Peking Picnic

by Bridge, Ann;

  ‘Black smallpox,’ said Laura. ‘Walk as fast as you can and don’t let them touch you.’ For some of the unfortunates stretched out their hands for alms as the travellers passed. ‘Keep your mouth shut too,’ she added.

  In silence they passed through the nightmare village. When they emerged at the further end the Professor drew a deep breath.

  ‘What a horrible sight!’

  ‘You know they think smallpox very lucky,’ said Laura. ‘They call it the hua-ping, the flower illness.’

  ‘Is there much mortality from it?’

  ‘Not as much as you might expect, among the Chinese themselves; Europeans don’t usually recover, though – it’s a very virulent form,’ said Mrs Leroy tranquilly.

  The Professor shuddered slightly. Perhaps he thought smallpox and armed men a curious prelude to a picnic; perhaps he was meditating on the psychology of pleasure. But his face wore an expression of considerable concentration as he walked on towards Chieh T’ai Ssu.

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHIEH T’AI SSU, the Monastery of the Platform of Vows, stands on a sort of natural terrace just below the crest of one of the ridges running down from the Western Hills towards the Peking plain, flanking the valley of the Hun-ho on the south. Its innumerable courts, pavilions, shrines and terraces stretch up the hillside, one above another, connected by paved walks and broad flights of marble steps, scattered irregularly in all directions at all sorts of levels; diversified by trees springing from the stone pavements, by rocky landscapes and grottoes in corners, by little pagodas, by drum towers and bell towers, and by vast bronze incense burners – the whole beautiful confusion, covering several acres and containing as many souls as an English village, enclosed within a high wall which follows its irregular outline over the contours of the steep stony slopes. Men in bright flower-blue cassocks, with blue trousers tucked into high white gaiter boots, wander about its shade-splashed walks and disappear through its unexpected doorways; grey-robed priests tend its latticed shrines, filling the courts with the perfume of incense, beat its vast resonant drums and its musical gongs; or stand in dreamy meditation, rosary in hand, beside its carved marble balustrades. It is a great religious foundation in being, in full and serene activity. Here the monastic life of a thousand years ago, painstakingly dug up and described by travellers like Hédin and Stein in the ruined temples of the Central Asian wastes, is unrolled before the Western eyes of the weekend visitor from Peking, breathing, actual, undecaying – the past wells up into the present in a timeless continuity, unchanging, quiet, with the still perfection of the figures on some Greek vase.

  Nothing is stranger to the newcomer to China than this custom of temple authorities of throwing open their sacred precincts to European visitors. A courtyard, or two, or three, according to their needs, is let off to each party, and there with their beds, food, chairs and servants they establish themselves for a day or two. But they are not confined to their hired apartments – freely they stroll about the terraces, among the shrines and pavilions, where the wealth and tribute of centuries is accumulated in buildings, in treasures, of a stylised beauty and a formal grace peculiarly Chinese, saluted with grave courtesy as they go by the black-robed monks. And in and around the whole temple, in spring, the fruit blossom flows like a tide, surging up in waves of exquisite pale colour against the ancient walls, springing like flowery fountains in the paved courtyards. More than one of the party, that night, was to fall asleep with sprays of peach blossom shadowed between him and the stars, and to wake with fallen petals on his face. Strange magic of the blossoming tree – ancient wisdom that brings in the spring to worship within its holy places! It is not easy to escape these wholly; all did not wholly escape. There is no cause for wonder if in that place, and then, some bonds of thought and custom were loosened, some curtains of the soul drawn back – if eyes were opened, if vision for a moment gleamed, and ardour sprang in pursuit.

