Wise Man Of The West (Harvill Press Editions)

by Vincent Cronin

  In August Ruggieri’s successor arrived from Macao. Antonio de Almeida was Portuguese, five years younger than Ricci, a frailly-built, dark-eyed ascetic, burning with zeal for the conversion of China. During autumn and winter he and Ricci were left in comparative peace to continue the task of slowly breaking down prejudice. By the end of the year their converts numbered fifty and in the spring of 1589 they baptised eighteen more, the largest annual total. Among them were the first Chinese women to receive the new religion. Their peculiar status had presented the missionaries with a problem.

  The very existence of women had to be deduced. None but the very poorest were ever seen in the streets and even when Ricci had visited private homes, the women of the household always remained in their own apartments, which they were not only prohibited but prevented from leaving. The men had clipped their wings by choosing as the chief criterion of beauty a physical characteristic which made gallivanting impossible: tiny, minuscule feet. From early childhood a girl’s feet were bandaged tightly day and night with parti-coloured cloths, ornamented with fringe and tassels. The constriction raised the instep, stunted their growth to half natural size and swelled the ankles wide. In this exquisite deformity their men exulted, rhapsodising about “golden lilies” and “two new moons.” It allowed a woman to shuffle and trip about the house—but no further—to serve without distraction father, husband and son, to fulfil Confucius’s dictum that beyond the threshold of her apartments she should not be known for evil or for good. Only two classes of women ventured abroad: wives of the very poor, who were to be seen in the fields drawing a plough or harvesting rice, and the blind, who lived in a street set apart in every town. By the hour they sat outside their houses, their long black hair caught up with silver ornaments or imitation pink and yellow asters, vermilion on their cheeks, daubs of white at their chin, strumming a lute, summoning to share their darkness men they would know but never see.

  Most graduates, especially those of high rank, kept several concubines besides a legal wife, and Ricci had realised early that polygamy might prove an obstacle to conversion of the mandarin class and their women. But at present, although he depended on the protection of one or two officials, his apostolate lay among a lower class, who could not afford concubines: men of goodwill and some intelligence, farmers, merchants, shopkeepers, who, lacking the graduates’ pride, were not held back from dealing with bonzes. Many of his converts were men who had for years led devout lives and practised strict fasting according to the Buddhist discipline. Unsatisfied with the theology of that religion, which was running to seed in a multiplication of idols, and sickened by the degenerate Buddhist bonzes, they gladly accepted a religion which more than answered their spiritual aspirations. Their wives, educated only in manual arts, were content in religious matters to follow their masters’ lead. Since they could not leave and Ricci could not enter their zenana, women were catechised by husbands or sons. Only for the actual administration of baptism was Ricci allowed to meet them. Since they could not come to Mass on Sundays and feast days, they prayed together in their own apartments. This humble home life Ricci considered admirably adapted to Christian virtue, but it meant that, unlike European women, they could never play the pioneer role of fostering, spreading and supporting Christianity. Congregations at Macerata had been largely composed of women, the churches built by their alms: at Shiuhing no woman had yet entered the chapel. In this respect the seedling mission had already conformed to the climate of Eastern life.

  The separation appeared as a paradox at the heart of educated China. Although society was exclusively masculine, its values were so conditioned by the absence of women as to be almost epicene. Without even a preliminary conversation a wife was bought for money, not won by courage and noble deeds; then imprisoned in a home where she must love her husband or languish. Lacking the stimulus of love’s rivalry, Chinese men became, in consequence, something less than men. None wore the sword which hung at every Italian gentleman’s hip. Sport, hunting, military arts, all the honourable diversions which Ricci esteemed, were here despised and rarely practised. Instead, dancing boys, dressed and made up like girls, were bought in public to serve the swarming sodomites. With no true love to serve, reason had curled in upon itself luxuriously, and life, like the Chinese game of chess, was conducted without a queen.

