The Three Leaps of Wang Lun

by Alfred Doblin

  Ch’en Yao-fen sat in a simple black silk gown among his colourfully-garbed guests. They nibbled sweetmeats, sipped from tiny teacups, cracked nuts. They basked in the mellowness and ease of the hour, waited for the actresses that Ch’en usually hired from the town, and were not at all inclined to turn their minds to beggars from the faraway mountains of Nank’ou. Then when Chu’s name dropped, and it seemed that Chu had spoken about them in the Nank’ou mountains, there was a general agitation, jumping up, crowding around Ch’en. The chinking of little sweet dishes ceased. They flocked together by the wallscreen in front of Chen’s household altar.

  Pailien-chiao, the White Waterlily, was in session.

  The curses against Chu grew loud. They wanted to know more, more, more. What then, how then, why then? Ch’en’s explanations repeated themselves. The adherents of the Waterlily in Chihli should be informed, alerted to these developments, prevailed on to use their influence so that nothing should happen to this new beggars’ league, if the worst came to the worst to take the beggars in and hide them.

  The fierce opposition of the others stung Ch’en, who had spoken not quite confidently, to speak with greater force and not without sharpness. They broke up at the request of many whose dismay was extreme, agreed to meet again in the evening.

  It was fear that dominated most of these sixteen men. Their cause was suddenly to acquire a face. Suddenly: that was the essential problem; needlessly, for no reason. Ch’ien-lung had ruled for a long time. The Emperor had a hard, not unjust hand. It was dangerous, futile, to instigate a rising against him. It was not the time.

  That evening the bright embossed lanterns and lamps flickered from the panelled ceiling. The accusations levelled by some against Ch’en were fiercer than at midday. That he had fallen for this errand boy instead of giving a swift man five strings of cash and a little sharp knife. One of them moaned, wept, gave himself and his family for lost.

  In the darkness Wang knocked with a prearranged signal on the back door of the house. From behind the wallscreen beside the altar the tall ragged man appeared, stood among the merchants. He related almost word for word what Ch’en had told them. As they crowded around him he described how they had had to descend from the mountain, the poor, sick men who dwelt with him on the bare slopes of Nank’ou. He spoke as if it had nothing to do with him. The thought came to some of these proud merchants: Give the half-starved fellow a good meal and send him back home with a few taels. They calmed down under his gaze, which they savoured. He really didn’t seem alarming; they smiled slightly and nodded to each other. It might be that he and the others were having a hard time; the poor devils shouldn’t perish, certainly not. But why all the fuss? Emperor and censors didn’t trouble themselves over a few hundred starving men; when the Huang-ho overflowed twenty thousand drowned in an hour and the Empire didn’t tremble; the Emperor merely passed a questioning hand over his brow. It was wrong of Chu to have presented the White Waterlily as a charitable institution. Who could tell what hunger and degenerate society had made of him.

  The excitement subsided, the headshaking became general. They conversed among themselves while Wang answered questions from this one and that. It was laughable, this proposition that gangs of brawny men should join together with them, when they had no idea what to do with them. They couldn’t let themselves be dragged by a hundred or a thousand men into actions of which they could not approve.

  Wang sweated, wiped himself in the peasant way with the back of his hand over nose and forehead, mingled with the exquisite perfumes the offensive odour of the high road. He understood the situation exactly. In Ch’en, who was used to command, anger welled up against his brothers, who in some incomprehensible manner had turned away as if there were no danger here for them; they chatted and strolled about as if they were leaving this man and his business to him. Wang and Ch’en exchanged glances.

  Suddenly the great ragged man laughed as he cast his eyes over the delicacies on the five little round tables in the room. His mouth widened craftily, his yellow teeth showed. Grinning he turned his head from side to side as with courteous bows he parted the gossiping gentlemen, passing his hand across a full dish of porcelain as one strokes a baby’s naked head. He squatted on a wicker footstool beside the table, and smacking wetly finished off the dish. The guests behind him cooed, tittered, whispered, placed themselves in little groups around him, offered him a dish from another table, which he accepted with thanks. He declared how fine and choice these sweetmeats tasted, selected from the dish morsels pointed out by the guests, and ate. Ch’en remained standing by the screen; the glances of the smiling gentlemen crossed his; they winked at each other; it had become entertaining.

