Hsi-wei Tales

by Wexelblatt, Robert;

  “One thing, Mr. Chen,” said the Assessor.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Where is it that you’re staying?”

  “I have the honor to be accommodated by a most worthy family. Perhaps you know them? The Shins?”

  Early the next morning, Hsi-wei made his way to the Assessor’s residence. His knocking was answered by the same servant who had guided him the previous evening who said that his master Lai Zhong was already out and his mistress not yet up and dressed. Hsi-wei handed over the robe, neatly folded, brushed, and pressed by Mrs. Shin, and also a small bundle wrapped in burlap.

  “I would be obliged if you could see that your Master receives this package.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  The bundle contained two pairs of straw sandals and two sheets of paper. On one he had written a new poem; the other was a note to the Assessor and his wife:

  Honored Sir and Madam,

  I do not often have cause to regret my poverty but today is one

  of those occasions. There is little I can give you in recompense for

  your great kindness to me and what I have to offer is poor indeed:

  merely these two pairs of sandals and a poem. The sandals I made

  yesterday afternoon, the poem late last night. I beg you to accept

  these unworthy gifts with my thanks. I shall be leaving Kuyuan at

  sunrise tomorrow and will always cherish the memory of your generous

  hospitality.

  Chen Hsi-wei

  The remainder of the day Hsi-wei spent completing the last three pairs of sandals and, with the aid of a local boy, delivering all the orders he had received. So, he was not at the Shins when Assessor Lai came in person to apologize and withdraw his eviction order.

  The poem Hsi-wei wrote for Lai Zhong and his wife Pang is the one that has become known as “Justice”:

  Lord Zhang Siyu paced grumpily until

  his second wife set things right with

  no more than a small adjustment to his sash.

  Meiling waited until her brother got up

  to pee then moved her toy duck

  to the right side of her yellow pillow.

  Wu’s mother-in-law looked at what her son’s

  new wife had done: nothing in its proper place.

  Uncomplaining, she put all the pots to rights.

  The world’s a wavering rope-walker whose

  apparent stability is really the ceaseless

  setting right of countless imbalances.

  Hsi-wei’s Grandfather

  One summer afternoon my grandfather took my hand and walked me all the way to the Pavilion of the Five Virtues. I couldn’t have been more than five years old at the time. Did he speak to me about the five virtues? I expect he did. To lecture on obedience, courage, humility, thrift, and honesty was the usual purpose of bringing children to the Pavilion. My grandfather was a lean, strong man, a real soldier who always stood erect, who marched rather than walked. I was rather frightened of him.

  As we stood outside the pavilion, he pointed up. “Hsi-wei, look at those clouds. Clouds are the sky’s thoughts. When it is thinking of joyful things, you see clouds like these, billowing white ones shaped like morsels of laughter. But on other days the sky is, as people say, of two minds. That is what it means when you see clouds that are white but also others that are gray. When the sky is grieving you see rainclouds. When it is recalling something that makes it angry the sky fills with thunderheads.

  “What would you say the sky is thinking today, Hsi-wei?”

  I was a little boy. I said I didn’t know.

  “Well,” said my grandfather pensively, “to me the sky today looks sad, as if its mind were brimming over with shameful memories and bitter thoughts.”

  “Bitter thoughts? What are bitter thoughts, Grandfather?”

  “Thoughts the sky would prefer to drive away with sunlight.”

  That was the day my grandfather taught me to look at clouds.

  In my ninth year Grandfather became anxious that the war threatened our province. He decided that we should go north and take refuge at an inn where he was well known. I remember my mother crying when we left our house, how she touched the objects we left behind, especially the humblest, her pots and kitchen utensils. The inn was hard by Shulin-Lan, the Blue Forest. As it happened, the fighting veered to the south and we only stayed a week. While we were there my grandfather, who now seemed to me a little less formidable and slightly more affectionate, asked me to accompany him on a walk through the forest. Shulin-Lan was thick with beeches, just the kind of trees that invited a boy to climb them; but, of course, it was most famous then as now for its pines.

