hill where he’d bumped into the Twilight Man, told him he had to go and sleep under a tree. But he hanged himself with his belt.