Creation (59 page)

Once I had decided that I was in no immediate danger, I began to ask Huan almost as many questions as he asked me. He enjoyed what he took to be my barbarous candor. But he did not always enjoy my questions. “Why hasn’t the duke been replaced? After all, he does not rule.”

“How terrible!” Huan looked shocked. Quickly he traced some magical design—to ward off evil?—on the edge of the mat where he was sitting. We were in a low-ceilinged room that faced upon a garden in which a row of plum trees were in pale, fragrant bloom.

“Oh, too barbarous! Really, too barbarous! Even for a person from beyond the desert.”

“I apologize, Lord Huan.” I looked humbly at the polished wood floor between us.

“It is so terrible to hear the thought
expressed
that I shudder and, oh, how my mind aches!” He clasped his stomach where Cathayans believe that the mind dwells. “Our duke is sacred because he descends from the Emperor Wu. He and he alone possesses the mandate of heaven. Even a barbarian must know that.”

“I do, Lord Huan. But as you have said yourself, the Middle Kingdom is not yet his. The balance between earth and heaven—that great bellows, as your wise men call it—is not yet in proper balance.”

“True. True. But it is, of course.” Yes, that is exactly what he said. I was never able to get entirely used to the way the Cathayans confuse future, past and present in their tense-less language.

Huan appeared to be saying that the mandate of heaven was already Duke P’ing’s. Actually, he meant that one day it would be his because it was already his and had been his because he was who he was. There is a good deal of subtlety in the Cathayan language; and endless confusion.

“But meanwhile there is the emperor at Loyang.”

“He is
not
the emperor. He is duke of Chou.”

“But he is descended from Wu’s father, Wen. And Loyang is the holy capital of the Middle Kingdom.”

“Even so, he is simply one of the fifteen dukes of the Middle Kingdom. And of those fifteen dukes, only eleven are descended from one or another of the twenty-five sons of the Yellow Emperor, who invented fire, whose descendant saved the world from the flood of water and then received from heaven the great plan with its nine divisions, the plan which eventually came into the possession of his descendant the Emperor Wu, from whom it passed down the generations to
him
,
the one who looks south.” Huan bowed reverently in the direction of the ducal residence. The expression the one who looks south is used to describe the heaven-mandated emperor. I don’t know why. Doubtless, an astrologer might have an explanation. I have often thought that it might have had something to do with the Aryan or north star. In any case, on public occasions the emperor always stands to the north of his people.

Once mandated, the emperor is a living reflection of heaven, that ghostly residence of a line of emperors which extends back to the Yellow Ancestor, who created all things when he pushed apart a sort of cosmic egg, whose upper half became heaven while the lower became earth. Only through man’s propitiation of heaven can harmony be kept between the two halves of a divided whole. Needless to say, religious rites are of enormous importance to the Cathayans. Like many primitive people, they believe that there will be no autumn harvest if, say, the spring terrace play is incorrectly performed—and a most intricate ceremony it is, involving numerous actors, dancers, singers and musicians, as well as the ruler, who alone may speak to the royal ancestors as they look down upon him and all his works, and smile—or frown.

“Then Duke P’ing has already received the appointment of heaven.” I bowed my head very low when I said the duke’s name, and lower still at the mention of
 
heaven.

“Yes, yes.” Huan smiled. But of course Duke P’ing lacked the appointment, as did the actual pretender at Loyang. That is the continuing crisis of Cathay. As a result, there is not a Cathayan ruler who does not dream of obtaining the hegemony, and heaven’s appointment—in that order. But it seems most unlikely that any one ruler will ever be able to subjugate his neighbors the way Cyrus or even Ajatashatru did.

As far as I can tell, the Middle Kingdom is larger than the Gangetic plain but smaller than the Persian empire. A hundred years ago the northern state of Tsin almost obtained the hegemony; then the southern state of Ch’iu became as powerful as Tsin and so heaven’s mandate continued to be withheld. That is the way things were when I was in Cathay, and I doubt if there has been any change. Despite protests to the contrary, no ruler wants the Middle Kingdom united—except by himself. Such is the balance or nonbalance there.

