The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (36 page)

“I shan’t sit down with you in case you think I’ve come in friendship to ask you a favour. The two are not the same, as your most acute perceptiveness must tell you. I’m no friend of the Broken
Melon; but I want to spare the persecuted, the misguided from the worst your butcher soldiers, your privileged executioners can do. They shall cease to exist. They shan’t attain the higher things, the highest things that they were led astray pursuing. And that will be enough for you.”

“How has Wang Lun the power to do what he promises? And if he has the power, why didn’t he exercise it sooner? Then he’d have no need to bewail the bloodbath, the burning of the monastery, could spare us his accusations.”

“I’m not above fate. I’m not promising you too much, and nothing beyond my ability. Now, at this moment, I can act. You’ll see how it goes. In three days I’ll have measured off the path of my power. Then I shall stand again before the four gentlemen, here at this doorpost, and report.”

“Until then we must hold off our troops, you mean? We hear reports, Wang Lun, that you possess great, the people say supernatural, powers. How they set about reducing a fortress will be of interest to seasoned soldiers. I’ll tell you what we’ve decided. We shan’t lose any time on your account. That could cost us our heads, and they’re worth more to us than the Western Paradise. We’ll draw all the troops under our command up to a particular line, which will be clear to you in two days, all around Yangchou. However, we shan’t begin storming the city before the end of the third day. That way neither you nor we are compromised. If you stand at that doorpost on the fourth day and report to us what we shall already know, then we’ll have learnt something.”

“Wang Lun wanted nothing more from the old gentlemen. He would like his sword returned to him, in a case of figs, at the outer door.”

The generals stood up. Wang made a restraining gesture with his long arms and ran down the steps.

The gate of the Mongolian town of Yang stood open all day for six double hours. Ma No’s house lay at one corner of the huge grass grown marketplace. On the evening of the tenth day of their stay in Yang, a wet late autumn day, the brother on sentry duty bent through the doorway, ran into the silent house: a man wanted to speak to Ma No.

Wang Lun threw straw hat and straw cloak down on the ground in the half dark room, removed the sword from around his neck, with bows and handshakes greeted Ma, who sat on a stool and nodded coolly to him.

“I’ve come to you, Ma No. We haven’t met since spring.”

“Spring?”

“Last spring.”

“At the swamp of Talu. You didn’t need fireflies this time to find me out. You only had to follow your nose, this time. Even the dead who die in hope of Paradise stink.”

“The last time I was your guest I was suffering with my knee. It’s healed now. How goes it with my host?”

“As it goes with anyone who, strolling along a path, a not quite safe path, loses one ankle after the other, one round gob of blood after another, one strip of skin after another. No doubt my guest will ask next how I feel about it. Pleasant, comfortable: what else can you expect if you travel with so little baggage. And it makes for a really light step.”

“There were a lot of you, pulling south out of Chengting.”

“Then I swung back to the north. There were more and more of us. I became king of a realm whose goodness was surpassed by only one thing, namely its weakness. Then I came here. You haven’t totted up all the dead yet with your nose, all the brothers and sisters. We shovelled two hundred of each into five graves. Now there are few of us. And now Wang Lun sits beside me, to
draw the line beneath his reckoning.”

“I’m not reckoning, Ma. Don’t make me responsible for fate.”

“Nor you me.”

“You’d better tell yourself that, Ma No. A man who fells a tree can be killed by it. I don’t want to go on about that in front of my teacher. I want to talk of myself, if he’ll allow me. What I want to say to you is obscure even to me and leaves me empty of all feeling. You know it already. On my wanderings from Hunkangts’un to western Shantung I went hungry and thirsty, endured many insults. In Chinan-fu, that great city, as assistant to the bonze T’o I cheated, stole, profaned. I roamed around Chihli, you saw me on Nank’ou Pass, it was going badly with me. I bowed my head, you swore to me we wouldn’t strive against fate; there’d been enough of that. I’d reached my goal. Many had suffered the same and thought the same. I brought them to a resolution. Now I’ve finished my story. You swore, you with your ignorant heart. Now when Ma No sits with his hand over his eyes he no longer looks as if his heart knew just about everything. What, Ma No—tell me, if you once loved me—what’s to happen now?”

