The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (25 page)

He never attained the summit of supreme bliss; he walked another road.

Three days later Wang Lun caught up with them.

Ma No had wavered: should he tell Wang himself about the change in his flock. Then he sent five men as messengers to report all they knew to Wang, believed to be a day and a half’s journey away. He went into conclave with some elders, and listened carefully to them. But Ma No couldn’t bring them round to the notion that Wang might repudiate this change in their precious teachings. The sanctity and robustness of the new ideas had rapidly permeated them; it’d only take a bit of discussing, they said, to persuade Wang and with him to convert the other scattered bands of Truly Powerless. The influence of Wang, though none of them had ever seen him, was so strong they were incapable of conceiving opposition to him. They would have thought their lives forfeit if they started something against him. Ma No said something about their role as leaders among the Broken Melon; he spoke so falteringly they couldn’t work out what he was leading to; he failed to win them over.

Wang Lun had no need of messengers: rumours had reached him before this. He came back with them to Ma’s camp. When he was led in the dark by lantern bearers to Ma’s hut, he indicated
with a movement of his hand that the woman squatting on the mat beside the former P’ut’o priest should leave. But Ma took the sister by the hand, led her to the next hut, came back alone.

A tiny oil lamp burned on the floor; near the right wall of the barely manhigh room a straw sack rustled on the mossy floor, beside it rags, cloths, clothing. By the left wall Ma’s cart lay tipped on its side; balanced precariously on it, caught by a few reflected gleams, the golden Buddhas. The thousand-armed Kuan-yin of rock crystal leant its head against the wall, rested its pale, scratched face on a splintered bamboo post.

When Ma returned, Wang Lun was sitting quietly on the edge of the cart, gazing into the light. To his alarm the priest saw that Wang was carrying an enormous battle sword, holding it out before him with both hands. Wang Lun was altered, his gaze unblinking. He rubbed his knee, and when he stood up later Ma saw that he limped in his left leg.

The man from Hunkang-ts’un growled that he’d been spotted the other side of the Hut’o River by soldiers on exercise and recognized, he’d had to swim across the river and smashed his knee as he jumped over the rocks on the bank. This was not quite correct; though he had indeed skinned his knee during this chase, he sustained the main injury as he approached the region of the swamp. He had met followers of Ma’s with some girls on the road; none of them recognized him. When they struck up a conversation, he learned for the first time that the members of this band called themselves Broken Melons; he pursued the conversation, with a dull excitement, grabbed hold of one as they turned away in distress, chased off the girls. Hearing cries for help a peasant left his grubbing in a bamboo thicket, threw a lump of root right across the road at Wang, almost smashed his already injured knee. Then the peasant fled as well, thinking when he caught sight of the
sword that he’d wounded an Imperial soldier. Wang wore a blue tunic with red facing, given to him by a deserter from Ngo’s troop.

Wang, sitting motionless on the cart, asked Ma No if they were suffering much harrassment by soldiers. As thick black drops of blood oozed through Wang’s trousers Ma wanted to bring water and a styptic powder, but Wang warned him off with a shake of the head. When he spoke again, he said it mattered little to the brothers and sisters where oppression came from: from Taot’ais or somewhere else. But what did Ma No think? Fate was hard and couldn’t be turned aside. It was good to teach the brothers that they shouldn’t touch the world in its course; but that didn’t mean you could play fate yourself and leave other people and the brothers and sisters to carry the burden. Those who thought they could stay untouched even then were likely to stumble into serious error. Yes, they would certainly and inevitably stumble into an error that would cost them more than a drop of blood.

Ma No, squatting on the mat, listened to him without looking up. He saw before him the hulking peasant who’d climbed one winter’s day on the Nank’ou Pass up the little paths to his hut under the rocks; he begged and wouldn’t go away from his door, asked about the golden Fos on the shelf.

He was filled with an ardent love for Wang, wanted to yield to an emotion that under Wang’s coarse, familiar Shantung dialect exhaled an “At last!”; but he remained still, thought, and wasn’t even surprised that he was thinking.

How I’ve changed, thought Ma No. The mountains and valleys of the Eighteen Provinces are broad and stretch far and wide; I carry the key to the Western Paradise; Wang Lun and I must go our separate ways in peace.

