White Lotus

by John Hersey

  After we had settled the children for the night, I went home with Rock. The city was restless and full of sound at that late hour—seemed to be talking in its sleep, to an evil dream.

  The Wheel Turns: First Day

  It was a dawn of the kind Dirty Hua used to call “under the toad’s belly”—dark and damp, with a low, solid, warty sky pressing down overhead, so you didn’t know, as Hua had put it, whether you’d be squashed or pissed on.

  As I turned into Hata Gate Street, on foot to work in that first gray, I dimly saw, at a distance up the way, the entire wide expanse of the avenue blocked by some barrier, like a low dam. The darkness of night, as if it were a heavier fluid than the light of dawn, seemed to have settled in the street and was still standing there, held back from draining off by that obstruction ahead. It was not until I had approached quite close in this murk that I made out the nature of the dam—a crowd of people. So many so early!

  Then I realized that the crowd abutted the grounds of the Board of Rites, where Rock had taken me that day—where the Number Wheel had been set up, and where it was now to be turned to choose soldiers at the gong of the first quarter of this morning.

  Chilled though I still was from our scare by the lake the previous evening, I was nevertheless drawn forward now by a perverse desire to press myself into this throng, and when, close at hand, I sensed that the crowd was orderly, half awake, passive, and sluggish, and that there were a few women among the men, a few whites among the yellows, I felt emboldened; I would weave my way slowly through the assemblage, see what was happening, then pass on to the orphan asylum.

  But one thing happened as I moved along to change my plan: I encountered Mink.

  The crowd was actually not thick. I could tell that some of the yellow men had been up all night and were still drunk—but they were fuzzy-headed, subdued, and quiet along with everyone else. No one bothered me. You could hear murmuring, that was all. To the right, in the open yard of the Board, I could just see the ghostly circle of the wheel; spectral figures, probably of guards and mandarins, moved on the wheel’s platform.

  “White Lotus!”

  I turned my head, and yes, even in the dimness it was certainly Mink, straining on tiptoe to see as much as he could.

  “Are they going to pick your number?”

  “Ai,” he said, “I have no number. I tried to give the registrars my name.”

  “Tried?”

  “They don’t want a crookback.”

  Mink urged me to stay and watch awhile, and I thought: Why shouldn’t I? I could excuse myself for lateness: been held up by the crowds. Mink seemed to be having a good time, as he chatted with the yellows around us, joked about the wheel, made it clear that he shared the yellows’ feelings about authorities who would set up a cruel lottery like this. He was soon something of a pet to our early-morning neighbors.

  But then light began to drench us. Faces developed hard lines, eyes came forward out of black sockets and glinted with signs of a feverishness that the earlier gloaming had hidden. I did not like what this prying brightness brought out.

  Now we could plainly see the wheel. Mandarins bustling. Uniformed men at tables with papers.

  And up like a waking henroost’s bedlam came the city’s day sound, a vast fabric riven by barkings, screechings of hubs, tinklings, hawkers’ cries that sounded like the appeals of drowning swimmers. Having grown more alert with the light, I strained to hear the special message of the city’s voice for this day: Was its timbre different from that of other days? Was it oppressive, like the weather? Quieter than usual? Just the same?

  There were the drums for the first quarter! Now it was nearby sounds that mattered, as the crowd around us, which was constantly thickening, stirred with expectation: this was the announced hour.

  Of course there were delays: the wheel stood up stark, the mandarins played their hands on it, bannermen pomped here and there—but nothing happened. We waited and waited, and this was not good for the feelings of the rabble.

  I kept thinking, “I should go. I’m late enough. I should run along.” But I was rooted in the paving, I could not break away. Was it Mink who held me there? Mink’s excitement?

  Then for the first time it came through to me that almost everyone in the crowd had some sort of tool or staff in his hand; many of the women in this throng that had seemed so orderly were carrying chunks of brick or shards of roof tile.

  I whispered something about this to Mink.

  He raised his hands for me to see. Each held a stone.

