The Banished Immortal

by Ha Jin

  They tried to wake Bai up, but to no avail, so they sprinkled cold water on his face. The instant Bai sat up, Li Guinian told him that the emperor had summoned him to compose poems in celebration of “The Rainbow and Feather-Garment Dance” and that he must leave with them without further delay. They put the inebriated Bai into a sedan chair and carried him to Fragrant Pavilion, where the dance was to be performed. The swaying sedan made him sicker, and he vomited and soiled his robe.

  When they arrived at the pavilion, which was a large yard paved with granite slabs, Li Bai was asleep again, his breath whistling through his nose. At this sorry sight the emperor said nothing, though the grand eunuch Gao Lishi ordered a servant to fetch a bowl of hangover soup. Bai vomited again. They put a new robe on Bai, who woke up a little but still couldn’t stand steadily, so Gao told the servants to carry him to a large rattan chair under a yellow parasol. The emperor followed them to see if Bai was capable of composing a poem. To everyone’s amazement, Bai raised his foot and demanded that Gao Lishi take off his boot for him. Onlookers gasped in astonishment. Gao was stunned as well, but, accustomed to serving the royal family, he went ahead and pulled off Bai’s boot. Then Bai lifted his other foot, and Gao did the same.3

  After he drank the hangover soup, made of orange peel, mint, fruit, green tea, and honey, Bai sobered up a bit. He saw His Majesty go back to join Lady Yang, who stood in the pavilion against a rail and watched the dance. Beyond them, swaths of peonies were in full bloom, swaying in the breeze. Lounging in the chair, Bai watched the dance as music rose from the band beyond the pavilion. A few moments later, he rose and moved to a table nearby, on which were prepared ink, spread paper, and a pair of brushes. He picked one up and began to write, not about the performance, but about Lady Yang’s beauty:

  一

  雲想衣裳花想容 春風拂檻露華濃

  若非群玉山頭見 會向瑤臺月下逢

  二

  一枝紅豔露凝香 雲雨巫山枉斷腸

  借問漢宮誰得似 可憐飛燕倚新妝

  三

  名花傾國兩相歡 常得君王帶笑看

  解釋春風無限恨 沈香亭北倚欄杆

  《清平調》

  1

  Her gown brings to mind clouds and her looks, flowers.

  The breeze caresses the rails glazed with thick dew.

  If she is not at the peak of Jade Hills where gods reside,

  You can find her at the Jasper Terrace bathed in moonlight.

  2

  The red, red peonies glisten with dewdrops.

  She stops others from pining for goddesses.

  Tell me, who was like her in the Han palace?

  The pitiful Flying Swallow would resort to a new dress.

  3

  The flowers and the rapturous beauty shine on each other.

  They make His Majesty smile when he looks at them.

  The breeze blows away all his worries

  As he and she lean over a rail at the Fragrant Pavilion.

  “QING PING MELODIES”

  Flying Swallow was a well-known beauty of the Han dynasty, but she had been very thin and delicate, the opposite of Lady Yang’s plump beauty.

  Both the emperor and Lady Yang loved these three poems, though they are in fact not extraordinary compared to Bai’s true masterpieces. They are light and commonplace, particularly the analogy between female beauty and flowers.4 Yet the royal couple were amazed that Li Bai could still produce charming lines even in such an impaired state. Lady Yang enjoyed the poems so much that she presented Bai with a parakeet—the bird was to be kept in the Imperial Academy, where a servant would teach it to utter some lines by Bai. Without delay Li Guinian began to set the poems to music. From then on, Lady Yang often sang these songs; occasionally the emperor would accompany her on the vertical bamboo flute.

  Though the emperor was happy about the poems, he also felt uneasy about Li Bai’s treatment of Gao Lishi. In private, His Majesty told the head eunuch that Bai looked “destined to be a pauper.” The emperor was known to be well versed in physiognomy, and his opinion on Li Bai seemed to be accurate; indeed, Bai was never really wealthy during his lifetime. (He became well-off briefly over the next few years, but then grew poor again.) On the surface, the emperor’s remark was meant to console the grand eunuch, but it also manifested the general attitude of a ruler toward an artist: however prodigious Li Bai’s talent was, in the sovereign’s eyes he was no more than a commoner. Talent alone was worthless, and at heart His Majesty may never have truly accepted Li Bai as a member of the royal clan. The boot-pulling incident also marked the point where Bai’s career began to suffer, regardless of his later glorious moments at court. Although his defiant act produced a potent legend that would fire the imagination of the generations to come, by humiliating Gao Lishi he had acted out his haughtiness and his contempt for the man in a dangerous way. He’d have to pay for this.

