The Three Leaps of Wang Lun

by Alfred Doblin

  “Am I afraid, Chia-ch’ing, or am I not afraid? Don’t be upset; this is me. I’ve no desire to bewitch anyone. I’m not capable of bewitching any of you, whatever your names are. I’ll soon be done with you. How prettily they dressed me up. Madam P’ei must be an excellent seamstress to copy so exactly my undershirt, my gown, girdle, fan, and look, my ring. If I were a demon and didn’t know who Ch’ien-lung was, I too would be fooled by this thing. So finely made, so exquisite. Brother, little brother, so pretty, so alive! Won’t you give me your ring? Let us greet each other, old lateborn brother of jade.”

  Chia-ch’ing groaned and shuddered. He was afraid to touch the figure in the linen cloth, yet had to wrest it from Ch’ien-lung.

  “Father, what are you doing! Give me the figure. It’s not right to play with the figure. Do it for my sake, father. They’ll see us from the hall.”

  Dulcet tones of stringed instruments wafted through the cypresses. The Yellow Lord, his face wrinkled with pleasure, gazed all the while at the doll, pressed it to him. “Tu Fu was wrong, Chia-ch’ing. In the end Tu Fu was wrong. That pleases me. Who could for long tramp the road of life, that each must travel alone. I can, for I’ve found a companion, a companion of stone. I scarcely know if it is he who stands here, I who lie there. Both of us for sure belong together, Chia-ch’ing, the doll and I. And so find the road of life bearable. Sacrifice for us, Chia-ch’ing, my dear son, honour us both. And take us back to my rooms, to our rooms.”

  Chia-ch’ing managed to wrest the dooll from the Emperor’s arms, drop it into the hole.

  The Emperor made a solemn face, taut with expectancy. He looked straight across to the marble columnss of his palace, a rapt hearkening, a grateful inclination of the ear to barely audible sounds.

  He repeated, whispering, “Take us back, dear Chia-ch’ing, to our rooms. We shan’t forget your friendship.”

  They exchanged no more words. They set off in the direction of the Emperor’s quarters, across the marble bridge. But Ch’ien-lung suddenly veered aside towards the murmuring guest halls. Then he turned back, and followed Chia-ch’ing.

  The Emperor’s steps dragged ever slower the nearer he came to his palace, where white and yellow lanterns gleamed. He ignored the parting words and bows of distraught Chia-ch’ing. At the threshold Ch’ien-lung ducked down, as if he were passing under something.

  That night, once more a night of the new moon, Chia-ch’ing slept badly. His dreams were so fevered that by the third night watch he could no longer bear to remain on the hot brickbed, but rolled off and in a daze of sleepiness dressed in the pitch dark room. Not until he was fully clothed and searching for his cap on the table did he come to himself, conscious of his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth, stand there wondering why he had got dressed in the middle of the night.

  He sat there a while in the darkness, paced up and down once or twice between the vases that stood on the floor, in sudden disquiet left the room and stood in the front courtyard.

  From the watchman’s box, the outline of it barely discernible, came a gurgling and snoring. A damp cold night breeze swept now and then through the broad parklands of the Vermilion City, which lay in a darkness more fearsome than Chia-ch’ing had ever seen.

  His heart pounded; in his ears was a thin roaring. He did not know why he stood here or why he was looking up at the treetops.

  He slowly turned to go back to his room, but after a few paces realized he had another plan and wanted rather to go out into the park, beneath the trees, and unburden himself of his disquiet.

  He trudged slowly through the gate along a path. Gravel crunched under his soft soles. He moved aside onto grass so as not to make a noise, for his steps frightened him. It frightened him that someone should be here in the dark with no companion, and he wondered why it was that this someone had not brought a companion.

  Chia-ch’ing’s disquiet grew with every step, every turning in the path. He had no idea why he had chosen to come this way. Whenever he saw a little pavilion between the trees he thought this must be the place—he wasn’t sure what place; but he wasn’t there yet. In his great anxiety he Sighed and rubbed his cheeks with both hands.

  The paths emerged from the trees. He felt his way around enormous fountains like black fingers. Then suddenly he stood rapt, hands drawn up to his throat like a swimmer, screwed up eyes.

  A dark apparition came swiftly down the path; he could make it out only from the movement. It meant to slip past; it was gone. He ran behind it, reached it in four strides, held it fast.

