White Lotus

by John Hersey

  But Duke chuckled and said, “Small boy,” using the yellow man’s contemptuous diminutive, the more sarcastic for being thrown at Peace’s powerful figure, “small boy, your head of hair is too heavy for your brains.”

  Absences in the Night

  As the weeks passed deep into the twelfth month I found myself increasingly troubled by a disquiet, a vague inner aching that I attributed at first to physical weariness, for the novelty, the sense of the festival release of our work in the fields, soon diminished, and I was often tired, but I began to understand that my discomfort was not washed out by sleep; it was rather a kind of persistent yearning. I had an impression something was happening beneath the surface of the life in the quarters. Auntie and Harlot—and several of the men also—would sometimes disappear after supper and not come back until very late hours. Awake when my hutmates returned, having waited for them with an alert heart, I dared not ask them where they had gone or what they had done. Their absences had to do, I felt sure, with Peace—but with more than Peace, too? With Smart’s book? With sorrow, with anger, with the underlying pain of our lives? With appeals to our white-faced God to help us? I saw, and thought about, their gravity as they silently left the field hands’ compound at night, their serenity in the fields in the morning after having been out to all hours.

  I wanted to understand. Why was I a slave? I would go to any length of work to comprehend the meanings of the characters in Smart’s secret volume I had heard so much about. This clandestinely translated Holy Book carried far more weight with me than the casual Bible of our Arizona days. I wanted to be able to read it myself. Trapped in my skin of a certain color, drifting through hostile days, I wanted to make sense of the world about me.

  The Turn of the Year

  But now we came to the end of the yellows’ calendar, and to their New Year, and in an almost craven spirit we faithfully observed the yellows’ rituals, even among ourselves. Being slaves, we played safe. Our white-faced God of whispers and furtive prayers might not suffice to relieve our many sufferings, and so, on the twenty-third day of the yellows’ twelfth month, Auntie, Harlot, Bliss, the widow, and I gathered in our room about the little niche in the mud-brick cooking range reserved for Tsao Wang, “Hearth King,” the yellows’ kitchen god, and we put honey in his tiny smoky palace, and smeared it on his mouth, to sweeten his tongue, and we placed offerings of straw, black beans, yellow paper, and fragrant punk before his tablet, and then we took down his picture, and burned it, and bade him a happy journey—for this little yellow god was said to be the chief of secret police to the yellows’ Supreme Being and was about to make his annual trip to report on us, as on all the users of kitchens in the whole land. We wanted the kitchen god to speak well of us—in case the yellows’ yellow-faced Supreme Being might prove, after all, to be master of our white-faced Jehovah. Was our white God Himself a poor slave? God help Him if He was!

  What would the kitchen god report about me? That I was a dutiful sow? Did he understand me well enough to speak of this powerful feeling I had of wanting to know more?

  An Announcement

  In the last light of one of those days I sat in our room with Auntie, Harlot, the widow, and Bliss.

  This was our home: one room, six paces long and four wide, a wattle-and-mud affair built up of twisted branches of weed trees, pignut and locust, as bones for a straw-bound plaster of mud; a dirt floor; one window hole with board shutters, which, warm or cold, we always closed at night to keep out bats and errant spirits of ill-buried slaves; our mud beds and mud-brick cooking range; one grain-seed chest for all our meager possessions together; and a huddle of earthenware pots that held our weekly rations of five catties of millet meal to each and two catties of pickled pork. This was our bare home, which we furnished further with stories, with songs, with grief, with bursts of laughter.

