The Three Leaps of Wang Lun

by Alfred Doblin

  They weren’t prepared. They needed peace, time, dig in, burrow, walls, walls! Hammering boards was useless; that wasn’t how it was done. In the morning they’d be slaughtered, and nothing achieved. Weren’t the feet of their persecutors tramping already? Life was full of noise, full of hate and fear: that was no way. Walls, walls! Here were walls, here, here!

  Stormy joy for the throng out there in the courtyards swept through Ma No. His brothers and sisters, his, they were to walk the good road: his people. Better than the sons of Sakya.

  When an hour had passed men came to the door, knocked, received no answer. They found Ma, the little dessicated man, asleep on the bed; he seemed to be very sweetly dreaming. He sprang up as they went quietly back down the stairs.

  He was very calm, allowed himself to be shown to the hut they’d set aside for him, moved into it.

  On that day and the next no attackers came. The Broken Melon relaxed into their old ways. Five days passed and still Ma No uttered no word of what should happen next. He was waiting. As he walked through the courtyards his receding brow was furrowed; no one disturbed him; his expression was dangerous. Ma had to mind his own counsel; he saw the limits of his capabilities; the league was plunging into the abyss and he couldn’t prevent it. He must wait, gritting his teeth, until the brothers came to him and begged of their own accord for walls. He didn’t dare strike such a blow against their freedom; he had opponents; they wouldn’t follow him any more. They enjoyed the security. They wanted to challenge fate: let it burst over them!

  Yuan with the almost square face, a remarkably flat nose, cold eyes, skull almost devoid of occiput, had a very changeable way of speaking. Mostly his speech was hesitant, glutinous; now and then, it might be on a quite trivial matter, he indulged in a rapid, apparently unmotivated outburst with vehement mimicry and gestures, so that in general you had the impression of considerable self-control. In fact this was hardly the case: he exercised self-control, but not over any particular passion. Early thirties, native of Szechuan, son of a wealthy feather merchant, a failure in the lowest examinations, ambitious without talent. Sometimes he was sluggish, dull, sometimes wild; mostly wild—he feared his vagueness would become obvious. He tried to insinuate himself among the sectarians, to make himself respected as agitated he cast dark words about him, words that he mulled over later, believing that all cogitation was performed in this same blind way.

  The two cousins Liu more banal characters, fanatics, very similar in their way of thinking, roughly the same age; the younger Liu, known by his childhood name of Little Third, though sanguine like the other was more sceptical, feared that nothing would come of all their hopes, was greatly depressed by his own scepticism. They had once worked in a porcelain factory, then unemployed had hit upon aurifaction, the secrets of which a cheeky bonze claimed to have imparted to them. Even now they carried about little pots of cinnabar; they expected a lot of the powers that their conversion to the Tao would bestow on them: perhaps they’d discover the Pill of Immortality.

  Yuan was the first to engage the leader of the sect in a conversation about what would happen next. He added quickly that, in his view, there wasn’t any need at all to leave the monastery. The priests would take good care not to press for a violent assault; and as for the government helping them off its own bat, that was highly doubtful.

  Ma No showed interest, urged him to use his ears and find out what was being said about the future of the sect.

  For all their fanaticism the two Lius were a hardheaded pair. Between themselves they often discussed the problem of the sect. In the forefront of their thoughts: the sect’s expanding, it’s carried along by true, earnest thoughts, it needs time to reach full maturity; but as soon as winter came there’d be an end to the Broken Melon. During a furtive stroll they’d heard from Ma No the terrible story of the mountain runners of Nank’ou; neither doubted that coming winter would outdo the last in horrors for the Broken Melon.

  What they meant exactly by “full maturity of the sect” they knew as little as most of the others who used similar phrases. It was a notion of a too intense suggestiveness that mocked any attempt to analyse it, if disturbed let in a surge of terror. The notion lurked in the background, they could reply on it, ignore it, they lived according to the prescribed rules and were sure that at a certain time the things promised by the notion would automatically be fulfilled.

