The sharp dispassionate voice of the man who had earlier been jostled by Wang’s neighbour rose above the confusion of hissed fury and curses. The man nearest the door, he cried, should go around the hut and check if anyone was outside; then he would speak. When the door was heaved open and a tall young fellow with his head thrust forward disappeared outside the hut, it was silent for a minute inside so that for the first time they heard the boom of the river and the plunging masses of snow. The young man came back in grinning: there was only something dead sitting near the hut. And he pulled a grey-brown civet pelt from under his shirt. Ma No shuddered in revulsion; he wanted to kick the fellow out, mastered himself and snuffled excitedly when he saw the over-earnest faces of the others.
The man at the hearth, from whose chin a little grey beard sprouted, stood up, stationed himself at the door which he barred with his back, spoke softly, sharply, gesticulated strangely as if he were catching flies. He plucked at his beard. His ancient face with its large eye pouches was lively as a purring tomcat’s. The slack skin did not detract from the play of his expressiveness: it rippled, flashed, rolled over the flat face with its prognathous jaw. Often he snapped his teeth together; they could see his little pink tongue curling, he bent his thickly padded back, crooked one knee or the other. It was known that he had left his home and a position of respectability for no reason. He had lived for years in the Nank’ou mountains, performed honourable services in the villages. People from his home town who were pestered by curious vagabonds for information about him reported with a shake of the head that he had dropped everything without the slightest cause. They were convinced that the old man had anticipated the discovery of a crime which in the event was not discovered, a story they found very amusing and which threw light on his timorous and secretive nature.
Chu spoke softly, “Since no one is listening at the door, your servant will speak. We must not breathe a word of it, good sirs, not out of fear and anxiety, I mean, which are not at all appropriate to people who have nothing to lose, but for reasons. Your servant Chu has good reason to speak softly and bar the door, and when you have heard him patiently, good sirs, and find yourselves in agreement, then you will speak as softly as he.
“I have good connections with Poshan, my home town in Shantung, where my nephews and siblings manage my property. We have often encountered there what our beloved brother Wang has suffered, and what the inhabitants of Kuangyuan have suffered. Fine things we’ve encountered, fine things, but the child who stands before you mustn’t prattle before men of your experience. See now: how often in the rich southern provinces does the Great River overflow its banks, and how often does the sea with its white breast hurl itself on the land, casting down houses and man and woman and child? How often does the Typhoon beat along the swarming coast, dance over the Yellow Sea and every junk and boat and great sailing ship suddenly grows legs and joins with him in a barbaric, horrible dance? And this little child will say nothing of the wicked demons that blight the fields so that famines break out. But see: people want to imitate the great powers; and whoever is a great lord wants to be a greater. And there are men, born of mothers, who swagger around the Eighteen Provinces, who have power in their hands, and they throw themselves like the grim sea over the flat land, so painfully cultivated, and with their broad bodies trample down the rice and all the fruits. There are gentlemen who swirl like a dark sandstorm over whole towns and populous villages and as they swirl suck up as much sand as people so that no one remembers how to breathe. And worst of all rages the spring tide that long ago fell upon the precious land, the Flower of the Middle, and ripped away its leaves and blooms. This tide came from the north and breaks against our rich fields and towns. It has dumped its slime and coarse grit on our rich fields and peaceable towns, and is called Ta Ch’ing, the Pure Dynasty. And I want to tell you something about it.”
Wang had long since pulled himself upright, stared wide-eyed at the old man, placed himself opposite him. The others craned their necks, pushed nearer to the door; the pulse beat harder in their temples; they watched the old man, he had them in the bag.
