White Lotus
Page 81
It is as if we were in a room alone, yet here we are on a public square surrounded by a crowd of onlookers.
I am used to him now, standing in front of me; I feel so familiar with him that it is only with an explicit effort of will that I can remind myself that he is a monster.
The sun has moved, or he has turned a little, and I can no longer tell from the glints on the sword whether the man is still trembling. I doubt it. He is as used to me as I am to him. The idea of an insurgent white race has been reduced in his eyes to the form of a woman whom he can think of ravishing. He has thought of it. I have seen those looks of sensuality, those little ocular stumbles, more than once.
My thoughts of the past have given me strength. I know the enormity of this despicable fat man’s debt to me and my people; I feel a strong tide of inevitability—we cannot be stopped. At the same time, I am caught here in this impasse. Try as I will, I cannot call up now the rapture I felt that day in the yard of the match factory, the flashing ecstasy of knowing that I was free, truly free, if for only a moment. This eludes me now. It seems to me that something new is needed, to break this lock. The Sleeping-Bird Method has reached the limit of its power; something new is needed.
Something beyond shame is needed. What I am doing here requires that shame must come into play—shame so crushing as to cause a moral retreat. But what if my adversary is no longer capable of shame, or is so inured to it that it does not deter him—may even, in fact, stimulate him in some awful way?
Why do I feel that this silence is so heavy, so threatening—this deadness of the air not only between us two but also hovering over the whole crowd?
I see some sort of shadow crossing Excellency K’ung’s face. There is a disturbance in his chest, a swelling, and the little slit of a mouth flutters with a long exhalation. I think that was a sigh. The sensual glow had died out somewhat from his eyes, and there is an inward-searching look.
He is beginning to be weary! He has had an inspiration, he has invented a really brilliant answer to the sleeping-bird tactic, but carrying it through is tiresome. He sees that he may have to stand here all day.
To dominate is hard work! He really is squirming with annoyance and sheer jadedness, as he sighs again and shifts his weight on his feet. The trouble with “Only the powerful are free” is that the powerful are enslaved by their own power. They have to tend it, be clever for it, and sometimes even wait patiently all day for its sake. It may drive them to crimes they dread committing; it may bore them at the very brink of murder. Looking down, I see that the Governor is in fact no longer holding the sword parallel to the ground. The blade is drooping. His hand must be tired; lassitude is a component perhaps of prolonged vigilance. I can imagine that the tip of the sword will soon be resting on the ground.
It may be that the first gradual declining of the blade, perceived at the outer edge of my field of vision as I scanned the Governor’s face, may have brought this life-saving realization into my mind: He will not kill me now. At least I believe that.
But is that enough? I grope blindly for the something new that I need to break this deadlock.
Some other thought, or some impression, is trying to force its way into the front court of my mind—I feel this as a vague uneasiness, a readiness of some kind—but I am so saturated with relief at the sight of the sagging sword that for the moment I cannot admit any interloping image or sound or idea.
The Governor looks as if he might be biting back a yawn. What a grotesque little zero that mouth would make if it were stretched into a yawn!
What is it that I want to think about, to know? Something seems to push at me, something painful that paradoxically stirs hope in me.
Now I hear a hint of this something. From a great distance, as if from the faraway edge of night, I hear a low sound. I think it is like a formless, meaningless groan in a dream of waking.
Suddenly I am a-tingle with awareness. It is a muffled groan, and it is off to my left. The vendor is alive! It must surely be he!
The sounds come at intervals, and it seems that with each outward breath of his still mostly unconscious body the vendor must be trying to shape an utterance that is halfway between a protest and a cry for help. This ambiguity is what makes the groans so eerie, so stabbing. This is the innermost sound of the white race. This is Rock’s never-uttered outcry, my unscreamed screams, our stifled white moaning of anger and need, and at its tolling as I hear it now the gooseflesh spreads all over my body.
The crowd is silent; there is not the least ripple of mockery or enjoyment—or distress—or anything. It is a thoroughgoing silence, a cautious holding back, a waiting to see; a massive response to just what this crowd deserves—a shock.
The groans are louder now, they are so intrusive that the focus of interest on the wide reviewing ground must certainly have moved from the two figures at the center, from Governor K’ung and me, to the prostrate form, perhaps writhing now, off to the side.
But the center of interest for me is still right here: it lies in the Governor’s eyes.
He has heard the sound. This is not simply a deduction on my part, from the volume of the groans I am hearing: this is something I see for a fact in the bird-snare eyes across from me. Gone now the boredom; the eyes are alight. I am thankful for the brilliance of mind I thought I had seen behind those brown pupils, for it enables me to do some reading now: most importantly, that I had been right in assuming that His Excellency had not seen the vendor or been aware of him in any way. These sounds baffle him. The remarkable presence of mind the Governor showed me when the laughter broke out at the wandering dog is not there now. He is so surprised and shaken by the groans he hears that he has, for these few moments, begun to lose sight and thought of me, and thus for the first time the advantage in our duel has started over to my side.
