by Lu Xun
He strode out of the gate, mounted his horse and, leaving his men standing to attention behind him, galloped out of the village. He ignored the fields of sorghum he passed every day; there was nothing for him there, he had discovered long ago. With a couple of cracks of the whip, his horse flew on another twenty miles or so, where a densely planted copse of trees lay ahead. The animal slowed, panting for breath, the sweat coursing down its body. Some three miles later, the wood at last drew near. The place was swarming with insect life – hornets, white butterflies, ants, grasshoppers – but nothing bigger. He had hoped for a couple of foxes or rabbits, at least, but now he realized it had all been an illusion. He skirted the edge of the forest, discovering yet more dark green sorghum fields behind, and a few mud huts scattered in the distance. The breeze was warm and the sun mild; silence reigned.
‘Damnation!’ he roared in frustration.
Perhaps a dozen strides on, his anger evaporated. On the flat ground outside one of the distant mud huts, he could see a bird, pecking along at its feet – the very image of an enormous pigeon. Seizing his bow, he drew the string back. An arrow flew out like a shooting star.
No need for further hesitation; he had never missed a target he had set his sights on. All he had to do now was gallop off to claim his prize. But what was this? As he approached, an old woman, cradling the deceased pigeon in her arms, charged at him.
‘Who the hell are you?’ she screeched. ‘Why did you just shoot my best black hen? Can’t you find anything better to do with yourself?’
Yi quickly reined in his horse, his heart pounding.
‘A hen?’ he flustered. ‘I thought it was a wood pigeon.’
‘You blind or something? You look old enough to know better.’
‘I was forty-four at my last birthday, madame.’
‘And you can’t tell a hen from a wood pigeon! Who are you, anyway?’
‘I am Yi the Archer.’ He allowed his self-introduction to fade circumspectly, noting – as he dismounted – that his arrow had passed precisely through the hen’s heart, leaving the bird indisputably dead.
‘Yi?… Never heard of you,’ she snorted, studying his face.
‘There are some who know the name. In the time of King Yao, I shot wild boars and snakes – ’
‘Ha! You lie! That was Feng Meng,2 and his lot. You might have been one of them – but here you are claiming all the glory for yourself. Shame on you!’
‘Over the past few years, Feng Meng has been a frequent visitor to my door, madame, but we’ve never been hunting partners.’
‘Rubbish. Everyone says it was him – why, I hear it four or five times a month.’
‘But back to the matter in hand. What’s to be done about this hen?’
‘Compensation – that’s what I want. She was my best layer: I had eggs from her every day. I want two hoes and three spindles for her.’
‘Do I look like a plougher and spinner, madame? I’ve no money, either. All I have is these five wheat cakes, made of white flour – these are all I can give you for your hen. Look, I’ll throw in five spring onions and a packet of sweet chilli paste, too. How about it?’ He groped around in his string bag for the wheat cakes, reaching out with his other hand for the hen.
At the sight of the wheat cakes, she began to reconsider – but she wanted fifteen of them. After a free and frank exchange of views, they settled on a final figure of ten, to be delivered the following day by noon at the latest; she would keep hold of the guilty arrow as a surety against Yi’s return. A relieved Yi stuffed the dead hen into his bag, swung back into his saddle and turned towards home. He was famished but happy: neither of them had tasted chicken soup for over a year.
As it was well past noon when he wound his way back around the woods; he tried to spur his horse on towards home, but it was exhausted, and it was dusk by the time they approached the sorghum fields. Somewhere in the distance ahead, he saw a darting shadow; an arrow suddenly swooped towards him.
Yi spurred his horse on, taking up his bow as he galloped and releasing an arrow of his own. Two arrows sparked in mid-air collision, fused into an inverted V, ascended and then fell back to the ground, their momentum exhausted. The instant the first arrows encountered each other, a second pair flew out, again clashing in mid-air. And so it went on, through nine arrows, until Yi’s quiver was empty. He now saw his enemy Feng Meng, jubilantly opposite, another arrow poised on his bowstring, aimed directly at Yi’s throat.