  In the spring of 1589 a new viceroy was appointed, his predecessor, a friend of the missionaries, having died after a few months in office. This official, no less than the governor of Shiuhing, had power to expel them; and they learned with dismay that Liu Chieh-chai had a reputation for cruelty, ambition and greed. At the conclusion of a successful campaign against pirates fishing pearls illegally in the gulf off the island of Hainan, he deemed it suitable that the people of Shiuhing should honour him with a shrine similar to that erected to Wang P’an. When enemies, led by the president of the tower committee, suggested that no site was more suitable than that of the missionaries’ two-storeyed house, Liu determined to get rid of the foreigners, on the grounds that they had no right to be in the Middle Kingdom. Through friendly mandarins, Ricci pressed argument after argument in an attempt to remain. He protested that he had been, as it were, naturalised; but that privilege, it seemed, was a dead letter which Wang P’an had had no right to invoke. He then pointed out that more than six hundred taels had been spent on building the house. Liu, unwilling to reimburse so large a sum, more than a new pagoda would cost, decided to offer compensation of sixty taels. Ricci cajoled, implored and finally asked to be allowed to travel to another province, but the viceroy dismissed all his appeals. The missionaries were finally forced to pack their belongings into two sampans which would escort them back to Macao. As they took leave of the small community of seventy Christians, the acting governor came to receive the keys of the house, bringing sixty taels as compensation. Ricci refused the money. He hoped to bring home to the viceroy the injustice of their expulsion and, if that failed, to give himself grounds for returning, when Liu’s term of office had expired, to regain possession of the house.

  On August the fourth Ricci and Almeida sailed from Shiuhing. At Canton, where they were delayed overnight, they bought black cloth and fashioned soutanes which they exchanged for the ashen cowled dress of the bonzes. The play, it seemed, was over. They resumed European habits and began to speak in Portuguese, but their thoughts remained at the Pagoda of the Flower of Saints. That night they lay awake, miserable and bitter. After such hardships, they were back where they had started, strays sent scurrying from the wrong side of the world, lovers rejected for their physical appearance.

  Next morning, as though in answer to prayer, their fortune turned with the estuary tide. As they prepared dispiritedly for the final stage of their journey, a fast boat suddenly drew alongside, summoning them back to Shiuhing. On arrival, Ricci learned that his last hope had been realised: the governor had come to the conclusion that if their house was taken without indemnity, then turned into a pagoda for his statue, everyone would accuse him of expelling the foreign bonzes not merely to enforce the law but for personal reasons.

  Ricci was summoned to the viceroy’s hall. Since it would have shown lack of dignity to visit an important mandarin alone, he took with him a Chinese servant. Entering the audience hall, Ricci knelt down at the far end, but the viceroy summoned him to his throne.

  “Why did you leave without the sixty taels?” he asked, attempting a smile. “I sent them for your travelling expenses. Now I have called you back specially to give them.”

  “I am grateful for your kindness,” replied Ricci, “but I have no need of the money. Once I return to Macao my brethren and friends will provide for me.”

  The viceroy tried to mask his annoyance. “Surely you are not so discourteous as to refuse a gift from my own hands.”

  “Your Excellency has expelled me like a criminal from the Middle Kingdom. I have no obligation to accept your presents.”

  The viceroy rose to his feet, struggling to contain his anger
. “No one transgresses my will,” he shouted. Not daring to lay hands on Ricci, he turned to the Chinese servant. “You’ve taught your master these tricks. Put this man in chains.”

  The servant cried out in terror. “I’m not to blame, your Excellency. The Far Westerner refused the money because he is sad at being forced to leave.”

  Ricci saw that the viceroy had lost command of the situation. “My servant speaks the truth,” he interposed. “Your Excellency has no cause to be angry. If your Excellency were really well disposed towards me, as he claims, instead of offering money which I do not need, he would let me settle elsewhere in the Middle Kingdom.”

  The viceroy, caught unawares, pretended not to hear and asked an aide to repeat Ricci’s words. Then he struck a new attitude. “That was my first proposal to you, but you yourself refused it.”

  “Is your Excellency willing, then, to provide me with a passport for Kwangsi or Kiangsi?”

  “I cannot do that. Those provinces lie outside my jurisdiction. Take the sixty taels and go to some other place in Kwangtung—anywhere but Shiuhing and Canton.”

  Wishing to enter as far inland as possible, Ricci chose a town on the Kwangtung-Kiangsi border. “Will your Excellency agree to Namyung?”