Ma took his hand from his eyes and looked long at Wang, who moved closer.

“There’s a certain difference between my friend Wang, when he came to a resolution on Nank’ou Pass, and me.”

“What difference? There’s no difference. Only that, then, I longed with my whole soul for someone like a double to stand there beside me and make everything easier. I’ve worked it out now; I understand you. I’m a wide mouthed sack for you to throw in whatever you want.”

“I don’t need any widemouthed sack.”

“You’re my brother, Ma No. You’re the only one who ever became my brother. When I think back on Su-ko: what was Su-ko
compared to what I feel for you? You flay me, you strangle me when you turn away. Whenever did two men, brother Ma No, suffer so alike as you and me? If you don’t need me, I, who love you, need you. You shouldn’t sit so quietly brooding—oh, I’ve done that as well-you shouldn’t fidget so with your fingers. You ought to turn to me, brother Ma No, and look at me. I’m the only man who can endure your gaze. I’m your guest, I want to come to you! How can I speak convincingly to you? How can I make you trust me?”

Wang had seated himself on a stool next to Ma No, his arms around Ma’s shoulders. Ma too laid his arm on Wang’s shoulder and sat unmoving. Then he said in a slow, suppressed tone:

“I never thought, brother, dear brother Wang, that you could wish me so well. Let me just think for a moment. I was talking of the difference, yes, the difference. Let me explain it to you. However bad a way you were in then, I’m dearly in a worse now, but you’ve become happier. You had a choice, you came to a resolution. I’m already beyond that point. I’ve no more choices open to me. Everything’s happened to me already. Everything in and around this city has run its course. All that’s lacking is an external movement, a gesture, a seal. All that can happen here now is a thing of no consequence.”

“Wang Lun hasn’t yet told his brother why he sought him out in this Mongolian town.”

“You’re offering us help.”

“Perhaps help, Ma. I’ve made a pact with the leaders of the army that’s moving against Yangchou and is already surrounding you. For three days there’ll be no direct action against you. For these three days I have a free hand to parley with you and your people.”

“I’m grateful for this ungrateful task, since it has brought my brother Wang to me.”

“I won’t allow the executioners and bloodsoaked soldiers to
fall on you and sate their bestial cruelty. You were my brothers and sisters, and you, Ma, I mean it sincerely, have again become my brother. You mustn’t fall into their hands. You must scatter. That’s what I have to tell you and advise you. You won’t be angry at what I say. You must go out and have the bell rung and say: Dreadful fate has trapped us till we can only hop like crickets in a jar. No need to judge whether we took the right path. We took the right path. Now we must part, and roam, so that we’re not felled like calves. Then you let them all go; they’ll heave a deep breath when you tell them, and no one will hinder them as they go. And you yourself, brother Ma No, you know now where you must go.”

Ma No smiled a peaceful smile. “Won’t you ring the bell yourself and speak to the brothers and sisters?”

“They’re your followers.”

“Not any more. Just go to the marketplace, call them together, speak, it’ll be a lesson for you. They don’t want speeches, neither do I. They’re lost, plain and simple. Like me.”

“You’re weary, Ma. All of you seem strengthless, weak. I beg you, implore you, Ma No, dear brother, I lay my forehead on the ground before you: go with me to the marketplace, ring the bell, speak and point to me. I love you all; perhaps my words haven’t been strong enough to show you what you are to me. For all the long months of this terrible year I’ve suffered for you and yearned for you, more than a lover for his little boy. You mustn’t let it hang over me that you sent me away and let it all pass as you know it must, the bestial horde slaughtering the good hopeful brothers and sisters. Are you prepared yet, Ma No, are you prepared? You yourself will be stolen away from me, you the jewel in my soul. You’re sending me forlorn out into the world, and I don’t have enough hands to sacrifice for you all. Don’t stand there so limp, act with me, help me this once.”

“How you bore into me, Wang. How you honour me. I was never honoured like this as king of my precious, precious isle. To have won you does me a deal of good. But I can’t do anything, Wang.”

“Why can’t my brother do anything?”

“The thousand slain brothers and sisters don’t allow it. All of us know that. The cheated ghosts would never give us a peaceful hour. They mayn’t have been prepared; we are. We’ll put everything right again. We’ll draw them on, take them with us from their roamings. And there can’t be any other ending now. I don’t want any other ending. We’re forged into one circle, dear brother Wang.”

