The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (62 page)

The defeated sectarians fled through southern Chihli, penetrated the mountain country of Shantung, gathered in several hill towns and received streams of newcomers. They descended in good order to the plain near the great Canal, which they crossed. Not quite two weeks after the events in Shanhaikwan, the Imperial troops drawn up to the north and east failed to prevent Wang Lun’s followers from burning the town of Shou-chang in a blind passion of destruction, occupying two other county towns, finally besieging and taking the walled town of Tungch’ang. These places were
right on the border with Chihli; their capture imperilled the border counties of Kuangp’ing and Taming. The Tsungtu received orders to defend this district.

Wang Lun lay in Tungch’ang on the Imperial Canal. All rebel troops were concentrated within a radius of two days march. Searing heat was followed by rainy days and storms. In the downpours peasants sowed their second crop. All trade in the region was at a standstill, traffic on the Canal halted. In a fury of activity the rebels put all surrounding villages to the torch. The approach of regular troops was hampered by the digging of great ditches, which were then flooded with water from the Canal. They undermined the highway; barriers of bushes, bamboo and sand were thrown up at intervals, high as houses. Watchtowers that could be used to send smoke signals were demolished. Peasants whose property was left undisturbed performed soccage for the rebels.

Every morning Wang sat in the magistrate’s yamen at Tungch’ang and held court. This last victory had refreshed his army; they lived war, weighed victory and defeat. Fortune and disaster depended on the black Ming banner: tenderly and with resolve the mass of warriors rallied to it.

During these days Wang Lun, seated on the k’ang in the courtroom of the yamen in Tungch’ang, presented to his lively followers a manifold image of cheerfulness, fiery passion and rapture. This had become familiar in him since the battle of Peking, but the condition now grew more pronounced. Some even asserted that in the midst of battle he became playful, snatched caps from the heads of enemy soldiers, stuck them on his Yellow Leaper, played with attackers like a cat, unconcerned at the progress of the fighting. How deeply he immersed himself in the usages of war was shown also by his free and easy manner with the women of the conquered town. Wang took what he wanted, while exercising strict
discipline over the Truly Powerless. He frequently asked pardon of one or other of his friends for his dissipation: his behaviour might be ridiculous, but they shouldn’t think badly of it. No one should take it into his head to think badly of it. The fact was, he felt really happy and confident; he hoped everything would go better soon. He avoided long discussions, avoided also conversation with Yellow Bell. Ngo, in charge at Shouchang, was filled with disgust and dread. Apart from official reports he and Wang had no contact with each other. Yellow Bell tried many times to seek an explanation from Wang. When Wang avoided him he went about oppressed, deeply grieved. He felt an obscure need to comfort Wang and protect him from something. So great was Yellow Bell’s concern for Wang that he assigned a few dependable people to watch the strange man and report back to him. But he could not bear to hear their painful reports and didn’t know where to turn in his anguish and his pity.

Once a robber was brought before Wang in the yamen, a ragged scoundrel with a black look who had announced himself to peasants as a Truly Powerless and then, allowed in, had fallen on the unsuspecting fellows. Probably ten serious cases of robbery in the vicinity of Tungch’ang were his work. Wang asked the rawboned, no longer young man where he came from. Kneeling, the man twisted from side to side because during the night he had been made for several hours to kneel on thin chains to persuade him to confess. He sighed and asked to be set free; he was innocent, they’d mixed him up with someone else. Then seeing the judge’s sombre gaze fixed on him he begged more importunately, stretched out his arms without answering Wang’s questions. At last he said he was the son of a baker from Ch’angch’ing, had run away long ago because he wasn’t suited to the bakery, he couldn’t stand the heat, still couldn’t; what a miserable fate. And then he told more lies until at
last he spoke of the rebellion, how he sympathised with the sectarians; his mouth gaped when he explained how peasants had taken him for a pious brother. At the judge’s command he had to stand up, supported by one of the attendants walk up and down the hall. With sidelong glances, knees often folding under him, the criminal observed the strange judge, who looked steadfastly back at him.

Wang was the same age as this fellow. If not for such and such a chance, his fate would have been the same: if not for Su-ko in Chi-nan, the misery up on Nank’ou and so on. In Chi-nan he’d gone about like this rogue who was now dragged up before him. Perhaps he hadn’t made such a mess of things as this fellow, but once, once thin chains had been spread for his knees too.

“Turn round!” called Wang. “Keep him walking!”

