by Lao She
She lifted her head once more, eyes fixed in a dead stare, ‘Wife of an ambassador, a woman who has been abroad, who doesn’t eat reverie leaves. And my reward from the amperor! My honorary tablet! Wife of an ambassador . . .’ Madam Ambassador’s head dropped down again. Her body sank slowly sideways to the ground, and came to rest between two of the others.
FREE LOVE AND OTHER THINGS
I WAS extremely downcast, for the widow’s lament had made me weep for all the women of who knows how many past centuries. I felt as though my hands were resting on the very darkest pages of Cat Country’s history, a history that I was afraid to go on reading.
Not going to the foreign enclave had been a mistake, for now I was once again a homeless ghost. Where would I go? The cat-men who had helped with the house were still watching me. They were probably waiting around to see if they could get any more money. To be sure, they had already looted everything that Madam Ambassador had owned, but apparently that still wasn’t enough to diminish their desire to come by a few more National Souls. My head ached terribly and two of my teeth had been loosened in the fall. I was finding it difficult to think clearly. Something in the back of my mind warned me that I was going to be ill. I took my pocketful of National Souls, in denominations of ten and five, and threw them all on the ground. Let the cat-men decide how it should be divided up or stolen, for I certainly didn’t have the heart or energy to supervise.
There was no hope for the eight vixens, and now Madam Ambassador was finished too. A puddle of blood flowed out from under her body, but her eyes were still open as though, even in death, she still wanted to keep watch over those eight little sexpots. I knew that if I didn’t bury them, no one else would, and yet there was nothing I could do. I was afflicted by such intense grief and disappointment that I almost felt like ending my own existence.
I sat on the ground for a while. Then, looking at those bodies again, I felt that I’d just have to get out of there. I was totally drained and almost too exhausted to move, but I simply couldn’t watch the women rot away before my very eyes, and so I left. Limping and hobbling alone in a most unsightly way, I probably lost a good deal of face for the entire foreign community. The street was crowded again.
I noticed a group of young people going from house to house with chalk, writing on the walls. The walls were still so damp that the words were not visible when they were first written but then a breeze would blow and dry the chalk to whiteness: SANITATION MOVEMENT. And then on every house appeared the words: EVERYTHING HAS BEEN WASHED CLEAN HERE. Although my head was throbbing, I couldn’t help roaring with laughter. The Cat People really knew how to get things done! What better time to advocate cleaning up the whole city than right after a violent rainstorm? The intense rain had even cleared out the stinking ditch in the centre of town. Sanitation movement – that was a laugh! I must have been slightly out of my head, myself, for I felt a strong urge to draw my pistol and shoot a few of the chalk-toting bastards.
I seemed to remember Young Scorpion’s having told me that the buildings over there were cultural agencies. I wound my way around to that side, not to visit the cultural agencies, but just to find a quiet place where I could rest and pull myself together. I couldn’t break myself out of the habit of thinking that buildings on a city street ought to be arranged facing each other, rather than laid out back to back in a single line as they were here. Pondering the novelty of this unique arrangement made me forget my headache a bit. Such a layout well suited the Cat People, for they didn’t care about fresh air and light in the first place. The buildings were all back to back without even breathing space between them; rather than calling it a street, it would be more accurate to describe it as a giant brewery for disease. My headache returned. Falling ill in a foreign country is apt to make one particularly despondent, and I am no exception. I began to feel that I should never get back to China alive.
I didn’t have time to be too fussy about where I sat down to rest, so I simply collapsed at the first cool, shady spot that I found. I have no idea how long I slept, but when I awoke I found myself in an immaculately clean room. I thought that I was either dreaming, or else experiencing hallucinations brought on by my high fever. I felt my head. It didn’t feel hot any more. I was utterly at a loss. Still feeling somewhat weak, I closed my eyes again. Then, conscious of light footsteps in the room, I opened them briefly to sneak a look. It was the Revery who was ‘more intoxicating than reverie leaves’. She came over, felt my temples, and gently nodded her head. ‘He’s better,’ she said to herself. I didn’t dare open my eyes again. I decided to simply wait for the facts to explain themselves. Before long, Young Scorpion came and I began to feel a bit more secure.