  Both agreed at once with Yuan that the monastery must be held. Only Little Third started grumbling. Whether the government mightn’t really attack, and then there wasn’t enough room for a long stay, and where would all the food come from.

  Their debates attracted a very fanciful professional storyteller by the name of Cha, who always went about naked to the waist in order to absorb as much as possible of the active principle of the sun, the Yang. A good-humoured crackpot with fine, lively young eyes, a man trusted by everyone who came in contact with him.

  Another who took part in the conversations was a great serious fellow, in his mid-forties perhaps, who disclosed neither name nor history. Only Ma No knew his fate. He was gaunt, wore untidy dangling moustaches and beard, was extraordinarily kind and polite to everyone with a shyness and passivity to match. Perhaps no one in the sect was so correct in prayer and in watchfulness over his thoughts, so careful in observing the precept that nothing, whether plant or animal or man, should be harmed unnecessarily. He was known as “Yellow Bell”, because he spoke almost always in a particular pitch corresponding to the keynote gung of the first pitchpipe, and this pipe was called huang chung or Yellow Bell. Yellow Bell, as everyone knew, was an intimate friend of lovely Liang-li, whose domineering, easily enraged nature was wonderfully calmed by his company. One of the reasons why this unknown man was often drawn into important discussions was that, although women were never allowed to take part in debates, Laing-li was eager to hear firsthand reports of them.

  Old Cha was pessimistic. The teller of tales knew better than anyone how to distinguish fairy tales from reality. He agreed with the points put forward by the younger Liu, agreed quite strongly; reproached Yuan: where did he get such a shabby idea as to trick the pious monks out of their monastery? Several times his ardour got the better of him. At such moments he lost his footing on solid ground, floundered in fury, struggled against monstrous giants, imaginary mammoths that had nothing to do with the subject. Ended up conscious only of his threatening posture and the ringing of his voice, of having opposed something; awaited a response.

  Yellow Bell purred in a monotone; he bent aside in order not to contradict. Busied himself with staring startled at old Cha and making courteous remarks about the power of his imagination and his way of thinking. When asked for his opinion, he was grateful that they thought him capable judging. He didn’t himself feel equal to such weighty decisions, had full and unreserved confidence in whatever conclusion the others reached. Finally he dragged forth an observation with the express qualification that it represented only a guideline for his private existence and he would never, not for anything in the world, want it to be taken for an actual opinion. And finally he was only voicing it because the gentlemen wanted him to and he didn’t want to offend the gentlemen.

  He could only second the views of the sagacious Mr. Cha. Indeed, if he might be so bold, he could, nay must, go farther, at least as far he was concerned. They would have to see how they stood up to winter and hunger in the old way. And if it went badly for them, well, everyone had to die, that was fate. And they too would die of course, for they all yearned only for the Tao, not life. If they saw the Spring, that would be a miracle, scarcely to be believed. Finally he wasn’t even sure whether they shouldn’t be thankful, for one day sooner at their goal had greater merit than one day later. But the older men knew all this much better than he did, and he was only offending them with this recital of mindless banalities.

  Such was the burden of Yellow Bell’s chime. The great quiet man looked shamefaced at the ground; the utterance had caused him distres
s.

  Ma No squatted one morning with the four men in an inner courtyard that lay far back and rose steeply towards the monks’ burial ground. Grass sprouted thick here between the stones; ancient elms stood over the yard. In their shade the men sat, and lovely Liang sat there too in a torn and patched yellow gown. Her hard face had grown thin, her movements, formerly so full of energy, had taken on a certain gentle pliancy, her narrow eyes flashed their old black fire.

  Ma No had joined the discussion at their request. Yuan explained their worries and what they’d been debating. Ma No agreed they ought to be worried. But opinions differed, reported Yuan, who acted as the spokesman, and with a gesture invited the younger Liu to speak.

  Ma let the talk flow over him. He knew no clarity would be achieved. Wang Lun’s ideas, long since refuted, were too strong in these people.

  Fate would have to speak more clearly. He turned his mind to the things he saw coming, that couldn’t be turned aside. He suffered under his helplessness.

