by Alex Miller
Hangzhou is no longer safe, Feng shouted at her. You may bring your parent and his servant with you to Shanghai if you wish. He meant it. The offer was a genuine one. He wasn’t sure whether he heard her thank him for this or whether she said something unrelated. The waves of static crackled and hissed and approached and broke on a pebbly shore and receded again. He hung up.
He frowned hard at the telephone, as if it had offended him, his lips pushed out like those of a wooden African idol. He had been caught off guard by an uncertainty. Children were surely akin to insects. They changed swiftly and unrecognisably from one form to another. The metamorphoses of larvae. He was not sure, now that he was to be brought face to face with it, what he might expect from himself. He could not place within himself the certainty that he was a father. There were the two dead sons reposing side by side on their white sheet and there was the ideal son of his innermost companionship. And now there was to be the real, the actual, boy who would be returning from Hangzhou within a day or so. (His numerous daughters Feng did not consider as having required from him real fatherhood, but a kind of careful guardianship, which he was certain he had fulfilled. His affection for certain of his daughters, as for his first wife, was deep and abiding.)
Just as he was beginning to touch on this interesting question, the question of what he might locate within himself of fatherhood if only he were to search, a question, indeed, concerning his own nature, Feng did a very characteristic thing. He abandoned the enquiry before he had properly got it under way and turned his attention to the business of the day.
It was not a simple absence of curiosity about himself, however, that prompted Feng to lose interest in this inward line of thought – in certain matters he was prepared to examine himself minutely – it was a distrust, rather, of the associative processes of thought on the abstract level, a distrust, indeed a fear, of where he might be led by such enquiry. It was the abstract, not the inward, that he spurned. If he had been a European navigator in the fifteenth century, Feng would not have discovered the New World. He would have sailed his craft always within sight of familiar features on the landward side. He would have kept within sight of features that he could confidently put a name to. The empty horizon was a nameless horizon and did not attract him. And whenever he happened inadvertently to glance towards it, as now, he sensed the threat its namelessness presented to the particular configuration of familiar elements which determined the direction and conduct of his life. The risk ‘out there’ was too general. It was not calculable, its boundaries were undetermined, and it was not acceptable to him. After all, one might find nothing in that direction. The abstract horizon was an horizon of absence for Feng, for that which has no name may not exist, may be, indeed, a mere illusion. There could be no guarantee that the empty horizon would not remain empty if one ventured over it. So he had chosen to stay at home, bounded in his thoughts as well as in his body by present reality, by the familiar.
August Spiess had written in his journal that Feng was too large a character to be dealt with in its pages. But the truth was rather the opposite. Feng was limited, and his limitations were largely self-imposed.
Among the business of the day to which he now returned his thoughts, from this inadvertent glance towards the nameless terrors of the abstract horizon, was the mundane but pressing matter of his son’s education. He had never consulted Lien about his plans for the boy’s schooling in Australia. He was not vindictive. Ten years ago her challenge had dismayed and surprised him, it had caught him off his guard, but he had observed it until he had felt reassured of countering it. He had not reacted to her challenge, then or since. He had done nothing. There had been nothing to do. He was certain, however, that she had come to an understanding of the direction of his intentions, even as he had himself. It was even possible that August had disclosed his exact plans to her once they had been formulated. (He had been kept informed of the occasional correspondence which had passed between his wife and his friend since the birth of the boy. He did not object to it. He did not feel threatened or betrayed by it. And he did not mention his knowledge of it to either of them. For it had been one of the many silent conduits of information he had relied on for his exact knowledge of his environment. It was only the unknown that troubled Feng. The known, he believed, might be controlled, and therefore used to further his purposes.)
August had agreed enthusiastically to accompany the boy to Australia, and to remain there with him long enough to see him happily settled at boarding school and established in a useful intercourse with his Australian relations.
