Men ran back and forth in the half dark. Their zeal was unquenchable. Half naked, trouser belts askew they raced up to the hole, threw little bundles of reeds in, slid back past each other. One shouted: why did another carry so little? The other hoisted his bundle higher on his shoulder: wasn’t that enough? On wooden sledges they dragged great heaps of stone that rumbled like waves over their heads and feet. They ran up and down untiring, seemingly inexhaustible, cacophonous, bleeding.
On the wall next to the gap a strong worker grew tired; he slapped a handful of clay onto a tall mason’s back. They’d been gossipping and sniggering for an hour about a muleteer who that morning had brought into town not dried dates, but sacks full of sand. Only when he reached the market did he realize he’d been robbed on the way. When the mason turned round a roar of laughter burst at him from twenty mouths. They curled up, rolled on their sides to let laughter gather in their bellies, their legs wave in the air, diaphragms heave. Others jogged the ladders, shrieked, “Just look at him! Just look at him!” And cawed at his strangely swollen face, his bulbous nose.
The tall fellow stared at the squat joiner, wiped his hand a couple of times across his nose, cursed his friend for the dratted onions he’d put in the bean broth; they made his eyelids and nose thick. And he hit the joiner, who now had the hiccups, hard in the belly.
The blow doubled him up; they set about each other with a will. The crowd urged them on at first; when, still fighting, they started tottering on the brink of the wall they were dragged noisily apart: “A judgement! To court! They must settle it. To court! To court!”
Tumbled down the ladders, as if there were a court for them there in the Mongolian town.
Their numbers grew on the way through the nearby lanes. A strident hubbub rolled along with them; the din of their tumbling voices knew no measure. Some pulled planks along behind them that people tripped over, but they kept pulling them along, only to let them fall without even noticing. Others stiffened backs and bowed shoulders beneath empty trugs they gripped with rockhard muscles, cursed at the others for setting such a pace and they couldn’t keep up.
Two elderly artisans with naked brown-black torsos ran their hands over planks left lying at a corner. One plank had fallen across a large stone. They grinned at each other, searching along the rough wood from opposite sides until they stood close, their hands touched, and now, astride the plank, they sat and seesawed and continually bowed respectfully to each other and traded pathetic felicities. They bade one another bear up under the present conditions, then, as they raised their hands in solemn affirmation, slipped sideways and lay there; one across the other’s legs apologized profoundly for his carelessness, felt his way along the other’s trousers.
In the mob, which often dissolved completely in the little squares, delirium grew. Some were seized with boisterous merriment. A former salt panner lost his temper. He said he wouldn’t go any farther. Liu was a wicked demon, there were two of him there, one Liu was over there by the houses, the other was beside him. They kept coming together, bouncing off each other, as if they were in the water sinking. At these complaints the ones in front retraced their steps, took him into their midst, croaked hoarsely, flung arms uncertainly around his neck.
A young man pushed his way among them, yelled, “The villain! He’s up to the same tricks himself. Can’t you see? He’s standing here and now he’s sitting on the roof. What’s he cursing Liu for?” They squeezed one eye shut, hastily made Liu and the panner stand side by side. A couple stood straddlelegged squinting at them through circled fingers, squinted at the roof. Meanwhile most had drifted away, reeled along bawling happily behind the body of the mob as it made for the main marketplace.
But it never reached there. They had long forgotten what they were doing. Some scratched between the cobblestones. Some cawed, licked sleepy fingers, circled their arms. Heads lolled, dropped onto chests.
Men had already swarmed into the town from other parts of the wall. Their lungs were marvellously full. They shivered with a fever that flamed and sank fingerdeep beneath their skin. Blood surged into their heads. Their bodies dropped away from them. They set their feet so carefully because they were afraid of treading on glass with their straw sandals; they stepped ever so gingerly on tiptoe, ever so gingerly. They could go more safely if they took their sandals off. And so several balanced in single file through the alleys, footgear in their outstretched arms.
