The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (20 page)

He attached himself to four men, one of whom, a hunchback with a very clever, thin face, bulging eyes, read from a sutra, slowly, as well as his short breath allowed. Ngo listened to the foolish twaddle. The four men attended with knitted brows, compressed lips. The stranger didn’t join in. He rolled two green sharpedged stones in his hands, held them up to the hunchback with the sutras, asked if he thought they were jadestones. The hunchback looked at him, then the four gravely tested the stones, rubbed them together, licked them with their tonguetips. One after another they shook their heads. The hunchback gave the stones back with expressions of regret.

“I wanted,” said Ngo, marching reflectively along with them, “to make myself a sash with green and blue embroidery. The stones were to be incorporated in a way I worked out years ago. But if you think these aren’t genuine jade, I shan’t have a sash made after all.”

The hunchback raised his page of sutras, with a piece of charcoal struck out a square in the prayer pyramid. “Let us once again read the Sutra of the Lesser Traverse.”

Ngo let the day run out to the last drop of the waterclock.

It was a lovely, enveloping evening. He vowed poverty, peace, acquiescence. Asked for no probationary period, whispered that he had joined them; at the same time made a cool dismissive gesture, an encoffining, smoothing gesture.

The wiry man stood next day at the same sunset hour thirty li from the rock chamber where Ma No taken the sabletrimmed mandarin’s hat from him, removed his long, expensive fur coat. He looked as wretched as the others. The men squatted on the soft,
grassy forest floor; they spooned millet and dogrice from kettles, dipped it in bowls of vinegar.

In two or three days they would reach the plain; there they would have to separate by day, beg. Towns were coming, Peking was coming.

Ngo heard the metallic clack of bowls, pots, chopsticks. With a hard expression he closed his eyes. He gasped painfully for air, sat bolt upright.

The most notable change during the next few weeks arose from the influx of women and girls that began soon after they reached the plain. Wang Lun had said that nothing human should be turned away; if women came they should dwell apart, make camp separately; any yielding to the appetites was a plunge into the fever of existence; if it happened often it would be best to turn the women away. This was clear, and they kept to it. No one was forced to remain with the Truly Powerless; whoever felt that his wanderings over this Earth were unbearable without brief glowing moments of sweetness could turn back.

Across the Liuli-ho a decent, rather restless fellow called Liu, of a talkative, good-natured disposition, rejoined them after an absence of two days accompanied by an older woman. They were spending a few days in this gently undulating district, gathered at evening in the abandoned cowsheds of a rich livestock farmer not far from a dilapidated pagoda. News of the woman soon spread; that Liu had brought her made them all smile. No doubt she’d persuaded him to marry her.

It was the childless widow of a teahouse owner who appeared at the cowshed door with her black trousers, dirty smock and broad careworn face, made bows to all sides, looked about ingratiatingly. She had been lonely. When Liu, uninvited, helped
her with the hard work, drawing water and carrying buckets, she thought he was making fun of her, then felt flattered, listened to his stilted talk of Wang Lun, of the Nank’ou mountains, that they wouldn’t go into monasteries but would live everywhere on the roads, in the fields. And what a magician Wang Lun was; they had so much, so much to look forward to.

The widow saw young Liu, bemoaned her fate. Liu helped, spoke of this and that. She gave him her room for the night, told him she had another; sat all night in her husband’s field in a shed, wondered if she should try to make him marry her.

Seductive arts that she practised next morning on entering her room floundered. Liu noticed nothing; she felt foolish.

Then they both became loquacious: she asked all about the men at the pagoda, Liu answered, she asked, repeated, Liu repeated.

When the restless youth was about to leave that evening with a little bag of rice in his arms, she took up another bag of rice, said she’d come too. At which Liu showed no surprise, but declared that that would be nice; he’d be able to tell her more about Ngo and Chu; Ngo to tell the truth was a remarkable fellow, and he’d soon be leader of their band along with Ma No.

The widow was happy. The men all accepted her with kindly unconcern; Liu, who paid no attention to the woman, won general praise, which pleased him greatly. Before long the woman had taken under her wing two invalids with frostbitten feet, knocked together a cart for them after begging all the parts.

