The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (28 page)

Something distasteful happened in the T’aihang-shan, something magical, ingenuous as in a song. The beggar camp was struck, the men went into the mountains where settlement clustered by settlement. The girls tripped arm in arm across the chequerboard of fields. They separated along the narrow paths between fields of rice and wheat. Soft muddy ground dented under the light feet of the joybringers. Amid the green of stalks a vivid red shone out, upright spherical flowers on childhigh stalks, shimmering silky purple: poppies. The girls’ fringes stuck to low foreheads. At their bright girdles they carried an alms bowl. Here and there one of them, not used to walking, brandished a brasshung stick, a rattlestick.

When a bringer of joy met a labouring woman or girl, the painted beggar girl would greet her, give her own name, say she belonged to the league of the Broken Melon, tell stories, pitch in, on leaving present a little cloth bag with ashes or a paper amulet with characters.

A labourer asked her about the district, about the direction of the ground’s spiritual pulse; she accepted presents from the respectful man, sat with him on a fieldbank, under a pagoda tree, ate what he gave her, and while he gazed at her entranced told him of the pious miracle workers who were her companions, of the difficult fate they’d endured. And then she tripped away, turning frequently and bowing greetings. When the holy prostitute saw trembling nervous glances at her side she was consoling, sat apart from him and sang a few strange little songs. She aired the neck of her loose gown, pulled out a red cloth, wound it around her face. Behind the cloth her laugh rang out, and then she granted the lucky man his will. Took the path again until she disappeared from the district.

Reports of this new league sped swiftly through the towns, the pleasure quarters, theatres, teahouses. Slaves of both sexes, actor lads and painted women slipped away. In vain proprietors appealed with one voice to the authorities, withheld licence fees to exert pressure.

On all lips was the story of young lady Ch’ai from Ch’ienling and how she escaped. She’d been sold very young to a house of low repute.

When she had reached the position of catering manageress within the house and as a result of her incessant enjoyment of hot wine—wine spiced with aphrodisiac ingredients—had fallen prey to chronic stomach pains, she considered one sober moment whether it mightn’t be better to hunger and freeze than be constantly sick, beaten by the proprietress and perform transactions of love with coolies, oil sellers, boat haulers.

Abused in every way, feeling herself completely ruined, she jumped from her uncurtained sedan chair, whose bearers she had liberally bribed, into the magistrate’s yamen where she was at once detained and taken, after the sentencing of her vicious mistress, to the House of Salvation which the town maintained next to the
prison. She learned useful things in the course of her short weeks there; her picture was hung in a glass case at the entrance to the house for men who came looking for a wife.

As soon as her picture was hung up someone went to report to the chastised mistress, still recovering from a hundred strokes of the bamboo. She engaged a nephew of hers, a layabout that she supported, to present himself to the director of the municipal House of Salvation, hand over false references as to his character and request the girl for his wife. After the fellow had hypocritically assured himself of the good qualities of his future bride he declared for her, fetched her away for a couple of weeks to a rented lodging and then took her back to his aunt.

The unlucky girl racked her brains how to inform the police of this deception. She was constantly watched, every bit of money was taken from her, she was locked up, beaten daily by the woman until she yielded and promised to behave. The ruinous drinking began again, the girl went about with bloodshot eyes, completely subdued, bowing low whenever she saw the mistress, glad that her hands and the soles of her feet were being left to heal.

Then one day a newly arrived inmate of the house who had no relish for this kind of life told her she’d got to know a melonseed seller who loved her and wanted to help her. The tormented girl was half unwillingly persuaded; together with three other girls that they brought into their confidence they set out a long petition of complaint against the mistress and her nephew. The new girl undertook to pass the petition to her admirer; he was to submit it by the usual channel to the authorities. The melonseed seller did in fact deliver the letter to the proper place; but before officials could come to investigate the affair, the nephew, via a minor functionary of the yamen who had charge of the correspondence, got wind of the complaint.

