White Lotus

by John Hersey

I make no pretense now of keeping my head lowered and my eyes hooded. I must see him, measure him. I am impelled to check on the forward-pointing sword.

  Half a dozen paces. One, two, three, four, five. Now comes a dance of halting. It is the pure military stop: the right foot plunged into immobility, the left foot rising up as if with astonishment and then crashing down, finis, beside the right. During this maneuver, which was accomplished with an impressive jiggling of fatty tissue, I had the feeling that the Governor’s eyes were not looking at me but were bulging with myriad lenses like the eyes of a fly, and that he was looking into every pair of eyes all around the reviewing ground watching him. I mean I had an impression of vanity of an absolutely staggering dimension. Whatever happens, I must take this into account.

  Involuntarily I do now lower my head a little, pulling it down into my shoulders, for seeing the sword still held parallel to the ground I have a sudden fear that this supple ball of fat will whisk the sword through the air without a word and cut my head off. This is not too much to imagine; I have witnessed beheadings.

  But what is that I see in the sun glints that are still on the sword? (I hear the man puffing.) There is a fine trembling. I might not have noticed the tremor on the bare steel itself, but intermittently the delicate shaking brings quick little darts of sunshine into my eyes.

  Governor K’ung stands at attention in front of me. He is close to me, well within sword’s reach.

  At first he says nothing. He is sucking in air with his mouth open, and I suppose he is catching his breath. Vividly I see him.

  He is exactly my height; our eye beams are entangled without an upward reach on either side. The pupils of his, under the puffy epicanthic folds of “good” yellow eyes, are dark mirrors in this light; the whites, pure white. Nothing clouds those clear eyes: never drugs, I would wager, no drink, no inner doubt. Could it be that an ascetic lives in this house of fat? To judge by the eyes, he is swift-minded, keen. My earlier impression, that his face is not as fat-looking as his torso, is confirmed, but his face is not for this reason haggard or drawn. His black brows are unusually wide and thick, his lips are wire-thin. Everything leads up to the brilliant eyes under the enormous brows; the mouth has to be abandoned, one cannot stay with that mean cut. The eyes speak to me, through their glittering, cheerful lenses, of filthy hatred, of haughtiness, of determination to hold me and all my white kind down in the dirt.

  And one other awful feature: the thick neck. We have heard of this aggressive neck in distant provinces, and it is justly famous. The man’s head is not small, yet downward from the ears there is a gross filling out—and not, it seems, to fat, but to a powerful corded lay of muscles which give the impression that they contain, like the bull’s neck, erectile tissue for combat.

  We stand and look each other over with frank, open stares, which would not be permissible in commonplace encounters: man and woman shamelessly stripping each other, to and beneath flesh, searching out with indecent haste the innermost core.

  It must appear to the crowd (the vain Governor seems so aware of appearances) that we are talking to each other in low voices.

  I look even more closely at the Governor’s eyes, to try to see what he is thinking. I see his continuing surprise—he feels both cheated and titillated—at my being a desirable young woman. His gaze descends to my breasts, my hips. I believe I see him shaking off speculations, as if those glances had been little stumbles, like the one his foot made approaching me; agilely his eyes return to mine. He wants now to see how afraid I am.

  Suddenly a thought comes into my head, as it were, from one side, and it almost knocks me off my one-legged perch: The vendor is lying off to my left. This is one thought the Governor cannot read. I feel sure he is unaware of the vendor. What will come into our relationship when the Governor knows about the vendor? I must weigh this.

  The Governor’s breathing is easier now. Those terrible lips lie together, he can manage through his nose. Yet he does not speak to me. What is he trying to do? Does he mean to stare me to death? Or has he not made up his mind what to do? Has my unexpected girlhood thrown him off course?

  He has a row of medals on his vast chest. The metal circlets overlap each other, hanging from their ribbons, but they seem to be identical, and the one that is fully exposed has in low relief an unmistakable (because of the neck) profile of Governor K’ung himself. Ai! The self-praising hero. Now my eyes move from breast to hip, right hip, where I see a revolver in a holster. He has modern means of doing away with me; he has a whole platoon of men with rifles at his back. Why then the sword? Is it (how I would like to blunt it with thoughts!) only ceremonial? Is it just for salutes? To remind of the past when we whites were slaves?

