And before night fell he sent four soldiers to the ladies, who led them under the watchful eye of an officer out of the town. They were threatened with the rod if ever they turned up again among the Truly Powerless.
It’s decided, completed, Wang rejoiced. He went to sleep happy. In a dream he stood beneath a sycamore, clung to its trunk. Above his head the green treetop spread broad and high so that as the heavy boughs sank he was completely enveloped and buried in cool leaves, invisible to the many people who walked by and delighted in the inexhaustible growth.
After the entire provincial army of Ch’en Yuan-li, Tsungtu of Chihli, had marched up to Tungch’ang, the sectarians were goaded out to a fight and defeated. Ch’en Yuan-li then pulled back. The Tsungtu of Shantung, with Banner troops under Chao Hui, took up a position on the west bank of the Imperial Canal in the path of the fleeing sectarians. The Tsungtu’s general engaged in a heated skirmish with the fearless rebels, who fled across the Canal, prepared for further battle in the plain outside the town of Linch’ing to the east of the Canal. Here unfolded the great battle in the course of which the remainder of the sectarians were driven into the town. They had taken care to secure the walls and towers, with the result that the regular troops were compelled to a siege of Linch’ing.
The sectarians numbered no more than Ma No’s band, barely fifteen hundred people including many women. Wang Lun and Yellow Bell had suffered only light sabre wounds. Ngo’s right arm was mangled up to the shoulder. The noble man held himself upright with difficulty, practised for the final battle by swinging a club in his left hand.
Brothers and sisters clung together in an indescribable intimacy. Their friends from the White Waterlily seemed to have vanished; the recent calamities had led to their complete absorption into the Truly Powerless. Pious hymns of the journey to the Western Paradise echoed from the walls. A joyous mood surged.
Among the women were many who believed themselves unable to endure the horrors of another battle. It was these who solemnly hanged themselves in the marketplace on the second day of the siege.
Some brothers grew confused in the spirit when it became apparent that the town was now encircled by uncountable hordes of troops and annihilation loomed. They danced naked in the streets, exulted in marrowjarring voices that they knew the true, the good Way and were dancing along it. Stealthily they slipped across squares, sank to the ground with eyes closed and rasped in delirium. Several of these men cut their arms and lips with sharp stones like Fo-priests; eyes rolling white grasped dreaming women by the hands, and hard on the heels of ecstasy, in ecstasy, rutting embraces followed that no one condemned.
A small number of the immured looked sidelong, distrusting, spitefully at the others, could not resign themselves to the final rapture, wanted somehow to escape, betray the sect. These it was, many of them weeping in the courtyards, who clambered on the walls at all hours, whimpering grievously followed the movements of the Imperials. Then they paid heed again to everyone, thrust themselves into the thronging marketplace, struggled to draw over their own twisted faces the festive calm of the others.
Here and there an individual fate was swiftly consummated. Ngo had sought the Wu-wei to find peace for himself. It tormented him, when the persecutions began, that he had to participate in the leadership. He went into battle with only half a heart and was glad of the benumbing turmoil. His revulsion against the Vermilion City thickened to hatred for the Manchus who forced him to battle. Hardly any among the Truly Powerless harboured such unbridled hatred for the Emperor as former Captain Ngo. Left alone, freed of his hate now that defeat loomed, he sat in Linch’ing. Dully he heard the trite songs of his friends, saw them from a great distance walking away from him. Memories awoke of the Emperor, of wanderings with Ma No, his beloved boy, and all without emotion. His right arm was ruined; he practised with the left and observed that it was all the same if the club struck a post, an Imperial, or his own body. Seeking conversation and the company of brothers he could not find himself again. He asked himself if it wouldn’t have been just as well to go on loving his boy and new boys, and was taken so violently by this notion that he melted in dreamy tenderness, approached this captivating vanished figure, begged its forgiveness for staying away so long, bringing no perfumes, no sweets. Whole days he passed in this trance. Yellow Bell came across him weak and in a high fever. The officer parted shaken from the sick man: he had the look of one diving already into the final darkness. As Ngo lay close to death in the bare room that had been found for him, in between the frosts and the flashing colours he felt for the delicate knees and ears of his boy, his clenched jaws barring entry to the rustling Wu-wei, tried now sceptically, now impatiently to find his balance, wandering, stammering, quite still.