  Then Wang uncurled his legs, walked around the little table and insisted that the fine gentleman who had been most friendly in offering him delicacies—he was the youngest, the one who was happiest at this latest turn of events—should sit down on his plaited straw stool. The amused man let himself be led around the table, but turned in front of the stool, remained standing, his expression darkening, his head on one side and his back to Wang. Wang leapt in front of him bowing ceaselessly, pointed with unaltered smile to the laden table, praised the delicacies. When the man coldly took a couple of steps past him, Wang followed with delighted nods, offered his arm as a support and his shoulders, in order to take him to his place at the table with the quite unsurpassable sweetmeats. The man wordlessly brushed Wang’s elbow aside. Then the bony beggar from the Nank’ou mountains grasped him from behind, bore him heedless of his childlike screaming and stamping back to the stool, set him on it with a crash, pressed down on his struggling shoulders. He held his left arm around the man’s throat. He turned his face in cold fury to all sides, threatening in fisher-brogue, in his right hand held the narrow, finely engraved dagger that the man wore at his belt, waved it in a circle around him. Again and again he bade the young man eat, until pressed by the half smothered urgings of the others he at last took a sweet and swallowed it. Wang withdrew his arm from the man’s throat, stretched and yawned. Onto the painted shoes of a stout elderly man who stood all alone and paralysed in the middle of the room he spat the half chewed remains of a date. In the deathly silence he greeted the host, the tall, grave Ch’en Yao-fen in his black silk gown, bowed grinning, promised to seek again in the morning the honour of a welcome, slipped behind the screen and was out of the door. The assaulted man’s dagger clattered, thrown against the ebony rim of the screen.

  Ch’en alone had grasped everything during the course of this game; but others too, insofar as they did not stand there mindless with shock, realized that here was something new, that mere words could not cover over. There was a crash, a heavy thud in the room: the young man had fallen senseless from the stool on which he had remained squatting; the overturned stool lay half under his legs. They ran to him, attended to the unconscious man, who suddenly vomited, soon moved his arms, sat upright and blinked dull eyes. There was no loud conversation. These rich gentlemen, as if there were no servants in the house, carefully restored everything in the room to order, wiped up the vomit with silken shawls. They paced up and down.

  Ch’en Yao-fen, in a clear vibrant voice, said that it would give him pleasure if the esteemed gentlemen would set foot again tomorrow or in the next few days across his shabby threshold; for today, he would invite them only to partake of a little more sustenance. One after the other they declined; they parted reluctantly, straggled distractedly to their sedan chairs.

  Wang made no mention of the proceedings at Ch’en’s house when he met the merchant next day at the sulphur fields. He was at pains to make sure there could be no misunderstanding: the brothers from the Nank’ou mountains did not seek protection, but recognition and brotherhood. They were strong in themselves, but they might become dangerous; and this should be prevented. While additives were poured into the lye pans Ch’en penetrated deeper into Wang’s conception; his view of poverty, his belief in the golden Buddhas became clearer to him.
Covering his face with a shawl against the blue vapour he reflected on the Tao, the rigid, unbending course of the world, which was the beginning and end of Wang’s not quite clear notions. They were fanatics, who would soon suffer terribly from want, from the authorities, the proud followers of K’ungfu-tzu. In Wang’s conversations the homely old Tao sounded so joyous.

  When they stood up after hours of silent squatting and fidgetting and Ch’en clasped his hands together, Wang knew that he had won the White Waterlily over.

  Book Two

  The Broken Melon

  Through western Chihli the name Wu-wei blew softly as a moth: whirring, fading between valleys.

  A twinge went through western and southern Chihli, a rheumatic discomfort in the arm, in the shoulder, over the feet, painful stabbing in a tooth, throbbing nerve above the left eye.