I shall miss you, August, Feng had been moved to admit on seeing the unexpected ardour of his friend’s desire to be of service. He had expected to have to convince. He had not really meant that he would miss him. It was not that, but he had not known how else to express the emotion his gratitude had aroused. I envy you. I wish I could go myself. And he had talked at length of Australia and his grandfather and had produced a large, square, sepia photograph from a drawer in his desk.
My grandfather’s house in Melbourne. They examined the photograph together. An imposing two-storey brick villa set in newly landscaped grounds, the trees and shrubs no taller than the people. A European woman in an elaborate white dress, ornamented with much passementerie and variously hued trimmings, posed elegantly on the verandah, her hands clasped loosely before her, her gaze direct and filled with assurance and authority. Behind her, in the shadows, a nanny held a toddler by the hand.
Standing on the gravel path below the woman was a Chinese of about forty years of age. He, also, was elegantly attired, his London frock coat of mid-thigh length was held open by his having his hand thrust into his trouser pocket. By this means a good expanse of double-breasted waistcoat of the same light colour as his trousers was revealed. On his head he wore a tall glossy top hat and in his right hand he carried a slim cane. He was looking directly into the camera with his good left eye. Over his right eye he wore a patch. Above his hat someone had unnecessarily inked a small X. My grandfather, Feng disclosed with awkward pride, placing his finger under the image of the man.
They looked at the photograph a while longer and August asked questions. My aunt, Victoria, his youngest daughter, still lives at the house. I shall write and tell her to expect a visit from you. It will be a great adventure, August. Beneath the photograph was the simple copperplate inscription Coppin Grove, 1876.
THE GIFT OF DEATH
Huang did not recover from the mysterious disappearance of his family’s ancestral cosmic mirror and the book of the ancestors. These ritual artefacts had been entrusted to his care when he was a youthful scholar of twenty. They had been in his keeping for more than fifty years. He took the blow of their loss as though the gods themselves had judged him unworthy and had removed these sacred objects from him and set him adrift. His subterfuge, his making a son of his daughter, had evidently angered them so deeply that they were determined to permit him no reconciliation with his ancestors. Despite his visits to the shrine, he was not to be forgiven. This was their answer to his attempt to reform himself. It was finished. It was the end of the family. His life’s course had been irremediably perverted by a selfish illusion. He feared death now more than ever, for he believed it certain he would be transformed into a disfigured ghost for all eternity.
He waited. He did nothing. He expected to die. He was expected to die. But he lingered, paused between life and death. He was silent. No one could guess the extent of his surviving capacities. He suffered Yu to dress him and to bathe him, to feed him and to massage his joints and muscles and to apply remedies to their pitiful aches and pains. But nothing could penetrate to the anguish in his spirit. There was no balm for that. He was a man condemned by his own tribe. His gods had pointed at him and cursed him. Their Word had fallen from him. His end would not be sudden. He withered, like an old tree whose tap root has been severed by a blow from an axe. He was to be culled. He was to be unlinked from the continuum. He could feel the bus
y fingers of death within him unpicking the brilliant cope of being. Gaps, like empty sockets where eyes had once glowed with understanding, had begun to appear in his memory of the poets. With horror he observed the steady progress of death and could do nothing to abate it.
When she could no longer hear his voice she hung up. Feng’s order to leave Hangzhou had numbed her. She had no counter for it. She saw that her father was weeping silently, the tears running freely down his face, his gaze unseeing, his body motionless as ice. If it had not been for his tears she might have thought him dead.
She called to Yu and offered him a cigarette. He came out from behind his blue screen and stood by her at the open casement. She lit his cigarette for him. They smoked and looked out on the formal garden. The day was hot and still and heavy. At length she said, I have lost.
Yu said nothing. He puffed his cigarette and closed his eyes and felt the pleasure of the dark smoke curling through his lungs. Then he groaned and coughed and ventured the reply, One cannot claim to have lost until one has ceased to fight. In order to succeed, it is simply necessary to survive one’s failures.
She laughed despite herself. Haven’t you something better for me than the wisdom of old men, Yu?
