White Lotus

by John Hersey

  “I’m glad of this meeting,” he said. (But had he in fact been climbing up the cut, or had he, as I now distinctly felt, been lurking behind the boulder in order to make a meeting, or a series of them?) “I’ve been wanting to see you two.”

  “We’re always glad to see you, Venerable,” Rock said, with precisely the same amount of emphasis as the Provisioner had put into his greeting—in other words, tendering a prudent echo.

  “Have you a moment’s time?”

  “Most of the moments of every day of my life belong to you, Venerable.” With the echoing tone of his voice, and with that final honorific, Rock took all the bite out of that retort and even turned it into vague homage.

  Provisioner Lung laughed, but his laughter was cracked, as if his throat were irritated by dust. “I wanted to see you because the New Year is approaching.”

  “We were just saying, coming along, that time goes very fast.”

  “It does. I make new contracts at the New Year. You’re a good hog—and your wife is a good sow—and I intend to increase your rent lands, as you asked me to do.”

  Rock wisely waited, and did not explode into pleasure. “Venerable knows what’s best,” he murmured, a routine formulation of thanks, expressed for the giver’s pleasure in terms of the helplessness of the recipient.

  “But as a condition, I want to clear the debt for the current year.” Here was the thunderclap! “As you know, the twelfth month is the time of debt clearance. I’d like to have everything wiped off the chip during this month.”

  “But the spring food crop was definitely reckoned—”

  “Borrow against it.”

  “But from whom, Venerable? You’re my credit.”

  “Ai, Rock Liu, you’ve been through other twelfth months, you weren’t born this year.”

  That was true enough. Even in slave years there had been debts to pay in the last month of the year—and how? By borrowing. In the twelfth month every pig was a borrower and probably a lender, too. Every white owed every white and owed the yellow man, too. No one ever paid full cash unless pushed to the wall. Pay a part, promise the rest! By third third, by ninth ninth, I promise the rest! But the yellow creditor was a hater of promises, he spat on the ground when he heard promises. And sometimes, all too often, he had the means to push the white man’s shoulder blades hard against the wall.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Rock said with a too bland voice.

  The Monkey Myth

  Just before dark that evening Manager Wu knocked at our gate, and I thought: Ayah, more trouble. Since the encounter in the limestone cleft Rock had been in a silent rage of such a depth that I had dared not go near him, much less converse with him, and when I answered the gate and found the village headman there I tried to get Manager Wu to tell me his mission, but he insisted on seeing the head of the house.

  I led him inside. Rock was sitting cross-legged on our platform. I offered to prepare tea, but the headman waved me off.

  He had come, said Manager Wu, to levy a tax. He knew, he said, that ours was a poor village, but we were confronted with a struggle for pride with other villages that were no less poor: The lower hands of the eleven villages in this part of the valley were going to collaborate in putting on theatricals during the last three days of the twelfth month. A mat shed would be erected on the threshing ground opposite Restful Thoughts Temple; a company of white strollers from Long Sands had already been bespoken. Each village had been assessed a share of the basic cost. It was his duty to spread our assessment through the village, according to gates and mouths.

  O ominous Rock! How sprightly you reacted to this news! You asked what our share was, and when Manager Wu named a figure, in cash value, to be paid in either money or crops, you knew that he had overassessed, in expectation of bitter complaint and argument on your part, yet you nevertheless said you would not only be delighted to contribute the share he named but would try to give more—and would also certainly give time, mats, and raffia cord for the construction of the stage shed.

  What a perverse man! Were you simply determined to strip yourself of the least possibility of paying your debts to the provisioner?

  No, it seemed to be that, yet much more than that, because when the headman had left, your anger—at Provisioner Lung, at the world we lived in, at me, at yourself—seemed to have vanished like steam from the spout of a kettle; it was quite gone into the air.

  And in the days that followed you were at the very hilltop of your manly best. We were not happy, by any means, but I would say that we reveled!

