The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (18 page)

His chair bore him as far as the fenced-off fields. Then two by two the bearers lugged great curiously shaped pots filled with a leaden substance along behind him, at his command set them down beside one of the flat lye pans the size of a room. A brown-black liquid covered its surface, exhaled a constricting, caustic vapour. With a gesture Ch’en dismissed the bearers.

Wang came, at a sign from Ch’en squatted next to him by the basin. They wound the thin silk scarves that lay beside Ch’en around mouths and noses.

How many might they be in the Nank’ou mountains?

A hundred when he came away, now maybe four hundred, maybe a thousand.

Why so vague, maybe four hundred, maybe a thousand? How could they increase their number so quickly?

They were all of the same mind. They had all suffered greatly. They protected one another.

Once more, who was he, where did he come from, what was his part in all this?

His name was Wang Lun, he was the son of a fisherman, born at Hunkang-ts’un in the district of Hailing in Shantung. He was their leader; he had advised them not to do anything against oppression, but to live as outcasts without resisting the world’s course.

What did he intend with it, this leading, this advice, what did he intend with it all? Why didn’t they just scatter to the eight corners of the Earth, live as he said, just as he said, which really seemed quite a suitable thing, instead of congregating, drawing the
attention of the authorities to themselves, demanding protection from unknown brotherhoods and so on.

Those who scattered would be ruined, said Wang. He considered it best for the brothers to hold together; otherwise in no time they would all be murderers, bandits, violators of women, burglars again. It wasn’t enough to be a footpad; you had to know which path to set your feet on.

Now for the first time the merchant, sitting there with his mind made up, felt astonishment. He studied the man beside him, who returned calm answers and all the time stared into the brown-black acid brew.

“You’ve left your lye here for four days, Ch’en. It’s not enough just to wash the pyrites that we haul out of the mine. You leave the lye day after day in the sunlight. One sulphur crystal after another grows as the water evaporates. Pour your lye into a brook: it won’t grow any crystals then, Ch’en.”

Long confabulations on the days that followed, just the two of them. In the last of these Wang played his trump: that though he might be seeking the protection of the White Waterlily for his brotherhood, he didn’t come empty handed. For he brought to the league a steadily growing army, one that could be relied on. When the strings of the yüeh-ch’in are stretched too tight they cease to lament and hum, spring like a New Year firecracker against the player’s cheek and the twang leaves a streak of blood.

Late in the evening of the fourth day Ch’en decided reluctantly to invite friends to luncheon on the following day. And after the sixteen had dined for three hours on many rare vegetables, lobster tails, pastries, chicken heads, mutton dumplings, braised noodles, after the sweet cakes, the wines, liqueurs and the vinegar had been cleared from the little tables, Ch’en had to tell his friends as they smoked about this strange beggar from the Nank’ou mountains.

He related it first as an anecdote, an amusing incident, then, when the guests wanted to turn to other things, he held fast to it, and suddenly the tone of their conversation altered in a quite imperceptible manner and the gurgling of waterpipes ceased. Everything happened as Ch’en had feared. There was laughter, indignation, displeasure over his role; many of them, the cleverer, were thunderstruck and fearful.

They sat around the small, closepacked tables in the sumptuously furnished room. Bright carpets and bamboo mats warmed the floor. Dark-stained pillars of wood, two rows of them, supported an elegantly panelled ceiling from which embossed iron lamps and lanterns hung at the feet of gryphons, out of dragons’ mouths. Speckled orchids lay at each place. A gorgeous wall screen had been pulled across to conceal the Eight Immortals table by the rear wall in front of the household altar. A gigantic yardhigh decorative mirror was turned face to the wall and revealed on its shining black wood herons gliding over waves, perched on rocks on the shore, flying very small in the firmament into the sun’s rays.

Ch’en Yao-fen sat in a simple black silk gown among his colourfully-garbed guests. They nibbled sweetmeats, sipped from tiny teacups, cracked nuts. They basked in the mellowness and ease of the hour, waited for the actresses that Ch’en usually hired from the town, and were not at all inclined to turn their minds to beggars from the faraway mountains of Nank’ou. Then when Chu’s name dropped, and it seemed that Chu had spoken about them in the Nank’ou mountains, there was a general agitation, jumping up, crowding around Ch’en. The chinking of little sweet dishes ceased. They flocked together by the wallscreen in front of Chen’s household altar.

Pailien-chiao, the White Waterlily, was in session.

The curses against Chu grew loud. They wanted to know
more, more, more. What then, how then, why then? Ch’en’s explanations repeated themselves. The adherents of the Waterlily in Chihli should be informed, alerted to these developments, prevailed on to use their influence so that nothing should happen to this new beggars’ league, if the worst came to the worst to take the beggars in and hide them.

The fierce opposition of the others stung Ch’en, who had spoken not quite confidently, to speak with greater force and not without sharpness. They broke up at the request of many whose dismay was extreme, agreed to meet again in the evening.

It was fear that dominated most of these sixteen men. Their cause was suddenly to acquire a face. Suddenly: that was the essential problem; needlessly, for no reason. Ch’ien-lung had ruled for a long time. The Emperor had a hard, not unjust hand. It was dangerous, futile, to instigate a rising against him. It was not the time.

That evening the bright embossed lanterns and lamps flickered from the panelled ceiling. The accusations levelled by some against Ch’en were fiercer than at midday. That he had fallen for this errand boy instead of giving a swift man five strings of cash and a little sharp knife. One of them moaned, wept, gave himself and his family for lost.