You are young, he said. It is a temporary setback.
Feng will send my son to Australia. It will be ten years before I see him again. By then he will be a man. In Australia he will learn to despise China. It will turn him against me.
Yu said severely, No one, not even you, can predict the future with certainty. To speak of ten years hence with such confidence is not the thought of an intelligent person. Ten days even! Who would be foolish enough to say what is to happen in ten days? Remember your demon! What has happened to your demon? Slap his face and wake him up. Why look to the moment of your son’s return to China in ten years? If you must look into the future, why not look twenty years into it, when he will have been home already for ten years? Why not thirty, by which time you will have both forgotten the influence of Australia? You are young. You are not yet thirty. It will all pass quickly. Do you remember the pain you suffered at his birth ten years ago? Well that was yesterday. I remember that night as if it were last night. Ten, twenty, thirty, years! What is the difference? Feng will die. Men die. He will fall from favour. It is not the wisdom of old men to say that you must deal with each day as it comes to you and not with all your days at once, but is merely common sense. It is extremely foolish to give up on a day when things are going so badly for you. At least wait until tomorrow. Who knows, perhaps the Communists will shoot Feng before he can send your son to Australia. This is not the time for you to tell me you have lost. We all lose. That is not the point.
Yu suddenly fell silent, as if he thought he might say too much. He gazed at Huang. When does he tell you to return to Shanghai?
He has given us three days, she said.
They looked into each other’s eyes. Ah, three days. He was dismayed. He would never see her again. The two old roosters with the golden chick. It was all only yesterday.
She didn’t mention Feng’s invitation.
Once we did not smoke our cigarettes in his presence, Yu said sadly. Where has our respect for him gone? They looked at Huang, silent and tearful in his scholar’s chair. After a minute Yu said, Why don’t you turn your son against Australia first? All the greatest battles of history were fought in one day. You have three days.
All civilised people know there is Heaven and there is Hell, but only a fool expects to encounter enlightenment in the darkness of Hell. The blind storyteller gazed around the scholar’s study with an expression of extraordinary arrogance, an air of superiority which betokened an inspection of decidedly inferior persons.
Were there others about the place, then, Lang wondered, besides himself and his grandfather and Yu? For surely such a large expression could not be intended solely for them? Were not invisible presences concealed in the dark corners of the study and beyond the casements in the gallery, and out beyond the gallery in the garden itself, squatting artfully to blend their shadows with those of the rocks? Other listeners to the story? Did they also fear the seer’s contempt as he did?
Lang did not question that the quality of sight vouchsafed the blind man was more penetrating and far-seeing than that of ordinary mortals such as himself, who could see no further than the four walls that encompassed them, or to the nearest horizon, but not through the walls or over the horizon, and, indeed, into the past and into the future as the storyteller could; for, being blind to the obstruction of material objects, the features of present reality did not impede his view. Lang gazed at him with a mixture of fear and expectation.
It is too dark in Hell to see anything much at all, the blind man went on in his contemptuous tone, as if he were speaking to idiots. That is why, once you have arrived in Hell, it is so very difficult to find your way out of it again. Nearly impossible. Hell is a destination. It is not a place on the way to somewhere else. Hell is not for travellers but for those who have done with travelling. One does not pause there, but stays there forever. That is the horror of it. Naturally enough, it is situated neither quite in the East nor quite in the West, but is located in an indeterminate place somewhere between the two. Hell is a paradox and is unresolvable and those who dwell in it suffer the continuous pangs of desire and loathing in equal proportions.
He completed his prolegomena and sucked phlegm from his nostrils into the back of his throat and loosed it with careless accuracy into a turquoise jar before his chair. He held out his teacup to be refilled. His torn sleeve fell away, revealing a forearm that resembled a darkly roasted shank of sinewy meat, the leg of a half-starved billy goat. Yu came forward and filled the cup to the brim with the steaming fragrant brew. Neither Yu nor Lang thought to question the storyteller on just how he came to know so much about Hell. His words did not invite questioning. He possessed the confidence of his words. He was their intimate and knew them well.
