Creation (69 page)

I agreed. Actually, I have always found men quite fathomable. They look entirely to their own interest. On the other hand, how men choose to interpret or explain the fact of, let us say, creation is often mysterious to me.

As I sat with Baron K’ang in that dimly lit room, the delicate music filling the air about us like the reverberation of a
sound rather than the sound itself, I knew that he meant to use me. In his elliptical way, he was testing me. He was applying, as it were, heat to the ulterior of the tortoise shell so that he might be able to read the mysterious script that was bound to appear upon the blood-coated outer surface. I remained as still as—as a tortoise shell.

“The restoration of the house of Chou is our dream,” he said somewhat unexpectedly.

“Is this imminent?”

“Who can say? In any case, first the hegemony, then the mandate.” Suddenly two tiny parallel lines marred the upper sector of the egg shell. The baron was frowning. “There are those who believe that the process can be reversed. Although I do not believe this, many wise and not-so-wise men think that such is the case. They believe that if a rightful duke is given his ancient
worldly
primacy, heaven’s decree will follow. Recent ... adventurers have encouraged this false idea. That is why our army is at the Stone Gates. It is easy to handle adventurers.” The upper part of the egg was smooth once again. “We do not fear traitors. But we fear—and respect—our divine sages. You know the teachings of Confucius?”

“Yes, Lord Baron. Fan Ch’ih told me a great deal about him when we were together in the west. And, of course, all educated men discuss him. Even Master Li,” I added with a smile. I was beginning to sense the wind’s direction.

“Even Master Li,” he repeated. The lower part of the egg now displayed, briefly, two small indentations. The dictator had smiled. “They do not love each other, these wise men.” He spoke in a soft voice. “Confucius is returning to Lu, at my request. He has been gone fourteen years. During this time he has traveled in nearly every land within the four seas. He likes to think that he was exiled by my revered father, the prime minister. But I assure you that this was not the case. Confucius exiled us. He is very strict. When the duke of Key made a gift to my father of a number of religious dancers”—the phrase the baron used for religious dancers was not unlike the Babylonian phrase for temple prostitutes—“Confucius thought that my father ought not to accept this gift on the ground that it was unseemly. He gave the traditional reason: such dancers are meant to weaken the resolve of the men who own them. Most courteously, my father said that he regarded the gift as a sign that the government of Key wished to make amends for the fact that they were harboring the traitor Yang Huo. Confucius then resigned all his offices. He was chief magistrate of the town of Chung-fu, a charming place that you must visit while you’re here. He was also assistant to the superintendent of works ... no, no, I’m mistaken—he had been promoted from that office. He was under-minister of police, an important office which he filled most competently.”

I watched the baron as he spoke to the wall behind my head. The wind’s direction was now unmistakable. He knew that I was a friend of Fan Ch’ih’s. Fan Ch’ih was a disciple of Confucius; so was the Chi steward Jan Ch’iu. I began to make connections.

I made the necessary connection. “Did Confucius go to Key?”

“Yes.”

We drank plum wine; listened to music; passed between us a smooth fragment of jade to cool our hands.

I have never known anyone in any country at any time to occupy the sort of place that Confucius did in the Middle Kingdom. Through birth, he was the premier knight of Lu. This meant that he took precedence immediately after the lord-ministers of state. Nevertheless, he came from a poor family. It was said that his father had been a minor officer in the army of the Meng family. Like the other baronial families, the Mengs conducted a school for the sons of its retainers. Confucius was the most brilliant student ever to attend that school. He studied the
Odes
,
the
Histories
,
The Book of Changes
;
he made himself an expert on the past so that he might be useful in the present. As son of the premier knight, he was also trained to be a soldier. He proved to be an excellent archer until middle age clouded his eyes.

Confucius supported himself and his family—he had married at nineteen—by working for the state. I believe that his first job was as a clerk attached to the state granaries. Presumably, he was accurate in his accounts because, in due course, he made his way up the ladder of government service whose terminus, for a knight, is a post such as the one that he had held in the ministry of police.