“I shan’t tell you anything about it, because you gentlemen know it all yourselves. When the tiger howls, the wind rushes through the valleys. The Manchus, the hard Tartars, who fell on our weak land straight from the foxhunt in their northern mountains, won’t lord it over us until the dawn of eternity. Our race is poor and weak, but we are many and shall outlive the strongest. You know what the people do, down by the sea when the seven peaceful years are up, the rainy season and the northwest gales are past, the disaster has struck and they’re still alive? They build. Build dykes, day and night, ram piles, heap up clay, mix branches and straw in it, plant grass. Such clever men will think me presumptuous when I ask them, in a strange house, what dykes they have built because they fear the spring tide and because they want to sweep the water back from their land. But others have long been quietly gathering clay in their hands, have stolen straw from such and such a one, at moments when no one was watching have secretly planted little grass seedlings and nurtured them. Already invisible walls and dykes crisscross the land, with sluices and outlets that we shall close when the moment comes: the water cannot return to the sea, the land is not drowned; we shall evaporate the water slowly with our fire like the salt panners, and retain the grains. I come from Poshan; our land yields less than on the Great River; but among our cabbages there has long bloomed a flower, secret but well-tended: the White Waterlily.”
None of them was sitting now. Excitedly they gasped, “The White Waterlily,” gathered around Chu, clapped him joyfully with their hands, flashed dark eyes at him. They were enchanted at the transformation in the halfwitted tomcat. They laughed their multifarious laughs: softly content, a challenging bleat, clear and triumphant as a bugle call; Ma No chuckling but unsure. Their lips were wet, mouths full of saliva. Under their cheeks thin hotplates glowed. Stomachs lurched gently.
“We are here, good sirs, to take counsel. Each of you may contribute as much as he has in his head. Wang has told us of his encounter in Chinan-fu with a certain grave Su-ko. I come from Poshan, not far from Chinan. I didn’t wait until a swift friend had cause to avenge me; perhaps I should not have found such a one. At the back of my street stood just such a little whitewashed wall, waiting for me. Already the lifeless hand of the Son of Heaven had drawn the red circle of death around my name. The sentence was already prepared that was needed to shut my mouth.”
The old man was going to rattle on, but Wang interrupted him. He took him firmly by the shoulder, forced him down to the ground beside him. Wang stroked the old man’s cheeks and knotty hands, offered hot tea. The old man still gulped, snatched, thrust out his lower jaw, stared straight out of red eyes, had singing ears.
The vagabonds, empty with rage, sobbed their burden away. Arms whirled of their own accord. Hot fury squeezed their throats, lashed a tin sounding-board, snorted snarling, quivering into the air. They saw themselves laid bare to the veins, lung vesicles, Chu had solved their riddle: they were outcasts, victims; they had an enemy and were radiant in their foaming hatred.
At this moment Ma No surrendered to Wang. Ma felt Wang’s obscure, sympathetic gaze, sensed how inwardly he was drawing these ravening animals to him, fearlessly soothing and kissing them; and suddenly a thread in him snapped. What now? He was drained of thought. What did it matter? The prior, the Buddhas, Paradise meant nothing! Renunciation of all restraint, smashing of all resistance. Contemptuous scowls at the vagabonds, their needs so petty compared to what Wang was suffering. A shiver. A steely alien certainty, aiming outwards from inside him. Ungiddy free fall into an abyss. Weak feather-light obeisance at Wang’s feet.
Wang fussed dumbly, sadly over the old man. He could see them all with knives between their teeth running down the mountain. They were slipping away from him.
He did not speak until they noticed his absent, distracted expression. His face was still wet with tears. He spoke wearily
, mumbled into the space before him, often started convulsively: “None of that’s any use. There’d be no end to it, were we ten times, a hundred times as many. What are we? Fewer than the friends Chu had then, and Chu sits with us and has to rub his heart bare. A rabble of beggars from the Nank’ou mountains. There’ll be killing after killing.”
The sly narrator from Kuangyuan shouted him down. His hard, mocking voice now sounded moved, gentle and slightly angry. Wang and he glared at each other. They were no idle beggars. Anyone who’d gone through what they had was no mere footpad. Yes, they were poor outcast men with barely any fight left, half dead, the kind they give a mouthful of water to and then chase away with kicks so you don’t die on the doorstep. Their four brothers were lost, soon it would be their turn. His eyes flashed again.