  Rumors began to crop up in the palace, calling Li Bai irreverent, if not malicious. Without question Gao Lishi was behind the gossip. Some said Li Bai mocked Lady Yang in his poems, and some insisted that he was flirting with her. The ancient beauty Flying Swallow had once been a dancing girl and had led a promiscuous life before becoming a queen, and she was also an archetype of the ruinous seductress—it was outrageous to compare Lady Yang to her. When the calumny against Bai reached Lady Yang’s ears, she was swayed by it and began to hate him. Legend has it that three times the emperor intended to promote Bai to a post, but she dissuaded him every time.

  Bai disliked Lady Yang and didn’t seem troubled by her hostility. It was widely believed that she had cast a spell on the emperor and was ruining the dynasty. She was wasteful, self-indulgent, unscrupulous. For instance, she loved fresh litchi, so the court set up a relay system to transport the fruit expressly from Lingnan (modern Guangxi and Guangdong provinces), horses galloping nonstop all the way from the deep south to Chang’an. It was reported that the litchi, having traveled more than a thousand miles, were still damp with dew when they arrived at the palace. But many horses died of exhaustion en route, and some pedestrians were trampled to death. Even crops were often destroyed, because the transporters, fearful of punishment for delay, would cut across the fields in order to arrive at the palace more quickly. In Chinese there is an idiom for such a terrifyingly beautiful woman—a beauty that can topple a city or a country (qing guo qing cheng). Of course, it is not the beauty but the power under her spell that does the ruination.

  POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT

  In the fall, an emissary came from a distant land and presented a letter to the Tang court. It was clear to the top officials that the diplomat was from somewhere near Central Asia, but no one could tell from which country nor comprehend the letter. The emissary couldn’t speak Chinese, so for half a month the central government was unable to ascertain his identity or mission. The emperor flew into a fury and threatened to disband the cabinet if they didn’t decipher the contents of the letter within three days, so the high officials began desperately searching for someone who knew the foreign language. Chancellor Li Linfu, who was in charge of diplomatic affairs and would be held responsible if China lost face, was more shaken than the others. The emperor’s son-in-law Zhang Ji was nervous as well: he headed the Imperial Academy, which ought to have been able to produce a translator for the letter.

  In a way, however, this lack of preparedness was unsurprising. For many centuries China had treated the countries beyond the western frontier with little distinction. The peoples of Central Asia were all called fan, a term that was also used to refer to Tibetans and Mongols. There were many fan peoples and languages, and China had diplomatic relationships with some of those states. But no Chinese, at least no one in Chang’an, could understand the fan script in the letter delivered by the new emissary. An
d so He Zhizhang again recommended Li Bai to the emperor, suggesting that Bai, who had once lived on the western frontier, might be familiar with the script. Bai was summoned to court. Glancing over the letter, he told the emperor that it was a script (scholars surmise that it was probably Tocharian) used in Yuezhi Country, which consisted of many tribes. Bai had often seen this script as a young boy and even had learned quite a bit of it. In a poem, he describes writing a letter in this foreign tongue: “Lu silk spreads glossy like frost, / On which I inscribe the Yuezhi script” (“Letters for the One Far Away: 10”). We should keep in mind that his mother had been from a western tribe, and that Bai had grown up in a bilingual or multilingual family. Now, in front of the entire court, he read out the contents of the letter, which contained a threat. The Yuezhi Country demanded that China cede some land to it or it would dispatch a powerful expeditionary army to Chang’an, destroy the city, and sack the palace.