It is an understatement to say that Confucius was not generally popular. In fact, he was hated and resented not only by his fellow clerks but by the high officers of state as well. The reason for this was simple. He was a nag. He knew exactly how and precisely why things should be done, and he was never shy in expressing his opinions to his superiors. Nevertheless, irritating as he was, he was too valuable a man to ignore; and so he rose as far as he could. By the time he was fifty-six he was under-minister of police, and that should have been that. He had had a successful career in government. He was generally honored if not liked. He was the acknowledged authority on the celestial empire of the Chous. Although he himself wrote nothing, he was the principal interpreter of the Chou texts. It was said that he had read
The Book of Changes
so many times that the thong which holds together the bamboo-strip pages had to be replaced a half-dozen times. He’d worn out the leather in rather the same way that he had worn out the patience of his colleagues in the administration of Lu.

At some point, Confucius became a teacher. I could never find out when or how this began. It must have happened gradually. As he got older and wiser and more learned, young men would come to him with questions about this or that. By the time he was fifty, he must have had thirty or forty full-time disciples, young knights like Fan Ch’ih who would listen to him by the hour.

Although he was not unlike one of those philosophers that we see—or rather, that I
hear
at Athens—he took practically no money from the young, and unlike your lively friend Socrates, he did not ask questions in order to lead the young to wisdom, Confucius
answered
questions; and many of his answers came from a positively archival memory. He knew the entire recorded as well as remembered history of the Chou dynasty. He also knew the history of their predecessors the Shang. Although many Cathayans believe that Confucius is a divine sage—one of those rare heaven-sent teachers who do such a lot of harm—Confucius himself steadfastly denied not only divinity but sagacity. Nevertheless, he became so celebrated outside Lu that men from every part of the Middle Kingdom came to visit him. He received everyone courteously; spoke of what was and of what
should
be. It was his description of what should be that got him into trouble.

Confucius started life as a client of the Meng family. Then he received office from the Chi family. But despite the patronage of the baronial families, he never let them forget that they had usurped the dukes’ prerogatives. He wanted this situation rectified by, first, the restoration of the Chou rituals to their original form and, second, by the ceding of the barons’ illegal powers to the rightful duke. When these two things were done, heaven would be pleased and the mandate would be bestowed.

This sort of talk did not exactly delight the barons. But the Chi family continued to indulge the sage. They also gave preferment to his disciples. Not that they had much choice: all the Confucians were superbly trained by their mentor in administration and war. Finally, since Confucius tried to keep the peace between the states, the barons could not fault him for that—at least not openly.

Confucius was often sent to peace conferences, where he invariably overwhelmed the other participants with celestial learning. He was even, sometimes, useful. But despite his years of work as an administrator and a diplomat, he never learned tact. Baron K’ang gave me a celebrated example of the sage’s bluntness. “Not long before Confucius left Lu the first time, he attended a celebration at our family’s ancestral temple. When he saw that my father had engaged sixty-four dancers, he was furious. He said that since the duke had only been able to afford eight dancers when he addressed his ancestors, my father should not have used more than six dancers. Oh, how Confucius scolded my father, who was very amused!”

The actual story was not at all amusing. Confucius had made it very clear to the old prime minister that since he was flagrantly usurping the sovereign’s prerogative, he was sure to suffer heaven’s anger. When the baron told Confucius to mind his own business, the sage withdrew. As he left the room he was heard to say, “If this man can be endured, who can
not
be endured?” I must say my grandfather never dared go as far as that.

Confucius tried to persuade Duke Ting to dismantle the fortresses of the three baronial families. No doubt, the duke would have done so if he could. But he was powerless. In any case, if only briefly, the two men conspired against the three families; and it is fairly certain that they were responsible for the revolt of the Chi fortress at Pi. Evidence? Shortly after the warden of Castle Pi fled to Key, Confucius resigned all of his offices and left Lu.

Stories differ about what happened in Key. But everyone agrees that both Yang Huo and the warden of Pi tried to enlist the services of Confucius. Each promised to overthrow the baronial families and restore the duke to his rightful place; each asked Confucius to serve him as prime minister. Confucius was said to have been tempted by the warden’s offer. But nothing came of any of this because Yang Huo and the warden never joined forces. If they had, Fan Ch’ih is certain that they could have driven out the barons and restored the duke. But the adventurers were as suspicious of each other as they were of the barons.