  You rushed about offering your services and your worldly little to make the theatricals a success. The charm, energy, and male sweetness that had won you access to many a mouse now won over, wholeheartedly, in turn, the cuckolds you had made. The entire village said, “That fellow Rock Liu is a cheerful donkey, isn’t he?”

  Then why did your behavior give me chills?

  All eleven villages were aflutter with anticipation. Satin ribbons were dug out from chests, visits of relatives and friends from distances were arranged, and chickens were given extra feed that could not be afforded.

  The day before the arrival of the troupe of players the valley seemed to turn upside down; the river ran across the sky, the hills pointed down, and, antlike, whites scurried all about the unders and overs of this disarrayed vision of pleasure.

  The focus of all the activity was the level field across from Groundnut’s temple. To this center the métayers from the whole cluster stretching from Tiger-Guarded Village at one end all the way to Ma Family Graves at the other carried, with self-endangering improvidence, contributions of reed mats, bamboo poles, sheafs of rice paper, planks, bundles of cord, tea bowls, and all sorts of things that were not even needed, such as strings of dried peppers. It goes without saying that Groundnut wound up as custodian of all edible overage.

  Rock sped here and there like a nest-building hare. Men from all the villages noticed him, and I lost for a time the unaccountable feeling of dread his high spirits had been giving me, and I gave way to simple pride in him.

  In a day the barren place became an ephemeral settlement, fabricated of bamboo and reeds and paper and cord. For the theater itself Rock and many other volunteers erected a large framework of bamboo poles, to which they laced a sheathing of reed mats; at one end of the shelter a rickety scaffolding was raised for a stage. And all about the theater and the temple, flanking the road and, in some places, encroaching on it, there sprang up scores of small mat sheds, for cook shops, tea houses, wine stands, gambling booths, and all sorts of vendors’ huts. Within the span of an afternoon, the area became something like a lively fairground.

  The performances began early the next morning, and lasted all day—and so for three days.

  Rock and I were there in plenty of time. A vast horde had gathered: eleven villages, to the last man, woman, and child, and many from farther away, too. Among the mob there were sure, Rock said, to be a large number of sharpers, pickpockets, and persons whose nasty little vices would flourish, like crawling insects, in tight-packed crowds. He told me to hang my pathetic purse within my inner gown, and to keep to old acquaintances.

  This last sounded like notice that he would be drifting away from me—and this, indeed, he did do. I took up with Bare-Stick and his deaf wife. So early in the day Bare-Stick was showing signs of having been drinking. I kept looking about for Rock; his restless exuberance worried me.

  Now came a surprise. Large numbers of yellows began to arrive, and in the mat shed they were placed along the two sides of the theater. The yellow intruders faced us whites, not the stage. There was Provisioner Lung among them. Ayah, they had come to watch the spectacle of the white people enjoying themselves!

  No matter. We did enjoy ourselves. I stopped worrying about Rock. The interminable drama was woven about the myth of the monkey who became a god—the perfect, hope-giving
tale to spin out before poor whites. It was all crude. Beyond the substance of the lines chanted in a wild falsetto by the actors, the illusion was entirely evoked by costumes. There was no scenery; except for weapons, of gilded and silvered wood, which seemed to abound, there were no properties. But the costumes! Dragon robes. Serpent robes. Double sets of inner garments brightly embroidered. Suits of papier-mâché armor. Ceremonial gowns of scholars and ministers. The dress of high-born ladies, mandarins’ wives, concubines. And best of all, the rags and lumpy quilts of the “flowery-faced ones,” the clowns who were also villains, whose cheeks and brows were plastered with chalky powder.

  Yes, the villains, the shabby ones, the earthy ones, the comical ones—they were unmistakably white, whiter than white.

  And how we laughed at the monkey’s foibles and trials! The Conscience God had provided him with a Head-splitting Helmet, which would tighten on his skull whenever he was tempted to sin, and he was so tempted, deliciously and uproariously, at every turn. Ayah, yes, the yellows must have laughed at our laughter! There were no separate acts or scenes; it was all one sweet and endless dream. When a new character appeared, and when his costume or his pantomime was not enough to identify him for us, we hooted, and he turned to us and told us straightly who he was, and what he had lately been doing offstage in the myth, and, like as not, what he was about to do before our eyes.

