The Treasury Of The Fantastic

by David Sandner

  You may ask: What would his wife say?—he, fortunately, had little need to consider that. He was lucky, he reflected, in the possession of such a spouse as Pu-hsi; who, though she might not tread with him his elected path, yet stood sentry at the nether end of it, so to say, without complaint or fuss. A meek little woman, lazy as to habits of mind, yet withal capable domestically, she gave him no trouble in the world; and received in return unthinking confidence and complete dependence in all material things:—as you might say, a magnanimous marital affection. His home in the fishing village was a thing not to be done without, certainly; nor yet much to be dwelt upon in the mind, by one who sought immortality. No doubt Pu-hsi felt for him the great love and reverence which was a husband’s due, and would not presume to question his actions.

  True, she had once, shortly after their marriage, mildly urged him to take his examinations and thus follow the course of nature; but a little argument had silenced her. He would let it dawn on her in her own time that there would be no more fish, either to cook or to sell. Having realized the fact she would, of course, dutifully exert herself the more to make things go as they should. There would be neither disturbance nor inconvenience, at home.

  Which things happened. But one night she examined his tackle, and discovered the unbent hook; and meditated over it for months. Then a great desire for fish came upon her; and she rose up while he slept, and bent the hook back to its proper shape with care, and baited it; and went to sleep again hoping for the best.

  Wang Tao-chen never noticed it; perhaps because, as he was gathering up his tackle to set out, a neighbor came to the door, and borrowed a net from him, promising to return it that same evening. It was an interruption which Wang resented inwardly, and the resentment made him careless, I suppose. He was far out on the lake, and had thrown his line, before composure came back to him; and it had hardly come when there was a bite to frighten it away again, and such a bite as might not be ignored. Away went the fish, and Wang Tao-chen after it; speeding over the water so swiftly that he had no thought even to drop the rod. Away and away, breathless, until noon; then suddenly the boat stopped and the line hung loose. He drew it in, and found the baited hook at the end of it untouched; and fell to pondering on the meaning of it....

  He had come into a region unknown to him, lovelier than any he had visited before. He had left the middle lake far behind, and was in the shadow of lofty hills. The water, all rippleless, mirrored the beauty of the mountains; and inshore, here reeds greener than jade, here hibiscus and oleander splendid with bloom. High up amid the pines a little blue-tiled temple glowed in the magical air. Above the bluff yonder, over whose steep sheer face little pinetrees hung jutting half-way between earth and heaven, delicate feathers of cloud, whiter than whiteness, floated in a sky bluer than blue. From the woods on the hillsides came the sound of bird-song, strangely and magically sweet; Wang Tao-chen, listening, felt a quickening of the life within him: the rising of a calm, sacred quality of life, as if he had breathed airs laden with immortality from the Garden of Siwangmu in the West. Shore and water seemed bathed in a light more vivid and tranquil than any that shone in familiar regions.

  Quickening influences in the place stirred him to curiosity, to action; and he took his oar, and began to row. He passed round the bluff, and into the bay beyond; and as he went, felt himself drawing nearer to the heart of beauty and holiness. A high, pine-clad island stood in the mouth of the bay; so that, unless close inshore, you might easily pass it undiscovered. Within, the whole being of him rose up into poetry and peace. The very air he breathed was keenness of delight and exaltation. The pines on the high hills on either side, blushed into deep and exquisite green. Blue, long-tailed birds like jewels flitted among the trees, and out from the tree-tops over the bay; the waters, clear as a diamond, glassed the wizardry of the hills and the pines, and the sweet sky with its drifting delicacy of cloudlets; glassed, too, the wonder of the lower slopes and the valley bottom: an innumerable multitude of peachtrees, red-blossomed, and now all lovely like soft clouds of sunset with bloom.

