The Three Leaps of Wang Lun

by Alfred Doblin

  In the corners stood sulky faces, young and not so young, not speaking to each other, chewing knuckles, picking straws from the ground to stick between their lips. These grim groups were composed of outcasts who moped around among the vagabonds; they had taken up with them only from necessity, and had grown surly among them. They could be shown a public fountain and, thirsty, would not dare approach it, so often had they been driven off with blows; they would look on calmly with a habitual sourness as the others drank, these outcasts among the outcast. They were not sure if they were included, if they were allowed to be brothers among brothers. Only when the smiling embarrassed comedians began to mix among these fellows, where they felt safest, did their expressions relax. None listening in the barn to those old affectionate creatures, Wang’s emissaries, had hearts as defenceless and forlorn as theirs. Scratch them on the heart with a nail and blood would spurt. They were dreadfully timorous. They melted under Wang’s words; some of the older ones embraced each other and filled the echoing barn with their sobbing. Timid as maidens they suffered the others to approach them, and even later faced their new brothers with memory-burdened awe. Some of them, beside themselves with what they were now part of, pushed through the crowd, knelt before the envoys, bowed down to the earth, spoke incomprehensibly. They had succumbed to the ecstasy of being admitted as brothers, weak distressed brothers of wicked vagabonds.

  The waiting, the misled, the homeless and crippled ate words and faces like sweet cakes. They felt themselves in good hands; they felt that justice was theirs, that their cause was being pleaded with dignity before all the world. These were the ones who had long been most intimate with Wang and who expected most from him; he was, they believed, more their brother than the others’. They dreamed openeyed and exulted inwardly.

  None of the four or five human predators who had lodged with them up in the mountains was still in the village. They had slipped off one by one as soon as it grew warmer, loped along snowy paths, dug their caves and huts free and waited, waited.

  When late that night the five envoys entered Wang Lun’s house and in the warm parlour, the same one in which he had played the trick with the leather bag, began to tell him about the assembly and its outcome, Wang leaned trembling against the table, heard them one by one and asked no questions.

  Then he told them what his plan was, and what they must do in the following weeks. He would go alone to Shantung; it would be weeks, perhaps a month, before he saw them again. Hammered into them that they were to scatter, come together only on one day or another, not stay long in any place but always keep in touch with each other. They were at liberty to accept into their community others of their kind who felt drawn to them, but should lay no store on gaining new brothers. Were to pluck no fruit from the trees, but wait until it fell off itself. They must look out only for themselves: this he couldn’t stress enough. And then for the rest of the night, before they went to bed, they talked more of the mysterious and the divine.

  This time it was not a discussion. After the excitement of the past few days they sat in the low half dark room around the bare wooden table, leaning on their arms, heads drooping wearily to the table, stared before them, breathed. They were silent, then one would speak to himself, unharness his dark thoughts, fall silent. They had heard much on their travels. It kept them awake, reconnoitring this new territory.

  One of them told of the great masters Tung-bin and T’ai-pai, who climbed aboard cloud chariots, traversed rainbows and then lost themselves in the skirts of the mist. They reached the summit of the world, leaving no footprints behind in the mud and snow, they cast no shadows. They bestrode peaks and crags until they came to the K’unlun mountains, at the portals of Heaven. They pushed through a fence, saw Heaven a canopy above, Earth a sedan chair below.

  Wang himself began to speak mysteriously of the Summit of the World, of the Three Precious Ones. He broke off suddenly, turned his head as if confused, seeking, to the side, to Ma No. Ma No in a cloister-chant: “Sakya is the all-protecting; succeeded by the Maitreya whom the pious await, the pale, calmly majestic king of the precious moon.” He droned raptly on about transformations.

  Everyone sat with his own thoughts.

  When it was bright morning Wang took his leave of Ma No. Without giving any reason, he rejected an offer to accompany him. In front of Ma in the little bare room Wang made the silent vow, singed the hairs on his crown, held his finger over a flame, threw the last of his money onto the floor.