Early in my captivity I managed to dispatch a message to Fan Ch’ih at Lu. Although he was my only hope of ever getting home to Persia, I had no idea whether or not he had the power to free me because I was never told just what my status was. If I was a slave, he could buy me. But whenever I suggested to Huan that a ransom might be paid for my release he would say, “But you are an honored guest.” Then he would clap his hands and I would be escorted back to my cell, whose door was never locked because I could never escape. I was as conspicuous in Ch’in as a black man at Susa. More so. There are hundreds of black people at Susa while, as far as I could tell, I was the only white person in Ch’in.

When I came to speak the language with some ease, Huan questioned me in some detail about the administration of Persia. Although he showed no interest in the Great King, when it came to such things as the fixing of prices in the market, establishing interest rates on money lent, keeping control of the population through the police and secret service, he was more than eager to listen to my stories of Persia and the Indian kingdoms.

I recall one dinner party where I was treated as an honored guest by Huan, who always enjoyed showing me off to his fellow nobles. On that occasion, most of the council of state was present. As we knelt on mats, servants shuffled into the room with stools, which were set beside each diner. I always wanted to sit on the stool, but that is the one thing you cannot do at a formal Cathayan dinner party. The stool is there only to lean against. Since even the Cathayans find kneeling for several hours uncomfortable, the stool is useful for shifting one’s weight about.

In front of each diner was an array of dishes and cups. A minister is allowed eight dishes; I was allowed six. To one’s left is a dish of meat that has been cooked on the bone, as well as a bowl of rice; to one’s right, a dish of sliced meat and a bowl of soup. This order must never be varied. In a circle outside these dishes, other dishes are arranged; they contain minced and roasted meat, steamed onions, pickles, and so on. Boiled fish is served in winter with belly to the host’s right; in summer the belly is to the left. Dried meat is folded to the left. Spouts of jars face the host. And so on, and on.

The ritual of a Cathayan dinner party is almost as elaborate as a religious ceremony. For instance, if one is of a lower rank than the host—which I was thought to be—one is required to pick up the dish containing rice or millet or whatever is made of grain; then one bows to the host and declines the dish while pretending to depart. The host then gets to his feet and implores the guest to remain, which he does. I have never heard of a case when the guest actually left. But since everything that can happen in the world has happened, that must have happened too. I should not like to have been the guest who left the dining room.

There were other niceties which one had to observe, but I have forgotten them. On the other hand, I am not apt to forget the splendid cooking that one finds in all the noble houses of Cathay. Even the cooked food that one buys in the market is of high quality, and there is no pleasure on earth to equal that of dining aboard a boat tied to a willow tree in the Wei River at the time of the summer moon.

Once the various ceremonies are attended to, a Cathayan dinner party can be almost as sophist-like as one here at Athens. Of course, Cathayan manners are more formal than Athenian manners. What manners are not? Nevertheless, the conversation in Huan’s dining room was occasionally sharp and to the point. There were even arguments toward the end of a meal when too much millet wine had been drunk.

I remember enjoying my first plate of the famed baked suckling pig, a somewhat inadequate description of a dish that begins with a suckling pig which has been stuffed with dates and baked in straw and mud; once the pig is baked, the mud is broken off and the meat is sliced and fried in melted fat; then the slices are boiled with herbs for three days and nights and served with pickled beef and vinegar. There is nothing so delicious in all Lydia. I fear that I gorged myself at Huan’s table—something that one is not supposed to do at a Cathayan dinner, but everyone does.

After Huan had explained to me how the pig had been prepared and I had extolled, sincerely, the result, he said, “But you must dine like this in your country.” He nodded encouragingly.

I nodded too; and said, “No, never. You have achieved that perfection which we merely seek.”

“Oh, no, no!” Then Huan turned to the other guests, saying, “Cyrus Spitama, despite his curious name and characteristic paleness, is a very sharp “weapon.” A sharp weapon is the Cathayan phrase for a clever person.

