The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (58 page)

Wedged between the north wall and a crosswall that protected the Imperial residence, the opposing armies sank their teeth into one another. No one could force a way from the burning Tartar city into the tightly packed space. Battlecrazed women suffocated in the gateway.

Wang Lun in the van ripped gaping holes in the Guard. He groaned, heaving his long sword about him. He toiled almost naked, semiconscious, no feeling in arms that lifted and hammered automatically. Now and again he sprang back, stood with head sunk forwards, streaming sweat, motionless as a bronze ox in a human wave that he divided, bloodshot eyes, hands thick as if gloved, his face swollen under a mask of clay. Then the hinges of his iron knee bent, shoulders and elbows parted the mob. Yellow Leaper flashed, pounded blood with blood in the mortar of the Imperial flower garden.

Ngo, drenched in blood not far from him, mined with his short double-edged sword, splintered projecting lances. He opened chink after chink in the soft living wall that spouted bodies.

From the palace walls arrows, slender butterflies, fluttered over the rebels, lit on gaping cheeks, shoulders, throats, decorated the lurching, the vacantly grinning.

While in the Tartar city throats bayed across broad squares, between the two walls a harsh cry rose only occasionally. In this darkness rent by little light a machine snorted, rattled, stamped. Teeth ground. The Guard squares dissolved. The entrance to the
Forbidden City would soon be clear. A whimpering set up among the defenders. Then the Imperial troops fled to either side, the rain of arrows from the wall ceased. From the inner city with a crash of thunder a fresh regiment swept through the gate, speared into the billowing rebel horde, which burst.

Abruptly the jubilation in the Tartar city fell back before the piercing whistles of Manchu cavalry, the bow-wielding clatter of horses. Tenthousandfold cries of woe and rage between the two walls. Panting step by step back behind pyramids of corpses. The upper North Gate compressed the fleeing rebels and mashed them. The Imperial City vomited out the rebels. The ditches rolled them head over heels to the bottom. Shoved into the Tartar city, they were given over to the hooves of brown horses. Squeezed from both sides, death cries trumpeted heavenwards. Curved Manchu sabres macerated brows and backs.

Then came a trembling in the irresolute mass.

A deep exhalation of breath.

The bursting of a boiler.

In a trice, the front line of the trampled convulsed.

The force of this last fury scattered the Manchu. In an unstaunchable movement the rebels flung themselves around behind the burning granary through the two deserted eastern gates Tungchih and Ch’ihua, out of the Tartar city, out of Peking.

Flight carried them into the dumb nightcool plain, laid them in front of small villages.

Pitch dark the Forbidden City. Ch’ien-lung Sighed at the window of his palace, a dim oil lamp on the little table beside him. In his hand he still held his panegyric to Mukden. Chia-ch’ing was praying, prostrate before a low statue of K’ungfu-tze on a bronze pedestal. The Emperor regarded him icily. When the prince stood up the scornful old man clapped his hands, whispered something
to the eunuchs. Chia-ch’ing saw the heads of the two treacherous officers of the watch on wooden platters.

The black banners of the White Waterlily and the Truly Powerless swept northward and eastward. The failure of the rebellious Imperial regiments was soon explained. Ch’ien-lung, informed, had had the suspect senior officers arrested the previous evening and locked in the Vermilion City. Lodged in the northern quarter that lay exposed to the attack, they were all freed during the battle. Five had fallen, four others, among them Yellow Bell, were dragged along in the flight. The intimidated turncoat soldiers had been set upon by their comrades in the night and defeated. The two officers, so cleverly won over, had it seemed been summarily despatched by Ch’ien-lung.

The three chief leaders—Wang Lun, Ngo, Yellow Bell—came quickly together. Wang raged against his troops. Not a few of his adherents were beheaded along the way, found guilty of spreading panic. All the heat of his rage was directed at the defeated troops. It was due only to his granite nature that just two days later the army was proceeding in close order towards the northeast, directly towards the approaching Chao Hui. Six thousand men under Ngo remained as rearguard. Contact was maintained with irregular bands; they were brought around to methodical plundering and assaults.

Chao Hui declined all support from the provincial army. At news of the defeat of the insurrectionaries in Peking he rounded up all his remaining available manpower.

