The Book of Crows

by Sam Meekings

  ‘Ask a man if he loves his country and he will swear he does, but ask him if he loves his neighbour, and the answer may be quite different. And yet what is a country but a collection of neighbours? How can we serve our country without first looking after the people within it? The Confucians tell us that we each must look to our superior for guidance – the son to the father, the student to the teacher, the citizen to the emperor. And yet I tell you this: we must look to the men beneath us, and learn from them. If we solve the problems of the farmers, the workers, the labourers, everything else will flow from there.’

  The elderly merchant nodded.

  ‘There is wisdom in your words, friend. But how am I to go about helping these men?’

  ‘You ask them.’

  He looked at me as if I had uttered some deep heresy, as if the rice wine had utterly ruined my mind.

  ‘Ask them?’

  ‘Yes. You were once one of them, and you knew better than anyone what you needed: shelter from the elements, a safe pen to keep your flock in, and so on. Ask them what they need. I pride myself on being a spiritual man, but sustenance cannot come from temples alone. Instead of paying for a new pagoda, you might invest in a mill wheel, say, or pay for a small dock to be built here on the river. Give them something they can use and they will thank you more than if you had given them a whole bag of the finest silk.’

  He smiled, and was still smiling the next morning when we saw them saddling up as we left the horse station. Yes, I know there is more to our responsibilities than building mills or setting up docks for fishermen. Perhaps the lesson I gave was too simple. Too easy. Yet the fundamental principle remains the same – one man, making a difference by example. If each of us changes our actions, then the whole world is transformed. That is what you told me that day in the teahouse. You talked of poetry and princes, of wilderness and the wild, of impulse and instruction. I can taste the tea – I taste the very ideas – on the tip of my tongue.

  Before we carried on our journey back to the city, however, I made a brief detour. I hope you will not be too ashamed of me when I admit – in the strictest confidence, please, my friend – that I visited a shaman. During my stay in the countryside, I had heard much talk among the locals about a much-renowned fortune-teller who lived in the hills. It was said that men came from many li away just to consult with him, for he could read the winds and the clouds just as easily as you now read the words on this very page. When I found that my wife was overcome with fatigue and wished to postpone our travels in order to rest and recuperate at the horse station, I realised that I had been given the perfect opportunity to pay a visit to this famous medium, for I felt I had to speak to someone of the strange thoughts that have been troubling me, and I feared anyone but such a man might look upon me with either pity or derision, neither of which I would be able to bear.

  It did not take long to find the solitary dwelling in the shade of one of the peaks, for the long line of people waiting outside it was visible from afar. As I drew up, I saw that it was a tiny wooden house much battered by the elements. The warped walls were laden with lichen and smattered with dry rot. You have no doubt seen many such buildings yourself, for hermits, monks and ascetics often seek to renounce the world and find greater peace in the solitude of the wilderness. Yet tell me, have you ever seen such a house surrounded by a throng of peasants?

  After many hours, when my turn eventually came to enter, I found I had to duck my head under the warped beams of the splintered doorframe to make my way inside.

  It was a dark and musty hovel, with a sickly smell of mildew and stewed forest fungi. The room (for, indeed, there were no other doors but the one through which I had entered) was badly lit and sparse – aside from a small grate for a fire, a pile of foul-smelling straw that must have functioned as a bed, and a candle burnt down close to the nub, the place was empty. The corpulent fellow sitting cross-legged in the centre of the floor seemed to fill more than half of the room.

  ‘Master Zhong?’

  The huge man nodded his head. He was bald, though – perhaps in compensation – he had let his beard grow so long that the ends had been tied into plaits around his chest. His jowls were ruddy and mottled with pink, his eyes tiny swirls peering out amid the folds of flesh.

  ‘Please, sit down, my friend,’ he said, beckoning me to join him on the dusty floor. ‘You are very welcome here. I see from your robes that you are an official – I cannot remember the last time I talked with an educated man.’

  I settled in front of him and sat motionless as he studied my face.

  ‘I think I can guess why you are here,’ he said. ‘Yes, your bloodshot eyes give you away. You have not been sleeping well, am I right? You live under a storm cloud.’

  I must have looked shocked, but he merely smiled.

  ‘It is no trick, my friend – it is simply that I have met many men like you. I am sorry to say that the nature of my occupation means that I am visited most often by the desperate and the heartbroken. Please tell me what is troubling you.’

  And against my better judgement I did just that, for the moment I opened my mouth the whole story came tumbling out, and it was only when I reached the end of my account of the last few months that I noticed I had been speaking for an unimaginably long time, and that the fat shaman in front of me had not said a single word. We sat in silence for some minutes, the shaman with his eyes pressed closed and I with tears stinging the corners of my own.

  ‘What should I do?’ I asked. ‘Is there any way … Can you find her? What if …’

  My words trailed off, and the shaman opened his eyes and smiled at me. I expected him to take out sticks with which to cast a hexagram, or study my pulse, or begin to draw up a convoluted horoscope, or attempt to speak with the spirits – I expected him to do anything except continue to sit and smile at me.

