The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (22 page)

On this fecund soil, turning already under the hoe as they came in from the west, Ma No’s band camped in peace. They awaited the arrival of Wang Lun, who a week ago had already
reached Chu’s more easterly band.

It was on the seventh day of the fifth month that a young weak brother was carried in after being found unconscious on the open road. The five days’ fast that he had imposed on himself after an ecstasy was too much for him. The long, light man, who wore over both arms a sort of cowl fixed by a cord, was dragged in by a treetrunk of a man in soldier’s tunic; he bent his sweating head far forward to shade the face of the young man with his enormous straw hat. Everywhere shacks and tents had been set up, as if by an army. Ma No had twenty men take turns at pushing sailcarts with planks at the head and rear of the main column, for ailments caused by cold and damp were spreading through the brothers and sisters. In the shade of the catalpa trees the soldier, a deserter from the provincial garrison, laid down his burden on dry moss in front of a tent, poured green liquid from a tiny black glass flask onto the unconscious man’s scabbed lips, dabbed two drops behind each ear. The man groaned, tried to wipe off the drops behind his ears, chewed his lips, opened his eyes. The soldier regarded him, ordered him to hold his breath, now breathe slowly, now hold his breath.

The sun set. Ma No leaned against the boards of his hut until the grey dusk fell, counted, calculated, looked through hollowed hand at the stars, clutched his breast, lay with his forehead on the ground. Tomorrow was the Day of Perfection of Sakyamuni the Pure, the swordbearer of penetrating wisdom.

When Ma got up and squatted in the warm moss he began to smile reflectively, smoothed by the dark air. His eyes glittered; they stood out yellow in their narrow slits like puppies snapping from a half open box. People walked past him with paper lanterns, a happy singing of many voices came down from the women’s camp on the eastern hill. Now and again hard rhythmic calls of men. Somewhere people were praying. An impenetrable, heavy, fat-bodied sky
pressed close to an earth that seemed, now the sun had left it, to be its kin; with a million twinkling stars it whispered anxiously to something near, came begging to this earth that it was wont, with imperial indifference, to let roll about its swollen feet. An accusing “caw, caw” approached, whirred around, thudded against the boards. Birds swept across from the thicket of bamboo, flew close by Ma’s shelter into the fields of micanthus. Ma closed his eyes. He saw the satyr birds as they flew in summer on Nank’ou and over the southern mountains: turquoise horns, round dark eyes in a black head; fiery swollen breast and belly; on the brown coat and brown wings of the little creatures shimmered eyeshaped rings. How they screamed.

Tomorrow they would celebrate the Perfection of glorious Sakyamuni. Ma did not move. They followed him, trusted him. Their welfare lay in his hands. He tasted bitterness on his gums and swallowed. Everything would row, swim, fly to the islands in the great ocean, everything would be for the best, everything was for the best: the boat prepared, the oarsmen ready, the rudder firmly mounted. Kuan-yin was the Ship-goddess who piloted the Traverse, standing in the bows, directing the wind. They chanted in front of their tents, the women sang, all lay snug in the shadow of Kuan-yin. He the bo’sun, the true helmsman. His welfare lay in their hands; he sought himself between their palms, saw himself crushed, pulverized, strewn over the grass. The wise prior of P’ut’o once refused him the class he wanted, the instruction of novices; he was a wise prior; now he had novices, as many as he wanted, they followed him wherever he wanted, and he was no longer proud.

Bent over himself, Ma concealed his cold face in his hands. And he concealed from himself that softly, sharply, he hated them, with a twitching unearthly pain that he could feel behind his breastbone. “Wang Lun,” he groaned. Ma No saw him as the others did:
mythically large. “Wang Lun, Wang Lun,” whimpered Ma No. He felt unclear things stirring in him, Wang Lun could straighten everything out. What terrible journey was that- to Shantung, to the White Waterlily, and he didn’t come, and he didn’t come back.