A starved hulk with claws and arms like an ape, toothless mouth, scrawny shanks; as good a climber as he was a liar. His brother, his brother! A true word among all the lies: no Truly Powerless, but his brother.

Astonished Wang examined the man, couldn’t take in enough of his rags, compared his hands with the rogue’s; cast furtive glances at the attendants to see if they noticed anything and found it strange that he sat up here and wasn’t himself walking down there. No, they noticed nothing. Shouldn’t they change places; wasn’t the rogue to be envied? A curse on Su-ko and Nank’ou and everything that had forced him, torn him from his path. That anyone could have such a mouth and give such dirty looks!

When the criminal had been paraded up and down before the k’ang several times, Wang sent the happy man, bowing ceaselessly, unpunished back to prison.

At dusk Wang slipped into the prison yard, waved the guards away, sat down beside the grinning man, who hopped jauntily with shackled feet around his guest. Instead of interrogating him the
judge began whispering to him in thieves’ argot, so the prisoner at first shrank back in dumb astonishment, then responded cheerfully; he knew the Truly Powerless had drawn all sorts of people. The prisoner told droll stories about the singing brothers and even the crazy sisters; you wouldn’t believe what cattle they were. They hatched an escape plan: rob the young solitary guard and once outside give the peasants who’d arrested the rogue something to remember them by. The rogue grew talkative and Wang listened; they smacked their thighs whispering. They had to sit in a huddle, the other prisoners came hobbling up and wanted to take part in the conversation. When Wang saw the man’s obtrusive grimacing, the mutilated ears and nostrils, he all at once fell silent. He listened beyond his neighbour’s hurried babbling, stared at the repulsive laughing unkempt heads. Nervously he rose, gave the criminal a few kind words, went into the street. His belly was frozen, his entrails heaved under his ribs. He hurried through the miry streets, in which scarcely a house door was lighted by a lantern; no patrols passed him by.

Don’t be a criminal, no murders, no murders! How could anyone stand to commit a murder? Help the others, the mutilated, help them! Make their faces whole again! Nank’ou, resist, don’t resist, mollify fate! Oh they were wicked and poor, they should come to him, then they wouldn’t need to kneel on chains, lie in their filth, suffer the long rod. His brother, his brothers, oh, so might he have become! No murders, no murders!

Next morning he gave orders that no one should be taken prisoner, and all the prisons emptied. Whoever among the criminals seized in the towns and the surrounding countryside declared himself for Wu-wei and ready to fight the Manchu was to be taken into the league. Pacing about in a lively unease he sent at midday for Yellow Bell, who came quickly.

Wang was waiting for the greybearded officer in front of his yamen, drew him into the house, grasped his hands without a word, embraced him. “If Ma No were still alive I’d send for him. You’d be there too. I have to tell you: last night I went to the wretched criminals in the gaol, but I can’t be a criminal any longer. I’ve still had yearnings that way sometimes, but it was wrong of me; it’s all old stories, you can’t relive your youth. I saw them in the gaol with their ears, noses missing; they spat at me; oh their looks were evil. You haven’t seen it, Yellow Bell. If one of them seeks you out, take a good look at him, then you’ll see I’m right: these are terrible, terrible people. I don’t know how anyone can sleep knowing such terrible people exist. Or how I brought myself once to murder a man. Oh, how unhappy they are, dear brother, how wretched. For murdering they go to gaol, for thieving they’re put in chains, flogged on the soles of their feet, their flesh is hacked off, ears burned away; and if they still live they go and rob again and don’t have the slightest idea what people want of them and how it’ll all end, why everything turns out so strangely. Mandarins there, there the Emperor, and there peasants and there criminals. Oh, how will it end? I conjured up my Wu-wei to help myself and them. It was supposed to go better that way, everyone on Nank’ou believed me, and it went well for so many. I don’t want to found a kingdom; I could kick myself, beat myself for being so heedless. The Wu-wei belongs to them and me, and I want us to be defeated.”

Yellow Bell removed Wang’s arm from his shoulder. They squatted together on a grubby rush mat by the door. Wang raised his arms to the wall: “Golden Buddhas ought to stand here, like they did in Ma No’s hut. The mild gods say everything and all of it good. Am I not once more on Nank’ou? I should like to be on Nank’ou again in gentleness and peace among my brothers.”

Yellow Bell spoke in a trembling voice: “Have you changed so
much, Wang? I feared for you. You might so easily be lost to us, I thought. I only thought it. In fact I’m happy for you and for me. What are you still waiting for?”

