by Lu Xun
But he could not sleep. He tossed and turned, itching to sit up. He heard his mother heaving long, soft sighs of disappointment. The first cockcrow told him a new day had arrived: that he was fifteen years old.
II
Before the sun was risen in the east, a puffy-eyed Mei Jianchi walked out of the gate without a backwards look. His blue coat over his shoulders, the blue sword on his back, he advanced in great strides towards the city. Every leaf in the fir-tree wood hung with dew drops, still enclosing the night air within. As he emerged from the forest, however, the droplets were sparkling with new dawn light. In the distance, he could just make out the crenellated outlines of the grey city wall.
He slipped into the city in between onion-carriers and vegetable-sellers. The streets were already buzzing with activity: men blankly standing about in idle groups, while from time to time pale, mostly puffy-eyed women – hair uncombed, faces unmade-up – poked their heads outside.
Mei Jianchi grasped that something important was about to happen – some major event that everyone was anticipating eagerly, but patiently.
On he went. A child suddenly ran at him, almost colliding with the tip of the sword on his back. The sweat poured off him in fear. As he turned north, approaching the royal palace, the crowds thickened into dense files, their necks craned forward, wails of women and children bubbling up in their midst. Afraid of injuring someone with his transparent sword, he dared not push his way into the throng. Feeling the surge of yet more humanity behind him, he was forced to retreat to the back, where his view was blocked by other bodies and necks.
Suddenly, everyone fell to their knees like dominoes as, far off in the distance, a pair of horses approached. Then came soldiers holding truncheons, spears, swords, bows and flags, kicking up clouds of yellow dust as they went. A great four-horse carriage followed, carrying a team of musicians, striking bells and drums, or blowing on instruments he could not name. Then another carriage, its passengers – either old, or short and stout – decked out in bright clothes, every face slick with sweat. They were succeeded by another team of cavalry, wielding swords, spears and halberds. The kneeling crowds prostrated themselves. Now Mei Jianchi saw a large, yellow-canopied carriage drive by, a corpulent individual sitting in its middle, brightly clothed, his small head fringed with a greying beard. At his waist could be glimpsed a blue sword – an exact match with the one on Mei Jianchi’s back.
A feeling of intense cold was again succeeded by burning heat, as if he were on fire. Reaching over his shoulder for the hilt of his sword, he began to move forward into the gaps between the necks of the kneeling crowd.
But no more than five or six steps into his approach, he fell headlong – someone had grabbed hold of one of his feet. His fall was directly broken by a young man with a wizened face. Afraid, again, that the sword point may have wounded someone, he scrambled quickly up again – and took two hard punches below his ribs. Undeterred, he looked back at the road. But the yellow-canopied carriage and its cavalry escort were both long past.
Everyone at the roadside clambered to their feet. The wizened young man still had Mei Jianchi firmly by the lapels. The latter had apparently crushed the former’s solar plexus – the very centre of his life-force – and the victim now wanted a guarantee that his attacker would pay with his life if he died before the age of eighty. Idlers immediately gathered around to goggle at the fracas, but no one spoke out. Eventually, a few audience members began to laugh or heckle – all taking the part of the wizened young man. Mei Jianchi felt neither amusement nor anger – only vexation at the tediousness of it, at the difficulty of extricating himself. Time passed – as long as it would have taken to boil a pot of millet. Mei Jianchi’s body burned with impatience, while his audience showed no interest in abandoning the spectacle.
The circle of people around him rippled apart to allow a thin, swarthy individual with black beard and eyes to push his way in. Silently, he offered Mei Jianchi a cool smile, then flicked the wizened young man in the chin and looked him hard in the eye. The young man met his gaze, slowly relaxed his grip and slipped away, followed shortly after by Mei’s saviour. The spectators also duly dispersed. A few of them asked Mei Jianchi how old he was, where he lived – whether he had any sisters. He ignored them.
He now headed south. The city was so crowded, he thought to himself, that it would be easy to hurt someone by mistake; his best course was to bide his time, until the king returned, in the expansive, underpopulated area outside the southern gate – a perfect retreat in which to wait for revenge. Every conversation in the city seemed to be about the king’s trip to the mountains: about his insignia, his magnificence, the unfathomable honour of having set eyes on him, the abjection of their prostrations, how richly they deserved the accolade of model subject; and so on they went, like a veritable hive of bees out on their daily swarm. At last, near the south gate, everything grew quieter.
He left the city and sat down under a large mulberry tree, taking from his bundle two steamed rolls to satisfy his complaining stomach. As he ate, he suddenly thought of his mother and his eyes prickled, but the moment passed. His surroundings grew more peaceful with every step he took from the metropolis, until he could hear even the sound of his own breathing.
The darker it got, the more uneasy he became. He squinted into the distance, but there was no sign of the king’s return. One by one, villagers who had come to the city to sell vegetables returned home, empty carrying-poles across their shoulders.
Long after this trickle of humanity had disappeared into the night, the same dark man from before suddenly flashed out of the city.
‘Flee, Mei Jianchi! The king is after you!’ he hooted, like an owl.
