The Three Leaps of Wang Lun

by Alfred Doblin

  Sweet Nai stood before her mother a miracle of gold, motionless in the unearthly splendour that Hai-t’ang had heaped upon her: purple wedding gown with broad sleeves, glinting diadem in her highpiled hair; blue orchids bloomed on the sleeves, the magic unicorn sported on the swelling bluegreen undergarments, a pair of ducks swam side by side across a pond; the uprearing phoenix twittered shrilly. Hai-t’ang squeezed the hands of her daughter, who gazed from anxious eyes; laughing she played with the perfumed veil that the lady of honour gave her, chattered, sang the song she had heard her daughter sing in the garden. Music approached: the eight gentlemen who were to fetch the bride had arrived. Lantern bearers, shield bearers, musicians in front; they wore gay green smocks with red spots, and flat felt hats. A swarm of children leaped around the yard: mischievously they barred the gate to the gentlemen, who knocked, threw coins, until the door opened to shrieks and huzzas from the children and the musicians crowded in. Chao Hui had taken personal charge of guarding the procession, despite Hai-t’ang’s warning against any military measures. After dining in the reception hall with the eight gentlemen he went over to the women’s quarters, where the bride took leave of her mother, tripped around with unsteady face, quivering lips, not daring to cry. Carpets had been laid over the steps down into the courtyard. On thin soles the childlike bride rustled beside her father, who wore his Imperial yellow jacket of honour with the chain of pearls; a peacock’s feather swayed in his cap; he strode forth in boots of black silk. By the steps he put his arms around his daughter, lifted her down into the closed red palanquin; the girl regarded him meekly. A trumpet signal: the bearers in blue jackets, yellow trousers took up the weight, paced slowly forwards. The procession formed itself, and bright music echoed down from the proud house that gleamed sombrely over the evening town. Chao Hui followed at a distance, in a closed sedan chair.

  Increasing commotion in the streeets. Thirty soldiers, ten mounted, the general’s bodyguard, escorted him with halberds. It grew darker as they snaked along the streets, burrowed through the markets. Lanterns flared. Trumpets alternated with flutesong.

  Without incident they reached the hastily opened gate of the Yuan residence, at the entrance to which the gentlemen were waiting. Whitish smoke rose from the middle of the courtyard: the bearers lifted the lovely bride over glowing coals.

  Then, just as servants were closing the gates, a disturbance arose in the onlooking mass of people, in which many soldiers were mixed. The crush impelled a few of the women and men in the fore into the yard. They tried to squeeze back into the crowd; since this meant shoving others, received blows. A violent squabbling and squealing arose by the dusky gate. As more and more became involved people heaved excited and curious across the yard. The bearers had not yet deposited the bride at the threshold of the house when the pummeling compressed throng overwhelmed the carpetdecked patio, hemmed in the palanquin, dragged aside a number of the elegant gentlemen waiting at the door. Amid cries of “Way!” soldiers and police laid into the seething confusion with clubs and whips. Many turned, tripped on the carpets, went tumbling, sank beneath the feet of the mob. A tall soldier, drumming blindly on caps and skulls with his staff, was attacked by two men. The bamboo was twisted from his hand, hard fingers stabbed his eyes. At the muffled screams of “Murder! Murder!” insensate terror seized a number of the people. In several places in the street as well as in the yard soldiers and civilians began to wrestle, tear each other’s clothes. Weapons appeared in the hands of fishermen, coolies, well dressed strollers.

  The soldiers of the wedding procession, mounted and on foot, driven together with Chao Hui to the back wall of the yard where they were unable to open the gate to the second yard, set their halberds hissing to the bayonet position. The riders used spurs on their well-groomed mounts which, shying at the din, reared up on their hind legs, smashed faces with their hooves, skidded on bodies, buried sprawling men. In a moment the space was covered with falling, clambering, roaring figures. The ones in front tried to avoid halberd thrusts. Walled in by those behind they curled up, hunched their bodies small; they were forced onto the points by the mob that expanded like a gas bubble, or else collapsed to the ground where their bones were snapped and air driven from their bodies by the weight of horses and men.

  Chao Hui’s strident bellow sought his daughter’s palanquin.

  The last mounted soldier shouted back that he could see a heap of red cloth and splintered wood in the middle of the yard, before he threw up his arms and tipped sideways with his horse ripped open from below. The soldiers’ halberds trampled underfoot, the bluejackets surrounded and devoured, ground down by the struggling throng.

