The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (50 page)

He sighed and dropped onto one knee, stayed thus with his head sunk on his breast, frowned now and then and raised his eyes. His lips moved a good deal.

Just after the drums had beat the second night watch, the door moved. Ch’ien-lung watched it tensely, without lifting his head. He had thought the door locked. But it must be open, for it was visibly moving. And the loose silk panels of the tall screen near the door were fluttering. Two pearls close by his foot rolled farther off, a large pearl rolled away from the screen. When something clattered behind his back, the Emperor turned.

A slender woman in a smoky blue gown was letting herself down from an unlit hanging lamp and her feet could not quite touch the floor. A draught came from the ceiling. The woman had climbed in through the roof.

This wildhaired ghost swept towards Ch’ien-lung as he stood up, and cried to him as it assailed his breast, “Why are you out of bed? Why can’t you help me?”

The Emperor shrank away in fear, apologized; he didn’t know her.

She flung back her gown. There at her girdle hung a skein of slender cord. “Run away,” she cried. “You don’t know me? Then who are you waiting for here? My gown’s torn.”

She scurried to the recess, eyes darting about the room. “I’ve lost my comb.” She tugged the purple shroud from the altar. The old man hurried imploring behind her.

A thin clinking came from the ancestral tablet. Whimpering, Ch’ien-lung tried to seize her by the hands. With a mocking laugh and clicking her tongue the ghost threw a cord over one of the bronze chains of the hanging lamp, dragged the purple coverlet behinnd her so that Ch’ien-lung caught his foot on it and fell heavily to the floor; disappeared through the halfopen door.

The Emperor pulled himself painfully upright, limped coughing, spitting, clutching his chest to the hanging lamp, climbed onto a stool, tottering wound the cord about his neck and hunching his shoulders, legs flailing, kicked the stool aside.

When Chia-ch’ing entered the dimly lit room, the Emperor was hanging from the lamp, feet scraping the carpet. The door was open, a purple bedcover lay on the floor of the corridor outside the room, one corner across the threshold. The noose was not drawn tight. The body was sinking under its own weight, the swollen face with its gaping foamy mouth, popping eyes, was warm to the touch. Before Chia-ch’ing could find scissors in the chaotic, overheated room, the body plumped face down onto the carpet.

Sweat itched behind Chia-ch’ing’s ears, down his neck. He loosened the cord from under Ch’ien-lung’s chin, turned the body onto its back, kneaded the bare chest, poured water from a font over its forehead. A thin layer of vapour clouded the mirror he held at the Emperor’s mouth. A creaking and rattling rose from deep in Ch’ien-lung’s lungs. The retracted eyelids flickered, the bulging eyes sank back and took on a blank glaze. His heart, which had not stopped beating, set up a fast deadly tempo without strength.

As Chia-ch’ing with tearfilled stupid eyes sank exhausted onto the carpet and the grey of dawn replaced the red glimmer from
the oil flame, the Yellow Lord propped himself up on both elbows, wheezed, coughed, stammered.

He stood up, reeled to the window, there held and rubbed his cordwealed throat, knelt on the bed, gazing all the while uncertainly with bloodshot eyes at prostrate Chia-ch’ing. His breath laboured more harshly.

He wanted to see this fellow closer to, the fellow sleeping so soundly there on his carpet, ha, who’d got himself caught, the lamelegged fox. He was well and truly caught; not even the watchmen had noticed anything.

Stiffly, carefully he crept up to Chia-ch’ing, vainly trying to hold breath that whistled and sawed. Then a darkness dizzied his back, between his shoulderblades, into his skull. He keeled over onto his hands.

Crawled on all fours, with a hellish delight crushed something that crunched under his left thumb, lifted his hand. He held it close to his eye, licked clear the fragment of pearl, spat it out. Head lolling he remained for a while bent over the fragment. A great pearl glinted just in front of him on the carpet. Ch’ien-lung’s face grew long, he opened his mouth wide. His hollowed hand crept gently towards the pearl as if he were catching flies, heaved himself forward, gaped speechless now at plump Chia-ch’ing, now at the hand beneath him. Then he felt doubtfully with his left hand for the broken empty pearlstring. And feet wide apart, balancing with outstretched arms he staggered upright towards Chia-ch’ing, pearl in one hand, chest boiling, grabbed a splintered page from a little table as he passed, stumbling lunged with curses, dull cries at Chia-ch’ing. Chia-ch’ing leapt up, screamed; they struggled.