  Chieh T’ai Ssu is approached from below by a paved road, winding up and round the curves and hollows of the hill, crossing the beds of torrents on beautifully arched bridges, and protected always on the valley side by a plastered parapet. On leaving the smallpox village the General’s little party turned to the left, crossed a stream near a broken high-backed bridge, and began the ascent of this road. For the first time for nearly eight miles they walked in shade, for they were close in under the hill now, and the ridge cut off the sun. And immediately the fruit blossom was about them. All over the brown hillside, on narrow stone-built terraces and wherever the slope would hold a little soil, stood the trees, so irregularly and in such profusion as to suggest a natural growth – the pink of almond flower, the deeper pink of apricot, the phlox-like greenish white of pear blossom. But with no green carpet, pied with daisies, below them; straight from the brown soil, an incredible flowering from the still naked earth. North China, with its rainless snowless winter, knows no spring as Europe knows it – only the deeply rooted plants and trees can come to life. Later the thunderstorms of early summer revive the parched world, covering the hills with a rank unnourishing verdure, but in spring the flowering trees carry the torch of rebirth alone. Unbelievable, the shock of this beauty – the delicately shaped perfection of flower of rose and paler rose and white, against the unrelieved fawn-coloured background. It is easy, here, to see why the Chinese have painted their masterpieces of flowers on backgrounds of brown silk – even Nature, in China, is a consummate artist, and with a sure hand has shown the way in which that race of consummate artists has followed, to produce a beauty unknown to the Western world. If you want to get some idea of the road to Chieh T’ai Ssu, go to the British Museum and look at the Chinese paintings – above all at the ‘Earthly Paradise’. But fill its air with a delicate scent, hardly more than a freshness, and yet more; and break its silence with the loud sweet notes of hidden babblers among bare wayside bushes, and with the tapping and scraping of the small feet of donkeys on steep cobbles. And because that picture is one of the supreme masterpieces of the world, and because Art carries truth like an arrow or a pang, you shall perhaps come to some knowledge of a Chinese spring, one of the rarest perfections ever permitted itself by the rejoicing spirit of creation.

  A little silenced by this loveliness, or possibly by heat and fatigue, the party proceeded up the road. At a curve they were overtaken by two young monks, shaven-headed, in faded blue clothes, carrying rosaries of little carved brown beads; they paused just ahead of the party to look over the parapet into the blossom-filled hollow below, and as they moved on again the rosary of one caught against a projecting tile and broke, scattering the beads in all directions. With a cry of distress the young monk stooped to gather them up, but they rolled insidiously away and downhill, along the little channels between the cobblestones. His face, beautiful and spiritual, with the expression of natural mysticism sometimes seen amongst the Chinese, wore a look almost of anguish as he pursued the beads. Mrs Leroy stooped and began to pick them up – the Professor, after a moment’s hesitation, did likewise. When they were reassembled the young monk sat down where he was in the road and counted them over in his blue lap; beaming, he thrust them into a little pouch in the belt under his cassock, rose, and addressed Mrs Leroy and her companion. The Professor watched, unable to understand; he saw the youth put out a long-nailed finger and point to Laura’s neck. She smiled and shook her head as she answered. Bowing, the two monks strode on, moving fast and easily up the steep road in their string-soled slippers, and were lost to view round a flowery curve.

  ‘What was he asking you?’ the Professor inquired.

  ‘He wanted to know if my pearls were a rosary too.’ She smiled as she touched the string at her neck. Professor Vinstead had noticed the pearls under her shirt and had thought them a very odd combination with jodhpurs. ‘Don’t they mind our touching their rosaries? I should have thought they would have done,’ he observed.

  ‘Not a bit, as a rule – they have very little sensitiveness about such things. They must ha
ve feelings of religious reverence, I suppose, but they are so different to European ones that they are quite unrecognisable by us. They treat their own sacred objects with extraordinary casualness. It’s quite common in country temples to find maize and millet stored in the main shrine, and strings of onions hung round the images to dry.’

  Professor Vinstead was struck by this aspect of Oriental psychology. The General, however, took a different view of the small episode.

  ‘I thought it was supposed to be very bad joss to touch a bonze’s belongings, Mrs Leroy,’ he called from his ass. ‘You and the Professor had better look out.’

  ‘He looked such a very saintly bonze,’ said Miss Hande. ‘I don’t feel he’ll bring them any harm.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t do it,’ said the General.

  ‘We didn’t touch them in anger or mockery,’ said Laura.

  ‘And you think Buddha takes motives into account?’

  ‘Probably. I shall be sorry if I’ve let you in for bad joss,’ said Laura, turning to the Professor with a smile; ‘but that’s a European superstition, and I don’t think they’re valid out here.’