  It was a woman with unbound hair, who thrust at him with her head to push him away.

  She whispered, “What have I done to you?”

  He slapped her face, struggled with her to the foot of a cypress. Now Chia-ch’ing realized he was right next to the Emperor’s apartment.

  He snarled at her, “Demon! Where’ve you been? What have you done? Tell me your name!”

  She bit his finger, looked malevolently up at him. He threw the apparition against a tree root. It made no sound, held fast to his legs.

  He could not subdue her, and when he saw her spiteful grin such a shiver ran down his spine that in a panic he trampled his legs free from her hands. The woman flung herself to one side snarling. Chia-ch’ing grabbed a dangling girdle-end. She struggled to free herself, but in a trice he had her on her feet, hands bound in a noose, and with great strides, the woman whimpering behind him, ran to the Emperor’s apartment that lay concealed in the profound darkness, tied her twisting and spitting hand and foot to a stone hitching post for elephants, stood trembling by the door.

  He pushed over the threshold. He remembered how curiously the Emperor, that little slender figure, had ducked his head under the tall doorarch. He too had better duck his head.

  Ch’ien-lung had not gone to bed that evening. After perusing documents in his study, entering corrections to his great poem on the city of Mukden, he ate little for his supper. But the chamberlain remarked how much wine the Emperor drank, how at the end of the meal he sat silent at the table, ordered no music, no game of morra with his favourites.

  Tightlipped, as if he did not see them, he brushed past the most graceful beauties of his harem standing in their purple gowns at the door of the dining room, summoned by Hu to enliven the Emperor’s mood. He passed the prostrate rows of eunuchs and serving girls with steps now fast, now hesitating. Once he raised his hand to the servant who followed with a lamp, uttered, “A-kuei,” pondered, waved him away.

  In his room he tried to read by the light of an oil lamp. It was a little work that Paldan Ishe had presented to him, a Tibetan text translated into Manchu, entitled The Prayer of Deliverance from the Abyss of the Intermediate State.

  He stretched out on his mattress bed after dismissing the servants, dozed off for a while with the woodframed pages, waking gazed about the tall wide room with its scent of sandalwood. His beard was crushed and matted, one cheek glowed red, his hands and feet were frozen. He sniffed. Hot bitterness stuck in his throat.

  No sound outside; it must be late. Ch’ien-lung felt his way to the edge of the uncurtained bed. His girdle was too tight; he loosed the knot and let it drop together with the broken fan and clinking ornaments onto the vermilion carpet, in which golden orchids sparkled like stars, stamped its surface with milky discs.

  He noticed that he was groaning loudly, that he must be ill again, but he noticed this only for brief moments. Then the doddering man busied himself among cabinets, mirrors and vases, sought in corners, felt with his fingers on the carpet, scratched with his thumbnail at the woven flowers, kneeling hollowed his hand and tried to scoop or scrape up the shimmering stars so he could rub them on his tongue.

  A little bronze cow grazed in a corner. Ch’ien-lung, stooping, laid his right arm, sleeve pulled up, onto the cold metal back, moved one leg and bobbed as if he were going to mount the beast.

  He picked up the Tibetan book. Sitting on the bed he turned the pages over and over and pressed them wh
impering to his breast so that the edges splintered and snapped the chain around his neck. Moaning louder he buried the paper in his face, sobbed, “Paldan Ishe, Paldan Ishe,” and with his head hidden in his left arm sent the fingers of his right hand groping blindly for the pearls that were dropping one by one from the chain, rolling across his lap.

  The old man slid to the floor after them. When he had gathered a handful he put them where his girdle lay, so that they rolled gently apart.

  Abstractedly he got to his feet, stumbled over the carpet, murmured, “Pray, Paldan Ishe, pray. They’re stealing me from here. Pray, Paldan Ishe.”

  He crept against the wall at the foot of his white bed. The wall was recessed like a cupboard: a little altar with an ancestral tablet filled the space. Ch’ien-lung shifted from side to side in front of the altar. His grizzling and groaning, in a descending scale, were like the monotonous dirge of a flogged man. The Emperor, dulleyed, tears trickling, turned towards his bed, tugged down a purple coverlet, retreated to the recess in the wall. Tangled in the cloth he stumbled, and twice stood still when pearls cracked under his feet. Then he raised the purple shroud and hung it with fumbling hands over the altar, secured it around the silver tablet.

