The Three Leaps of Wang Lun

by Alfred Doblin

  He sat down on a stool by the brick bed. They spoke long and earnestly, conversing in pure kuan-hua, which the servants did not understand. Anger coloured Hai-t’ang’s cheeks; the large fan whisked in her left hand. “For as long as the Great Dyke has stood along the Yangtze the villainous rabble has not dared such a deed. And shall not again treat our precious child so. We helped restrain the Huang-ho, Chao, China’s Sorrow. The wild swans shall not fly again across this land before the hooves of our swiftest horses have overtaken the murderers, trampled them.”

  Such was the import of their long, fierce discussion. While Hai-t’ang, beside herself with grief, rocked back and forth and clapped her little soft hands. While she grasped the dangling sleeves of the Tartar, in whose eyes the pupils grew wide with a thrilling, hungry passion.

  The male residents of Tso-fu Street were punished with twenty blows of the long rod, the neighbourhood night watchman was thrown into gaol, the district intendant of police dismissed.

  Chao Hui summoned the town’s Prefect. For two days he pleaded sickness. When the general’s courier came on the evening of the second day with orders either to appear or to appoint a personal representative and then in view of the continuing grave situation in the province to resign his office, the Taot’ai acceded. Obedience was bitter to him. As Prefect of the town he was subordinate to the Viceroy of Chihli; only in the previous month had an Imperial decree been issued, empowering the specially appointed general Chao Hui to require in quite exceptional cases that civil officials of the rank of Fut’ai and above should report directly to him.

  In the temple of the town god, behind the altar, was the god’s bedchamber, his bed and clothes. A second bed stood in the sparsely furnished room opposite the adytum. This was provided for senior officials of the town and district, when before deciding on important matters they wished to obtain advice from the Lord of the Walls and Moats, the great wise god. Before journeying to Chao’s camp Tang Shao-yi undertook his temple sleep.

  Riders pranced in the van, runners cried their piercing “Make way for the Taot’ai!”, oncoming sedan chairs were forced to the side, carts overturned. The bearers had steady shoulders: a rhythmic, sure pace carried the mandarin’s green palanquin in the fresh morning out from the city wall. Outside the city yellow dust blew from the plain, and not far away the strong square ramparts of the camp rose, barely distinguishable from the earth. The yokeshaped gate. Fearsome little soldiers in blue jackets shot arrows at hanging mice, strolled in the rectilinear streets of the camp, juggled on staves held steady by others. In the centre of the camp on a high building a red pennant with white characters fluttered: Yamen of the General Officer Commanding. A runner carried the Prefect’s long red visiting card into the building; the bearers half set their load down in the courtyard. Then the runner beckoned. The palanquin stood in deep sand before the door. The large, corpulent mandarin in his official robes, at his belt a fan and embroidered tobacco pouch with flint and steel, slowly climbed out and slowly mounted the two steps to Chao Hui’s yamen. Chao came to meet him. They exchanged greetings with endless flourishings of the fists, up and down. The door of the yamen remained open.

  In the open room Chao Hui sat opposite his guest. The teacups in front of them remained covered. Coolly the Taot’ai regarded the slender Tartar, whose cheekbones stood out a burning red, whose little moustaches hung over thin lips, whose catblack eyes glittered; who took a couple of pulls on the silvermounted mouthpiece of the waterpipe. Water gurgled.

  Each spoke with intense interest of the other’s family. It was perhaps coincidence that the general’s silver hand tapped ceaselessly on the table: the Imperial hand, three fingers extended, the sign of judicial authority. Very soon the general alluded to his guest’s indisposition, which he much regretted. When the Taot’ai, leaning on the table, asked after Lao-hsü’s condition Chao, grasping the silver mouthpiece, asked louder what intelligence the town authorities had obtained relating to the rebels; whether the sects had been uncovered, and the emissaries who agitated in the town; what gatherings within the town boundaries had been raided during the past few weeks.

