Wise Man Of The West (Harvill Press Editions)

by Vincent Cronin

  On arrival at Lintsing the eunuch captain went several times to visit the Collector of Taxes in one of the magnificent palaces he had built for himself, but on each occasion was turned back, as Ma T’ang did not consider his presents sufficiently magnificent. The captain was at his wits’ ends: he could not afford finer gifts yet must obtain Ma T’ang’s consent to continue his journey. If he arrived late at Peking, he would lose money and perhaps even his life. In this dilemma, calling on members of Ma T’ang’s retinue, he informed them of the foreigners and their presents, adding that they possessed quantities of jewellery and knew how to fabricate silver. If he had a hand in their introduction their master would increase his influence over the Emperor. Pleased at the news, Ma T’ang presently sent word that he would come on board in the near future to inspect the presents.

  Foreseeing danger, Ricci decided to consult a friend he had first known in Shiuhing days, now military superintendent in Lintsing. When Ricci arrived at his house and explained what had happened, the military superintendent shook his head.

  “My poor friend,” he said, “you have no hope of getting out of Ma T’ang’s hands. He and his kind are the real masters of our country. The Emperor acts only on their advice.”

  “I shall take my stand on the Censor’s passport,” said Ricci. “That no one has a right to contravene.”

  The military superintendent was not impressed. “The greatest mandarins have failed to withstand the eunuchs. What can you hope to do—a foreigner without money or power or influence? No, resistance is futile.”

  “What course then do you advise?”

  “Be very pleasant to him: thank him for the favours he proposes. He is weak and effeminate at heart—and susceptible to flattery. But don’t try to escape; you will fail and even risk your life.”

  During their conversation a messenger arrived in haste.

  “My master Ma T’ang,” he announced, “is making his way to your boat. It is most important that you be there to receive him.”

  As Ricci prepared to leave, his host said, “Tell Ma T’ang that the Far Westerner is in conference with me. Explain that I would not let my visitor leave for anyone else in the world.”

  When the messenger withdrew, the mandarin turned to Ricci. “He respects no one in the city but me: if you are late, he will think only that I have done him a favour.”

  Ricci returned to his boat in time to see a palatial barge glide down the canal, long as a European galley, a little broader and far higher, all the woodwork finely carved, gilded and varnished. When it drew alongside, Ricci was escorted on board. Wide verandahs surrounded a dozen cabins and halls, hung with silk and furnished with antiques. He was received by a short, stout, middle-aged man, powder and vermilion on his beardless face merely accentuating its incisive lines, unmistakable as the ideogram for greed. The eunuch waddled towards Ricci with an incongruous, effeminate fluttering of his fan. After an exaggerated show of courtesy, “I hear you have something to offer his Imperial Majesty,” he said in a shrill uneducated voice. As Ricci inclined his head, he continued, “I shall lend you every assistance. Meanwhile, I should like to examine the presents.”

  “It will be a pleasure to receive you,” replied Ricci.

  The eunuch frowned. “Your boat is—a trifle small. I prefer to have them carried here.”

  He shouted the necessary orders, while Ricci tried to control his annoyance. One by one the presents were carried in and taken out of their cases. The prisms particularly excited Ma T’ang.

  “Excellent,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “These are truly worthy of the Son of Heaven.”

  Last of all a picture of the Virgin with the Christ Child and St. John the Baptist was unveiled. Astonishment forced the eunuch to his knees.

  “Fair lady,” he said, “I promise to give you a place in the Emperor’s palace. I shall write a letter at once to his Imperial Majesty.”

  Ricci, however, was not deceived. He had had dealings with eunuchs and knew them to be utterly selfish, without a spark of conscience or the least shame. Despite his assurances of help, Ricci did not doubt that he intended to turn the presents to his own advantage.

  “I pray you not to put yourself to such trouble,” said Ricci. “You are a busy and important man. In Peking I have many friends—high officials, who have promised their help.”

  Ma T’ang laughed derisively. “None of the mandarins has as much power as I,” he boasted. “Why, when I present a petition to the Emperor, he takes action the following day, whereas anyone else either waits weeks or does not receive an answer at all. No, I am the man to take charge of the gifts.”

  Remembering his friend’s advice, Ricci acceded gracefully. “The Lord of Heaven, Whose picture you are helping to present, will reward you for this good work you are doing Him.”

  Ma T’ang’s face clouded at the implication. “I shall soon be travelling up to Tientsin,” he said, “two or three days’ journey from the capital, to take the money collected during the past half-year. Sixty thousand taels.” His tongue caressed the figures. “I should be pleased if you and your party would accompany me.”

  Seeing no way out, Ricci again accepted. Interpreting this as weakness, Ma T’ang then said he would have the presents carried to one of his palaces.

  Ricci, however, was determined to keep the gifts by him. “I don’t think that would be convenient,” he said. “The clocks are difficult to regulate. I am afraid they might be damaged.”

  “The pictures at least I will take.”

  “We prefer to keep the pictures, to venerate when we say our prayers.”

