The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (10 page)

Still with his head in bandages he went one afternoon to see the bonze. He was sitting in his place in a solemn attitude; strangers from Wuting-fu were there viewing the temple. When he recognized the casually swaggering Wang, he hurried delightedly across and thanked him for his handsome donation to the recent water Mass, asked how his evidently suffering patron found himself. With furrowed brow he added that his temple was beset with troubles. Some cunning thievish rogue was making himself free in this peaceful quarter of the town and plundering poor Han Hsiang-tzu and his humble servant T’o Chin: that was his name. Wang listened with interest, looking down at him, and asked after a pause for thought what precautions wise T’o Chin had taken against this criminal.

Then T’o, with warm and reiterated thanks for his unbounded benevolence, took this serious man who observed everything with the inquisitive eye of an official on a guided tour. T’o Chin let him see the old empty wall box, showed him the mantraps that he set in the evenings by the doors, pointed out the dried tar on the wall behind the statue. Wang gave advice; would it not be wisest for the bonze to keep the day’s takings about his own person? T’o Chin replied by alluding to the dangerousness of the scoundrel, who even … Wang bridled, repudiated the term “scoundrel”, explained at the other’s smiling glance of enquiry that such strong expressions grated on his ears, that he cultivated such sensitivity of hearing out of deep respect for the patron of music.

They wandered several times, eyeing each other, up and down
between the pious strangers from Wuting-fu. Then Wang condescendingly took leave of the priest, who expressed himself rapturously grateful for the confidence of his illustrious guest.

That night the fisherman’s son from Hunkang-ts’un walked distractedly up and down outside the temple. He didn’t know how to handle it. He was afraid of exposing himself to the old joker’s ridicule. Letting him be was impossible after the wily trickster’s latest triumph. For several moments Wang seriously considered waking T’o Chin, thrashing him, and giving himself up to the police.

Then he felt his way across the pitch black yard. In a corner by the outhouse on one side he stopped to let his eyes grow used to the dark. There, dose beside him at an angle to the main door, he saw a long ladder lying on the ground.

He didn’t touch it; he pondered. It was one of T’o Chin’s little games; the ladder normally stood in a corner of the yard. On the other hand there couldn’t be any more hiding places inside the temple where T’o could put his day’s takings. Wang carefully stepped around the ladder, tried several times to jump up onto the low roof but couldn’t reach and it made too much noise. Then awkwardly, sliding back again and again, he pulled himself up a damp post of the outhouse, swung onto the roof. It took more than an hour before he made it across to the temple roof itself; he was afraid that if he stood upright he would be seen from the street.

And so he crawled bent double and at every doorslam, watchman’s drumbeat he fell flat on his stomach, in constant danger of sliding down the steep-angled tiles. He cursed his luck, having to live off the money of such an old villain. Roofrib after roofrib was negotiated; slowly Wang let himself down to the warrior figure on the eaves that held a shiny shield. Behind the shield on the warrior’s arm something hung, swung darkly as the eaves bent under Wang’s weight. It was the purse. His clammy fingers untied it, a
tricky half hour ensued until he stood once more in the street, shivering, his dirty face twisted with anger at the old man’s guile.

Around noon, as he stood on the terrace chewing tobacco after lunch, the quick footed landlord came blathering up to hand him a long visiting card. T’o Chin enquired after his benefactor’s health, was visibly pleased that his head wounds were healing, observed Wang’s torn hands with distress: earning a living in Chinan-fu was so hard. When they had drunk their tea Wang paid quite openly from his guest’s purse, accompanied him to the temple to find out what the business of the ladder was all about. They evinced great sympathy for each other, especially Wang for T’o, since he felt that the advantage was with him and T’o seemed to accept this. At the suggestion of his guest T’o fetched the ladder from its corner, placed it against the roof, climbed up a few rungs. Wang, puzzled, climbed after him up to the roof.

Wang knew it: this game, which he always won and lost at the same time, would be resolved today.

On shaky legs and with a weak back he crept at nightfall hungry and nervous into the yard, got the ladder that was lying again in front of the main door, placed it against the roof and climbed up, his heart pounding. A purse was hanging there again right from the warrior’s arm. He lay prone on the roof, uneasy; something seemed to be moving in the yard; once the ladder jogged. He climbed down again quickly, without incident.