  He sighed and dropped onto one knee, stayed thus with his head sunk on his breast, frowned now and then and raised his eyes. His lips moved a good deal.

  Just after the drums had beat the second night watch, the door moved. Ch’ien-lung watched it tensely, without lifting his head. He had thought the door locked. But it must be open, for it was visibly moving. And the loose silk panels of the tall screen near the door were fluttering. Two pearls close by his foot rolled farther off, a large pearl rolled away from the screen. When something clattered behind his back, the Emperor turned.

  A slender woman in a smoky blue gown was letting herself down from an unlit hanging lamp and her feet could not quite touch the floor. A draught came from the ceiling. The woman had climbed in through the roof.

  This wildhaired ghost swept towards Ch’ien-lung as he stood up, and cried to him as it assailed his breast, “Why are you out of bed? Why can’t you help me?”

  The Emperor shrank away in fear, apologized; he didn’t know her.

  She flung back her gown. There at her girdle hung a skein of slender cord. “Run away,” she cried. “You don’t know me? Then who are you waiting for here? My gown’s torn.”

  She scurried to the recess, eyes darting about the room. “I’ve lost my comb.” She tugged the purple shroud from the altar. The old man hurried imploring behind her.

  A thin clinking came from the ancestral tablet. Whimpering, Ch’ien-lung tried to seize her by the hands. With a mocking laugh and clicking her tongue the ghost threw a cord over one of the bronze chains of the hanging lamp, dragged the purple coverlet behinnd her so that Ch’ien-lung caught his foot on it and fell heavily to the floor; disappeared through the halfopen door.

  The Emperor pulled himself painfully upright, limped coughing, spitting, clutching his chest to the hanging lamp, climbed onto a stool, tottering wound the cord about his neck and hunching his shoulders, legs flailing, kicked the stool aside.

  When Chia-ch’ing entered the dimly lit room, the Emperor was hanging from the lamp, feet scraping the carpet. The door was open, a purple bedcover lay on the floor of the corridor outside the room, one corner across the threshold. The noose was not drawn tight. The body was sinking under its own weight, the swollen face with its gaping foamy mouth, popping eyes, was warm to the touch. Before Chia-ch’ing could find scissors in the chaotic, overheated room, the body plumped face down onto the carpet.

  Sweat itched behind Chia-ch’ing’s ears, down his neck. He loosened the cord from under Ch’ien-lung’s chin, turned the body onto its back, kneaded the bare chest, poured water from a font over its forehead. A thin layer of vapour clouded the mirror he held at the Emperor’s mouth. A creaking and rattling rose from deep in Ch’ien-lung’s lungs. The retracted eyelids flickered, the bulging eyes sank back and took on a blank glaze. His heart, which had not stopped beating, set up a fast deadly tempo without strength.

  As Chia-ch’ing with tearfilled stupid eyes sank exhausted onto the carpet and the grey of dawn replaced the red glimmer from the oil flame, the Yellow Lord propped himself up on both elbows, wheezed, coughed, stammered.

  He stood up, reeled to the window, there held and rubbed his cordwealed throat, knelt on the bed, gazing all the while uncertainly with bloodshot eyes at prostrate Chia-ch’ing. His breath laboured more harshly.

  He wanted to see this fellow closer to, the fellow sleeping so soundly there on his carpet, ha, who’d got himself caught, the lamelegged fox. He was well and truly caught; not even the watchmen had noticed anything.

  Stiffly, carefully he crept up to Chia-ch’ing, vainly trying to hold breath that whistled and sawed. Then a darkness dizzied his back, between his shoulderblades, into his skull. He keeled over onto his hands.

  Crawled on all fours, with a hellish delight crushed something that crunched under his left thumb, lifted his hand. He held it close to his eye, licked clear the fragment of pearl, spat it out. Head lolling he remained for a while bent over the fragment. A great pearl glinted just in front of him on the carpet. Ch’ien-lung’s face grew long, he opened his mouth wide. His hollowed hand crept gently towards the pearl as if he were catching flies, heaved himself forward, gaped speechless now at plump Chia-ch’ing, now at the hand beneath him. Then he felt doubtfully with his left hand for the broken empty pearlstring. And feet wide apart, balancing with outstretched arms he staggered upright towards Chia-ch’ing, pearl in one hand, chest boiling, grabbed a splintered page from a little table as he passed, stumbling lunged with curses, dull cries at Chia-ch’ing. Chia-ch’ing leapt up, screamed; they struggled.