  ‘It wouldn’t help, you know,’ he said.

  I was confused. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You didn’t come here to ask me to go into a trance, to speak to the dead or visit the next world. And it wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t make things easier. But you know that, don’t you?’

  I nodded, and I soon found myself smiling too, for that is just the kind of thing that you would have said. I saw then that he was right, and that I had known this myself all along, even if I had not been able to articulate it. The mood lightened, and it was not long before we were chatting away about the Great Wheel and the eightfold path, and some time later, when I stood up to leave, I felt a little lighter, a little less harried by doubts.

  ‘Thank you for your time, Master Zhong. I see now why the locals speak so highly of you.’

  ‘Do not mention it. I am sorry for your loss, and sorrier still that there is nothing I can do to make it better. I have enjoyed talking with you. Please, promise me this. You will not give up hope. And promise me also that you will visit again if there is ever anything I can do for you.’

  I made these promises and left his dwelling, and it was only then that I understood how much it had meant to me simply to speak of all that had happened without fear of causing pain or reproach, or risking reawakening the sorrows of grief in those I love.

  The rest of the journey was uneventful. The sight of the mighty junks sweeping upriver towards the capital was enough to remind us of the huge differences between the slow days in the rustic family cottage and the noise and pulse of the greatest city on earth – as was the number of beggars and lepers milling outside the city walls. I was somewhat surprised to see how vigilant security has become while we have been away; our papers, servants and clothes were checked carefully, despite the growing line behind us, before the guards admitted us through the towering gate.

  I will not risk testing your patience by detailing the state of our house after the tenants had left, nor by telling you about the tedious search for new household servants. But let me ask you, do you believe that houses can retain memories? That, somehow, parts of ourselves get left behind in the pl
aces we have been? I am loath to speak of the spirit so flippantly, yet I had a sense of something so familiar the other night that it left me disquieted and threatened, briefly, to cause a relapse of my old illness.

  It must have been the third night we were back when I woke to find myself in the small orchard at the back of the house. I had no idea how I had got there. It was late – the moonlight spilt between the bare branches of the peach trees and puddled silver around my feet. I bit into my hand to test whether I was still dreaming – I was not. I could hear the low whistle of the night breeze cold around my shoulders, the calling of some of the insomniac birds so popular in households these days, and, in the distance, the marching of the night guards. My wife and the servants must all have been asleep.

  I was standing beside the oldest of the peach trees. The gnarled trunk splits into two outstretching branches near the base, and it was on the worn ridge where the boughs divided that she used to sit as a small child, swinging her legs while I would walk among the trees, composing verses that might make her giggle. I was not particularly surprised to find that my feet had led me in here while I was still given to dreams – it is well known that our bodies store memories as well as our minds, which is why once learnt we cannot forget, for instance, how to walk, or how to sing. Perhaps I had heard the call of one of the neighbours’ birds and mistaken it for her, and this had caused me to rush down to our special spot. Our dreams do delight in that kind of bittersweet torture.

  My first thought was, of course, to return to bed. And yet I found I could not move. It seemed – though I am embarrassed to write this to you, for I fear you will think me a fool – almost as if the tree was on the verge of speaking to me, as if it partook of everything that had happened amid its branches, and could share the intimacy of that knowledge with me. Writing this in the light of day, I am tempted to scratch out the last lines. But I shall not, for something in me longs to experience that moment again, that brief suppression of logic that allows a man to believe that anything is possible. The longer I leant against that old peach tree, the more I remembered, and the more difficult it became to move.

  I was waiting. And that I knew I was waiting for something that would not come did not dishearten me in the slightest. I thought that I finally understood those heretics in the Sect of the Circle who deny the existence of time. For who could argue that the past sometimes returns to us, that the present is not as solid as it seems? There are those that argue that we will live our lives over, again and again, after death – but it seems to me that our memories condemn us to live them again and again in life, for there are some things from which the mind cannot shake itself free.

  As I sat there, I began to think of the many different dreams the capital holds. The cottage in which I spent these last years recuperating was on the edge of a tiny village with tiny dreams. The cock’s crow called everyone to their plots, and sundown sent them in for their supper. When they turned on the straw at night the whole village was as one, dreaming the tallest crops, the biggest yield, a bumper year. Even the crickets and cicadas there sang of the harvest. And it was easy to be snared by that dream, to come to think that nothing else mattered but the green shoots stubbling the fields with possibilities.

  Here in Changan there are more dreams than there are people. Sitting by the window now, for instance, even though the moon rose many hours ago, I can hear revellers returning home, theatre troupes packing up their wares, all-night labourers working on the defences, the imperial guard changing shifts at the outposts and towers, messengers clattering through the street with urgent missives, priests with their jangling bells heading to and from the temple and bawdy sniggers and groans from the street-corner pleasure rooms. Each sound hints at a different dream. I have been told since my return that this incomparable metropolis now houses more than a million people! It is therefore difficult to calculate how many dreams Changan holds, though I can assure you that however many more are added it will never be full. Is there a collective noun to describe this many dreams? A rabble of dreams? A cacophony? A swarm, a flock, a flight?

