The Three Leaps of Wang Lun

by Alfred Doblin

  An astrologer visited him about this time from Peking, who because of his ignorance had been relieved of his post in the Ministry of Rites. Since he could not penetrate the secret of computing important events, he found for himself a scandalous profession that came all the easier to him with his respectable figure, his reticent confidence-inspiring demeanour: he became a factor in the extensive trade in children for the southern provinces, new blood for the theatres and houses of pleasure. The trade was carried on under the mask of adoption or procurement for adoption; on occasion he provided apothecaries or very wealthy invalids with little children whose eyes, liver and blood would be processed and used. As a sideline this man was a highly esteemed marriage broker.

  As he sat with Hou in a pavilion on the estate beside the little canal and his sorely afflicted friend related his woes, they sat there a while smoking the waterpipe and watched the haulers toiling as they broke a passage through the frozen water.

  The astrologer asked whether the land on the other side of the canal also belonged to Hou, and for how far, and what sort of goods were transported here. After a couple of gurgling pulls on the pipe gave as his opinion that the canal ought to be closed.

  Hou understood at once, laughed, warned him to speak softly. Of course it would be good if the canal were closed, but quite impossible to achieve. Naturally if some conceivable way could be found he wouldn’t forget his friend. The canal was important for those and those and those; if anyone did manage to close it there’d be enormous profit to be gained.

  The dignified astrologer, simply attired in black, was grateful for the presumptive splitting of profits; of that later. He sat in thought, spoke suddenly in melancholy tones of the death of old Hou, so highly valued by the Emperor, and when had he been buried, who had specified the place. Then without explanation, bewailing the untimely death of that true friend of the nation, he went into the house with his friend, lit candles before the ancestral tablet. He excused himself and retired for contemplation, as he said, to the room placed at his disposal.

  Next morning, accompanied by the boorish rheumy-eyed local astrologer, he had himself carried to old Hou’s grave furnished with all his professional equipment: compass, zodiacal table, windrod. After investigating for three days, they put their extensive calculations together for comparison and came to the conclusion that the position of the grave was disturbed by the line of the canal. The constricted nature of the site made it impossible to ameliorate the spirit’s rest by erecting a pagoda. Hence the misfortunes in the Hou household since the old man’s death.

  Hou didn’t catch on, and when the crafty astrologer began to lament the meritorious man’s fate Hou threw himself howling to the ground, didn’t know where to turn. He ran to the ancestral tablet; he didn’t want the fault falling on his shoulders; he had to inform the departed that he wasn’t to blame for the siting of the grave, not he. How could he, grateful son that he was with his daily obeisances, have come upon the dreadful idea of hounding his late father from his rest? Imploring he embraced the astrologer, and to his astonishment gazed into an artfully wry, chubby face. The astrologer grunted as the fat arms squeezed him, pushed his friend back, finished the censing, and they walked slowly to the garden pavilion down by the canal. The phlegmatic man from Peking said in ministerial tones, “We must not upset the deeply offended spirit of your father still more by removing the grave. That would be the pinnacle of disrespect. The line of the canal must be altered. This canal must be closed as quickly as possible.”

  Fat Hou grunted “Yes, yes” in his misery, and then, after a pause during which they looked earnestly at one another, in a brighter voice, “Yes, yes.”

  The months-long correspondence with provincial authorities and the Ministry of Rites was taken over from the troubled, distraught son entirely by the astrologer. Weeks went by, for appraisers from the Imperial Astrological Bureau were charged with compiling an urgent report following the rejection of Hou’s petition by the subordinate authorities on grounds of its damaging effect on the public weal. Ch’ien-lung, however, informed personally, stated without hesitation, “A canal can be dug elsewhere. Until another small canal can be completed with all necessary despatch, provisional means of transport are available. It is base to hound a deceased person of Hou’s enduring service from his rest because of some temporary local inconvenience.”

