Creation (60 page)

“Oh, you will! You will, Lord Huan!” I sounded like one of those Indian birds that have been taught to speak.

“You told me that men were good to one another in early times because people were few and things were many. Now people are many, and things few. Even in the far-off time of the Emperor Yu, life was so hard that Yu himself worked in the fields until he wore all the hair off his shins. But now there are ten thousand times as many people as there were in the age of Yu. So, for the common good, we must control them in order that they not hamper one another. How can this be done? I confess that I myself was not clever enough to think of a solution. But your wise Persian king provided me with an answer.” Huan bowed in my direction, obliging me to bow so low that my stomach gurgled. The Cathayans take very seriously the stomach’s noises. I prayed that the sounds from my stuffed belly were in no way seditious.

“ ‘Utilize human nature,’ said the Persian king. ‘Since men have their likes and dislikes, you can control them by rewards and punishments, which are the handles by which the ruler maintains his supremacy.’ ”

“But should these ... handles fail the ruler, what then would this wise Persian prescribe?” The old man looked at me; the eyes were bloodshot; the veins at his temples throbbed. He hated Huan. There was no doubt of that.

“The word that the wise Persian used was ‘force.’ ” Huan was benign.

“ ‘Force,’ he said, ‘is the stuff that keeps the masses in subjection.’ ”

Despite the marvelous food, I cannot recall a more alarming dinner party. Through me, Huan was challenging his fellow nobles. Luckily for the Ch’inese, the nobles did not embrace all of Huan’s harsh precepts, and he himself never ceased to be more than what he had been for so many years, first amongst equals. But through his efforts, the lives of the common people have been so changed that nothing short of a collapse of the state can ever save them from that slavery he had consigned them to. At least the Spartans are trained to love their state, and take for granted their brutish lives. The people of Ch’in do not love their masters, to say the least.

The dinner party ended when everyone invoked heaven to grant the duke a long life. I was somewhat startled by the vehemence with which the dinner guests addressed heaven. After all, the duke was powerless; yet the nobles wept real tears at the thought that he might die. I attributed their emotion to millet wine. But three months later, when Duke P’ing did indeed die, I realized that those tears had been genuine.

On that fateful day, I was awakened at dawn by a clanging of bells. This was followed by an irregular beating of drums. From one end of the city to the other, there was a sound of wailing.

I dressed quickly and hurried into the courtyard just as Huan climbed into his chariot. He was dressed in old clothes and looked like a beggar. With a cry the charioteer lashed at the four horses, and they were gone.

According to one of the stewards of the household, “the duke died just before the sun rose. They say that when he had taken too much wine, he called for the eunuch to help him vomit, which he did. But instead of vomiting wine, he vomited blood. Oh, this is a terrible day for Ch’in! A black day, truly, truly!”

“Was he so loved?”

“By heaven, yes. Otherwise he would not have been the one who looks south, would he? Now he is gone.” The steward burst into tears. It seemed that everyone in Ch’in was weeping. I was mystified. I knew that Duke P’ing had not been popular. More to the point, he had existed only as a ceremonial puppet, manipulated by the six families. What, then, was the reason for so much grief?

I found out during the funeral ceremonies. I stood with Huan’s household in the square at whose center is the ducal residence. Except for a row of flagpoles just opposite the entrance, the building is inferior to the prime minister’s palace. The display of banners signifies that the one who lives within possesses heaven’s mandate. On this day the banners were black and red, and highly ominous. Since no breeze stirred the thick cloth, they drooped in the hot sun. The day seemed to be without air. Although I yawned constantly behind my sleeve, I could never get quite enough breath. I put this down not only to the heat but to the heavy breathing of the ten thousand solemn men and women who stood in perfect silence, staring at the palace gate. Although the people of Ch’in must be the quietest and most obedient on earth, I used to find their stillness somewhat alarming—like a presage to earthquake.

The doors to the palace opened. Huan and the council of state appeared, followed by a highly lacquered palanquin resting on the shoulders of a dozen soldiers. Atop the palanquin lay the duke. The corpse was dressed in scarlet silk and a thousand jewels. On its breast lay a splendid disk of dark-green jade, the symbol of heaven’s favor.