“Everything, dear brother! That’s why I summoned you. What have I achieved, tell me, since I came down from Nank’ou? Has it been good? How am I to comprehend my life?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen everything you’ve done.”

“The Wu-wei is good. No one can take that from me. Yellow Bell, I’m so afraid I’ve missed the Way. And the prisoners must all come with me, I have to care for them.”

The other comforted Wang; he had to lead him around in the hall. Whatever the fate of their army, the Wu-wei wouldn’t be defeated.

When they were seated again on the mat Wang soon fell silent, reproaching himself. After a pause Yellow Bell said softly, emerging from thought, that he wanted to tell his brother a story.

“In a village in the province of Chihli, it is said, there was once a family called Hsia. Listen quietly, Wang, it’s a story that concerns you; be calm, dear brother, I shall give you my whole opinion and help you. The wife did her work in the fields, she went out early in the morning with the oxen and ploughed. She loved her husband. One morning before she got up, a loud whisper came from the wall: ‘Your husband drinks wine in the tavern, he’s playing about with the neighbour’s daughter, thinking of making you his second wife.’ The husband took her in his arms before she went to the fields and kissed her, she took both her children by the hand and they sat with her in the field. The oxen lowed, the woman played with the children and left the plough alone. At midday she strolled back home with the children, hugged her husband passionately, said she felt unwell. He had to untie his apron, put on his straw hat, and go to plough. She sat on a ruined grave behind the house, thought
how a man’s love was as brushwood and straw, cried pitifully and wondered how to find comfort. With a determined expression she got up: ‘Do me a favour,’ she prayed to a Buddha, ‘save me.’

“In the dead of night she slipped down from the bed, swung her hands in farewell to her sleeping husband, stroked the gently breathing children, went out into the blue night over a great field of cabbages, and beyond a patch of fallow there was a mountain with steps cut into its steep flank by which, in certain months, Buddha could be reached. Others from the village must have climbed them this night, for as she went up she noticed fresh muddy footprints. She grew anxious because there was no end to the steps, and she feared she would lose her strength. She climbed and climbed; she overhauled others; all at once they slid down a short stretch and were then swept up and up without having to move their feet. On a platform the god sat with covered knees on a donkey. Two men with umbrellas, fans and lanterns were standing behind him holding the donkey on a halter, looked friendly. The god was smiling too. He had a narrow, finely drawn face with a goatee; his feet were tucked into his grey overgown. The woman stationed herself at the very end and waited with downcast eyes. When the men beckoned to her, she timidly crept closer into the lamplight. The god laid his thin hand, transparent as white jade in the light from the lanterns, on her hair and invited her to speak as soon as she had turned her back on him. She spoke haltingly, at which she too seemed to turn to transparent jade. She turned to face the god once more; he bent down, whispered a strange word in her ear, gently told her she could go back home now, everything would be fine. She put her hands up to her face, stood for a while until one of the two men led her to the steps.

“Now a whole summer passed, until the woman, who only occasionally went out to the fields, sat more and more on the grave,
held her children to her and finally at the end of the harvest wandered off again to the steps. The climbing did her good; her feet hurt, which contented her. It seemed to her she climbed the whole night long. She was quite alone; it wasn’t the month for going to seek the god, but she stared boldly in the face of the stern old guard up there and demanded to be let in; she had a right, no one could deny that. He led her sadly to the huge dark platform, said the god was there, she only had to speak. At once she cried out, gave her name, complained that the god hadn’t helped her. He answered from far away, ‘What do you want of me, woman?’ She cried, ‘You’re not supposed to do the asking, I am. I wanted to die. But you gave me a word of comfort, kept me living. What do you want of me? That’s why I’ve come to you. I’ve walked the whole night long to ask you this.’ Hard, very close to her, the voice asked, ‘Where are your children? Who tended your millet all summer through?’—‘You must help me; my children are all right; I’m the only one who bothers with the millet.’—‘The word did not help you because you were stubborn, woman.’—‘You led me by the nose all summer long, you’re a fine god.’—‘Woman, you did not want to help your husband and yourself.’ She burst out laughing: ‘And you call that comfort?’ She said not a word more. At a frown from the narrow forehead that loomed up close in front of her she crumpled together, whizzed like a jagged stone down into the abyss to where the steps began, where they penetrated the clouds. She dived past stars, like a homeless meteor amid the swarms whirled past the cloudgates. Have you understood me, Wang Lun?”