The Real Story of Ah-Q (54 page)

Further in towards the centre of the city, Mozi found himself in an enormous public square, packed with stalls and jostling crowds – the city’s main shopping area and crossroads. Finding an old man who looked moderately well educated, Mozi asked for directions to Gongshu Ban’s residence. The language barrier, unfortunately, mired the two of them in misunderstanding. Just as he was starting to trace out the words on the palm of his hand, there was a loud noise and everyone began chorusing Chu folk songs, led by one of the state’s singing stars, Sai Xiangling. When even the old man began to hum along, Mozi knew he wasn’t going to get any more joy out of him, and so off he strode. But there was no escape from the singing – no one was to be distracted until Sai was done. Eventually, after things quietened down, Mozi made further inquiries at a carpenter’s shop.

‘D’you mean Gongshu Ban of Lu
⁶
– the one who invented grapnels and pikes?’ As Mozi thought, the proprietor – a corpulent individual with a yellow face and black beard – had exactly the information he sought. ‘It’s not far from here. Turn back the way you came, past the crossroads, then turn south-east down the second road to your right. Turn north again, and the third house is his.’

After tracing the name on his hand to confirm it with the carpenter, Mozi committed the directions to memory, thanked the man and strode off in the direction indicated. His instructions were exact: on the main gate of the third house was nailed an ingeniously carved cedarwood plaque, on which were inscribed in archaic script the words: ‘Gongshu Ban of the State of Lu’.

After several raps of the red copper door-knocker – cast in the shape of an animal – an irascible-looking gatekeeper emerged.

‘No visitors!’ he roared as soon as he saw Mozi. ‘We’ve had enough freeloaders from Lu!’

In the time it took Mozi to look across at him, the gate was shut again. When Mozi tried knocking a second time, he was greeted only by silence. And yet, discomforted by the glance Mozi had shot at him, the gatekeeper decided to report the new arrival to his master, who – carpenter’s square in hand – was busy measuring up a model of his siege ladder.

‘Another sponger, master,’ the gatekeeper offered diffidently. ‘A bit different from the usual crowd, though.’

‘What did he say his name was?’

‘I didn’t ask,’ the gatekeeper nervously confessed.

‘What did he look like, then?’

‘Like a beggar. Tall, swarthy, about thirty – ’

‘Mozi!’ Gongshu Ban exclaimed, abandoning his work and running down the steps. The surprised gatekeeper hurriedly overtook him to open the gate. Visitor and host encountered each other in the courtyard.

‘How’ve you been?’ Gongshu Ban chatted merrily away, taking Mozi inside. ‘Busy as ever?’

‘Same as always.’

‘You have come so far, master. What instructions do you have for me?’

‘Someone in the north has insulted me,’ Mozi calmly told him. ‘I want you to go and kill him.’

The smile faded from his host’s face.

‘There’s ten pieces of silver in it for you,’ Mozi continued.

Now Gongshu Ban’s face clouded with anger. ‘I’m no murderer!’ he responded icily.

‘Delighted to hear it!’ Mozi straightened up, then bowed a couple of times to him, as if intensely relieved. ‘But I still have business to discuss with you,’ he imperturbably continued. ‘Back north, I heard you’d invented a siege ladder to attack Song. What has Song done to deserve this? Chu has too much land, and too few people. What is the point in killing what you lack, to take more of what you already have in plenty? He who attacks an innocent victim is inhumane; he who fails to oppose such a plan is no patriot; he who opposes it but dissuades no one is weak; he who refuses to kill one man, but is willing to kill many is inconsistent. So – what do you say to that?’

‘There is…’ Gongshu Ban pondered, ‘there is something in what you say.’

‘So give up the ladder.’

‘Impossible,’ Gongshu Ban said regretfully. ‘I’ve already given the king my word.’

‘Then take me to see the king.’

‘All right. But let’s eat first.’

Mozi had no interest in food. He bent at the waist, as if about to propel himself to his feet. Knowing how restless he was, Gongshu Ban abandoned his delaying tactics and agreed to take him straight to the king. Going first to his own room, however, he came back with a robe and pair of shoes.

‘But you must change into some decent clothes, master,’ he begged him. ‘People are very conscious of appearances round here – not like they are at home.’

‘Of course. I’m not wearing these old things for the love of them,’ Mozi admitted. ‘I just didn’t have time to change.’

The King of Chu was no stranger to the name Mozi, the sage of the north. The moment Gongshu Ban announced him, he was immediately admitted to the royal presence.

Mozi followed Gongshu Ban into the palace – his bony feet sticking out of the bottom of his ill-fitting robe like an egret’s – and bowed before the king.

‘Imagine a man,’ Mozi expansively began, ‘who spurns his sedan chair, coveting instead his neighbour’s broken old barrow; who casts aside his brocade, but has designs on his neighbour’s felt jacket; who rejects his own rice and meat, while scheming to snatch his neighbour’s husk gruel. What kind of a man would you call this?’

‘A kleptomaniac,’ the king frankly replied.

‘Chu is five thousand
li
square,’ Mozi went on, ‘to Song’s five hundred. Which is the sedan chair, which the broken barrow? Chu enjoys the marshes of Yunmeng, teeming with rhinoceros and elk, the Yangtze and Han rivers, with their fish, crabs, turtles and alligators – richer than any other state in the world. Song has nothing: not even pheasants, rabbits or carp. Which has rice and meat? Which has gruel? Chu has great pines, catalpas, cedars, camphors – Song has no forests. Which state enjoys brocade, which shivers under felt? This is my humble analogy for the king’s planned attack on Song.’

‘Well put!’ the king nodded. ‘But now I’ve put Gongshu Ban to the trouble of inventing those ladders, I have to find some use for them.’