He stood rooted there at the foot of the ladder. He couldn’t move. His felt shoes were embedded in a thick slime that rose over his ankles. He groaned; worked his way loose by pulling himself up the ladder, leaving his shoes stuck there. His anger gave him grim strength, made him almost senseless. When he stood barefoot and with gummed-up trousers free in the yard, he threw the purse violently at the door of the bonze’s room. He yelled through
the quiet night to the tinkling of rolling coins:

“There’s your filthy money, you son of a turtle.” Hammered on the thin wooden wall of the house with his fists, until a soft voice made itself audible from within: “What do you want, my dear? What presents have you brought this son of a turtle in the middle of the night?”

“He’d better come out, that son of a turtle, I want him out here.

“I want to show him what meanness and baseness are. You’re going to pay for my shoes and my trousers.”

“But the dear, tempestuous man has already received the price of his shoes and his trousers.”

“Come out I say, you prattler, you swindler, you lump of lard, and I’ll show you what I mean by pay!”

While Wang Lun raged freezing out in the yard, T’o Chin dressed by the light of an oil lamp in his best robe, put the kettle on to boil, and very calmly opened the door into the yard. Wang wanted to rush at him; because of his gummed-up trousers could only hobble painfully. T’o Chin held the lamp up for him, bowed without ceasing. In the eyes of the strapping young fellow, who felt the ridiculousness of his situation, stood tears of rage and pain. The bonze moved aside for him, indicated the warm brickbed, on which Wang lay down whimpering.

The cup of hot tea that his host proffered with great ceremony he drank in two gulps, while T’o threw open his priest’s robe, poured a strong smelling liquid onto a wad of cloth and slowly rubbed the pitch from Wang’s legs. Now and then he ran into the yard with his lamp. “A thief might come and steal our money,” he explained as he came back in with the purse and shut the door again. He offered Wang a pair of trousers and good felt shoes. The fisherman’s son from Hunkang-ts’un sat at the generous man’s table, devoured watermelon and gulped down cup after cup. He
seemed to be swaying up and down, but the tea was hot and the melon juicy.

In his conversation T’o Chin proved to be as great a reader of men’s souls as he was a rogue. His defeated opponent laid his head first on one side, then on the other in wonder at such manifold artfulness. As intended, T’o had caught himself a trusty collaborator.

So the remarkable interaction between the two mutated into friendship.

T’o Chin’s occupation was a very simple one. He had under his care the temple of a very poor company—the musicians. They paid him an insignificant sum for his services and placed the room at his disposal; essentially he had to make his own living through the sale of incense and Masses, and everything depended on his own abilities. In a different quarter of Chinan-fu stood another temple of the Patron of Music, and when T’o’s god failed to grant their wishes people would take themselves blaspheming and complaining to the other temple and bring T’o’s god into disrepute.

Now Wang Lun and T’o Chin carried on the business jointly. Wang was the bonze’s crier and witness. When they made their way of a morning together through the streets and the swarming marketplaces, the giant Wang in a green smock walked ahead of the priest, held the two yard-long horns by their mouths; T’o Chin from time to time blew into the mouthpieces; two deep startling notes bellowed from the horns into the scattering crowd. In front of the silk merchants’ booths, the porcelain sellers, they loudly praised the rare, immense efficacy of their god: the lots in his temple gave the surest prescriptions against every illness; a Mass said before him was as effective as it was cheap. It was a good idea to freshen up the divinity now and then, ascribe sensational new abilities to him; so they cried the music god’s flair for sniffing out
crimes, thefts. If they were then led off somewhere they simply spied out the opportunities as they carried a small statue of Han Hsiang-tzu around, stole something later, and with the help of Han Hsiang-tzu’s nose unearthed the greater part of the booty in some distant spot. Naturally, when the haul was particularly rich the god left them in the lurch.

T’o Chin, recognizing Wang’s inclination to tomfoolery and high jinks, gave him a beautiful stag mask with splendid antlers, a mask such as the lamaistical shamans wore at their Cham-dance. Wang Lun was as happy as a child with the thing, romped around the yard and out in the street together with the two sedan bearers; startled visitors, drove them off.