  As we walked my grandfather spoke a little about the war—or, rather, he spoke of war in general. He called it the worst of all catastrophes. “Floods and earthquakes kill thousands, but they don’t degrade people. War disgraces the victors no less than the defeated—usually more.”

  It surprised me to hear my grandfather speak this way. I had thought him proud of his service and his general’s many victories. I had yearned to ask him about his experiences; now I sought an explanation for his words. I wanted to hear about the battles in which he had fought, how he had become a hero, what he had done to be rewarded with a fine red house and rich flat land, why he was so respected by the proprietor of the inn where we were staying and feared by its servants. But, when I looked at his rigid figure and stern face, my courage failed me.

  “Look at these pines, Hsi-wei,” he said suddenly.

  I looked. Before us was a stand of colossal trees, trunks thick as three men. Reaching higher than a pagoda with five eaves, their tops dissolved in mist. The ground beneath them was soft with brown needles, punctuated with huge cones.

  “A tree must battle its way through dirt and rock toward light. Even the meanest sapling has to be ambitious. The ones who fare best steal water and light from the less determined. These tall pines are simply the most merciless. Notice how no other trees grow beneath them.”

  “Is it the same in war, Grandfather?” I ventured to ask.

  He took a step away from me. “It’s time to turn back, Hsi-wei,” he said. “Your mother will be worrying about you.”

  It was my eleventh winter. Grandfather had been losing weight all year long and now his skin hung sallow and loose on his bones. He no longer stood with legs wide apart, fists on hips, surveying the household like a commander reviewing a regiment. His face was contorted with pain, and he seemed to me full of anxiety. I could now easily lift his sword which, as a child, I had longed to wield. Now I could heft it and he could not.

  He lay on a couch by the window most of the day. I would sit with him for hours. He was the first to hear my earliest verses and, in his way, he encouraged me. “That’s not entirely terrible, Hsi-wei. Keep it up and you might become a real poet and starve in exile.”

  He grew weaker daily. Mother took to speaking in hushed tones. Father drew me aside and told me to prepare myself.

  The winter deepened. Grandfather’s hands and feet were always cold.

  One afternoon I came in from the shed and saw that he was shivering on his couch, even though the fire had been built up and the room was intolerably close. I pulled the thick blanket aside and lay down beside him. I took his icy hands in my own.

  “Look,” he said. “Look at the snow, Hsi-wei.”

  I raised my head to peer out the window. It was true; snowflakes had begun to fall and were coming down faster every second. The air was so still they plummeted, like silver coins.

  “Is the snow covering up the sty, the midden?” breathed Grandfather.

  “Yes,” I said, squeezing his hands more tightly in my desperation to put into them the warmth of my own.

  “The snow will cover up the mud,” he mumbled weakly, “th
e privy, the manure.”

  I could feel him dying. His eyes were closed and the face that for months had been so full of anguish and regret began to relax. “Snow is the sky’s purest offering, oblivion,” he whispered in my ear. His breath fell on my cheek as softly as a butterfly. “For at least a little while it will bury all that one has done wrong. It is beautiful, Hsi-wei, the snow. Beautiful to forget everything…be forgotten.”

  After he died we laid him out and began the funeral rituals. All of us bowed to say our farewells. Only I dared to touch him. He was cold but his hair was warm. Even today I can feel the warmth of my grandfather’s hair.

  Hsi-wei and the Tale of the Duke of Shun

  What follows is an explanation of a recently discovered poem-letter dating from the Sui period. It was sent by the poet Chen Hsi-wei to a friend he made in the vicinity of Hsuan, Ko Qing-zhao, thought to be a painter of pastoral scenes. To understand Hsi-wei’s text requires some knowledge of the nearly forgotten figure of Chang Yan-lu.

