Creation (62 page)

“So they began to play. The music was strange and other worldly. Other-worldly but
not
heavenly. Out of the south, eight black birds appeared, and danced on the terrace of the palace. Then a huge wind swept through the city. The tiles flew off the palace roof. The ritual vessels were smashed. Duke P’ing fell ill, and for three years nothing grew in Ch’in, not even a blade of grass.”

Huan smiled at me. “The Lord Duke knows well this sad, this cautionary tale. I take it most seriously, you know. In fact, that’s why I always keep this screen near me so that I shall never be tempted to play the wrong music. We do not want, ever again, to see eight black birds swoop down upon us from the south.”

That very night, the duke’s steward bribed one of Huan’s servants to come to me at midnight in my cell. I was given a razor, face paint, women’s clothes. Quickly I transformed myself into an unusually tall Cathayan lady. I then followed the servant through the dimly lit palace, fearfully aware of the creaking of the floorboards as we crept past a pair of sleeping—that is, drugged—guards to a side door that opened into a walled garden. Here the steward of the duke of Sheh was waiting. Fortunately the night was moonless—starless, too, because of heavy clouds, full of rain.

Like spirits of the dead, we hurried through twisting, narrow streets; we hid in doorways whenever a contingent of the night guard approached, their bronze lanterns casting shafts of light before them like fiery lances. Since no citizen was allowed to leave his house from sundown to sunrise, Yang resembled a city of the dead. The steward had permission to be abroad, but I had none. I don’t know what excuse he had ready should we be stopped. Fortunately, with a sound like ten thousand drums, a storm broke over the city.

Through a flood of rain we made our way to the city gate where the wagons of the duke of Sheh were ready to depart. The steward lifted up the floorboards of one of the wagons and motioned me to hide in a space slightly smaller than I was. Once I was wedged into place, the boards were nailed down. Although the storm was so loud that I did not hear the order for the duke’s entourage to leave, I felt the wagon jolt beneath me as the driver started the mules and we rattled through the gate.

As I had expected, the Ch’inese police caught up with us two days later when we were in the Hanku Pass. The wagons were thoroughly searched, and my hiding place was discovered. But I was not in it. The duke had taken the precaution to station scouts along the road from the city. He knew that when I was found to be missing, Huan would suspect him of having engineered my escape. The scouts signaled one another by holding up highly polished bronze shields that reflected the sun’s light from station to station.

As soon as we knew that the police were almost at hand, I took refuge in a tree while the wagons continued past. When the police arrived, the duke was superb. He reminded them that he was a cousin to their new duke as well as a direct descendant of the Yellow Emperor, of the Emperor Wen, and of all the rest. Nevertheless, he would allow them to search the wagons; and he hoped that their sacrilegious behavior would not be unduly punished by his ancestors in heaven.

The police searched the wagons; scrutinized every single one of the duke’s attendants, male and female; were plainly astonished not to find me. In a totally regulated state like Ch’in, no one vanishes without official connivance. Finally they gave the convoy permission to continue on its way but, to my horror, the police accompanied the wagons for the next five days, and they did not leave the duke until the convoy had arrived at the stone monument that marks the border between Ch’in and Chou.

I was obliged to keep not only out of sight of the police but out of range of the wolf packs that stalked me curiously, eyes like green-yellow fires in the night. I slept in trees, always carried a heavy stick and cursed the fact that my woman’s costume included no weapons. I saw a black bear; I saw a brown bear. If either saw me, he showed no interest. Although brigands are supposed to live in that dim forest, I encountered no human being. Had I not been able, from time to time, to hear the sounds of the duke’s convoy, I would have been entirely out of the world of men.

Whenever I found a pond or stream, I drank water the way animals drink, on all fours. I ate strange berries, roots, fruits. I was often ill. Once I thought I saw a dragon, gleaming in the half-light of the forest. But the dragon proved to be an odd pinnacle of shining green and white jade, the most beautiful of all stones.

I stood in a copse of feathery trees at the juncture of the Wei and Tai rivers, and watched as the police saluted the duke of Sheh, and turned back into the forest. On the far side of the Tai River, I could see the cultivated fields of Chou. Going from Ch’in to Chou was like passing from night to day.