A long procession of slaves emerged from the palace carrying chests of silk, golden tripods, leather drums, ivory statues, gilded weapons, featherwork screens, a silver bed. All these rich objects were to furnish the ducal tomb at a breath-taking cost. I know. Huan asked me to make a complete accounting of what had gone into the tomb so that the sum might be allowed for in the budget that was to be presented at the council of state when it waited upon the new duke.

At the far end of the square, Huan and his fellow ministers took their places at the head of what proved to be a mile-long funeral cortege. Just behind the chariots of the nobles was a wagon drawn by eight white horses. The body of Duke P’ing was so strapped to a board that he seemed to be driving the wagon’s horses. The effect was distinctly unpleasant. The objects for the tomb were placed in other wagons, along with several hundred ladies of the harem. Behind their veils, they wept and moaned.

It took more than an hour for the chariots and wagons to cross the city to the south gate. Here Huan made a sacrifice to some local devil. Then he led the cortege along a winding road to the valley where the kings are interred beneath artificial mounds not unlike the ones at Sardis.

Quite unexpectedly, I was given a ride in a red-lacquered wagon by a tall, lean man who said, “I have a passion for white people. I used to own three. But two are dead and the third is sickly. You may kiss my hand. I am the duke of Sheh, a cousin of the late duke of Ch’in as well as of the dukes of Lu and Wei. But then, we dukes are all related to one another through our common ancestor the Emperor Wen. Where do you come from?”

I did my best to tell him. Although the duke knew nothing of Persia, he had traveled more in the west than any of the Ch’inese that I had met. “I spent a year at Champa,” he said. “I can’t say I liked it. The weather was either too hot or too rainy. And the people are much too dark for my taste. I’d hoped that they would be white like you. But I was told that if I wanted to find white people, I’d have to keep on traveling for at least half a year and I couldn’t bear the thought of being so long out of the world.” He pinched my cheek; stared intently at the fold of flesh between his fingers. “You turn red!” He was delighted. “Just the way my other slaves did. I never tire of watching the red come and go. You don’t think Huan would sell you to me?”

“I’m not at all certain,” I spoke most carefully, “that I am a slave.”

“Oh, I’m sure you are. You’re a barbarian, even though you don’t fold your robe to the left. You really ought to, you know. It’s more amusing for us. And your hair should be loose. You mustn’t try to look too civilized or you will lack novelty. Anyway, you are definitely a slave. You live in the minister’s house. And you do what he tells you. I should say that you are very much a slave. I can’t imagine why Huan hasn’t told you. Very wicked of him, really. But he is so timid. He probably thinks it bad manners to tell you outright that you’re a slave.”

“Prisoner of war, I would have said.”

“War? What war?” The duke of Sheh stood up in the wagon and looked about him. “I see no armies,” he said.

The gray-green countryside was certainly peaceful as the funeral cortege twisted like a silent, interminable snake between those jagged limestone hills that mark the ducal burial grounds.

“I came as an ambassador from the Great King.”

The duke was moderately interested in my story. Although Persia meant nothing to him, he was very much aware of Magadha. When I told him that I was married to a daughter of Ajatashatru, he was most impressed. “I’ve met several members of that family, including Ajatashatru’s uncle who was viceroy when I was at Champa.” The duke became very animated, even gleeful. “I’m sure whoever owns you will be able to get a splendid ransom from the king, which is why I must get you away from Huan. Then I’ll sell you to your father-in-law. You see, I’m always short of money.”

“But I would have thought that the ruler of Sheh would be supported most richly by ... by heaven!” I was slowly learning the elaborate style of the Cathayans. Nothing spoken ever quite means what it appears to mean, while the arm, hand and body gestures are intricate beyond belief. I never began to master them.

“The Sheh of which I am duke is no longer the Sheh that it was, so I’ve never set foot there. I prefer to travel with my court and visit my numerous cousins and collect dragon’s bone. You have probably heard that I have the largest collection of dragon’s bone in the world. Well, what you have heard is true. I have. But since the bones always travel with me, I need to maintain ten thousand wagons, and that is very expensive. But if I can sell you to the king of Magadha, I shall be rich indeed.”