  How effulgent the satin of his blue tunic! How many hours did it take how many white women silk-reelers to unravel cocoons for that tunic? With this thought—and remembering the vendor—anger has welled up in me, old white anger. I look in the Governor’s eyes. I see the tiny veiled jump there when he makes out that I am angry. He is the one who is supposed to be angry. But I see plainly that he is not. He is a man with his own image hanging on his chest trying to make some calculations. I think I might prefer to find him angry.

  He seems to exude cheerfulness and patience. His demeanor seems to say, “I have plenty of time. I have all day. I have all the time in the world.” He has the good humor of the truly fat. No, it is more impenetrable than that: He has the good humor of the bigot. Bigots can be all too pleasant, for they have no doubts to worry them. Yes, something like a smile plays around those lambent eyes—nothing could be said to “play” around his lips; anything that trifled there might trip and maim itself. The Governor is definitely not in a hurry, and he has the look in his eyes of being in good spirits, notwithstanding that delicate shaking I saw on the sword blade.

  But why doesn’t he speak?

  Hooo, I must keep my eyes away from his. I must not let him see the fear I feel. He must see nothing but white skin.

  He is wearing a curious sash as a baldric from which the sword’s scabbard is hung. I focus on it. A stretch of it shows, crossing his chest under his tunic, which hangs open at the front. The sash is a width of embroidered silk on which a story is told in frieze of gold thread, and of gray; a story of domination. Human figures, gold and gray, struggle across it. The gray are bent, they seem to be burdened. The gold are beating the backs of the others with rods. It is an awkward narrative of slavery! It is an old sash, made (no doubt by a slave woman) for a master who felt like boasting of his power. Governor K’ung has had it brought out from some musty box to wear today: to undermine me, to give himself strength?

  His not speaking is very strange. I put it together with the impression I have had of his being at leisure: there is no hurry. Suddenly I wonder:

  What if he has decided to wait me out? What if he has decided to stand there opposite me just as long as I perch here? What if he stands there motionless and speechless all day? All day, all night, as long as I last? Fat as he is, cannot he stand there on two feet longer than I can balance on one? Has he decided to answer our symbolic protest with a symbolic assertion? We never speak during our sleeping-bird demonstrations. Is he to remain silent the whole time while he demonstrates…what?—the tale on his baldric?—the old, old story of some men bending other men to their wills?

  What shall I do if this is what he has chosen? How can I counter this tactic, if he has elected it? It would be an impressive answer to us, for I don’t see how I could outlast him. What could I do?

  The vendor comes into my mind; and Governor K’ung’s vanity. The vendor. How could he help me? I cannot imagine. He is flat on his back, perhaps dead. I have not actually seen him prostrate, but I feel certain that he is. How could he possibly help?

  I hear laughter. Laughter runs again like an eddying wind through the crowd, and I am made aware by this sound of the tense silence that had preceded it. I have bee
n concentrating so closely on my adversary that I have lost all awareness of sound, or the lack of it, and now hearing the gusts of laughter I realize that a few moments ago I could hear the man breathe, so still was the noonday around us.

  Once again I cannot imagine what the laughter is about. Something to do with the vendor? Is he alive? Stirring into consciousness? Have the young pranksters grown restless at the deadlock between the Governor and me, and are they playing new tricks? Would they dare, in the presence of Excellency K’ung of the bull neck?

  I have been through the mystery of this crowd’s laughter once before, but the Governor has not. I have to admire his composure. What control! He does not take his eyes off me, but I do see minute starts and flutterings of his stare, reflecting what must be powerful temptations to look to this side and that. He resists them all, though he must know he could silence every guffaw and snicker by gestures of no more than his left forefinger.

  The laughter increases. I sense a third presence; somebody or something is approaching. This feeling is confirmed as the Governor’s gaze now does slide past me, to my left and rear, near the ground. His look is one of annoyance and contempt. I have the irrational thought that Rock is crawling toward us on all fours.