‘Ha!’ thought Yi. ‘I thought he’d left these parts to try his luck fishing on the coast. Still up to his old tricks, I see. No wonder that old woman wouldn’t shut up about him.’
The bow, distended like a full moon, released its missile towards Yi’s throat. Perhaps its archer’s aim had been a little out, for it hit him squarely in the mouth. Thus punctured, Yi tumbled from his horse, which came to a halt.
Feng Meng crept over to smile upon Yi’s dead face, lifting an imaginary cup of liquor to his victory.
But as he bent to look, Yi opened his eyes and sat bolt upright.
‘You obviously didn’t listen to a thing I said to you,’ he smiled, spitting out the arrow. ‘How could you have failed to learn my art of arrow-biting? Hopeless: trying to kill your teacher with his own tricks. You’ve got to come up with something of your own.’
‘I thought you might enjoy a taste of your own medicine…’ the deflated victor mumbled.
‘Enough!’ Yi laughed, standing up. ‘You might be able to humbug old women, but you won’t fool me! I’m a hunter, not a highway robber – unlike some people round here.’ Glancing back down at the hen in his bag, he saw it was undamaged by his fall. He swung back on to his horse and rode off.
‘Damn you to hell!’ Feng Meng shouted after him.
‘Hopeless. Such ill-breeding, at such a young age. No wonder he managed to hoodwink that old woman.’ Yi shook his head despairingly as he rode along.
III
The sky was fully dark before the fields were behind him, and glittering with stars; to the west, Venus shone with exceptional brightness. His exhausted horse now tortuously picked its way along the whitened ridges between the fields, as the moon over the horizon began to pour out its silvery light.
‘Confound it!’ Yi fulminated, hearing his stomach loudly complain. ‘The harder I work, the more bad luck comes my way. What a waste of a day!’ He tried squeezing the horse’s stomach with his legs, but the animal just shook its rump and ambled on as before.
‘Chang’e’s going to be furious, waiting for me all this time,’ he thought. ‘At least I’ve got this hen. My lady, I’ll say, I travelled seventy miles to win you your dinner. Or would that sound too boastful?’
He gazed at the lamplight from other houses, the euphoria of success overriding his anxiety. Without so much as a touch of the whip, the horse flew into a gallop. A round, white moon now illuminating the way ahead, a cool breeze against his face, his heart grew light – lighter even than after the great hunts of the old days.
Without needing to be told, his horse pulled up next to the pile of rubbish. A foreboding that all was not well gnawed at Yi; only Zhao Fu emerged to meet him.
‘What’s happened? Where’s Wang Sheng?’ he asked.
‘He’s gone to the Yaos’ to look for the mistress.’
‘To the Yaos’?’
‘Yes, sir.’ His man took the reins and whip from him.
Dismounting at last, Yi walked in through the gate, chewing the news over. ‘Are you sure she didn’t get tired of waiting and go to a restaurant?’ he turned back to ask.
‘Yes, sir. I’ve already looked in all three of them.’
Yi went on into the house, head bowed, thinking through the possibilities. Inside, he was startled to discover the three maids gathered nervously in the hall.
‘What are you all doing here?’ he shouted at them. ‘The mistress never goes alone to the Yaos’.’
Gazing silently at him, they helped him off with his bow, his quive
r and the string bag containing the hen. Yi’s heart began to pound: could Chang’e have committed suicide out of pique? He had Number Seven call Zhao Fu, and got him to check in the pond and the trees in the back courtyard. As soon as he stepped into his and Chang’e’s apartments, however, he knew he had drawn the wrong conclusion. Her room was in chaos: her chest of clothes flung open, her jewellery box missing from under the bed. This last discovery hit him particularly hard: not on account of the gold or the pearls, but of the elixir of life that had been inside.
After making two circuits around the room, Yi noticed Wang Sheng at the door.
‘The mistress isn’t at the Yaos’, sir,’ Wang Sheng informed him. ‘They’re not playing mahjong today.’
Yi glanced wordlessly at him. Wang Sheng retreated.
‘Did you call, sir?’ Zhao Fu now appeared.
