I sometimes went to see him in his little room, just such a little room as I had had on Trowbridge Street. Somewhere he had procured a small battered victrola, but it was his only luxury. He liked music, especially Italian operas, and he liked to dance suavely by himself to his victrola when only I was there to watch. Cortesi made vegetable soup with hot water out of a spigot, and invited me to share it with him. He had put himself through college by living mostly on raisins, raw carrots, and figs.
One night in his room—I don’t know how it happened—we spent hours on hell, heaven and purgatory, comparing the Buddhistic system with the Catholic. But Cortesi was really not much interested. He said he did not believe that mystical systems were any good. “I have no use for people like Dante and Christ. What lunatics!” According to Cortesi, the emotional life of a poet, the religious sacrifice of a martyr, the ecstasy of a mystic—such dreams and fancies were good for no one; he meant to give them as wide a berth as possible. If you get hungry for such things, chemistry could take their place. A man could become quite mystical enough over chemistry. But as a matter of fact, Cortesi was the most sensible, sober and rational of beings.
BOOK SEVEN
1
THAT EASTER VACATION I wanted to go to New York. Some students showed me how to hitchhike (part of my college education which was to prove an asset later on). Seven of us took up our station along the Boston Post Road. We were finally picked up by an ex-college man, who revived his college memories all the way down talking with us. Arriving in New York, none the poorer, we had a hilarious dinner in a cheap little lunchroom. I heard the others laying plans for a room, but of course I was going round to George Jum’s place. They divided the night into three parts and drew lots. Two were sent out to engage one double room in a modest hotel toward which all contributed. Those who drew lot number one were to sleep from 10 P.M. to 2 A.M. At two, this pair vacated for the next couple, who were allowed to sleep from 2 to 6. The last couple in the third lot must spend the whole first night in seeing New York, but they could sleep from 6 to 10. Then all would meet outside around the corner and use the day in sightseeing. The hotel would never know that it had rented a room to six boys instead of two. My classmates intended to stay in New York like this as long as their money and strength held out, as none of the six had ever been in this city before.
2
As soon as possible I set out to call on Kim. And I had difficulty finding his place again. This part of the city was a maze. It was hard to tell the streets from the funny little lanes and alleys and blind ends. Here and there by some dark doorway stood small groups of young men and women in casual attire, smoking cigarettes and wearing no hats. The Villagers, I thought. For some time, I realized, all the bright young people of America had been collecting here, all eager to be poets, sculptors, artists, anything in fact to get away from Main Street and to burn the candle at both ends away from the gossipy neighbors. . . . I entered that quiet sunken doorway at last. Kim was expecting me, for I had telephoned, and he came to meet me in comfortable heelless Chinese slippers and a short quilted sack coat of red silk; this suited admirably his dark low-molded face and black hair with its complicated Western cut. I realized then that Kim was a part of this pageant, he was one of the Villagers, though he might not have liked it if I had told him so. No, he was not ashamed to step out in that exotic dress to buy cigarettes around the corner (how different from Boston), and the people on the street and at the corners and in that dark drugstore greeted him carelessly as if he were well known.
We returned indoors. Kim had been painting upon the floor, Korean style. There was his black ink-stone, where the powdered ink was crushed to be mixed with water; a round Korean cushion too, and several brush pens of the finest quality. The faint bitter herblike smell which I associated with good Chinese ink and the mysteries of the calligrapher’s art permeated the room. And the stale American cigarette smoke as well. But Kim gathered up his work and, when I attempted to examine it, waved me aside. He showed me a new book he had recently acquired. It was a beautifully bound and illustrated copy of Don Quixote.
“I think I am a Don Quixote out of the East,” said Kim thoughtfully, “with my sweetest Dulcinea the old-fashioned muse. But there is good stuff in this book. Who knows? He might be better for you than Shakespeare, my friend. You and I, we should be sceptical when we have seen so much, laugh at ourselves, and at the same time laugh a little to ourselves. Yes, this man has the originality of Shakespeare, but he writes not of bloom but decay.”