  “If you like, but I think either the monastery of Nanhoa or Shiuchow would be more suitable. Travel that way and see whether you do not prefer one of them.”

  When he agreed, the viceroy handed him the sixty taels. “Take these—they will help to pay for your new house.”

  Ricci accepted the silver—to have refused now, after the viceroy’s essential concession, would have been effrontery—and the mandarin’s good humour returned. Ricci prostrated himself, head to the ground, to show his gratitude, then made to withdraw. The viceroy detained him. “Here are a number of books—straight from the press. The full story of my successful expedition against the pirates of Hainan. You are the man to appreciate them.”

  Ricci accepted a pile of gaudily bound volumes and murmured a polite formula. “It is fitting that so glorious a campaign should be handed down to posterity.”

  The viceroy smiled and bowed to the departing figure. “May your way be peaceful, Far Westerner.”

  Provided with passports, on August the fifteenth Ricci and Almeida again left Shiuhing, this time their heads high. They travelled by boat—China’s waterways were her roads—first down the Western River, then up the Pekiang, through increasingly mountainous country. Rice terraces alternated with woods of cedar and oak, with groves of bamboo, their tawny yellow or emerald stems crowned by waving plumes of duller green. Chinese maps had revealed the vastness of the Middle Kingdom: now this knowledge became bewilderingly actual on the broad river which looped as though it had lost its way among the limitless paddy-fields and tiered hills. They covered the distance from Rome to Florence without traversing the full breadth of a single Chinese province. Over such stages the galloping post-horses of Italy would have been hard pressed to make headway, but here time was no less ample than space. They travelled passive to nature, at the whim of wind and water, as though man’s activities scarcely mattered in such a gigantic environment.

  After eight days, arriving at a pass in the mountains, they were halted by a servant of the third collateral, acting governor of Shiuchow, with orders to lead them to Nanhoa. His master, it appeared, was merely giving effect to the wishes of Liu the viceroy who, making no clear distinction between the numerous religious sects, considered it both logical and convenient that the foreign bonzes should reside at this large Buddhist monastery. Ricci, for the moment unable to see a way out, acquiesced.

  Escorted by two bonzes, after an hour’s walk they arrived at a level, well-watered valley between hills, rich in fruit trees. The fields on either side of a clear stream were sown with rice. On sloping ground, flanked by brick bell-towers, stood the rose-red building of Nanhoa, blue and red glazed roofs billowing like dancers’ skirts.

  Their guides explained that all the land around belonged to the monks of Nanhoa. The name meant Pagoda of the Southern Flower, the first shrine having been erected in the sixth century. A Buddhist monk who had travelled overland from India bent to drink water from the stream. Because its taste reminded him of his native country, he decided to remain there preaching. The monastery grew to its present size in the following century during the lifetime of a holy monk called Lu Hui-neng. The two bonzes retailed the local legend. Lu had been nurtured not with his mother’s milk but with dew which a genie gathered every night. He first entered the monastery as a scullion pounding rice for the community. He wore chains as a belt and his flesh was covered with vermin. Whenever one of these vermin fell, he would replace it under his chain saying—the two bonzes exchanged a glance and giggled—” You still have plenty to eat.” Such asceticism found its reward: pilgrims arrived from far and wide to consult the holy man. Many remained, until, at Lu’s death, the monks numbered a thousand.

  The monastery was divided into twelve houses, each with its superior, the whole being governed by a prior, who, at their approach, came forward to meet the visitors with exaggerated signs of joy. “We are delighted you have chosen to live among us. The whole monastery is at your disposal.”

  Ricci discounted the welcome, for the bonzes, being subject to civil authority, were bound to carry out the third collateral’s wishes with good grace. The community probably resented his presence no less than the Buddhists in Shiuhing. He noticed that the prior snatched at every occasion to show the inconveniences of the monastery and seemed delighted whenever Ricci emphasised their differences of belief or practice.