  The threat flustered the emperor and his courtiers—it was a message that demanded an immediate response. Li Bai assured His Majesty that he could write a reply, but he wanted Li Linfu to prepare the ink for him so that he could inscribe the script here and now. He hated Li Linfu, knowing the man had withheld his “Grand Plan for Our Dynasty” from the emperor, and he intended to humiliate the chancellor openly. Without delay Li Linfu began to grind an ink tablet on a stone, urging Bai to write the letter. Bai wrote the reply rapidly and then translated it into Chinese for the emperor. The contents of the letter wouldn’t have been difficult for him to compose: the civil-service examination had always contained a section for such a diplomatic essay, and although Bai had never entered for the exam, he was familiar with the preparatory materials.

  The emissary was called in to listen to Li Bai announce the reply. In a loud voice, which had a slightly metallic twang, he summarized it thus: China would not yield to their demand and was unafraid of their military. If the Yuezhi Country instigated a war, China, which was many times bigger and mightier, would retaliate, destroying all of Yuezhi’s tribes. China was willing to exist peacefully with their country if they were not bellicose. Awestruck, the emissary hurried back with the official reply. Thereafter no word came from Yuezhi Country again.1

  The emperor was so pleased that he kept Li Bai at court so that he could assist with foreign affairs. He was promoted to royal secretary at the fifth rank, whose principal duty was to write decrees and summarize petitions. In practice Li Bai didn’t do much of those either, and yet the new position gave him an opportunity to witness political proceedings in the top circle. His presence at court made some of the ministers wary, and they began to view him as a potential rival and a troublemaker. Li Linfu and Gao Lishi in particular both hated him and were determined to make his life difficult. Bai, however, was buoyant with illusions and even believed himself to be one of the indispensable courtiers at the center of power. He was no longer just an academic fellow but a real official with a respectable rank and a handsome salary. He should be able to save enough to buy a house within a year and then bring his children to the capital.

  But soon a secret smear campaign was launched against Bai. In addition to Gao Lishi and Li Linfu, others in power also regarded him as unstable. His constant drunken state gave the impression that he was incapable of steady work, so top officials would dismiss him when a consequential issue was at hand. They didn’t want him to meddle with administrative affairs, and so although Bai would go to court for audiences, his voice was rarely heard. It was well known that Emperor Xuanzong loved Bai’s talent and swift literary imagination, and these officials feared that he might earn more favors from the emperor at the expense of their own advancement. Gradually Bai came to feel the sting of envy and malice. “Although His Majesty loves what is beautiful / The jealousy in the palace can still kill you,” he says in a poem titled “Song of a Jade Flask.” He became frustrated at every turn and began to lose heart.

  One morning Bai arrived at Grand Bright Palace to listen to officials as they presented petitions and to the emperor as he issued decrees. To his surprise, His Majesty declared his intent to start a war against Tufan (modern Tibet), which had posed a threat to China in recent decades. The emperor ordered Wang Zhongsi, who was the marshal of the Tang army and also the commander of the Western Regions, to organize an attack on a small town in Tufan known as Stone Fort.

  Wang, a stalwart man in his late thirties, was from a family of military officers and had successfully fought several battles against Turks and Tibetans. The instant he heard the imperial decree, his face darkened. Several officials voiced their support for the war and a few junior generals even volunteered to depart with Marshal Wang the next spring. But to everyone’s amazement, Wang stepped forward and spoke to the emperor, saying, “My father fought and fell in the battleground for our country. I was raised here, in the capital, and since my childhood I have been bathed in Your Majesty’s love and kindness. You gave me the name ‘Zhongsi,’ so I never dare to forget my family’s hatred for the barbarians and the royal bounties you have bestowed on me. Even the successful battles I have fought are far from enough to repay your benevolence. Since you granted me the high position of the marshal, I have pondered my former deeds and have come to believe that attacks and killing are not the best way to serve our country. I would like to follow the model of the great general Li Guang in the Han dynasty, who stayed at the border to stabilize the region. If the barbarians leave us alone, we will leave them alone. If they come to attack, we will be ready to repel them. In that way we will surely succeed and stabilize the hundreds of miles of our frontier. If we make constant war, we waste a great amount of manpower and resources. That could damage the foundation of our country….I am afraid that is not a wise approach, so I am begging Your Majesty to keep peace for now and wait for an opportune time if we have to fight. Please think twice, my Lord.”2

