The Ancestor Game

by Alex Miller

  Evening 2 January 1928 Christmas Day and New Year passed here without anyone remarking upon them. I am glad. They belong to the world I have left behind. Her fever has quite gone. She is returned to health. Not, to be sure, to her full strength, but one senses the restlessness of her youthful ambition. She requested that I walk with her today. The air was cold, but the sun shone brightly. Together we paraded Lang before the servants in a little courtyard on the far side of the principal storehouse. People came in from the street through a small gateway, which had been freshly painted in bright vermilion, and they admired the child and cast curious glances my way. I felt that Madame Feng intended to parade me, also, as an exotic acquisition from the strange land of Shanghai, which I am certain they think of here as the centre of Western Christendom, that is to say the place where all the devils live. Walking at her side I felt rather as the Africans in the seventeenth century must have felt who were taken as amusements to the royal courts of Europe. I was wearing my silvery fur and maintained an inscrutable and dignified manner, while observing everything that went on about me with the keenest interest. Among the people who crowded round us I recognised no one from my audience. These folk of the storehouse courtyard were an altogether better dressed and more prosperous caste than the hungry crowd that gathers each day to watch me dine.

  Yu accompanied us, fussing around her and Lang all the while and pretending to keep the curious at a respectful distance with threatening motions of a bamboo stave. A ritual gesture it seemed, for there was no real need for him to do this as their manner could scarcely have been outwardly more respectful than it was. I noticed, however, how they signalled to each other secretly with movements of their hands and eyes, either to warn of something or to comment in some forbidden way upon the proceedings. It went on the whole time and was an undercurrent which I can only liken to the nervous twitterings and flittings of ground birds at the appearance in the sky of a regal hawk. They smiled broadly all the time and giggled and kowtowed to her repeatedly, some offering presents, which were taken up by Yu’s assistant, the same short dark and determined man who serves me unwanted rice. I believe Madame Feng possesses the power of life and death over these people and would not hesitate to exercise it. Huang, as ever, remained hidden. Though I felt he watched our progress from concealment. I have not met him yet. His is a secret life. He is another of their silkworms, shielded from contact with ordinary folk and mundane cares by the cocoon of his exquisite refinement no doubt. Yu is his emissary to the world, his forward scout and quartermaster.

  The City of Heaven, 24 January 1928 When I visited them this evening Lang was lying upon the skin of a snow leopard. He cried when I went to move him from it in order to examine him. Madame Feng saw in his attachment to the fur a good omen, as she does in everything that touches upon his life. But how can there be ill omens when she herself presents him with only those things she desires him to come in contact with? As I bent over him his protuberant right eye gazed up at me coldly, seeming to remind me of our secret relations and at the same time to indict with a degree of bitterness the limitations of my craft of midwifery. It was an emotional moment. I felt myself to be accountable to him for something larger than his immediate welfare. She would insist he already shows extraordinary gifts. I know nothing of this, but certainly he is not like other babies of a few weeks of age to look at. His features appear to be those of a grown person. There is something old and sad about him. His are the features of experience. And his likeness to his father is startling, even to the dense mat of spiky black hair that shoots straight up like grass from his scalp. She forced into his tiny grip one of her brushes, and when he waved it about – as he could not help but do for it is beyond an infant of that age to relinquish anything – she cried out with delight, as if he had crawled over to the corner and snatched up the brush himself. Were I to force him to cling to my moustaches he would undoubtedly do that as well. But would she see it as an augury? I say nothing, knowing it is not possible to discuss with her what she does not wish to discuss. I am her African.

