Wise Man Of The West (Harvill Press Editions)

by Vincent Cronin

  Six weeks passed, but no word arrived from the viceroy. Ricci began to doubt whether, having had his way with the sixty taels, Liu would fulfil his promise. They continued to live in the cramped room of the pagoda, ill-treated by the bonzes who hoped to drive them away by unkindness. Once again, as in the first months at Shiuhing, they and their belongings became the object of curiosity: all day long visitors of every class streamed in to gaze at their uncouth faces, to listen to their barbarian tongue (as though they were performing gibbons), to inspect their books and pictures, their astrolabes and globes. As the plum trees turned yellow, the weather grew more miasmal. Many of the bonzes fell ill and Ricci learned to his consternation that every autumn at least a quarter of the population suffered from malaria. The mortality rate was high; visitors, it was pointed out with relish, unaccustomed to the climate, were especially susceptible.

  Mist laid low the mountains, leaves fell into stagnant water, the death of all creation seemed near. In the first phases of the Chrysanthemum Moon Almeida, never very strong and weakened by severe, self-imposed penances, caught the disease. For six days he lay gravely ill in the pagoda, without servants, medicine or proper bedding. At first Ricci did not summon help, knowing that the disease must take its course, and having little faith in Chinese doctors. On his arrival in Macao he had made a point of discovering how local medicines differed from those he had watched his father dispense. Chinese materia medica comprised herbs, roots, barks, twigs, leaves, flowers, seeds, grasses and fruits, an immense variety ranging from coriander seed and betel-nut husks to galangal and apricot kernels. Herbal books were better and more complete than Dioscorides, the standard European work. All treatment was gentle: disease had to be wheedled away, not openly attacked with a knife. Blood was never let, a tooth never extracted by force. Ricci’s esteem for Chinese pharmacy did not extend to its practitioners. Men of intelligence devoted themselves to moral philosophy, the prerequisite for government posts, with the result that sciences were neglected. A few mandarins dabbled, but in general only the stupid and unambitious practised the art of healing: picking up scraps of knowledge from old women and older books, for schools of medicine were unknown.

  Almeida grew weaker and Ricci decided as a last resort to summon the most reputable doctor in town. He turned out to be a peasant with airs. On his arrival he felt the sick man’s pulse: three in each wrist, from the beat of which he could determine the organ requiring treatment. Chinese doctors believed the human body was built up, like all the universe, from Yin and Yang; etymologically, dark, coiling clouds and bright sunshine. Excessive Yang evoked heat; excessive Yin cold. In addition, the five constituent parts of the body—muscles, blood, flesh, skin and hair, bones—corresponded to the five elements, wood, fire, earth, metal and water, which in turn produced symptoms of wind, heat, moisture, dryness and cold. After examining Almeida, the doctor pointed out that his fever sprang from an irregularity of the blood: he must be given liquids containing herbs with the property of quenching flame. Bleakly Ricci waited while he set the groaning man’s disease in its cosmic context, prescribed according to magical analogies, and administered a rare and expensive electuary. When the doctor left, Ricci knelt beside his friend and put his trust in other formulae.

  Two days after Almeida’s illness passed its crisis, Ricci himself began to feel unsteady. Since his arrival at Macao he had enjoyed perfect health. Physically no less than mentally he had become acclimatised to China, rejoicing in its hot summers and mild winters after the exhausting humidity of southern India, and finding adequate the staple diet of rice and pork. But against the mosquitoes of Shiuchow even a robust constitution proved no defence: he had malaria. Almeida was still too ill to look after him. He lay alone, sweating and shivering, more than ever conscious of solitude and impuissance. Every third day the fever would break within him like torrential monsoon rain, flooding his consciousness, sweeping away the parapets of prayer, the dykes of resolution, annihilating him by fire and water. He believed he would die, and in the interstices of delirium pleaded he might be spared until the new house had been founded—if it were destined to be founded at all—and some visible form given to the mission. As though in answer, five days after he was struck down he received a visit from the acting governor. The viceroy had written at last, granting licence to build and, still better, making the field theirs without payment. More effectively than any herbal prescription, this news helped him to health. He forced his body to respond to the best opportunity he had ever been offered. Presently spirit and will had their way. By the end of the month he and Almeida had recovered sufficiently to walk down to the field and mark out the site of their new house and chapel.

