The Englishman, because he does not have to obey his parents (once he is an adult), often hates them: while the Chinaman, because he has to obey them implicitly, seldom hates them.
Sometimes the Englishman tries to find a remedy in equality, tries to make of his father a friend. But the friendship is not free: and within it the tie will still chafe him. The Chinaman, instead, makes of his father a god; and that relation, lubricated by the very formality it entails itself, will probably not chafe either of them in the least.
Worship is the smooth, nacreous coating with which the pearl-oyster covers the irritant grain of sand. When any human relationship—parent and child, governor and governed, male and female—seems intolerably fraught with irritation, there is a lot to be said for converting it like this into a superhuman one.
No generalisation however is universal. It is not impossible for a Chinaman to hate his father: only very rare, very rare indeed. When it does happen, because it is so rare it is rendered more arcane, a more potent shaper of the course of his life, than among us. It is something that cannot be breathed aloud: a sacred crime, like incest. Seeing no answering reflection in society around it, the motive is driven down, and inwards: becomes compressed.
Some of the flowers of this hidden root will then be highly curious: and some, even beautiful.
That fireman, Ao Ling, was a young chap—the same age as Dick Watchett: but his had been a more varied career. Not typically Chinese, you might say: there was too much movement in it, too much restless shifting from place to place over big distances. And lately, too much purpose: too little of the happy-go-lucky: a sternness, even an impatience.
A sort of self-oblivion, too, seems to settle on a man, once he has identified himself with a Cause. He will be able to tell you minute details about the Cause itself, from A to Z: but he can hardly tell you whether he himself wears two legs or three.
Ao Ling was in that state now. He had a minute memory of everything which had happened to him up to the time of his conversion, but of very little afterwards. From the time of his conversion, at least down to the time when they fought their way out of Chingkangshan, his mind was a blank, so far as personal things were concerned—it was filled solely with the progress of the Cause. In this ecstasy of religion, small wonder that neither the storm, nor his hunger, nor even the fire from the furnace which had seemed powerless to destroy him, could move him very greatly! Small wonder he had been so bitterly angry at the footling little beliefs of P’ing Tiao.
He sat there in a posture the design of which seemed framed on the bones of his body and the set of his ears, rather than (like most European postures) on the shape of the body’s surface. A straight line ran up his spine, up the nape of his neck, up the back of his head. His very short, coarse, thick black hair radiated impartially from a high crown: it was dead-looking, and contrasted surprisingly with his small face, which could be extremely lively and mobile (though it was like a wall, now).
Hunger? For some days now he had been without food. But what are a few days without food to a man who has been through the long faminous siege of Chingkangshan almost without noticing he was hungry?
Hunger had been nothing new to him, even then, in point of fact. For as a child he had once lived through a famine year: and had not forgotten it. He was seven years old at that time. As his limbs got smaller, his paunch got bigger, so that (like an old man) he could no longer see his knees. From drinking immense quantities of water to fill it, his paunch went hard, and pushed out his little navel till it protruded like a young baby’s. He had put nothing solid into that paunch, for five months, but bark and earth—except one day, when the family found a hoard of nine dried beans.
In the earlier months of that winter there had been some food in the house, it is true. But that, naturally, was not given to the children. It was reserved for their grandmother: and the little starvelings used to have to carry her bowl of gruel to her, once a day, with their compliments, until their powers of walking became so uncertain that in common prudence they had to be excused. For one thing which hunger did to them was to take away the power of regular sleeping and waking. Even at night they only slept for a few minutes at a time; and by day they were liable to drop off into a catnap at any moment, whatever they were doing.
There were only two children in the family; Ling and his sister.
One day, late in the famine, they went to the district town, to sell the sister. Most families tried to sell or give away their little girls, those days: but not all were successful. For with so many to choose from the buyers were grown particular. They did not consider it economic to take children under nine years old, being not yet fit for hard work. Those over eleven or twelve, on the other hand, might have wills of their own and make trouble in their new homes: so they too were refused. But Ling’s sister was lucky—she was ten, just a good age: ready for hard work, but mentally still dependent. So Ling (who had been unboyishly fond of his chieh-chieh) had seen her skinny skull with its sad, monkey eyes, her nobbly elbows and her cracked fingers, for the last time. He saw his father give her: and the buyer, but quite kindly, take her away.
There was a sickening smell everywhere in the town, with so many people dead: and there did not at first seem many of the living about. But as the Ao family threaded the streets on their return home, they came all at once on a large crowd. It was in a street outside the door of a rich man’s house. Not the main gate, but a postern, a door of dark polished wood in a perfectly blank wall. Everyone knew the rich man had food in his house: and now the crowd had gathered, without premeditation, in twos and threes, till the street was packed. They did not say much, they just kept up a low growling; though once or twice someone cried out; cursing in falsetto, or supplicating for food. Many were nearly naked. The Aos were soon jammed in the crowd, which still grew: there must have been more than a thousand. Men whom hunger had so withered that their every movement was a gesticulation.
