The Three Leaps of Wang Lun

by Alfred Doblin

  Chao Hui’s palace stood solitary behind the town on the northwestern Magnolia Slope. The defeated general seldom left the house, wandered from room to room, from the courtyard into the garden. He no longer stood at the window facing the sea; it angered him that the sea lay there to which the rebels had forced him back, that his soldiers and his commander’s luck were as nothing and he like a cat about to be drowned, yowling up and down beside the water.

  He sat much in his study with its frieze-covered walls, puffed on a hookah and brooded. He was a fine gate guard of Peking! By a puzzling turn of the battle Peking was saved at the last moment; he was trapped on the coast; where was his martial glory, what did Ch’ien-lung think? He could no longer accuse A-kuei and knowing eunuchs of despatching him to hopeless tasks. There was a battle. He was defeated. Ch’en Yuan-li, the young inexperienced Tsungtu of Chihli, will take pleasure in relieving the town. The lord of Shantung and Pi-yuan of Honan will gain honour at the expense of Chao the failure. He’d lost face. Shame on his house, shame on his ancestors.

  Youthful Hai-t’ang, his principal wife, consoled the melancholy man. She drove her greying husband out of the house to inspect walls, keep discipline in the town. But Chao detested this town that once he had loved. He loathed its ambiguous citizens, was reluctant to see the deceitful Taot’ai T’ang Shao-yi, who when the troops entered the town had expressed gratitude that he would now be spared the fate of the neighbouring magistrates, admittedly at the expense of his revered friend Chao Hui. The wounds of his son Lao-hsü had long since healed; the general sat idly with him at games of morra, sat in the women’s quarters, listened to his wife as she instructed their sweet fifteen year old daughter Nai on the p’ip’a.

  One morning, while the entire body of troops was exercising on the elevated ground between town and wall, from an alley in the northwest of the town emerged as if from the earth a gaudy festive procession heading straight for Chao Hui’s house. It appeared to concern some happy event: the men, following two goldpainted sedan chairs, wore long red scarves over their black garb. With gongbeats and cries of “Make way!” they marched in the warm sunlight; the train snaked rapidly towards solitary Magnolia Hill. The “Little Father without a tongue”, Chao’s house slave, bowing grotesquely, accepted the enormous red visiting card that was handed to him from one of the chairs.

  The lean mandarin inside put on his chain of pearls, went to meet his guests in the Hall of Twelve Green Pillars. An unknown Manchurian name was written on the card. Six of the strangers, their demeanour grave, strong expressive faces, entered the hall:

  Wang Lun and five companions. Wang introduced himself first by the Manchurian name on the card, the others with invented names, then at the invitation of the host they sat at a little table between two pillars and were silent. Chao Hui clapped his hands for servants and tea. Blood flowed into his face; no one appeared. In shame he begged his guests’ forgiveness, clapped again trembling with agitation. But the strangers brushed the matter aside, soothing: they were here on business, arrived by ship, would stay only a short while; menials were the same everywhere.

  They exchanged quizzical glances. With a sudden movement Chao made to rise and look for the servants, but again the strangers begged him not to trouble himself; their affair could be settled expeditiously.

  Again they were silent. Wang, in a black gown that did not reach his ankles, took a fan from his girdle, hardened his expression, said with a cold unwavering stare that he and his companions were come to ask for the hand of the renowned general’s daughter. During a sojourn in the Lower Reaches he had heard of the cultivated and artistic Hai-t’ang, daughter of the former Tsungtu of Anhui, Huang Tzu-tung; the whole town spoke of the delicacy and good breeding of the daughter. The approach might be unorthodox, but the master on whose behalf he had come had no other means of developing the connection. With his long arm he passed across the bare table a large red envelope containing the personal particulars.

  The general sat rigid. The corner of his mouth twitched. Wang spoke calmly, invited him to open the envelope; what did the old rhyme say: “How does one cut an axe handle? Without an axe it is impossible. How does one take a wife? Without a matchmaker she cannot be got.”