The sect, decimated, completely exhausted, was lost. It was granted to the remnant to see through the last days together with Wang Lun. Among these sectarians the name Nank’ou meant almost nothing. When Wang Lun told them he had returned to them after a great journey from Nank’ou through the Lower Reaches to Linch’ing, they knew well who he was and that it was worthwhile to have lived for the Wu-wei and to enter the Western Paradise.
In the first hour of the afternoon when they were driven into the town Wang Lun, bleeding at the neck, dripping with sweat, trembling pulled Yellow Bell into the empty courtyard of a house, embraced him violently, stuttered beside himself, with blazing eyes, “Brother, we are lost. It’s the end. Brother, the gates are closed. Who do I thank for that?”
Yellow Bell groaned, “We are lost.”
“Do you think so? I’m ready to die. What I said in Tungch’ang is still true: there’s no other end. The Nai-ho is black as mud. But I am with you, with you all, the only thing I’ve ever loved in my whole life is here: Nank’ou. I’ve come back to you. The gates are closed. We can pray, we can rejoice. All of a sudden we are free.”
In the following days Wang opened up completely. He climbed without cease through streets and squares. He strove to know every single member of the sect, let them relate their fates. He wept with them over fallen friends, for all of whom collective offerings were burned in the marketplace, forgave the Imperials they had been forced to fight against. The time when all should walk the pure Way was not yet come. Only through yielding and meekness could the terrors of life, the iron blows of sorrow be turned aside.
At the devotions in the marketplace the barefoot man, bareheaded, climbed onto the planks of a market stall. He told of his wanderings in the Lower Reaches and how it had done him no good, of the thousands of joyous brothers and sisters that Ma No had led to the K’unlun Mountains. He named many of them, described them. At other times, and this with great urgency, he praised fate. He found again the words from Nank’ou: how small men were, how quickly everything passed and how little use noise was. The Imperials and Manchus might be victorious; how would it help them? Who lives in fever conquers lands and loses them; it is a confusion, nothing more. Wolves and tigers are evil beasts; who takes them as his emblem devours and is devoured. Men must think as the earth thinks, water thinks, the forests think: without fuss, slow, still; accepting, conforming themselves to every change and influence. They, who were truly powerless against good fate, had been forced to do battle. The pure teaching must not be eradicated, blotted away like bad ink. Now all fighting was over for them, must be over. Clubs, swords, scythes would be taken up just once more. Wu-wei was buried in the hearts of the Hundred Families. When they were gone it would spread in a stealthy, miracle-teeming manner, while they strolled among the clouds of the Western Paradise and sank up to their loins in sweetscented ambergris. They were surrounded by corpses; shades and skeletons grasped at them, the strongest sorcery couldn’t overpower such evil. Only Wu-wei could, that separated life from death with such a simple stroke. The sages of old knew as much. Be weak, endure, bow down to fate—that was the true Way. Cleaving to events, water to water, cleaving to the rivers, the land, the air, always brother and sister, love—that was the true Way.
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He spoke of the dream that appeared to him night after night: he stood beside the tree, at first it was like a sycamore. Gradually the tree began to grow around him, so slender and at the same time so bushy, hanging over him voluptuous as a weeping willow, enclosing him like a green coffin. Sometimes when he awoke the dream was still in his head and then he imagined that the slender trunk had twined like a creeper around his legs, his body and arms, so he couldn’t extricate himself from the watery pith and was completely sucked up into that luxuriant plant which everyone rejoiced to see.