  ***

  No one can be certain about the truth of the ancient tale of how Chang Yan-lu became the Duke of Shun. Without faith in its veracity a story will be judged less as history than as a made-up tale: is it credible? faithful to human nature? does it make me think or wonder; above all, is it both pleasing and significant? Of course, everyone must decide such questions for himself. However, if the story of Yan-lu were not pleasing it would long ago have been lost to our people’s imperfect, albeit long, memory whereas, in fact, it has been retold many times and over many centuries. Proof that it is a meaningful story is that it has given rise to disputes and has even been the cause of bitter feuds. That is why it is held to be a dangerous story, not to be told to young children. Surely a story that is both inflammatory and often repeated ought to be granted some merit, whether it is true or not.

  According to most sources, Chang Yang-lu’s father was a petty landowner in Zhou, holding the rank of count, second class. His land lay in the north and, while extensive, was arid and unproductive. Yang-lu was a second son. Though the title and land had to go to his brother everyone acknowledged Yang-lu’s superiority, even his brother. The boy was well-built, athletic, quick with numbers, a precocious apt pupil who produced elegant calligraphy. He excelled at all martial exercises and games of strategy; he was able to speak easily with either a peasant or a scholar, and to impress both. Despite all these gifts, he aroused affection more often than jealousy.

  Yan-lu’s mother had a cousin in the capital who had attained the rank of a third minister. Through him, a place was arranged for Yang-lu at court. With tears being shed on all sides, he was sent off to the capital at the age of fourteen.

  Yan-lu was politely received by his mother’s cousin, welcomed warmly by his extensive family, and given a room in their villa. He was appointed as an assistant in the Ministry of Cloud Cavalry which, in addition to horses, had charge of food storage and road maintenance.

  The boy quickly distinguished himself by adding up a dan of rice more rapidly and accurately than anyone else and by riding the most fractious horses with reckless grace. In short order, he was promoted.

  According to one version of the story, Yan-lu was rewarded by his superiors with an invitation to join the gentry in the silver pavilion at the annual Lantern Festival. In the course of the evening, Yan-lu found himself standing near a group doing traditional riddles. A lady complained that the riddles were so traditional that they had grown stale.

  With the audacity of his youth, Yan-lu spoke up. “Pardon me, My Lady, would you like me to ask you a new one?”

  The lady was surprised but smiled. “What? Have you just made one up?”

  Yan-lu bowed low. “Two, My Lady.”

  People gathered around, including the Cloud Cavalry Minister himself.

  “Well, what’s the first?” asked the lady, intrigued.

  “What can turn everything around without moving itself?”

  “What indeed?” asked the Lady with a giggle, glancing around at her friends who all shook their heads. “It appears we need a hint, if you please.”

  Yan-lu looked at the lady in her carefully coiffed hair and silk gown which was cut rather low. “It is something you see at least once every day.”

  “I’ve got it!” exclaimed the Minister. “It’s a mirror and I assure you she sees it twenty times a day.”

  Everyone laughed except for the lady, who happened to be the Minister’s first wife.

  “Let’s have the second riddle,” said the Minister, who had enjoyed solving the first and discomfiting his haughty wife.

  “Well, Your Excellency, try this: When I slap you, I slap me. And when I hit you, my blood flows. Who are you?”

  The Minister’s deputy, who seldom left his side, made a shocked face and grumbled. To speak to the Minister of slapping? Imagine! To his mind it was this impudent boy’s blood that ought to flow.

  But the Minister was not in the least offended. He requested that Yan-lu repeat the riddle and asked his deputy if he knew the answer. The deputy scowled and shook his head. Then the Minister asked his first wife if she knew, but she turned away and pretended not to have heard.

  “Well, then, I give up. What’s the answer?”

  “A mosquito, Excellency.”

  “Ah, a mosquito. Of course. Splendid!”

  The boy grew into a tall young man and his reputation rose with his stature.