And he was coming back too late. Where was it heading? They had all grown calm and bright, with a peculiar kind of hopefulness. He had come to nothing. His golden Buddhas, the thousand-armed crystal Goddess were dragged along behind him in their cart like a meal from which he never ate. In his daily toil for the brothers was no absorption, no self-subjugation. His feet no longer trod the four steps of holiness: now caught by the current, born again, never born, Arhat, Lohan, sinless worthy, yeah, regarding with the same eye gold and clay, sandalwood and the axe that will fell it. Nothing, nothing more of the Paradise where they shrink from each other, spirits of the finite light, the unconscious, those who feel no pain, the dwellers in nothingness, and those who are where there is neither thinking nor not-thinking. Silent and mild the golden Buddhas sat before him on the Nank’ou Pass, earlobes extending to their shoulders, blue hair knotted over round foreheads with the third eye of enlightenment, distant gazes, radiant, almost evanescent smiles on protruding lips, squatting on slim round shanks, feet turned soles up like a child in its mother’s womb. Nothing more of that. And nothing of Wang, of calm, serenity; he took no part in the growing Circle of Piety. Nor in anything else.

Tomorrow they would celebrate the Perfection of glorious Sakyamuni.

Ma No removed his hot shaking fingers from his face, laid hands together on his breast, placed his fingers in the holy mudra position, sent himself into a trance in the sweet dark summer night.

He got up, struck a light for his paper lantern, went into some of the men’s huts and said with rigid composure that tomorrow
was the Day of Perfection of Most-holy Buddha; they must build a barque to celebrate the Blessed Traverse. As he walked across to the women’s camp, a confusion of bright lanterns moved swiftly up the other hill, where piles of planks lay that the men had not used for building huts. Twenty paces from the first of the women’s tents Ma No came to a halt on the slope, swung his lantern, said very softly as three women ran up to him that tomorrow was the day of Sakyamuni’s Perfection; the brothers would construct the barque of the Blessed Traverse. He bade the sisters think on the succouring Goddess of the Traverse.

In the morning conches blared from the men’s hill: five notes. With thin ropes they hauled a long, crudely built barque out from the darkness under the catalpas, pushed it carefully supported at the sides and stern down into the micanthus bushes, which the ship parted like waves. A long procession of girls and women emerged from the rough scratching stalks; at the head were young ones, bearing on upstretched arms a huge brightly coloured cloth doll. They thronged around Ma No’s tent.

Ma stood in the open, silent, in full priestly garb with the sulphur yellow robe and sumptuous red sash, crowned with the black four-cornered hat, his head bowed, hands in the mudra position. The women with the doll knelt to him. A long time passed before he noticed them. They asked that his Goddess of rock crystal yield up some of her spirit to their effigy, open their Goddess to the light. Ma No seemed bleary; his voice was flat. He lay a good while in his tent, where they had placed the doll next to his Kuan-yin; he seemed to be praying. Then the women came in. One held a small wooden dish containing red juice with a stalk floating in it. Ma took the stalk, dabbed red spots: eyes, mouth, nostrils, ears. Now the doll could see, taste, smell, hear, had a soul, was Kuan-yin, Goddess of the Barque.

Into the surrounding villages ten men and ten women went this day healing, working, helping, begging. There were long hours of prayer in the miscanthus fields, men in one line, women in another; Ma No in front of the ship. A handbell tinkled; all fell on their foreheads; the priest recited in a monotone; from time to time the congregation joined in. When the sun no longer shone directly overhead the men and women sat together around the ship with the bright Goddess leaning against its mast, and ate their midday meal.

Storytellers went around, leapers and jugglers demonstrated their skills, a few former courtesans who had been making music in various parts of the valley came together; as they approached the barque, circling hand in hand around the Kuan-yin, sang the joyful Song of the Green Crag; from many throats, repeated many times, the fine sweet song rose over the low hills, echoed from the trees.

Striking the ground rapidly with boards, they smoothed a heap of earth thrown up at the top of the women’s hill, invited a young eunuch and a large-eyed slender courtesan to dance. So the eunuch came out first onto the stage, visible to all in the micanthus field and on the slope of the men’s hill, with the limbs of a gazelle, gazing around out of proud enraptured eyes. He wore an ordinary loose tunic and flapping trousers of a black material; everyone knew he’d brought a great chest of clothes with him from Peking when he fled to Ma No. In this loose black garb, queue wound up in a knot, his arms now raised lightly, he danced.