The duke of Sheh was a fantastic figure who greatly amused the Cathayans. He was born Sheh Chu-liang, the illegitimate son of a duke of Lu. Not content with this ambivalent status, he styled himself -duke of Sheh. But Sheh is not a country. The word means holy ground—the earth mound that stands at the edge of every Cathayan state. The duke liked to pretend that once upon a time there had been, somewhere, a state called Sheh whose hereditary duke he was. Absorbed by predatory neighbors, Sheh had ceased to exist and all that was left of this lost world was its vagabond duke. Whether or not he was truly ducal—through Lu—is a fine point that Cathayan nobles delight in discussing. On the other hand, since his descent from the Emperor Wen was a fact, all of Cathay’s sovereigns were obliged to receive their honored cousin. As the duke was constantly on the move from court to court, he was able to keep his living expenses to a minimum. He maintained a score of elderly retainers, fourteen equally aged horses, six wagons—ten thousand is a form of Cathayan hyperbole which means countless—and one chariot with a broken axle.

There were those who thought the duke enormously rich but very mean. Others thought that he was a poor man who lived on trafficking in dragon’s bone. He used to collect these huge rocklike fragments in the west country where they are fairly common; then he would sell them to physicians in the east, where dragons are scarce. I had the good fortune never to see one of these alarming creatures, but I was told that the duke had slain more than thirty. “In my youth, of course. I am not what I was, I fear.” He constantly painted likenesses of these beasts, which he sold whenever he could.

As the funeral cortege approached the high mound that marked the resting place of what the Ch’inese claim is the Emperor Wu, the duke suggested that we find some way to get me away from Huan. “You must have some influence with him. I mean, if you didn’t, he’d have killed you by now. He’s easily bored, like so many timid men.”

“I don’t think that I have the slightest influence on the minister. He uses me in small ways. At the moment, I keep his accounts.”

“Are you a skilled mathematician?” The duke turned and squinted at me. The falling sun was now on a level with our eyes; it seemed to have burned away the air. Never before or since have I had such difficulty breathing as I did in the hot season of Ch’in.

“Yes, Lord Duke.” I was so eager for him to buy me that I was ready to tell any lie. “My people built the pyramids as an exercise in celestial mathematics,”

“I’ve heard about them.” The duke was impressed. “Well, I shall think of something. You think, too. It’s a pity you’re not a criminal because there’s always an amnesty for criminals when a new duke takes the throne. Even so, we might be able to persuade the new duke to free you if Huan will let him, which I doubt. On the other hand, if you’re free, how can he sell you? That’s a bit of a riddle, isn’t it?”

I agreed. But then, I agreed with everything that this delightful madman had to say. He was my only hope of leaving Ch’in, a place that I was eager to escape from—an eagerness that was increased, if such was possible, by the funeral ceremonies that took place at the mound of the Emperor Wu.

The carriage and wagons formed a semicircle in front of the conical hill which contained if not the legendary Wu, then at the very least a monarch of demonstrable antiquity, since the mound was covered with that symbol of majesty the dwarf pine, which takes a thousand years to mature into those graceful hieratic shapes that Cathayans admire.

Since the wagons and chariots were arranged according to rank, the duke of Sheh and I were quite close to the prime minister, and so we had an excellent view of the proceedings. Behind us, in quiet ranks, several thousand of the common people fanned out over the low silver-gray hills.

I don’t know what sort of ceremony I expected to see. I assumed that there would be sacrifices, and there were. Fires were lit southwest of the mound, and a great number of horses, sheep, swine and doves were butchered.

In the division of the sacrifice, as in everything else, the government is ingenious. Each person is given a tally stick, which entitles him to so much and no more of the cooked meat of the sacrificed beasts and fowl. As a result, not only is there always enough for everyone but there are no unseemly riots of the sort that mar Babylonian and even Persian ceremonies. I am told that Huan was responsible for this innovation, which was eventually adopted by all the Cathayan states. When I tried to introduce the principle of the tally stick to the Magians, they rejected it. They prefer the unseemly chaos that attends all their haoma-drenched rites.