The low whining rose a tone or two, like a storm about to break. If you were impartial you would have feared for that rich man, among his foppish latticed courts and fishponds, with the wolves at last at his door.
The door was opened, from within; and the door-keeper stood there. He was a small, gat-toothed man: but well fed. Alone, the mob surging up to him: but he did not seem afraid of them. He did not speak: but he lifted his hand and pushed the man nearest to him in the chest.
They all went down, falling like a house of cards. In a very short while they were all lying on their backs. Many were too weak to get up again for some time, after the shock of falling: they raised their bodies a little off the ground, weeping with vexation at their own weakness.
Little Ling noticed this collapse of apparently strong men, in the magical face of the Rich, with wonder, and a very curious feeling.
Then the door-keeper closed the door again, hardly bothering to bolt it. Soldiers from the Yamen! There was no need of soldiers, to withstand these autumn leaves.
When they got home, Ao Ling went alone to the little shrine in the fields where the country-gods sat. Ordinarily they are treated with great respect: given paper clothes, and sniffs of incense, just like the household gods (who, at the New Year, when they repair to Heaven to make their annual report, have their lips smeared with honey that their report may be sweet). But now these were as tattered as their worshippers, their clay bodies as cracked and ill-cared for.
The evening was high-pitched with the shrilling of cicadas: and everywhere the croaking of frogs, like the quacking of a whole fleet of ducks.
Greatly daring, Ling laid hold of the gods: momentarily expecting them to rebuke him. But nothing happened—there was no gate-keeper here!
He dragged them out of the shrine: and with what strength he had, broke them in pieces.
There they lay: powerless to resist, as they had already shown themselves powerless to help: and he started back to the house.
There was a rustling in the dry bamboo-clump. As he passed, in the du
sk, something bounded out behind him. It was the god, the fractures showing as fiery seams in his flesh, his green face terrible with anger. Little Ling stumbled screaming into the kitchen, and fell flat on the floor.
All that night he heard the god trampling round the house, or snuffling, for his blood, at the door.
After the famine they moved south, away from the River, into the hills of eastern Hunan: right away from the River.
IV
Why had Ling, among so many filial Chinamen, been one to hate his father? That wrinkled face, with its beard of a few coarse black hairs—why, on the rare occasions he found himself near it, did he always shrink from it, as if he expected a blow?
For their contacts were very rare. In even the poorest, clay-built Chinese house, the women’s court (where the children live) is separate from the father’s room: an inner place. The only contact the children have with their father is a formal one, when there is some almost ritual act of service to perform. Much as the Chinese love their children, there is no display of affection such as might, in its naked informality, arouse a revulsion in the little one. The pangs of that primeval tie are never allowed to be felt; nor the pearly coating to wear thin.
Ling’s father was invariably kind to him, in his remote way: did the right thing by him: dressed him, of course, all in red.
Yet when his father sent him at length to school, because his father sent him he tried not to learn.
However it is difficult not to learn, at a Chinese school. An English boy can stare at a book until he sees double, without reading a word: can shake up the figures of a sum like a kaleidoscope, without coming any nearer the answer. But the Chinese teaching method is subtler. There everything is learned by rote. Say it over and over again: say it in chorus, for hours and hours. Your attention may be in Tashkent: but say it over and over again like that, in your high piping voice, and it will get in behind your attention: when your attention returns it will be as a lid, not a shield—the thing you wished not to learn will be already safely ensconced within. So too Ao Ling had learned: by rod and by rote, but chiefly by rote.
Yet the impoverished student who conducted the little school could not make much of Ling. He was a polite but a glowering boy, not much liked by his fellows: and with an inner resistance, it almost seemed, to authority. That meant there was no hope for him (for a willing obedience to authority is the first of virtues, without which no others can be added).
Ling’s personal hatred of his father, of course, the tutor never suspected. How should he? He was a decent man, not given to the imagination of incredible evil in his pupils. And a feeling so unnatural, so shameful, any child would take pains to hide even from himself. It was only by its fruits that you could tell it was already there.
An exaggerated fear, bordering on a nervous hatred, of the rich, however, the teacher did discern in him: but could not account for.
Only once did the teacher see Ling’s face really happy. It was the season of bean-flies—big green insects, with red iridescent eyes. Ling was catching the silly, lovely things in dozens, and putting them in paper boxes: looking at his captives in a most happy and adoring way, holding them with infinite gentleness. The gentle Buddhist himself smiled with pleasure at his student’s patent love of them. But then he saw Ling take the boxes, full of living flies, and thrust them, all of a sudden, in the stove.
V
But Ling’s early memories went back far beyond those days: beyond his school, beyond the famine: growing even clearer, the earlier they were. Bright separate pictures, recorded not for anything important in them but rather, it seemed, by whim. Almost, Ling believed, he could remember the day when he lay, a new-born babe, wrapped in the traditional pair of his father’s old trousers.
That of course is not possible: but some of his memories certainly went back very early indeed.