  Tang Shao-yi smiled complaisantly. Several had been apprehended at sutra-reading, but as a rule insurrectionaries went about their business in secret and weren’t as easy to catch as rampaging cattle, barbarian hordes, perambulating youths. If it were all so easy, the Governor General and the Fut’ai would not have needed to request help from the Son of Heaven, from the most successful general in many a year. They exchanged bows.

  The recent occurrences, Chao continued, his expression hard, demonstrated the impudence and audacity of the insurgents. He intended to report to Ch’ien-lung and propose that in any troubled district the streets where political crimes were committed or insurgents arrested should be burned. He would further recommend that for some months the old system of mutual clan supervision should be reintroduced throughout the province, and the ten mutually responsible households punished together. The attentive Tang could not find words to express his amazement. “Your Excellency observed during your felicitous time in Anhui how difficult it is to contain the raging waters of the Great River. The conspirators and sectarians are seeping through the foundations of our defenceless houses.”

  “A man is not water. A man can die.”

  “The power of the glorious Emperor K’ang-hsi has acquired Tibet for the blackhaired sons of Han. The land of Tibet is far away. Its abundant passes are beyond the horizon. No army is plundering its stolid populace, as Your Excellency intends to I plunder here. Go with your horde to Tibet. I know Chihli. It is peaceful—without soldiers.”

  “Tang Shao-yi has never been in Tibet. He does not know the pestilence of that land. In Lhasa, in Tashilunpo the pestilence walks in yellow robes and red priest-girdle through the streets and wears precious jade rings on its fingers. They take the copper cash from a man’s pockets and the brain from his skull. They walk through the streets. Here they seep under our houses.”

  “Our land is peaceful, Excellency. It can accommodate many priests. Not fifty years have passed since Chihli and Shansi suffered a drought of many months, the wells dried up, the cattle died in droves. The father of Ch’ien-lung, sublime Yung-cheng, now throned in Heaven, found only steppe in the rich provinces. No army stood then outside Yingp’ing, outside Shanhaikwan. No peasants fled their villages for fear of soldiers. In Peking the Emperor went to the Altar of Heaven and addressed a petition to Shangti; processions chanted in every province. And it rained! People thought the age of Yao and Shun had returned. But that sort of wisdom, perhaps, seems ridiculous to more elevated minds.”

  Since Chao said nothing, just stared at him unblinking, he continued coolly to give rein to his education. He spoke of the mythical ancient, Shen Nung, born in an age of fishermen and hunters; he taught agriculture, sampled the taste of herbs, mixed medicines, so that even now he was held in great esteem among doctors, greater perhaps even than Ts’ang Chieh.

  Wordlessly the general clapped his hands. The waterpipe that a servant brought he thrust behind him with a brusque movement of the arm, pointed to a large scroll on a small corner table. Controlling his voice he read out the latest Imperial edict:

  When in any district unruly persons declare themselves to be divine or Buddhas and purport to found a heretical religion or sprinkle themselves with water imbued with virtuous or magical powers, or when they seduce the populace with clandestine religious practices and collect money among themselves, then, even if no danger of a breach of the peace is occasioned, the sub-prefect of the district who neglects to proceed to that place and arrest the criminals shall be demoted by two ranks in the Civil List. And the Prefect shall be demoted by one rank.

  He did not continue. Tang Shao-yi had thrust out his broad chin and assumed a challenging smile. Chao laid down the scroll.

  “The Imperial edict that Your Excellency has done me the honour to read out does not apply to me. For me, miserable lizard, another decree applies. The law agai
nst heresy. Your Excellency will understand.”

  But he seemed not to understand.

  “The old law that hangs on every wall. I mean that law. Your insignificant servant, Excellency, will speak slowly and dearly. Your insignificant servant stands in the place of those insurgents who are to be cut into pieces, whose wives and daughters are to be sent to Ili whose graves are to be filled with rubble. Your insignificant servant grants his protection to all who fall foul of this law. It is the particular pleasure and the unbounded delight of the most obedient slave who cowers before you to succour and shelter those who come athwart Your Excellency’s measures. And happily athwart.”