Wang, stunned, threw himself heavily to the ground.

“What message shall I take from you to the Western Paradise, Wang? That you loved us, that you showed us the Way.”

“You won’t take any message from me. You must stay here, you must all stay here.”

“We don’t fear the horde.”

“The soldiers—!”

Wang writhed upright; pinpoints flashed in his glaring eyes. He stood, taking deep breaths, staring at the ground. Then huskily he said:

“I shall go. You may be right. Is my sword there? Where did I throw my Yellow Leaper, dear brother?”

Ma picked it up, hung it around Wang’s neck.

“One message I shall not take, brother Wang: that you run around behind a Yellow Leaper.”

They embraced. Ma still smiled. “And how long will it be before I see my brother Wang from Hunkang-ts’un in the Western Paradise?”

When Wang stood in the dark marketplace alone and looked about him he knew for sure: soldiers of the generals of the Tsungtu of
Chihli won’t storm the walls of the Mongolian town.

He felt his way along streets until he reached the outer wall. He slunk into the little unroofed yard of a ruined cottage, threw himself down to sleep in a shed. Very early, after a terrible night, he departed the town.

Among the shrunken population of the erstwhile kingdom that now thronged the Mongol quarter of Yangchou-fu were three hundred peasants and townsfolk. The walls and watchtowers of the town were in a lamentable state, but the people, having enlisted the aid of fellow guildsmen from the Lower Town, set quickly to closing breaches in the stonework, deepening the dried up moat outside the wall and filling it with water, procuring bows, arrows, wooden shields and piling them in the watchtowers. Behind the ironbraced gates they heaped great stone blocks that they dragged from a village one li outside the town, to render the gate impassable in an assault.

These hardworking, quite unadventurous men and lads were by no means exceptionally fond of fighting; indeed they had no real occasion to be shut up in the town with the sectarians, but they made common cause with them from a certain pious self-interest. That provincial troops should fall upon sectarians seemed to them monstrous: a terrible vengeance was inevitable. To their way of thinking it could only be a matter of time before the brothers and sisters, tormented beyond bearing, unleashed their sinister subterranean powers. Until then it was best to keep in with them, secure for oneself a part of their power. They were spurred on, too, by a feeling of the importance of their role. Often they discussed the chances of gaining back the old kingdom, or a new one. It was only a matter of convincing the Son of Heaven of the Tsungtu’s baseness or of unclogging widespread support among the people. For if the Son of Heaven should look with favour on the Tsungtu’s
conduct, the Pure Dynasty’s oft asserted antipathy for the people would become obvious.

While these men—former salt boilers, carters, coolies—built and dug and by their determined behaviour drew the Lower Town to their side, the brothers and sisters recovered from their terror. Their wounds healed, the paralysis of their desperation wore off. They mulled over the terrible blows they had suffered, strove to regain their feet. Since they could not stray beyond the walls they lapsed into complete inactivity. Sat in the streets, the squares, in a fine large temple to the Pox Goddess, on the earthworks, waited. At morning and evening they gathered in the marketplace.

Ma No stood before them in a mud coloured gown. The little bent motionless man with the receding forehead. They prayed. The crowd threw an idolatrous reverence around Ma No like a restraining leash. To them he seemed instinct with power, a guarantor of what must come. Wang Lun’s name had a defunct sound; no one knew if he was still alive.

Lovely Liang-li had survived the rout. Mutely she had long begged Ma’s forgiveness. She strove fiercely to unharness her thoughts from worldly things, to merge completely with the holy. There was always something lurking between, a chasm yawned in her: an emptiness, a constriction of the abdomen, a gagging and choking that sucked her downwards. She thought of holy things only through a human medium. She came to them only on these wheels. She shook herself, ran from herself, struggled with herself about Ma No.

Suddenly, bewildered and quite uncomprehending, she recalled what had happened before she left home. She could have sworn to herself that it wasn’t her. Her father, child, husband rose dimly before her, memories that might have come from a story book, were it not for the power they had of causing Liang to turn away
in dull torment as soon as they appeared. A twinge in her teeth, a bleak scurrying feeling in her jaw warned Liang of their impending appearance.