  Western and southern Chihli felt this spring the warm disquieting effluvium around the Nank’ou beggars.

  The hundred who pulled out of the hamlet of Pat’a-ling grew within a few weeks to several thousand. What they brought to tramps, sneak thieves, victims was nothing less than an avowal of misery. There had been a change since the mountains of Nank’ou:

  Wang Lun, the tall, dangerous fellow from Hunkang-ts’un in Shantung, has told amazing things of the golden Fos; he’ll help us, he knows magic, we’re going along with him. Now the crowd preached for itself. Dwellers in remote villages, pilgrims away down in the plains heard of the multitude who left Pat’a-ling after the great frost and pushed southwards begging, working, praying. At first people declared it was those vagabonds and ruffians who’d been infesting the passes to Wut’ai-shan; such talk evaporated quickly. Wang Lun, they said, had ridden off to the K’unlun on a blue horse, to inform the Queen of the Western Paradise of the founding of their league. He had gone to Shantung to fetch the goldwater and pearls of eternal life. This opinion was the most tenacious. People formed a curious picture of him from the tales of the older men. He was seen as a mild man, endowed with an enormous physical strength that he didn’t know what to do with. From time to time he was seized by strong demons, which he had learned to control by means of a dreadful charm. He had a good heart for the poor p’ing-min; they would all partake of his fabulous gifts.

  Wang Lun had left his shadow behind, and it shrouded the league. Quite without design a few men were pushed to the forefront, and the crowd followed them. To be sure some here or there tried to impose themselves, but this was by the way. Everyone accepted his own role.

  Through his skill at horsemanship and archery and his fine figure Ngo, a native of Taku in Chihli, though only thirty had attained the rank of You-ch’i in one of the senior Banner regiments. He wore proudly but without ostentation the moonstone in his cap, the tigercat on his breast; when at chess he raised his soft right hand and the mother-of-pearl ring on his thumb glinted dully his opponents had no idea what strong soul sat across from them. For years he had kept up a friendship with an effeminate rouged actor lad, a young fop as people called him. The Emperor thought highly of Ngo; but Ch’ien-lung always displayed a preference for refined, elegant men who did not talk back, knew how to shoot and go through their paces, were hard and unyielding.

  The intrepidity he demonstrated during an incident that was much spoken of at the time gained Ngo entry to the innermost circle of courtiers in the Vermilion City of Peking. He was stationed with his detachment opposite the northern gate, where the Gate of Wu-ti leads to the broad moat surrounding the Imperial city. Hard by this part of the wall, so that Ngo and his men could peer across from their watchtowers, lay the palaces of the Imperial wives and concubines. One autumn, at a season when the waters of the moat are covered with small frogs and flies, rumours spread that the little child of a concubine had died of a cramp, and another child, a baby, was lying ill. Doctors and priests strove to exorcize the fever demon from the baby, which cried a great deal but did not betray the name of the demon.

  Ngo’s guard were alarmed one night by the loud shrieks of several women. Rushing into the gardens up to the concubine’s pavilion Ngo heard that the sick child’s demon had just been seen inside in the shape of a little bat that lunged at the mother’s hair and then fluttered over the baby’s hot face and flew out of the door. Ngo recognized from the description-the size of the creature, the white belly, the direction of its flight-that this was a shade he himself had often noticed near the moat in the company of a dragonfly and two brown toads. At nightfall next evening he posted six stout men of his troop at the Gate of Wu-ti, armed with shields, bows and arrows. He himself took up position with sword drawn at the entrance to the threatened pavilion.

  At the end of the first night watch the men saw something whirr up out of the water. They shot arrows; the women, made nervous by the noise, released firebrand after firebrand to frighten off the ghost; the rockets streamed green and white through the dark gardens. The demon, which was only dazzled, pressed through, flew around the cypresses. Ngo saw it by the light of a firebrand fluttering about as if dazed. He struck out at it; there was a croaking and screeching. The creature turned, flew back. Ngo pursued it roaring, brandishing his sword. They came to the house of the Director of Imperial Music, a eunuch; all at once the creature disappeared behind the wall of the house. As the women came running up and the light from swaying lanterns grew brighter the official awoke, came in his nightgown astonished to his door, asked what the matter was. Ngo cried, “The grey batdemon has flown over your wall.” Horrified the ponderous eunuch ran with Ngo and others into the house. After they had shone their lights in every corner the Director of Music struck himself on the forehead, whispered that they should quickly look beside the hearth in the living room.