Farther into the town they climbed here and there over a man, they whispered, “Careful!” to one another with gesticulating arms, tried several times to step around the same body. Which lay there snoring, legs tucked up to chest, brow furrowed.
Men stood rooted in front of the houses. They leaned blue-lipped against doorposts. The breath was torn from them in violent gusts. They moaned, whistled and grunted like bellows. Brothers laid their bodies down cautiously on benches; every scene, house, figure, the dark of the sky span round in a spiral, the earth fell away beneath them like a great upturned pointed hat. Clumsily they pulled off their clothes, ready to jump; wheezed, waited for what would come. Their ribs stuck out like thongs; they emitted rapid snorts.
Hundreds concealed themselves in the houses, in the corridors, under tables; a vice squeezed their bowels, spleen, belly and then loosed its grip. The vice worked on them with a rhythm that grew ever faster. They choked on yellow bile, intestines squirted and tried to escape. Faces lengthened. Green beasts ran past their faces to the right, then the beasts turned; the lot of them ran back towards the left.
Men staggered to the gate, to the walls. But they slipped between the rungs as they climbed the ladders, tried in vain to extricate themselves, overturned the ladders onto themselves. One managed to reach the top. They heard him go over the edge and down into the ditch where he was still twitching.
Black night. Water streamed down the flanks of many. A little wheel turned in front of them, ever more distant, it was the eye of a needle, a molehill, a cave. They rolled their eyes, were trapped in a spoke.
In stuffy rooms brothers shrank fearfully together at the cries and bumping outside. They huddled squatting over one another. Suddenly they started, glared about them drawing deep breaths as if they heard something, stood up swaying, again and again straightening bodies that kept sinking under them: “The soldiers are coming! All is lost! Wang and his ten thousand are beaten!” They turned on the silent corners of the room, threw stools, fled head down into the open air, grasped at one another in the darkness of the streets. Here and there two strangled each other. They thudded to the ground side by side with grunts of desperation. In their dreams they wielded clubs, pounded and throttled the thick slime that oozed between their fingers.
On the flat close-set roofs some were singing. They sang of the Great Traverse. Their hands swung imagined prayer bells. They preached across to one another. They called to the gleaming pinnacles of supreme bliss that they saw; they were so near. And when one of them heard the shrill voices from down the street he sighed, “Brothers!” with tears in his eyes, entranced. They stood up and burst their skulls on the street, crushed a dying man as they fell.
As the night advanced and many lay phantasising in the alleys, in earthy hollows, under the eaves, something bright, striated, white, icy cold blew into necks, up to the backs of heads. When anyone turned he was seized by an invisible demon; with a cry something wrenched his twitching body straight, stretched it taut as if feet, hands, head were to be torn from it. And then it twisted limbs this way and that, rolled the body like a lump of soggy dough. When, dripping with sweat, they rested from the battle they screamed at the demon for his cowardice. Just let him come near again, stop hiding himself. They stared with glassy eyes about them, vomiting. And it came back. With one bound it seized them again. They sprawled and jerked together, as if shot from a catapult. Until their prolonged rigidity gripped their yearning like iron, clung to it in grim fury. And when it let go they still blinked strangely and forgot to breathe.
A
s noise spread from the walls that evening into the Mongolian town the night watchmen in the Lower Town hurriedly brought up great blocks of wood on oxcarts, piled them against the gate to the upper town. They weren’t to let out any of the immured. Blows struck the gate from within.
The uproar inside increased momently; soon the whole Lower Town would be awake.
Now drumrolls sounded through the streets from three watchmen, woke the hundred former provincial troops who were scattered, still armed, around the town. They must come and stop the sectarians from breaking out into the Lower Town to escape what was clearly an assault. When the soldiers came running, climbed the watchtowers of the town, the countryside lay peaceful in the cloudy moonlight right up to the pine wood; utter darkness in the streets of the Mongolian town that seethed with a thousandfold roaring, screaming, howling. The enemy must be already in the town. But it was uncanny: no weapons clashed, no arrows; no house burned.