I liked the idea of talking about Shakespeare, of course, so Kim got drink for himself and settled down. “You are right as far as you go,” he said. “The Orient has not had Shakespeare yet. We had Confucius. Yes. But we had no Æschylus. That is why we never had Shakespeare. Only Li Toi-kei.”
It was good, I thought, to be with him again. Two hemispheres opened out before me once more, not just the world of collegiating. We talked and talked. Kim too seemed to enjoy it.
“My, this banquet of talk is a treat I don’t often have,” I exclaimed at last.
And Kim rose and got more drink. “Well, here I am, keeping on drinking more and more. I must be afraid of being dry-mouthed this evening. But fools must drink like fish. He who doesn’t know what he is after in this Western world is a fool. He is worse off than a poor fish—they stay forever in their own realm. And drink water. I this.” (He did so.) “Marcus Aurelius, when tired of Greek philosophy, sent for some Eastern wisdom. It is my turn. So here I come, out of the East to the West—of the West and of the East . . . as far as Manhattan . . . to this Village where fools live, nay, pygmies creep, cockroaches crawl. I came to get Western wisdom. I was too much in a hurry . . . unlike Marcus Aurelius. So I could not send anybody for it. When I get here—ha ha! I see that the Western wisdom is as valueless to me as those old German marks and only good for wallpaper as being cheaper than paper. Yes, here I am (may you not be the same!). This is Western wisdom,” he lifted his glass and stared at its contents. “You won’t get it in college. This is it.”
After that we had some Chinese poetry. After a certain number of drinks, Kim always turned to Chinese poetry. Out came the brushes and the ink again. (And modern typing paper.) “Chang Hsu, after three cups, writes inspired characters . . . strokes of his long-haired writing brush drop on the paper like clouds of driving mist.” It was like that with Kim.
Before I left, Kim said to me, “While you are here, I will take you to see a Marcus Aurelius in America. Yes. I have an American friend who thinks there is nothing good except out of the East. You will hear him talk a great deal about the Chow dynasty, its philosophy and art. But you can’t expand for him your new views on Greek culture. It is not ignorance; his formal education in college was based on Greek civilization. Even in his studies of science, philosophy, psychology, astronomy, he could hardly forget those Greeks. They bore him, that is all. He is not like Goethe to say, ‘Beside the great Attic poets, I am nothing.’ But perhaps the time when Goethe lived was more slavish than this time of my friend Brown. His eyes grow blank when I mention the changes in ideology when Christianity invaded the Western world. But they burn with enthusiasm when he talks of the time that Buddhism entered China during the Han period. Truly, he is never tired of talking on Buddhism, its effect on Chinese art; but the Western religious art leaves him cold. He speaks with veneration of Confucius. Not so of Plato . . . to him the modern East is being Westernized and spoiled.”
“Isn’t it fine!” I exclaimed. “The West is meeting us halfway. As we Westernize, they orientalize!”
“Well, it is so with Brown. He is always thinking of the long Chinese wall and the court of Kubla Khan, instead of the luxury palace with frescoed walls from that island empire of Crete. He is thinking of the Tai Shan, and the Yang-tze Valley, instead of the Macedonians moving with their herds down the Vardan. Is he some transmigration of a Taoist priest moved to Park Avenue?”
3
Educated in America, where he had taken in fact a degree in economics, commerce and banking, he had returned only to keep his business desk full of manuscripts and poetry. His father, a wealthy Chinese businessman, finally allowed him to leave the bank, and from there he went straight to study Western literature in Cambridge, England. Kim had met him in London. Afterwards Hsu Tsimou went to Italy and studied Dante. Grasping the significance of Dante in founding the Italian literature, he became a passionate convert to Hu Shih’s new movement of the Pei-hua or literature in the spoken language. (This cropped up first in the matter of translation; the argument of Hu Shih was, ridiculous to put the vulgarities of Western novels and plays into the formal stilted elegance of a purely classical and literary writing. All translations, at least of Western prose, should obviously be made in the Pei-hua or spoken tongue. The corollary was soon evident—the spirit of modern China could best be expressed in unliterary language too.) Well, like Hu Shih, Hsu Tsimou made a vow never to write again for publication in the literary language. He was devoted to all movements emancipating China from tradition, and was unconventional in all things.