On the Chou side of the river the duke was received with deference by the frontier commander, who examined his passport perfunctorily and graciously waved him toward Loyang, the capital of the Middle Kingdom. My own entrance into Chou was less formal. I floated across the Tai River beneath a rude raft of willow branches.

The duke was astonished to see me. “What a joy!” He clapped his hands. “Now I shall get the ransom money from Magadha. Oh, I am delighted! Surprised, too. I was positive that if the wolves didn’t get you, the wolf-men would.” That was the first time—on Chou soil, needless to say—that I heard what the civilized Cathayans call the barbarous Ch’inese.

The duke gave me food from his own store of provisions, and presented me with one of his own wide-skirted gowns of loosely woven fine threads, as well as an almost new outer robe of black lambskin. Once all ducal emblems had been removed, I looked like a knight—no more, no less. Yet I felt most uncomfortable. For the first time since I was a boy, I did not have a beard. I looked exactly like a eunuch. Fortunately, many Cathay an men do not wear beards, so at least I was not conspicuous.

FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE I ARRIVED in Cathay, I began to enjoy myself. Although I was still a captive, if not a slave, the duke was a delightful companion, eager to show me the true Cathay. “You must not base your view of the Middle Kingdom on Ch’in, which is barely a part of the realm, despite the somewhat irregular descent of their dukes from the Emperor Wu. Even so, these crude provincials lust for the hegemony! But heaven is kind, and the mandate has not been bestowed on anyone. When it is granted, I am certain that it will be awarded to my beloved cousin the duke of Chou. You’ll find him inspiring. But flawed. He acts as if he were already the son of heaven, which is the height of presumption. Of course, all the dukes of Chou have suffered from the same delusion on the ground that heaven’s last decree was indeed bestowed upon their ancestor. But that was three hundred years ago, and the mandate was lost when an unholy league of barbarians and nobles killed him. The emperor’s son fled here to Chou and proclaimed himself emperor. But, of course, he lacked the hegemony. So he was really only duke of Chou, which is why, to this day, we have nothing more than a shadow son of heaven at Loyang, the shadow capital of a very real Middle Kingdom. The duke of Chou is
nearly
emperor. But that is not good enough, is it? Particularly when Chou is one of the weakest of the duchies and sooner or later some neighbor—probably the wolfmen—will take it over. Meanwhile, we all look to Loyang with tears in our eyes, hope in our stomachs.”

The duke then told me about his great-grandmother, who had also been the great-grandmother of the present duke of Chou. A woman of infinite pride, she always referred to herself as the little boy. One day the wing of the palace where she lived caught fire and all the ladies fled except the little boy, who remained seated in her receiving hall, serenely telling fortunes with yarrow sticks. When a maid servant begged the duchess to leave the burning palace, the old lady said, “The little boy cannot leave the palace unless escorted by the son of heaven or by a male relative whose rank is no lower than that of marquis and, of course, the little boy must never be seen outside the palace without a lady-in-waiting who is older than the little boy.” Then she went on with her fortune-telling, a popular Cathayan pastime.

The maid servant hurried off to find someone of sufficiently high rank to escort the duchess to safety. But there was no one at the palace higher in rank than earl; and there was no lady-in-waiting older than the duchess. So, faces shielded with damp cloths, the earl and the maid servant entered the blazing palace, where they found the old lady still seated on her silken mat, arranging yarrow sticks.

“Please, that person of the son of heaven,” said the earl, who was also her nephew, “come with me.”

The duchess was very angry. “This is unheard of. I may not leave my quarters unless chaperoned by an older woman and by a man of my family whose rank may not be lower than that of marquis. To do otherwise would be unseemly.” And so the duchess burned to death, in the name of seemliness, a quality that is all-important to the Cathayans.

This lady’s death was a source of endless discussion in Cathay. Some regard her as a figure to be admired and emulated. Others think her ridiculous. “After all,” said Fan Ch’ih, “she was neither a maiden nor a young married woman. She was a very old lady who need not have worried about who chaperoned her. She was not modest. In fact, she was vain like all the other members of the house of Chou. And vanity is never seemly in the eyes of heaven.”