  My companion Harlot had given me courage, and I was telling stories of what seemed the far, far distant past: of Agatha in the coffle when the swarm of bees came out, of Kathy Blaw chanting the tale of the jaguar and the jackass to the slave ship’s holdful of naked women, of the swearing of the oath over the chalk circle on the floor of Chao-er’s tavern (even now my shoulders twitched with half-shaped laughter), and of “a man slave I knew in the Northern Capital”—I could not speak his name!—his face tumid and bruised from the carousal of the night before, his shirt torn half off his back—the trembling of leaf shadows on that broad back!—as he rode on the shoulders of yellow men off toward jail and the…Water! Give me water!…

  My friends wept. Recounting the pain of two dim years, I was perversely happy. I was among my own. I had no contact here with yellows. The overseer never came near our quarters; the long-jawed face in the grove of trees had been, yes, wistful; and where was our young master, whom I had never even seen?—and on this day early in a year that could hardly be worse than the last, my tongue was free, my mind reached back, and I felt a marvelous lucidity…yet a pull, as well, of the uncomfortable, unformed yearning of these last weeks.

  The widow clapped the shutters closed. The evening air was bitter cold.

  There came to my mind, as I was talking of a wild, whirling evening at Chao-er’s—a flash of Cassia Cloud’s wine-slop rag across a white cheek—there came to me, as if a bubble were bursting up into my mind, a shred of understanding that I had not had before: that the dissipation into which Nose had willfully plunged in the Northern Capital was not a way to be “in front” at all, and that it was no answer to yellow power, yellow magic. I saw that Peace here on Yen’s farm understood this. I burned with eagerness to know where he went late at night—where he was leading.

  Auntie and Harlot both spoke, with unaffected admiration, of the clarity of my memory, and in the dull glow of the supper embers I saw them look at each other as if exchanging some thought I could not fathom.

  Then they were gone. They slipped out without a word. Cold air came across the earthen floor as they opened the door to leave, and the widow put sticks in the k’ang oven to warm up our bed.

  At once I felt restless. The Woman of Timnath, the Harlot of Gaza: they were the life of our hut. Bliss was a good-hearted girl but lacked a will of her own; she moved as if someone else had her by the shoulders and was guiding her gently here and there. The widow wore a shawl of bitterness—everything was wrong.

  I asked the widow, “Where do they go?”

  “Pfaa!” she said. “Looking for men.”

  “They stay out so late,” I said.

  It was Bliss who spoke up then, looking into the waning firelight of the cook-range as though she did not know what she was saying. “They go to secret meetings.”

  The widow flew into a rage. “Close your mouth, you little frog! What do you know about those two? You—a baby to take care of babies—don’t even work with your back—got a sheep’s tongue—ba-a-a! ba-a-a!”

  They went to bed, Bliss and the widow, but I sat on the edge of our k’ang, gazing at the dying glow of the cooking embers.

  At last, before crawling onto the litter beside the other two, I put some wood knots onto the k’ang fire, for a cold snap had come—could the malign yellow blizzard of a Gobi dust storm be whispering at our stout shutters? I was unable to sleep. I thought about this farm—the crude, unkempt “big house.” What had the old owner really wanted?

  I was still awake when Auntie and Harlot returned; the fire in the k’ang was out, and I was getting chilled. I sat up, shivering with cold and with my desire to ask questions, but not daring to speak, and they saw me stirring. Side by side they came over to my bed. Auntie was wheezing. I could not see their faces, because the cook fire was almost out. They leaned forward, and Auntie whispered, “Peace and Smart, they’re going to teach you, child. We told them about the things you can remember. They want to teach you.”

  What had Peace said about my memories of Chao-er’s—or of the faggots by Coal Hill? “What did you tell Peace?” I
asked in a rush.

  “The things you told us,” Auntie said.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said you had a good mind, Smart should teach you to read.”

  Now the yearning I had felt during these weeks seemed to be building inside me to an almost unbearable pressure. “When?”

  “Some night soon. They’re going to start with you soon.”

  I began to sob. Sitting cross-legged on my mud bed, I covered my face with my hands and wept with great heaves.

  “Hush, hush, baby, you’ll waken the widow.”

  No danger of that; the widow was sleeping on her back, with her mouth open, making a creaking sound like that of big branches rubbing together in a tree.