When I came in, Kim and his guest were having an argument—not on literature, but on love, a favorite topic with Hsu Tsimou, I found. . . . He was a Chinese of average height, not so tall as Kim, and rather slighter, with a very handsome oval face, and black eyes full of fire, and an unconquerable zest for life. Hsu Tsimou was so handsome, indeed, that he looked like a character out of an old Chinese novel—such as Dream of the Red Chamber. His whole personality reflected radiance and enthusiasm, very different from Kim’s somber nature. Tsimou had just brought out a picture of his second Chinese wife whom after many vicissitudes he had married romantically, in despite of conventions, and he was saying: “Love is my inspiration, as Death to François Villon, as the wine to Li Tai Po. I always wanted to dedicate my life to love. And so I married it. The world is full of rain, wind, and bitter air, but that does not matter, so long as I have love. With love I can sleep in the moonlight without food or bed.”
“To most men peach blossoms seem to last for a short time of the year. To you all the year round, always peach blossoms?” Kim said in a joking manner.
Tsimou would have no irony. He had taken love over whole from the West, like a sun that sets in one hemisphere to rise in another. To him, love was life itself, his god, his truth, his beauty, and religion, as he expounded.
“It is only while being drunk,” said Kim, “that I can agree with what you are saying.” (But I thought they were both drunk, each having a glass nearly emptied of white Chinese wine.)
“Becoming sober,” Kim went on, “there appears to me an illusion. I feel you may be somehow deceived. . . . The man who has felt many currents, finally he comes to stand still . . . he returns to the Taoistic view.” (Kim got out his sketchbook of ink drawings.) “See that man in his boat? His eyes are on the far horizon, because that is the infinite . . . where the infinite sky, the infinite water, the infinite blue are one. That is the goal that this man dreams of, that is the hope. Rowing on fast as he dreams, this meeting place of sky and sea seems to him always so near . . . always it is in sight (is it not, we agree?) . . . Yet it is so far to measure with a boat for this man. True, it is the nature of this man to travel toward some goal. He may have no other thought night and day, panting and struggling. . . . But will that goal ever be reached? Is he not like Ulysses? Each success makes some newer obstacle. Always he must go on, the sport of the sea. He who has faith in travel gets shipwrecked, as well as he who has doubt. He who works hard succeeds no better than he who is drifting . . . for no one has ever reached the place where the sky meets the sea. How many we find on the sea, trying to get where the end ends . . . somewhere along the way, the ship is wrecked, while the traveler, unable to find even a stone to cling to, sinks forever into the vast ocean of oblivion. . . . Toward a hopeless goal and fatal adversity! Is it dignified to be deceived?”
“Poor man! Poor man!” murmured Hsu Tsimou, never losing his childlike radiance, his sparkling simplicity. “What foreign disease have you caught here? Is it metaphysics? Are you seeking for God?”
He said it incredulously, for the Chinese are usually satisfied in agnosticism; Koreans too. They are philosophical, but not religious or metaphysical. Missionaries have said this: We will not understand God. It is the practical in Christian ethics that has most appealed to the converts in the Far East. . . . And I heard Hsu Tsimou trying to persuade Kim to return with him to Shanghai, to join with him in new movements, new ideals, the task of revivifying the East. “The East, my friend, is where we belong! And this East is not dead as you say. The desert is soon going to bloom. When all the bad old ways are cut off and thrown away—underneath the roots are still green—grafting of new life will take place. The best of the West upon the undying roots of the East. That is the world for us. There we have some part to play. What is it that Lu Hsün says? First there is no road always: the feet of many people put one there.”