Shaking his head, Yi dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
After another few turns around the room, Yi walked into the hall where he sat down, gazing up at the wall opposite: at his crimson bow and arrow; his black bow and arrow; his cross-bow, his long sword and his short sword.
‘When did you realize she’d gone?’ he finally asked the maids, who were still standing blankly before him.
‘When I brought in the lamp,’ Number Two said. ‘But no one saw her go out.’
‘Did you see her taking an elixir? The one from the box?’
‘No. But she did ask me to pour her some water in the afternoon.’
His fears now fully aroused, Yi stood up, feeling utterly alone.
‘Did you see anything flying up to the sky?’ he asked next.
‘Oh!’ Number Eight paled, making a connection in her mind. ‘Just after I’d lit the lamp, I went out and I did see a black shadow fly over. Could that have been the mistress?’
‘Without a doubt!’ Yi slapped his knee, stood up and went out. He then turned back to Number Eight. ‘Where in the sky?’
Looking in the direction Number Eight indicated, he saw only the white globe of the moon, scattered with hazy outlines of trees and pavilions. He vaguely remembered his grandmother telling him, as a boy, about the wonders of the moon palace. Gazing upon it now, floating in a sea of deep blue, he felt the heaviness of his own mortality.
He suddenly experienced a murderous rage. ‘Bring me my Bow for Shooting the Sun!’ he roared, his eyes bulging. ‘And three arrows!’
Numbers Two and Seven brushed the dust off that greatest, most powerful of bows, and handed it – along with three long arrows – to him.
Taking the bow in one hand, the three arrows in the other, he placed the arrows against the string, drew it fully taut and aimed at the moon. Straight-backed, eyes flashing, hair and beard blowing about him like tongues of black fire, at that moment he might have been the same Yi who, all those years ago, shot the nine suns out of the sky.
As at one instant, the arrows whipped away from the bow, the action blurred with speed, their separate trajectories coalescing into a single hum. To be sure of hitting his target, Yi quivered his hand a fraction as he released the string, to disperse his simultaneous missiles – to make three separate wounds.
The maids squealed in alarm. Seeing the moon shudder, they thought it on the point of falling, but it kept its place, glowing more intensely, more beneficently than ever, as if uninjured.
Yi cursed out to the heavens, then paused an instant; the moon ignored him. He advanced three steps; the moon retreated as many. He took three steps back, and the moon regained its ground.
Everyone gazed silently at each other.
After wearily propping his great bow against the doorway, Yi went back inside. The maids followed behind.
Yi sat down, sighing. ‘Well, I hope your mistress enjoys eternity on her own. How could she have left me like that? Did she think I was getting past it? Just last month she told me how young I still was. That the moment you start thinking you’re old, you’re halfway to the grave.’
‘Of course not,’ soothed Number Two. ‘Some say you’re a great warrior still.’
‘Sometimes, you remind me of an artist,’ added Number Eight.
‘Balderdash! But I can understand why she was fed up with crow in fried-bean sauce…’
‘I’ll go and cut a bit off the leopard skin hanging down by the wall to patch the middle,’ Number Eight decided. ‘It looks awful as it is.’
‘No hurry,’ Yi said thoughtfully. ‘I’m starving – fry that chicken with some chillies, and steam me five pounds of wheat cakes. I’ll sleep better on a full stomach. Then I’ll get another elixir from that Daoist priest tomorrow and go after her. Number Seven: go and tell Wang Sheng to measure eight pints of white beans for my horse!’
December 1926
TAMING THE FLOODS
I
The great floods had divided the lands, encircling mountains and engulfing hills. Not all Emperor Shun’s subjects crowded on to summits that held clear of the water: some tied themselves to treetops, while others sat on rafts, occasionally embellished with tiny wooden shacks. A veritable idyll of adversity, when viewed from dry land.
News travelled on rafts, apprising the empire that Lord Gun, after a fruitless nine-year battle with the floodwaters, had lost the goodwill of the emperor and been banished to Feather Mountain. His son, Yu,1 had succeeded to the poisoned chalice.