  So the affair was settled. And before the guilds of haulers, salt boilers, coolies, wagon hirers in the villages to the west realized what was up, the lock gates were closed in utmost haste, the water drained into a lake by means of a connecting ditch that Hou had had dug even during the protracted negotiations. The transport of cargo had to be effected by quite other means; it had to be unloaded, carried by land a day’s journey across Hou’s property to what was now the end of the canal. Hou refused to allow the first coolies, wagoners onto his land. Hasty intervention from the prefecture resulted in the granting of passage, for the time being free of tolls. It was left to Hou to discuss with the relevant trade associations how to construct as quickly as possible a road through to the canal.

  He acceded without further ado; but with the approval of the authorities, speedily gained, charged a small toll for the use of his property, erected five storesheds on open sites beside the road, helped the transport workers by placing large auxiliary wagons and oxen at their disposal. The profit was enormous; to it was added gain from the pilfering that was unavoidable with so much transshipping and placing in storage. What it came to finally was that his place seemed the natural spot for a central salt depot, Hou by underhand methods having made transport difficult for those who stored their salt elsewhere.

  For weeks it remained calm; throughout the affected district the guilds debated ceaselessy. In the prefecture it rained petitions. Barge haulers, unemployed, worked with the salt panners; these, insofar as they did not deliver grass to Hou, lost income from the reduction in storage dues. Unrest grew.

  Then a newly arrived Prefect became involved in the affair in a way that nearly cost him his head. In the western counties Hou’s case was nothing unusual. Tax evasion on an enormous scale had been perpetrated by the great landlords for decades; silk spinners, mill owners paid scarcely more tax than some insignificant casual labourer in their employ. In the register at the tax office these rich gentry were entered against some tiny patch of field, the property that their fathers and grandfathers had started out with; good relations with Superintendents of Taxes and with Prefects had seen to it that the initial declarations in the registers were passed down through the generations unrevised; false returns concerning fallow land, flooded areas helped.

  As soon as a few cases of this sort had been brought discreetly to his notice, the young Prefect rode solemnly off to the nearest Principal Tax Office where the lists were displayed and reported to the Superintendent of Taxes, audibly, in the open yamen, within earshot of several people, what he’d been told, pointed in a loud voice to the discrepancies between the information in the lists and the actual properties. As he climbed back into his green sedan chair his runners and bearers looked at each other dismayed, trotted off shaking their heads. What the servants in the young Prefect’s household predicted in their whispered conversations soon came to pass.

  The old Superintendent, a well loved man treasured by the government for his knowledge of local conditions in Chihli and Shantung, appointed a deputy for ten days. During this time, as he had announced, he travelled back and forth across his tax zone in order to acquaint himself with the situation, visited commercial enterprises, farms. But he had been unable to hold back the written petition to the central authorities handed in by the young Prefect together with his oral report, and waiting for the grey-haired mandarin on his return was an urgent demand from the Finance Ministry in Peking for a brief on the matters detailed in the attached memorandum.

  While the young Prefect, still a bachelor, lay in the evenings beside a pool of red lotus and played the game of floating leaves with friends,
his servants, who knew the locality, wrung their hands at his short-sightedness; they’d heard that dissatisfaction with the Prefect was making itself felt in the region.

  Unexpected little disturbances arose during the arrests of thieves and at public punishments; there followed more serious incidents that began to keep the Prefect rather occupied. Finally, in several hitherto peaceful villages there occurred attacks on Imperial officials and buildings. A sharp instruction was handed down for him to suppress the unrest. It was no use; his constables declared themselves powerless. When a memorial arch erected by the Emperor in honour of a virtuous widow burned down in the open marketplace, it seemed that the Prefect’s last hour had come.

  Then plump Hou invited him for a talk, which the Prefect had already had in mind in view of the transport question. And now the crisis resolved itself in the simplest possible way. The Prefect had no choice; he had to think of the shame that would fall on his still living parents and his ancestors were he to be demoted; not to speak of his own desolate future.