  One day the First Minister sent for Chang Yan-lu. The First Minister was a crafty man feared for his ruthlessness, high standards, and intelligence but esteemed for the same qualities. Yan-lu was conducted by two guards through courtyards he had never before seen and down a red-painted corridor to a wide and well-appointed inner chamber. On a dais sat the First Minister. Yan-lu at once put his forehead to the floor. The First Minister gestured to the guards to leave the room. Only after the doors were shut tight did he address Yan-lu.

  “By all accounts you are a gifted and brave young man. I am informed you are now seventeen. Is that so?”

  “Yes, Excellency. Seventeen.”

  “We have a challenging task for you. It will be difficult, but I ask it in the name of the Duke, to whom you have sworn allegiance.”

  The Minister explained that the recent death of the Duke of Shun had brought his young son to power. Shun was growing in strength and, with a new ruler of unknown temperament and ambition, might prove a problem. In short, the Minister had to consider the probability that Shun would attack Zhou in the near future.

  “You will be provided with documents proving that the Duke has treated your family unjustly. You are to take these to Shun, declare that you detest Zhou, and beg to be taken into the service of the Duke of Shun, even in the lowliest capacity. We rely on you to distinguish yourself in Shun as you have here and so to attain a position giving you access to information that will be vital in the event of war.”

  For the sake of this plan, the Chang family did have their land confiscated by the state, though, after a few months of privation, they were given a smaller but more profitable estate in the south.

  Yan-lu did as instructed and was taken into the service of the youthful Duke of Shun in which he rose quickly. After only three years, he was appointed third deputy to the Minister of the Green Jade Gate. This was approved by the First Minister, a kindly man who, during their interview, treated Yan-lu in a fatherly manner. In this new position, he accompanied the Duke, who was only two years his senior, on hunting forays and then on a punitive expedition to the western border. On the way to the frontier, the column was ambushed and, in the ensuing fight, Yan-lu saved the Duke’s life. As a consequence, he became the Duke’s favorite companion.

  According to some versions of the story, shortly after this expedition Chang Yan-lu married while in others he remained single; however, all agree that he grew fond of the Duke and of the people of Shun. As for the young Duke’s
political objectives, he could find no indication of any aggressive intentions with regard to Zhou; quite the contrary, in fact.

  Yet war did come.

  Zhou’s First Minister persuaded his Duke that Shun was a clear threat and the time had come to eliminate it by annexing their neighbor. With a man of their own in a position of confidence in the court of Shun, they could rely on having a decisive advantage.

  A distant cousin of Yang-lu’s father, a rural bureaucrat, was sent to Shun, ostensibly to visit him and give him news of his family. When they were alone, the cousin said, “I’ve been sent by the First Minister to deliver this” and drew from his robe a sealed scroll. “Don’t ask me anything about it. I swore not to open it. All I know is that I am to take your reply back with me in the morning.”

  The scroll did not say that an attack was imminent; however, the questions it posed made the Minister’s intentions clear enough. Shun would soon be attacked and without warning.

  Yang-lu spent a terrible night, torn between two loyalties. He did not sleep and wrote nothing until dawn was breaking. When he did write, he wrote falsely.

  The following day, after seeing the cousin safely off, he begged a private audience with the Duke and his First Minister. He told them the whole story, not leaving out his personal struggle.

  The Duke was too furious to speak but the First Minister remained calm. “Why did you decide for us?” he asked.

  “Three reasons,” said Yan-lu. “First, because you are the more worthy. Second, because you are not the aggressor. Third, because I have come to know you.”

  The Minister suggested to the Duke that Yan-lu be given a commission in the cavalry and sent to the border with two generals to strengthen the defenses.

  The fighting began within weeks. Yan-lu led his men so well that he was acknowledged as Shun’s best field commander. After repulsing the initial onslaught, the army of Shun crossed into Zhou. Meanwhile, in the capital a treacherous official, bribed by Zhou’s First Minister, poisoned the Duke of Shun and his First Minister as well. In the panic that followed, he declared himself ruler. He sent orders for the army to withdraw from Zhou and signed them as Duke of Shun.