  The table with the covered teacups between Chao Hui and Tang Shao-yi rattled. Both had stood up.

  The general, whose eyes were starting from their sockets, growled, “I’ll have you bound and laid in the dust.”

  “At Your Excellency’s command. We are at war. This poor northern province has no greater wish than to live in a state of war with the murderers of Ili. Those who dwell meekly within the four seas pray and obey the laws. Let only the Imperial hand not be raised. What Your Excellency and this clod of yellow have to discuss has nothing to do with the glorious Son of Heaven.”

  “Are you, T’ang Shao-yi, Taot’ai of Shanhaikwan, in league or in collusion with the insurgents? Perhaps the words of my renowned senior lack clarity.”

  The Taot’ai was a head taller than the military mandarin opposite him. Sunlight fell sharply through the open door into the room, over the Taot’ai’s back into the elaborately bony face of Chao Hui, this face gnawed by blizzards, whose small ears with their shallow folds had admitted more death screams than those of any other man of his time. The one-eyed peacock feather on his round cap shimmered greenly in the light.

  T’ang Shao-yi, instead of answering the question, asked if in his mulish ignorance he might make a proposal.

  “The honorable general was sent here by the Emperor with special authority. In a few weeks the Emperor will possibly travel to his summer palace in Jehol, or to the tombs at Mukden. Before the Emperor passes through the province it must be at peace.”

  “Continue!”

  “The dwarf before you would not dare to make a proposition. There is only one solution known to this dwarf.” T’ang, uninvited, sat down again. Slowly the general too bent his knees.

  “And that is—for Your Excellency to come over to us.”

  The two men looked blindly into each other’s little eyes, searched out facial lines. Through Chao’s brain there swept suddenly a bleak, helpless feeling; his brain swam in it, slithered as in a tub of greasy, filthy washing water.

  “If Your Excellency does not pacify the province in the next few months, at least provisionally, you will lose what remains of your estates in the Lower Reaches, will yourself be dismissed, your glorious ancestors demoted. If you think of saving yourself, all will fall out as you wish. The insurrectionaries have infiltrated almost every family and many of the guilds. It is impossible to search them out, since there are as many havens for them as roofs in the town. The train of events is easy to predict. The hatred of the peaceable masses for the murderous horde that has been set here under your command is growing constantly. The insurrectionaries are gaining adherents. The war-likin contributions are becoming insupportable, the tax revenues of the civil power are diminishing. Let your troops commit just a few more atrocities against citizens, and this province and Shantung and Shansi as well will erupt in rebellion. They will be beaten down five times. Other armies will come, other generals. But the war will—drag on for months.”

  Now the Tartar understood the wily mandarin. His thoughts cohered again. Carefully he probed the size of the losses in tax revenue suffered by the civil power, last month, the month before that. Now, as he approached the core of the matter, he marvelled at the sureness with which the Taot’ai had kept a grip on his thoughts, like a lathe its iron bar. And how the artful man had deceived and nearly, nearly seduced him.

  Chao Hui suggested, tentatively, turning over half the likin proceeds to the town. But T’ang declined in tones of delight, suggested that the tax might be increased a trifle for certain guilds and a third of the resulting revenue be allowed to flow to the civil power, in furtherance of Imperial commands for the suppression of rebellion. Civil and military could then at last work hand in hand. Also, in view of the considerable deficit in the town treasury, it was desirable to levy on the rich merchants a special, not too heavy, tax, proportionate to their means, in the name of the General Plenipotentiary, for three or perhaps four months. Some arbitrary portion of this tax could usefully be put to increasing the strength of the town police.

  Chao Hui agreed, with a few minor diminutions, to the Taot’ai’s proposals.

  T’ang grinned ceaselessly. He asked time and again: However could they have misunderstood each other? It was certain the town would now be at peace, with new resources flowing to the authorities. This intolerable discord between magistrate and military had (so he was reliably informed) already driven several town officials into the arms of the rebels.