  “We’re going to make them feel it!” he said, and I saw that his eyes were hot like all the rest.

  At that I had to know that I myself shared in some way the pressure that was building in the crowd as the delay continued. I felt the wheel now as a taunt, and the mandarins up there as men who would have to shoulder responsibility for my grievances. I saw that the whites in the crowd were rather numerous, and that their faces were all on fire. I swelled up with an unfamiliar strength that derived from an unexpected common cause.

  Deep in the first quarter of the morning a bannerman on the wheel’s platform struck a gong, a mandarin grasped a spoke, and the wheel turned.

  At once there was a total hush, and distinctly I heard the whir of the bamboo slabs against the fateful pointer.

  For three or four numbers, as the silence held, it went like this: The wheel turned, the slabs whirred against the pointer, round and round till the rolling stopped, and a blue-button took out the chip against which the arrow rested and bellowed out a number, and maybe we would see some poor fellow near us in the crowd go pale, and his wife would let out a wail, and the registrars rattled through their flakes of papers and called out the name that went with the number, and the bannermen took the fellow away if he presented himself—or if he did not, a squad went off to his home to pick him up; and they gave the wheel another spin. They had greased the hub; the wheel turned perhaps a dozen times for each number, to an awful whirring from the bamboo chips which had the sadness of a pigeon whistle moaning in the sky.

  After the first few numbers an eerie droning started up from the crowd around me, a murmur of pain and anger—a blending of hundreds of voices, speaking low, saying “Ayah,” or “Hai,” or “Look at the sons of turtles up there in their silk,” or “Let them fight their own war”; sighs and grunts and protests all blurred into an unearthly grunting sound.

  All the same, I felt happy in some way. I heard Mink growling beside me. I grumbled, too. I felt as if all these yellow men and women were my companions in resentment for once. We were all together. I was part of a vast potential.

  Mink and I were in the forepart of the crowd, which now had a much thicker mass than when I had arrived. Many toward the back began to shout:

  “We can’t hear!”

  “Louder!”

  “What number?”

  We began to feel a forward pressure from those at the rear, and the whole assemblage began to bulge into the great plaza of the Board.

  One of the mandarins on the platform, reacting to this heavy wave, raised his hands in a gesture of pushing us back.

  He may have meant these motions as a plea, but his manner was unfortunate—imperious and (worst possible tone on this occasion) military. I felt angry at the sight of his fluttering palms.

  A half brick flew from the middle of the press, and with a fortuitous dead aim struck the wheel. One of the spokes splintered. The sight of the broken spoke—the perfect new wheel flawed—the fragments of the spoke splaying out at queer angles: it seemed the Emperor himself had been defaced; I felt a jolt of elation; this simply released a jubilee in the crowd. With one throat it gave a whoop—such a delighted whoop! And it—we—surged forward.

  Ai, I wanted something in my hands! Mink and I pushed forward shoulder to shoulder.

  Ahead, men climbed on the platform. The wheel tottere
d and then fell over backward, and a loud cheer burst from our throat. Bricks and tiles and stones began to pelt on the more distant roofs and against the latticed paper windows of the Board of Rites. The bannermen—there were no more than a hundred on hand, a ceremonial guard and squads to fetch selected registrants—were overpowered by the human flood before they could even level their silly gilt spears.

  I was caught up in the joy of the thing! I could feel it in my throat. I had no idea any more what this was about, I was simply swept along in a common cause that had no shape or name.

  I got my hands on a bannerman’s tunic—we tore it off his back—it tore like paper!

  In the distant background I heard the deep gongs and drums of the city’s gate towers commence their accelerating announcements of the shutting of the gates. So soon had the authorities taken alarm! But far from staying us these warning sounds inflated our—my—desire for revenge.