  Hou’s family showed itself highly honoured by the visit. The grossly cringing Hou, hearing of his exalted guest’s still living parents, offered the Prefect a summer residence for the aged couple on one of his estates; he twittered with expressions of the greatest concern at the current difficulties in the prefecture, placed his own excellently trained and armed estate guards at his guest’s disposal. The icy Prefect made no reply.

  He sacrificed in front of his ancestral tablet, and prayed; for two days spoke with none of his friends. Then he accepted.

  That afternoon at the offices and then at the residence of the Prefect, Hou’s glittering return visit took place, to the unfeigned joy of the neighbours and servants, who praised the Prefect as a wise old man. All misunderstandings were brushed lightly aside; clearly one mistake had led to another, to overreaction, confusion. The happy administrator could expect in less than two weeks an acknowledgement from the central authorities of his energy and perspicuity in the suppression of this dangerous local rebellion. After a little ineffectual violence from villagers affected by Hou’s measures, all was peaceful.

  In those high summer days rumours arrived of the pious band of beggars; here and there a man left his village to seek out the Broken Melon. Everyone heard of the intrigues and assaults directed against these mild people; then came the great bloodbath, the monks withdrew from the lamasery, Ma No’s frightened crowd hid behind strong walls.

  Certain adherents of Ma’s who were resident in the area informed the guilds and clansmen’s associations of the sect’s nature and its fate. At once a sympathy for the outcasts set in, a feeling of solidarity with them. Not a sod had been turned for the new canal; apparently as a result of military expenditures the Imperial Treasury was short of money. The families of many unemployed men wandered northward. Confused rumours of the Broken Melon were carried into the distressed villages: it was a clandestine political movement in league with the White Waterlily; they went defenceless through the land and let themselves be slaughtered; that happened so as to rouse the people and show them you could be lame, crippled and unresisting and still be delivered from the violence of the warlike Manchu and the cheating mandarins.

  Frequent conferring among the inhabitants of the various settlements resulted in the formation of a group of representatives of the several guilds and settlements which, in the face of official neglect, decided to migrate to the Broken Melon under Ma No. Hazy thoughts and boiling blood drove these men; they wanted to come together with Ma No, who had already taken possession of a monastery, and with him do something to improve conditions.

  It was against this straggling train of peasants and workmen that the monastery gates were hastily closed and hastily opened again. When some brothers rushed to Ma No’s hut and reported that a crowd of peasants and guildsmen of a friendly disposition had come to the monastery and wanted to talk to him, Ma considered it inexpedient to summon his confidants to the interview, had five of the newcomers escorted to the Chanpo’s room and then appeared there himself.

  They treated him like a potentate, fell down before him; embarrassed and afraid that someone would see, he had to ask them to look on him as one of themselves; he was one of them, a poor son of the blackhaired hundred surnames. And what did they want, who’d sent them.

  This question set them grinning at each other; at a gesture from Ma they squatted in a semicircle on the floor. Then they were silent, not knowing who was to speak for them.

  They were five elderly men, three salt boilers, one of the ruined panners, a wagoner. In arguments at home these canny fellows came up with excellent advice; here they were subdued by the presence of a man of Ma’s reputation, and also by their haziness about this man’s goals. The salt panner, the best educated among them, opened his mouth, looked at each of them in turn, and declared with grins and bobs of his head that since no one seemed to have any objection, he’d better speak. And he related with a few casual phrases who each of them was, where they lived, that they’d been badly treated by the great landlords and the mandarins.

  The wagoner, who listened attentively and nodded agreement at every word, took up the tale at once: “And that’s the point. That’s the whole problem. We can’t do a thing. The prefecture doesn’t answer our petitions. Who are you then, Ma No? Where d’you come from? Where do your illustrious parents live? Above all, what’s to be done?”

