by Lu Xun
The king strode down the golden steps and, undaunted by the fierce heat, craned his head over the top of the cauldron. All he saw was the surface of the water, calm as a mirror, and the head lying, face up, in its centre, both eyes fixed on his face. When the king’s gaze met its own, it suddenly flashed a merry smile. The smile made the king feel they had met before – though he couldn’t think where. In this instant of bewildered recognition, the dark man lifted the blue sword from behind his back and, with one clean stroke, brought it down on the king’s nape. The royal head fell, with a thump, into the cauldron.
When enemies meet, their responses are unusually keen – and especially at such close quarters. The moment the king’s head hit the water, Mei Jianchi’s head immediately rose up and bit it ferociously on the ear. The cauldron of water frothed noisily, as the two heads locked in a deadly struggle. After some twenty rounds, the king’s head had taken five wounds, to Mei Jianchi’s seven. For the king was sly, always finding ways to wind his way behind his enemy’s head. One careless miscalculation by Mei Jianchi, and the king had him by the nape – preventing him from spinning back round. The king sank his teeth into his opponent, gnawing his way in. The boy’s cries shrilled around the throne room.
Everyone, from the queen down to the court jester, was frozen with terror, until the boy’s yelps brought them back to life – as if communicating to them an infinitely dark sorrow. But even as their skin prickled with horror, they tingled also with a secret delight, and opened their eyes wider, as if waiting for something else yet.
Alarmed but not discomposed by the direction the fight was taking, the dark man casually stretched out the arm – resembling a withered branch – holding the sword and extended his neck over the cauldron, as if gazing into its base. With a neat slice of the blue blade, his own head tumbled into the cauldron, generating snow-white blossoms of spray.
The moment it hit the water, his head made for the king and took an enormous bite at his nose, almost taking the whole thing off. Shouting with pain, the king opened his mouth, and Mei Jianchi’s head seized the opportunity to escape, spun round and clamped down on the king’s jaw. On they hung, yanking the head to and fro between them, giving the king’s mouth no opportunity to hold a bite. Then they fell frenziedly upon him, like starving hens pecking at rice, mauling him until his entire face was a scaly, ruptured mess. In time, he stopped thrashing about the cauldron and merely floated, moaning, until even that lay beyond him. Finally, he breathed his last.
Slowly closing their own mouths, the dark man and Mei Jianchi let the king’s head alone and swam a circuit around the cauldron to check whether he truly was dead, or just playing dead. When they were satisfied that the king’s head was indeed finished, they locked glances, smiled, then closed their eyes, faced upwards and sank to the bottom of the cauldron.
IV
The smoke dispersed and the fire burnt out; the water stopped bubbling. The extraordinary quiet brought the courtiers back to their senses. A first, solitary cry of horror was echoed by the rest of the room. The moment one of them moved towards the golden cauldron, everyone else frantically followed. Those jostled to the back caught only glimpses through the gaps between other people’s necks.
The steam was still scorching. The surface of the water lay flat as a mirror, topped by a layer of grease in which a vast collective of faces was reflected – the queen, concubines, guards, aged ministers, dwarfs, eunuchs, and so on.
‘Oh, heavens! Our king’s head is still in there!’ the king’s sixth concubine suddenly sobbed hysterically.
Everyone – from the queen down to the court jester – scattered, rushing uselessly about in panicked circles. Only the sharpest of the aged ministers stepped forward. He rested his hands on the edge of the cauldron, then winced in pain, whipping them back to his mouth, where he blew energetically on them.
After calm had returned, everyone reconvened outside the palace to discuss the best way of extracting the head. In about the time it would take to cook three pots of millet, a decision was reached: all the sieves from the royal kitchens would be sent for, and the guards ordered to fish it out.
The required implements – sieves, colanders, golden dishes and dishcloths – were quickly assembled and laid out by the cauldron. Rolling up their sleeves, the guards set respectfully about their task – some with sieves, some with colanders. Metal clinked on metal, churning the water. After this had gone on some while, the face of one of the guards was overcome by an expression of tremendous solemnity. He carefully lifted his sieve to reveal – pearl drops of water scattering from it – the white skull held within. The assembled company chorused gasps of astonishment, as the skull was dropped into a golden dish.