The Yellow Lord rasped hoarsely, “He’s broken my pearlstring, the rogue, the murderer, the fat thief.”

He scrabbled desperately as Chia-ch’ing brought him down.
“He’s trampled everything. My lovely pearls. Guard! Guard! You will bring me my chain of pearls. Murder!”

There were sounds from the corridor; lights glimmered through the half open door. Clink of weapons. The door burst open. A whirling eunuch dragged them apart, prised fingers loose, pushed Chia-ch’ing back and punched him in the jaw. Recoiling at the sight of the throttled eyes he recognized Chia-ch’ing. Attending the reeling Ch’ien-lung, two guards. The prince, groaning, explained in breathless syllables.

The Emperor roared on the carpet, arms grasping towards Chia-ch’ing, sobbed, wailed, showed his broken pearlstring. “Murderer! You will bring me my chain of pearls. Hold him fast!”

The prince gulped cool air.

He found a cord tied around the stone post, of the same kind as the cord that Ch’ien-lung had had around his neck. A dry twiggy branch was tangled in the coils. The demon had already transformed itself.

The sickly condition into which Ch’ien-lung had fallen lasted two weeks. During this time the Emperor’s moustaches turned completely white; his face like a mummy’s.

As he recovered, Chia-ch’ing sat by him. The Emperor had no memory of that night.

Snow danced over the Forbidden City; the Emperor retrieved the reins of government. Then unexpectedly, in one of the huge conservatories, he brought up with his son the affair of the sects.

Chia-ch’ing, fully briefed on the previous summer’s events, swelled with imprecations against the sectarians who disturbed and impoverished the country.

Ch’ien-lung, with the apathy of a ruined man, announced that the ancestors had spoken ill of him, that the lama pope hadn’t been able to advise him and how difficult the whole affair was.

Then the prince implored his father, as he led him away from the hot stove, to recollect the means by which the empire had extended its frontiers during his reign—by mildness or by military force; that Confucius and other sages had commended patience, but not against rebels. Indeed, any ruler was guilty of a crime against his subjects, who didn’t strike down rebellion of whatever kind with rod and sword.

Ch’ien-lung stood with his emaciated face against a fan palm and peeled off a long strip of bark. And about what exactly, Chia-ch’ing asked, were the ancestors supposed to be annoyed and had given a sign?

About weakness in taking the offensive, about negligence by appointed authorities; the events had been a warning; a portent that he should think of the Eighteen Provinces, and their fate that drew inexorably nearer when innovators, enthusiasts, frauds and the half mad were allowed free rein to draw the ignorant astray. And with flashing eyes Chia-ch’ing spoke urgently to the Yellow Lord, whose absent gaze often passed across his son’s plump, animated features. The entire West would fall on the Floreate Empire. Instead of Tibet being a tributary of the East, the Eighteen Provinces would be in thrall to the phantasms of visionary, uncouth priests. The lamas used subtle weapons. And how long would it be before the longnosed white men from India appeared on the scene, and the redbearded barbarians from the northern frontier with their knouts. The lustrous age-old world order of the Sage of Shantung would be lost under the wanton fantasies of western barbarians. Confucius must be defended. The sword must be unsheathed in time.

Up and down between the palms and cacti they dragged their bodies, breathing heavily. A silver pheasant strutted before them on the dewed marble slabs; it placed its red feet with sudden condescending
decision; primly it arched its blueblack neck to display the brilliance of its feathers. In front of the bushy round trunk of an oil tree Ch’ien-lung parted from his son. His sunken eyes, framed in wrinkles, gazed unhappily out. He asked Chia-ch’ing, laying a hand on his shoulder, to be present at the coming secret consultations.

In the conferences that ensued with Chia-ch’ing, A-kuei, Song, Chao Hui, the old Emperor twisted and turned like one tired of life whom all want to save. He was loth to accept Chia-ch’ing’s blindingly obvious proposal. He had buried himself deep in hopeless perplexity, and a secret, self-tormenting pleasure kept him there. How difficult it was to decide on hope. To this was added the obscure shame of a rescued suicide faced with life.

No amount of reasoning by his counsellors could have achieved what Chia-ch’ing’s subtle tact succeeded in doing. The prince kept silent about earlier events, concealed all his flabbiness, wooed the Emperor whom he adored for this inner conflict.