  The prior took Ricci through the buildings. In grotesque contrast to its idyllic surroundings, the place seemed in the last stages of dissolution. The monks were shifty-eyed, almost illiterate and, in the words of the proverb, stupid as black lacquer. From time to time, as they stumbled on women, some of them suckling infants, the prior in embarrassment would draw his guest’s attention to a curious idol or finely carved bracket. Ricci remembered hearing that many monks, although vowed to chastity, had wives and children; others were highwaymen and murderers. Unclean corridors and cells were crammed with dusty bronze and wooden idols. In enclosures freaks were penned: pigs, sheep and ducks on which the superstitious could detect the rudiments of a human foot: proof of metempsychosis.

  The central temple, a sumptuous hall, was crowded with statues, at least five hundred, wooden, stone and metal, covered with gilt and dominated by the three towering Precious Ones, different incarnations of Buddha. Veneration was being paid only by smoking lamps and cloudy thuribles. On the walls were depicted scenes from the Buddhist hell, more gruesome than any German painting of the Christian judgment. Some of the damned were being roasted alive, others fried in boiling oil, some sawn in half, others lacerated by dogs; yet a fifth group were undergoing a transmigration of soul according to the nature of their crimes, the cruel into tigers, the lecherous into swine. To each crime its punishment, and to each an inscription stating the means to forgiveness: whoever called upon one or other of the idols a thousand thousand times, would be pardoned for that particular offence.

  As they left the temple, the prior turned to Ricci. “Naturally you will occupy a position of authority among us. We have heard of your ascetic life and were wondering, my colleagues and I, whether you would feel obliged to impose your own stricter discipline?”

  Ricci detected anxiety behind the casually worded question. Repressing a smile, he asked, “You believe I have been appointed to reform the monastery?”

  “Why else should you come?”

  When Ricci explained that, far from wishing to stay, he was seeking a pretext for leaving, the prior dropped his strained manner and offered to help him obtain land in Shiuchow. Almeida, it was decided, should sail up to the town, while Ricci travelled there on horseback next morning.

  That night the monks gave Ricci a farewell feast, after which he slept in the guest room reserved for potentates. Next morning he was taken up
a winding staircase to a niche in the temple wall. Here the body of Lu was preserved: a shrunken mummy covered with varnish, surrounded by ninety-eight lamps. Ricci noticed that the prior and other monks genuflected as though to a god and that they were astonished at his refusal to kneel.

  Ricci, accompanied by the prior, arrived in Shiuchow at noon. Received in audience by the third collateral, he explained why he could not reside at Nanhoa. First, it was far from the city and, therefore, from the mandarins and graduates with whom he wished to associate. Moreover, it would be imprudent, even dangerous, for foreigners to live among cut-throats.

  When the prior, too, had pointed to other inconveniences, the third collateral finally offered to let the Westerners live in Shiuchow. Ricci accepted eagerly. Since they had found welcome here, there would be no advantage in visiting Namyung, five days’ journey away to the north-east.

  That afternoon, when Almeida arrived, the third collateral presented the newcomers to the chief mandarins. They proved far friendlier than at Shiuhing: here, further north, people seemed less afraid and suspicious of foreigners. While a suitable site was being sought, the missionaries were sent to live in the local pagoda, which, here as in every town, offered unfurnished lodging to travellers as a means of supporting the bonzes. The group of buildings—the Small Buddhist Temple of the Beautiful Pagoda—lay near an anchorage on the western of two rivers which almost encircled old Shiuchow. The town, however, which counted twice the population of Shiuhing, had spilled on to the outer banks on the western side, and a bridge of sixty boats, bound by heavy chains, linked old Shiuchow to the western suburb.

  Unloading their belongings from the sampan, they installed themselves in their room at the pagoda. They replaced the idols with their own paintings and set up an altar for daily Mass. Directly in front of the pagoda, close to the river, lay a field which Ricci judged an ideal site. Making enquiries, he discovered no drawback and next day suggested it to the acting governor. The mandarin was delighted because the field formed part of the pagoda’s estate and no group were easier to coerce than the bonzes. He wrote to the viceroy asking permission to assign the land and suggested to Ricci that, in order to pacify the owners, he should purchase the field with his own money. Ricci was obliged to deal with agents who, in league with the bonzes, demanded eighty taels for property worth no more than eight. Ricci refused to pay their price.