  Despite the chill, I stayed leaning against the old peach tree until dawn broke, and with it the spell that had kept me rapt. I have been thinking how naïve we are when we are young, how full of conceit. I once believed I had control of this body, that it was there to serve my intellect and my desire. It takes an older man to realise that we are prisoners of the body – it does with us as it wishes, and will not heed our pleas or demands. Perhaps that is why my body carried me outside. Perhaps that was also why the illness took so long to clear. Either my body is playing a kind of joke on me or it is getting its revenge for the ways in which I once took it for granted. I find myself out of breath after I have walked from my home in the south to the Sui Palace compound by the north city walls, and in winter my bones ache so much it is as if frost has somehow formed on them.

  But these are insignificant gripes, and I still have not told you about the one thing I know you are anxious to hear about: my new position at court. I have left the Imperial Library behind for the Eastern Palace – it is fortunate that I am not one of those older men who come to prefer the company of books and scrolls to the messy business of interacting with people. I believe I shall relish the challenges the position of Junior Counsellor brings, though it may take a little time for me to readjust to the pace of life at the court.

  I must admit that I have been amazed at how few of our circle remain in the capital. Most are gone to the provinces, to governorships or diplomatic posts in the frontiers. Only a handful – men like Hua Jinbo and Dong Jie – toil still in their relevant offices, though I must admit I have not had the nerve to seek them out.

  The Eastern Palace, as you no doubt know, is now the home of the crown prince. It is a fine building, one befitting the child of heaven. I was almost taken aback by the stunning shocks of red and yellow that decorate the vaults and pillars. Whereas the Imperial Library is characterised by hushed discussions and reverent silence, the Eastern Palace is a veritable bustle of debate and argument. This is perhaps the perfect opportunity to see the blossoming of those ideas about reform and justice that you and I formed together in the bright firmament of our younger days. Though I have yet to meet the prince – the eunuchs, it seems, are never far from his side, and do not deign to speak to lowly civil servants such as myself when they can avoid it – local rumours depict him as a well-read and thoughtful young man. Good qualities, which, if properly cultivated, would make for an enlightened emperor in the future. That is, if the eunuchs have not poisoned his mind by then.

  Examples of their greed and plotting are everywhere. I have been – and you must understand, as ever, that I say this in the strictest confidence – quite appalled by what I have seen in the inner reaches of the imperial government since my return. It is worse than ever before. The eunuchs have made bribery endemic in the palace, and they consolidate their powers daily. The senior eunuch is rumoured to be particularly power-hungry. Ever since our noble Emperor Xianzong – blessings be upon his glorious reign – granted them military authority in the battles to defeat the rebel provincial governors, their influence has become almost boundless. They deal out state contracts, favours and positions, and there are few who will criticise them publicly, for they are well known to harbour grudges, and their revenge is frequently fierce and spiteful.

  Yet I am confident that once the crown prince learns of the extent of their corruption – once he sees what bribery, nepotism and spiralling taxation are doing to the humble peasants of our great land – he will act to ensure that we return to the golden age of his ancestors. I will not neglect my more mundane clerical duties, but I am certain that a chance to gain his confidence will soon arise. As you once said to me, we must seek out those who have a stomach for truth, and steel them for strength.

  You rightly chided me, friend, for losing sight of my optimism in my grief. You were right too, that a return to the city would help me fight free of the shadows that
have been hovering beside me. My wife too is happy with the return – though she would never say as much to me, of course. I heard her humming one of the old Han lullabies under her breath when she was knotting up her hair this morning, and it was enough to keep a smile on my face until noon. I have resolved to put the sallow days behind me.

  I look forward to hearing more of your adventures in the great outposts, where I have no doubt that your work will continue to conform to your high standards. Send my best wishes to your children, and keep them close to you, for nothing is so conducive to happiness as the observation of happiness in those we love. Please send me more of your poems, and when I have time I will respond in kind. I say a sutra that your health may stay strong, that your heart will stay hot.

  Bai Juyi

  A Delicate Matter of Phrasing

  PART 2 · 24 FEBRUARY 1993 CE

  With the old man’s crazed ideas still echoing in my head, I followed the road west, out towards the highway. In no time at all I was on the outskirts, with nothing separating me from the countryside but the slow, dumb river. My car clattered over the bridge, heading out once again from the heart of the city to the far-off fields and valleys. I found myself wondering how many might have jumped last night, how many might have decided that the rushing water down there was the better option. At least they’d get a bit of peace. Fuck. That’s the kind of thing Li Yang would say. I was getting soft.

  Have I ever thought about it? No. I mean, of course I’ve thought about it. A little. But not seriously. Imagined it, maybe. What my wife’s face would look like when she heard the news. Whether her cold heart might wring out a tear. Whether it would make my daughter think of me differently. What Li Yang would do, sat alone (or with another lover?) up in that sprawling expense account apartment in the middle of the city. So yes, maybe a little bit. The tug of the current. The certainty. The letting go of all the things I’ve spent the last few years trying to keep hidden. Sinking. The light skittering on the top of the water, the world above breaking into blur.