The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (35 page)

One of the Law Kings, bent over his knees, gave a signal. Drums rolled in front of his place; behind the dark backdrop the blare of trumpets swelled; great swarms of ox carts drove creaking over the field. The battle was over. The field was cleared, horses herded together.

An hour passed; breathing became easier. Gratification lay on the faces of the citizens. Then on the flat hill that lay like a stage in the middle of the field calm peaceful music began to play, a melody that drifted free and always returned. Bamboo tubes and panpipes took it up gravely, cymbals rustled frequently among them and the bronze bell rang; castanets accompanied. A long procession of sisters after a while, sumptuously adorned, with long fluttering red ribbons on snugfitting cloth headdresses, walked out among the men; the silk of their overgarments scraped; they swung rosaries, magic swords and placated the irate spirits of the field. They ranged themselves in front of the hill; faces turned from the town they sang to the orchestra.

All the brothers, sisters and townspeople listened enchanted to the singing and let sweet melancholy smooth down their souls. They were attentive to the music; few, lowering their eyes in delight, recalled the clangorous tumult just past. Hands were unclasped; they sat with their backs to the field, rested their heads. Softly the bronze bell was struck.

There was a shout; those lost in thought sat upright. Masks approached the hill. A new play was beginning. Murmuring arose among the brothers and sisters on the town slope; the words travelled
upwards. It was the Eight Immortals who approached.

The brothers who played these figures had not disguised themselves in detail; some wore threadbare clothes under the face masks and emblems and walked barefoot. Climbing up the hill were old men, with tin clasps around their foreheads instead of a halo.

Chung-li Ch’üan, the whitebeard, held an enormous wooden sword, the other end of it borne by two small boys. An old bent woman fanned him with a fan as big as an unfurled parasol. The old man had obtained the elixir of immortality; he appeared in many guises, he could walk on water; he took his fan and his sword everywhere.

Then came old Master Lu, called the Guest of the Cave, his mask a benevolent smiling face; he drew a cart behind him with a low stool on it and a trestle with a red towel, a wobbling porcelain basin, a broad razor.

Ts’ao Kuo-ch’iu and the others followed; the last two riding sidesaddle on mules.

They placed themselves on the flat hilltop in a circle, waved towards the music and the brothers and sisters; some of the trembling old men tumbled onto the sand.

A happy murmur from the town. At a fast trot a pony and carriage started out of the woods. In the two-wheeled carriage that looked like a hollowed out jadestone a bearded dwarf sat holding the reins; behind him trotted a second equipage, more slowly. From this seashell-carriage gazed a young girl, placidly holding aloft a tall stalk like green seaweed; a long leafcase hung down.

At the sight of this the murmuring rose to a roar, a loud shouting, an “Ah!” that rippled over the rows of seated figures, tumbled through windows, rolled across the roofs. This was the chi-plant, that bestowed immortality. The townsmen and peasants turned agitatedly back and forth between the spectacle and the sight of the sectarians below. They realized that the most esoteric of mysteries
was being performed on the hilltop; they hoped to strengthen their sensation of holiness by glimpsing the brothers and sisters.

For the latter everything was real and unfeigned. They laughed and stretched out hands; they yearned, and tears stood in their eyes. The Immortals waved from the hill.

Now the music stopped; it set up again at once in a Singular springy, jubilant manner; tom-toms and cymbals joined in. And to this music a festive train approached from the woods. Innumerable yellow-jacketed forerunners, tablet bearers, gongbeaters. On the shoulders of eight bearers rested a bedragoned palanquin splendid with bunting, yellow curtains drawn shut. Two smaller sedans and a rearguard followed.

The Holy Mother of the Western Mountains was being borne to her kingdom.

On the hill along the seated rows deepest silence reigned; then a general scraping and rustling: the backs and pigtails of innumerable people touching foreheads to the ground twelve times.

No end to the Holy Mother’s procession. Behind the palanquin men, women exulted; they waved scarlet threads, ran barefoot hither and thither, leaped past each other, danced, rolled playfully in the sand, carried each other on shoulders, men embraced women, men carried boys in their arms. At first the singing seemed ragged, confused; then as it approached you could make out songs of seduction that the sisters often crooned to the yüeh-ch’in.