One evening the frightened girls listened through the floorboards
to his agitated debate with the mistress in the reception lounge below on the measures that had to be taken. Then the five compromised imperilled creatures steeled themselves to an act of violence: they tied up the woman who watched their room from the corridor, having first stopped her mouth with paper; let themselves down, by means of false queues and their own which they quickly cut off and knotted together, at the back wall of the house, ran pellmell through the streets, hid until morning under the town wall; after exchanging their elegant costumes for the rags of beggar women who passed the night in covered burrows by the wall, slipped one after the other through the gate and away.

They had no need to hurry so, for after the first shock the mistress and her nephew were glad the five complainants had disappeared, and sent many a good riddance after them. But deathly fear goaded the flanks of the five girls; they ran mindlessly li after li, at every sound from behind threw themselves flat on the ground. Finally, having clambered up a mountain and sat down on an untrodden waste of stones, they wept themselves calm together.

Further developments in this very commonplace affair lacked for nothing in banality. At the end of the first day two of the girls, unable to continue for excitement, hunger and fear, separated from the rest and stayed behind for several days at the magistracy of a village to which they came, waiting for the alerted mistress to fetch them. But she accused the girls of theft and slander. The benignly disposed magistrate reproached them with this for a few more days in the village and advised them, since they had in fact misappropriated some clothing, to give up all thought of a return to town. And so the spoilt young things worked for scanty wages in the fields and sties, cursed the whole business.

The other three girls caught up with Ma No’s band, after five days of uninterrupted wandering, freezing and thirst that left them
almost dead from exhaustion. They were welcomed with open arms. But two of them couldn’t take to the strict quiet life. Their talents and their beauty weren’t sufficiently noticed. The mentality of the brothers and sisters struck them as boring and comical. One of them married a brother who felt the same way. The other, a clever young thing, studied a few of the favourite Court dances from an absconded Imperial actor, mugged up phrases and Court arcana from him and was soon engaged as an important acquisition by the proprietor of a teahouse with cabaret. To promote his find, he started rumours circulating about intrigues at the Imperial Court of which she was the victim, and so on.

Only the destitute, the tormented who had let themselves be carried along barely knowing their own mind bloomed among the Broken Melon. They’d never dreamt such happiness was possible. For the first time something like hope gleamed again from sunken eyes. But they were the least fitted to such a life. A stray Shih, as the knowledgeable among the sectarians put it, had pierced their skin and entrails. They vomited blood and could go no farther. A village apothecary concocted rejuvenating pills for them from the placenta of a primigravid bitch. But they lay dead in the lovely summer fields and were free of their wretched existence.

The fame of the holy prostitutes spread far across the countryside. Perhaps nothing served so well to make the sect known. The authorities and the harrassing literati in the Confucius temples, though under no inhibitions, could come to no agreement on measures to adopt. They couldn’t permit many hundreds, among them depraved scions of the oldest families, to be massacred by constables and provincial troops; none dared risk the spectacle of a slaughter of madmen who wouldn’t lift a finger to defend themselves.

Efforts were made through mildness and gentle force to move the sectarians on, to scatter them. As every attempt met with a flat
refusal, the Prefects banned every village and settlement which the sectarians approached from supplying them with food and drink. Individual Prefects, on their own initiative and with the support of their officials, initiated action against the league. They made use of popular superstition, spread rumours that the sectarians abducted pretty women from lonely villages, that they had in their possession a life-prolonging powder which they kept for themselves. On the basis of such rumours minor assaults ensued on sectarians who were found some distance from the camp. They were stripped naked, beaten. The secret instigators of such attacks hoped this would reduce the flow of adherents to the league and put fear into the sectarians. The calm of the Broken Melon was undiminished, unchanged the suggestive power of the Western Paradise that was promised to all who followed the Tao, free from unease and troubled by no desires. Only they knew the true pure Tao, and they would attain mastery of the powers sung of in the ancient odes.