His antics filled half the town. Like when he sat down somewhere in the street, in the middle of a pack of stray dogs, pulled on the stag mask, snarled at the dogs, then made off at their head across busy squares: shrieking of women and children, pandemonium, leaping, barking, running around, and the chase disappeared down an alley where with a kick he conveyed the howling dogs through a paper window or into a sedan chair and ran on whooping.

One event, momentous in its background, and in its consequences to affect him drastically, made him notorious.

Some Chinese tribes in Kansu, adherents of the Mohammedan faith, had comported themselves in a defiant and rebellious manner. They called themselves the Salarrh of the White Turbans, were divided among themselves; they had been put down with force.

Now everything in any way connected or related to them in other provinces was to be identified, banished and uprooted, long after their leader and all his followers had yielded up their lives. The ground trembled already under the feet of secret leagues who raged against the warrior Emperor and the alien Manchu dynasty,
but no one in the proud Vermilion City paid any heed to this dull murmuring, whose voice would later be augmented by the swishing of arrows, the clashing of curved sabres, the unearthly ruddy-white cackle of pillars of fire, the groaning and bursting of collapsing roofs.

In Chinan-fu there lived among other Mohammedan families the family of a certain Su. He made wicks from plant pith; he was a respected, worthy man who had achieved the lowest civil rank. The Su’s resided in Unicorn Street, almost opposite Wang Lun’s inn, and Wang greatly esteemed the clever, though conceited, man.

The Taot’ai of Chinan-fu established that Su-ko was the uncle of a man who had instigated the first disturbances in Kansu. Constables arrested the manufacturer of wicks, took him and his two sons to the town gaol where he was interrogated daily under torture.

He had spent three weeks in custody before Wang heard of it in his lodgings. At once cold terror coursed through his bones. He conjured up the image of the grave, solicitous man, asked time and again, “But why? What for?”; couldn’t rest until he had confirmed for himself that Su-ko really was in prison together with his two sons and was being interrogated every day under torture. And just because that agitator, the one who’d first read aloud from an old book in Kansu, was his nephew.

At midday Wang sat down together with his two friends and three beggars in the inn and discussed with them what to do. He brandished his two open hands in front of his face in the way he had and said: “Su-ko is an upright man. His relatives and friends are not here, they’re already headless. Su-ko shall not remain in prison.”

The one-eyed beggar told how he had heard in the Taot’ai’s yamen that the provincial judge from Kuangp’ing-fu would arrive in three or four days to sit in judgement on the Su’s. Wang pumped him with excited questions: who’d said it, how many had heard,
were preparations already in hand to receive the Nieht’ai, the judge, how many would come with the Nieht’ai. When he heard it was an old judge, appointed specially for this case and unknown in the town, his narrow eyes gleamed scornfully; then he grinned, after a pause laughed out loud so that the chopsticks fell off the table and the other five laughed too, punched one another, melodiously echoed each others’ laughter. A huddle of heads, rapid exchanges of words, frequent furious insistence from Wang. Each went his way.

In two days every yamen runner in Chinan-fu, and thus the whole town, knew that the Nieht’ai coming to give judgement at the pending political trials would arrive the following day, sooner than expected.

Wang Lun and twenty idlers and ruffians he had quickly rounded up in the town had rendered impassable no fewer than three bridges that the envoy would have to cross, had hired formal dress for himself and his accomplices from a pawnshop that owed him and T’o a favour for several cheaply acquired items, and on the given day marched with exaggeratedly stem features into the great city through the same gate that he had passed through a few months before, alone, smiling, with a familiar greeting to the fat gate guard, as if he were just back from one of the many small tea pavilions outside the walls frequented by poets and young gallants.

On this hot morning in the eighth month gongs clashed ceaselessly before him, demanding reverence. Two of the ruffians, halberds at the ready, rode in front on rickety bays, unsteady in the saddle. Behind them marched two gong beating youths with menacing frowns, four minor officials with freshly lacquered insignia of judicial dignity. And in the blue palanquin, concealed by drawn curtains, a venerable dreaming ancient with a white beard that hung in thick tassels left and right from cheeks and chin onto the shiny black silk robe, almost covering the beautiful breast badge with its
embroidered silver pheasant: Wang Lun himself. The round black mandarin’s hat was ornamented with the sapphire button.