‘How is he?’ I heard him ask Revery in a low voice. Before she had a chance to reply, I forced open my eyes.
‘Are you better,’ he asked. I struggled to a sitting position.
‘Is this your room?’ My curiosity was returning.
‘It’s our room,’ he said, pointing to Revery. ‘I thought of asking you to come and live here in the first place, but I was afraid that father wouldn’t approve; after all, you are father’s man, or at least that’s what he thinks. He doesn’t want me to fraternise with you because he says that I’ve already picked up too many foreign ways.’
‘My thanks to both of you.’ I surveyed the room again.
‘You’re probably wondering why it’s so clean. That’s one of my foreign ways that father objects to.’ Both Young Scorpion and Revery laughed.
Come to think of it, Young Scorpion really did have a strong foreign flavour about him. Judging from his speech alone, he must have picked up a lot of additional vocabulary from foreign tongues, for in conversation he used about twice as many words as his father did.
‘Is this your home?’ I asked them.
‘This is the office of one of the cultural agencies. We simply moved in and took it over. A man with enough prestige can occupy the buildings of any agency he wants to. Since we have kept this place spotlessly clean, I think we have nothing to be ashamed of with regard to the agency. No one else seems to bother themselves with the question of whether or not private people ought to occupy public property, so we don’t concern ourselves with it either. “Muddling through” – that’s the best way to describe our situation. Revery, why don’t you give our friend some more reverie leaves.’
‘You mean I’ve already eaten some?’
‘If we hadn’t got some reverie broth into you, you wouldn’t have come to yet. Reverie leaves make excellent medicine. As a matter of fact, the reverie leaf is the king of drugs here. No matter what you have, there’s always the hope that the leaf can cure it. If you have a disease that can’t be treated with reverie leaves, you might as well lie down and pull the sheet up over your head. Although the leaf can cure a number of serious diseases, it does have one peculiarity: it will cure an individual, but it will kill a whole society. That’s one kink that we haven’t worked out of it yet.’ Young Scorpion took on the air of a philosopher again.
After I had eaten some more of the reverie leaves I was in much better spirits, but I no longer felt like doing anything. I began to appreciate the wisdom of the people from Light Country: there really was good reason for their living in their own enclave apart from Cat Country. For once you got too close, the place seemed to grab you fast and drag you down against your will. Cat Country was like an undertow in the ocean: get too close to it, and you’d be sucked in. If you wanted to sojourn in Cat Country, then you had to become a cat-man without any reservations; if you were unwilling to do that, then you’d better not go there in the first place. I had done all that I possibly could to avoid eating the leaf, and what was the result of all my resolve and effort? I, too, ended up eating the leaf. There seemed to be an absolute law at work: stay in Cat Country, eat the leaf; don’t eat the leaf, don’t stay in Cat Country.
If this civilisation were ever to conquer all of Mars – and there were probably quite a few Cat People wh
o cherished this pipe dream – then it wouldn’t be long until the dissolution of the whole planet. Filth, disease, chaos, stupidity, darkness – these were the only distinguishing characteristics of this civilisation. Although one could spot a pinpoint of light here and there, that tiny bit of light was certainly no match for so much darkness. Unless someone did something, the power of darkness would inevitably overwhelm Cat Country. And yet the Cat People themselves didn’t seem the least bit conscious of their impending doom. Perhaps Young Scorpion was conscious of this approaching night, and seeing that the game was already lost, had begun to toy with his pieces while laughing at his own defeat. As for his father and the rest of the people – well, the kindest thing one could say is that they were still dreaming. I had a million questions for Young Scorpion regarding education, the military, finance, produce, society, the family, politics . . .