  When the general, glancing at the visiting card, moved his lips, opened his mouth, tonelessly asked who he was, the guest replied that the visiting card was to deceive the servants. He was Wang Lun, a leader of the besieging army. He was acting for a Ming prince who was to ascend the throne. Admittedly this man was a Chinese; but no Chinese despised the Manchus to the extent that he would not seek a well-bred Manchu daughter for his principal wife.

  The mandarin, springing up, rushed to the gong, shouted, “Servants! Tai-tsung! Tai-tsung!”

  The strangers scrambled to their feet as the mandarin rushed past to the window. Two covered the window; Chao Hui, slipping past, falling, was lifted up by iron hands, steered with much bowing back to his place.

  Wang listened at the door, at the window; in a trice stood before the bitterly groaning general with the dispirited eyes. The bill of particulars had been brought, the betrothal sought; now it was up to the general to take the letter to the bride and collate the good and evil fortune of the eight marriage signs. They would take back his answer.

  The general struck the table, exploded: “Criminals! Scoundrels!” Four held him, bound arms and legs with red scarves, laid him in the dark passageway by the door. Wang whispered, “Think it over, general. We’ll be back.” And with a thick writing brush that he took from a wall cabinet he painted on the polished floor of the hall the menacing sign of the Ming dynasty. Already two of the men were climbing into the sedan chairs outside in the yard; gongs, cries of “Make way!” In a flash the procession was off down Magnolia Hill, disappeared into a side alley.

  Half an hour later five officers, invited by Chao Hui to lunch, found two house slaves in the front courtyard in the dirt and gagged. The Little Father, freed, ran howling into the house; the house reverberated to cries. The women came from their chambers as Little Father blubbered. Calling anxiously they swarmed in search of the general; someone tripped over him. In the bright reception hall Hai-t’ang held his sullied head. He sighed; they applied wine to his lips. Palely he regarded the many figures thronging around him. Officers and servants took up the strangers’ trail. It was hours before they discovered which alley the procession had vanished down. A military search of every house in the neighbourhood yielded nothing suspicious; the few inhabitants of the alley were promptly flogged. The outcome of the investigation, reported to Chao Hui that evening, was that the besiegers must have many friends in the town. Since rebels could not have infiltrated via the walls the strangers must have come from the sea. The police at the customs house should be reinforced; a sharp eye should be kept on the friendly pirates and on ships bringing supplies.

  They turned over every cellar, every ruined house in the town in their search for Wang and his accomplices. Chao Hui went to Hai-t’ang’s room; he tore himself free from her. “What remains, Hai-t’ang? You’re so clever yet do not see what is so obvious. I’ve become the mockery of the town, the butt of our enemies.”

  “Let your enemies laugh. They’ll scream soon enough, as they screamed in Peking. They’ve beaten our dear Lao-hsü, assaulted you, now they want our delicate Nai in their clutches. A silken cord is not for you; it’s for the town officials, the prefect Tang Shao-yi and the others. Avenge yourself, Hui.”

  “It’s no use. We can’t hold out. They’re infiltrating from the sea. They run about the streets, in the markets among us; perhaps they greet us and we don’t recognize them. Sung is right. When grains of sand are against us we should go away. We Manchus are hated.

  They’ve made me a figure of scorn.”

  “If only you were Hai-t’ang, Hui! It is on your child and mine that they spit. I will not tolerate it. If you won’t take revenge, then I shall.”

  “What are you saying, Hai-t’ang? They sat here in this house,
now they are—where? Take revenge, when you sit in a cage.”

  “T’ang Shao-yi is deceitful. He has no faith in you. He’s afraid for himself; he made this shameful deed possible for the rebels, he wants to keep his own hands clean. The silken cord is for him.”

  Chao opened the window. The elms stood with their sparse leaves against the red sky. Mild air wafted in; sudden sweet singing from the garden.

  Hai-t’ang tripped across to him at the window. “The girl is singing.” She inclined her head to her left shoulder in rapture. “Why didn’t we take advantage of the peach blossom time, when Yüan Ching’s parents asked about marriage? She would not be with us now.”

  “I want the sweet girl with us still.”

  “But Chao Hui also wishes he had married her off at the time of the peach blossom. They’ll come again, those criminals, tie you up, tie up the slaves, tie me up, abduct the child. They want to steal her, they will steal her. Oh! if only Nai were not here with us.”