  The Yellow Lord rasped hoarsely, “He’s broken my pearlstring, the rogue, the murderer, the fat thief.”

  He scrabbled desperately as Chia-ch’ing brought him down. “He’s trampled everything. My lovely pearls. Guard! Guard! You will bring me my chain of pearls. Murder!”

  There were sounds from the corridor; lights glimmered through the half open door. Clink of weapons. The door burst open. A whirling eunuch dragged them apart, prised fingers loose, pushed Chia-ch’ing back and punched him in the jaw. Recoiling at the sight of the throttled eyes he recognized Chia-ch’ing. Attending the reeling Ch’ien-lung, two guards. The prince, groaning, explained in breathless syllables.

  The Emperor roared on the carpet, arms grasping towards Chia-ch’ing, sobbed, wailed, showed his broken pearlstring. “Murderer! You will bring me my chain of pearls. Hold him fast!”

  The prince gulped cool air.

  He found a cord tied around the stone post, of the same kind as the cord that Ch’ien-lung had had around his neck. A dry twiggy branch was tangled in the coils. The demon had already transformed itself.

  The sickly condition into which Ch’ien-lung had fallen lasted two weeks. During this time the Emperor’s moustaches turned completely white; his face like a mummy’s.

  As he recovered, Chia-ch’ing sat by him. The Emperor had no memory of that night.

  Snow danced over the Forbidden City; the Emperor retrieved the reins of government. Then unexpectedly, in one of the huge conservatories, he brought up with his son the affair of the sects.

  Chia-ch’ing, fully briefed on the previous summer’s events, swelled with imprecations against the sectarians who disturbed and impoverished the country.

  Ch’ien-lung, with the apathy of a ruined man, announced that the ancestors had spoken ill of him, that the lama pope hadn’t been able to advise him and how difficult the whole affair was.

  Then the prince implored his father, as he led him away from the hot stove, to recollect the means by which the empire had extended its frontiers during his reign—by mildness or by military force; that Confucius and other sages had commended patience, but not against rebels. Indeed, any ruler was guilty of a crime against his subjects, who didn�
�t strike down rebellion of whatever kind with rod and sword.

  Ch’ien-lung stood with his emaciated face against a fan palm and peeled off a long strip of bark. And about what exactly, Chia-ch’ing asked, were the ancestors supposed to be annoyed and had given a sign?

  About weakness in taking the offensive, about negligence by appointed authorities; the events had been a warning; a portent that he should think of the Eighteen Provinces, and their fate that drew inexorably nearer when innovators, enthusiasts, frauds and the half mad were allowed free rein to draw the ignorant astray. And with flashing eyes Chia-ch’ing spoke urgently to the Yellow Lord, whose absent gaze often passed across his son’s plump, animated features. The entire West would fall on the Floreate Empire. Instead of Tibet being a tributary of the East, the Eighteen Provinces would be in thrall to the phantasms of visionary, uncouth priests. The lamas used subtle weapons. And how long would it be before the longnosed white men from India appeared on the scene, and the redbearded barbarians from the northern frontier with their knouts. The lustrous age-old world order of the Sage of Shantung would be lost under the wanton fantasies of western barbarians. Confucius must be defended. The sword must be unsheathed in time.

  Up and down between the palms and cacti they dragged their bodies, breathing heavily. A silver pheasant strutted before them on the dewed marble slabs; it placed its red feet with sudden condescending decision; primly it arched its blueblack neck to display the brilliance of its feathers. In front of the bushy round trunk of an oil tree Ch’ien-lung parted from his son. His sunken eyes, framed in wrinkles, gazed unhappily out. He asked Chia-ch’ing, laying a hand on his shoulder, to be present at the coming secret consultations.

  In the conferences that ensued with Chia-ch’ing, A-kuei, Song, Chao Hui, the old Emperor twisted and turned like one tired of life whom all want to save. He was loth to accept Chia-ch’ing’s blindingly obvious proposal. He had buried himself deep in hopeless perplexity, and a secret, self-tormenting pleasure kept him there. How difficult it was to decide on hope. To this was added the obscure shame of a rescued suicide faced with life.