Some jumped up from the seated brothers and sisters, ran to each other, called with broken voices, pointed, called names, names of dead believers fallen in the attacks, at the burning of the monastery. It was them, their masks, they recognized them all, every one; they hollowed to them, the masks hollowed back, called to them, enticed them on. The sisters untied their hair and flaunted their locks. Brothers, beside themselves, clapped hands to their eyes,
wept in each other’s arms, flung off their tunics, their sandals, their hats in order to reach them. Down below the masks of the dead brothers and sisters gathered around the palanquin of the yellow Queen of the Western Paradise, who had drawn back the curtains, revealed her painted regal face to all sides.

A monstrous cry tore loose from the multitude in the town. The eyes of all those above were open wide, fumbling hands sought to tear away the purple veil that excitement had laid dazzling across their vision. They exhaled in fear.

And the last of the brothers below dragged in their arms something that left behind long black trails of blood; other brothers hastened back to the woods, on their arms fresh stiff motionless corpses of men. They stumbled up the hill with their dreadful load. These were the dying and dead brothers who had just now sacrificed themselves.

And when, singing to the music, they laid down their terrible deathcraving burden in the throng before the palanquin of the glorious Queen, now risen from her seat, when the musicians aghast threw down their instruments and stretched out on the ground, then Ma No could not restrain himself. Loudly he cried out, opened his fists towards the hill, ran down the slope to the flat ground. The brothers and sisters rose from their seats, in a moment the seats, windows, doors, roofs of the town were empty. Everyone stormed down the slope, knocked one another over, let themselves be trampled without noticing it. They burst through the iron fence, tore it out along its whole length; the brothers, sisters and townspeople flooded unhindered over the bloodsated plain to the hill, which they surrounded shouting senselessly. Like drowning men they pulled themselves up it, like drowning men who sought to emerge from the sea to the gentle smile of the Queen of the Western Paradise.

This emotional day saw weighty events of great consequence on the northern and eastern frontier of the little kingdom: the victorious assault of the provincial army.

In the night, country dwellers fled to the capital. During a renewed battle some days later the routed forces of the kingdom, who had taken up positions in front of the town, were completely annihilated. The storm at once broke over the town, which was empty of soldiers. Townsmen and sectarians tumbled in disorderly flight south from the burning town; decimated they arrived about four thousand strong outside the walled city of Yangchou-fu.

Those still carrying arms, desperate, surprised the gate guard, cut down the unsuspecting garrison of two hundred men and took control of a substantial portion of the city, the relic of an earlier Mongolian settlement, that lay within the walls, separated from the rest of the city by a wall. Here the remnant of the defeated band barricaded themselves in.

The holy kingdom was lost. The brothers and sisters went down into the town proper, and thanks to an upwelling of sympathy for the Broken Melon the besieged were supplied by the town with provisions, although no armed support was forthcoming and accommodation in the houses of the lower town was denied them.

While units of the provincial army prepared for further pursuit and slowly concentrated forces around the city of Yangchou-fu, Wang Lun’s emissaries, the fig sellers, hurried to the tents of the generals commanding the troops. In every letter was written: He was Wang Lun, leader of the Truly Powerless, who distanced themselves from this latest rebellion. He requested the generals to delay their preparations for one or two days and to receive him, Wang Lun from Hunkang-ts’un, for an important conference. He would come alone. For credentials he would send into the tent of
the assembled generals his sword, Yellow Leaper, which bore on its blade seven inlaid panels of brass and below the pommel a lotus blossom of inlaid silver wire. The generals showed each other their letters, tried to guess what it was all about, and agreed to grant the notorious man an interview. At the same time, in case his request should have evil intent, they took precautions to have him cut down on his way back. On the day of the interview, in good time, the generals received warnings from friendly sources they had taken into their confidence not to lay violent hands on the man, and emphatic advice to go along with whatever plans he proposed. Hints of secret guilds standing behind Wang gave force to the advice.