‘I don’t understand politics,’ he said. ‘Father specialises in politics, why don’t you go and ask him? As for the rest of the things you’re interested in, there are some that I know about and some that I don’t. The best thing is to go and see for yourself. Then when you’ve seen what you want, come to me if you have any questions. Cultural enterprise is the only area that I’m up in. Father has a finger in every “enterprise”, but since he can’t oversee all of them himself, I take care of the cultural ones. If you want to see schools, museums of natural history or libraries, just say the word and I’ll arrange it so that you’ll get your fill.’
His words did even more for me than a big dose of reverie leaves. If I had political questions, I could go to Old Scorpion; if I had questions related to culture, I could go to Young Scorpion. With two such informants to rely on, I could be sure of gaining a fair knowledge of Cat Country.
I wondered if he intended to put me up indefinitely. I didn’t dare ask, for to tell the truth, I didn’t have the slightest intention of leaving this clean room if I could possibly help it. I really wanted to ask to stay but I simply couldn’t bring myself to pant before them and wag my tail like a fawning puppy. I would wait. Young Scorpion asked me what I would like to see first. I’m ashamed to say that the leaves had made me so lethargic that I didn’t feel like moving.
‘Why don’t you tell me a little about your own history?’ I said. I hoped that I would be able to learn a bit more about his father as well as himself. Young Scorpion smiled. Every time he smiled, I felt he was somehow lovable and despicable at the same time.
Young Scorpion was painfully aware that he was superior to other Cat People, and for that reason he didn’t want anything to do with them for fear of soiling his hands. He acted as though he felt that being born in Cat Country was a personal misfortune, and often spoke as though he were the only rose in a bunch of thorns. This was a part of him that I didn’t like.
‘My parents gave birth to me,’Young Scorpion started speaking as Revery sat down to one side and gazed into his eyes, ‘but that has nothing to do with me. They loved me very much, but that has nothing to do with me either. My grandfather loved me very much too, but then all grandfathers love their grandsons, so there was nothing very remarkable in that either. It seems that there’s really not much that’s worth telling about my childhood.’ Musing back over the years, Young Scorpion raised his head slightly, and Revery raised hers too in order to continue gazing into his eyes.
‘Wait, there is one minor event that’s probably worth your hearing about, even if it is not worth my telling about. My wet nurse was a prostitute. Although it is considered quite proper among us for a prostitute to be a wet nurse, I was not allowed to play with any other child. This was a part of the “special education” given in our family. Why insist on a prostitute to look after the children? Well, we had money for one thing. We have a saying, “Even devils are attracted by money.” Well, my wet nurse was one of those devils. Getting a whore for a wet nurse had been my grandfather’s idea, for he felt it was best to have soldiers look after girls and prostitutes look after boys, the reason being that they will soon communicate knowledge of sex to their wards. Their wards, in turn, having a thorough knowledge of the ways of man and maid, will marry early and produce offspring. And what better way is there to do justice to the ancestors than that? In addition to the prostitute, I had five teachers who taught me to read – five wooden excuses for men who taught me all the wisdom of Cat Country. Then one day one of my wooden mentors unbent a bit and ran away with my wet nurse, an indiscretion that resulted in the expulsion of his four wooden colleagues.
‘Father sent me abroad when I grew up, for father thought that anyone who knew a few words of a foreign tongue must be omniscient, and he could well use an omniscient son. After four years I came back home, but much to father’s dismay, I hadn’t learned anything. I had only succeeded in picking up a few foreign mannerisms. This, however, in no way diminished his paternal affection for me, and he continued giving me money as usual. And what did I do? Well, I was happy to have the money to spend and passed my days making merry with Star, Blossom, Revery and the other girls. Outwardly I was my father’s Lieutenant in Charge of Cultural Enterprises; in reality, I was nothing more than a parasite. I wouldn’t lower myself by committing evil, but I was equally incapable of doing good. “Muddling through” – the more I milk that precious expression, the more cream I get out of it.’ He laughed, and Revery laughed with him.