  I am startled by a contact—something pointed yet soft—against the back of the leg on which I am standing; my scalp crawls, my buttocks congeal into gooseflesh.

  Now appears in front of me, sniffing at my trousers, the same woebegone cur we had seen earlier. I cannot help looking down at it, and yes, it is the same one, with the raggedly molting fur. It is no longer a picture of terror, however; it fans the air with its moth-eaten-looking tail, it ducks its head in repeated invitations to petting and play. As it sniffs at me it pokes my leg with its nose.

  The crowd is laughing hard.

  The dog is bound to lose interest in my unresponding form, and it will surely go to the Governor and start sniffing and wagging at him. What will Excellency K’ung do then? He will kick the dog, send it hurtling away with a high-pitched yelp and tail tucked forward between its scurrying hind legs. He may even use his sword; I must brace myself against the sight of blood. Governor K’ung has been so contained, so controlled—rage must be boiling under the rashers of fat: rage, if at nothing else, then at the laughter of his yellow populace, and now at this insubordinate cur, and probably all along at me. The poor dog will catch the sword as my proxy; I wish I could give the creature a sign, keep him by my feet. It sniffs at my raised shoe, it sniffs at my crotch: gusts of hilarity right and left. I hold still.

  There it goes, finally bored, toward His Excellency. Its head is lowered, its tail still wags but more discreetly, the whole form is lowered in a worshipful crouch, for even a dog can sense the august nature of the second figure standing here in the open. Authority must have its distinctive scent.

  Governor K’ung’s eyes flash now with a certain readiness, and I watch the feet to see whether the man’s balance is being gathered for a swift and nimble dig at the gaunt ribs. I look at the sword hand, to see whether the grip has tightened, driving blood from the knuckles.

  Something is certainly different. Ai, yes, the laughter has ceased. Utter silence, but for the snuffling of the dog’s dusty, rubbery nose.

  Governor K’ung, I realize, is not going to react. Not by so much as a hair. Neither kick nor whistling slash. Nothing. He is going to match my indifference. The mountain of flesh is frozen. What strength the yellow man has!

  The wagging stops. The cur is mysteriously intimidated. It slinks off.

  What does the poor dog know? I am frightened. Is there a K’ung Method, which may bring the defeat, for good and all, of the Sleeping-Bird Method?

  A disgusting look of self-satisfaction seeps into the Governor’s face.

  What did the dog smell? Did it smell the habit of domination? Did it smell the power of yellowness?

  We are back at the beginning of things. Excellency K’ung is a yellow man, and the essence of the K’ung Method is quite simple: Have a yellow skin. Even a dog knows that.

  Governor K’ung is planted with a straight back, holding the sword pointing forward, parallel to the ground, and he seems willing to wait all day, or till I faint with exhaustion; he is yellow power, arrogance, contempt. I balance on the one leg, and I am white defiance. We are at an impasse. We stand. We glare. We cannot move.

  BOOK ONE

  The Coffle

  A Visitor

  THAT DAY when it all began I was working with other young girls at our village pottery shed.

  I was near the wheel of Mrs. Kathryn Blaw, the senior potter, who was also storyteller at our village library. Narrow parrot-nosed face, hair drawn back in a bun, simple brown clay-spattered work smock—she was in the shade of the tin roof of the wheel shop, but the brilliant light of a reflected Arizona afternoon flooded her, filling every wrinkle of her dry white skin with a juvenating liquid glow; the wheel shop was only a roofed shed without walls.

  Mrs. Blaw was building up from a lump of tempered clay the sides of a large graceful urn of the sort our village sold, mostly to California merchants, for the storage of grain and fruit. As she worked on the earthen shell at the low wheel, her shoulders curving and her breasts pendent within the smock, the swift flapping, paying, and wilting of her sharp hands expressed without doubt her ferocity, her edgy temperament, the wild spirit that took hold of her when she wound into a tale; she terrified my friend Agatha, and me, and all of us who had lately been children.

  She shouted for a new batch of worked clay.