  On the same day that the beggars abandoned the village and scattered to the north Wang set off on his journey to Shantung, to the brothers of the White Waterlily. He walked without stopping, often sixty or seventy li in a day. A terrible blizzard held him fast for two days in the mountains before he emerged into the hill country and the plains.

  During his weary journey Spring broke through. The town of Yangchou-fu saw the beggar and paid him no heed; not long afterwards it would see followers of this man suffer horrors within its walls, fall half into ruin. He crossed great rivers, the Imperial Canal, spent one night in Linch’ing, the town in which he was to die. As Spring came on, he neared the rich familiar fieldscape at the westerly foot of T’ai-shan. In the winter fields they were still stripping rushes, uprooting the long sterns for market. He thought of Chinan-fu, not far from here, and Su-ko. When the first rain fell, sowing began: rape, beans, wheat. The bellowing of mighty plough oxen, the near and distant singing of the sowers accompanied Wang. He continued on, south and east, bypassed clamorous Chinan.

  His food he earned from begging, coolie work; he helped in the fields. In the larger villages and towns he set up as a storyteller, carried in his hand the clapper, the dice that a great teacher called Ma No had lent him; he listened to the people, sowed his seed with great skill.

  He had left Chihli, was again in Shantung, the country that had given birth to great K’ungfu-tzu, restorer of the ancient order, iron central pillar of the edifice of state; the country that for centuries had brought forth secret leagues to topple emperors and fearlessly restore the equilibrium that this edifice required. The land had borne a monstrous corpse, ceaselessly now offered up the living in order that its flesh, its monstrous bones should fertilize the earth and not burden vast areas of precious soil. The secret societies were the picks, shovels and rakes of the province. They survived reigns, dynasties, wars and revolutions. Supple and insinuating they adapted to every altered circumstance, remained through every twist and turn quite unchangeable, exactly the same. The leagues were the land itself, stretched out with its blind eyes; the people haggled up above, celebrated their feasts, increased themselves, appeased their ancestors, generals came, soldier folk, Imperial princes, battles, conflagrations, victory, defeat; after a time, an untold number of months, little vibrations trembled in the land, volcano eyes cast flaming untender glances, plains subsided; a wide mouthed thundering; disturbed, the land flung itself onto the other side to sleep; everything was well again.

  Centuries had passed since the Ming rulers, born of the people, true Chinese, grew weak, turned over, twitched slowly. In the collapse of the Empire, undermined by impotence, criminality and eunuchy, the leagues made their move. They met with coldness the contempt of courtiers, who placed a boy on the throne. Then they openly declared war on him, wrested control of the land; throughout the provinces the waterlily of Shantung gleamed a fearful white. Through the centuries the leagues had not forgotten the happy times of the Ming emperors. Legends twined around their name. The Manchus were no oppressors; they let the people be, as long as they allowed themselves to be ruled. However great the emperors were that the Manchus gave to the Empire, performing and preserving imperishable deeds, to the unbending confederacies they remained always alien; they were forever in the wrong. However mildly and lovingly and oblivious of self these powerful aliens toiled for the people, they could raise no frank smile on the lips of the women whose arms held them in death and in life. The Manchus had to know that these hearts were closed to
them. There was no vindictiveness. They held the people down by the sword. Violence began to contend with violence. China, the widow, pining away in hopeless yearning, gathered friends against the earnest consort. Coolness was met with anger, disappointment was met with anger.

  Wang skirted the green hills at the western foot of T’ai-shan. When the first hills were behind him, he laid up for a few days with his old friends from the Chinan time. He sent a sly young potter that he found among them down to Chinan with greetings for the priest T’o, keeper of the temple of the Patron of Music, Han Hsiang-tzu. Then Wang could wait no longer for the messenger’s return. The potter did not find the priest in the temple; after Wang murdered the T’ouszu he had left his room and gone into hiding in the town, first in the green mansions, where a girl Wang had befriended took him in, then in a little village across the river, where he began to practise his skill as an engraver of pewterware. Here the astute potter found him. Shock and joy at the news caused T’o to drop his steel stylus. Behind a bolted door he interrogated the young fellow, who told him of Wang’s earnest, even awe-inspiring bearing and hinted at his mission in Shantung. Both of them, T’o and the potter, left the village early next morning. When they reached the mountains four days had elapsed since the potter set off and Wang was one day’s march farther on, leaving no word of where he was going. Not until much later, in the days of final desperation, did Wang see his teacher once more and realize once more his devotion to him.