  Bai was deeply touched by Marshal Wang’s candid words. He had always felt uneasy about the warfare waged in the western regions; because he had once lived there and had known the tribal peoples, he couldn’t view them as enemies deserving to be destroyed. (Unlike other writers of his time, in his writings, he never used the word “savages” [man] to refer to those tribesmen.) As he was about to step forward in support of Marshal Wang, he saw the emperor’s face drop, so Bai paused. Then Chancellor Li Linfu began to criticize Marshal Wang, claiming he had let the emperor down. Other courtiers and officers also joined the debate. Most supported the expedition, but Wang argued that Stone Fort had no strategic value—it was not worth thousands of soldiers’ lives, to say nothing of the civilians who would lose their homes. Li Bai was about to condemn the hawks, but his friend Cui Zongzhi (the handsome man “like a jade tree in the breeze”) held him back and whispered not to act rashly. Zongzhi had been Bai’s loyal friend since their first meeting in Jiang Prefecture eighteen years before, and Bai trusted him.

  Finally Marshal Wang ran out of patience, lowered himself to his knees, and said to the emperor, “Every year we start an expedition and recruit young men for war. There are not many young men left in our central land. Everywhere you encounter widows and orphans. I am not afraid of death, but I don’t want to exchange tens of thousands of lives for my own glorious position. Please cancel your decree, Your Majesty, and stop those who only want personal gains at the cost of others’ lives. If you do so, our country will be blessed and all the common people will be blessed.”3 Wang then knocked his head hard on the stone floor again and again; his forehead became smeared with blood. The emperor looked upset, but he valued the marshal’s bravery and ability—and, having seen him grow up, was personally fond of him—so he only stood and dismissed the audience.

  Still restless that night, Li Bai set about composing a petition in support of Marshal Wang. He sat at his desk wielding his brush. As he was writing, his friend Zongzhi stopped by and urged him not to become involved in such a matter—the emperor could very well be furious at Marshal Wan
g and might take it out on someone less essential to him. To Zongzhi, whose family had served the court for generations, the emperor was no longer the ambitious and conscientious sovereign dedicated to his country’s security and prosperity. Look what was going on in the palace. Every day there were dances and ball games and other frivolities. The emperor was already nearly sixty, but was careless about his health and wasted his vitality, indulging in women, wine, decadent music, and elixirs of life, dreaming of immortality. He was completely under the spell of Lady Yang, that Fox Spirit. Keep in mind, Zongshi warned, she must still hate Bai’s guts and was surely prepared to pounce on him at any moment. To speak truth to the royal couple now could only incur their wrath against him.

  So Bai abandoned his half-written petition. He felt more isolated than before, afraid that all his enemies would join hands in reducing and ruining him. Moreover, he knew that his advocate He Zhizhang, frail and already eighty-four years old, was considering retirement back to his home village on the seacoast. The eight “drinking immortals” would not revel together any longer, and Bai often drank alone, sitting moodily in the moonlight. When drunk, he would dance around the yard by himself, regarding the moon as a companion. “When I sing, the moon will waver, / When I dance, my shadows will be scattered,” as he said in “Drinking Alone in the Moonlight.” He began to care less about attending the audience at court. He was not indispensable at all, he soon realized, and no one paid heed to his absence.

  He remembered Husi, his farmer friend living in the southern outskirts of Chang’an, near Zhongnan Mountain, and went to visit the man one day in the early spring. When Bai arrived, Husi was sowing millet but stopped to receive him heartily, like in the old days. They both marveled at each other’s gray hairs. Husi’s cottage was even quieter than before—his children had grown and no longer lived with him. The two friends chatted over Husi’s home-brewed wine. For the first time since coming to the capital, Bai enjoyed a moment of peace. Husi was a good, patient listener and relished the anecdotes Bai told him about the palace. They also talked about Daoism. Husi knew the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu quite well and, as before, mentioned that fortune and misfortune were often indistinguishable and one should take them with equanimity. Bai agreed, and shared with Husi his disappointment in the capital, which he had once viewed as a heavenly place where he could realize his political ambition. Now he felt completely out of place. They talked deep into the night.