  And there sat a little female with green eyes, blood dripping from her breast, with the face of an ape. She was grey and said she didn’t know how old she was. She was questioned more closely, her hands gripped tight. Tu-hsi, the renowned exorcist of the Vermilion City, who had been waiting all night by the endangered pavilion and had rushed into the house with the others, signed a warning to the people holding the grey witch, but it was too late. She transformed herself into a black cat, scratched their hands and arms. Tu-hsi threw himself on her. In the very moment that he fell upon her he changed himself with one glance in his octagonal hand mirror into a white tiger that tore at the cat. They scratched and bit bloodily on the floor amid the howling of the women; then Ngo struck off the witch’s head.

  He stood there laughing, rejoiced bloodthirstily over the little red puddle on the floor, while the others ran back along the dark paths to wash and free themselves from the glance of the dead demon.

  The concubine’s child was saved. Ngo received a little bag of peppermint as a gift from the Emperor.

  His new duties in the inner court quickly estranged Ngo from his weapons. He had to immerse himself in the intrigues, the gossip mongering, the eunuch atmosphere. There was already a certain playful, passionate tendency in him, to which he now gave full rein. He fell in love with the fourteen year old son of a poor gardener’s widow, called Ching-tsung, fitted him out with everything necessary, took him into his lodgings, addressed many fine poems to him. The rooms of this former soldier were strewn with rouge pots, perfume bottles, embroidered shawls. The vain youth, who had a feminine nature and was not without a certain grace, lay in the lap of the demon conqueror and smiling let himself be kissed by meek lips, and fed sweets.

  They loved each other until the youth, strutting like a prince in silken gowns, accused Ngo of paying more attention to another boy than to him, and ran away. For days Ngo wept distracted in his rooms. The gardener’s widow brought the boy back; he’d been playing her up horribly. Ngo forgave him, even after he confessed that a eunuch was interested in him and he’d already accepted presents from him. Little by little Ngo found out details of this friendship, found out who was involved, and was so grieved and disgusted that he began once again to request a posting to guard duty on the walls. He was not at all cross wit
h him, but still the boy noticed a change in his friend’s manner.

  And perhaps because his long association with Ngo had refined him, made him more sensitive, he became visibly quieter, fell into a melancholy, for weeks ate almost nothing, lay in a constant abstraction. The captain sat gnawed with pain beside his beloved’s couch, throughout the long weeks of his illness kept to the house. At last the boy recovered. Their friendship glowed, they were devoted to each other as never before. Although human foibles were usually overlooked in these exotic circles, everyone laughed at bold grave Ngo’s infatuation. Ching-tsung was a great pampered lad; the captain treated him as if he needed guarding against every draught, started nervously at every hard look from the boy.

  It was not the captain, too deeply immersed in his own feelings, who noticed the turned up noses around them. The boy, still irritable after his illness, berated Ngo angrily for making him a laughing stock, determined to leave him, let himself to be commandeered by another captain who spoke mockingly of Ngo with him. Ngo wandered mindlessly on the walls of the Tartar City, in the palace fell into a long swoon, raged; friends held the homicidal man back. They calmed him with difficulty, his eyes not yet opened to the sentimentality of his behaviour.

  Once he had fought down his desperation he considered what was left for him. Army and uniform were hateful to him; he could not remain in the Vermilion City. He secured a transfer to the Office of River Traffic at Hsuanhua on the Yang-ho. There he passed his time in strenuous activity, riding, sailing, writing verses, at his own request was retained for a further three years, received a promotion, during his period in office increased the traffic and the state revenues not inconsiderably.