The others looked at me with more than polite interest. But then, I don’t believe that any of them had ever seen a white person before. Certainly, they were always surprised when I spoke their language. As a barbarian, I was expected to grunt like a pig.

Politely, a noble asked me about Persia. Where was it? How far away? When I explained that it was a thousand miles to the west of Champa—a port that they had all heard of—a dozen heads nodded with disbelief.

“He tells me,” said Huan with his almost toothless smile, “that in his country all men are subordinate to the state and that the state alone is the measure of what is good and bad.”

The nobles nodded and smiled, and I did the same. Needless to say, I had
never
told Huan any such thing.

“But surely,” said one old man, “even in a barbarous land, heaven’s decrees take precedence over those of the state.”

Huan looked at the roof beam as if it were heaven. “As long as the mandate has been given the ruler, the ruler’s will is absolute. Isn’t that the way you told me it was in your happy country?” Huan smiled at me.

“Yes, Lord Huan.” I was not about to contradict my captor.

“But surely”—and the old man turned now in my direction, glad to use me as surrogate for the first minister—“there are certain laws of heaven that your ruler must obey?”

Huan answered for me. “No. There are none, as long as the mandate is his. These western barbarians believe, as do we, that the state is a chain that starts with the individual who is linked to the family which is linked to the village which is linked to the state. Each link in the chain must be strong. Each link contributes to the whole, which is the state. In the happy country of our honored guest”—a bob of the head in my direction—“men are no longer the way they were at the beginning when each man lived only for himself, which meant that if you brought two men together, you had two different ideas of what was good and bad, which is a very bad thing since no one can deny that all the suffering in the world begins with a disagreement between men as to what is good or bad. Well, the barbarians of Persia are wiser than we. Yes, yes! They believe that if each man is allowed to act and think as he pleases, there can be no order, no harmony, no state. And so, finally, the wise ruler, when he receives the mandate of heaven, must tell his people that what he thinks is right is right for all men and what he thinks is wrong is wrong for all men. But, of course, there are always some who will disobey their ruler and so the Persian king has said, ‘Should any voice be raised against the official good, whoever hears that voice must report it to his superior.” How wise that rule is! How truly wise! Everyone is obliged to report to the ruler or to his officials any wrongdoing or even the hint or suggestion that wrong might be done. The result? Perfect happiness! Because the western barbarians have eliminated all disorder and disharmony. Everyone serves a state which is based upon ... what was that marvelous phrase, Cyrus Spitama? Oh, yes! The principle of agreement with the superior.”

Huan bowed to me as if I were the imaginary Persian monarch who had invented this unholy system of government. A few years later I learned that Huan’s dinner party had proved to be historic. For more than a generation there had been much argument amongst the Ch’inese nobles on how the state should be governed. Huan believed that the only way to govern Ch’in was to enslave the people to a degree never before attempted in Cathay or anywhere else, including Sparta. Everyone was encouraged to spy on everyone else. Families were broken up so that able-bodied men could be moved from army to agriculture to road-making or whatever. Since merchants and artisans tend to come and go as they please, Huan proposed that these activities be outlawed. Finally, in order to. establish the state’s absolute primacy, he worked, secretly, to destroy his own class, the aristocracy.

Needless to say, Huan’s fellow nobles were not altogether happy with his theories—not to mention practices. There was a good deal of polite dissent at the dinner party. Some years later the dissent grew less polite and Huan was murdered by a rival faction. But he had done his work well. Although merchants and artisans continue to prosper and the aristocracy has kept its power, ordinary men and women are obliged to live in barracks, their lives entirely ordered by the state. Should anyone object to Huan’s rule of heaven, he is hacked in two and his re-mains are displayed on either side of the city gate.

As we ate baked suckling pig, the old man addressed Huan through me. “In the time of our ancestors, each man lived according to the dictates of his inner nature and there was much kindness in the world and little struggle. Surely your Persian king would like his subjects to live as their ancestors did, in harmony with heaven and themselves.”

Huan clapped his hands gleefully. “But when I asked this wise barbarian the very same question, he said, and I hope I quote you exactly ...”