  “Quiet, Hai-t’ang, the girl can hear you. She’s singing again. The house is secure. I’ve doubled the watch. The mad dogs shall not bark again in my yard. I’ll have T’ang Shao-yi incarcerated. I’ll wipe the grin from the scoundrel’s face.”

  “What use is T’ang Shao-yi to me? You can imprison seventy; seven hundred more will come. The child is singing. How long will she sing? Where can I take her? Hui, what is to happen with my child?”

  Hai-t’ang sat on the carpet, rocked herself crying. Tears smeared the red kohl jars of her round cheeks. Coloured tears dropped greasily from her chin onto her light blue gown. “On whose behalf did Wang Lun come?”

  “Wang Lun? On behalf of a Ming prince. It’s ridiculous, he didn’t mention the man’s name. He gave me to understand what an honour the Ming prince was bestowing on us, seeking a Manchu daughter for his wife. Let us not speak of it.”

  “I don’t know what is so bad between the Manchus and the Chinese. But if you hadn’t been unjust it would not have come to this rebellion. Look at T’ang Shao-yi: such rogues in every town. Wasn’t rebellion inevitable? And we have to suffer. It’s a sign of your weakness and obtuseness that rebellion should break out in the land. Uproot the sectarians; in ten years they’ll come again. How can I help Nai? Where is Yüan Ching?”

  “Yüan Ching is doing duty on the walls.”

  “I should like to see him. You must send someone and invite him to us.”

  “He can’t get away in the next few days. I don’t know—”

  “But I know. I want to talk to him. I want to see him. I want to speak to his parents. We must discuss what will happen with Nai. We decided against giving her away in the spring. Now it is urgent.”

  “The signs will not be good.”

  “You needn’t say the signs will not be good. You needn’t make me even more unhappy, Hui. She’s our child, and we can’t stand by the window and listen to her sing and sing, knowing nothing. What will tonight bring, what will the morning bring? She must sleep with her maids in my room. I shall see Yüan Ching, I shall speak to his parents. Or let me tell you, when Wang Lun comes back, and he will come back, depend on it, I shall be present. I shall see him, ask him on whose behalf he seeks our daughter’s hand. The prince will come to us, if he’s not a wicked man. And he shall have Nai. Yes, Hui, the Chinese are not worse than the Manchus. It will be good if we can be reconciled. I will not lose my child because of your vices.”

  “Now, dear Hai-t’ang, you don’t know what you’re saying. No, you don’t know. Do you realize what a scoundrel this Wang Lun is? A Ming prince! He wants to show us what danger we’re in and what he can do with us.”

  “I shall speak to Yüan Ching. He must be released from watch duty for one day, for tomorrow. No, don’t laugh, Hui. I can’t live. As I am a woman, you must not laugh. I must bear the whole misery. If some disgrace befalls you, you snatch up a silken cord. Help me, Hui, help your Hai-t’ang, whom once you loved.”

  Negotiations between the two families were swiftly concluded. Meanwhile, since the besieging army was not ready to storm the town, reinforcements arriving only slowly because detachments of provincial troops were hampering the efforts of southern rebels to link up with the Chihli army, Wang immersed himself in the bustle of the town. Almost consciously he was reliving his youth in Chinan. When the Taot’ai T’ang Shao-yi was dragged from his yamen, led to the marketplace with a cangue around his neck, Wang was among the gawpers who read the placard tied to the venomously squinting official’s breast and back: that the Taot’ai should serve as a lesson to all in the town who directly or indirectly expressed sympathy with the rebels and neglected to sniff out suspicious persons. Wang was the first to break up the shy shuffling and whispering round about the mighty man, by picking rotten gourd peel from the ground and taking careful aim at the man’s face without letting fly. But when the missile smacked into the shackled man’s eyes the general jeering, teasing, spitting stopped only when the lame warder came up, dressed in a blacklacquered straw helmet with a black cock’s feather; squatting down he was hit on the hand by a dead fish and with a roar laid into the crowd with his short bamboo.