  ‘We’re in the same boat, anyhow,’ said Vinstead. He found himself drawing an obscure comfort from that thought, among a number of disquieting recollections – the smallpox in the village below, the soldiers with machine guns, the obviously disturbed state of the country. The possible forms of ‘bad joss’ seemed very numerous – it was most peculiar, the indifferent way in which all these people went casually about among them, taking their pleasure as if in the most complete and suburban security. He found himself feeling a slight irritation at their irrationality – and then his irritation turned against himself. It must be the sun, confound it! – he to be having superstitious forebodings, because he had touched a few inanimate beads belonging to a harmless Chinaman! He strove to throw off his depression, and prepared to talk again to Mrs Leroy, with whom alone, among all these strangers, he felt that he had established a little link of intimacy. But Mrs Leroy was now walking beside Miss Hande’s donkey, deeply engaged in conversation; they were talking about the Chinese again, and Mrs Leroy was, so she alleged, preaching a sermon. ‘My dear Miss Hande, it’s really a duty for people like you, writers of reputation, to understand them as well as you can. But you simply must scrap all your theories about them, and just open your eyes and ears and see what you get. The soul of a people isn’t in the writings of its publicists. That’s the mistake you Americans always make; you accept the written statements, and shut your eyes to the facts before you. It’s the little common everyday things that teach one about another race – get familiar with them. Remember, understanding begins where familiarity leaves off.’

  ‘Who said that?’ interrupted Vinstead, struck by the phrase.

  ‘I did! I do! I’m doing a fearful lot of saying, amn’t I?’ she said, smiling at Miss Hande.

  ‘Well, I think you’ve given us some very valuable indications for racial study,’ replied the novelist; ‘but they’re not easy to carry out in a short visit.’

  ‘No, but then one can only learn very little on a short visit, can’t one? One can’t theorise after it, that’s certain,’ said Mrs Leroy, turning aside to break a branch from an almond tree, with which she proceeded to switch the flies from Miss Hande’s ass. Nina’s boy was always so slack – he ought to have given Miss Hande a fly switch. ‘But one can report small visible facts accurately,’ she proceeded, switching away; ‘and that’s far better than any number of inaccurate theories.’

  At a turn of the road a flat-topped gateway rose before them. They passed through it into a sloping courtyard, where donkeys stood tied to tall trees, and piles of fodder, coal dust and luggage lay about in confusion. The General and Miss Hande dismounted; the donkey boys began to unload the asses. Niu appeared, and was given some instructions in Chinese. ‘Come on,’ said General Nevile, and limping stiffly ahead led the way, beneath flat-topped pillared p’ailous and across other courts, till passing through a final doorway he turned to his companions with, ‘Here we are at last.’

  Hot, dusty and weary, they found themselves at one end of an immense flagged terrace, broad as an English high street and apparently nearly a quarter of a mile long, where the evening air moved coolly round the boles of the huge conifers which rose here and there from the pavement. On the left they were vaguely aware of great pavilions with scarlet pillars and painted eaves, rising above marble steps; on the right the terrace was bounded by a carved marble balustrade, with nothing beyond it but space, and sky, and through blossoming treetops a distant view of the mountains beyond the Hun-ho. They strolled along it, cooled by the delicious freshness, soothed by the space and peace and dignity of their surroundings, and the indefinable sense of achievement which lies at the end of all journeys. At the further end, under the shadow of an immense stone pine with a leaning trunk, two tables stood, gleaming cheerfully with white linen; Touchy arose from a pile of cushions close by, dropped his book, and advanced upon them with the cocktail shaker. It was delicious to sink down into a cushion, and stretch out hot and dusty feet before one – Touchy was an artist, and his drink at the moment tasted like nectar. It was still something of a surprise to the Professor to find himself drinking cocktails at all with any frequency – to be drinking them in such a scene gave him a sense of being on some stage, acting a part not his own. With the idle and unconscious absorption of fatigue he watched Touchy measuring the top of the cocktail shaker against its squat bulk, up and down, up and down, while he and the General exchanged the details of their journeys. The walkers had met some soldiers too, but theirs had worn no armlets at all, showing that they were deserters – T’ao-pings, or masterless soldiers – a piece of news at which the General frowned.

  ‘Touchy, Miss Hande and I want to know where we live,’ said Laura at length.

  ‘Oh, but my dear, of course! Come on – you too, sir; and you, Professor. We’re all in the same courtyard this time – one of the big ones.’