When Ch’ien-lung, half inclined to accede, secretly delighted with his son, grew dubious, Chia-ch’ing selected a more forceful tack. He appeared bewildered by his father’s opposition, ended one visit to the agitated Emperor with irritable words, unsure gestures, kept to his room.

To the Emperor, who soon came to seek him out, he declared himself inconsolable, since clearly it was true that their glorious dynasty had been abandoned by the ancestors. The Yellow Lord, incredulous, rigid, shattered by a cudgel blow, tried with anxious wails to save a remnant of hope, stuttered out the same arguments that Chia-ch’ing had brought against him. The plump prince snivelled, tearfully pawed the premisses over and over, sniffed them thoroughly, his every breath, every blink watched by the Emperor. They pushed each other back and forth, groaning, Ch’ien-lung
every moment fearing his death sentence, each undermining the other, goading the other, wresting a decision from him. The Emperor summoned all his bruised desperation. He had to overcome his son’s dull, obstinate blubbing. Until Chia-ch’ing yielded and flounced aside in annoyance.

The game was won. The Emperor felt chained to Chia-ch’ing in an enigmatic relationship. Ch’ien-lung sulked for days. No one could approach him with any matter of politics.

Then he took the bait. With a sulphurous anger, as if it came from himself, he flung at his Council of State his wish for the rebellion to be suppressed by force.

Three weeks passed after that night. Through the wintry landscape couriers bore the Imperial edict, the formulation of which had involved the entire Ministry and consultation with the elder princes and all the censors.

The proclamation announced the application, in a harsh, precisely specified rigour, of the law against heresy to the sectarians of the northern provinces. All resistance was to be treated as rebellion. In the decree the Emperor complained of the bad soil onto which his previous mercy had fallen. Military measures for suppressing the rebellion, which were to be set in train at once, would be under the command of Chao Hui, whom the Emperor had vested with special authority and the supreme command of the various provincial armies.

Let the populace not be alarmed.

The Dragon Throne would defend the teachings of Confucius and of Heaven.

The Western Paradise
 

The promulgation of the Imperial decree that winter met with little resistance. A few prefectures in the east and south of Chihli suppressed the orders. For the rest, the decree swept like a call to arms across the northern provinces.

Chao Hui’s troops, the terrible murderers of Ili, marched into the northern province. A few hundred itinerant brothers and sisters, chanced on in small bands, were seized, condemned after interrogation. Little groups that resisted arrest were swiftly surrounded, overpowered, after a flogging cut into pieces. These actions were completed in no more than a few weeks, then Chao Hui yawned in the freezing northern province, could neither report victory to Peking nor launch an attack. The Truly Powerless had vanished from the face of the visible earth. Captured couriers, letters revealed that members of the secret society had withdrawn into towns and villages, the people had taken them in and all at once enormous masses were smouldering behind the Truly Powerless. The White Waterlily emerged like the ghost of a brutish impenetrable wall of humanity. Neither Chao Hui nor the Tsungtus of Chihli and Shantung cared to enquire where this dread freemasonry stood in relation to the Wu-wei people. A harsh winter set in.

It was after the last clash of a sectarian band with the soldiers that five traders from the village near where the clash had occurred moved out and travelled south with their sailcarts. These were diehard brothers, who meant to fetch Wang Lun back. Their one-wheeled carts, piled high, rolled before them in frosty snorts of
wind, slid over frozen snow as if on runners. Only two of them knew the dialect of the southern provinces they were heading for, but the other three were sturdy fellows, no strangers to fistwork and the open road. One of them, T’ang, when Ngo gave the order for them to disappear, had fled to the villages with a number of others, tried to stir up rebellion against the Manchus; he wearied of the business. He took his escape from the last skirmish with the Imperials as an omen, quickly persuaded his companions to come south with him to Wang Lun. He had Wang’s whereabouts from Ngo. After a day’s journey they turned about. T’ang needed credentials to show Wang Lun. When they reached the village again old Chu was nowhere to be found, old Chu who—as he often said—had been present in the Nank’ou mountains at the birth of the sect. During the plundering of the village he had brought suspicion on himself, and now the old fanatic, his heart burst with fury under intensive questioning, lay beside a broken mulberry tree in soft snow holding his stiff-frozen head between his feet. They waited out the night, then buried the corpse behind the magistracy wall to bring bad luck on the treacherous authorities, heaved the sticky head into a bucket of salt that T’ang carried on the handle of his cart, and now had the credentials they needed.