I see again the tiny dartings of the pupils which seem to be tugging at the Governor’s will; the dark, shining circles may tear themselves loose now and look aside, whether he permits or not.
I can imagine, from the depth of my own desire to turn my head and confirm what my ears and guesswork have told me, how powerfully the Governor wants to look in the direction of these unexpected sounds of pain, aggravation, and consummate bewilderment.
It seems to me that the Governor hears these groans, as I do, as white sounds, for his ear is sharply attuned to white entreaty and even more finely to white outrage. He cannot imagine that there has been, all along, another white person, besides the sleeping bird, out here on the open ground; much less one who has come to such grief.
He must see a possibility of miscalculation—that all that was so certain a few moments ago may now be slipping out of hand.
His self-control breaks. He turns his head, on the poise of his huge neck, to look.
I see one eye now from the side, and through its refracted intelligence I take in the scene: Fifty paces away, a few feet this side of the edge of the crowd of yellow ruffians, on the ground, a number of things lie broadcast as if by a fury of wind—a white man on his back, with matted hair, in ragged clothes, his face as pale as barley flour, his forehead bloody, his mouth stretching one-sidedly with grisly sounds that no man ever wished to utter, and near him, various smashed and battered objects, bits of curved varnished wood, a brass canister, parts of an ash-colored brazier, an iron bowl; and scattered charcoals, still steaming, and a dark stain of oil on the ground.
The voracious eye-in-profile, the leaping full brow above it, the twinging membranes that pass for lips—the face that has been so impassive is electrified by rushing thoughts and feelings. Among them I think I see two that help me: anger at yellow citizens for having taken initiative into their own hands, and, far more important from my point of view, contempt for his own kind, fully as powerful, for a moment, as any he could possibly feel for mine. There are as well a thousand alarms and annoyances that I cannot yet decipher, for it seems that he hims
elf cannot sort them out.
He is so used to being in charge that I see him tempted to walk away from me to this new center of interest, and there peremptorily to deal with it. I also see the flicker, toward me, of remembering that he has undertaken something here that he cannot abandon.
The fullness in my throat which comes from the feeling of the flow of advantage toward me, is so strong now that I think I am going to have to speak. I cannot help myself; I am going to break the fundamental rule of the Sleeping-Bird Method, I am going to utter words.
I do now quietly speak the first words that come into my mind: “Virtuous wisdom, gentle hand.”
These are the words I saw inscribed in the memorial arch that spans the parade ground. Governor K’ung must have seen those words many a day.
My voice is not at all loud, but the effect is that of a gunshot. Back comes Governor K’ung’s face with a startled snap of the great neck.
He is appalled at what he now sees on my face: a desire to speak further to him. I want to tell him the whole terrible story. I want to make him listen. Perhaps I even want to ask him—when I have finished speaking—what can possibly be in his vile mind.
Yes, this may be the new thing we whites have needed to break the basic deadlock into which we have fallen: speech. Silence is what has shackled us so neither side could move. Our white demonstrations, our silent mimetic acts of protest—these led only to further and deeper silence, which the yellows in turn answered with silence—blows, a sword—and these led to today’s confrontation of silences here on the parade ground.
Oh, none of us has lost his tongue in these recent months; neither whites nor yellows have lost the power of speech. It is just that we have not spoken to each other for a very long time. We whites have been issuing statements at large, and so have the yellows, but these peremptory utterances on both sides have amounted to nothing better than silences. It has been a long time since we have spoken to each other and longer since we have heard each other’s words. They will not listen to us; we think we know the lies and hypocrisy they will spit out. Yet now at last I have had the urge to convey something directly to a hateful yellow man.
Here on the reviewing ground the vendor’s groan first broke the silence; then my words shaped a thought.
And a violent change has occurred. I have a powerful fantasy that Governor K’ung and I have changed places.
I am in charge. He is utterly demoralized. He does not know what I am going to do with him, and I have not yet really decided.
I had no time to plan what to say, and those words from the inscription on the archway simply sprawled into my mind. Apparently those words, together with the vendor’s moaning, and the sight of the vendor and his kitchen strewn on the ground—these disarmed the yellow man, stripped him of his power, and turned him over to me. In my mind it seems that we have changed places.
But now this impression begins to slip away from me. I am aware of the sword, which is being held again at the ready position, parallel to the ground. I look at the sharp tip of it, and I am easily able to see, without the sun’s help, that the hand that holds the sword is trembling again. Rage? Fear? The rage that feeds and is fed by fear? I can well imagine that my power was momentary, and is surely ended.