He went slack-kneed back and forth, sank down slowly until he sat on his heels, straightened again by fits and starts and brought his arms, palms turned outwards, more and more rapidly together above his head. Then he stood still, turned his face to the side so that his radiant smile could be seen, and with one leg placed in front of the other began to make strange movements with body and arms. He leaned far to the right, laid his arms together on his
breast, leaned far to the left, gyrated his body; now, body held still, moved his arms so they fluttered, coiled, sought beside him. He swung his arms sharply round, and again they fluttered gently, coiled, sought. Now his little feet quickly placed themselves one before the other, tripping on the spot; at the same time the arms flew to one side, the movement being followed to the tips of the outstretched fingers. It seemed that the body was under a spell, sought in vain to run after hands, fingers. The movement of the feet became ever wilder, jerking, jumping, until the dancer managed with a great spring to the right, a great spring to the left to free himself from the spot, until he bounded high, crouched low in a joyful frenzy, sinking down to the ground on one side, and with a shake forced himself back to the spot. Now the large-eyed courtesan glided up to him, her low round forehead bare, black hair bound in the chignon of the thirteen braids, a plump well-shaped face, a long shirtlike tunic of light grey over her slender figure, at her ankles tongues of white protruding from violet leggings. In her left hand she held a grassgreen girdle.

She began with brief head movements to both sides. Then came a nodding, lifting, a slow luxurious circling of the head. As the sequence began again the hands that had been hanging limp from tight pressed arms came into play, swung at first unnoticeably and then more strongly in front of the violet legs, lifted the forearms high. Both arms stretched: with swirling hand movements she jerked her hips abruptly sideways, and the movement was carried down to the legs. At first they were pulled along with the swing of the hips; then, infected, stimulated, impassioned they swayed to the left, to the right, paced, jerked, trembled in their own way. Strong thighs pressed together; calves weaved around each other, knees flicked apart, came together. Thus the girl leapt, girdle balanced on both arms, around the marked-off stage and the young eunuch
who accompanied her in an undefinable rhythm of head and hand movements. They danced about each other, side by side. The eunuch sank to the earth, arms raised rhythmically, and slowly and forcefully pushed his tender body up from the ground; the courtesan stood stiffly over him, arms diagonally across her forehead. As he swung his arms one last time, she dropped onto her heels and, meeting her fingers from above with his own widespread, he drew her up. As if they were fishes they swam with straight fingers, outstretched arms towards each other.

In costumes from the young eunuch’s collection, they danced for the insatiable audience the dance of the peacock feathers, of the red and black ribbons. Male and female were indistinguishable. As evening fell everyone began to stir. The barque must begin its voyage with the departing sun. The women squatted together in conclave; over their knees were long slips of coloured paper on which they scribbled their names and those of loved ones, inscribed spells against ghosts, diseases, ran to the barque and threw the slips at the feet of the effigy. Late in the afternoon the barque had been gaily decorated by the men with red paper, long pennants fixed at the mast, little sails attached to strings; it was studded with a thousand red eyes. In a dense crowd they all stood around the ship; the handbell clanged. Now fire blazed up, burning strips of paper flew onto the planks, over the deck. The crowd shrank back. The ship took fire at bow and stem; bright red flames flitted up sailropes, devoured sails, and all at once the rigging flared in dazzling light. An “Ayi” of awe; they raised their hands. The light died. The Goddess stood; the deckboards and the planks of the sides burned smokily, crackling, spitting sparks. The people prostrated themselves with ceaseless anxious prayers that the Goddess might take their wishes with her on her voyage. The smoke grew thicker, the cracking of the wood louder; the flames worked briskly. A whitish glow, whose
brightness swiftly increased, sometimes subsided in order to spring cautiously up again, broke through the billows. The mast and the Goddess now stood in smoke; something calm, brown-black could be made out. Wider and higher the flames flared, writhed like clouds around each other. They trickled like thin sand between the seams of the planking, grasped with dripping hands at the beautifully carved oars, pulled at them like brawny sailors. The fiery pennants fluttered more gorgeous than red paper. Then the glow lost all redness. A white even light shone dazzling, and now—. Everyone retreated. Sizzling, blue steaming in a sea of white; long motionless lines of smoke above the glow.

As the roar of the flames died away, Kuan-yin vanished. From all sides they pressed close around the barque through the thick smoke. The superstructure and the slips of paper were consumed; they poked gaily, vainly after bits of paper on the shimmering wood; the Goddess had set off joyfully on her Traverse. Conversing softly the people scattered.