  From their lodgings among the Bodhisattvas, a galaxy of star gods and the deities of thunder and lightning, every day they set out, under the malevolent gaze of their neighbours, to clear the ground, to saw and nail together larchwood planks. At the pace of the surrounding crops the house steadily rose and beside it the second church of the Middle Kingdom, different from any that had ever been built, unrecognisable for what it was. To avoid charges of constructing a Portuguese fortress and to illustrate that his religion was not tied to western forms, Ricci had chosen to build in Chinese style.

  chapter five

  Bonze into Graduate

  The following autumn, as soon as building was finished, Ricci and Almeida set up house, together with two young Chinese from Macao whom Valignano had attached to the mission as candidates for entry into the Society. They were called Sebastian Fernandez and Francis Martinez, for converts in the enclave were given not only a Christian name but also a Portuguese surname. The site of their home was more isolated than at Shiuhing and overlooked a river much less wide and crowded with boats, yet its view of paddy-fields and mountains, the nearby pagoda and tower, was reminiscent of the southern town. The exterior of house and church (secular and ecclesiastical architecture did not differ in form) was indistinguishable from neighbouring buildings—wooden pillared structures with glazed tile roofs like canopies of battle tents—the interior more spacious than at Shiuhing.

  Here they began to repay the hospitality of the past year, especially towards a graduate named Ch’ü T’ai-su. On the death of his father, poet, historian and one of China’s most distinguished Academicians, Ch’ü, a young man of brilliant promise, turned from Confucius to alchemy. He not only squandered his inheritance but fell into debt and was obliged, with his young wife, to trek round the country in search of wealthy friends, on whose behalf he used his winning manner to influence magistrates. The previous year, hearing that the foreign bonzes possessed an uncanny knowledge of alchemy, he had profited from a visit to the viceroy to meet Ricci. They had become friends and, when the missionaries moved to Shiuchow, Ch’ü, who meanwhile had settled in Namyung, chose Ricci as his master: a great honour, for Ch’ü was three years his senior. The ceremony followed a precise protocol. While the master sat at the north end of his room, the disciple entered from the south, prostrated himself four times in deep humility and offered a present. Next day at a public dinner the disciple announced to his friends that he had chosen a master. Even if he received instruction for only one day, during the rest of his life he must address his teacher as master, sit beside him in company and acknowledge his superiority. Ricci was well content with the arrangement, for through Ch’ü he came to know the local mandarins.

  Ricci had soon discovered that the young graduate was intent on learning only one thing: how to change cinnabar into silver. However, as their lessons progressed, he was able to interest his pupil in other more marvellous if less rewarding subjects. He began to teach Ch’ü mathematics, a subject which, like medicine, the Chinese had no incentive to learn and which had remained at a rudimentary stage. In particular, Chinese arithmetic, conditioned by the abacus, was clumsy and slow. If a mistake were made, since previous calculations were effaced, the whole reckoning had to be started again. Ricci, who had been surprised to find that China had always used a d
ecimal system, showed that by means of written numbers, for which ideograms already existed, more complicated problems could be solved. He then expounded the first book of Euclid, inventing Chinese terms for each stage of the argument from the definition of a point to the theorem of Pythagoras. Logical deduction from definitions and axioms revealed a new world to Ch’ü, for Chinese geometry had not advanced beyond practical mensuration.