  We reached the tables and got our hands into the heaps of records: names and addresses and numbers for the wheel. The papers began to flap wings. Whoosh! Shooo! Some of the men with tools broke the wheel all to pieces, and armed themselves with the spokes. Then one of them with a huge bottle of some inflammable liquid—tung oil or pine spirits—scattered it about on the platform and set it on fire, and the crowd stood around throwing the Number Wheel records and bannermen’s uniforms and officiating mandarins’ hats into the flames.

  In a short time fire broke out, no doubt from the same cause, in one of the buildings of the Board of Rites. This sobered me: this was getting to be a good time of an order I hadn’t foreseen. I clutched at Mink’s shoulder, wanting to back out of the crowd.

  But the mob was suddenly bored—here everything was wrecked. There were shouts off to one side that I couldn’t make out, and a big part of the horde surged out of the plaza. Mink’s face was red, he took me by the hand like a lover and towed me along. I had no idea where we were headed; nobody seemed to know.

  Soon I saw. We were going to the Straight-Toward-the-Sun Gate—the one in the south wall reserved for the Emperor’s processions to the Altars of Heaven and Agriculture—and it was obvious that the leaders of the mob had in mind capturing the gate, so it could be opened and unlimited numbers of the poorer classes of people could come in from the Outer City to take part in this…this celebration! Quickly done. The guard of bannermen was come upon utterly by surprise—never expected such boldness.

  The gate swung open.

  Ai! Listen to this! I was a useless white girl and Mink was a hog with a snag in his back—and we ran back and forth, hand in hand, three times through the sacred gate that is supposed to be reserved to Old Dragon-Face! We all romped through and back laughing and embracing each other! Yes, even yellow men hugged me! Soon hundreds of poor people began pouring through from the Outer City, all grinning and cheering.

  But then: Down from the direction of the Forbidden City we saw a sedan chair coming—eight bearers. Official. A mandarin stepped down about fifty paces from the edge of the crowd. This was surely a messenger direct from the Emperor—to order us to clear his gate.

  I saw the front edge of the mob open up like a mouth and just go out and bite the mandarin into it. I was wildly happy. I saw the man’s silk gown tossed in the air, and a knot in the crowd up there was bending down and dipping—and then that was over, but something new was coming: a squad of bannermen with jingals.

  Ayah! I tell you, the gala feeling, the sense of redress—suddenly rather thin. These soldiers with their two-man guns came swinging down. Halted. The first line of muzzle-bearers knelt with the barrels on their shoulders, the stock men knelt behind. The mob was simply frozen, you just couldn’t believe that the celebration had turned into this—until someone half-screamed a curse on the Emperor himself and a shower of brickbats flew at the bannermen. Mink and I took one look at each other’s face. We knew it was time for whites to be unseen—to go—to dissolve. We cut into Water Gate Alley along by the wall. On the run. We had only gone a few paces when we heard the first volley. After it there was utter silence—the quietest quiet I ever experienced—nothing but the sound of our cloth shoes on the ground.

  Near the orphanage we were winded and we slowed to a walk. Mink, his chest a forge bellows, laughed. Panting, he spoke of his joy. “We—gave it to them—all right!”

  That “we”! I thought that this Mink who spoke of elation looked bleak, and I felt the mob spirit draining out of me with alarming speed.

  By the time we were inside the orphanage and Benign Warmth had begun to question us right at the gate—we were disheveled, I needed no excuses, he had heard the city gates closed and wanted to know the reason—I began to face with astonishment the feelings I had so recently, and with such abandon, harbored.

  Mink, less quick to react than I, spoke of yellows and whites surging forward together, and Benign Warmth broke in then, speaking to his matrons in a tone of simple confirmation—a man who is always right cannot lower himself to the point of sounding triumphant. “It has nothing to do with us, as I told you.” He could not stop at that. “Hai! You see? You people came in here last night high-tailed as Mongol ponies. Wood Pillow and Snow Bug”—two of the senior matrons—“were hysterical all night. Belted Persimmon was the only calm one. We have nothing to fear from the yellow race. We have a special position here. Do you follow me, Small White Lotus? Why, at the slightest sign of difficulty I would send a messenger to Big Madame Hsüeh or Big Madame Huang, and i-ko lang-tang”—the yellow magician’s mystical formula, presto! “Do you realize that Venerable Hsüeh Li-fang is a member of the Censorate? And that Venerable Huang Fu-ju is on the Board of Punishments? They’d have the Banner Corps around here in a blink. I have a clean table. I’m astonished at you people.”