Since such attacks on the league enjoyed little success the Prefects stood aside from the affair, submitted reports to the provincial authorities, waited.

Jealous fomentation in the Confucius temples. Literati, former government officers, the half-pensioned, their friends, every official in western Chihli saw the Broken Melon as a personal enemy, to be fought all the more vigorously since the hands of the government were plainly tied. Here the only worry was of the impression a massacre would make on the populace, otherwise everything would have been settled long since.

Until one day an old military man in Shunte of the rank of T’itu, who detested religious quarrels and wanted to ingratiate himself with Peking, offered to take on the job of annihilating the Broken Melon if a substantial sum of money were placed at his disposal for the recruitment of a number of former soldiers, true
patriots. The sum being quickly collected by subscription amongst the relieved conspirators, two hundred men set off one night from Shunte aiming by a forced march to reach the sectarians while it was still dark, before they left their camp; the T’itu was among them. Thus occurred early in the morning the notorious bloodbath at a village next to the camp of the Broken Melon.

Rumours of the approach of an armed band had alarmed the inhabitants of this region for some days already; they doubted the possibility of action against these harmless people. Still, the emergence of the league and holy prostitution had already produced an effect extensive enough to bring a large number of peasants out this early morning. They ran clustering from all sides as screams of woe rose from the peaceful camp. Their way was obstructed by fleeing brothers and sisters. Then cudgel against cudgel. Scythes lopped swordswinging hands. Sharp lances of bamboo penetrated looming bodies. On the backs of murderous soldiers rained poles and rootclumps. Mouths agape, groans, thuds, clanging. Steaming sweat, thin fountains of blood, irregular rhythm of quiet and uproar. “Kuan-yin, help me!” Half an hour later the demon of the place was sated. A hundred soldiers lay still, over two hundred sisters and brothers, forty peasants.

The sectarians gathered themselves. Furious flight bore them from that place.

Towards evening they arrived at a great lake to the north, called by the inhabitants the Lake of Harmony, halted, horrified that they’d left to the peasants the coffining and burial of their dead. Ma comforted. On the way he’d already received intimations from an informed source that the fallen sisters and brothers died well prepared; their souls were now winging their way towards the yearned-for realm.

By the moonbright lake he consulted with eight brothers on
the next step. They couldn’t let themselves all be murdered. With feigned decisiveness Ma countered that it was all the same what day you died on; all that mattered was whether the soul was prepared. He spoke glibly and felt he wasn’t quite meeting the enormity of the situation. He had no answer to the question: whether they shouldn’t take adequate precautions instead of rushing towards death.

Hundreds and hundreds were flocking to the banner of the Broken Melon; but no Traverse to the home they yearned for was being prepared, no haven for the depraved and ruined. Deception was the only word for it, a callous disgrace. They were being led to the slaughtering block, the slaughtering block and not the Western Paradise.

To the music of shrill reed pipes they whispered. Ma No’s inconsolable hot gaze fastened almost randomly on the great monastery across the water. Beneath the brightness of the sky he could make out every building in the lamasery, the many chapels, the great broad prayer hall, the dormitories for the monks. He’d lived for years in just such peaceful buildings. Now once again, an outcast with several hundred others, he sat before those gates. Separated by a lake.

The brothers choked on desperate decisions. They should dissolve the league. No one wanted to bear the terrible responsibility. They implored Ma No: “What shall we do, what shall we do?” Tomorrow, the next day, in a week provincial troops would arrive, surround the Broken Melon, crush the brothers and sisters. No doubt about it: today a report from the local authorities to the prefect, Tsungtu: breach of the peace in the province. Before long an attack by the government. What crime had the Broken Melon committed for this to come about? No amount of complaining would help. What should they do? Beloved brothers dead, lovely sisters, pious wanderers dead. Streams of blood, shattered skulls, throats offered
freely: unthinkable, all of it, agonizing, crushing, to ascend to the Western Realm between sour sweat and war cries. The league, the circle broke.