Ecstatics foamed and clapped when Wang spoke in this vein. It frequently happened that crowds gathered, crowded around the gates with a hazy notion of going out to preach to the enemy and winning them over. They urged Wang, urged Yellow Bell to let them hold a festival. And one day the joyous sounds of a festival fluted through the town. They hauled the carved image of a goddess, the Queen of the Western Heaven, from a sumptuous temple, carried it to an open space beyond the houses, burned incense, leapt. Brothers walked barefoot over beds of glowing coal spread in front of the goddess, faces turned to the goddess laughing, triumphant. Brothers and sisters endlessly begged Wang to send spirits to her that would cast themselves down before her and praise her on behalf of all who honoured the holy Wu-wei. Five times five men and women dragged beams and loose boards over the beds of coal. And as the wood blazed up, they trampled in glee one behind the other, one over the other amid the frantic shouts of the crowd, yelping into the swelling flames before the gentle image, like chicks under a mother hen’s wing.
Chao Hui was commander in chief of a force that outnumbered the enemy by almost ten to one. The arrival of those Manchurian archers whose deployment the Emperor had ordered was expected daily. A young officer was attached to the general’s Banner regiment: Lao-hsü, the son of Chao and Hai-t’ang. As she first drove Chao Hui out to avenge their sweet daughter, so Hai-t’ang then drove out this elegant idler, who was rapidly changed by his sister’s death. He hardly had need of his mother’s prodding.
Linch’ing consisted of an old and a new town. Only the new town was strongly walled and surrounded by an earthen rampart. The wall of the old town was not quite complete, only two of its watchtowers usable. Before the archers arrived Yinchitu, a captain of Chao’s Banner, took two hundred men, forced the eastern gate of the new town, stormed the almost undefended wall overpowered the badly armed rebels. Only forty Imperials were killed in this surprise attack, while two hundred and thirty corpses of sectarians and townspeople were counted.
The next day a red sun glowed. As it sank, Wang gave orders for everyone in the old town who had a weapon to take arms and abandon houses which were difficult to barricade. They were to take up positions in the largest houses in the narrowest streets. Small bands of archers and slingers were to place themselves at particular points along the walls as soon as night fell. Yellow Bell saw to the deployment with cold efficiency; his calmness removed all fear from the moment.
As soon as it grew dark someone came to the house where Wang was lodging; when a man opened the door at his knock, handed over a vase and said it was not to be opened. After closing the door the man stood there irresolute, and before he could ask a question the messenger had vanished. Doubtfully he bolted the door, took the sealed porcelain vase, of no great weight, to Wang’s room, placed it on the mat. Shortly afterwards Yellow Bell arrived at the house to speak to Wang. He went into the room and saw Wang seated by the oil lamp at a table, his back to the door. He seemed to be reading. Then the gatekeeper called from the yard that Yellow Bell was to go up: Wang Lun was on the first floor with some brothers, asking for him. Frightened, Yellow Bell stumbled up the stairs. From the room above he could hear loud talking and noises. Wang was handing out spears and short daggers. Yellow Bell called to Wang, who let a dagger drop when he saw the officer’s horrified face, rushed downstairs with him, went softly through the door. The apparition was still reading at the table. Wang called to it, it turned, gazed at Wang, whose hands clutched his throat, out of his own eyes, moved towards the mat, vanished. The two men edged nearer. The vase stood there, sealed. Yellow Bell held Wang, who was tottering, by the shoulder. “Yellow Bell, do you know what it was?”
Yellow Bell said nothing, closed his eyes. Wang was trembling. “It means I must die tomorrow.”
In haste, distraught, Wang told the gatekeeper to take the vase away, carefully. After staring blankly into space for a while he went back up with Yellow Bell.
The assault on the gates began shortly before sunrise, beginning with the new town. Bold, powerful Yinchitu was the first to storm into the town through the battered gate; he sought Wang Lun, to strangle him with his bare hands. Close behind ran Lao-hsü in a redplumed helmet, shieldless, in each fist a long two-edged knife. The southern gate succumbed not long after to the provincial troops, who had now been joined by the archers; as soon as Yinchitu entered the town through the east gate, all defenders had withdrawn from the walls into the lanes and houses. On the southern wall stood a cast iron cannon, which the attackers filled with the blood of a virgin they had stabbed the night before the assault, and shot into the town to cleanse the air of the spirits of fallen rebels. Women rushed at the soldiers from alleyways with a horrible jubilant shrieking; they blocked streets leading to the rebels: clumped possessed flesh that had to be hacked away. Flames from burning houses jogged in from the edge of the town.