Frantic sounds from within. And now it was clear the wicked demons kept down for so long by the brothers and sisters had torn themselves loose and fallen on them. Priests and bonzes were woken.
Ladders could be heard being placed against the gate; bodies tumbled with dull crumps.
All at once two grimacing, bloated faces appeared side by side over the gate, foaming at the mouth, whinnying like horses. The priests swung their tall bronze censers into the faces. From the shattered physiognomies thick blood dripped onto the watchmen, who shrank back in horror. The priests pointed burning brands at the two creatures, who were dragging themselves higher. Suddenly one reared up and crashed to the ground. The other puled unmelodically at the night sky, leaned his matted breast over the top of the gate; then the ladder was toppled from within; he sagged; his hands clung to the gate; soldiers loosed his fingers; he dropped heavily, lay mumbling on the earth for a long time.
No one in the Lower Town dared emerge onto the streets. Towards morning the noise moderated. Occasional shrill cries wafted down. In the later part of the night there rose from a house in the street that ran parallel to the gate a lone voice, a girl’s voice; she was singing a dirty song. In between whiles she enticed, called men’s names, rasped.
In the greying dawn the outer gate was opened. Traders, vegetable hawkers, countless wagons moved up the streets. The water carriers came. Wagons clogged the access to the Mongolian town. A way was cleared for the Taot’ai’s green palanquin. The commander of the former provincial troops, now town garrison, a lanky fellow, ordered the gate opened. The beams were shifted, bars unfastened; soldiers pushed back the gates.
The moment the gate opened a loosened fragment of wall fell from the arch, covered the entrance in thick dust. Both gates had to be forcibly pushed in, the inner bolt broken, before the entrance was cleared.
Before nightfall the previous evening a heavy iron bar had been jammed between the stone walls as a barrier; on it a whole row of people leant bent double. When the bar was lifted the bodies tumbled against the entering throng, crashed face down among them. Some were still alive and called out to the townsmen with faint voices. The soldiers pushed on. At one corner two girls stood, heads on each other’s shoulders. They only fell when someone pulled the hand of one from her friend’s waist. Here and there the dying slowly puffed out their cheeks. In more than twenty houses women were discovered in pools of blood; they had given birth in their convulsions; in convulsions they had ripped umbilicus and placenta from their bodies, quickly bled to death.
On the steps of one house in a corner of the marketplace squirmed a girl decked in narcissi; she shouted, “I am Liang-li. I want my father in Chengting.” When they pulled her by the feet she struck about her and was dead.
They surged into the house. A little man was squatting on the k’ang in a corner of the bleak room. He pouted as the soldiers entered.
He stared at them, balancing his head, struggling to lift the lids of his hooded eyes. At the corner of his mouth sticky gobs of slime. His lips bright yellow; his face overlain by thick waxy skin; hollows in the temples. Snorts, snuffles: “She’s coming at last. The Heavenly Mother herself is coming.” Smiled proudly like one who commands.
The foremost soldier recognized the leader of the rebels, put a piece of red paper into his mouth to keep the demon from him. First he cut a gash in Ma No’s mouth and chin with the tip of an arrow. Ma frowned, pushed himself upright against the wall, cawed like some animal, “Pah! Oh, pah!”, staggered forward in rage and dread. The soldier grabbed him by the breast, thrust him choking from the k’ang on to the floorboards.
Book Three
Lord of the Yellow Earth
Ch’ien-lung, the great Emperor, who had received the empire of the world from Heaven and everchanging nature, emerged from his hunts and his musings on the northern steppes, made his way back to Mukden.
He had seen again the enormous landscapes of Tartary. Few days in their profound silence had been disturbed by tribute bearers. Tigers loped out of the woods. Week by week letters of fealty arrived from the Imperial princes and high nobility, enquiring after his health.