Seized by trembling, Mei Jianchi strode off with him as if bewitched; soon, they began to run like the wind. When he stopped to catch his breath, he realized that he had reached the edge of the fir-tree wood. Far behind him lay the silver rays of the rising moon. In front, the stranger’s eyes gleamed phosphorescently in the darkness.
‘How do you know me?’ Mei Jianchi asked fearfully.
‘Ha! I’ve known you since the day you were born,’ the man’s voice said. ‘I know that you carry on your back the male sword and that you seek to avenge your father. I also know you will not succeed. You have already been informed on: your enemy has returned to the palace by the east gate and ordered your capture.’
Mei Jianchi’s heart ached.
‘So Mother was right after all,’ he murmured.
‘She knows only the half of it. She doesn’t know that I will take vengeance for you.’
‘You? You will right our wrong, O champion of justice?’
‘Don’t insult me with such language.’
‘Then, why do you take pity on a widow and a fatherless child?’
‘My child,’ he rebuked. ‘Justice, pity – once, these words were pure. Now, they are the debased capital of fiendish usurers. I know nothing of these things. All I seek is revenge on your behalf.’
‘Very well. But how is that to be had?’
‘I need only two things from you,’ said the voice below the phosphorescent pools. ‘Your sword and – your head!’
This singular demand seemed to invite suspicion of its maker, and yet Mei Jianchi discovered he was not surprised by it. For a while, he could find nothing to say.
‘Do not fear that I wish to trick you out of your life and inheritance,’ the voice continued grimly out of the darkness. ‘The decision is entirely yours. Trust me, and I will go forward on your behalf. Otherwise, I will leave well alone.’
‘But why do you want to avenge us? Did you know my father?’
‘I knew your father, just as I have always known you. But that is not my reason for coming to you tonight. Listen, ingenious child. I excel only in the taking of revenge. Your vengeance is mine; and so is his. I have no care for myself – my soul is thick with scars, inflicted by others and by my own hand; I hate myself for it.’
As the voi
ce in the darkness fell silent, Mei Jianchi drew the blue blade out from behind him, then brought it down on his own neck. As his head tumbled on to the green moss over the ground, he handed the sword to the dark man.
Taking the sword in one hand, grasping Mei Jianchi’s hair with the other, he lifted the head up and planted two kisses on its hot, dead lips, then burst into cold, shrill laughter.
His mirth immediately scattered through the fir-tree wood. A whole wolf pack of phosphorescent eyes now flashed and surged near, accompanied by hungry panting. The first mouthfuls ripped apart Mei Jianchi’s coat; the second devoured his flesh and every last drop of blood, until only a faint crunching of bones was left.
Now, the great wolf at the front of the pack rushed at the dark man. With one flourish of the blue sword, the wolf’s head lay on the moss at his feet, before the rest of the pack. The first mouthfuls ripped apart the skin; the second devoured its flesh and every last drop of blood, until only a faint crunching of bones was left.
The man wrapped Mei Jianchi’s head in the remains of the blue coat, placed it – along with the sword – on his back, turned around and strode off through the night to the capital.
The wolves paused, shoulders hunched, tongues lolling, following his swinging gait with their burning green eyes.
And as he walked, he sang, his voice shrilling through the wood:
‘Ha! Sing hey for love, for love sing hey!
Love the sword, with death you pay.
In this world, we walk alone,
No longer he who watched the throne.
An eye for an eye, both choose death.
A man has taken his last breath.
Sing hey for love, for love sing hey!
Love the sword, with death you pay.’
III
His pleasure-trip about the mountains had brought the king no pleasure. Even worse, the depressing intelligence of an assassin had reached his ears in the middle of it, bringing him back to the capital. He was in a vile mood all that night – complaining even that his ninth concubine’s hair was not as beautiful as it had been the day before. It took over seventy captivating wriggles from the lady in question – perched all the while on his knee – to soothe the frown of displeasure from the royal brow.
But when the king got up the following afternoon, his low spirits were still with him. After breaking his fast, he was furious again.
‘I am so bored!’ he roared, yawning.
No one knew what to do with him, from the queen down to the court jester. He was long weary of his elderly ministers’ sermons, of his stout, japing dwarfs; recently, he had bored even of his extraordinary acrobats – tightrope-walkers, pole-climbers, jugglers, handstanders, sword-swallowers, fire-eaters, and so on. His frequent rages usually climaxed in him reaching for his blue sword and dispatching a few unfortunates for the most minor of transgressions.
Two young eunuchs had just returned to the throne room from an idle wander beyond the palace. Sensing imminent peril from the grim set to the courtiers’ faces, the one whitened with fear, while the other trotted merrily up to the king as if seized by the most wonderful inspiration.
‘Your slave,’ he prostrated himself, ‘begs to report he has just met a stranger, with the strangest of arts, who may be able to divert Your Majesty.’
‘What?’ the king said. (He had always been given to monosyllabic answers.)
‘A thin, dark man – the image of a beggar. Dressed all in blue, carrying on his back a round blue bundle, singing a song of tall tales. When asked, he says he can perform tricks of a like the world has never seen – tricks that can lighten the blackest of moods, and bring peace to the realm. Though everyone begged him to perform, he refused. He said he needs a golden dragon and a golden cauldron.’