  Bare-Stick’s wife, who could hear little of it, laughed as hard as I. We were all pressed together tightly. Bare-Stick gave me squeezes, transferring his appreciation of the drama to various parts of my body. I yielded to every influence, and wept as I laughed.

  Hail Chu Pa-chieh, pig fairy, with your muck rake, sturdy ambassador from the realm of the coarser passions, how we adore you! You mirror! We are you, you are my inner self, pig, pig, pig.

  And Priest Sha! How weak you are, how human! You need praise and encouragement to stiffen up your watery knees every time you come near these rough beings.

  And you, monkey, discoverer of secrets! If only I could have an iron wand like yours! The gold-banded iron wand of all my desires!

  Then into the edge of the dream comes an oblique, flashing thought: If I had the wand, I would…would dispose of Provisioner Lung.

  Where is Rock?

  For a moment I look around for him—but there is Lung Wang, the Dragon-King of the Eastern Sea…. I am transported again….

  Sunset outside the mat shed and a cold wind ranging from the faraway loess highlands, rather than a dramatic moment on the stage, decreed a halt for the night. I went home with Bare-Stick and his wife, and all the way, breaking out peals of renewed laughter, we reminded each other of superb moments. Bare-Stick said, “I liked that part where the pig fairy was getting ready to mount the Pearly Emperor’s daughter—the way he snorted and rolled his eyes!” We laughed and I said, “And when the monkey made his wand so small he could hide it in his ear—but it pricked him there!”

  Rock was not at home when we got there. He came in late, drunk, and poured out onto the platform from a leather pouch a mass of cash—a fortune! He would not say where it had come from; I assumed—I hoped—he had been gambling.

  “Enough to pay back Provisioner Lung and have some left,” I breathlessly said.

  But Rock sprawled on his knees and greedily raked in the copper circlets with their little square holes and he said over and over, “Never, never, never, never, never.” He tied the purse, when it was full again, to the cinch of his trousers, and later, drowsy from his drinking, he said, in a kind of growl, “I saw him there. Laughing at us.” Those were his only words to me that night.

  The next night Rock did not come home at all.

  I stayed up late, waiting, and heard a whippoorwill’s endless keening. During the small hours, having dozed off, I wakened in great fear, with a vivid feeling that I was being ridden by an evil spirit; my neck had been saddled, a witch-steel bit was in my teeth. I dared not get up to light a lamp, and indeed I could not move at all. After a long time I went galloping off suddenly into a swamp of dreams. When I woke up in the morning the corners of my mouth were chafed, as if a real bit had been pulling at them, and cold sores were beginning to form there; my neck and back were weary and stiff.

  When I went out in the yard I found that our single hen had been stolen—presumably by some of the scum that the plays had attracted.

  I set out for the theater, asking of acquaintances if they had news of Rock. No one had seen him. In the theatrical shed Bare-Stick took me under his heavy arm again. Feeling lead-limbed and full of apprehension and foreboding, I could not help telling him that I had had the feeling of being saddled during the night.

  Bare-Stick’s blustery reaction was somewhat reassuring, for he took my night burden as a commonplace that every white bore sooner or later.

  “Put a sieve beside you on your platform tonight. Those spirits can’t resist counting, something makes them count. They’ll be kept busy counting the holes in the sieve. Or do you have a book? Almanac? Set it out. They’d have to count the characters and pictures.”

  “Does it have to do with Rock?”

  Bare-Stick reduced his blaring to a murmur that his wife could not hear, and with a highly inappropriate naive beaming expression he said that if Rock stayed away that night, he would sneak out and visit me.

  The players’ antics that day seemed overdrawn and chaotic to me; I could not follow the action. I was distracted. I kept looking for Rock. Bare-Stick’s great mule guffaws beside me only irritated me. The sores at the corners of my mouth stung more and more.

