The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (63 page)

Who stood with head bowed and nodded. “I have received a sign and must accept it. I can’t strike fate in the face. But believe me, Yellow Bell: resolutions don’t help a man when he’s not at peace. Resolutions can’t change anything within him. Everything must come of itself.”

Suddenly he lifted his grave face to Yellow Bell. “You rejoice over me. And I rejoice, because today I’ve received this sign and because it will go better with me now. I can feel that it will go better, dear brother. I begin to love mankind once more. What a muddle I’ve lived through; now I can stand upright again and go in peace and tend our beloved Wu-wei.”

“Woe to us that we must tend it with swords and clubs, Wang. It is we alone who take the proper path that leads to the Summit of Supreme Bliss. I want to live only so long as I am able to defend our good teaching. Last night I wanted to let you go with that criminal. I shan’t forget tonight, when for the second time I have sat upon the pass of Nank’ou.”

Yellow Bell held Wang’s left hand, stroked it. “This is you, this is how I wanted to know you, dear brother. The fever has gone from you. Let them defeat us. Who can harm us?”

They rose. At Wang’s request Yellow Bell accompanied him through the streets. When they had walked for an hour they came to a green meadow of low grass through which a shallow brook ran. Wang’s stride was firm. Yellow Leaper hung from his neck on a string; it dangled gleaming over his blue shortsleeved smock. A pointed straw hat covered his brow, which was slashed by a red scar; masterful eyes in a dark tanned face squinted into the sun. Yellow Bell’s long legs took great steps; he walked bent; grey smock and grey trousers, strawsandalled like Wang. Hollow temples, deepset eyes that flashed black, flapping beard. Larks and finches sang above them.

Wang pointed to the town wall, smiling. “We shan’t come to Nank’ou today.”

They stretched out by the brook, were silent. Yellow Bell murmured, “I shan’t have many more such days. I shan’t lie much longer in the kaoliang. I was outside Chengting with Ma No. The
sun shone fair over the lama monastery. Salt boilers knocked at the gate, we were startled. Liang-li sat beside me.”

“You’ve never forgotten this sister, brother Yellow Bell.”

The officer fended this off with his arm. “When the sun shines, Yellow Bell thinks of Liang-li from Chengting. When it doesn’t shine, he wonders why, and why he has forgotten Liang-li.”

“She died in the Mongolian town.”

“Wang, she’s in the Western Paradise. Beyond the white clouds in the west I discern at times a fine, clever face.”

Hooting, rattling from the distant houses. Ceaseless twittering from the birds, black animated clusters high overhead. Wang, reclining, drew in his legs, flung himself around, knelt up and observed the birds swooping and soaring, and the little brook. He took off his straw hat, removed his neck from the noose of the swordstring; then he stuck the sword in the soft earth, jammed his hat on the hilt, swung his arms and placed his legs as if for a runup. “On your feet, brother Yellow Bell. I’m going to jump.”

With one leap he was on the other side of the brook. “Now I’m on Nank’ou. Ma No is doing what I want to do. Everything is going badly. I must jump again.”

He swished down beside his sword; the hat was blown off by the draught. “Now in the Lower Reaches. A beautiful time, Yellow Bell. The dyke, the Yellow River, the Yangtze; I had a wife. The Wu-wei wended its way to me, I’m not there yet, I can’t follow so quickly. Slaughter, my yellow sword! And now—”

He crossed the little stream with a third leap. “Where am I? On Nank’ou again with you, Yellow Bell. The sign was good. The criminals were good. I’ve come back from the Lower Reaches, I’m home again in Chihli. Come across to me here, dear brother, bring my Yellow Leaper with you, for there’s a fight to be fought.” Yellow Bell stood beside him.

They put arms around each other’s shoulders, gazed into the trickling, glittering water. “The Nai-ho,” Yellow Bell laughed. They held each other tighter. Wang lowered his head, sighed softly: “The Nai-ho. It has to end this way.” Yellow Bell too shivered slightly: “I hoped for a good fate for us. I leave the Flowering Middle with reluctance.”