The calamity had endured so long that all the universities had been shut down, and there was no dry ground even for nursery schools, so most people were rather raw and uneducated. Except on Mount Culture: for there, a mighty congregation of scholars had gathered, their food delivered by flying chariot from the Land of Clever Tricks.2 Thus liberated from anxieties about subsistence, they were able to continue freely with their academic research. Most of them were against Yu, or even refused to believe in his very existence.
Once a month, the flying chariot would announce its approach with a rush of air overhead, whirring louder and louder until it glided into view, its large flag – a gleaming yellow circle at the centre – flapping in the wind. When the vehicle hovered five feet from the ground, a number of baskets, of unspecified contents, would be dropped down. A few vertical exchanges might take place – for example:
‘Goo-mou-lin!’ (For the learned residents of Mount Culture preferred to communicate in heavily accented English.)
‘Hao du yoe toooo?’
‘Goo-loo-jee-lee…’
‘Oh-kei!’
The chariot then sped off back to the Land of Clever Tricks, leaving only the hush of applied eating and the sound of the waves crashing against the rocky sides of the mountain. Their energies replenished a hundredfold on waking from their midday naps, the scholars would drown out the sound of the breakers with their seminars and research papers.
‘No son of Gun will succeed in controlling the floods,’ one learned individual with a walking stick declared. ‘I have not only collected, but also actually examined, a vast number of genealogies of kings, dukes, ministers and rich men. Only one conclusion thrusts itself out at me: the descendants of the rich are always rich, the descendants of the wicked are always wicked. This demonstrates the scientific principle of heredity, from which we may extrapolate: if Gun was unsuccessful, his son will be equally so, because the stupid never give birth to the clever!’
‘Oh-kei!’ someone without a walking stick agreed.
‘But what about the revered father of our emperor?’ another scholar – again without walking stick – objected.
‘Granted, he was never the sharpest tool in the box. But he made some progress over the years – he wasn’t a complete fool.’
‘Oh-kei!’
‘W-what nonsense,’ another scholar stammered, the tip of his nose flushing bright red. ‘It’s all a great hoax! There is no Yu – he doesn’t exist! He’s just a worm. Look at how he writes his name: , a worm in a box with a lid. What can a worm in a box with a lid do against the floods? And Gun doesn’t exist, either!’ He gave a little skip for added emphasis
.
‘But Gun does exist. I saw him with my own eyes seven years ago, smelling the plum blossom at the foot of Kunlun Mountain.’
‘A classic case of mistaken identity! And Yu is most indisputably a worm. I have a huge pile of evidence to disprove his existence. Gather round and see for yourself.’
Springing valiantly to his feet, he pulled out his fruit knife, stripped the bark off five giant pine trees, made a paste of leftover breadcrumbs, water and charcoal dust, and over the next twenty-seven days wrote out in minuscule print a devastating critique definitively proving Yu’s non-existence. To read it cost ten young elm leaves or – in raft-dwellers’ currency – a shellful of fresh waterweed.
Since the floods had put an end to hunting and farming, the survivors had an excess of time on their hands, and so the critique drew flocks of visitors. For three days, tourists crowded under the pines, sighing in either admiration or exhaustion.
‘Yu does exist,’ one rustic finally objected on the noon of the fourth day, while the scholar was attacking his fried noodles.
‘He’s a worm!’ The author of the unforgettable treatise sprang, roaring, to his feet, choking on a mouthful of semi-masticated noodles, his nose purple with outrage.
‘Don’t waste your breath arguing with him, Mr Birdbrain,’ the scholar with a walking stick intervened, setting down his bread. ‘All peasants are idiots. Produce your genealogy,’ he ordered the rude nonconformist, ‘and I’ll show you your ancestors were all idiots.’
‘I’ve never had one.’
‘How I loathe you grubby plebeians, muddying the crystalline waters of scholarship!’
‘W-we don’t need to see his genealogy to prove I’m right,’ Mr Birdbrain went on, even more angrily. ‘I’ve plenty of letters of congratulation from other scholars commending me for my erudition – I have them with me here.’