  The women at the kneading troughs started up like partridges surprised in a thicket of greasewood, and their sudden flurry stirred a fuss among the chickens, sheep, and goats that wandered freely within the compound wall. Since our country’s defeat in the Yellow War we had lived a marginal life, subject to many dangers, of drought, jealousy between states and cities, slave raids, brigandage, cow-stealing, and depressed lawlessness. For security our village was divided into walled compounds, and all the compounds together were enclosed in a single continuous hedge of impenetrable prickly growth: cactus, thorns, briers, brambles. My father’s house was in the compound that also contained the pottery works, and I never felt entirely safe outside its walls of clay pile, which were taller than the tallest man, and except to go to the clay pits by day I never ventured beyond the outer village hedge, for Kathy Blaw had told us tales of carnivorous mountain bears, yellowish in color, which traveled in herds of hundreds, swooped down into the desert on hunters, seized their weapons, and made prey of the would-be predators; and of men, unthinkably yellowy too, who panyarred unwary wanderers and took them away to the sea.

  My mother, who was one of the kneaders, called out that it was time for Agatha and me to go to the pits to fetch more raw clay.

  We two scuttered like roadrunners in the dust of the compound out through its gate, carrying a galvanized tin bucket between us.

  A few yards along the unpaved village street, outside the gate of the compound of the Church of Santa Maria de Felicidad, among the many little outdoor shrines to various saints, I carelessly glanced at the porcelain figure of San Pedro of Chaco Rico, a local patron of easy pregnancies, standing alone in his little hut, which was like a birdhouse on a pole, with what seemed to me his sensual gypsy face, and at once I crossed myself (though I was not enlisted in his faith), for I believed he could alter the fate of any young girl on his slightest whim.

  Agatha’s father was Mayor Jencks. Near the mayor’s compound, in a little movable booth shaded by a striped canvas awning, sat sleepy Plimpton, who sold the villagers newspapers and magazines that were dropped off outside the hedge by the Flagstaff bus, and gum, shoestrings, cheap toys, and religious relics. Since the defeat we had had a powerful revival of all faiths. Our village numbered less than a thousand, but we had five churches, and Plimpy’s wares included a guaranteed lock of hair of Marcos de Zuza, the first Franciscan
friar to have explored our valley long ago; a speck of gold said to be from one of Brigham Young’s twenty-seven wedding rings; slivers from the one and only True Cross set under tiny magnifying glasses; and other “genuine” curiosa that Plimpton sold, mainly to children and gaffers, to attract good and ward off bad cess. I myself, though a Methodist, wore a locket he had sold me for a quarter containing a scrap of cloth from the robe of a Jesuit martyred at Guevavi; I had also slipped into the case, to fortify its beneficence, a used horseshoe nail and a tail thrown by a lizard.

  “What’s new?” I asked, scanning Plimpy’s magazines and papers.

  He yawned. “Examiner come in this morning, says the Syndicate’s on the rampage again.”

  “Where?”

  “Down beyond Jerome.”

  “That’s pretty far.”

  “You never know,” Plimpy said. By now his burdensome eyelids were sagging over the blue moons of his pupils, from which, they having perceived that no sale was to be made, the dim light was rapidly fading.

  Agatha and I were girls of fifteen, and we could not help being easy-hearted. We ran on, giggling over Plimpy’s delicious nodding, his news already gone from our minds.

  We came to the gap in the eight-foot-high hedge that served as the main village entrance. The half dozen chevaux-de-frise at the opening—big spiked frames tangled with barbed wire—had been pulled apart by the pit tractor just enough to allow passage to people on foot. Four men stood sentry duty at the opening.

  Edging outside, Agatha and I saw the sunlit world to the west—in the near foreground a sea of gold, where down a tipping tableland the chest-high rabbit brush was in full bloom, then the dusty ribbon of the unpaved highway, then a rock-strewn stretch, with the reddish massif of Dead Guest Mesa off to the left, and, all beyond, reaching up and up, cloaked with sagebrush and collared with piny on pine, the great pale shoulders of the Chaco Rico Range. Elated by this wide sight, we sped to our right along the outside of the hedge, until, turning the village corner, we saw a landscape in a different mood: a curve of a brown river, feathery cottonwoods, a stripe of thirsty verdure meandering off southward in the general dustiness.