‘Our great king!’ the queen, concubines, ministers, eunuchs, and so on, wailed. Soon, however, the sobbing died away, when another guard fished out a second, identical skull.
Eyes blurry with tears, they watched as the guards continued fishing, their faces running with sweat. They went on to produce a tangled mass of white and black hair, together with another few ladlefuls of much shorter bristles – of black and white beard hairs, it would seem. Followed by a third skull. Then three hairpins.
When only a clear broth was left in the cauldron, they set down their sieves and colanders, and the three categories of objects – skulls, hairs, hairpins – were sorted between three golden dishes.
‘Our great king only had one head. So which is his?’ the ninth concubine asked anxiously.
‘That would seem to be the difficulty…’the venerable ministers muttered, exchanging glances.
‘If only the skin and flesh hadn’t been boiled away,’ observed a dwarf, kneeling down, ‘we’d easily work out whose was whose.’
There was, it seemed, no alternative but to subject the skulls to careful examination. And yet they were all largely identical in colour and size – they couldn’t even differentiate the boy’s. The queen said that the king had had a scar on his right temple from a fall he had taken as a prince; perhaps it would have left a trace on his skull. Just as everyone was rejoicing after one of the dwarves had found such a mark on one of the skulls, another dwarf noted a similar one on a slightly more yellowed skull.
‘I know!’ said the third concubine triumphantly. ‘Our great king had a very high-bridged nose.’
The eunuchs immediately set to researching the respective height of the noses before them; though one of them did indeed seem rather high, the difference with the other two was far from significant. And sadly, there was no mark to the right temple.
‘Besides,’ the aged ministers said to the eunuchs, ‘was the back of our great king’s head so pointed?’
‘We were too humble ever to take a proper look.’
The queen and the concubines now set to remembering; but while some said it had been steeply domed, others claimed the opposite. The king’s hairdressing eunuch would not commit himself.
A great council of princes and ministers was gathered that very night, in an effort to decide which was the king’s head, but the outcome remained as indeterminate as ever. Even the hair posed problems of identification. The white hair, of course, belonged to the king; but as his hair had been only greying, it was very hard to attribute the black. After discussions that went deep into the night, the elimination of even a few strands of red beard was vehemently resisted by the ninth concubine. She swore she had seen the occasional brown hair in the king’s beard – so how could it be proven there was no red, either? The red was reunited with the other colours, and the case reopened.
As the night edged towards dawn, there was still an absence of agreement. The debates were now interspersed by yawns, and when the second cockcrow was heard, the most discreet and appropriate course of action was finally decided upon: to bury the three heads together with the king’s body in a single golden coffin.
By the day of the funeral, seven days later, the entire city was alive with anticipation. The subjects of the realm rushed from near and fa
r to witness the king’s grand exit. From first light, every street was packed with men, with women, with tables of offerings squeezed in between them. Later on that morning, cavalry trotted slowly through to clear the way, followed, after another while, by the royal insignia (banners, truncheons, spears, bows, halberds, and so on), then by four carriages of drums and wind instruments. Behind, the king’s yellow-canopied carriage bumped along, the golden coffin – containing its three heads and one body – mounted on top.
The tables of offerings now emerged from among the kneeling ranks of the crowds. A few of the empire’s more zealously loyal subjects wept with rage that the souls of two regicides would enjoy the same memorial sacrifices as their king; but it was not to be helped.
Then came the carriages of the queen and the host of concubines, weeping as they gazed at the assembled crowds, and the assembled crowds gazed back at them. After them came the ministers, eunuchs, dwarfs, and so on, their faces draped with expressions of woe, as they jostled their way chaotically forward, ignored by their audience.
October 1926
LEAVING THE PASS
Laozi1 sat, still as a block of wood.
‘It’s Confucius again, master!’ his student Gengsang Chu whispered, bursting impatiently into the room.
‘Ask him in.’