The four generals were quartered in the magistracy of a village outside Yangchou. In the wretched yamen, at midday, they received the sword as arranged in a case of figs, handed to a door guard by a local tradesman. One hour later the guard reported that a ragged fellow in military uniform was standing outside, who claimed he’d handed in his visiting card an hour before. The generals, after ordering him to be searched for weapons, had him admitted.

Wang Lun, a giant, with his thin clothing and empty dangling hands appeared even taller in the room where the generals sat like judges behind a table, not coming forward to greet their guest. His hard serious face lit up for a moment; he leaned on the doorpost, pulled the door shut, said in a sly tone, “Here’s Wang Lun from Hunkang-ts’un, and you’re the generals of the Son of Heaven, one, two, three, four. Greetings to the old gentlemen. It was smart of you not to greet Wang Lun; for after all the old gentlemen are guests in this land, and Wang Lun regrets he didn’t meet the gentlemen when they first arrived in his country and show them reverence.”

“Sit here beside us, Wang Lun, leave the door alone. There are no eavesdroppers.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid. The men who eavesdrop are my brothers.”

“You sent us a case of figs with letters in. We wrote to you. You’ve established your credentials with the sword. What do you want?”

“I don’t think I’m mistaken, generals, if I believe I know what you want. Here in this district. You want to advance on Yangchou after your victory, and destroy my former brother Ma No and wipe him from the earth.”

“That will happen before the moon is full.”

“Wang doesn’t doubt the old gentlemen’s skill in strategy and the battlereadiness of their troops. He believes in the fate that Ma No has challenged and that’s about to break over him. Over him, and over you, a decade sooner or a decade later. So you’re going to destroy the Broken Melon and Ma No?”

“You heard us. The courteous man who regrets not having greeted us on our arrival in his country still hasn’t explained why he sent us the sword and the letters.”

“So you’re going to destroy the Broken Melon and Ma No. You of course are better than them and will be reborn as higher beings. But that’s of no help at the present. There are five thousand of you, well armed; they don’t even lift a bow, not even a stick or stone. You’re brave enough to cut down defenceless brothers and sisters, after they’ve atoned for their crimes a hundred, a thousandfold. You know who drove them to take over the monastery by the lake; the well informed gentlemen have some idea who mobilized the murderous attack on the Broken Melon in the T’aihang. It’s no secret to the great commanders which Prefect it was who sent the constables and lictors to the monastery after the Broken Melon for—for what? The brothers and sisters didn’t attack anyone. They stretched out their necks to the cowardly swords. And they sat there, in the prayer-halls of the monastery that the Chanpo yielded up willingly in the face of their need, and let themselves be broiled, roasted, grilled, stewed by the constables the Prefect sent to finish off the
bloodbath on the T’aihang. What’s to happen now? They let themselves be carried away by the rebels in the district; they shouldn’t have grown desperate, they should have let themselves be murdered, for desperation too calls up fate. They should have atoned for it. I think, Wang Lun from Hunkang-ts’un thinks, enough is enough. There’s been enough of playing fate, wise gentlemen. Laws against heresy are no reason for murder and killing, not reason enough. The land is peaceable. Seek enemies where you like, but not in my country, my honourable guests.”

“Our kind host has, of course, a great army behind him, since he speaks so slightingly of us foreigners. But he overestimates us. Who are these insignificant creatures sitting here in front of him? They have orders from the Ministry in the Imperial City, they have instructions from the Tsungtu of Chihli. They could agree to everything their kind host says—who won’t respect us even while he sits with us. They all have written papers in their pouches that beat with a stronger pulse than their own living hearts.”

“You gentlemen aren’t warlike, Wang Lun’s not warlike, only the papers are warlike. But I know that even papers cry war only against enemies. So if the Broken Melon ceased to be enemies of your strips of paper—”

“Which will be the moment they cease to exist.”

“Or when they disperse and become indistinguishable from the people. That was why I sent emissaries with the figs to the old gentlemen. Let me ask you: do you have orders in your sashes to be victorious, or to crush the Broken Melon?”

“According to our papers and in our own view the two are one and the same.”