In the thunder and lightning of the summer’s first storm, ten scorching days after the flight from Peking, the armies met on the hills of Yingp’ing. The snorting and maneshaking grunts in the sky, the baring of teeth, whipping of tails, rolling of eyes went unobserved from the flat hilltop. From the black air a giant gong hung above the armies on an invisible cord; its beats incited. Two white
panthers leapt past each other. The soldiers of Ili gave themselves to the delights of a sated blood thirst. The sectarians yielded to the embrace of their bitterest foes, cracked their spines.

Chao Hui swayed on his grey horse, up on the hill. Wang Lun rolled his wheel along the road, milled his corn. Then the blackness of heaven was ripped asunder, hailstones pelted from the gash, danced on skulls. The Truly Powerless fought in the dazzling chaos of the storm with icy calm. No wound troubled them. It was all the same if they lived or died. The flames of the Ili soldiers failed to eat through, began to smoulder, to flicker. No furious assault followed from the rebels; calmly, not so much impetuous as impelled by involuntary necessity, they overwhelmed the enemy.

As Chao Hui turned back with his devastated soldiers the rebels, drawn on, dogged his heels. Both fleeing. Running from the field, leaving the broken men, ox wagons, unmuscled swords and clubs, as if it were stinking ichor.

The defeated Imperial general barricaded himself in the town of Shanhaikwan.

Yellow Bell and Wang Lun rode around the western, inland section of the town.

The general’s red palace flashed like an erect halberd; to the south the grey memorial arch splayed its legs; the inscriptions on its brow boasted of victories over Mongol princes of old.

From the higher ground beyond the town the slime-yellow sea could be seen; white sails of junks preened themselves on the water. The town slid into the sea: it sprinkled the rivermouth and the sheltered coast with houseboats. If not for the yardthick wall with its watchtowers, this rockhard gnashing jawbone of the town, the rebels would be able to chase the Imperial troops into the sea with one thrust.

Yellow Bell looked dreamily at the grey roofs on which weak sunlight played. He recalled that night when the full moon shone and they had stood at the edge of a copse by a ruined town. The tables were turned. How long now till these walls met their fate?

Wang touched his arm. If it was up to him, the town would soon be taken. But how strong and precious had the brothers and sisters been in the Mongolian town, how strong!

“Do you know, Yellow Bell, what Fate looks like? Like a corpse. She won’t be spoken to, or comforted, or angered. You can wave cloths to her soul in gardens, on roofs, outside the door, in the yard.

“How many now are still alive of the brothers from Nank’ou? I don’t think the earth has ever taken so quickly so many splendid warriors; the land smells sweet with their spirits. And I am left, and I’m to lead to victory. And what is it I do now, on and on? Devour, sate the ground with precious bodies, behind Hochien, in Peking, at Yingp’ing. They didn’t want to take me with them. Sacrifices pile up before me, I’m a corpse already that the ground refuses to snatch, so as to keep me away from those so dearly sacrificed. And so I shall tear around the earth a while longer; the name Wang Lun will resound like the name of a demon from Hell; I’ll fall asleep somewhere, sometime, and not know why it all happened.”

They dismounted in a copse of elms, tethered their horses, sat on moss.

Yellow Bell, his expression pained, stroked Wang’s shoulder. “What is this? What is this?”

“We must conquer the empire for ourselves. We must set up the Ming emperors, who shall be our emperors. It can’t come to pass that it was all for nothing. Ma No said his brothers and sisters were forged together into a ring; he didn’t want to save himself from me. And I say the same. We can’t let this be torn from us, not through any defeat: we must set up the empire of the Mings. This
buzzes through and through me. I hold fast to this rod of iron: the Way is foreordained; it has nothing to do with me.”

“What do you mean, Wang Lun: it has nothing to do with you?”

Wang turned mysteriously to the tall officer. “There’s a difference between you and me. I am the soil in which the Wu-wei grew, that took part of my soul from me. Earlier I believed I had to prepare a lovely, thriving, gentle home for the Wu-wei among the people of Chihli, ran here and there with Yellow Leaper. Now Wu-wei has acquired a voice and a resonant throat of its own, whispers clearly that it was a spirit of my body and I should give it shelter and a resting place in me. It laughs at me, as Ma No used to laugh. Oh, Ma No, who instructed me on Nank’ou about the mild guiding Buddhas, is so often with me. Now, dear brother, everything is pointing at me and has such a strange tormented look. My wife sits in the Lower Reaches and doesn’t mourn me; but my son that I produced without a wife, my Wu-wei, whimpers for me. You know what I’m trying to say. My son is whimpering. I must protect the brothers and sisters as I’ve always done. We have to set up the empire of the Ming.…”

The officer looked askance without bringing himself to an answer, then: “You’re different from Ma No, quite different. My brother Wang Lun follows a good path with fear and counterfear. Yellow Bell hasn’t experienced much of Wang Lun’s hard fate. Yellow Bell thinks one should be bold, should challenge the world. We are children of the Hundred Surnames. I too say: what has it to do with me? We must dean our house, dear brother Wang, so that it goes well with us.”