Four days later she went over to the village, helped a joiner all day with the sawing for a few cash, told acquaintances about her new life, came back with her pretty fifteen year old niece and a fat asthmatic woman, the wife of a smith. They too stayed with the Truly Powerless.

The smith’s wife was childless, the second wife had set herself
up as the complete mistress of the household. The proper wife feared for her life. She said the second wife had sent a werewolf to her bed one night; that was how her breathing problem started. She didn’t feel at all easy in that miserable hovel, a single room like a cowstall behind the smithy. She was convinced the second wife’s child was the offspring not of the smith, but of some loathsome being whose exact nature she wasn’t yet quite clear about. The widow’s fifteen year old niece was very friendly with the young second wife. When the widow came, told about the brothers and the smith’s wife heard with excitement what powerful magic these men could do, they arranged to go off and swore to each other that they’d stay together; the wife wanted to leave this house with its evil influences, come back later when she’d learnt powerful spells from the brothers. The fat woman stood up quite determined to gain revenge in this way. But when they met at evening behind the smithy, she declared that her friend’s niece would have to come too; she often sat for ages with the second wife, but there was a great rat scuttling about under the floorboards in the parlour, and you never could tell what might come to pass in that house between a greedy rat and a simple girl.

So the widow, alarmed, without a moment’s hesitation dragged her struggling niece out of the village and the three of them made their way to the pagoda. It was already quiet in the sheds; they lay down in a corner on bedding that the young girl had been made to carry under both arms. In the early morning the smith’s wife, groaning and crumpled, gathered her bones; the niece hopped around behind her like a little chicken as she grimly asked this man and that who was the strongest of them and what should she do. A doddering man who was poking in the sandy floor with a stick to make a hole for his kettle returned her a most circumstantial account without once looking at her. She was greatly attracted by
the composure of this man, finding him in all respects agreeable. He said that before long there’d likely be an end to werewolves, nightmares, as soon as lots of people marched bravely out against them. The Truly Powerless though turned their faces to quite other things; she’d see soon enough, nothing was of any account to the brothers; werewolves definitely were of no account. Wang Lun, for example. He stepped on her foot and asked her to get out of the way, he needed room.

The woman listened, highly satisfied. She was particularly taken with the fact that clearly everyone, man or woman, could perform all that was necessary without resort to the expensive services of a Wu.

The niece chirped stifflegged with hypocritical little eyes behind the smith’s wife, suggested when they should run away. If only they didn’t have a good thrashing waiting for them at home. What if they were kicked out or sold. Chu saw her as he passed by with her tearful eyes, kerchief pressed to a quivering mouth. He laughed at this tousled unruly companion. She confided in him, to draw him out. He told her no one would come to take her away. She went off cheerfully with the three men he passed her to.

The league took in great numbers of women: nuns, pilgrims, beggars, victims of every sort. At about the time that Wang Lun was skirting the westerly foot of T’ai-shan, rushes being stripped from the winter fields and the first rain falling, the river of the Truly Powerless rolled in several beds across the plain of western and southern Chihli.

But acceptance of women and the splitting of the band were not so momentous for the fate of the Truly Powerless as the change that came over Ma No. This erstwhile Fo-priest from the isle of P’ut’oshan, eccentric and friend of crows on Nank’ou, carried himself here with a lordly passionate demeanour, under the seething and
pawing of his unleashed pride buried himself and a great swarm of Truly Powerless in the plain of northern Chihli.

In Pat’a-ling, Ma No had been fascinated only by what was taking place in Wang. A feeling of motherly anxiety, reverence, delight filled the skinny little man. When Wang sighed that morning and set off alone, Ma No was left in utter helplessness. He sat in the bare storeroom, looked at his swollen finger joints, the Buddhas he had carried in from his cart, the armhigh crystal Kuan-yin of a thousand limbs that stood on the window sill. Rogues, thieves and murderers were his companions; they must wander, wander. Perhaps they’d see a civet cat now and then, like the old fat one that every evening used to thrust its padded snout against his door and chirp like a starling; it was probably snuffling around in his hut this very moment, or some rogue had made himself at home there and was flinging stones at the startled beast. Crows you could find everywhere; there’d be other crows to see. What was he supposed to do among these footpads? Wang had gone away. They were supposed to wander, not resist, truly: not resist. The word meant nothing without Wang. Wang’s teaching rang hollow: “What use is it to rage and struggle, when fate takes its course? What use is it to strive, when fate can only choke on joy, success, sickness, overindulgence?” Strange baggage for beggars!