  He rowed shoreward, and on under the shadow of the peachtrees, and came to a narrow inlet, that seemed the road for him into bliss and the secret places of wonder. Here the petals fell about him in a beautiful roseate rain; even in the middle of the stream, looking upward, one could see but inches and glimpses of blueness. He went on, until a winding of the inlet brought him into the open valley: to a thinning of the trees, a house beside the water, then another and another: into the midst of a scattered village, and among a mild, august and kindly people, unlike, in fashions of dress and speech, any whom he had seen—any, he would have said, that had lived in China these many hundred years.... They had an air of radiant placidity, passionless joy and benevolence, lofty and calm thought. They appeared to have expected his coming: greeted him augustly, but with affability; showed him a house in which, they said, he might live as long as he chose. They had no news, he found, of the doings in Wei or Ch’in, and were not interested; they were without politics entirely; wars nor rumors of wars disturbed them. Here he would abide forever, thought Wang; such things were not to be found elsewhere. In this peace he would grow wise; would blossom, naturally as a flower, but into immortality. They let fall, while talking to him, sentences strangely illuminating, but strangely tantalizing too, as it seemed to him; one felt stupendous wisdom concealed: saw a gleam of it, as it were a corner trailing away: and missed the satisfaction of its wholeness. This in itself was supreme incitement; in time one would learn and penetrate all. Of course he would remain with them, forever; he would supply them with fish in gratitude for their hospitality.... Falling asleep that night, he knew that none of his days had been flawless until that one—until the latter part of it, at least.

  The bloom fell from the trees; the young fruit formed, and slowly ripened in a sunlight more caressing than any in the world of men. With their ripening, the air of the valley became more wonderful, more quickening and inspiring daily. When the first dark blush appeared on the yellow peaches, Wang Taochen walked on air, breathed joy, was as one who has heard tidings glorious and not to be expected. Transcendent thoughts had been rising in his mind continually since first he came into the valley: now, they were as luminous dragons sailing among the stars by night: liquid, gleaming, light shedding, beautiful. By his door grew a tree whose writhing branches were glassed on the water in a great bowl of purple glazed porcelain in which golden carp swam; as he came out one morning, he saw the first of the ripe peaches drop shining from its bough, and fall into the water, diffusing the sweetness of its flavor as scent on the diamond light of the young day. Silently worshiping Heaven, he picked up the floating peach, and raised it to his mouth. As he did so he heard the tread of ox-hoofs on the road above; it would be his neighbor So-and-so, who rode his ox down to drink at the inlet at that time each morning. (Strange that he should have learned none of the names of the villagers; that he should never even have thought of them as bearing names before.) As the taste of the peach fell on his palate, he looked up, and saw the ox-rider. It was Lao-tzu the Master...who had passed out of the world of mortals seven hundred years before....

  Forthwith and thenceforward the place was all new to him, and a thousand times more wonderful. The cottages were lovely pagodas of jade and porcelain, the sunlight reflected from their glaze of transparent azure and vermilion, of luminous yellow and cream and green. Through the shining skies of noon or of evening you might often see dragons floating: golden and gleaming dragons; dragons that shed a violet luminance from their wings; dragons whose hue was the essence from which the blue heaven drew its blueness, and whose passing was like the passing of a shooting star.... As for his neighbors, he knew them now for the Great Ones of old time: the men who were made one with the Tao, who had eaten the Peaches of Immortality. There were the founders of dynasties vanished millennia since: Men-Dragons and Divine Rulers: the Heaven-Kings and the Earth-Kings and the Man-Kings: all the figures that emerge in dim
radiance out of the golden haze on the horizon of Chinese pre-history, and shine there quaintly wonderful. Their bodies emitted a heavenly light; the tones of their voices were exquisite music; for their amusement they would harden snow into silver, or change the nature of the cinnabar until it became yellow gold. And sometimes they would rein the flying dragon, and visit the Fortunate Islands of the Eastern Sea; and sometimes they would mount upon the hoary crane, and soaring through the empyrean come into the Enchanted Garden of Siwangmu in the West, whence birds of azure plumage fly over the world unseen, and their singing is the love, the peace, and the immortal thoughts of mankind. Visibly those wonder-birds flew through the valley, and lighted down there, and were fed with celestial food by the villagers; that their beneficent power might be increased when they went forth among men.