Wang stretched his legs, made his way carefully through them, embraced Ma No in passing, stood by the wall right at the back almost out of Sight. Only when the dull glow from the hearth flared brighter did they see that he stood with head bowed, his hands behind him touching the statue of a Buddha. Ma No beside him. Wang felt himself tossed on a stormy sea. It was as if, floundering between life and death, his arms had struck a raft suddenly, he dragged his body onto it and spoke to the drowning men, steered the raft to shore with his legs.
“Bad things have been done to us: that is fate. Bad things will be done to us: that is fate. On every road, in the fields, streets, mountains I have heard from the old folk that only one thing helps against fate: not to fight it. A frog can’t devour a stork. I believe, dear brothers, and will hold fast to it, that the course of the almighty world is fixed and unyielding and does not turn aside from its path. If you want to struggle, then so be it. You will alter nothing, I shan’t be able to help you. And then, dear brothers, I shall leave you, for I must part from those who live in fever, from those who don’t come to their senses. An ancient said of them: you can kill them, you can let them live; their fate is decreed from outside. I must submit to my death and I must submit to my life and look on both as trivial, neither hesitating nor hasting. And it would be well for you to do the same. For any other course is hopeless. I shall bear the small and the great, without desire and with no sense of burden, and turn aside to where men do not kill. Yeah, I shall tell you this of Kuan-yin and the other golden Fos that Ma No worships; they are clever and venerable gods, I worship them for what they have said: Thou shalt not kill any living thing. I will make an end of murder and vengeance; that road leads to nowhere. Don’t be angry with me that I am not of your mind. I shall be poor, so that I have nothing to lose. Riches pursue us down the street; they never catch us up. I must climb—with you, if you wish—another peak, more lovely than any I have yet seen, the Summit of Supreme Bliss. Not to act; to be as weak and docile as the white water; to skim like the light from every slender leaf. But what do you have to say to that, dear brothers?”
They were silent. Chu sighed, “You must lead us, Wang. Do as you will.”
Wang shook his head. “I shall not lead you. When you’re of my mind, then I shall lead you. You must agree, now, this moment. And you shan’t hesitate, and those in the village shan’t hesitate, for at bottom not one of you speaks any differently. You merely froth so still, like I myself once, dear brothers. Go with me. We are outcasts and proud of it. In our weakness we are stronger than them all. Believe me, none shall dare strike us down; we shall turn aside every point. And I shan’t forsake you. Whoever strikes us will know his own weakness. I shall protect you and me; I shall journey to Shantung and seek the protection of the brothers of the White Waterlily, as Chu proposed. But I shall not protect robbers or murderers. Let us be what we are: weak, distressed brothers of a poor people.”
Ma No’s arms clung around Wang’s great neck; he whispered hotly, “And I shall journey with you. I shall be a poor weak brother under your protection.” The others sat motionless, looked long at one another. Then they cast themselves, Chu first, then the four, down before Wang with their foreheads to the ground.
Ma No’s hut was empty.
Crows and great ravens hopped over the steps through the open door, sat in the hearth that was still warm, tugged with their beaks at the coarse rush matting. Two grey civet cats let themselves down from the roof by their tails, with one bound threw themselves at full stretch into the piled up blankets and skins, burrowed around in them. Their gleaming speckled fur flashed in the evening rays. A fat raven rocked on the empty shelf and peered down. When the larger of the two cats reared up with his short legs pressed against the wall, he launched himself with nervous wingbeats and harsh caws towards the ceiling, out through the open door.
In the village at this same evening hour the footpads were going one behind the other into the house of peasant Lei, one of those four houses around the oak tree at the entrance to the village. In the back yard stood a spacious empty barn used by the peasants for meetings. The great open doors on the long side let in wide floods of light.
What was discussed at this meeting in the barn, in the heavy stink of rotting straw, stale clothing and cowdung, is briefly stated. Wang was not present; during the long trek down with the golden Buddhas and the sweetly smiling Kuan-yin of rock crystal Ma No had not left his side. They were sitting together in the room full of farm implements and talking.