‘But victory is not guaranteed,’ Mozi countered. ‘Find me some scraps of wood and we will see.’

Addicted to games and other novelties, the king delightedly told the ministers present to rustle up some pieces of wood. Undoing his leather belt, Mozi bent it into an arc in front of Gongshu Ban, to represent the city wall. The thirty-odd pieces of wood that were procured he divided into two – one set he kept for himself, the other he gave to Gongshu Ban, to represent the weapons of siege and defence.

The two of them then took up their instruments of war, as if playing chess, and the contest began. If the attackers advanced, the other side would defend; retreat by one was answered with pursuit by the other. The king and his ministers watched on uncomprehendingly.

After nine retreats and nine advances, each showcasing different strategies, Gongshu Ban capitulated. Mozi then turned the arc of the belt against himself: it was now his turn to attack. The same dance of advance and retreat went on; this time, however, Mozi’s pieces broke through the belt after the third sally.

Though mystified by the whole performance, the king and his ministers could see that their man had laid down his pieces, disappointment written over his face; that he had lost at both attack and defence.

The king shared in his sense of defeat.

‘I can beat you,’ Gongshu Ban muttered, after an awkward pause. ‘But I’m not going to tell you how.’

‘I already know,’ Mozi answered calmly. ‘But I’m not going to tell you.’

‘What are you talking about?’ the bewildered king asked.

‘What he means,’ Mozi turned to the sovereign, ‘is that he’s thinking of killing me. If I am dead, Song won’t have anyone left to defend it. What he doesn’t know is that my disciple Qin Huali and three hundred others armed by me are awaiting their enemies in the capital of Song. Kill me, and you still won’t take Song.’

‘Ingenious!’ the King of Chu sighed. ‘We’d best stay at home, then.’

Mozi had planned to return directly to Lu after persuading the king to call off his attack on Song. But because he needed to return Gongshu Ban’s robes to him, he was obliged to go back with him. As the afternoon was by then well advanced, and both men were hungry, his host prevailed upon him to have lunch – or dinner, perhaps more accurately – and to stay the night.

‘I must be off today,’ Mozi insisted. ‘I’ll come back next year, to show the king my book.’

‘Still obsessed with justice, are you?’ Gongshu Ban asked. ‘Doesn’t it wear you out – always looking out for the desperate and distressed? Let the poor worry about justice – it doesn’t matter to the rich. He’s a king, remember!’

‘Faulty logic. The poor make silk, hemp, rice and millet, but the rich need them, too. Even more so with justice.’

‘True,’ Gongshu Ban cheerfully agreed. ‘Before you arrived, I wanted to take Song. Now, though, I wouldn’t take Song even if you offered it to me for free. Because it wouldn’t be right.’

‘If you promise always to do what is right,’ Mozi responded, equally cheerily, ‘I will give you Song for free. In fact, I will give you the world!’

While they talked and laughed, lunch was brought out – fish, meat, wine. Ignoring the wine and fish, Mozi picked at a little of the meat. Embarrassed to be drinking alone, Gongshu Ban urged food on his abstemious guest.

‘Dig in!’ he gestured at the chilli sauce and the large griddle cakes. ‘These are really quite decent. Though the onions aren’t as succulent as they are back home.’

Gongshu Ban’s spirits rose further as he drank his way through a few cups of wine.

‘Is your justice a match for my grapnels and pikes?’ he asked.

‘A hundred times better,’ Mozi responded robustly. ‘Love is my attack, respect my defence. Without love and respect, there will never be peace – only treachery. Love begets love; respect, respect; while your grapnels and pikes beget only further aggression and mutual destruction. That is why I say my justice is superior to your warships.’

‘But your justice has just broken my rice bowl, my dear fellow!’ Having lost the latest of their arguments, Gongshu Ban now changed the subject, probably already tipsy; he had no head for wine.

‘It’s still better than breaking all the rice bowls in Song.’

‘From now on, I will devote myself to the making of toys. Wait there, my dear fellow, I’ve something I want to show you.’

Springing to his feet, he ran into the back room, where he seemed to be rifling through a chest. Soon, he re-emerged, bringing with him a magpie made of wood and bamboo.

‘Wind it up,’ he said, handing it to Mozi, ‘and it’ll fly for three days. Ingenious, is it not?’

‘I prefer the ingenuity of wheel-makers.’ Mozi placed it on the mat, after glancing at it. ‘A good carpenter can pare a piece of wood three inches thick into a wheel strong enough to carry fifty piculs.
⁷
Human ingenuity must be of practical benefit; all else is a waste of time.’

‘Of course,’ Gongshu Ban sobered up with this latest rebuff. ‘Of course. I knew you were going to say that.’

‘Just do what is right,’ Mozi advised, looking him straight in the eye, ‘and you will have ingenuity and more besides: the world will be yours. But I have disturbed you far too long. Until next year.’

Mozi took up his small bundle and bade his host farewell. Knowing there was no keeping him, Gongshu Ban saw him to the gate, then went back inside. After some thought, he stuffed the model of the ladder and the wooden magpie back into the chest in the back room.

Mozi took his time over his return journey: first, because he was exhausted; second, because his feet hurt; third, because he had finished his provisions and hunger slowed him down; and finally because – his mission accomplished – he had none of the sense of urgency that had driven him on the outward journey. But fortune seemed to be against him: just past the frontier into Song, he was searched twice by patrols. Near the capital, his path crossed with that of a fundraising National Salvation Squad, which claimed his tattered old knapsack as a donation. And just outside the capital’s southern pass, he was caught in a downpour. When he tried to take shelter under the city gate, two patrolmen chased him away with spears. As a result, he got soaked to the skin and spent the next ten days with a blocked nose.

August 1934