  With a crack the overstrained rear door burst open. The hemmed-in soldiers, Chao Hui tumbled, flew in retreat across the second yard. In the street, in the front courtyard arms could move again. Now they saw the trampled and the crushed among them.

  Gangs of stalwart men, toiling in several places among the crowd, cried grimfaced, “To the Prefecture! Down with the soldiers!” They brandished daggers, knives, swords. They stretched and unseamed the mob in the street: “The soldiers are killing us!”

  Townsfolk blindly took up the cry, shielding their eyes from the Sight of sprawled bodies, the battered, speared. Howls of outrage flickered through neighbouring streets. Running groups of raging, bleeding, torn, maddened men and women coalesced. Everywhere house doors cracked open under kicks to howls of “Murder! The soldiers are killing us!”

  The streets lay in darkness.

  It foamed out of every street.

  Distant parts of the town awoke. The cries echoed first over the Prefecture marketplace. Single figures shot like cannonballs from side alleys. Then the streets spewed larger clumps of mob across the huge square. At last the mob itself, thrusting up from every surrounding street simultaneously, a thousand-armed Buddha with a black face before the silent Prefecture, the prison, town barracks.

  Dim lanterns glowed here and there, swam like boats over surf. The mute buildings engirdled this redeyed Buddha, whose body swelled; they dug into its side. Torches, hungry wolves, approached the courtyards, gatehouses of the Prefecture.

  Before the flames that feasted in the yamen stuck their white heads out of the windows the prison had been broken open, the prisoners freed.

  Tang Shao-yi recognized, at once throttled and hacked to pieces.

  The ecstatic whoops of unseen murderers, the head of the Taot’ai stuck on a police stave, incited those farther back who called hungrily in chorus, “Bum! Destroy!” They scrabbled at each other, clambered onto shoulders.

  Women, sucked into the surging stream of bodies, rolled their eyes, wrenched combs from their hair, moaned, tried to strip off their clothes, exuded white foam through grinding teeth. Their pupils shrank to pinpoints. They clung to the shoulders and backs of roaring men who brushed them off mechanically. Here and there a slender man, sensitive, frightened, hung around the sweaty neck of a stranger, Sighed regretfully as the bluegreen flame erupted spreading from the breast of the crowd: “How beautiful, how beautiful.” Then his arms flickered like the hot glare. His brain spinning he was absorbed into the stiff stem throng.

  The air overhead seethed.

  Inside the barracks on the west side of the square two hundred alarmed soldiers barred the doorway. As the wooden rafters crackled they threw down bows and sabres, against the orders of their officers forced open the door. Suffocation ensued in the narrow entrance. The mob propelled itself across the courtyards.

  From time to time billowing smoke concealed the great glare from the roofs. Then the flame suddenly laid aside its grey cloak, flared over the marketplace, illuminated the thousand twisted animal faces that black night had concealed.

  Six groups stormed up the broad streets to the north; from the camp and the walls companies of troops drummed down. Trumpetblasts, hand to hand combat in dark streets. From roofs and nearby knolls arrows whispered, spears hissed into the heaving mad throng. The mass was thwarted. F
resh companies thudded down from the north, rammed into the insurgents, swung from low eaves, shot in long rows, forming up street by street towards the market. Through brief pauses in the howling came a distant wild trumpeting, scraping, rumbling; a landslide: the rebels outside were assaulting the gates. Mercilessly the crowd pressed northwards, ground against the barrier of soldiers.

  When all at once those struck by arrows began to sink down, the crowd spat at the soldiers. Then it spread howling in rage towards the southern exits, smashed whatever came in its path. The wounded fell away, shrugged off from the mass. They did not wait until the main body, beaten back by the soldiers, rushed back across the smokethick marketplace and the raucous cries of soldiers and the drumming over stones drowned the yelling, jeering, whistling.

  Groups fought for an hour in the marketplace and side streets. The Imperials, in possession of the northern part of the town and the market, strutted before the barricaded southern accesses. More violent brawls raged by the western wall.

  Next morning the victorious besiegers raised their black banners over the greater part of the walls, but the vanguard of the provincial army was already marching into their own camp. The decisive battle this day was over in the first hours of morning. The insurrectionaries, outnumbered, were defeated after the hardest of struggles with the fresh regular troops. They fled south-eastward, led by Wang Lun and Yellow Bell.