  I burned with a blush, for I felt then the whole shame of my having let myself be carried away. I felt no less the shame of Benign Warmth’s inanity. I had thirsted so long for something, for something—and now that I had tried to slake my thirst the taste in my mouth was bitter, bitter; nauseous; perhaps even poisonous. What was so strange on the air? I listened. The entire city seemed to be partaking of my shame. A dead hush. All the usual sounds—of drums, cock crows, sellers’ chants, notes of flutes and fiddles, advertisements of storytellers, barking of dogs, beggars’ and arguers’ urgencies; and the undertone of contentment, games, family peace, innocent playing of children—everything in the city that bespoke life and a love of life was stilled.

  The Wheel Turns: First Evening

  But the hush was no more than a lull; it hung over the city like smoke till some new gust of trouble blew it away. The urban roar rose again, and in it we could hear unfamiliar cracklings of anger and havoc. At times through the afternoon we heard ominous sounds in the middle distance—crashes, splittings, rumbles. Once we heard a fusillade—jingals again? Three times the brooding air near us was shaken by a surge of voices and hurrying footsteps, as a seething crowd swept past the asylum, sounding like a whooshing flock of jackdaws on its way to raid a heronry. Where were the mobs going in such haste? The gate gongs, and even the Drum Tower and Bell Tower whose signals usually marked the parts of the day, were silent; the city remained shut.

  Benign Warmth, who kept repeating that the disturbances had nothing to do with us, nevertheless had the prudence to order our gates double-barred.

  I worried all day about Rock, who was, at the moment, out of work. Would he be able to resist running with those packs?

  In the evening Benign Warmth gave me permission, in view of the turmoil in the streets, to leave for Rock’s cubicle before the children were settled for the night, while there would still be plenty of light left for my passage across the city.

  I hurried along. I was astonished by the extent of wreckage in the main streets: crushed carts, staved-in store fronts, smashed house gates, crumpled sedan chairs. Signs of looting and arson. As if overhead, as I hastened, the chatterings of a roused ci
ty flew in waves from here and there, and I began to feel, against my will, some of my excitement of the morning. The memory of the bannerman’s tunic ripping under my hand! The sense of revenge! We—the poor of the city, yellow and white—pouring out our bitterness against the authorities!

  And so when, in a mouth of a hutung just below the Imperial Ancestral Temples, I came on a wild crowd that had a mandarin of the Blue Banner Corps cornered, I felt a renewed flood of triumphant vindictiveness. I set my teeth and pushed into the edge of the crowd. There were whites in this pack—this was all aimed at those in power.

  One of the rabble’s leaders was there; I was not far from him. He was a tall ugly yellow cock on a military mule, a banner-corps animal, and he was wearing a banner-corps officer’s helmet that he had stolen, with ear and neck lappets shining like a whore’s gold chains, and he was swinging a spoke of the Number Wheel around his head, and he was shouting like a madman.

  I heard what he was roaring. His filthy tirade pierced me—punctured me—let the joy of revenge out of me like the air out of a child’s pig bladder—pshshsh! Hai, had I felt a “common cause”?

  “My fellow free men—we’re free men so far—but maybe they want us to be slaves like the hogs now—I hear that’s what this hog’s war is about—but you’re free men and women still: You see that mandarin turtle pizzle cringing in there against that wall? Are you going to let that turtle’s son of a hog lover go free to run in and set up another wheel to put dirty numbers on for their pig lovers’ war? See this spoke here? They’re not going to use this piece of wood to bring up my number for their pork war! All right, boys. Keep your eyes on the dirty hog-loving sow-screwer.”