Confucius did not stay long in Key. Although his discussions with the two rebels were not satisfactory, the duke of Key was delighted with Confucius and invited him to join the government. The sage was tempted. But the prime minister of Key was not about to have such a paragon in his administration, and the offer was withdrawn.

For the next few years Confucius wandered from state to state, looking for employment. At no point did Confucius ever want to be a professional teacher. But since we always get what we do not want in life, he was besieged by would-be students wherever he went. Young knights and even nobles were eager to learn from him. Although Confucius appeared to be speaking of the restoration of the old ways in order to please heaven, he was actually the leader of a highly radical movement whose intention was, very simply, to sweep away the corrupt all-powerful and ever-proliferating nobility so that there might once more be a son of heaven, who would gaze southward at his loyal slaves, amongst whom a clear majority would be highly trained knights in the new Confucian order.

This was the background to the return of Confucius to Lu in his seventieth year. Although he was seen as no personal threat to the regime, his ideas so troubled the nobles that Baron K’ang decided to put a stop to the wise man’s wanderings. He sent him an embassy in the duke’s name. This wise man was implored to come home; high office was hinted at. Confucius took the bait. He was now en route to Lu from Wei.

“Let us hope,” said my host, “that our little war with Key will be finished before he comes.”

“May it be heaven’s will.” I was pious.

“You will hear a good deal about heaven’s will from Confucius.” There was a long pause. I held my breath. “You will be lodged here, close to me.”

“The honor—” I was not allowed to finish.

“And we shall see to it that you return, somehow, to your native land. Meanwhile ...” The baron looked down at his smooth little hands.

“I shall serve you in every way, Lord Baron.”

“Yes.”

Thus, with no further word spoken, it was arranged that during my stay at Lu I would spy on Confucius and report secretly to the baron, who feared Yang Huo and the warden, who regarded with deep suspicion his own guards commander Jan Ch’iu, who found unnerving the moral force of Confucius and his teachings. Sometimes it is wise to confront rather than evade what you fear. That is why the baron had sent for Confucius. He wanted to learn the worst.

THE CAPITAL CITY OF LU REMINDED ME of Loyang. Of course, all Cathayan cities are more or less alike. There are the astonishingly narrow, twisting streets, the noisy market places, the quiet parks where altars to heaven, rain and earth are set. The city of Ch’u-fu was more ancient than Loyang, and smelled of charred wood, the result of a half millennium of fires. Although I did not know it at the time, Lu was considered somewhat backward by such up-and-coming states as Key, whose capital city was regarded with rather the same awe that Sardis used to be by us. Nevertheless, the duke of Lu was the heir of the legendary Tan, whose name is on everyone’s lips in much the same way that Odysseus is constantly referred to by the Greeks. But whereas Odysseus is noted for trickiness, Tan was overwhelmingly noble and self-sacrificing, the model not only for the perfect Cathayan ruler but, more to the point, of the perfect gentleman—a category invented or appropriated by Confucius. Although most gentlemen are knights, not all knights are gentlemen. Gentle or seemly behavior is the Confucian ideal. I shall try to describe what that is in the proper place.

Whenever Confucius had anything important to say, he would invariably ascribe it to Tan. But then, he used always to say, “I do nothing but transmit what was taught to me. I never make up anything of my own.” I suppose he believed this and I suppose that, in a sense, it could be true. Everything
has
been said before, and if one knows the recorded past, one can always find a venerable pretext for action—or aphorism.

Two weeks after I moved into the Chi palace, the war between Lu and Key ended. Jan Ch’iu and Fan Ch’ih had won a remarkable—that is to say, an unexpected—victory. They had even managed to seize the town of Lang on the Key side of the border. It was reported that both Yang Huo and the warden of Pi were to be seen fighting in the Key army against their own countrymen. In this respect, Cathayans are like Greeks. Loyalty to oneself takes precedence over patriotism.