Ma No was loosed from chains: elated, gawky and droll. The old waspishness sounded disagreeably in his voice; he had to struggle with his grimaces, his manner of speaking, sudden passions which were now groundless and which he dragged around with him like a sick animal its winter coat in the spring. He recognized with the subtlest of feelings his duty to observe Wang; saw with trepidation the dangers that threatened Wang; saw in the background Wang’s fear of the vagabonds’ worship. Ma No watched with pleasure as a paternal, lordly feeling for the brothers who had put their faith in him sat firmer and firmer on Wang.
In the barn the five delegates reported on their discussion with Wang Lun and what Wang had said to them. Repeated it almost word for word. They stood in the middle of the draughty space; men crowded around them. The effect of the delegates’ report was tremendous.
Fresh attacks, arrows in their midst could not have aroused them so. From some, who generally kept their distance from the others, came scornful comments about monkery; they shrank back when they found themselves surrounded by passion-filled faces, quiet staring into space, urgent questioning, thoughtful pacing up and down.
Those who had returned from Ma No’s hut radiated an unshakable certainty; they stood hemmed in; the throng echoed again and again their “Wang is right.” These envoys, from old Chu to the gangling, hulking youth who had carried the bloody pelt into Ma No’s hut, were stared at, surrounded by their comrades who grasped their hands, thirsted, marvelled at their composure. None of them called Wang, squatting in the room to which all thoughts were turned, a couple of houses away. They had no wish to see him; he ought not to look on all this, the pacing, the doubt, this perplexity. They feared the dousing of all lights at his hand.
To most Wang’s plan came as an intoxication to be resisted. What was being conferred on them was a general absolution. They were to wander, each protected by the others, begging, working through the province, never staying long in one place, never sleeping within solid walls, never killing. They were to do harm to no one, not cheat, not be vengeful. Those who wanted could pray to the mildest gods, the gods of Sakyamuni that Ma No and Wang had carried down from the mountains. What this would bring them was vast, so vast it could not possibly be put into words. The eyes of the five speakers grew small with bliss and reticence. The hulking youth in particular had something wooden, clumsy in his manner, spoke brokenly, was tightly constrained in his bearing as if he were suddenly abstracted, ill at ease in his skin. The others asked what their aim would be, not curious or sceptical but greedy, stirred up. Wang Lun’s envoys just smiled shyly; it seemed there were secrets at the back of it, powerful ones, so powerful that even they had not yet been initiated into them.
The questioners fell silent themselves, uneasy in their hearts and at the same time thrilled.
They had a feeling of return and of loosed chains. Those incapable of self-control, who had fallen victim to their lusts, worn out scorners of the world and cold ironists, were the first to be taken with the plan. They were empty, pushed and lurched their way through changeable, wretched lives, good-natured, volatile in their interests. These were the most prone to infatuation, for they had nothing to lose or win, were quite defenceless since they had nothing to occupy them. So bold in the most terrifying situations, such unflappable guards and attackers, they were at their most unresisting when a face showed itself hard with resolve and radiated feeling. It ensnared them, they chased after it, they begged, raved in fury, and if it evaded them believed themselves cheated of their property and lost. They were the trustiest vanguard of every, every doctrine. They walked around in the barn, played the fool in their usual way. They could hardly bear to listen as the envoys spoke on, they were so enthralled, tormented by all excess; they were embarrassed by their transformation.
The lucky ones who had fled the pressures of town life pricked up their ears when they heard they were to go back. They were to forgive, they were being urged to remember. These were the ones who went around deeply preoccupied, often listened, looked about with furrowed brows. They were sensitive to jostling: people crowded them. The arid deluge of their experiences and entanglements rose before their eyes; they shrank in horror from them as from a snake’s hole. They were to forgive, do harm to no one: that was supposed to clear up the whole muddle. They clung to the envoys, hung on their words, complained inwardly. Feelings of revenge welled up in them, healing, reconciling them to themselves and others. They would go through the old streets, brothers of a secret league, arousing fear, doing no harm. The moment they thought of it they were transported to the place, saw themselves wandering: the role of accuser entranced them. They were to go back: a flush of expectation went through them. They clung to the envoys, hung on their words, yearned.