He said Wang Lun had been gone a long time. The protection of the White Waterlily was important, but leading the brothers
and sisters was more important, perhaps harder too. Wang Lun shouldn’t be bitter; it was easy enough to set up rules, and in great quantities. As it turned out the rules of the Nank’ou mountains, however precious, weren’t suited to all eventualities; they’d had to be changed. Wang Lun could rest assured that basically everyone was the same as if they were coming around the cliff of Shen-yi at that very moment. Wang Lun was really a perfected saint; he shouldn’t break out in anger over them.

Ma No couldn’t understand what drove him to torment Wang and call him a saint. He couldn’t hide from himself that he crushed the expression on his tongue like a sweet date and tasted it with cold pleasure.

Wang stood up in pain, poked with his sword in the moss. He would never have believed it, not this. This man seemed to be casting the first die.

He slid painfully down onto the mat beside Ma; unwillingly let him roll up the trouser leg. The priest fetched a jug and linen, washed the knee.

Wang watched him. “Ma, once on Nank’ou Pass we sat next to each other. Was that really us, you and me? You lived up above the little stamping mills. Didn’t we become friends?”

“We’ve gone out into the fields and woods of Chihli, Wang. Thousands have come to us from the towns, from every prefecture and district to taste our freedom and our true emancipation. We’ve had to open prisons with cunning, bribes and deceit to free brothers of ours. None of them would have come and we’d have toiled in vain if we’d simply built another prison out of old stale words, dried-up rules. That wasn’t your intention. And even if it was, it wouldn’t have stayed so, if you’d come with us down from Nank’ou here to the swamp of Talu.”

Wang reached for Ma No’s chin.

“Ma No, who do you say would have changed his intention if he’d wandered with you, your southtrending band, from Nank’ou to the swamp of Talu? Whose intentions have changed? How many are they, and how good? Ma, there are two kinds of people. One kind live and don’t know what they should do. The other kind know what they should do. We’re that kind, we who’ve no right to live, who are here for the others, yes, Ma No, even at the cost of missing out on the highest chi. Everyone’s predestined to his office. What our destiny is we knew in your hut up above the little stamping mills. You didn’t need to tramp through Chihli and I didn’t need to come with you to learn that. You shouldn’t eat your bean broth and throw yourself at a woman and chase after the Western Paradise. I thought you knew that. All that’s forbidden to us. Something else has been given to us: to know all this. But I won’t become angry, Ma No my brother.”

“You won’t become angry, Wang.”

“Do you know why I won’t become angry? A while ago, before I came into your valley, I was walking across a field of thyme. I wasn’t feeling very well, your messengers had gone on ahead, my knee hurt, I couldn’t keep up. I sat down for a moment on a molehill. What was coming, our talk, our reunion, troubled me a little. It seemed to me for a moment I’d fallen victim to a field shade that was lying in wait for me there. When I open my eyes again I see a thick thread of light winding with lots of twists and turns across the field. It started right by my molehill, a little glimmer, low down, moving all the time. It was fireflies. Nature’s not against us. I’m going to watch out tonight to see if the King of the Fireflies appears to me in a dream, and I shall thank him. They may have been helpful spirits from the swamp, who saw how weak I was; they’re so poor themselves. The glimmer led into your valley. I’m not angry; I haven’t been abandoned.”

“Wang, you shan’t turn against me. A few weeks ago I thought just like you: they the grains, we the shovel; they the head, we the cap; they the foot, we the path. Then things came that I find it hard to remember: that the hat, you might say, took control of the head, and the road fled from the foot. I know I owe you a reckoning for it, I don’t deny there’s a reckoning due. But I’m unable to give you one, because I cannot, even with an effort, cannot call it to mind. It’s been erased, like inkmarks in the rain.”

“Bad ink,” Wang interrupted; he was smiling. “And what is the rain called, dear brother?”

“Not disloyal.”

“The rain is called vanity and lust for power; vanity and lust for power I call it.”

As they squatted there side by side, Wang held Ma No by the shoulders, doubtfully studied his gaunt face. For the first time they looked squarely at each other. Wang seemed to grow sadder and more serious; he let his head droop crookedly, in a surge of sympathy took Ma’s hand and stroked it: “What is the rain called, Ma No? What happened to you?”

“You were gone so long. We lived as Truly Powerless. Women came. I don’t know what happened to the other brothers. One day I just knew that I was—no longer—free of desire. But I wanted to be again. Life’s so short. You can’t walk down the wrong road too long, you can’t spend days like copper cash and exchange them for rice and millet. Now once again I’m free of desire, I’ve been sated, must go on and on being sated. I know, you don’t need to tell me, it’s endless: but I can pray freely and purely and hope that my actions weigh enough to balance the lust. Don’t scold, Wang. I know that no one despises me.”