  The birches and bright hazelwoods in the lovely hill country through which the man from the Nank’ou mountains wandered burst into leaf. Cranes sailed through the air. The wind amended its blustery behaviour; the crags were higher and barer. The coalmining region of Poshan came nearer. Now and then long endless trains of mules passed him, carrying candied dates, sweet red fruit down into the valleys.

  Then the roads grew broader; even the mountains drew apart. Dark wide fields stretched out with irregular holes, pits in which excavated coal lay exposed. The air even in sunlight grew thicker and darker. In many places columns of smoke rose into the air like posts marking off the district and fencing it in. The road was hard; round blocks of granite were strewn about. The ground undulated. On a bare stony plain stood the great town of Poshan.

  Wang had obtained from Chu the address of a wealthy pitowner. He did not find the man in his great solid house; he was travelling on business, they said, around the neighbourhood. Wang had to await his return. He went out and hired himself as a labourer in a pit. They stood in fives and tens in the deep shafts with blackened torsoes, heaved on mighty winches. Rhythmically, hand over hand they heaved on the slippery leather strap. Their singing fell away evenly from the top to the depths, and rose like the bucket full of water and coal. They lived in the plain, crowded together in huts of mud.

  Every evening Wang walked into the town. He had to make his way between heaps of coal like pointed hats. Then came empty fenced-off patches over which a suffocating acidic smell hung. Here crystallising in the sun in great vats was the ferrous sulphide that they extracted from a lye of pyrites. On the sixth day the pitowner was at home; he had already heard of the strange workman who asked for him day after day.

  Ch’en Yao-fen was large and broadshouldered, with a bony forehead; had an energetic nature, spoke in the short urgent sentences of the very busy; his questions were straight to the point. Wang had never come face to face with such a man before. He wavered at the start of their interview; his certainty left him for a moment; dark memories of his days as a trickster in Chinan flitted over him; he felt caught out. It was only when he pronounced Chu’s name, when the merchant made a step towards him in amazement and he began his dealings with Ch’en, that everything quietened under a cool watchful calm.

  Ch’en stood there an age, his left ringspangled hand at his mouth, not moving, shocked at Chu’s fate. Then he bolted the door, invited his guest, not understanding what it was he wanted, to sit at a little table in front of the house altar, offered him tea from his own cup. Wang, whose face and ears bore traces of coal dust, gave an account of his purpose, plain and simple: the straits they had endured in the Nank’ou mountains this winter past, how they had taken over the little village, how the beggars had formed themselves into a brotherhood and followed him, the actions of the prefect of Chatuo against them. They would perish, craved the protection of patriotic friends, for they like Chu were innocent.

  The merchant, whose bulging eyes never left the face of the man who sat there with dangling arms and swollen fists and made his request as if he were asking for a cup of rice, enquired only what form this protection should take. He received the answer: Pressure on the authorities; in an emergency, direct incorporation of the persecuted and support for them. Then with gentle words he requested Wang to leave, so as not to arouse suspicion; in the morning at the lye vats, where he was trying out a new process that he had learned of on his trip, they would be able to continue their conversation in peace. Wang bowed and clasped his hands together, after reminding him of the pressing urgency of his mission.

  The merchant gasped once he was alone. He understood nothing of all this, could not understand why Chu, the closest tongued of all of them, who without a word had abandoned all his worldly goods, should have bared everything to these vagabonds, betrayed them all. He tossed about all night. When he dressed next morning he placed a short broad knife in the tobacco pouch at his belt. If it came to it, he would get rid of this emissary in the lye vats. Ch’en was quite prepared to murder; this affair demanded immediate action. In order not to implicate anyone else he did not seek out his friends and guildsmen. He lit incense before the ancestral tablet in his living room, vowed a hundred taels towards the construction of a pagoda should the matter turn out well, summoned his bearers.