  Their quarters had the merit of beauty if not of convenience. A square paved courtyard sixty yards across, with buildings round three sides of it and a wall with a door on the fourth; in the centre a carved marble well head under a group of peach trees in full bloom. On the further side to that by which they entered a flight of marble steps led up to an imposing pavilion, whose projecting painted eaves, supported on scarlet pillars, made a sort of loggia along the whole of its latticed front – the side buildings, also with tiled roofs and latticed paper windows, but without loggias, stood, like it, on a sort of raised stone terrace a few feet above the court. Here and there a strangely shaped roof of fluted sea-green or golden tiles showed over the tops of the pavilions; from somewhere out of sight rose two great pines, whose trunks, flushed pink in the evening light, carried their black plumy tops a hundred feet clear into the sun-gilt air. Touchy led them to the loggiaed pavilion. ‘Here you are – ladies on the left, men on the right.’

  Laura and Miss Hande stepped left and entered a latticed door. They found themselves in a largish room with plastered walls and a stone floor covered with rush matting; all across one side of it stretched a shallow brick platform some eighteen inches high and several feet in depth, built out from the wall – the k’ang, or bed. There was no furniture at all, but the servants had set up the ladies’ six camp beds in this apartment, and deposited a selection of luggage on each. In the dim yellowish light which entered through the paper lattices they observed Lilah Milne, a mirror and some pots of stuff perched before her on the edge of the k’ang, kneeling on the floor and attending to her face. A tin washbasin stood close by. Laura looked upon it all with disfavour – she walked to the door, put out her head and called, ‘Lai!’ Niu appeared, in spotless white, as usual. There was no room here, Laura said – six T’ai-t’ais could not sleep in one room. Niu explained that there was no other place, ‘Mei-yu fah-tzu!’ (it can’t be helped) he said resignedly. Laura was quite determined that it should be helped, and that spee
dily; she was not going to sleep and wash for three days crammed up in a room with five other women. She pointed across the court to the buildings on the left, ‘There is what?’

  There, it seemed, was the Son of the Kitchen and the servant men. She pointed to the right, ‘There is what?’

  Niu began to stammer. There, it appeared, was no man, but it was a not-good place. ‘What-not-good?’ ‘Not clean!’ said Niu unhappily. ‘Give see!’ Laura strode across to the smaller pavilion and examined it. A door in the centre opened into a fair-sized room, with two lesser rooms leading out of it, both with k’angs. It was dusty and unswept, but not unduly dirty. ‘Make clean!’ said Laura briefly. Niu poured out a flood of explanation, guiltily. He knew quite well that he should have prepared more rooms. It was not that the servant men had not wished to make plenty of room for the T’ai-t’ais, but that place was an extremely not-good place – there were (here Niu displayed a thoroughly sound bit of psychology) rats!

  Psychology was wasted on Laura. She scorned the rats. Kaoliang brooms were fetched, the small pavilion was swept out, straw matting laid on the k’angs and floors of the inner rooms, and in ten minutes Laura’s bed and luggage and tchilumchi were installed in one, and Lilah at her invitation had her bed moved across too and placed in the other. ‘What about Judith?’

  ‘She’ll sleep out, if I know her,’ said Lilah.

  ‘Then we’d better get her bed moved out from there, anyhow,’ Laura said, and commanded it to be placed in the central chamber of the new pavilion. Miss Hande’s grateful relief at these dispositions was obvious if unexpressed. Then Mrs Leroy went into her room to wash and unpack, calling aloud to space in general for k’ai shui (hot water) as she did so.

  In the dimly lighted chamber she set to work with a practised hand to arrange her few effects. The tchilumchi, an enamel basin with a leather cover, was emptied of its collection of toilet articles and set ready on the k’ang to receive the hot water (which space in general duly produced in a tin jug). Taking a couple of nails from her trouser pocket she drove them into the wall with a brickbat picked up in the courtyard, and hung her pocket mirror on one and her towel on the other. Her spare clothing was placed under the pillow of her camp bed to heighten it, and the camp bed itself shoved up close against the k’ang, so that the latter served as a bed table, on which her book, chocolate, a box of cigarettes and a candle stuck in a tin saucer were neatly arranged. In a few minutes the room had taken on a curiously inhabited appearance. While she washed and put on a clean shirt, Lilah strolled in and surveyed her arrangements silently, as usual.