The Three Leaps of Wang Lun

by Alfred Doblin

  “Until midday.”

  They clumped out of the room. Ma No sat alone the whole long hour in front of the bare Buddha altar; to think was beyond him.

  Fate was bending under him.

  No more slaughter! The way assured. Fierce love for the brothers and sisters, hope blooming for every bliss, the radiant western gate! This feeling of joy grabbed him so hard he nearly called for help. He laughed to himself, softly; what a task these five messengers were taking on, these impudent childish men who compared their passion for guzzling and boozing with the passion of his brothers and sisters. But let them be blessed! What other use could be found for these gangs of salt boilers and stevedores than to station them round about to serve as mobile brickwork, flexible moats, excellently closable gates for the Broken Melon!

  One hour after midday the five men stepped into the Chanpo’s chamber, made to fling themselves down, dropped hesitantly onto the stools.

  Ma No interrogated the salt panner again: who’d sent them, how many villagers they represented.

  He countered with the impatient question: what result had come out of his calculations and what advice had he for them. At which Ma, looking each of them in turn sharply in the eye, said he couldn’t give them any advice, but as soon as they set off for home he’d join them on the road, and two or three of his brothers and sisters would come too. He wanted to make some calculations on the spot. What was necessary and what could be deduced from the time and the conjunction of the Zodiac and the metals would then reveal itself.

  The wagoner was astonished; in his view this decision hit the nail on the head in a quite extraordinary way. The learned salt boiler turned his head to his companions as if awaiting an acknowledgement, then he stood up, placed himself beside Ma No and said softly to him, “I’d better tell you, Ma No from P’ut’o, that this foolish salt boiler standing beside you thought exactly the same way as you, out there in the yard. Of course the others couldn’t see it, they don’t let a man get a word in edgeways. So in the end I just kept it to myself. A man’s the only one who knows his own worth.”

  And he grasped Ma familiarly by the shoulder.

  The panner couldn’t quite work it out: “So there’s to be no advice, not direct, like ‘Go there, go there, over here, down there’? We learn something every day. Different things are quite different. You wouldn’t believe it. We need calculations on the spot so we know how to get started. There’s something in that. No doubt about it; I’ll not deny that.”

  And he turned with coarse words on the conceited wagoner.

  While the delegates conversed with their fellow villagers in the courtyards, surrounded by uneasy brothers and sisters, Ma No had a short, sharp discussion with his confidants in the secluded burial ground. Ma wanted these confidants to accompany him.

  He wanted to break off his tactic of waiting. He desired unconditional agreement, submission to what he planned. In a curtly domineering tone he expressed the wish that they go with him to the mutinous district.

  Only Yuan wanted to go with him; the Lius, and in particular Yellow Bell, declined to involve themselves in fighting. Lovely Liang-li stared at Ma No. This man horrified her more and more.

  Then Ma, who was wandering up and down among the willows, assumed an uncommonly hard and agitated tone before this group of advisers. He scolded them for leaving him in the lurch, for knocking him, his courage already gone, to the ground. They had no feelings for the brothers and sisters, who, driven out from kin and guild and neighbours, sought refuge with them and within a few days would perish here like rats fed poisoned corn. They were his confidants; but instead of standing by him they encumbered, suffocated him.

  At these reproaches Yellow Bell was seized with a wild trembling; he interrupted Ma several times with an exclamation; then he struggled for words: “It is not seemly to speak like that to us, Ma. What these brothers are willing to endure from you I don’t know; you shan’t speak to me in this unseemly way, as if to a house slave. We owe you nothing. You are blunt, and lacking in your wise demeanour. You rave. We don’t deserve this. You mustn’t treat us so.”

  He trembled so violently that, sitting on the ground, he fell onto his face; down his thin brown cheeks tears flowed.

  Anger flashed from Liang’s eyes; she could not bring herself to speak; the younger Liu, the sceptical Little Third, set himself in front of Ma, said calmly, “Us Lius are made of baser metal than Yellow Bell; we don’t cry. Ma’s no longer treating us as confidants. Why does he want to go with the peasants, why should we accompany him? If we’re not told anything, he’ll learn that us Lius can take a scolding; for the rest, we do what we think right.”