  Harlot said, “We told them about you, sweetheart.”

  Even as I sobbed I wondered why I was crying so hard. Would learning new things bring such sadness?

  In Peace’s Eyes

  For a time the ground was frozen, and the iron tires of the carts clanged on it as if the earth were one huge frigid sledgehammer head. It did not snow. No use trying to dislodge stumps from cold steel: we were shifted to new work, carrying split rails of locust wood from the cleared land to a meadow half a mile away, for a new pasture fence. Two men teamed to carry a rail, or three women.

  In the clearing and in the meadow bonfires burned, and we were allowed to warm ourselves a few minutes at each end of our shuttle. We almost ran with the rails on our shoulders, to keep warm; we traveled in trains of five or six rails in tandem, singing as we trotted. Despite the fire and the rush of our work, I was chilled through.

  Now I was at the meadow warming my hands at the fire when Mink came along, sharing one of the long timbers with a slave named Tree, a tall spindle of a man, and those of us who saw the team could not help laughing at the sight of the rail sharply inclined from the straight thin one in front to the bent short one behind. When the pair came to one of the places where Top Man had told us to stack the palings, we saw them pause, and it appeared that Mink with his twisted back was unable to heave the rail straight off his shoulder to the ground. He and Tree, whose head was twisted around on his stalk of a neck to consult with Mink, stood awkwardly for some time. We laughed more than ever. At last we saw them ease the heavy rail off their shoulders into the crook of their elbows, then by another stage to their hands, and facing each other they swung the rail—counting, “One! Two! Three!”—and flung it out. It landed crosswise on the pile and cracked in two. How we howled!

  Others joyfully tossed their rails the same way after that, and several were broken.

  Li, the overseer, came on a donkey. He saw at once what had happened and spoke to us collectively. Who had started this game?

  No one spoke. Li dismounted and strode straight to Peace and repeated his question. Peace shook his head, and his little queues jiggled; his mouth was open, and the gap of his missing teeth showed dark and disreputable. How stupid he looked! Did I imagine that Mink was trying to look larger than usual? He was actually strutting back and forth at the edge of the crowd around the overseer.

  Li, seeing that he was up against our concerted empty-headedness, shouted at us with a rage-wrinkled face to straighten out the heaps and get on with our main task. Then he rode off.

  We carefully heaped the cracked and broken rails alongside the whole ones, so the unsound pieces would not be discovered and discarded until fence-building time. Thus we trebled work that we had already doubled.

  From the moment of the overseer’s confrontation with Peace, the huge man had been muttering and shaking his head, so his massive thatch of hair swished about his shoulders. Almost all of us were back at work now, tidying the stacks, and at a sudden weird roar from Peace every face turned his way.

  Peace appeared to be in a state of absolute calm, but for his eyes, which stared at something on the ground—at nothing I could make out. Then I realized he was gazing at a sight the rest of us could not see. I sensed this realization spreading like a hot liquid spilled among the slaves.

  Slowly Peace moved forward and in a voice that sounded as if it came from deep in a cave he began to tell us his vision.

  A lion. The carcass of a lion. It was lying on its side on the meadow grass, hollowed out, half opened out, the eater eaten, its flesh still red but tinged here and there into carrion, the bones in the basket of the great chest white against the meat. Great lion, hollowed out, on its side.

  Peace stepped closer to this sight, stiffened, raised his hands as if to push back what he now saw as too amazing. I stood, as did all the others, in a thrill of awe and terror.

  Bees! A hovering of bees over the hollow in the huge animal’s chest. Ah God! A hive inside! A huge store of honey!

  Peace took two staggering steps forward and dropped to his widespread knees, and fanning at the air as if to drive away the insects, he plunged both hands like dipping spoons toward the heart of his vision. But then he jumped and repeatedly started, and he drew back, and his hands slapped back and forth as if he were being stung again and again; his eyes showed his scorn of the pain, his surprise at each pricking of his skin, his anger at the pests.