  The City of Heaven, 29 January 1928 Observed closely by my faithful following, I was sucking the last delicious vestiges of juice from the crevices of a steamed pork chop this afternoon, a pork chop which had been steeped in a rich dark sauce the consistency of molasses, when the telephone rang. As the sudden shrilling of the bell sounded the crowd at the door scrambled back a good pace. I myself jumped and almost dropped the bone. Hurriedly wiping my fingers I picked up the telephone and placed it against my ear. At first all I could hear was a crackling and buzzing. Then I began to make out the sound of many voices, remote and indistinct voices, whose disembodied tones seemed to send forth messages into a kind of eerie infinity, as airy whisperings which were not meeting up but were passing through each other’s tracks like the traces of stars left upon an exposed photographic plate. Messages bound for no destinations! I listened in wonder to mysterious beings conversing in the uncanny deep, then cautiously I repeated my greeting: Hullo! I called, This is August Spiess at the house of Huang Yu hua! Thin and far away, subsumed one moment beneath the celestial choir and the next rising faintly above it, I heard Feng’s answering voice calling my name: August! Is it you? The sound of the telephone had brought Yu and the rice carrier to the door of their kitchen. Like a nervous stage manager and director of the play, they stood in the doorway and watched. Pressing the telephone firmly against my ear and mouth I shouted into it that it was indeed I, August Spiess. I heard nothing but hissing and sharp electrical discharges shot through with those inhuman cries, then Feng’s voice struggled to the surface once again, like the voice of a drowning father, August!

  He spoke at some length, I was sure of it. But his voice might have been one starling among a mighty flock of thousands wheeling against an evening sky for all my ability to follow it. The boy, August? These were the only words I could distinguish at last. And again, fading, The boy?

  He is well! I bellowed, and once more with even greater force. He is well! He thrives! I listened for a long while but could not again locate Feng’s voice among the whispering multitudes. Slowly I replaced the handset in its cradle. They were watching me. Yu and his assistant also, from the wings. The hall echoed with my bellowing. Had I overdone it? There was no applause, and without that convention it is difficult to tell how one has done. Yu and his assistant glanced at each other and returned to their kitchen. The others watched me; as before, waiting with apparent assurance of witnessing sooner or later a satisfying denouement to this affair.

  Hangzhou, 10 March 1928 I can no longer bring myself to call this place the City of Heaven. My audience has been gratified. It came about in this manner. It is spring and I knew my departure for Shanghai could not be delayed much longer. Knowing also that a return visit here could not be counted upon, I resolved a few days ago to undertake an excursion which had long been a fond wish of mine. Fearing she might not approve and would find the means to prevent me from proceeding with it if she were to hear of my plan – for since our arrival we have not ventured beyond the gates – I said nothing to Madame Feng. Normally I sit for two and sometimes even three hours over the midday feast. I determined on this day to take no more than a light snack and then to set out at once on my journey.

  So, apparelled in my ghostly fur, with the addition of my straw hat with its gay cerise band, after eating only two small dumplings, I got up from my throne. At this unexpected sign from me, those who were seated at the front of the doorway also stood up. Instead of making my exit as I usually do via the rear of the visitor’s hall and returning to my quarters, I strode boldly towards my audience with the intention of passing beyond them to the principal courtyard from where I could gain access to the road.

  I smiled broadly and made a hesitant kowtow when they did not fall back at my approcah but stood their ground solemnly. Before stepping down from the table, in my imagination I had visualised something like a performance of, say, Ariadne by the Vienna Staatsoper and myself as L
otte Lehmann going among her adoring audience during the interval. In this fable my own little audience had parted respectfully before my approach like the Red Sea parting before the rod of Moses. As they did not move, however, I was unable to proceed and was forced to stand my ground before them. We gazed at each other nervously. The powerful smell of their bodies enveloped me and I recalled my weary nights administering to the poor and the sick in Shanghai’s forsaken hovels south of Siccawei Creek in the Chinese city. Only now I was not accompanied by an interpreter. There was no mediator with me who might reveal to these people the benign nature of my intentions. I encouraged myself with the thought that they were so awed by my nearness they had become frozen to the spot. Smiling broadly, I forced my way among them, murmuring reassuring platitudes and placing my hands upon the shoulders of an old woman here and upon the head of a cringing child there, gently encouraging them as if I were the Pope himself among his congregation at Easter time. They did not move aside but resisted me more strenuously, nudging me and shouldering me, indeed bouncing me back and forth between them as bullying boys do in a schoolyard when they have entrapped a victim in their midst. By this ungracious means I was at last delivered from one to another into their very centre, whence all movement among them ceased. I was out of breath and my hat was over one ear. I was surrounded by their staring faces, on which I read a sullen disagreeableness. Now that they had me, however, it seemed they were at a loss to know what to do with me. I saw at once I must take the initiative while they wavered in their purpose and so, with a shout of alarm, I barged my way suddenly through them to the open courtyard. I half expected they would follow me, but my aggressive action seemed to have cowed them, for they did not. When I reached the gates I turned and looked back. They still stood tightly together, like a flock of sheep frightened into the corner of a field, watching the wolf depart hungry. I laughed aloud with relief and with a flourish of my arm bade the gatekeeper open his gates. I decided my unexpected behaviour in leaping from the table and confronting them had so bemused them they had not known how to respond graciously but had taken my action as some kind of challenge which they had felt called upon to meet with a show of physical resistance. Thankfully a poor show as it had turned out.

