The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (64 page)

He spoke of the dream that appeared to him night after night: he stood beside the tree, at first it was like a sycamore. Gradually the tree began to grow around him, so slender and at the same time so bushy, hanging over him voluptuous as a weeping willow, enclosing him like a green coffin. Sometimes when he awoke the dream was still in his head and then he imagined that the slender trunk had twined like a creeper around his legs, his body and arms, so he couldn’t extricate himself from the watery pith and was completely sucked up into that luxuriant plant which everyone rejoiced to see.

Ecstatics foamed and clapped when Wang spoke in this vein. It frequently happened that crowds gathered, crowded around the gates with a hazy notion of going out to preach to the enemy and winning them over. They urged Wang, urged Yellow Bell to let them hold a festival. And one day the joyous sounds of a festival fluted through the town. They hauled the carved image of a goddess, the Queen of the Western Heaven, from a sumptuous temple, carried it to an open space beyond the houses, burned incense, leapt. Brothers walked barefoot over beds of glowing coal spread in front of the goddess, faces turned to the goddess laughing, triumphant. Brothers and sisters endlessly begged Wang to send spirits to her that would cast themselves down before her and praise her on behalf of all who honoured the holy Wu-wei. Five times five men and women dragged beams and loose boards over the beds of coal. And as the wood blazed up, they trampled in glee one behind the other, one over the other amid the frantic shouts of the crowd, yelping into the swelling flames before the gentle image, like chicks under a mother hen’s wing.

Chao Hui was commander in chief of a force that outnumbered the enemy by almost ten to one. The arrival of those Manchurian archers whose deployment the Emperor had ordered was expected daily. A young officer was attached to the general’s Banner regiment: Lao-hsü, the son of Chao and Hai-t’ang. As she first drove Chao Hui out to avenge their sweet daughter, so Hai-t’ang then drove out this elegant idler, who was rapidly changed by his sister’s death. He hardly had need of his mother’s prodding.

Linch’ing consisted of an old and a new town. Only the new town was strongly walled and surrounded by an earthen rampart. The wall of the old town was not quite complete, only two of its watchtowers usable. Before the archers arrived Yinchitu, a captain of Chao’s Banner, took two hundred men, forced the eastern gate
of the new town, stormed the almost undefended wall overpowered the badly armed rebels. Only forty Imperials were killed in this surprise attack, while two hundred and thirty corpses of sectarians and townspeople were counted.

The next day a red sun glowed. As it sank, Wang gave orders for everyone in the old town who had a weapon to take arms and abandon houses which were difficult to barricade. They were to take up positions in the largest houses in the narrowest streets. Small bands of archers and slingers were to place themselves at particular points along the walls as soon as night fell. Yellow Bell saw to the deployment with cold efficiency; his calmness removed all fear from the moment.

As soon as it grew dark someone came to the house where Wang was lodging; when a man opened the door at his knock, handed over a vase and said it was not to be opened. After closing the door the man stood there irresolute, and before he could ask a question the messenger had vanished. Doubtfully he bolted the door, took the sealed porcelain vase, of no great weight, to Wang’s room, placed it on the mat. Shortly afterwards Yellow Bell arrived at the house to speak to Wang. He went into the room and saw Wang seated by the oil lamp at a table, his back to the door. He seemed to be reading. Then the gatekeeper called from the yard that Yellow Bell was to go up: Wang Lun was on the first floor with some brothers, asking for him. Frightened, Yellow Bell stumbled up the stairs. From the room above he could hear loud talking and noises. Wang was handing out spears and short daggers. Yellow Bell called to Wang, who let a dagger drop when he saw the officer’s horrified face, rushed downstairs with him, went softly through the door. The apparition was still reading at the table. Wang called to it, it turned, gazed at Wang, whose hands clutched his throat, out of his own eyes, moved towards the mat, vanished.
The two men edged nearer. The vase stood there, sealed. Yellow Bell held Wang, who was tottering, by the shoulder. “Yellow Bell, do you know what it was?”

Yellow Bell said nothing, closed his eyes. Wang was trembling. “It means I must die tomorrow.”

In haste, distraught, Wang told the gatekeeper to take the vase away, carefully. After staring blankly into space for a while he went back up with Yellow Bell.