“It was the women. Brother Ma No, I don’t despise you for that. But you hadn’t finished; I think you had more to say. You ran
to the woman you hungered for. Did you take her then and go your own way, back to Nank’ou or some village or town? No one’s forced to come to us. Anyone can go if he feels pressed. Tell me now, is that what you did?”

Ma No, listening with half an ear, continued ruminatively: “I’ve known for a long time what desires are. But what women are I didn’t know at all. Women, women. You aren’t like me, Wang, schooled from infancy in the monastery. Sighing, not knowing what for. Casting about in the moonlight in a great restlessness, and finally sighing for—Kuan-yin; worrying over the—twenty holy commandments. That’s how you forget yourself. Now the women are here. I believe they’ve sometimes wound themselves about me from morning till night, crying, begging me for marvellous formulas. Until I’d calmed them and they knew our way, weeks passed, and then new ones arrived. At last they followed my good way. They left a pressure on my shoulder, a gasping squeezed-up heart, sweat on my hands. I went their way. Stronger men are needed for this work, P’ut’o-shan has spoiled me. See there, beside us on the cart, just look at them! Are they still there? This rattletrap’s resting now from twenty years of wandering, the Gods weigh on its sleep.”

Ma No, not rising, grabbed the handle of the cart, gave it a jerk. The golden Buddhas swayed, fell to the ground on either side, tumbled over each other. Lastly with an abrupt sound the Kuanyin of rock crystal overturned. Striking hard against a broken-off Buddha’s head she cracked in two halves; her arms shattered.

Wang sought Ma No’s face. But he was hunched over, and spoke as if nothing had happened.

“Although it was like that with me, I didn’t want to, couldn’t desert you. There’s no sense punishing me, no, banishing me for eternity, because I was so badly brought up. There must be an end to it. The holy books must be wrong. There must be a solution. I
knew the solution. The doctrine of chastity is a nonsense, not a precious rule, a barbarism. The brothers and sisters agreed with me.”

Wang twitched. He flung himself half round to the wall so that Ma could not make out his face in the shadows. His gigantic battle sword lay across his knee; the thin bandage was soaked with crimson blood.

The sword had been given him by Ch’en Yao-fen on his departure from Poshan. It was called Yellow Leaper. It was an heirloom of the Ch’en family, and invited its possessor to ponder the traditions of the White Waterlily.

A straight double-edged blade, inlaid on its upper side with seven round panels of brass; close to the haft, below a star pattern, lotus leaves. The gilded grip swelling towards the middle; on either side the characters for the Ming: sun and moon in fine silver wire; the guard moonshaped. The pommel ending handsomely in a tonguing dragon’s head.

Wang did not say what drove him after a silence to stand up and, pushing away the sword, to press outstretched arms hard and mercilessly like logs onto Ma No’s shoulders and hold him in a pincer. Wang’s teeth chattered, a convulsive trembling took his hands that sought the sword pommel in order to drive the blade between Ma No’s lips into his tight clenched mouth, turn it swiftly in his gullet, bore with it, pull it out and strike at his leathery cheeks.

Ma No sank down under the pressure. He waited sullenly for what would happen next. In an evil, venomous mood he stayed sitting when Wang withdrew his arms and with a groan stretched his injured knee.

Wang intercepted the baleful look Ma cast up at him. His face swelled like sprung upholstery. He raised himself painfully leaning on his sword, his bloodshot eyes flared. He pointed with both hands down at Ma: “You, you’re the traitor, you’re a deceiver, a
seducer, just don’t move, that word says it all, no need for longer explanations. I’d have said the same to you three days ago, when I heard about the setup here. You didn’t have to go looking for a solution with your miserable pining; I could have told you straight away you’d betray the whole world, every paradise and every blessing just to lie in the straw with your woman. Because you’re poisonous, a natural scorpion. It’s my fault, mine alone, for giving you free rein with the Truly Powerless. I am the pillar on which everyone rests, I am the sky that spreads impenetrable over the wretched and itself enjoys nothing of the sun and all the stars. I’ve turned away from more than you know of, Ma No, from more than a woman and a thousand women; I’ve had to part from myself, from my arms, my legs, from my birth and my history, I’ve dug among the intestines in my own belly and drained the blood from my veins. With violence I’ve done that.