  Once in the public road I put the incident quickly from my mind and strode forward cheerfully, the drumlike knocking of the black-lacquered gates closing behind me sounding in my ears. I had no thoughts of omens, auguries or signs, being confident in my mind that it was I who was the principal dispenser of such things among these people. It was a fine day with a cold breeze blowing freshly from the mountains. A perfect day for walking. I rejoiced in my freedom and looked forward to adventures ahead. It was the first day of Spring in the City of Heaven and it belonged entirely to me! I might have asked myself, implying a degree of self-congratulation, if there could possibly exist anywhere in China a more fortunate being than myself this day.

  As I strode along the wide thoroughfares beneath the budding plane trees and the early blossoms I was cheerfully untroubled by the many curious glances cast my way. My thoughts were filled with expectations of treasure. In my thoughts I was already fossicking among the ruins of the ancient kilns and turning up a fine harvest of shards of the famous Nei-yao, the original palace ware celadon of the early Southern Sung court, the most prized of all glazes to western scholars and collectors. These would be specimens from the source, taken with my own hands from the venerable ruins in which they had lain for centuries, specimens of such undoubted authenticity I would be able to employ them as touchstones to assess the quality of certain pieces in my own collection and any I might consider acquiring in the future. But it was much more than the possession of a few pieces of broken pottery that excited me. I was making a religious pilgrimage. That is why I made a mistake which might otherwise be inexplicable to me.

  If I had paused to reflect for a moment as I went along, I might readily have recalled, for I knew it well enough, that the kilns of Fenghuang Hill, towards which I had set my steps, had been buried long ago under repeated rebuilding and had never been found, and that it was towards the later kilns of Chiao-t’an, a mile or so to the south-west, that I should have been directing my steps if I merely wished to collect shards. But I did not pause to reflect. My head was full of visions. A blind enthusiasm gripped me. I had leaped from my stage in the middle of the banquet and made for the buried kilns of Phoenix Hill as if the voice of Kuanyin herself had commanded me to go there at once.

  As I walked along the dusty roads, which became narrower and more crowded with peasants as I ascended the hill, I was thinking of a happy occasion during my childhood. Feeling myself to be nearing the end of a search, I suppose my thoughts turned naturally to its beginning. At the age of eight or nine I travelled with my parents and my sister to Rome. I have always had a memory from this holiday of my father and myself on our hands and knees beside each other in a wide open space. It is like an image from a dream, but I know it to be in reality a memory of an actual event. Though I did not of course realise it then, at the age of eight or nine, on my hands and knees beside my father that day was the moment I became a collector and began my search. I don’t know where my mother and sister were on this occasion. They may have been watching us or absent on an adventure of their own. I don’t know. They may even conceivably have been on their hands and knees beside us. They are not, however, included in the memory. There has never been a place for them in it. In the remembered image, though undoubtedly not in the true history, my father and I are alone. We are searching for pottery shards, or for coins or fragments of broken statuary, among some ancient Roman ruins. We are devout, awed and deeply conscious of our own unworthiness. We are at the source of our civilisation. We are worshippers at the source. We are true believers. Today, in these modern times, as we all gaze confidently towards the future, it has become a heresy to suggest we might also look to the past. It seems, indeed, absurd to us that generations looked for their inspiration towards the past. But they did. My father’s generation, those of them who survive, still tirelessly expound to us the values and virtues of classical antiquity and still see in those remote times the source of everything that is good and right. Although I no longer possess the certainty of childhood, I think I shall never be entirely free from a conviction that my father was right to think as he did. What my mother thought of it all I don’t believe she was ever permitted to say. I remember only how sad she was when I left Germany. She seemed to know she was never to see me again.