In the darkness Wang knocked with a prearranged signal on the back door of the house. From behind the wallscreen beside the altar the tall ragged man appeared, stood among the merchants. He related almost word for word what Ch’en had told them. As they crowded around him he described how they had had to descend from the mountain, the poor, sick men who dwelt with him on the bare slopes of Nank’ou. He spoke as if it had nothing to do with him. The thought came to some of these proud merchants: Give the half-starved fellow a good meal and send him back home with a few taels. They calmed down under his gaze, which they
savoured. He really didn’t seem alarming; they smiled slightly and nodded to each other. It might be that he and the others were having a hard time; the poor devils shouldn’t perish, certainly not. But why all the fuss? Emperor and censors didn’t trouble themselves over a few hundred starving men; when the Huang-ho overflowed twenty thousand drowned in an hour and the Empire didn’t tremble; the Emperor merely passed a questioning hand over his brow. It was wrong of Chu to have presented the White Waterlily as a charitable institution. Who could tell what hunger and degenerate society had made of him.

The excitement subsided, the headshaking became general. They conversed among themselves while Wang answered questions from this one and that. It was laughable, this proposition that gangs of brawny men should join together with them, when they had no idea what to do with them. They couldn’t let themselves be dragged by a hundred or a thousand men into actions of which they could not approve.

Wang sweated, wiped himself in the peasant way with the back of his hand over nose and forehead, mingled with the exquisite perfumes the offensive odour of the high road. He understood the situation exactly. In Ch’en, who was used to command, anger welled up against his brothers, who in some incomprehensible manner had turned away as if there were no danger here for them; they chatted and strolled about as if they were leaving this man and his business to him. Wang and Ch’en exchanged glances.

Suddenly the great ragged man laughed as he cast his eyes over the delicacies on the five little round tables in the room. His mouth widened craftily, his yellow teeth showed. Grinning he turned his head from side to side as with courteous bows he parted the gossiping gentlemen, passing his hand across a full dish of porcelain as one strokes a baby’s naked head. He squatted on a wicker footstool
beside the table, and smacking wetly finished off the dish. The guests behind him cooed, tittered, whispered, placed themselves in little groups around him, offered him a dish from another table, which he accepted with thanks. He declared how fine and choice these sweetmeats tasted, selected from the dish morsels pointed out by the guests, and ate. Ch’en remained standing by the screen; the glances of the smiling gentlemen crossed his; they winked at each other; it had become entertaining.

Then Wang uncurled his legs, walked around the little table and insisted that the fine gentleman who had been most friendly in offering him delicacies—he was the youngest, the one who was happiest at this latest turn of events—should sit down on his plaited straw stool. The amused man let himself be led around the table, but turned in front of the stool, remained standing, his expression darkening, his head on one side and his back to Wang. Wang leapt in front of him bowing ceaselessly, pointed with unaltered smile to the laden table, praised the delicacies. When the man coldly took a couple of steps past him, Wang followed with delighted nods, offered his arm as a support and his shoulders, in order to take him to his place at the table with the quite unsurpassable sweetmeats. The man wordlessly brushed Wang’s elbow aside. Then the bony beggar from the Nank’ou mountains grasped him from behind, bore him heedless of his childlike screaming and stamping back to the stool, set him on it with a crash, pressed down on his struggling shoulders. He held his left arm around the man’s throat. He turned his face in cold fury to all sides, threatening in fisher-brogue, in his right hand held the narrow, finely engraved dagger that the man wore at his belt, waved it in a circle around him. Again and again he bade the young man eat, until pressed by the half smothered urgings of the others he at last took a sweet and swallowed it. Wang withdrew his arm from the man’s throat, stretched and
yawned. Onto the painted shoes of a stout elderly man who stood all alone and paralysed in the middle of the room he spat the half chewed remains of a date. In the deathly silence he greeted the host, the tall, grave Ch’en Yao-fen in his black silk gown, bowed grinning, promised to seek again in the morning the honour of a welcome, slipped behind the screen and was out of the door. The assaulted man’s dagger clattered, thrown against the ebony rim of the screen.

Ch’en alone had grasped everything during the course of this game; but others too, insofar as they did not stand there mindless with shock, realized that here was something new, that mere words could not cover over. There was a crash, a heavy thud in the room: the young man had fallen senseless from the stool on which he had remained squatting; the overturned stool lay half under his legs. They ran to him, attended to the unconscious man, who suddenly vomited, soon moved his arms, sat upright and blinked dull eyes. There was no loud conversation. These rich gentlemen, as if there were no servants in the house, carefully restored everything in the room to order, wiped up the vomit with silken shawls. They paced up and down.

Ch’en Yao-fen, in a clear vibrant voice, said that it would give him pleasure if the esteemed gentlemen would set foot again tomorrow or in the next few days across his shabby threshold; for today, he would invite them only to partake of a little more sustenance. One after the other they declined; they parted reluctantly, straggled distractedly to their sedan chairs.

Wang made no mention of the proceedings at Ch’en’s house when he met the merchant next day at the sulphur fields. He was at pains to make sure there could be no misunderstanding: the brothers from the Nank’ou mountains did not seek protection, but recognition and brotherhood. They were strong in themselves,
but they might become dangerous; and this should be prevented. While additives were poured into the lye pans Ch’en penetrated deeper into Wang’s conception; his view of poverty, his belief in the golden Buddhas became clearer to him. Covering his face with a shawl against the blue vapour he reflected on the Tao, the rigid, unbending course of the world, which was the beginning and end of Wang’s not quite clear notions. They were fanatics, who would soon suffer terribly from want, from the authorities, the proud followers of K’ungfu-tzu. In Wang’s conversations the homely old Tao sounded so joyous.

When they stood up after hours of silent squatting and fidgetting and Ch’en clasped his hands together, Wang knew that he had won the White Waterlily over.

The Broken Melon