  In the afternoon, fighting of little glory took place between the veterans of Hi, reinforced by provincial squads, and the insurrectionaries in the town. Even the pirates took part in this phase of the campaign, first capsizing the junks of refugees, then swarming ashore where they surrounded and took prisoner a small number of desperate combatants.

  During this final battle, Chao Hui was discovered by provincial soldiers in the second courtyard of the Yuan residence. He was lying face down in a shed with contusions on both arms and hands, in a kind of swoon or distraction. He came to. They carried him through the ruined streets in a public sedan chair to his house.

  A few hours later, on a greydraped bier, the corpse of little Nai was brought in. She had been crushed, then trampled into unrecognizability.

  Sounds of battle receded from the town.

  Red flagpoles were set in the soil before Chao’s house; soulbanners to attract the dead were raised on them. On the patio of the roofed front courtyard lay the open coffin. Blue shoes embroidered with plum blossom, turtle, goose peeped out from the rich yellow blanket that covered the ruined face. Prayer formulas in the fabric besprinkled the dead girl. Around her throat beneath the blanket Hai-t’ang had placed a golden chain with a tiny glass phial, pushed a little letter into the phial in which she gave the girl’s name, her clan, age. She described her beauty, breeding and innocence, the fate she had suffered. That the spirits might receive her cordially, and not mourn that she trod no more the soil of the Empire of the Flowering Middle.

  Whitegarbed guests arrived in the afternoon, three times pressed foreheads to the ground before the libation table at the foot of the coffin; pipes shrilled, a guest poured out wine, drumbeats, reverberation of a single gong, silence. Two lamas in yellow robes, gilded diadems on their heads, sang litanies, swung censers. At evening near Magnolia Hill they burned pretty paper sedan chairs, silver shrine, spangled gowns, a treasure chest, lutes and fiddles, the bride’s favourite books, to accompany her across the Nai-ho.

  On the third day after her death, when the soul returns again, Chao Hui and Hai-t’ang hurried for long hours under the elms, searched in corners, dragged branches aside, called the vanished girl by every pet name, wept, cried, fell into each other’s arms, clung listening to fenceposts in the garden, ran groaning after every birdcall, climbed onto the roof of the house. She must come back, the bad men had gone, the bridegroom awaited her. In her room nothing was changed, books and lutes lay around, her friends sobbed and wanted her back; the enemy were all defeated and they would move back to the sunny Lower Reaches. Oh the thuya trees there, the civet trees, the fan palms, if she would only think of them, the soft warm air and the banana groves. No mosquitoes would bite her. A boat, a little bright boat would be hers to travel in if she wanted to stay with her mother; yes, she could stay, she must stay, must only come back. They would live near Hsinghua, lakes full of roses that bloomed so fragrant. They wanted to be away from here, she must come, come, come! To her father, to her mother! Nai! Did her little soul want to come into the house, or down in the garden, or where? Nai! Nai!

  Knees lame with weariness they felt their way into a room, sank down onto a bench. Again they pulled themselves upright, dragged themselves out, sought, waved doll’s fans, lifted their faces, called, sobbed.

  With grizzling pipes, monotonous drumming, youths drew up outside the house on the morning of the funeral. Music rustled against the walls like the unsure hands of a delirious consumptive; an overloud gongbeat jarred at regular intervals.

  Twelve pallbearers, unreal in grey and white, flitted about, silently took charge of the coffin heaped with white cloths and ribbons. Wailing, keening, groaning of guests in the yard. The house deserted, the courtyard empty. The long blue silk clan banner of the Chaos was raised by twenty-four bearers; through the door behind it trailed bearers of umbrellas, four-cornered moon fans, pennants and halberds. Pellets of flour for homeless ghosts spurted in the dust of the road.

  In the dead girl’s room Hai-t’ang played on little Nai’s p’ip’a. Her hair hung loose. Face unrouged. She turned the instrument to this side and that.

  On the same day captured sectarians were transported on carts from the market to the execution ground outside the town. Little Nai was already in her tomb when soldiers on heavy brown horses led the interminable procession of lurching miscreants through the wall into the sandy depression. Trumpetblasts from the marketplace. The Truly Powerless and the adherents of the White Waterlily, almost a hundred and fifty, wore wooden fetters on their legs. Kaoliang stalks were tied on their backs, wrapped in paper inscribed with the name of the criminal. The ox carts rumbled through the streets; the brothers smiled down, waved at the townspeople who passed up bowls of rice, cups filled with wine. They sang of the Western Paradise. From all sides people ran up, pointed out friends, acquaintances, wept and dared not curse the victors. Outside, a monstrous crowd pressed about the execution ground, held in check by riders with levelled swords and batons.