Furious street fighting set in. The brothers would not allow themselves to be trapped in the houses; they sallied forth from house after house. The town quivered death. The streets filled with choking soldiers. Fresh troops poured in continually over the walls, ground their teeth and could not be restrained. From the centre of the town among the furious roaring, the long sharp screaming, a raucous bawling and whooping swelled from the rebels, sank, surged again.
In a street, planted with the corpses of women, that led to the marketplace, brothers saw as they opened their house doors to enter the fray Wang Lun running with great leaps from the marketplace, bareheaded, sword slung over his left shoulder. He raced past, his sweatdrenched face hollow and unrecognizable, eyes empty, Yinchitu and Lao-hsü pursuing at the head of archers and lancers. The brothers held back the onslaught. Wang disappeared into a large empty house at the end of the street. A small group of sectarians with daggers ran along the houses, threw themselves on the archers in front of the last doorway. Yinchitu, covered by Lao-hsü, heaved open the door with a groan. Wang was panting by the courtyard wall. Yinchitu parried Wang’s thrust with his sword; they struggled; the captain wrested Yellow Leaper from the rebel leader’s grasp. A dozen sectarians succeeded in gaining entry to the yard. They felled Lao-hsü with their daggers, freed Wang and scrambled with him to the upper floor of the house. Here were piled planks of camphor wood. They barricaded the stairs with a jumble of planks, cupboards and tables. While archers from Kirin shot arrow after arrow in through the windows, they started a fire and were burned before the first soldier could climb the stairs.
Yinchitu stormed down the street after rebels, brandishing Yellow Leaper about his head; he struck down twenty brothers and sisters.
In the southern part of the town Yellow Bell held his house longest. When it was set alight with burning arrows, he scrambled with his forty men out into the street. He fought warily against the Imperial Bannermen, who retreated when they recognized the officer they had revered in the barracks. The whole town had fallen to the jubilant regulars, and still he fought, protecting himself with a tall shield, behind the yamen wall. A lance in the throat spun him around; his last companions were felled by club blows. The hundred men and women who had gathered weaponless in the marketplace ready to be massacred were surrounded, bound, dragged by twos to the camp outside the burning town.
Government measures winding up this affair lasted a month. During this time the prisoners were transported to Peking; Ch’ien-lung interrogated the greater part of them personally, to ascertain connivance by officials, dil
atoriness in persecution. Then the brothers and sisters were sentenced before a large crowd outside Peking in accordance with the law against heresy. Their families and the families of known rebels were banished to the Ili and Mongolia, some two thousand people in all. The village of Hunkang-ts’un was burned to the ground, the remains of Wang’s parents exhumed, dismembered, all residents of the village driven out, their scanty chattels confiscated. The corpses of the rebels rotted in the streets of Linch’ing, poisoned the air until the few remaining inhabitants turned to the Prefect. Then a decree of Ch’ien-lung ordered the carcasses to be gathered and piled outside the wall near the Canal. Two wide shallow graves were dug for the men and women on the riverbank, at a spot where evil spirits congregated. Into these were tipped barrow loads of cadavers; debris from the burned out houses and charred beams were piled on top. From the Canal these two long grave mounds and rubble heaps looked like the backs of two giant moles scrabbling out of the earth.
Ch’ien-lung basked. He made it known to the State Council that he had named Chia-ch’ing, the son who had reconciled him with his ancestors, as his heir. Officers, generals, high officials, advisers who had taken part in the suppression of the rebellion received titles of honour, estates. On the day of the Thanksgiving Festival, Ch’ien-lung inscribed in a firm hand in the inner hall of the K’ungfu-tzu Temple: “Had K’ungfu-tzu been here, he would not have proceeded more thoroughly than I.”