  Ricci enjoyed imparting, for the first time, knowledge which had been handed down by the Arabs, Greeks and Egyptians, opening horizons to the Chinese, who believed that because the good life had been discovered their education need never change, and had made thought itself stereotyped by an unalterable literature. He took pleasure in weaning Ch’ü from the magical properties of infinite and infinitesimal and reducing the world to the measure of man. Teaching, too, proved a means of self-defence, preventing Oriental methodology from becoming habitual.

  Every day during the mathematics lesson Ricci found an opportunity of mentioning Christianity. Ch’ü listened attentively but made no comment. One day he brought a notebook in which he had listed his principal doubts so that Ricci might reply to them, point by point, as he did in the field of science. As he scanned the list, Ricci smiled. Instead of the usual difficulties—surely the idols will be cross if we desert them; why may we not continue to cast lots and observe lucky and unlucky days?—his pupil had raised fundamental questions, ranging from proofs of the existence of God to the problem of evil. Ch’ü, in his turn, was no less surprised at receiving answers which seemed to him to resolve the problems he had believed insoluble.

  Convinced of the truth of Christianity, he wanted to be baptised, but one difficulty held him back. His first wife had died and he was living with a concubine of low birth, whom he refused to take as his legitimate and only wife. He had no male descendant, a very great dishonour, and if the concubine could not give him a son he would be obliged by the most hallowed of Chinese traditions to take others until a child was born to carry on his name and venerate his memory when he died. Ricci was deeply disappointed. He had come to the conclusion that, given the size of China and the small number of missionaries, he must win the graduate class, intelligent enough fully to appreciate Christianity and with sufficient influence to make it popular. In Ch’ü he had found a typical graduate, convinced him of the truth of Christianity, yet failed to overcome the ingrained belief, fostered by Confucianism, that a man’s paramount duty was to beget a son. Social tradition had proved an even more formidable obstacle than atheism and the lack of common philosophical principles.

  In their second autumn at Shiuchow, Almeida again fell victim to malaria. After a week’s fever, on October 16th it became clear that he could not long survive. Ricci heard his confession and sat at his bedside, watching the flushed frail body, like one of those coloured kites their neighbours loved to fly, sink and rise and sink in a failing breeze. Almeida, who had a fervent devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, was possessed by a single thought—to receive viaticum before he died. Since for reasons of prudence the Blessed Eucharist was not reserved, it would be necessary to wait until Ricci could say Mass. Every few minutes, while an eighth corner of the night was ploughed, he enquired the time. “Remember, Father,” he said, “if I’m unconscious by morning, I may still receive viaticum, because I ask for it now with my wits about me.” Ricci reassured him. At half-past two Almeida said, “You can begin Mass, Father. As long as you finish after sunrise, you fulfil Canon Law.” But long before dawn, at three o’clock, he felt his fluttering body plunge. He motioned that he wished to kneel before the crucifix. Ricci helped him to the ground, where, lacking the strength to balance, he fell forward and died. To the last moment his soul had outrun his body. Gently Ricci took the light figure in his arms and laid it on the bed. At dawn he vested in black and, without consecrating a fourth host, celebrated Requiem Mass.

  For the second time Ricci suffered the loss of his only European colleague but he kept his grief to himself. His friends were shocked that he did not show open signs of desolation or wear mourning. They did not fully understand his explanation that in entering religion he and the catechists had already become dead to the world and, so that no offence should be given, during the few days when friends came to view the body, Ricci dressed his servants in white, symbol of pale cheeks, colour of mourning. One of Almeida’s acquaintances presented a coffin of cedar wood, three inches thick, twice as large as those in Europe, beautifully carved and varnished mirror-smooth. Burial presented a problem. Ricci did not want to lay Almeida in the church, for the Chinese would have considered the building defiled, nor to bury him with the dead of Shiuchow in unconsecrated ground up on the mountain-side. Until he reached a decision, once again conforming to local custom, he retained the coffin in the house. The Chinese dead were kept at home in varnished coffins, the chinks sealed with bitumen, for as long as two or three years. Filial piety demanded the physical presence of the dead person for most if not all the period of mourning. This allowed time, also, to choose a grave in touch with favourable influences and currents, with invisible winds and streams: “a place on the terrace of night.”