As we approached the outskirts of Loyang, human traffic increased. All sorts of men and women were making their way to the capital. The rich rode in chariots or were borne in litters. Poor farmers carried their produce on their backs. Rich farmers and merchants presided over bullock-drawn wagons. The common people were well-dressed and smiling, unlike the dour Ch’inese, whose features, incidentally, are quite unlike those of the eastern Cathayans. The people of Ch’in tend to be bronze-colored with flat noses. The people of Chou and the inner states are paler in color than the Ch’inese and their features are more delicate. But all of the indigenous Cathayans are black-haired, black-eyed, round-headed, with almost hairless bodies. Curiously enough, like the Babylonians, they are known as the black-haired people to the Chou warrior class, which conquered the Middle Kingdom at about the same time that the Aryans came into Persia, India, Greece. Where were the Chous from? The Cathayans point to the north. It would be interesting if we shared a common ancestor.

We entered Loyang through a tall stone gate, set in a crude brick wall. I felt immediately at home. The crowds are like those one sees at Susa or Shravasti. The people laugh, shout, sing, hawk and spit; they buy, sell, gamble and eat at a variety of booths in every street.

Near the central market, the duke bought a boiled carp from a man at a stall. “The best carp in Cathay,” said the duke, tearing off a piece and giving it to me.

“I have never tasted a better fish,” I said with a fair degree of honesty.

The duke smiled at the fish seller. “I always come to you first when I’m in Loyang. Don’t I?” The duke was gracious despite a mouth full of fish.

The man bowed low, wished the duke long life; received a coin. Next the duke bought a large leaf which had been made into a funnel containing bees that had been fried in their own honey. He commended the dish highly, but I found it odd. Since my days in Lydia, I have never cared for honey.

The duke of Sheh always took rooms in a large building opposite the ducal palace. “This house belonged to a connection of my family,” he said, somewhat vaguely. After all, he was related to everyone. “But then it was sold to a merchant who rents out rooms at a very high rate, except to me. He makes me a special price because I’m a member of the imperial family.”

Although the duke did not treat me as a captive, I knew that that was exactly what I was. When we traveled he kept me either in his own room or in a room with his steward. I was never out of his sight or that of some member of his retinue.

After Ch’in, I found Loyang such a charming place that I did not realize for quite some time that both city and nation were close to economic collapse. Neighboring states had seized most of Chou. Only the ambiguously divine figure of the duke kept the rulers of Cheng or Wei from occupying Loyang itself. As it was, everyone more or less maintained the fiction that the duke was the son of heaven—all the while stealing his land and mocking, behind his back, his pretensions.

Loyang had the somewhat startled look of a great capital that has only recently lost the empire that sustained it. Babylon has the same slightly dilapidated and disappointed air. Yet Loyang was full of music, games, jugglers; and, of course, ceremony.

We attended the rites of the new year which are celebrated in the ancestral temple of the dukes of Chou. The building must have been unusually beautiful when it was first built shortly after the arrival of the last emperor’s son, three centuries earlier.

The temple has a high, steep roof whose tiles are beautifully glazed in a wavy pattern of alternating green and gold. The wooden columns are decorated with the intricate duck-weed pattern that only the son of heaven may use. The temple’s foundation is of stone, while the walls are made of dark wood and covered with weapons both ancient and modern. In theory, the entire armory of the nation is kept in the ancestral temple of the ruler. In practice, only token weapons are kept in these temples. When the ruler was simply a clan leader, he ensured his primacy by the direct ownership of all weapons. But that was long ago, when the community was nothing more than a family that obeyed its father, who was himself a son not only of his own chieftain-father but of heaven, too.

At one end of the vast interior is a most curious terracotta statue of a man, somewhat larger than life. He is dressed like a warrior of the dynasty before Chou; his mouth is covered with a triple seal. At the base of the statue is the inscription “Least said, soonest mended.” Why there should be a statue to caution in the ancestral hall of the Chous is totally obscure; unless, of course, the message is perfectly plain and means what it says.