‘Do I find you well, master?’ Confucius said, saluting him reverently.
‘Same as ever,’ Laozi replied. ‘And you? Read all the books in our little collection yet?’
‘Yes. But…’ Confucius’s face soured with an unusual irritation. ‘It’s taken time, but I’ve mastered all six of the classics – The Books of Poetry, History, Rites, Music and Changes, and the Annals of Spring and Autumn. I’ve visited seventy-two princes – but not one would take my advice. To be understood is hard indeed. Or is it the Way that is hard to explain?’
‘You were lucky,’ Laozi replied, ‘not to encounter a ruler of real talent. The six classics are the remains of the former kings. What use are they for the future? Your words are like a path; and a path is tramped out by sandals – but are they the same thing?’ He paused. ‘White herons conceive through eye contact; insects conceive through their calls; hermaphrodites conceive spontaneously, both sexes contained within one body. Nature is unchangeable; fate is unalterable; time is unstoppable; the Way is unblockable. Once the Way is within your grasp, all will go your way. Without it, you are lost.’
As if dazed by a direct blow to the head, Confucius sat down, dejectedly inert – like a block of wood.
After perhaps eight minutes, he heaved a long sigh, then got up to say goodbye, politely thanking Laozi – as always – for his instruction.
Making no effort to keep him, Laozi rose to his feet and, leaning on his stick, escorted him out to the library’s main gate.
‘Leaving so soon?’ he muttered mechanically, waiting until Confucius was about to get back into his carriage. ‘Won’t you stay for tea…?’
Mumbling a refusal, Confucius got into his carriage and cupped his hands deferentially in farewell, leaning against the horizontal bar across the vehicle. With a flick of the whip and a cry of ‘gee-up’ from his disciple Ran You, the carriage rumbled into motion. When it was some dozen paces from the main gate, Laozi went back inside.
‘You seem in good spirits today, master.’ Gengsang Chu returned to stand by Laozi’s side again, his hands hanging respectfully at his sides, once he had seen his teacher sit down. ‘Unusually talkative.’
Laozi sighed. ‘You are right,’ he replied mournfully. ‘I did indeed say too much.’ He suddenly seemed to remember something. ‘Confucius brought a gift of a wild goose, did he not? Was it dried and cured? Steam it for yourself. I don’t have the teeth for it.’
After Gengsang Chu left him, Laozi peacefully closed his eyes. Quiet reigned in the library, disturbed only by the clatter of bamboo poles against the eaves of the house – Gengsang Chu taking the goose down.
Three months passed. Laozi went on sitting, still as a block of wood.
‘It’s Confucius, master!’ his student Gengsang Chu entered and informed him in a surprised whisper. ‘We’ve not seen him for a while, have we? I wonder what he’s come about.’
‘Ask him in.’ The same sparing reply as always from Laozi.
‘Do I find you well, master?’ Confucius said, saluting him reverently.
‘As ever,’ Laozi answered. ‘It’s been a while. You have been burying yourself in books, no doubt?’
‘Dabbling, merely dabbling,’ Confucius said modestly. ‘But I have stayed at home, thinking. And I seem to have clarified one point: crows and magpies touch beaks; fish exchange saliva; the sphex metamorphoses; an older child will cry when his mother is pregnant again. If I do not embrace change myself, how will I succeed in changing others?’
‘Exactly so!’ Laozi said. ‘You are enlightened.’
Both fell silent as two blocks of wood.
After perhaps eight minutes, Confucius heaved a long sigh, then got up to say goodbye, politely thanking Laozi – as always – for his instruction.
Making no effort to keep him, Laozi rose to his feet and, leaning on his stick, escorted him out to the library’s main gate.
‘Leaving so soon?’ he muttered mechanically, waiting until Confucius was about to get back into his carriage. ‘Won’t you stay for tea…?’
Mumbling a refusal, Confucius got into his carriage and cupped his hands deferentially in farewell, leaning against the horizontal bar across the vehicle. With a flick of the whip and a cry of ‘gee-up’ from his disciple Ran You, the carriage rumbled into motion. When it was some dozen paces from the main gate, Laozi went back inside.