  His chair bore him as far as the fenced-off fields. Then two by two the bearers lugged great curiously shaped pots filled with a leaden substance along behind him, at his command set them down beside one of the flat lye pans the size of a room. A brown-black liquid covered its surface, exhaled a constricting, caustic vapour. With a gesture Ch’en dismissed the bearers.

  Wang came, at a sign from Ch’en squatted next to him by the basin. They wound the thin silk scarves that lay beside Ch’en around mouths and noses.

  How many might they be in the Nank’ou mountains?

  A hundred when he came away, now maybe four hundred, maybe a thousand.

  Why so vague, maybe four hundred, maybe a thousand? How could they increase their number so quickly?

  They were all of the same mind. They had all suffered greatly. They protected one another.

  Once more, who was he, where did he come from, what was his part in all this?

  His name was Wang Lun, he was the son of a fisherman, born at Hunkang-ts’un in the district of Hailing in Shantung. He was their leader; he had advised them not to do anything against oppression, but to live as outcasts without resisting the world’s course.

  What did he intend with it, this leading, this advice, what did he intend with it all? Why didn’t they just scatter to the eight corners of the Earth, live as he said, just as he said, which really seemed quite a suitable thing, instead of congregating, drawing the attention of the authorities to themselves, demanding protection from unknown brotherhoods and so on.

  Those who scattered would be ruined, said Wang. He considered it best for the brothers to hold together; otherwise in no time they would all be murderers, bandits, violators of women, burglars again. It wasn’t enough to be a footpad; you had to know which path to set your feet on.

  Now for the first time the merchant, sitting there with his mind made up, felt astonishment. He studied the man beside him, who returned calm answers and all the time stared into the brown-black acid brew.

  “You’ve left your lye here for four days, Ch’en. It’s not enough just to wash the pyrites that we haul out of the mine. You leave the lye day after day in the sunlight. One sulphur crystal after another grows as the water evapora
tes. Pour your lye into a brook: it won’t grow any crystals then, Ch’en.”

  Long confabulations on the days that followed, just the two of them. In the last of these Wang played his trump: that though he might be seeking the protection of the White Waterlily for his brotherhood, he didn’t come empty handed. For he brought to the league a steadily growing army, one that could be relied on. When the strings of the yüeh-ch’in are stretched too tight they cease to lament and hum, spring like a New Year firecracker against the player’s cheek and the twang leaves a streak of blood.

  Late in the evening of the fourth day Ch’en decided reluctantly to invite friends to luncheon on the following day. And after the sixteen had dined for three hours on many rare vegetables, lobster tails, pastries, chicken heads, mutton dumplings, braised noodles, after the sweet cakes, the wines, liqueurs and the vinegar had been cleared from the little tables, Ch’en had to tell his friends as they smoked about this strange beggar from the Nank’ou mountains.

  He related it first as an anecdote, an amusing incident, then, when the guests wanted to turn to other things, he held fast to it, and suddenly the tone of their conversation altered in a quite imperceptible manner and the gurgling of waterpipes ceased. Everything happened as Ch’en had feared. There was laughter, indignation, displeasure over his role; many of them, the cleverer, were thunderstruck and fearful.

  They sat around the small, closepacked tables in the sumptuously furnished room. Bright carpets and bamboo mats warmed the floor. Dark-stained pillars of wood, two rows of them, supported an elegantly panelled ceiling from which embossed iron lamps and lanterns hung at the feet of gryphons, out of dragons’ mouths. Speckled orchids lay at each place. A gorgeous wall screen had been pulled across to conceal the Eight Immortals table by the rear wall in front of the household altar. A gigantic yardhigh decorative mirror was turned face to the wall and revealed on its shining black wood herons gliding over waves, perched on rocks on the shore, flying very small in the firmament into the sun’s rays.