One was of his sister, of whom he had been so fond. It was in the days before he had learned to walk. He had seen Chieh-Chieh toddle out of the door into the sunshine, and on all fours had made haste to follow her. Once out in the yard, he had sat up on his clammy end to look about him. Suddenly he was bowled head over heels by a big, black-haired, wrinkled old boar, who was making a sally at a piece of melon-rind.
In only one of these memories did his father actually make an appearance. I have said that there was little personal contact between them: but in the other picture I propose to describe one of those rare contacts did occur.
The whole family were straddling the thatched roof of their cottage. The yellow flood-water swirled around them, and the mud walls beneath them were melting away. I suppose their peril was pretty acute. Ling was lying in his mother’s arms. He must have been very young then: for presently she gave him suck.
However, hardly had the milk begun to come when suddenly his father tore him from her breast, and tossed him, howling furiously, into the rescue-boat which had just drawn near.
Chapter XI
(Saturday)
After the famine the Ao family moved south, into the eastern Hunan hills, near the Kiangsi border. By this time Ling’s father had grown stern with him: and the boy’s hatred deepened. But still he never gave it expression. This was not only a matter of self-control: it was a curious defect in the hatred itself. When alone he might be filled with the white fervour of parricide; but whenever he faced his father a look or a word would prick his rage as if it was a bladder, and leave him humiliated, utterly without its support (acting rather like the push the gate-keeper gave the crowd).
When he was twelve, without warning or any open quarrel, Ling ran away.
He worked here and there, now at this, now at that: being bitten by a restless spirit that made him always move on, from Hunan into Kiangsi, eastward from the wild and wooded hills into the red loam country near Nanchang.
It was on that road he saw his first motor-bus. It was not one of a regular service, but a lone one, far from its fellows, plying wherever a sufficiency of passengers wanted to go. It was packed with passengers so tight that they seemed to spread out at the top like a bunch of flowers: and you could tell by their faces that it was a proud thing to travel by motor-bus.
It was not moving very fast, however, because the proprietor, to economise petrol, had yoked a pair of bullocks to it instead of using the engine.
For a while Ling worked at a country inn, on this road. It had only a few smoke-blackened rooms: one smoky lamp: for general guest-bed a wooden platform. There the few travellers sat peacefully sucking at their little pipes, or relieved their mild boredom by writing and drawing on the walls. The shrill mosquitoes: the crowing cocks: the mid-night stamping of the cattle: and at dawn the rattling chain by which he drew water from the well.
What a contrast it was to the urban hotel (where presently he got another job) in Nanchang!—Nanchang, the first capital town he set eyes on, and therefore the world’s metropolis to him. The sing-song of the peddlers in the street: the clatter, the strident singing, the everlasting shapeless noise: the smell of bean-oil: the snapping voices of men gambling, for drinks, all night with their fingers: the soldiers roused at bugle-crow, and the sewing-machines.
Sitting in the centre-castle of the “Archimedes,” Ao Ling closed his ears to the Christian buffoon: let his reverie course over the chequered field of his memories.
For a time he had worked as a navvy, repairing the dykes that hold the yellow Yangtze back from the green land behind.
For a time he had worked in a Shanghai theatre. Not as an actor, nor property-man, nor musician, nor any job you would think of with the word “theatre” in your mind. In that baking heat, his job was to toss among the audience hot towels, with which to ease their congested sweat-glands.
—Again, a time in Nanking: where they had already begun to raise a new, gaunt Whitehall in the earthen ruins.
A time when he had stood, his arms bound behind him, waiting his turn to kneel before the headsman. It was a sandy space, like a football-ground, outside a city wall: and
surrounded by a football crowd. But even as he waited his turn someone galloped up with news, shouting. The headsman (one of the last of his guild), his smug and vain expression turned suddenly to terror, dropped his cleaver and ran, his yellow apron flapping against his knees. The punctilious Magistrate, presiding in his bivouac of matting, vanished without punctilio. The soldiers ran: the crowd melted: he was left alone, one living man among four decapitated bodies, the cold sweat drying on his stiffened and aching face.
His hands were still tied behind him as he wandered into the emptying town. A silent town: no voice raised in alarm, only a whispering all over it like a shower of rain—the whisper of running feet. When he had found something to cut himself free he ran too.
Not long after that he spent a merry three months as conductor on the Hangchow bus: a most light-hearted, boyish time. These were proper buses, proceeding under their own power. Back and forth to Nanking, for three months, always through the same countryside. It is a delicate, detailed, green country—all shades of green, green rice-fields, dark green corn-fields, green trees, green feathery clumps of bamboo. A country of earthen roads, and hump-backed bridges over canals thick with quiet, child-drawn traffic. Over these roads the bulging and intoxicated buses roared and raced; each with its wildly-swaying luggage-trailer like a tin can tied to a bolting terrier’s tail.
In this job Ling developed a passion for machinery, and in time might even have risen to the rank of driver. But one day, as they bucketed over a bridge with all their wheels in the air, he caught a glimpse of a beautiful boat-girl, sitting in a sampan and embroidering slippers. Hers was a beauty that would have made even a wild goose alight. Without hesitation he dropped off the moving bus.