  Ma controlled himself. “All of you, even Yellow Bell, will understand at once why I rave and will refrain from accusations and stop plaguing me with tears. Provincial troops are on their way, the peasants told me. This time they’re no hired bandits, ha, for sure, now you look at me. But you don’t trust me. Whatever I don’t peel away like the layers of an onion I’ve made up, and if I succumb to anger at it you’ll still kill me one of these days. How many days is it, dear Liu, dear sister Liang, brother Yellow Bell, until the Great, Great Traverse?”

  Yuan was the most nervous of them. Since the assault he had slept little, had wild dreams and cried out in his sleep; in actual danger he bore himself as a rule with notable steadfastness and by his demeanour instilled courage in others. Blood rushed to his head when he heard of the impending attack; he cried to the two Lius, “Can we stop arguing now? Does any of us want to be called traitor against the hundreds out there? We must hurry, hurry and again hurry, that’s the end of this whole discussion. What are we doing sitting here so long?”

  “We shall stay sitting here,” replied Liang. “Whoever fears for his body should stay in the city, compose verses and lounge in a sedan chair.”

  Yuan’s highcoloured face grew mottled; his throat seemed swollen, so gummy and husky his voice as he burst out: “The chatter of women does not disturb the educated man. No more than the howling of grown men should put a stop to a serious debate. One’s agitated, another’s not. What of it? You all sit there and sit till evening, and when the hundreds who follow us feel the sabre between their shoulderblades it’s all over. But it mustn’t all be over. That’s not for you to decide by squatting there. I’m in this as much as you. Ma must speak, Ma No must put us right.”

  He fell silent, because all the while Yellow Bell’s great face was smiling at him in such a friendly way that he let his voice trail off in confusion and stop.

  Yellow Bell addressed him: “Don’t stop speaking, Yuan. No one will hold it against you if you say what’s in your heart.” He pumped his hands in greeting towards Ma and Yuan; they responded, hesitant and polite.

  At last only Liang remained sitting on the ground, stared at the grass. Little Third spoke sympathetically to her; he helped her up; she went with lowered head to Yuan, bowed deeply before him until he returned the greeting; then she inclined her narrow shoulders before Ma, embraced him in front of the others, said in an unhappy voice, “Help, Ma No. Bring it all to an end. You are right about everything. No slaughter, don’t let that happen. Save whoever you can, us included, me included.”

  An hour later Ma and his confidants slipped away with the five village delegates. Most of the other villagers remained in the monastery at the urging of the respected salt panner, who told them to look after the threatened sectarians. It became evident on the way that Yellow Bell had not calmed down; during the night, which they had to spend in the open, he was heard groaning beside Liang, who tried to comfort him. In the morning he found some excuse to separate from them, and made his way back to the monastery.

  Next afternoon they came to a village, the largest of this region, where the salt panner had his property. Quickly Ma surveyed what was of interest to him, listened to great numbers of people. They rode for a while on mules through other villages. Crowds of unemployed men emerged from the houses, stared at the strange proces
sion, fell to the ground.

  Before nightfall the sectarians held a brief discussion; they burned with the feverish notion that Imperial troops had already reached the monastery.

  Then hinnies bore the exhausted figures back. More than a hundred of their new friends followed in excitement; they ran through the tall kaoliang. Overnight they allowed themselves an hour’s rest; early in the morning they approached the lake.

  A pale gleam of fire rose across the water. They had come too late. The attack on the monastery already over; the monastery put to the torch by soldiers. Hundreds killed. The soldiers, scarcely hindered by the peasants who had stayed behind, fled after doing what they could to save the sisters, shut up in the chapels, from the flames. They had run away head over heels in superstitious fear as if they were the vanquished.

  When Ma passed through the broken gate with the furious peasants, Yellow Bell was sitting in the gateway, called “Hail!” and “Triumph!” to Ma, who lay drooping on the grey beast’s neck.