  During 1591 Ricci was occupied in proselytising among Ch’ü’s friends and in teaching Almeida’s successor, a young Italian, the four most important of the nine Chinese classics: the Great Learning, which laid down man’s duty to seek perfection, know and will the good, correct his passions, order his family life aright and so contribute to national peace; the Doctrine of the Mean, which defined the principle of righteousness as “nothing too much,” counterpart of cosmic order; the Mencius, apophthegms of one of the Master’s disciples; and the Analects, ethical phrases of Confucius, the first of which—“Is it not pleasant to learn with constant perseverance and application?”—in counterpoint with filial piety made up the anthem of Chinese civilisation: conformity with the past. From these texts he must be able to quote as freely as a Roman gentleman from Virgil and Horace. Since they formed the basis of the state examinations, they would also give him insight into the graduate mind.

  If most of Ricci’s time was spent studying and teaching, there were also compensating hours of recreation and enjoyment. He relished his meals, preferring rice, bamboo shoots and local rice-wine—served slightly heated—to the bread, beef and grape vintages of Europe. Kwangtung rivers abounded with excellent fish, many varieties of which he had never tasted before. He appreciated the view across to the mountains and a climate which pleached the months in an unbroken garland. He enjoyed occasional open-air plays performed by a travelling troupe, the feast of lanterns when the whole town seemed to be on fire, the dragon-boat races along the nearby river. He learned Chinese chess, both the usual form and a more complicated game, in which 278 pieces were moved on a board of 361 positions. He grew to love blue and white porcelain, and to laugh at the antique bronze vases prized by rich graduates only when they were covered with authenticating rust. But his greatest joy came from Europe in the form of annual letters, two or three years old, from friends in another world which did not reject. He delighted, too, in the company of the Chinese Brothers, their enthusiasm such a pleasant change from the studied gravity of their Confucian counterparts who tried to be old before their time, and in the fervour of his few converts.

  Ricci found difficulty in restraining the younger ones from their favourite occupation, entering pagodas and breaking hands and legs off the statues. Once, in defiance of his strict prohibition, a newly baptised houseboy stole an idol and brought it back secretly to the mission house. He waited till late at night, then cast it into the kitchen fire to burn in hell. One of the Brothers, making a last round before going to bed, detected a strange smell of perfumed wood and discovered the idol in the grate, half-consumed. Next day he told Ricci about the incident, adding that he had no doubt who the culprit was. What should he do, dismiss the boy or give him a severe reprimand? Ricci burst out laughing and replied that, for once, such zeal should be overlooked.

  The following
year, 1592, marked the tenth anniversary of Ricci’s disembarkation at Macao, the third since his arrival in Shiuchow. China counted less than a hundred Christians; Shiuchow only fifteen. In comparison with other missions, diverse as Brazil, the Philippines, Japan, he could not profess to be sowing: he was still breaking arid ground.

  At times it seemed doubtful whether even that claim was justified. During the course of 1592 he had occasion to return to Shiuhing for a few days. Although some of the Christian community had occasionally visited Shiuchow or Macao to consult a priest and strengthen their faith, most had given up their good practices. Parodies had begun to creep in. Ricci walked down to the Pagoda of the Flower of Saints. Its garden, which had once boasted tree peonies and azaleas, was overgrown with weeds. He pushed the creaking door and accustomed his eyes to the dim light. The myriad eyes of gleaming gilt idols gazed back at him. In the centre a drum, wooden fish and tongueless bell hung before the Buddha to come, his belly exposed to view, on his thin lips the shadow of a smile. After only three years rank reversion everywhere. Ricci baptised five children born in his absence but foresaw that, without the support of educated men, the community would soon revert to type.