  “That’s the whole problem,” one of the salt boilers in a grumpy tone turned to the sprightly wagoner. “The point still is, as I’ve always said: what’s to be done? And how are we to do it?”

  The wagoner hushed him with hand gestures and winked at Ma. “He doesn’t mean it like that. We quarrel now and then because our two domestic tribulations don’t get along. When I say, how are we to do it? he says I’m wrong; I ought to ask, how might it best proceed. And if I say ‘whoa’ he thinks me ignorant and a bletherer, and finally lands up with a ‘ho’. They all know about that in our village, and even farther afield. He’s a fine lad, eh?”

  He asked the panner, who coughed and hawked at length and rubbed· his nose; indignantly he rebuked the man: “Settle it how you like; I can’t see anything to choose between you. We didn’t march half a day here just to decide if it’s better to say ‘whoa’ or ‘ho’. What the whole point of it is, that’s still the problem.”

  The wagoner, astonished, spread his hands as if to say, “That’s just what I think,” and nudged the irritated salt boiler, who motioned him away.

  “So,” the panner addressed Ma through a cold, “we’ve come to hear what you’ve got to say. Six of my villagers have joined up with your crowd and they’ve told us about you and the others. You call yourselves brother and sister, which we all find very friendly. Will you help us?”

  “Or will you do something with us against the landlords and the Prefect, who’re all hand in glove?” This from another salt boiler, a tall gaunt fellow who spoke with forefinger raised like a schoolmaster. “We’re going to do something against them in the next few weeks, but we haven’t got a plan yet.”

  “Plan, plan,” grumbled the panner. “What ideas you do have. I could make you a plan easy enough. Don’t go putting too much store by plans. I’ve seen people with the finest plans, and nothing came of ’em in the end. First of all Ma No’s got to answer the question, in short, will he take our part, or not?”

  “Or help us or not,” the sprightly wagoner elucidated.

  Ma listened without breathing to this idiotic conversation. He was disturbed only by the fact that two of the salt boilers had so far kept out of it; but really they looked no different from their companions. This was the sign he’d been waiting for. Ma met it in a different manner from Wang Lun: while Wang fearfully concealed from himself that something he predicted was coming terribly to pass, it poured with warm filling satiation into Ma’s gorge and belly.

  Ma had the feeling that fate was bending beneath him, he flapped uncertainly past the notion, such a ridiculous notio
n, that his path and the Tao were magically superimposed on one another. While the guildsmen debated before him, he sat there dazzled and sweating from every pore in a kind of stupor; he strove to master himself.

  He said he had no troops to help them with. They knew of course the Broken Melon were being persecuted, people wanted to destroy them. Villagers and Broken Melon alike had been slaughtered. They suffered under great violent lords.

  “That’s just why we came to you here in the monastery,” the panner retorted. “Us villagers are at our wits’ end. You’re a clever man and know your books and your numbers.”

  The tall salt boiler, who spoke in an relentless schoolmasterly way, raised his forefinger: “There’s something else you ought to know, Ma, since you’re listening so calmly to what they all say, one after the other. It concerns you and all the brothers and sisters. It concerns all of you, I say. A nephew of mine’s employed in a village half a day’s journey from here in the felt-sole trade; he’s a guest at present in my house. A workmate visited him yesterday from his village and told him that fifty or a hundred armed constables are on their way to you on account of the terrible slaughter of a week since. They’re on their way already and will more likely be here today than tomorrow. What they’ll ask you, and how they’ll ask it, you’ll find out soon enough. I tell you, since you’re so clever and listen to them one after the other: this concerns you.”

  Ma No smiled: “In the eyes of men my brothers and sisters are already lost. Who will help us? How long can my dear guests wait for the advice of their friend Ma No from P’ut’o-shan?”

  They looked at each other. The panner croaked, “Would it suffice our clever friend for his consultations if we waited till midday or an hour later? Our homeward journey’s not a short one, indeed not, and who knows what’s brewing back there.”