  Lovely Liang-li, brought along for the first time to one of these discussions, looked at him. At first there’d been a feeling over her heart of mute scorn for Ma No. But only for a moment. This wasn’t a man like the others, like her father, her lawful husband, her friends in the sect, Yellow Bell. She wasn’t his equal just because she was allowed to sit discussing with him and look him in the face. It was hard to believe that the formation of their league of love was all his doing. And in some obscure way she realized that for Ma No their league was something other than what it was for her, that no warmth underlay it, rather something nauseously tormenting, something menacing, a fall of rocks.

  She shivered, remembered her first impression of him as a strange, reclusive man who, having abandoned his gloomy cave, walked the way of truth and effortlessly pulled along in his wake all those who clung to him. He wasn’t to be crossed. It was dreadful, unbelievable to think he’d lost his way.

  Ma No spoke in incomprehensible calm. The sect would go under soon. Provincial troops would march against them, or winter would come.

  They’d go on like this for a couple more months, then they’d all go separate ways, to kin or on the high roads or outside the Imperial rice distribution points. You couldn’t expect a bloodbath like the recent one to have no effect on the behaviour of a great crowd. The influx would dry up from now on. And what conclusion could you draw from this? That you should let everything run its course. He had no hope at all for the sect. Soon pogroms would be stirred up against them, it was only a matter of time. Everyone for himself. Each to his own pitiless fate.

  This was music to the ears of the great strange man known as Yellow Bell. He murmured to himself that fate took its course; it fell on each of them in a peculiar way. You had to shake yourself free left and right so as not to evade your fate.

  Yuan and the two Lius stretched their legs, squinted at the ground. Yuan stood up: That wouldn’t do, it would not do. Not even the hermits of the Buddha religion thought like that, and they still looked on the community of the pious as a holy treasure. Despite his considered words he was agitated and waspish. He had no time for Yellow Bell. Yuan had to restrain himself, else he would have started jeering.

  Her fine head raised to Yuan, Liang asked what the clever teacher from Szechuan thought about the fate of the Broken Melon; if they were supposed to live for ever as if they’d already found the subtle jade powder.

  Man No’s smile at the moment was of such emphatic arrogance that Liang, mouth open, turned and drew the eyes of the other four onto Ma. Whose smile stayed unaltered, fixed as they all stared, changed only when the elder Liu shouted, What did he think? with a puckered sneer.

  Ma said, “The acumen of our sister Liang-li pleases me. Beautiful hearths, some poets have called women; but Yuan no doubt ceased to think so when a little spark from the beautiful hearth singed him. How does the rest of that wonderful verse go, Yuan, that you recited to me not long ago, by you yourself or a poet of the T’ang dynasty?”

  Yuan bowed, flattered. “It’s a verse of Tu Fu’s unlucky Censor of the Emperor Hsüan-tsung.” He recited: “At P’eng-lai Palace the gate is turned to the southern mountain. Toward Heaven stretch bronze pillars with their basins where the dew collects. Westward lies the Lake of Jasper, to which the royal mother descends.” Liang raised her left hand towards Yuan: “And another verse, by Yuan O-tsai goes: Flown is the bright play of clouds, ere the yellow millet is well cooked.”

  At which Yellow Bell burst into a peal of laughter such as might ring out from an ox stall of a soldier horde, but quite incongruous from him and revealing in some inexplicable way something of his past. Already in his ineffably embarrassed way he was begging their pardon he’d been quite lost in thought, his laughter wasn’t related in the slightest to anything said by anyone present. Nevertheless the effect on the others of this sudden coarse eruption was so disagreeable they feel silent, looked through one another and Liang asked Ma No if he wouldn’t rather take stroll or sit on a mat, he was shaking so.

  But Ma No, who had indeed stood up, merely sat down beside Yellow Bell and soothed him. The clever man, smiling all the while at the others and turning to Yuan, said the clearly they’d not remained untouched by life. “We suffer so much and become ever less capable resolve. We are flies, whose legs and wings have been pulled off by children.”