  For the moment Ma T’ang did not press the point. As a return for putting the foreigners into his hands, he gave orders that the eunuch captain should be excused the customs’ duty, amounting to thirty taels. Ricci and his party transferred to one of Ma T’ang’s boats, where they were supplied at his expense with rice, wine and fuel for cooking. Here they received several visits from the military superintendent, who spoke to his friends of the esteem in which the foreigners were held at Nanking, hoping that the news would reach Ma T’ang’s ears.

  During their short stay, Ma T’ang invited Ricci to a great feast, at which the other guests were eunuchs, in one of his magnificent palaces. While dinner was being served Ma T’ang’s own private troupe of performers came in, conjurers better than any Ricci had ever seen at home, contortionists more resilient than the fakirs he had watched in India, and acrobats who made a mockery of nature’s laws.

  As guest of honour, Ricci was invited to select from a repertory book several historical plays to be performed that evening. Later a troupe of fifty-six “youths of the pear orchard,” all young castrati, introduced themselves to the spectators in appropriate speeches, and began to act the first play. The villain’s face was painted white, as custom dictated, while warriors wore thick red and yellow paint. All were robed in gorgeous silk. They declaimed their parts in recitative, interrupted at intervals by shrill, harsh music of wind instruments, while long pauses were filled with a loud crash of gongs and kettledrums. The actors improvised their own scenery. A file of soldiers, piling themselves on a heap across the uncurtained stage, represented a wall, while a general, to undertake a distant expedition, mounted a stick and circled the stage two or three times, brandishing a whip and singing a song. Even actions were stylised: moving the hands slowly across the eyes signified weeping, while standing stiffly up against a pillar was the sign of hiding. When their part was done, dead men rose and walked away.

  The faithful concubine, the poor scholar, the stern father, the husband who dresses up to test his wife’s fidelity: round these stock characters a weak pantomimic plot was woven, in which the virtuous hero and villain invariably received their deserts. Neither an indigenous nor ancient art form, the drama had been introduced by the Tartars and remained at the level of crude entertainment. Indeed, its essential conflict between persons was hostile to traditional Chinese thought. Although he had chosen the plays
himself, Ricci preferred the acrobatics.

  The banquet lasted more than eight hours; during that time the entertainment, which included puppet shows and jugglers, never ceased. Ricci recalled the politeness, elegant manners and good humour of dinners at Nanchang and the southern capital: then looked round at the neutered company, stuffing themselves with sweets, gulping their wine, some making eyes at the young actors, others shrieking with laughter at an obscene joke, dedicated to a life of luxury day and night, for which only depredation and murder could pay. The mandarin class, after all, was less omnipotent than he had once believed: their tenuous civilising influence continually challenged from beneath by these barbarians, leagued not by respect for reason but by their common vitiation.

  A few days after the banquet, it was decided that Ricci should leave for Tientsin at the end of July. A servant carrying Ma T’ang’s letter to the Emperor accompanied the missionaries on the eight-day journey, together with four soldiers to see that the ship had right of way. A week later Ma T’ang joined them.

  Not until mid-September did a messenger arrive from the capital. Convoking all the local mandarins to his tribunal, Ma T’ang told Ricci to appear in coarse cloth and wearing a small round hat, sign of humility. When Ricci appeared Ma T’ang solemnly announced that he had received a written reply from his imperial majesty: supreme honour which few mandarins could boast. At this, lackeys came forward and made Ricci kneel as a sign of reverence to the imperial word. Ma T’ang then read the rescript, a gilt-edged scroll emblazoned with dragons. Its contents, though scarcely justifying such excitement, were not unsatisfactory: the Emperor placed the whole matter in the eunuch’s hands and asked for an inventory of Li Ma-tou’s presents. Ma T’ang ordered Ricci to write out the list there and then. More than ever distrustful of his intentions, Ricci purposely did not include everything. When the inventory was completed, the eunuch read out “Three paintings, two small, one large: two clocks, a large one with weights, a small one which sounds the hour by itself, and two prisms.” He scowled. “You must add to the list the jewels I have been told you possess.”

  “You have been misinformed,” Ricci replied. “I have no jewels, and even if I had, no one would oblige me to offer them as gifts.”

  To temper this rebuff, he invited the eunuch to look at their other belongings in case they should include some object worthy of the Emperor. Mounting a palanquin carried by eight bearers—thus usurping honours due only to mandarins of the second rank—in company with all the city magistrates, Ma T’ang came to the boat and inspected the presents a second time. He selected the clavichord, an illuminated breviary, a well-bound copy of Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum and seven books of mathematics, most by Clavius. These Ma T’ang transferred to his tribunal; when Ricci protested, he said the law laid down that gifts which were the subject of a letter to the Emperor should be kept in custody.