  Ma, wordless, shook a fist over him. Even lovely Liang turned away sobbing from him.

  How things went from here is well known. The Broken Melon left the monastery, the population of these regions rose against the Imperial officials. There followed the storming of prisons, expulsion of magistrates, landlords chased from their vast estates, their houses burnt. For days thick smoke piled over the farms. Not graves nor memorial arches nor pagodas were spared.

  The first manifestos issued from a committee presided over by the salt-panner. The properties of evicted landlords were declared forfeit; the rule of the alien Manchu dynasty, the Ta Ch’ing, was branded illegitimate, foreign, and hence abolished.

  Insurrection spread rapidly to the northeast. From there two groups of Wang Lun’s Truly Powerless, each of about three hundred men, marched towards the insurrectionaries, sought out the brothers in order to help them.

  From the second week Ma No signed all proclamations, notices and so on. He sent emissaries to nearby towns, who pasted on the outer walls under cover of darkness a letter from Ma No to the Emperor Ch’ien-lung. In it Ma declared himself willing to acknowledge the rule of the Pure Dynasty, provided that the entire region affected by the rebellion was ceded by the central government to the administration of its own prince.

  After another week the most crucial step was taken: the occupied districts were transformed into a spiritual kingdom on the pattern of Tibet, with the name “Isle of the Broken Melon”. The task of this new state was defined as the nurture of paradisial aspirations. Ma No proclaimed himself priest-king of this spiritual land; a commission of three men, titled Law Kings, served at his side. Ma set up residence in the only town of any size in the occupied districts. Here plans were drawn up for the defence of the Isle, the raising of great double walls with watchtowers to encircle the whole region, watchtowers at stages on all main roads. Around a thousand of the local men remained under arms; arms for the rest were stored in the capital.

  There were two kinds of people on the Isle: former residents in their houses, shops, in their fields, hills, in the orchards; and the brothers and sisters, by day toiling among them, otherwise keeping apart, many in huts, most in the fields near to the powerful spirits of the soil. The sectarians acquired no property, passed all earnings for which they had no immediate need to the royal treasury.

  The time by the swamp of Talu had yielded full measure of wonder, tumult and joy. Here on the Isle they were hidden away. It was a masterstroke of Ma No’s. He had lifted every burden from the Broken Melon; the wall he had wished for was a living thing surrounding the brothers and sisters. The path of outward liberation for his adherents which he embarked on at the swamp had been trodden to its end. They were safe from destruction at the hands of blind fate.

  Ma No’s hardness grew during this time. From the moment he became priest-king of the district a sternness surrounded him which bordered on cruelty and revealed the well-schooled student of ascetic monks. Ma was not changed; but he once again found himself in a position where only his word was law. The fire at the monastery, where brothers and sisters lay charred before his eyes, still burned in him. He experienced no feelings of revenge; only the feeling that things that had started like this should not be allowed to end in farce. He listened no more to advice from his confidants. Sympathy for the half dead, the speared in the courtyards, in all the corridors almost killed him. He descended from the peak, stood among the wretched, confused, superstitious of his people, bent under their torments, was one with them.

  Not one of his confidants did he acknowledge now. He strove in haste to draw all power to himself, feeling that otherwise he would sink under the responsibility. Not until he’d done his utmost for the sect would its fate be of no account; then he’d be able to stand and fall meekly with the others. No fire would trouble him then.

  Ma No, unknowable man, sat on the throne of the Isle. No idol gazed more blindly than he. His faith in the Western Paradise had up to now been mingled with a sensation of ecstasy, a rapturous yearning; now Ma sat there sober, held this belief from him in an iron grip. He did not yearn for this paradise; coldly he requested, demanded entry for himself and his people. No longer was it a question of some dreamlike goal to to be reached slowly, step by step, but of something near, like the little wooden bridge he crossed every day, to which he went whenever he pleased, something purchased, paid for, overpaid tenfold, which no one could withhold from him. It was no longer a matter for dispute whether the Western Paradise really existed or not; events had furnished it with the most tangible signs of reality possible.