On the evening of this day of the three leaps two ladies of the town had themselves carried to Wang. One elegant slender lady came first into the silent yamen, where Wang remained seated on the mat. The lid of her left eye drooped mostly; now and then big white spots could be seen on the eyeball. A plump, very pretty lady followed, who carried herself with less assurance than the elegant one. The first gave her name as P’ei, the other Ying. Settling themselves on the mat they waited for Wang’s greeting. The elder remained unruffled even when the man asked harshly what they wanted. They came from the Vermilion City. They’d had to flee even before the seige. They offered their services to the sectarians. Madam P’ei described in broad terms what had befallen them, ended by explaining that she was in a position to get back into the Vermilion City and bring about the deaths of the Manchu leaders by sorcery. Wang had heard something of this sorceress’s deeds. He stayed silent for a while, not moving. Then he climbed down, thanked the ladies, asked them to leave their address, sent them away with two soldiers for their protection.

That evening the affair left Wang fretful. First he sent for Yellow Bell, then the messenger had to be recalled. He wanted to come to a decision alone. In the courtyard of the yamen he paced about. This was a new sign. Unexpected end of the Manchus. Ought he seize the chance, must he not? No Nai-ho yet! But his initial reluctance returned. There was something unbearable about the proposal. It was revolting, the whole thing was senseless, it
came from without, wasn’t a sign, it simply disturbed the course. What he experienced with Yellow Bell at the little brook was final, and no one should interfere in it. No murders. The paths all lay straight ahead.

And before night fell he sent four soldiers to the ladies, who led them under the watchful eye of an officer out of the town. They were threatened with the rod if ever they turned up again among the Truly Powerless.

It’s decided, completed, Wang rejoiced. He went to sleep happy. In a dream he stood beneath a sycamore, clung to its trunk. Above his head the green treetop spread broad and high so that as the heavy boughs sank he was completely enveloped and buried in cool leaves, invisible to the many people who walked by and delighted in the inexhaustible growth.

After the entire provincial army of Ch’en Yuan-li, Tsungtu of Chihli, had marched up to Tungch’ang, the sectarians were goaded out to a fight and defeated. Ch’en Yuan-li then pulled back. The Tsungtu of Shantung, with Banner troops under Chao Hui, took up a position on the west bank of the Imperial Canal in the path of the fleeing sectarians. The Tsungtu’s general engaged in a heated skirmish with the fearless rebels, who fled across the Canal, prepared for further battle in the plain outside the town of Linch’ing to the east of the Canal. Here unfolded the great battle in the course of which the remainder of the sectarians were driven into the town. They had taken care to secure the walls and towers, with the result that the regular troops were compelled to a siege of Linch’ing.

The sectarians numbered no more than Ma No’s band, barely fifteen hundred people including many women. Wang Lun and Yellow Bell had suffered only light sabre wounds. Ngo’s right arm
was mangled up to the shoulder. The noble man held himself upright with difficulty, practised for the final battle by swinging a club in his left hand.

Brothers and sisters clung together in an indescribable intimacy. Their friends from the White Waterlily seemed to have vanished; the recent calamities had led to their complete absorption into the Truly Powerless. Pious hymns of the journey to the Western Paradise echoed from the walls. A joyous mood surged.

Among the women were many who believed themselves unable to endure the horrors of another battle. It was these who solemnly hanged themselves in the marketplace on the second day of the siege.

Some brothers grew confused in the spirit when it became apparent that the town was now encircled by uncountable hordes of troops and annihilation loomed. They danced naked in the streets, exulted in marrowjarring voices that they knew the true, the good Way and were dancing along it. Stealthily they slipped across squares, sank to the ground with eyes closed and rasped in delirium. Several of these men cut their arms and lips with sharp stones like Fo-priests; eyes rolling white grasped dreaming women by the hands, and hard on the heels of ecstasy, in ecstasy, rutting embraces followed that no one condemned.

A small number of the immured looked sidelong, distrusting, spitefully at the others, could not resign themselves to the final rapture, wanted somehow to escape, betray the sect. These it was, many of them weeping in the courtyards, who clambered on the walls at all hours, whimpering grievously followed the movements of the Imperials. Then they paid heed again to everyone, thrust themselves into the thronging marketplace, struggled to draw over their own twisted faces the festive calm of the others.