  Ma T’ang’s second letter, forwarding the inventory and asking for permission to offer the gifts, was presented on September the twenty-third, the Emperor’s birthday. Weeks passed without an answer. The eunuch took fright and regretted having meddled in an affair involving foreigners. He no longer invited Ricci to his entertainments and soon refused to exchange a word with him. He ordered the travellers to leave his ship and take up uncomfortable lodgings in a pagoda within the walls of Tientsin. Here six soldiers kept guard day and night, but they had freedom at least to say Mass, which they offered daily for a favourable reply. In November Ma T’ang sent a curt note that he would be returning shortly—before the canal froze—to his post in Lintsing. He sent back the pictures and the large clock; the other presents he claimed to have deposited with certain mandarins for safe-keeping.

  The following day he came to visit them unexpectedly, with the military superintendent, and a bodyguard of two hundred cut-throats. Entering the pagoda he approached Ricci, his hands restless with disappointed rage.

  “My friends at the palace,” he cried out, “have written to say you possess quantities of jewellery. Exactly as I suspected. You still refuse to offer it to the Emperor?” His oblique look was confronted by piercing blue eyes; his effeminate face by a bearded, incisive profile, his flabby body by a tall compact figure.

  “I have already explained,” replied Ricci, “that we have no jewellery.”

  Ignoring this, Ma T’ang shouted to his men to carry everything from the lodgings into the courtyard. Meanwhile, pacing in agitation, he caught sight of Pantoja in a corner of the room.

  “Who is this barbarian?” Ricci hastily presented the young Spaniard. “Why haven’t you brought your friend to visit me? Do you think that was a courteous action?”

  “Precisely out of courtesy he did not come to your palace,” replied Ricci. “For he knows neither your language nor your etiquette.”

  Ma T’ang scowled and went out to inspect the baggage and furniture. First he opened all the cases and writing desks, scrutinising each object and paper, then flinging it aside. Ricci watched helplessly, his only compensation a look of sympathy from the military superintendent, as if to say, “You see how these eunuchs behave: they will be the country’s ruin.” Every time Ma T’ang found something which had not been shown him, he complained furiously, as though the object had been stolen from his palaces. If he fancied an engraving or curio, he handed it to one of his suite. When he had rifled all the drawers without finding jewellery, he became even more angry.

  “I know you have precious stones hidden somewhere,” he cried, looking round the courtyard. Ricci was most anxious that he should not inspect the case containing religious articles.

  “You have looked everywhere,” he said and tried to distract Ma T’ang’s attention. But this only increased his suspicions: determined to justify his claim, he continued the search and at last came on the precious case. Opening it, he found a beautiful crucifix enclosed in a wooden box. Puzzled, he lifted it out and caught sight of the five wounds painted a realistic red. “So!” he cried. “A fetish to kill the Emperor!” His look of astonishment and horror told Ricci that he really believed the charge. “I suspected you were up to no good—here is the proof.”

  Ricci thought quickly. The Incarnation was a mystery which Chinese converts took months to grasp. If he said the figure was the Lord of Heaven whom he adored, the ignorant Ma T’ang would fail to understand and accuse him of lying to escape a heinous charge. Ma T’ang’s thugs, muttering furiously, had already begun to crowd round: he must provide an explanation in familiar terms.

  “This figure,” he said, “represents a great saint of the West who willingly suffered death for us on the cross. We paint pictures of the scene and carve crucifixes, so that we may always have him before our eyes and thank him for suffering on our account.”

  “Nonsense,” shrieked Ma T’ang. “It’s a fetish made to inflict a terrible death on his Imperial Majesty. You will be taken to Peking under arrest.”

  The mandarin on the other hand seemed satisfied by Ricci’s explanation. “All the same,” he said, “it is cruel and improper to keep representations of such a scene.”

  Believing he had discovered a cache, Ma T’ang continued his search into the case containing all the missionaries deemed most sacred. Distractedly Ricci and Pantoja prayed for deliverance. After a few moments the eunuch found two other crucifixes which, to Ricci’s surprise, seemed to damp his suspicion. He examined them and compared them with the first, then said petulantly, “No one ever makes more than a single fetish. They may, as you claim, be representations of a saint.” Next he found and set aside two reliquaries, one an ebony cross containing bones of saints, the other in the form of a triptych, as well as a gilded Mass chalice, which had been sent that same year from Macao. These he said he would forward to the Emperor. Finally he took possession of a bag containing two hundred taels, set aside for their expenses in Peking.

  Concluding his search, the eunuch sat down, motioning Ricci and the mandarin to chairs beside him. With a grand gesture, he returned the bag of s
ilver to Ricci, as though it were a present. “You see, I am an honest man,” he swaggered. Ricci thanked him, then asked for the reliquaries, but with these the eunuch refused to part.

  “At least give me back the chalice,” Ricci begged. “With that we sacrifice to the Lord of Heaven. It is a sacred object which no one but we who are consecrated may touch.”

  The eunuch, sensing a challenge, lifted the chalice and began to turn it over and over in his stubby, plump hands. “What do you mean?” he asked in a slow, insolent voice, “no one but you may touch it?”

  Furious, Ricci threw down the bag of silver in front of the eunuch. “Take double its weight—or more if you like—but give us back that holy vessel.”