  “Ha! Ha!” he shouted as he beat at them.

  Then resolutely he leaned forward again, and down arched the hands into a single bowl, and they scooped forward, the fingertips digging, and with a triumphant shout he raised his hands over his head, and for a moment I really believed I saw the sweet amber liquid and the clots of beeswax overflowing from the trembling cup of Peace’s hands.

  Harlot had begun a hymn; never had the tremor of her voice been so sad. “Watchman, tell us of the night…” Others came in on the second line—“What its signs of promise are”—and soon a circle of women formed and fell on their knees around Peace and his vision, swaying, singing with Harlot, calling on the white God with heartbreaking cries. I felt with a sudden flood the bitterness of my life, the uselessness of everything, the emptiness of the future. Apparently I had been crying, for I became aware of a wetness on my hot cheeks.

  Peace was standing now, shaking his head confusedly and looking at his hands, which hung down limply from his powerful wrists.

  A shrill voice shouted, “Top Man coming!”

  The song ended abruptly; there was a scramble to the disarray of rails.

  Into the Millet

  Peace saw another vision a few days later. The cold weather had continued, and a day was set aside for the cutting and storing of ice. Men were taking turns on large-toothed handsaws, six at the same time in a far-stretched echelon cutting broad strips of ice across the pond behind the tobacco house, and six others, paired with the first six, cutting chunks off the ends of the strips. A lane of black water was opening across the middle of the pond. Men with gaffed poles hooked the floating cubes of ice and with dexterous tugs flipped them up onto the solid ice, and we women, bending over, skidded the chunks to the edge of the pond, where teams of donkeys with stone boats were waiting to drag the chunks to the sawdust-heaped ice pit at the rear of the house slaves’ courtyard.

  A huge bonfire blazed on the bank, and we worked in relays, those who were off duty standing in a circle around the wonderful fire, clapping the cold out of their hands.

  By midafternoon I ached and shivered, and under my scarf my ears and under my foot rags my toes and under my improvised mitts my fingers stung from the cold. The gaiety of the morning had worn off. I wondered with each cake that was loaded on the stone boats whether that might not be enough. I yearned for another chance at the fire.

  Li came down from the office on foot pushing a wheelbarrow with a wheel as large as a donkey cart’s, bearing a large keg lashed to either side. I heard him say to Top Man, “Give them drams before you kill them.”

  “We’re almost done, Overseer Li. About two hours more.”

  Subdued groans went up from all who could hear.

  “Give out the d
rams now. I don’t want the whole force down with bad lungs.”

  Li left the wheelbarrow near the fire and returned to his office. And so, to delighted rubbing of hands by the men, we gathered all around the fire, and Top Man began the passing out of drams in good big bowls, which lay in a rack on the wheelbarrow. Harlot had told me about precautionary drams in bad weather, but I had never had one, and when my turn came, and Top Man poured two measures of the millet liquor called “fire spirits” and one of water into my bowl, I was afraid to drink it, and I sipped, and everyone shouted, “Swallow it! Gulp! Gulp it down!”

  I did, and the burning in my throat and the metallic, garlicky fumes in my nostrils—besides the flame in the liquor, there was a bite in the water, for the keg in which it was stored had strings of red peppers and lumps of amber asafetida soaking in it—made me clutch at my neck and cough and weep; the slaves laughed at me.

  In a few seconds a wild release from cold and despair surged through me from the knot of heat in my belly, and I joined, still moist-eyed, in the laughter. There was a cheerful chattering all around me. I felt an ecstatic joy.

  Peace, at his turn, swallowed his dram without the slightest shudder and stared deep into the flames of the bonfire.

  All the drams were done. Top Man gave the signal for the resumption of work. We were just turning away from the fire, in a little storm of shouting and chortling, when once again we heard that ghastly bellow from Peace’s throat. Everyone stopped where he was and watched the big man.