  Above the crouching figures of my father and I, the Italian sky is a splendid azure with little white fluffy clouds floating gently. All around us are the dazzling pavements, the marble steps and broken columns and the shattered pediments of the ancient settlement. Sprouting from fissures and crevices among the stones are thousands of yellow dandelions. Here and there are the downy heads of those which have gone to seed. I pick one of these trembling spheres and blow upon it, and as I blow I make a wish. The wish was of the greatest importance to me at the time of making it. But what it was I can no longer recall. Of that particular action the only recollection which has persisted undimmed to this day is that of the feathery ball of seeds quivering as I held it before my mouth.

  Walking along towards Phoenix Hill, I was feeling a sense of wonderment at what a mysterious fiction our memory is, when suddenly my hat was knocked from my head. As I bent to retrieve it I received a push in the back and was sent sprawling on to my hands and knees. As I fell forward I felt no alarm, for it seemed to me I must have become involved in an unfortunate accident and that in a moment all would be explained and restored to normal. Indeed I did not even feel sufficiently put out to interrupt my thoughts. I sensed, or believed I sensed, a kindliness all around me which I did not think to question. On my hands and knees in the roadway I had plenty of time to study the texture of the dust. I was struck by the contrast of this yellow earthy Chinese dust with the dazzling marble pavements of ancient Rome. In the brief moment that passed whi
le I was still expecting to feel helping hands assisting me to my feet and to hear the voices of apology’ close to my ears, I considered what a wealth of proverbs and wise sayings had been composed upon the subject of dust.

  When no one came to my assistance, however, and I began to get to my feet, turning my head as I did so to see what or who had knocked me to the ground, a stone struck me a glancing blow above my right eye. Close around me the excited voices of my assailants encouraging each other suddenly broke into a wild chorus. It is the coat, I thought. They have mistaken me for one of their unscrupulous landlords. They will realise their mistake in a moment. But sticks and stones continued to beat upon me and I was forced to raise my arms to shield my head. About a dozen or more young men and women were gathered around me. I tried once again to rise in order to reveal their error to them. As I did so, however, in their eyes I saw a terror of what they were doing and at once I, too, began to feel afraid. They shrieked and darted at me in ones and twos, hurling their stones and swinging their sticks so wildly and with such an excess of fear and excitement that they as often hit each other as me. Fortunately, the thick fur deadened their blows, which I felt as dull proddings.

  A small crowd quickly gathered. My plight was observed by these passers by in that emotionless way the Chinese peasant has acquired through the centuries, which seems to suggest that the misfortunes of others are witnessed through a sort of hole in time. It is all the same, this expression implies, a woman giving birth to a dead child in a doorway in Shanghai or a foreign devil being beaten in a back street in Hangzhou. There is nothing to be done. One pauses to observe and passes on. One cannot intervene, for these are not human beings upon whose misfortunes one gazes but imaginary beings. I recognised one of my audience among the onlookers. It was the woman who had been the first to arrive in the doorway to the courtyard and who had looked at me seated at the teakwood table in Huang’s hall as if I were an exhibit in a museum. She was looking at me now with exactly the same expression in her eyes. This then, it appeared, was the final scene, in which the young people kill the hairy old mastodon.