The assault on the gates began shortly before sunrise, beginning with the new town. Bold, powerful Yinchitu was the first to storm into the town through the battered gate; he sought Wang Lun, to strangle him with his bare hands. Close behind ran Lao-hsü in a redplumed helmet, shieldless, in each fist a long two-edged knife. The southern gate succumbed not long after to the provincial troops, who had now been joined by the archers; as soon as Yinchitu entered the town through the east gate, all defenders had withdrawn from the walls into the lanes and houses. On the southern wall stood a cast iron cannon, which the attackers filled with the blood of a virgin they had stabbed the night before the assault, and shot into the town to cleanse the air of the spirits of fallen rebels. Women rushed at the soldiers from alleyways with a horrible jubilant shrieking; they blocked streets leading to the rebels: clumped possessed flesh that had to be hacked away. Flames from burning houses jogged in from the edge of the town.

Furious street fighting set in. The brothers would not allow themselves to be trapped in the houses; they sallied forth from house after house. The town quivered death. The streets filled with choking soldiers. Fresh troops poured in continually over the walls, ground their teeth and could not be restrained. From the centre of the town among the furious roaring, the long sharp screaming, a raucous bawling and whooping swelled from the rebels, sank, surged again.

In a street, planted with the corpses of women, that led to the marketplace, brothers saw as they opened their house doors to enter the fray Wang Lun running with great leaps from the marketplace, bareheaded, sword slung over his left shoulder. He raced past, his sweatdrenched face hollow and unrecognizable, eyes empty, Yinchitu and Lao-hsü pursuing at the head of archers and lancers. The brothers held back the onslaught. Wang disappeared into a large empty house at the end of the street. A small group of sectarians with daggers ran along the houses, threw themselves on the archers in front of the last doorway. Yinchitu, covered by Lao-hsü, heaved open the door with a groan. Wang was panting by the courtyard wall. Yinchitu parried Wang’s thrust with his sword; they struggled; the captain wrested Yellow Leaper from the rebel leader’s grasp. A dozen sectarians succeeded in gaining entry to the yard. They felled Lao-hsü with their daggers, freed Wang and scrambled with him to the upper floor of the house. Here were piled planks of camphor wood. They barricaded the stairs with a jumble of planks, cupboards and tables. While archers from Kirin shot arrow after arrow in through the windows, they started a fire and were burned before the first soldier could climb the stairs.

Yinchitu stormed down the street after rebels, brandishing Yellow Leaper about his head; he struck down twenty brothers and sisters.

In the southern part of the town Yellow Bell held his house longest. When it was set alight with burning arrows, he scrambled with his forty men out into the street. He fought warily against the Imperial Bannermen, who retreated when they recognized the officer they had revered in the barracks. The whole town had fallen to the jubilant regulars, and still he fought, protecting himself with a tall shield, behind the yamen wall. A lance in the throat spun him around; his last companions were felled by club blows. The hundred
men and women who had gathered weaponless in the marketplace ready to be massacred were surrounded, bound, dragged by twos to the camp outside the burning town.

Government measures winding up this affair lasted a month. During this time the prisoners were transported to Peking; Ch’ien-lung interrogated the greater part of them personally, to ascertain connivance by officials, dilatoriness in persecution. Then the brothers and sisters were sentenced before a large crowd outside Peking in accordance with the law against heresy. Their families and the families of known rebels were banished to the Ili and Mongolia, some two thousand people in all. The village of Hunkang-ts’un was burned to the ground, the remains of Wang’s parents exhumed, dismembered, all residents of the village driven out, their scanty chattels confiscated. The corpses of the rebels rotted in the streets of Linch’ing, poisoned the air until the few remaining inhabitants turned to the Prefect. Then a decree of Ch’ien-lung ordered the carcasses to be gathered and piled outside the wall near the Canal. Two wide shallow graves were dug for the men and women on the riverbank, at a spot where evil spirits congregated. Into these were tipped barrow loads of cadavers; debris from the burned out houses and charred beams were piled on top. From the Canal these two long grave mounds and rubble heaps looked like the backs of two giant moles scrabbling out of the earth.

Ch’ien-lung basked. He made it known to the State Council that he had named Chia-ch’ing, the son who had reconciled him with his ancestors, as his heir. Officers, generals, high officials, advisers who had taken part in the suppression of the rebellion received titles of honour, estates. On the day of the Thanksgiving Festival, Ch’ien-lung inscribed in a firm hand in the inner hall of the K’ungfu-tzu Temple: “Had K’ungfu-tzu been here, he would
not have proceeded more thoroughly than I.”