To see where I stand I look up at the eyes. Such a change has taken place in them that I wonder whether Governor K’ung, in the moment of hearing those few words from my lips, felt on his side a slight draft of thralldom. Did he get a glimpse of what it is like to be white? Did he, too, have the sensation of changing places?
The look of implacability is gone. Of course the sensual glint has been driven out. I still see hatred, and yes, I guess there is rage. The something new that I see looks to me like uncertainty. I see fear, too.
Could it be that Excellency K’ung with the neck of a ram does not know what he should do?
It is obvious to me that he must act, and soon. In the circumstances the K’ung Method is turning into a fiasco; he cannot wait me out now. The entire multitude of yellows, and our band of whites where Rock stands, too—all those who hem in the reviewing ground have seen his startled reaction to the vendor’s groans. A move is expected of him. To do nothing now would be to lose face beyond recovery.
I am still standing on one leg. I have a burning melancholy feeling at my breast, a fierce yearning—to speak again. But words will not form; because of my own anger and fear, words are lumps that choke me.
I gather, from looking in his eyes, that Excellency is on the verge of a decision. There is a strange hurt look there, as if I, by breaking the silence, have done him an unkindness, been somehow ungrateful, or disloyal, or unloving, or unlike his idea of a full-hearted white woman.
I confess that this look, expressive of a disgusting sense of loss that verges on the sentimental, gives me a vindictive feeling of triumph. I want to laugh in his face, but I am prudent enough to restrain myself.
But the feeling of triumph is quickly washed out by misgivings, as the glint of fear in the Governor’s eyes grows stronger. It fills me with a reciprocal terror. Of what is he afraid? Does he fear a massacre—the weapons he thinks hidden under white tunics, the weapons that may really be in the hands of some of our hoodlums, our disenchanted tigers, our hardened wharfmen? Is he in terror of the sword in his own hand, the holster on his hip? Of his own impulses, which he has seen reflected in what has felled the vendor? Of speech, which sooner or later must lay bare his (and my) most private and unbearable secrets?
He turns now, looking about. He must have decided what to do.
I put my left foot on the ground, because I know that my perch is over, and I feel able to turn my head and follow what is happening.
First I look quickly to my left, and I get a minor shock, because, while the essential facts are as I had deduced, the arrangement of the details is quite different from the picture I had built in my mind. For one thing, the vendor is lying on his stomach, his arms are gathered about his head, as if to protect himself from blows even in partial consciousness; hence the muffled sound of his groans. His impedimenta are scattered, but not in the pattern I had imagined.
At once I look back at the fat Governor. He is inserting the sword in the scabbard; he has some trouble, in the agitation he obviously still feels, getting the sword’s point into the mouth of the sheath. His right hand is held high, his left hand steadies the scabbard, the point waves about uncertainly. There! It is in! He drives the sword home with an authoritative thrust, and I have the malicious thought that he is trying to show that he is still dominant over at least his own blade.
I feel that my chest will burst if I do not speak again. But it is not easy. I feel nausea-like waves in my throat at the effort to convey to Governor K’ung the bare truths of my protest, my yearning, my history, my agony, my needs, my demands, my awful fear of where his fear may lead him. There is such a gulf between us that words have lost their value, yet with all my strength I reach for them.
I manage to say, “I want to tell you something.”
But that is not what I wanted to say at all! Why “something”? I meant to say, surely, “everything”!
Governor K’ung ignores me. He turns again and raises his hand, and I see that he is flagging a squad of the most unmartial of all the uniformed figures—the city police. They see him and run a few ragged paces toward him. He wags the index finger of his right hand toward the vendor, and they comprehend: They are to remove the groaner. They trot toward the prostrate figure.
Now the Governor looks around once more; he has to do something about me. He is not, at any rate, signaling to the soldiers with rifles. He spots what he wants, and I follow his eyes. It is another sloppy band of the local police!
And now I see that he is wagging the finger over my head, pointing at me. They are jogging toward us.
He is washing his hands of me, turning me over to mere city authorities!
I say, “Can I talk with you?”
His ugly little mouth writhes; I see the light of a guarded wish to respond in his eyes. He is trying to say something to me! I welcome his effort, I want this as much as I dread it. But suddenly he turns and starts marching back to the yamen; his whole satined back jiggles with each step.
I feel put down. I have won today, but we have not really eased our deadlock at all. The hardest struggle is still ahead.
I hear a murmur—is it of disbelief, a grumbling?—from the crowd.
The police, falling over each other, circle around behind me as if I were dangerous. I feel a hand on my arm.
Looking at the retreating Governor’s back, I have a thought that floods me, at the very time when perhaps I should be giving way to a blessed sense of victory, instead with a fear as puzzling as any I have felt in all my life up to now:
What if someday we are the masters and they are the underdogs?
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