No great train accompanied the aging Emperor: two hundred men of his lifeguard, one pure Manchu company, a small number of favourites, friends, slaves; lastly the exquisite orchestra. He had hunted the high country east of Kalgan, on the edge of Mongolia. Bright cold air, broad open grassland, mountain glens, broken vistas. He made camp in the troughshaped valley near Hsüanhua-fu. The houses were dug into the loess, with rooms, vaults, passages. On the thinly peopled plains shaggy brown horses galloped. Teaburdened camels swayed by. Nomad families camped in big round tents of felt. Brown flatfaced Mongols with gaily coloured ribbons prostrated themselves.
At the frontier the Imperial train was joined by the commander of the frontier troops in his red fur cap and red wing collars. Then they crossed the outliers of the great Hsingan range, descended towards Mukden.
The Emperor’s gaze was remote, his expression fearsomely bleak. Beneath tall willows clusters of peculiar houses appeared. A long, twisting mountain path led them to low hills where they saw broadleaved trees, women who wore arrows in their hair and fresh flowers. Cannons boomed from the eight towers on the walls of Mukden. They rode along the straight lines of the town, the Mongols behind on little ponies, until the roofs in the middle of the town came into view with their gleaming yellow tiles. For five days Ch’ien-lung remained in his palace.
In the autumnal park by a pond the Emperor sat alone on a stool, his lap filled with green lettuce leaves. In front of him a giant tortoise slept.
The carapace was black with yellow flutings. The broad central plate was edged in yellow with deep indentations. The clumsy forefeet extended sideways like flippers, toes like pegs driven into the feet. Hind legs drawn into the armour. The Emperor, dressed in black silk with a plain silk cap, rapped on the shell with a stout branch from which fircones dangled.
And then out of its lair the grey horny head emerged, that wonderfully passionless head on a wrinkled neck that sparkled like dried fish skin. Like a royal mummy: the long, withered, craning neck, the triangular skull turning in contemptuous unconcern. Jaws clamped, the severe work of plane and straightedge. Nostrils sunk with an auger. To the sides, lidless, immobile, clever wise eyes, windows of a gelid brain.
Slowly the shell lifts itself on one side, sinks back, pushes forward. It is the painful gait of a nimble but gouty and ancient man, who lifts his rump, doesn’t bend his knee, swings his legs stiffly out sideways, slowly turns a corner. The foreflippers swim, right, left, scrape. The armour sinks back, the hind legs stretch and follow. A highpitched wheezing, a gentle hiss comes from the punched-out nostrils. Again the rump heaves, the front flippers slide forward. It is a climbing over level ground.
The Emperor sat on the stool with his fir branch. He tried to keep pace with the tortoise, to imitate it, and pondered. As it heaved forward it seemed to turn its eyes on him. He slid slowly after his branch to the ground, crouched on his knees behind the creature as it
moved away from him towards the pond. For some reason he bowed down behind it.
Very slowly, as Ch’ien-lung wished, the procession continued on its way. Wide sandy spaces alternated with fields of watermelon. The Liao-ho channelled black soupy eddies in which strips of green bobbed. For two days they waited for the arrival of an ancient Supervisor of Traffic from Niuchuang in order to sacrifice to the river God. Then they entrusted the ferry with the placid Emperor to the waters.
His entourage recognized this state of profound abstraction and lassitude. It had come upon him with increasing age. This man, once so energetic and commanding, now let them do everything, lead him, seat him. The great monarch’s face as they rode silently past the li after li of shops in Hsinmi-ts’un was disconcerting in its uncanny absence of will, the rubbery softness and torpor of the eyes. His lips hung, he mumbled inarticulately. As the eight bearers marched slowly over the rippled sand his palanquin opened from within, he climbed out, the front bearers turning in astonishment, and ambled along beside an old halberdier who failed to recognise him. When the horrified Protocol Officers leapt out of their chairs and fell to the ground before him, led him by the hand to his palanquin, he stumbled along with them, wearily raised his swollen eyelids, looked at them in puzzlement. His eyes wept. Before he climbed back into the palanquin they wiped spittle from his grey beard. They walked along beside the palanquin. Across the Taling-ho they came to Imperial grazing grounds. From the tall watchtowers in the centre of Chinchou-fu cannons again boomed greetings.
The Three Leaps of Wang Lun Page 30