‘You seem in low spirits today, master.’ Gengsang Chu returned to stand by Laozi’s side, his hands hanging respectfully by his sides, once he had seen his teacher sit down. ‘Unusually withdrawn.’
Laozi sighed. ‘You are right,’ he replied mournfully. ‘You don’t understand: I must leave this place.’
‘Whatever for?’ Gengsang Chu sounded astonished.
‘Confucius understands me. And as he knows that only I can see through him, he will never relax. If I don’t go first, there will be trouble.’
‘But do you not share the same Way? Why should you go?’
‘No,’ Laozi waved his hands in disagreement. ‘We are different. Imagine we have the same pair of shoes: I walk mine into the desert of the north-west; he wears his to court.’
‘But you are his teacher!’
‘What touching naivety,’ Laozi smiled, ‘after all these years with me. Nature is unchangeable; fate is unalterable. You and Confucius are very different: he will never come back and never call me teacher again. From now on, he will call me an old fool, and conspire against me.’
‘Really? But then you are never wrong about people, master.’
‘That is not true. I often used to misjudge them.’
‘Then,’ Gengsang Chu gave the matter more thought, ‘we’ll stand and fight.’
Laozi smiled again, revealing his gums. ‘Do I have any teeth left?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Do I still have a tongue?’
‘Yes.’
‘My point being?’
‘The hard falls away, while the soft survives, master?’
‘Well said. Tidy up here, then go home to your wife. But before you go, give my black ox a brush-down, and air the saddle and blanket. I leave at dawn tomorrow.’
Laozi avoided the main, direct road to the Hangu Pass – the gateway to the north-west. Instead, he turned his ox down a fork in the road, riding him slowly around the edge of the city. His plan was to scale the wall: it was not too high and he was sure he would manage to scramble over if he stood on the animal’s back. The only difficulty lay in getting the ox out also. A crane would have levered it out, but neither of the great engineers of ancient China, Lu Ban or Mozi, had yet been born; and such contraptions lay far beyond his own imaginative capabilities. His own philosophy, in
sum, was unable to furnish him a solution.
Unbeknownst to him, as he had taken the fork he had been spotted by a scout, who immediately reported his presence to the warden in charge of the pass. Before he was twenty yards into his detour, a horse-mounted party galloped up from behind, led by the scout, with the warden, Xi, four policemen and two customs officers following.
‘Halt!’ came the cry.
Smartly reining in his black ox, Laozi held still as a block of wood.
‘Well, well!’ the warden exclaimed, galloping closer, then rolling off his horse to cup his hands in salutation. ‘If it isn’t Laozi, the librarian! This is a pleasant surprise.’
Laozi, too, scrambled off his ox. ‘I have the most terrible memory…’ he mumbled, squinting at his interlocutor.
‘Of course – of course you will have forgotten me, master. My name is Xi, I’m the warden of the pass. I came to see you once, when I visited the library to consult The Quintessence of Taxation.’
During this speech, the customs officials had turned over the ox’s saddle and blanket. One made a hole with a sharp stick, and wiggled an exploratory finger inside. He then walked off, scowling, without a word.
‘Are you taking a turn about the walls?’ Xi asked.
‘No. I was thinking of heading out, for a little fresh air.’
‘Excellent! Excellent! Healthy lifestyles are all the rage at the moment – nothing more important. But this is such a rare pleasure – you must rest at our lodge for a few days, and share with us a few pearls of your wisdom.’
Before Laozi was able to reply, the four policemen gathered round and lifted him back on to the ox. With a jab from the customs official’s stick, the ox flicked up its tail and galloped off towards the pass.
Once they had arrived, his hosts immediately opened the main hall to receive him – the central room in the gate-tower, overlooking loess plains that levelled infinitely off to the horizon, beneath a vast, blue sky; the air was indeed excellently clear and sharp. The huge fortress surmounted a steep slope; just beyond the gate, a cart track wound between the pass’s impregnable dirt precipices – so narrow it seemed a mere ball of mud would block it.