But Kim showed no enthusiasm for going back. It looked as if the Orient meant no more to him than last year’s leaves in the wasteland. “I fear that death lies at our roots. You must cut off the roots. And then man might as well be here as there.”
It was very interesting to see these two together, for they were in great contrast. Hsu Tsimou was simple in all things. He had only arrived from Europe that day, and had come straight to Kim’s place, suitcase in hand. In that one suitcase he could travel all over the world and had done so many times. And even it was full of books. I saw, when he opened it to bring them out to show Kim. He looked as if he never needed much cleaning; for Tsimou remained Oriental. His haircut was simple too, slightly long black hair parted in the middle and falling into his eyes now and then; while Kim’s went up from his forehead and all around in complicated ways. Tsimou’s shirt was a simple white, his tie a solid green; Kim’s Western shirts were checked or striped, his necktie was always of some complicated pattern. It was so of all Kim’s Westernization—he was detailed and subtle; Hsu Tsimou, simple and swift. Impossible for Kim, I thought, to select one simple trend like Hsu Tsimou, such as anti-traditionalism or romantic love—one simple color to be his banner and make him an enthusiastic, energetic man. And yet my friend was not so narrow as to be consistent, even in his assumption of Taoistic drifting and passivity.
Kim went out to get cigarettes around the corner, and Hsu Tsimou and I were left alone. Tsimou sighed and shook his head. “What will become of Kim?” he questioned softly. “He can’t go on like this. Either he must get that American girl he is in love with—or take up communism . . . for he stands now at the road with a blind ending.”
“What girl?” I exclaimed in intense surprise. The thought of Kim in love had never entered my head. George, yes . . . he was always in love. But Kim!
But Hsu Tsimou had no more to say about it. Perhaps he knew no more. And Kim was many-sided and a person of mystery. I realized I knew few things about him.
4
Kim had arranged for me to meet Mr. Arthur Brown, his friend who was interested in Asian civilization. We drove to Park Avenue. The doorman of the house where our taxi stopped saluted Kim as if he had seen him frequently. So did the elevator boy. Kim ra
ng at an apartment on a high floor, and a neat maid in uniform answered the door. I saw that even in the dim hallways were many Chinese paintings. I had no time to examine them. Mr. Brown came in just then and received us with a hearty handshake. “Let us go into the Chinese room . . . and we will have a tea ceremony in the Japanese room later.”
Our host seemed about forty years old, a man of medium height, of plain but interesting features and a fierce hawklike nose. I would not have taken him for a scholar or an art connoisseur. He looked more like a banker. Really he had been an engineer once; or at least he had studied engineering in college but I don’t know if he ever practised it.
We entered the Chinese room, the walls of which were hung with bamboo paintings, storied tapestries, embroidered pictures. It was of enormous length. There was heavy furniture brought from China, made of Nanmu wood in Canton style and decorated with marble slabs in red and gray clouds, a solid square table looking as calm and immovable as any mountain and several deep Chinese sofas to lie or rest on, showing strong fat carvings that must have come out of Peking. On the floor were large Chinese carpets, and to one side of the softly burning fire, an opulent Chinese screen.
One’s mood was subtly changed by these physical objects. Taxis outside were forgotten. One returned for the moment to that leisured tranquil world of yesterday, to the relaxation of harmonious fatalism. As we walked slowly through the whole extent, I felt that Kim must love to wander here. . . . The Young Girls at a Chinese Window . . . the Panther in the Grass . . . the Dragon of the Peaks . . . and many more. Kim stopped longest by the landscapes, mountain ravines like visions—high summits among the clouds with groups of scholars holding symposium oblivious of the coming storm—a vigorous storm caused by a raving dragon as the artist had portrayed, yet somehow even the dragon was included in their fellowship. One was caught up into a sublime pantheistic composure before nature and life, warmer, softer, tenderer, simpler than stoicism, yet of such lofty resignation that tempest and destruction became no more frightful than “the crying of a little child.”
East Goes West Page 26