  They smiled at each other, bowed countless times towards each other, showed their yellow teeth.

  Chao Hui felt a little dizzy. Red and green spots danced before his eyes.

  They lifted the covers of their teacups, drank tea from the plantations near Swatow. Chao accompanied his expansive guest quickly down the two steps to his palanquin.

  Inside he let his head fall, heavy and reeling, onto the table. With his hot forehead he kneaded the red scroll, the Imperial edict of the previous week.

  That evening the Taot’ai sent to his house two valuable sceptres, two ju-yis in white jade with finely carved birds and flowers, on the endplates verses by Ch’ien-lung.

  Chao Hui’s emissaries next morning carried into the town magistracy a screen consisting of twelve porcelain leaves; the leaves were wonderfully painted with cherry blossom and longnecked birds; finest underglazing in cobalt blue.

  Hai-t’ang asked whether T’ang Shao-yi had been sent packing, and these were presents for the new Taot’ai. Chao Hui turned his head away.

  Book One

  Wang Lun

  On the mountains of Chihli, in the plains, under the all-suffering sky they sat, against whom the armour and arrows of Emperor Ch’ien-lung were mobilized. Who passed through the walled towns, spread out through market towns and villages.

  A gentle shudder went through the land where the “Truly Powerless” appeared. For months their name—Wu-wei—had been once again on all lips. They had no abode, begged the rice, the bean broth they needed, helped the peasants, artisans at their work. They did not preach, sought no converts. The literati who mingled with them strove in vain to hear from them a religious dogma. They had no icons, did not speak of the Wheel of Existence. At night many made their camp under rocks, in the vast forests, mountain caves. Often a loud moaning and wailing rose from their resting places. That was the young brothers and sisters. Many ate no meat, trampled no flowers, seemed in friendship with plants, animals and rocks.

  There was a vigorous young man from Shantung who had passed the first examination with distinction. He rescued his father, who had gone out alone in a fishing boat, from the gravest danger; before setting out after his father, he vowed to follow the adherents of Wu-wei. And so he went, the joyful examination celebrations hardly over, quietly from the house. He was a respectful, rather shy youth with deepest eyes, who suffered visibly under his spiritual struggle.

  A bean merchant, a gaunt bony man, lived through fifteen years of childless marriage. He grieved deeply that after he was dead there would be no one to pray for him, to feed and care for his spirit. At the age of forty-five he left his home.

  Chin was a rich man from the foot of the Ch’an. He lived in a constant rage because, however carefully he guarded his wealth, month after month he was the victim of thefts, though only of trifles. On top of this came the extortions of policemen, tax gatherers; severa
l times he lost houses, burned down by illwishers. He feared that one day he would stand bereft of goods and chattels. He felt impotent, without rights. So he gave away all his money to blind musicians, old bawds, actors, set fire to his own house and took to the woods.

  Young rakes with girls they had rescued from the painted houses drifted in. Often the girls, who were among the most revered of the sisters, could be seen in strange ecstasies under the purple callicarps, in the fields of millet, and heard to babble incomprehensibly.

  Six girl friends from the northern Imperial Canal who had been married as children jumped, in the month when they were to be taken to the houses of their bridegrooms, tied together with a halter into the canal below the town. Since they injured themselves against the canal wall as they jumped and hung there wailing loudly, they were rescued by some passing barrow haulers who conveyed them to the nearest police post after making shift to bandage the quite unresisting girls with scraps of clothing. As they were recovering under the friendly care of the officials and putting themselves to rights, their fathers came storming up outside. The girls heard the noisy altercation with the constables, climbed out through a rear window and made off. They tramped from village to village, hid themselves in a secluded cave in the mountains, obtained food by helping on the farms, in the mills round about. The youngest of them, a blooming fifteen year old, daughter of an old schoolmaster’s concubine, died there when a robber violated and then strangled her. Not long afterwards the robber together with the girls fell in with a group of sectarians.