  The ox carts moved on, the singing died away. In rows of twenty they hobbled one behind the other.

  Now the executioner appeared behind them, naked to the waist. Hands grasping the hilt of the double-edged sword of judgement he swung it aloft so that he rose on tiptoe; smashing it down, bending double, knocked off balance by the force of the blow he severed head from torso.

  Two perpendicular armthick founts of blood. The head rolled, blinked its eyes. The mouth snapped. The still kneeling torso bounded forward, fell.

  Soldiers in a wide ring aimed their bows, partly on the rebels, partly on the dark mass of people.

  The report of their great victory brought the Governors of Chihli and Shantung the double-eyed peacock feather. Together with his decrees Ch’ien-lung sent letters in his own hand to these commanders, ordering the complete annihilation of rebels and heretics. How much weight Ch’ien-lung placed on a radical solution to the affair was shown by the appointments he made for the second phase of the campaign: at the side of the commanders he placed as advisers the President of the Court of Censors A-szu-ho and his most knowledgeable and learned son in law, Lawangdorchi. Furthermore he had large numbers of skilled Manchurian bowmen recruited in Solon and Kirin and immediately despatched to the theatre of war.

  The defeated sectarians fled through southern Chihli, penetrated the mountain country of Shantung, gathered in several hill towns and received streams of newcomers. They descended in good order to the plain near the great Canal, which they crossed. Not quite two weeks after the events in Shanhaikwan, the Imperial troops drawn up to the north and east failed to prevent
Wang Lun’s followers from burning the town of Shou-chang in a blind passion of destruction, occupying two other county towns, finally besieging and taking the walled town of Tungch’ang. These places were right on the border with Chihli; their capture imperilled the border counties of Kuangp’ing and Taming. The Tsungtu received orders to defend this district.

  Wang Lun lay in Tungch’ang on the Imperial Canal. All rebel troops were concentrated within a radius of two days march. Searing heat was followed by rainy days and storms. In the downpours peasants sowed their second crop. All trade in the region was at a standstill, traffic on the Canal halted. In a fury of activity the rebels put all surrounding villages to the torch. The approach of regular troops was hampered by the digging of great ditches, which were then flooded with water from the Canal. They undermined the highway; barriers of bushes, bamboo and sand were thrown up at intervals, high as houses. Watchtowers that could be used to send smoke signals were demolished. Peasants whose property was left undisturbed performed soccage for the rebels.

  Every morning Wang sat in the magistrate’s yamen at Tungch’ang and held court. This last victory had refreshed his army; they lived war, weighed victory and defeat. Fortune and disaster depended on the black Ming banner: tenderly and with resolve the mass of warriors rallied to it.

  During these days Wang Lun, seated on the k’ang in the courtroom of the yamen in Tungch’ang, presented to his lively followers a manifold image of cheerfulness, fiery passion and rapture. This had become familiar in him since the battle of Peking, but the condition now grew more pronounced. Some even asserted that in the midst of battle he became playful, snatched caps from the heads of enemy soldiers, stuck them on his Yellow Leaper, played with attackers like a cat, unconcerned at the progress of the fighting. How deeply he immersed himself in the usages of war was shown also by his free and easy manner with the women of the conquered town. Wang took what he wanted, while exercising strict discipline over the Truly Powerless. He frequently asked pardon of one or other of his friends for his dissipation: his behaviour might be ridiculous, but they shouldn’t think badly of it. No one should take it into his head to think badly of it. The fact was, he felt really happy and confident; he hoped everything would go better soon. He avoided long discussions, avoided also conversation with Yellow Bell. Ngo, in charge at Shouchang, was filled with disgust and dread. Apart from official reports he and Wang had no contact with each other. Yellow Bell tried many times to seek an explanation from Wang. When Wang avoided him he went about oppressed, deeply grieved. He felt an obscure need to comfort Wang and protect him from something. So great was Yellow Bell’s concern for Wang that he assigned a few dependable people to watch the strange man and report back to him. But he could not bear to hear their painful reports and didn’t know where to turn in his anguish and his pity.