‘Revery is a friend,’Young Scorpion had again guessed what I was thinking, ‘a friend with whom I live. This is another of my foreign mannerisms. I have a wife at home to whom I was married when I was twelve. My prostitute wet nurse taught me all there was to know when I was six, so by the time I reached twelve, of course, I was anything but a stranger to the game. My wife is so talented that she can do almost anything, especially breed children – an excellent woman according to my father. And yet I preferred Revery.
‘Father was quite amenable to my taking her into the house as a concubine, but I wasn’t willing to do that. Since he has a dozen concubines himself, he sees taking concubines as perfectly normal behaviour, but he can’t forgive her for simply choosing to live with me. Me, he can excuse, because my arrangement with Revery is one of the foreign mannerisms that I picked up abroad and he recognises the existence of such alternative arrangements, even though he may not approve of them. Grandfather, on the other hand, hates us both equally, for he simply doesn’t recognise the existence of any foreign customs that might be brought forward to excuse my behaviour. Grandfather doesn’t object to our relationship for any ill effect it might have on either of us personally, but he does object to it because of the example that we set for the youth of Cat Country.
‘You probably know that we Cat People look upon the relationship between man and maid as existing purely and simply for that kind of business. One takes a wife for that; and it’s for that that one takes a concubine too; and why does one visit prostitutes if not for that? And this business of free love that modern people make such a fuss over these days is, after all, still only for that. Once one has had enough reverie leaves to eat, then one’s thoughts turn to that.
‘Grandfather may have something in disliking me. You see I am a model to the youth of Cat Country, and it was I who set the precedent for marrying first, and then practising “free love” afterwards. It’s for this reason, too, that the old people hate me down to the very marrow of my bones. You see, under the old custom of taking a first wife and then a series of concubines, it was clearly understood that the whole business was only for that to begin with, hence everybody – wives and concubines as well – could live together in perfect harmony. A little that here and a little that there resulted in the birth of many children, and that was all to the good.
‘But this business of “free love” is sticky. To begin with, if you have a wife at home, you can’t very well throw her out to take your “free lover” in; and your “free lover”, on her part, is not likely to be willing to enter your household as a concubine. Thus, you have to establish her in a separate ménage
. These days, if you don’t set up a separate place, you aren’t considered authentically foreign in your mode of life, but it was Revery and I who started this fad. But because of the double ménage arrangement, “free” love has become quite expensive, and some of the old folks feel they can’t afford it. But when they don’t provide the young with sufficient money to carry on the new fad, terrible family quarrels occur. Thus you see, Revery and I carry quite a heavy burden of guilt.’
‘Couldn’t you just make a complete break with the old family system?’ I asked.
‘No, that wouldn’t do at all! We wouldn’t have any money! “Free love” may be an admirable foreign custom, but there is an important native one that takes precedence over it: asking the old folks for money. Besides, if it weren’t for the disharmony produced by the conflict of native and foreign customs, where would we get such good material for practising our “muddling through”?’
‘Can’t the old people come up with any good way out of the impasse?’
‘Now what in the world would you expect them to come up with? They start from the premise that women were only made for that to begin with anyway. Since they take concubines themselves, and approve of their children taking concubines, they are in no position to forbid “free love”. There is nothing that they, we, or anyone else can do.
‘The chief result of taking wives, concubines and practising “free love” is an increasing number of children. The problem is, who is going to be responsible for the nurture of so many children? Neither we, the old people, nor anyone else has the answer to that one. We are always worried about the question of where to get some more of that, but we never concern ourselves with the question of our own children. The older men break their necks in taking concubines; the younger ones break their necks in making “free love”. On the surface of it, there’s a great deal of competition between the two systems, but in reality the whole thing is only for that anyway, and the result of all that is more little cat-men with nobody to look after them, nobody to feed them, and nobody to educate them. This is what we call “giant-size muddling through”. My grandfather muddles through. My father muddles through. I muddle through. And all of our youth muddle through. The single most hated expression in all of our Felinese language is “taking things seriously”.’