  Yuan shrugged, fidgeted, disappeared to inspect the halls again with radiant eyes, marvel at the chapels.

  Liang walked beside Yellow Bell and Ma No towards the open gate of the monastery across luminous winding courtyards. Ma felt he was carrying these two like a bag of stones on his back. Yellow Bell was the most fearsome of all the sectarians. He could have let him fall, but his ambition needed this man; he must master him, he must.

  Lovely Liang dreaded her fate. She couldn’t wipe away the memory of Ma’s arrogant smile. It was like a white tiger gazing from a rock down onto a man coming unawares around a bend. What was this man planning?

  While Ma kept a stern eye on silent Yellow Bell, the lovely Liang mused. They had set course for the Isles of Bliss. The helmsman on such a fearsome voyage must himself be fearsome. Yellow Bell walked unperturbed beside her.

  And ever so quietly the sign that Ma had foreseen had been preparing itself. When on the seventh day sixty of the local people knocked at the monastery gate, the sign caught up with the Broken Melon.

  The sect had made its home in one of the richest parts of western Chihli. Cotton was grown here; sericulture was highly developed.

  A peculiarity of the district was the occurrence of active salt wells. In the course of decades a great number had been dug and whole livelihoods depended on the wells. To win the slat a funnel-shaped hole a yard across was dug until water was struck. At the bottom brine was allowed to collect and evaporate; it was brought up in buckets. As on the coast, the further preparation was divided among salt boilers, panners and stockpilers. In giant kettles and pans the slat boilers drove off the water from the mother brine. Hay for heating the kettles was provided by the wealthier owners of grazing land and farmland, most of whom at the same time stockpiled the salt arranged its transport, delivered prescribed quantities to the Imperial depots. Whoever among the well diggers owned sufficient land could work faster, let the briny groundwater flow over tamped earth levels, hasten evaporation in the sun. Transport of the dutiable heaps of salt was almost entirely along waterways; only short stretches called for mules, carts, ox wagons to transport the commodity to the next river or canal.

  Now nine years earlier the father of a man called Hou of this district had been carried off by the smallpox. He had been a judiciary official with a reputation for competence, plain and strict in the extreme, greatly feared for the brevity and succinctness of his judgements. By clever speculations in the purchase of rice, which he then sold on to the government, this man had amassed great wealth. He bought more estates. When he reached the fourth rank he retired, made presents to the Imperial privy purse, continued to specul
ate with circumspection and one day returned from a journey across country in poor condition; the corpulent man had to be lifted from his chair; he soon died.

  His eldest son, the present landowner Hou, as a child the worry of the family for his sickliness, was no less shrewd than his father; but whereas the older man had used people as they offered themselves to be used, he for no reason was hard and cold towards everyone. In his outward figure he took completely after his father, the ponderousness, the plumpness of the limbs, the amiable rustic burr. He shunned ostentation, observed all the prescribed rites strictly, led an exemplary family life. Despite his hardness in commerce he exuded a certain joviality, so that many of the common people who had no business dealings with him were true partisans of his. He increased his property, though not blessed with his father’s farsightedness.

  Two years after the old man’s funeral misfortune began to assail Hou. Two of his sons died in the same month of an unknown sickness that caused them to lie rigid for days, tossing their heads, then begin to rave and perish before the demon responsible could be identified. His best friend in southern Chihli let him down in the course of a few daring speculations, of a kind that would have brought his father success: Hou amassed great piles of rice in his storehouses; the speedy export of rice from his friend’s stores was supposed to lead in southern districts to an artificial increase in the price, which Hou would exploit. But the friend claimed not to have secured in time the great barges he’d ordered; Hou was left sitting on enormous stocks. There followed at short intervals two arson attacks on his properties, causing severe losses. Thus set in a turn in his fortunes.

  Hou had often regarded with painful feelings the canal that passed in front of his villa; the long barges of the salt transport, transporting as well grapes, plums, pears, the cries of the haulers, the scraping of ropes against the canalside; from here it was a short journey to a broad tributary of the Imperial Canal.