  He spent a few days with a priest in the dirty little temple of childbestowing Kuan-yin. He felt his way patronisingly into the modest swindles of this harmless miserly concocter of powders, then strolled around in a false grey beard, played with children and told them exciting and funny stories. Only occasionally did he call on friends, to hear the latest about the reorganization of the army. He gurgled his pipe for hours on end on the sunny veranda of a restaurant; in his brooding the only thing he missed was his peasant girl, who had stayed behind in the camp. On a beach to the north of the landing place he lay in stony sand. On many a morning the sea looked at him balefully from yellow rheumy eyes, spat out clotted slime, snarled. Then again its appearance changed from greyblack to purple and back again, imperially gorgeous. Under a fresh breeze long trains of waves, carriages with dazzling harness, danced to shore. So peaceful, trickling sand through fingers. Here a hollow, there a dune. Sails appearing, bobbing. Clambering of great junks up the curve of the world over the floating line of the horizon. Hunkang-ts’un lay to the southeast. Wang Lun made little sleepy eyes, wound up his queue.

  The tenth day after the bandits appeared at the general’s house came a rumour that a wedding was being prepared between his daughter and her betrothed, young Yüan Ching. That night the daughter woke up, roused her mother and the maids who were sleeping in the same room. Starting up in the dark they too heard strange scrapings and shufflings outside in the corridor. For ages the women did not dare stir. When the noises continued, Hai-t’ang flung open a window, cried fear into the rear courtyard where the watchmen slept. Almost at once torches flew across the dark area towards the house, which echoed with movement. Hai-t’ang opened the door a crack and shrank back. In the garish light of torches a broad table stood in front of the door; it must have been brought from the reception hall. The men jammed puzzled heads together over the fine gold sceptre, the silver rings, the two little purses of silk, the casket with its double happiness sign. There was a scraping, quite near. The men shone torches under the table. There in a wooden cage two redpainted geese cackled and flapped their wings against the bars, blinded by the light. During the night someone had secretly brought bridal gifts into the house. The black fan with the sign of the Ming, upright against the wall, told who.

  The servants were no less shocked than Hai-t’ang, who was carried swooning into her room. Her sobs and her daughter’s wailing filled the women’s quarters until morning, when they had to dress and make up for the wedding. Chao Hui did not ask when the soldiers and servants returned during the night from searching the area; he knew already they would find nothing.

  The best astrologers in the town had given contradictory advice as to the timing of the ceremony, indeed as to whether they could even give their blessing to this marriage. Of the five astrologers, three found the day and hour favourable for the union, a fourth
read in the eight characters of the natal year, day and hour of the two betrothed a dubious conjunction of the third class; the fifth advised firmly against the planned timing: although the betrothed were ruled by the compatible elements Metal and Water, the wedding required a month under the sign of the Horse or the Rat, not the fatal month of the Dog. He would have to calculate the terrible marriage of the Five Demons.

  The wedding day was illumined by a mist-shrouded sun. From the rear balcony of the Chao residence a red silk banner hung motionless, embroidered with the characters: “Dragon and Phoenix presage happiness”. In the afternoon the lady of honour, an elderly relative of Hai-t’ang’s, sleeveless gown and red veil, climbed into a plain sedan chair and was carried through streets in which there was a greater commotion than usual: fishermen had just reported that a combined contingent of provincial troops from Chihli and Shantung lay scarcely a day’s march from the town, and there was great agitation in the besieging camp. A tent had been erected in the courtyard of the Sung family. There the gentlemen dined; in the house the lady of honour consecrated the red silk bridal veil with smoke from nine sticks of incense, filled a bowl with millet, wheat, beans, arranged the bridal bed. To the din of drums, trumpets and gongs a child laid four apples at the corners of the bed, protected the room with two little pieces of charcoal at the threshold. The lady glided out, climbed into the mule cart; accompanied by outriders, marshals and beaters arrived at the stiff silent house, far from Magnolia Hill, of the Controller of Customs Chao Hsin, a cousin of the general.

  At grey dawn the bride and her attendants had been brought here so that the wedding could be conducted in secret. In the sedan chair Hai-t’ang begged the general for a day’s postponement of the ceremony, after such a horrible night. But Chao Hui, his eyes menacing, said “No.” Hai-t’ang knew with what effort she had wrested a clandestine ceremony from him, fell silent, wrung her hands.