While the corpses—the charred body of Wang, who had been born a fisherman’s son, lived a criminal, founded the Wu-wei for the wretched of the Eighteen Provinces and so fallen under the laws against heresy, the pierced body of Yellow Bell, the noblest and gentlest of the brothers, whoo received the spear with his soul at peace, surging tenderly towards a lovely white cloud, Ngo the weakest of all, slowly crushed by his misery, the numberless brothers and sisters who had blossomed under the peace of Wu-wei—while the corpses still rotted in the quiet streets and in the houses of Linch’ing, Hai-t’ang travelled on a great ship of mourning, surrounded by her women, along the coast to her southern homeland.

Chao Hui, the broken victor, was held fast by Ch’ien-lung at Court. Hai-t’ang wanted to travel alone. She told Chao Hui when he sold his house in Shanhaikwan that he should take a concubine, have a son by her.

Soft autumn came. The ship glided along the southern coast. From the towns music shrilled; harvest processions thudded in the fields. Junks streaked playfully over the dark water. Hai-t’ang still as death on the broad heavy ship. She did not journey directly to her home; the ship anchored off the island of P’ut’o-shan. Hai-t’ang wanted to go before the merciful goddess Kuan-yin, secure for herself the prayers of the most pious monks.

Sunny jags of granite peaks. Dreaming tucked-in landscapes. Slender fan palms with clear voices. Camellias a hundred thousand. Transpiring ponds, floating lilies. Between hedges, behind stony paths a temple at the foot of the cliff. Stretched out sky.

Supported by two women Hai-t’ang rustled along the path in grey voluminous clothes, grey veil over her face. They went through the entrance hall, across the vast terrace and the platform in front of the prayer hall. Hai-t’ang’s eyes tolerated the reliefs on
the steep breastwork of the terrace, extolling childish love. In front of the altar the eternal flame smoked in its carved wooden niche. Curtains, patchwork carpets, standards, drums, incense.

Kuan-yin huge at the back. She sat there by the wall in a white robe, left hand delicately raised; her face was golden; she wore a crown of five lotus leaves; her blue hair was fastened with a diadem. She sat on the marble plinth slender of hip, stronglegged, head leaning slightly back; violet bib; white silk flowed over her narrow shoulders. The eyelids beneath black brows were lowered but the yellowish lashes, thin, slightly parted lips seemed to flutter gently. In such mildness she kept her silence; in such absorption she heard and gave. Tablets and banners praised her: “Kuan-yin, great friend. Her merciful boat conveys all across. Her grace is vast as the waves of the sea. She arose for everyone. A mother’s heart. Her golden body will not perish.”

Monks in brown robes pressed foreheads to the ground before her. Murmurs, tinkling, a soft chant. Hai-t’ang crumpled her veil; breathed gustily and smiled, gazed away over the monks.

It was late evening. The island was vanishing in the darkness. Bearing lanterns a hundred monks left their cells and chapels in procession along stony paths. Hai-t’ang had donated a vast sum in order that they should pray for her to the goddess. She sat at a bend in the path under a boulder of granite. The procession murmured past, arms crossed, cowl after cowl. She paid the monks, an endless stream. Proud, triumphant she surveyed the boundless throng: she must succeed in overpowering the goddess. Peace, peace was what she wanted. Wang Lun had taken both children from her; vengeance had failed, and even had it succeeded would have been of no use. Peace for herself, peace for her dead children, endless, ever-renewed floggings for Wang Lun! It grew calm in her as the torches vanished amid chanting into the temple. She gulped the
warm air. The goddess had better look out, now the monks were crowding in on her, struggling with her—for Hai-t’ang. Her maids got to their feet. Hai-t’ang returned to the ship for the night.

The next evening she sat once more under the boulder of granite. The torches swayed past. In the darkness she turned her triumphant face, contorted with hate, towards the dark temple. She shook her arms over the heads of the monks.

On the third evening she sent her maids away. The murmur of the procession filled the paths. Hai-t’ang stared into the dazzling torchlight. She fell down, screamed, tore her breast. The goddess was stronger; the monks could not prevail. They could pray and pray and pray. Who had the strength? Who could save her?