Here and there an individual fate was swiftly consummated.
Ngo had sought the Wu-wei to find peace for himself. It tormented him, when the persecutions began, that he had to participate in the leadership. He went into battle with only half a heart and was glad of the benumbing turmoil. His revulsion against the Vermilion City thickened to hatred for the Manchus who forced him to battle. Hardly any among the Truly Powerless harboured such unbridled hatred for the Emperor as former Captain Ngo. Left alone, freed of his hate now that defeat loomed, he sat in Linch’ing. Dully he heard the trite songs of his friends, saw them from a great distance walking away from him. Memories awoke of the Emperor, of wanderings with Ma No, his beloved boy, and all without emotion. His right arm was ruined; he practised with the left and observed that it was all the same if the club struck a post, an Imperial, or his own body. Seeking conversation and the company of brothers he could not find himself again. He asked himself if it wouldn’t have been just as well to go on loving his boy and new boys, and was taken so violently by this notion that he melted in dreamy tenderness, approached this captivating vanished figure, begged its forgiveness for staying away so long, bringing no perfumes, no sweets. Whole days he passed in this trance. Yellow Bell came across him weak and in a high fever. The officer parted shaken from the sick man: he had the look of one diving already into the final darkness. As Ngo lay close to death in the bare room that had been found for him, in between the frosts and the flashing colours he felt for the delicate knees and ears of his boy, his clenched jaws barring entry to the rustling Wu-wei, tried now sceptically, now impatiently to find his balance, wandering, stammering, quite still.

The sect, decimated, completely exhausted, was lost. It was granted to the remnant to see through the last days together with Wang Lun. Among these sectarians the name Nank’ou meant almost nothing. When Wang Lun told them he had returned
to them after a great journey from Nank’ou through the Lower Reaches to Linch’ing, they knew well who he was and that it was worthwhile to have lived for the Wu-wei and to enter the Western Paradise.

In the first hour of the afternoon when they were driven into the town Wang Lun, bleeding at the neck, dripping with sweat, trembling pulled Yellow Bell into the empty courtyard of a house, embraced him violently, stuttered beside himself, with blazing eyes, “Brother, we are lost. It’s the end. Brother, the gates are closed. Who do I thank for that?”

Yellow Bell groaned, “We are lost.”

“Do you think so? I’m ready to die. What I said in Tungch’ang is still true: there’s no other end. The Nai-ho is black as mud. But I am with you, with you all, the only thing I’ve ever loved in my whole life is here: Nank’ou. I’ve come back to you. The gates are closed. We can pray, we can rejoice. All of a sudden we are free.”

In the following days Wang opened up completely. He climbed without cease through streets and squares. He strove to know every single member of the sect, let them relate their fates. He wept with them over fallen friends, for all of whom collective offerings were burned in the marketplace, forgave the Imperials they had been forced to fight against. The time when all should walk the pure Way was not yet come. Only through yielding and meekness could the terrors of life, the iron blows of sorrow be turned aside.

At the devotions in the marketplace the barefoot man, bareheaded, climbed onto the planks of a market stall. He told of his wanderings in the Lower Reaches and how it had done him no good, of the thousands of joyous brothers and sisters that Ma No had led to the K’unlun Mountains. He named many of them, described them. At other times, and this with great urgency, he praised fate. He found again the words from Nank’ou: how small
men were, how quickly everything passed and how little use noise was. The Imperials and Manchus might be victorious; how would it help them? Who lives in fever conquers lands and loses them; it is a confusion, nothing more. Wolves and tigers are evil beasts; who takes them as his emblem devours and is devoured. Men must think as the earth thinks, water thinks, the forests think: without fuss, slow, still; accepting, conforming themselves to every change and influence. They, who were truly powerless against good fate, had been forced to do battle. The pure teaching must not be eradicated, blotted away like bad ink. Now all fighting was over for them, must be over. Clubs, swords, scythes would be taken up just once more. Wu-wei was buried in the hearts of the Hundred Families. When they were gone it would spread in a stealthy, miracle-teeming manner, while they strolled among the clouds of the Western Paradise and sank up to their loins in sweetscented ambergris. They were surrounded by corpses; shades and skeletons grasped at them, the strongest sorcery couldn’t overpower such evil. Only Wu-wei could, that separated life from death with such a simple stroke. The sages of old knew as much. Be weak, endure, bow down to fate—that was the true Way. Cleaving to events, water to water, cleaving to the rivers, the land, the air, always brother and sister, love—that was the true Way.