Lang watched the blind man noisily suck the tea, and he drew the snow leopard’s skin closer around his shoulders and curled his legs under him more tightly on the ample seat of the chair. The summer evening was mild. It was not for its warmth that he wore the leopard’s skin, but the reassurance of its familiar touch. No doubt there was to be in the story some relief from the meanness of familiar things, and perhaps an element of instruction also. That much was to be expected from a storyteller. It was certainly for this reason his mother had invited the blind man to sit with them this evening. But the storyteller’s choice of words made Lang suspect that something more was intended than mere distraction and homily on this occasion. He felt himself personally singled out for the blind man’s rhetorical attention. The ‘indeterminate’ location of Hell could scarcely, it seemed to him, have been an entirely gratuitous choice of phrase. He pulled the snow leopard’s fur around his shoulders more snugly because he knew the storyteller could see into the secrets of his inner life, and there was a coldness, a cruel detachment, in the blind man’s gaze.
The storyteller banged his empty teacup on the table beside him. Huang’s head jerked upward, his eyes wide with alarm. Now to our tale! How can a starving orphan boy become a great and powerful merchant of the living cargo without the intervention of demonic forces? the blind man asked with an artful flourish of his pink tongue. The boy in question was ten years old. He had just reached his majority when we encounter him on his journey. He had been travelling for several weeks after his mother and father and his sisters and brothers and all his relatives in the village had been put to death by members of The Society for Peace, who were waging a war at that time against the opium smugglers of Nanhiung-chou.
Just as a corpse left unburied for a few days seethes with a mighty colony of maggots, so the Middle Kingdom seethed with war and banditry and opportunism in the aftermath of the first opium war, and in the West it was the year of revolution. The World had forgotten peace and the victims of war were to be seen everywhere.
Starvat
ion and wounds had made the boy so weak that he could scarcely stand. But for some reason unknown even to himself he kept going. He did not give up. His perseverence was unnatural. It was inspired and feverish, not reasoned. He travelled, poor fool, as if he believed there was to be a bountiful end to his journey. But how could that be, for there is a bountiful end to no one’s journey who travels alone. He owned nothing but the filthy rag that covered his privacy. In his delirium he had even forgotten his name, and as he was the sole survivor of his clan this was probably just as well for him.
Anyway, one road let him to another as it invariably does, until he reached the great highway that leads to the sea. On this mighty road the crowd of lost and disconnected refugees moved like an endless flood that is fed by a constant deluge high in the regions of its catchment. The noise was of a thousand voices calling to lost loved ones and for the assistance of the gods. To keep themselves and their sons alive many parents butchered their daughters and cooked the flesh by the roadside. And such was the extremity of the case that no mother attempted to hide this act from those who passed by. And none of those seeing it paused to remark on it.
On the wharf that stretched out over the sea at the end of the road, the Lord of Death waited, observing her pilgrims with great interest. When she saw the nameless boy coming towards her, she perceived at once that there was something about him to be valued. It was this: although the world of the living had rejected him so completely that it no longer even deigned to favour him with a name of his own, he had not given up the quest for meaning. He had not succumbed to despair. Though nameless and without a family he did not consider himself to be without worth. Rarely had Shinje seen such a wilful desire for life as this. She saw that such intuitive determination might be put to work, and she decided to recruit him to her cause.
The sea lay before him. He had come from the wooded mountains and for the first time in his life he gazed upon a horizon that was without vertical features. He was so impressed by the magnitude of what he saw, so attracted by the vertiginous magnetism of this horizontal depth that he forgot his hunger and his wounds and he stood on the wharf gazing in wonderment upon the twinkling expanse, which heaved and undulated and rippled, and seemed to tremble with a deep responsiveness that made him sway towards it. The hidden illumination of the sea bewitched him. Even the air seemed lighter and to wish to lift him up.