  I did not see Provisioner Lung among the yellows in the great shed.

  Where was Rock?

  Immediately after the plays adjourned, men began to untie the mats and tear down the sheds and shelters, in order to reclaim the materials they had contributed. Rock, so active in the raising of the structures, was not to be seen.

  Gradually I heard reports. He had been caught the previous evening trying to steal a suckling pig in Liu’s Dog’s Tooth Village. He had been seen drunk in the lower hand of Mud Bridge. Attempted with the crudest methods to seduce the headman’s wife—a woman over fifty years old—in Hot Pepper Village. Rampaging, roaring, cursing up and down the valley. The story that caused me the sharpest fear was that he had been heard in Wang Family Big Gourd Village railing with a foul mouth against Provisioner Lung.

  I considered going to look for him but decided against it. If I found him, this would cause him to eat loss and would only make him wilder than he already was.

  It turned out that I had no need of searching, because he came in that night, and I saw at once that the rumors had been well based. Haggard, three days unshaven, his clothes and even his queue muddy, the money vanished, eyes red-rimmed, with a breath like the vapors of fermented pig swill, he talked in a rushing, stammering torrent about the woebegone valley in which we lived; he sounded not so much drunk as…as…O-mi-t’o-fu!…as ridden by a witch all too familiar to me. I trembled on a corner of the bed to hear him.

  Very late I drifted off to sleep still hearing him rattle his crazy speech, as unceasing as the previous night’s melancholy whippoorwill.

  Several times in the night I was wakened by his stumbling around the house and yard, cursing, rummaging, busy in the dark.

  Once I awoke to a horror like that of the night before, hearing a terrible metallic screaking—and I realized that in the pitch blackness he was sharpening a knife on his flat grindstone.

  Unafraid for myself but filled with a kind of folk dread, I called out to him, to try to get him to settle down. But he seemed to be beyond communication.

  With daylight he appeared to be somewhat calmer, and I even succeeded in persuading him to take some tea and a millet cake.

  It was the New Year morning—time for visits to friends. I wept. Rock dozed off sitting up.

  Then Bare-Stick came whooping in with an
earthen jug of millet liquor, and his noise made Rock open his reddened eyes. Bare-Stick ogled me and said he had come to see whether the wanderer had returned. I saw Rock stiffen at this oafish declaration.

  Bare-Stick said, “Hai, Rock, I’ve seen a sight this morning that you would have liked. You know how Old Provisioner Lung was at the plays and around the sheds these last days trying to collect the year-end debts? He dunned me five or six times. His period for collection was supposed to be up at dawn this morning. Just now, in broad daylight, some of us saw him walking along Eleven Villages Road with a lighted lantern—his fiction that the night isn’t over yet, so he can still collect a debt or two! Wouldn’t you have liked to see that?”

  Rock stood up. He looked like a mastiff. He roared, “I’ll pay him, I’ll pay him,” and snatched up the knife on which he had been working in the night and ran out at our gate.

  “Ayah,” I said after his back, but of course he could not hear me. “Be careful.”

  Bare-Stick promptly started pawing me, and he tugged at the cinch of his trousers to loosen them. I slapped him hard, and he left, carping at my want of New Year spirit.

  I sat down, unable to think, not daring to venture out, my blood a-throb in my ears.

  The day was cold and clear. I was vaguely aware of the sunlight creeping across the papered window.

  It must have been after noon when Manager Wu and three others—Hairlip Shen, Ox Yang, and one of Rich Shen’s sons—dragged Rock in, his elbows pinned together behind his back and bound with cord. There was blood on his quilted jacket. The panting men blurted out that Rock had been seen running up and down the whole valley, cursing and shouting, and that he had come back to our lower hand and had stabbed Bare-Stick six times in the chest and abdomen, to the edge of death.

  I shrieked. Had I shrieked words, they would have been, “But that was not the man he meant to kill!”