  Seven years Wang Tao-chen dwelt there, enjoying the divine companionship of the Sages, hearing the divine philosophy from their lips; until his brain became clarified to the clear brightness of the diamond, and his perceptions serenely overspread the past, the present and the future, and his thoughts, even the most commonplace of them, were more luminously lovely than the inspirations of the supreme poets of the after ages. Then one morning, while he was fishing, his boat drifted out into the bay, and beyond the island into the open lake.

  And he fell to comparing his life in the valley, with his life as it might be in the outer world. Among mortals, he considered, with the knowledge he had won, he would be as a shepherd among his sheep; he might reach any pinnacle of power; he might reunite the empire, and inaugurate an age more glorious than that of Han.... But here, among these Mighty and Wise Ones, he would always be...well, was it not true that they must look down upon him? He remembered Pu-hsi, the forgotten during all these years; and thought how astounded she would be; how she would worship him more than ever, returning, so changed, after so long an absence. It would be nothing to row across, and see; and return the next day—or when the world bored him. He landed at the familiar quay in the evening, and went up with his catch to his house.

  But Pu-hsi showed no surprise at seeing him, nor any rapturous satisfaction until she saw the fish. It was a cold shock to him, but he hid his feelings. “How hast thou employed thyself during my absence?” said he. An unusual question; which she answered—guiltily, if he had noticed it—“Sir, the day has been as other days.” “The day?” he said—“the seven years?” She was still more embarrassed. But here the neighbor came to the door, to return the net he had borrowed in the morning, and to impart an item of news-gossip. “I hear,” said he, “that Ping Yang and Po Lo-hsien are setting forth for the capital tomorrow, to take their examination.” “They showd have passed—” began Wang Tao-chen, and stopped himself, leaving the “seven years ago” unsaid. Here were mysteries; he was piqued that the fisherman, no more than Pu-hsi, should a disposition to render homage to his greatness, or surprise at his return. And had he not lent the net on the morning of his setting out? He made cautious inquiries as to events of this year and last year; and the answers set his head spinning. Had he dreamed the whole seven years then, and dreamed them in a day? By all the glory of which they were compact; by the immortal energy he felt in his spirit and veins, no! He would prove their truth to himself; and he would prove himself to the world! He too, would go up and take the examination.

  He did, and left all competitors to marvel: passed so brilliantly that all Ch’in was talking of it; and returned to find that his wife had fled with a lover. Well, she should repent; she should learn what great one she had deserted. Without delay he took examination after examination; and before the year was out was hailed everywhere as the most brilliant of rising stars. Promotion followed promotion, till the Son of Heaven called him to be Prince Minister. At every success he laughed to himself; who now could doubt that he had lived in the valley with the Immortals? His fame spread through all the Chinas; he was courted by the emissaries of powerful kings. Yet nothing would content him; he must prove his grand memory still further; so he went feeding his ambition with greater and greater triumphs. Heading the army, he drove back Wei across the Hoangho, and imposed his will on the west and north. The time was almost at hand, men said, when the Blackhaired People should be one again, under the founder of a new and most mighty dynasty.

  And still he was dissatisfied: he found no companionship in his greatness; no one whom he loved or trusted, none to give him love or trust. His emperor was but a puppet in his hands, down to whose level he must painfully diminish his inward stature; his wife—the emperor’s daughter—flattered and feared, and withal despised him. The whole world sang his praises and plotted against him busily; he discovered the plots, punished the plotters, and filled the world with his splendid activities. And all the while a voice was crying in his heart: In Red-Peach-Blossom Inlet Valley you had peace, companionship, joy.