‘A golden dragon? He must mean me, the king. A golden cauldron, that I have, too.’
‘My humble thoughts precisely.’
‘Bring him in!’
Before the words were out, four soldiers rushed out on the eunuch’s heels. Smiles rippled through the room – from the queen down to the court jester. A show of magic, they hoped, would dispel the king’s gloom, restoring peace to the realm. And were the trick not to come off, only the beggar would suffer the consequences. All they had to do was survive until he was brought in.
Soon enough, six people approached the golden throne: the eunuch at their head, the four soldiers at the rear, the dark man sandwiched between. Everyone saw, at close quarters, that he was indeed dressed in blue; that his beard, eyebrows and hair were black; that he was so thin his cheekbones, eye sockets and brow bone jutted out. When he knelt, then prostrated himself, they all noted a small, round bundle on his back, wrapped in blue cloth and embellished in dark red.
‘Speak!’ the king said irritably. Now he had seen the beggar’s simple appearance, he doubted he would have any great tricks to astonish the world with.
‘My dishonourable name is Yan Zhi’ao, of the village of Wenwen. As a child, I was taught no profession. Later in life, I encountered a master conjuror who taught me to perform magic with a child’s head. But the performance requires more than its conjuror: it needs a golden cauldron filled with water, heated with charcoal and set before a king. Within, I will place the child’s head, and once the water begins to bubble, the head will rise to the surface and entertain you with the most extraordinary songs and dances. Its tricks can lighten the blackest of moods, and bring peace to the realm.’
‘Begin!’ the king ordered.
A golden cauldron, of a size normally used for boiling oxen, was promptly set up in front of the throne and filled with water. Charcoal was piled up below and the fire was lit. Standing to one side, the dark man waited until the charcoal had turned red then took down his bundle and opened it. With both hands, he held aloft a child’s head: delicate eyebrows arched over elongated eyes, scarlet lips smilingly pulled back to reveal bright white teeth, hair wild, like a cloud of blue smoke. After walking around in a circle, holding the head up all the while, the dark man stretched his arms out over the mouth of the cauldron, his lips moving to say something no one caught. His hands opened out and released the head into the water. Five feet of boiling spray surged up; then all fell quiet.
For some time, nothing happened. First to lose patience was the king, followed by the queen, the concubines, the ministers and the eunuchs. Noticing the dwarfs smirking, the king decided he had been taken for a fool and looked to his guards.
But at the very instant the king thought to order them to hurl the villainous trickster into the cauldron and boil him to death, the water began to bubble and the flames to flare up, painting the dark man in the faint, glowing red of smelted iron. As the king turned back to the performance, the stranger lifted both hands up to the ceiling and – staring blankly into space – began dancing and shrilling a curious song.
‘Sing hey for love, for love sing hey!
In love, in blood, we all must pay.
One man laughs against the flood,
The king lets loose a sea of blood.
I but a droplet or a stream.
Yet I love this head: of blood I dream.
Sing hey for blood, and let it flow!
Alas, alack, and woe, and woe!’
The water began to surge with the rhythm of the song, into waves pointed at their crest, broad at their base, swirling like miniature mountains up to the surface of the water, then back down to its depths. The head bobbed up and down, turning circles, somersaulting; the audience could just make out the happy smile on its face – as if it were enjoying the exercise. Another while later, it suddenly began swimming against the current, still spinning round as it crossed back and forth. The water began spraying out, bringing showers of hot rain down on the court. A dwarf suddenly yelped in pain, rubbing his scalded nose.
When the dark man finally stopped singing, the head, too, paused in the centre of the water – its expression growing more solemn – and faced the king on his throne. Perhaps a dozen ins
tants later, the head began to shudder, then to bob up and down a little faster, still maintaining its poise. After three bobbing circuits around the cauldron, its eyes suddenly flew open – the irises shining with an eerie brightness – and its mouth launched into song.
‘The king’s munificence is great,
Superb in war, supreme in fate.
The world has limits; not so His Grace.
What fortune brings us face to face?
The blue sword bright won’t be forgot
In the royal sight, how strange my lot.
Sad my lot, in the royal sight,
Return to me, my blue sword bright.’
Suddenly perching on the crest of a wave, the head turned a few more somersaults then bobbed up and down again, darting artful glances to left and to right, and still singing:
‘Alas, alack, and woe, and woe!
Alas, poor me, my love lies low.
My love is gone and bloody my head,
Easily, I took one head,
You, my love, left thousands dead…’
It now sank back and failed to re-emerge, the remaining words of the song drowning at the bottom of the cauldron. Imitating the weakness of the singing voice, the simmering water, too, gradually subsided, like an ebbing tide, until there was nothing to be seen – from a distance – below the mouth of the vessel.
‘What’s happening?’ snapped the king, after a pause.
‘Great king,’ offered the dark man, half-kneeling, ‘the head is now engaged in the most extraordinary part of the performance – the Dance of Union – at the bottom of the cauldron. If you wish to see it, you must come closer. I fear my own humble arts are too inadequate to draw it to the surface – the dance must be performed at the base of the cauldron.’