Mistrustful, withdrawn, he went with the others. He spoke little that day. In his dreams he recalled the previous night, and he nursed a wicked desire for Wang’s deep, hard voice. At first he pushed the little cart with its covered Buddhas by himself, snappishly spurned any help. After a few li when the path led upwards, his scrawny arms grew numb, he had to yield the push-bar. Tiredness aggravated the impatience that plucked quite faintly, tormentingly fast on his muscles as on a tiny guitar. He sat down on a round block of granite in the middle of the path.

The procession jammed up. Ma No, his gaze all the while fixed vacantly on the snowy ground, realized after some time that everyone had stopped. He wanted to jump up in irritation, snarl at the man by his cart, was disarmed by the earnest expectant faces, looked about him. Hastily he blurted, “Onward.” Turned up his nose, abashed. It was ridiculous: these people waited for his orders, artful rogues waited for a nod from a Fo-priest before moving off. How the great prior on P’ut’o would laugh! He, leader of a gang, robber chief.

Only now did it occur to him that he had taken Wang’s place. But he didn’t want to, he needed Wang himself. At once this “don’t want”, this yearning for Wang, violently seized his bowels, squeezed his gorge upwards, milked his spittle. Desperately he pressed his arms to his breast. He saw himself irretrievably lost. His brain swam, his skin burned with the realization that suddenly Wang had gone and everything was meaningless: the joyous surrender to him, the descent into the village, the migration of the horde from the pass. It all punctured his breast, emptied it, impaled his spine.

He had taken Wang’s place. The sudden ludicrous thought jolted into him.

In the limp nausea on his tongue he tasted his former life. Wang might slip away from him; what was he to do? He was afraid; he whimpered.

Think! Just think! Where was Wang Lun? The rogues and beggars around him debated. Ma heard the holy precepts that Wang had drawn out of him. Over these simple men lay the intoxication of the past day and night. He looked at them, swallowed up in his gloom; he laboured his way out, fearful of falling back. He forced into view that gentle moment when he gazed into the snowladen sky and for the first time loved Wang. He wanted to experience it
again; this experience alone had wings.

He drew closer to the beggars, saw himself again with a slight horror in the role of eavesdropper, clinging, relying. How was he to find Wang? They marched, they didn’t feel abandoned by the fisherman’s son. Ma mixed with them shamelessly. He flattered them, dissembled so the rogues wouldn’t notice anything. And all at once he breathed more calmly, all at once their joyful certainty patched the holes in his soul. He pulled his black cats kin cap over his ears.

The precarious feeling that the men he was supposed to be leading possessed more of Wang than he did himself never left him in the following weeks. Sometimes they couldn’t prevail on him to make announcements; he was plunged into a teeth-grinding rage; it seemed they wanted to lead him into temptation. They were reproaching him for being who he was. And again he had to master himself and to his astonishment accept that the brothers thought nothing, trusted him. In fact had a ridiculous reverence for him that differed little from their feelings for Wang. His replies to them were painfully constrained. However blasphemous it might seem, they clearly wanted nothing to come between them and him; no Wang Lun came between the beggars and him. They offered themselves freely, importunately, as chattels. It seemed to him an indecency, a desecration of Wang, that he should be their teacher. He moved among them with a forced awkward lewdness.

He got used to it. Daily contact smoothed down oversharp sensitivities. Impelled hourly to speak, to decide, he quickly developed a nearness to the brothers that they needed, a leader’s nearness. He acted. This, more than thinking, freed and untied. He swam over obstacles. He felt sated, raised above doubt. The Nank’ou times began to dim. He was cast in the hard mould of his new tasks.