  But now and then he was beset by a feeling that he would have to pay a price for it, that there might occur a circumstance in which a price such as he had already paid would have to be repaid, and so now what he wanted was not long life but a brief, urgent decision, even the rapid destruction of this Isle that he had adorned with the name of his brothers and sisters. By his cunning, decisiveness, on the strength of the uncanny powers ascribed to him, he had become ruler of this land whose occupants he despised, whose touch repelled him. It tormented him that he must make use of dirty things to help the Broken Melon. Never had his hatred for Wang Lun been so constant, for the man who had allowed all this to pass when he might have prevented it with a small shift of his will.

  In the first days after the reversal at the swamp of Talu, Ma served his people better than he knew. He had thought to make a journey back to himself, out of the clutter of daily command. But only with the burning of the monastery did this journey become possible. Ma became a hermit again, without in his role of king becoming aware of it. He gained empathy with vanished incidents on Nank’ou Pass. Through his dreams civet cats ran, sat on the Buddha shelf, flocks of crows waited for his scraps on the steps; and Ma No wondered at this upwelling of memories. Uncouth Wang Lun looked at the golden Buddhas, long since shattered, asked endlessly after a hundred-armed Kuan-yin of rock crystal whose splinters cut the feet of travellers in the vale of micanthus. Against fate the only salvation was through acquiescence; the slaughter at the foot of the mountains, the burning of the monastery once again proved all that. Ma felt that the immensity of this idea and the fruits of these facts were beyond his powers.

  The sect was welded together by fate. The joy of the summer months no longer shone over them. Many became conscious only now of the deadly earnest of their sect. Ma radiated a dark glow that imparted itself to them. Yuan, fallen in the battles around the farms, lay under the earth. The Lius kept silent before Ma’s authority. Lovely Liang trembled at the glance of this rigid man and thought herself lucky to follow him. Yellow Bell had disappeared.

  Once more the body of the sect shivered with an inner sickness. In a village barely eight li from the capital there lived among the Broken Melon a young, strange, handsome brother who, though a charcoal burner by trade, bore himself with enviable refinement and was always ready to help. Like not a few others he had left home out of filial devotion, from a vow to a wandering brother th
at he would go to the Broken Melon himself if the brother would help his sick father. Now, torn from familiar surroundings, he journeyed with the others to the Western Paradise.

  But he was disturbed in the purity and calm of his emotions by a feverish passion for a woman. This woman was a sister, but she found it a struggle to keep her spirit aimed surely towards the clearly seen goal. Of a girlish gentle beauty, a voice that was always husky, dreamily squinting eyes, she was first borne from her father’s house at the side of a coarse forty year old dealer in furs, from whom she fled two years later because she thought he had discovered her infidelity. The man fetched her back, she deceived him again and had to leave the town. She was glad to come upon the wandering brothers and sisters; she could indulge the vexing wildness of her body without mortal risk; she almost stumbled headfirst into their lusts.

  Then she met the young charcoal burner. She didn’t deny him, but soon he drew back from her, desired her no more; grew gloomy. He declared to her one morning, when she came to his smoky billet in front of the village and sang, that he’d given no thought for days to heavenly things, he was in torment and begged her to stay with him and belong to him. The young woman covered her comely face weeping as soon as he began to speak, for she knew already what he would say. But when he finished she looked about to see if anyone was listening, sat in the smoke next to him, put her arms around his neck so that her full cheeks and unsated lips lay beside his smooth skull, and moistened his queue with tears and kisses. Surely he knew his wishes flew in the face of the precious rules, and what did he think he’d do if anyone found out.

  Nung slowly turned to her his oval face that had lost all symmetry under his pain. What would happen if they were found out he didn’t know; he didn’t want to offend against the precious rules, for that would be a sin against his father; but he didn’t know where to turn. The disgusting suicide demon in the wide trousers had fallen upon him, this last night and three evenings ago. “What’s the answer, dear sister? How should Brother Nung deal with it?” They sat quietly and without thought in the foul smoke; his sooty hands twined in her black artful locks.