The Book of Crows
Page 44
For the most part, we spoke of the old times – isn’t this why we hold our oldest friends close, that they might anchor us to the people we used to be? Jinbo could still recall each of the operas we had seen some ten years or more before – he could name the actors, replay perfectly the most haunting scenes, catalogue the hiccups and mistakes, and even hum the themes to aid my ailing memory. Yet as he recounted those long nights in sweaty, overcrowded teahouses – or described some of the blushing women we often beckoned to sit beside us, or the way we used to shout each other down, to interrupt and insult as we debated anything that came into our heads – as he drank and spoke and tried to engage me, I could not help but think of all the people who were not there. Not only yourself, my dear friend, but Liu, Wang, Xu and Bao, and the others who sometimes joined our table. It is a curse of age that everywhere you go the past trails behind you, and sometimes it seems that nothing else quite measures up. The world feels more and more like those marked city walls, which, even after they are lavishly redecorated, still reveal – if one examines them closely – the scrawled curses of different years languishing just beneath the new coat of paint.
Our talk soon turned to poetry. Jinbo lavished praise – indeed, perhaps a little too much – upon my Poems of A New Music, telling me how much he enjoyed the folk song rhythms I had employed in order to mimic the voice of the ordinary man (though he seemed careful not to mention the criticisms of the official corruption and excessive taxation that are implicit in many of those verses). He even quoted some of the shorter poems back to me, half singing and half chanting in a high, mournful voice, and by the time he had finished his face was quite red. It was thus only after we had ordered a second bottle of rice wine that the conversation turned to the subject that had been bothering me.
‘Can I ask you a question, my friend? Do you still feel the fire burning within you? The fire we once all felt – the passion, the zealous fury at the world and the burning desire to change it, to remake it?’
Jinbo sighed, and let his hand curl around the knot that bound his thinning hair.
‘Fires cool, or else they consume everything in sight. There is no other way. Do not misunderstand me: I still yearn for change, but I have learnt the value of pragmatism. Besides, it is impossible to work so long within the palace and not become caught up in its machinations, in the slow and arduous balancing act of politics, the delicate compromises and the careful diplomacy. Change comes slowly. It takes patience and reserve, not youthful bluster and idealism.’
I nodded in agreement, and my friend raised a toast to the undimmed dreams of our youth, and to the peculiar sorrows only experience can teach.
It was only then that I saw the sadness etched upon his face. How old he looked, how tired. That passionate young man who used to weep and rage at every tragedy or instance of injustice in those teahouse operas – all those years of toiling within the palace bureaucracy seemed to have worn him down, made him wistful and lachrymose. It was then that I decided to confide in him, for I knew he would understand. Thus I told him of the prince’s words, of the Book of Crows, and of everything Master Zhong had told me – all the doubts and questions that had been spinning like a fierce gale within my mind those past weeks.
Hua Jinbo’s answer was simple: he advised me not to tell the prince what I had learnt, not to risk everything because of some useless vestige of idealism. The truth, he told me, was a luxury not everyone could afford. ‘Why waste this opportunity to guide that impressionable young man?’ he asked me. ‘Gain his trust, and work from the inside to make the country a better place. You would only make an enemy of him if you were to tell him the book did not exist, for no one can bear to see their hopes torn away.’
The careworn look in his eyes told me that he was speaking from experience. I raised a toast and thanked him. He had helped me make my decision. I knew what I had to do.
The following day I met with the prince. The following week I was summoned by the emperor. You know the rest.
Yes, against all my better judgement, against all the sage advice of our old friend, I told the prince the truth. I said what I had to say – that the book was nothing but a myth, a foolish dream, and that the longer he spent chasing such airy fantasies the more the eunuchs would consolidate their power and the faster the country would fall into ruin. There is no need to repeat all the arguments that passed between us. It is enough to say that I condemned myself to exile by sticking stubbornly to some old ideal, and therefore I have no one to blame but myself.
And so my strange story is finished, another ink stick has been rubbed down to a stub, and I must return to my packing. In just three days, we leave for Jiujiang. I am resolved to begin again, and perhaps I will take to this new life better than I have taken to the city. On reflection, I think it is always best to move to something new instead of trying to reclaim something that is gone forever. The city has too much past for me, and I for it. A ship that has lost its anchor must drift endlessly at sea, never returning to land, and that is how I have felt since my daughter’s untimely death – as if there is nothing tying me to the world. Yet I have been wrong. I still have hopes, I still have dreams, and I will not give up on them. I still have my poetry, and perhaps a new province might inspire me to pick up the brush more often.
I must leave this house, where I will always feel the call of the past. And wherever I go, I shall have my wife beside me. Perhaps I may, in time, talk with her as I used to talk with you. Perhaps some good may come from this journey after all.
It is now late, and everyone sleeps but me. Mercifully, there is no rain tonight, though the city is as noisy as ever. I shall miss it. Often these days I find myself wondering what my own life might have been like if I had known what would happen – if, say, I had access to my own Book of Crows. Would I have done things differently, or would I have lived my life exactly as it has been? Yet whenever my thoughts stray towards these melancholy hypotheses, I recall that old proverb you told me during one of those long teahouse evenings. Can you guess the one of which I speak? I will refresh your memory: ‘If one man walks through the wilderness we call him lost. Yet if ten men walk the same way, we call their steps a path, and we call their route a journey.’ It seems to me that most paths are invisible until you are upon them.
Please accept my apologies for bothering you with my foolish ramblings. Send my best wishes to your children, and keep them close to you, for nothing brings as much happiness as the happiness of those we love. Keep them at the centre of your world, and spoil them as much as you can, for one day they must leave for other homes. I say a sutra that your worries will be stolen by the wind, and that your children long outlive you.
Bai Juyi
Copyright
This ebook edition published in 2011 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk
First published in paperback in 2011 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd
Copyright © Sam Meekings, 2011
Illustration and calligraphy © Susie Leiper, 2011
The moral right of Sam Meekings to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
ebook ISBN: 978–0–85790–033–3
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
rayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share