  Twenty years passed, and his star was still in the ascendant; it was whispered that he was certainly no common mortal, but a genie, or a Sennin, possessor of the Tao. For lie grew no older as the years went by, but still had the semblance of young manhood, as on the day he returned from the Valley. And now the Son of Heaven was dying, and there was no heir to the throne but a sickly and vicious boy; and all the Chinas had but one expectation: that the great Wang Tao-chen should assume the Yellow.

  It was night, and he sat in his library, waiting events; homesickness weighing down his soul. There the great court functionaries found him; they came bearing the Yellow Robe, and brought with them the ambassadors of all the states. Let him proclaim himself emperor; the dynasty had clearly exhausted the mandate of heaven, and the people everywhere were crying out for reunion under him, for an end of dissensions, and the revival of the ancient glories of Han. He knew that not one of them spoke from his heart, nor voiced his own desire; but had come as deeming it politic to anticipate the inevitable. He saw no one among them to whom he could speak the thoughts of his mind, no one who had the greatness to understand. He saw polite enmity and fear under their bland expressions, and heard it beneath their courtly phrases of flattery. To be Son of Heaven—among such courtiers as these!

  But in Red-Peach-Blossom Inlet Valley one might talk daily with Tao the Master and with Such-all-One; with the Duke of Chow and with Muh Wang; with the Royal Lady of the West; with Yao, Shun and Yu themselves, those stainless Sovereigns of the Golden Age; with Fu-hsi the Man-Dragon Emperor, and his Seven Dragon Ministers; with the Monarchs of the Three August Periods of the world-dawn: the Heaven-Kings and the Earth-Kings and the Man-Kings....

  Tears rose in the heart of Wang Tao-chen as he went through the courtly forms of dismissing the emissaries. He would give them their answer in the morning; tonight must be devoted to consulting the Gods. As soon as they had gone he did off his robes of state, and donned his old fisherman’s costume, and fled out of the palace and from the capital, and set his face westward towards the shores of Lake Tao-ting. He would get a boat, and put off on the lake, and come to Red-Peach-Blossom Inlet Valley again; and he would dwell there in bliss forever, humbly glad to be the least of that divine companionship. The least? Yes, although he had won a name for himself now, and a great place in history; the Immortals would not wholly look down upon him now. And he knew that his life there would be forever; he knew that he had eaten of the Peaches of Immortality, and could not die....

  He came to his native village, where no one knew him now; and bought a boat and fishing-tackle with the last of the money he had brought with him. He put off from the little quay in the early morning, and followed the course he had taken so many years before. In due time he came to the further shore, and to one bluff after another that he thought he recognized; but rounding it, found no island, no bay, no grove of red-blossomed peaches. The place must be farther on...and farther on.... Sometimes there would be an island, but not the island; sometimes a bay, but not the bay; sometimes an island and a bay that would pass, and even peachtrees; but there was no inlet running in beneath the trees, with quiet wa
ters lovely with a rain of petals—least of all a red rain. Then he remembered the great fish that had drawn him into that sacred vicinity; and threw his line, fixing his hopes on that...fixing his desperate hopes on that....

  All of which happened sixteen hundred years ago. Yet still sometimes, they say, the fishermen on Lake Tao-ting, in the shadowy hours of the evening, or when night has overtaken them far out on the waters, will hear a whisper near at hand: a whisper out of vacuity, from no boat visible: a breathless, despairing whisper: It was here—surely it was here.—No, no it must have been yonder! And sometimes it is given to some few of them to see an old, crazy boat mouldering away—one would say the mere ghost of a boat dead ages since, but still by some magic floating; and in it a man dressed in the rags of an ancient costume, on whose still young face is to be seen unearthly longing and immortal sadness, and an unutterable despair that persists in hoping. His line is thrown; he goes swiftly by, straining terrible eyes on the water, and whispering always: It was here...surely it was here.... No, no it was yonder... it was yonder....

  MARK TWAIN

  The Mysterious Stranger

  Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) was born in Hannibal, Missouri. He is a major American writer who worked as a satirist, journalist, and novelist. His Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered one of the finest American novels ever written. He is also famous for numerous other novels, short stories, and satirical sketches.