Wang gently touched his hand. “Let’s move on, brother. Since I came up from the Lower Reaches I’ve been ridiculously confused. I know only that I was born in Hunkang-ts’un, have such strong bones and such a mouth; otherwise I know nothing of myself.
Once I knew a Mohammedan and a priest. They were my companions once. You mustn’t pay so much attention to what I say. Ngo shook his head too.”

They rode almost to within bowshot of the wall, where soldiers of the besieged army were patrolling. They could see over the wall, make out packed streets, distinguish idling gangs of soldiers among the hawkers in the markets. Wang Lun’s horse frisked; on the rider’s face appeared a pleased curiosity; the cunning eyes dissected the distant tiny groups. At a shout from Yellow Bell he pulled the horse about; the patrolling soldiers had drawn their bows. They galloped on around the town.

All Wang’s torment evaporated in a flash. He cancelled Ma No and the Broken Melon in the Mongolian town as with a slash through a failed calculation. He had followed Ma No, who without him put into practice all the teaching of Wu-wei. In excitement and horror Wang observed its progress and its end. It was his duty to bring to a conclusion this affair, which was in fact his own affair; no baseness should snarl its way into the death of this dream. In a spirit of vengeance he still carried his sword around, ran murderous from the bloody field, but in his heart he knew already there was nothing to avenge, there was no enemy here against whom he could raise his sword, because everything had to end like this.

And when Ngo told him the story of Ma No’s death, with one savage tug revenge was laid bare: he was overcome, annihilated, throttled more foully than the T’ouszu. Disgust came: the whole Wu-wei was finished! Complete seclusion in the Lower Reaches beckoned, a few months of commandeered rest; the peasant in Wang came slowly to the fore. Meanwhile in Chihli his teaching gnawed about itself. He couldn’t stay deaf and blind for long, shake off his past like dust; his rage against the Emperor uncorked him again. The Wu-wei, though hurtling down the road, was his own
dearest creation. Half pushed he came back; the tempestuous movement blew him along with it. Often he didn’t know what he should do, thought how easy nonresistance would be and saw himself in an endless, hopeless slaying. He couldn’t find himself. Looking over the wall of Shanhaikwan he saw the lively bustle of the marketplaces, streets: a joyful excitement flashed through him; decisions, an unfounded urge were hoist up within him: “Into the place! Into it, without weapons.” He didn’t know that it was the image of Chinan-fu there before him, that he was sweating Wu-wei from every pore. Endure, endure, suffer, bear! Don’t fight back! Su-ko! For the first time he loved life again. Whooping he raised his arms towards the town. With a feeling of weakness he wanted once again to be the town fool.

The army of the league had completely abandoned its initial division into two parts. The brotherhood of arms bound the White Waterlily and the Truly Powerless indissolubly together. These strong men and women ran, struck tents, pushed ration wagons, wielded dubs and swords; black banners flapped; they had no eyes for anything more distant. Victory must be theirs, the Manchu driven out, golden Mings back on the throne. The Truly Powerless differed in no way from the secret society, except that they were prouder, in battle behaved like berserkers, in camp fought dangerous bouts for sport by twos or fours, made a show of menacing confidence.

They camped in a wide semicircle around Shanhaikwan, rested from their latest battles, awaited reinforcements that were on the march from Shantung and Kansu. From Chihli and the neighbouring provinces there were reports of provincial armies mobilizing.

Newcomers claimed to know that provincial troops had grown to enormous numbers. Every piece of intelligence was greeted with laughter and delight.

At news of the spreading rebellion two men came trekking in from Nanking claiming to be descended from the Ming imperial line. They reached the rebels the day after their defeat in Peking, fought at once with great bravado in the clash with Chao Hui. They were cousins, the elder a peasant in his fifties, the younger perhaps in his twenties. They stood out through their gravity ~md an amiable, indisputably distinguished demeanour. Of course they could support their claim only by tales of a very fanciful kind, found general credence.