The Real Story of Ah-Q (52 page)
Read The Real Story of Ah-Q Online
Authors: Lu Xun
Tags: #Lu; Xun, #Short Stories (Single Author), #Fiction, #General, #China, #Classics, #Short Stories, #China - Social life and customs
‘Our great king!’ the queen, concubines, ministers, eunuchs, and so on, wailed. Soon, however, the sobbing died away, when another guard fished out a second, identical skull.
Eyes blurry with tears, they watched as the guards continued fishing, their faces running with sweat. They went on to produce a tangled mass of white and black hair, together with another few ladlefuls of much shorter bristles – of black and white beard hairs, it would seem. Followed by a third skull. Then three hairpins.
When only a clear broth was left in the cauldron, they set down their sieves and colanders, and the three categories of objects – skulls, hairs, hairpins – were sorted between three golden dishes.
‘Our great king only had one head. So which is his?’ the ninth concubine asked anxiously.
‘That would seem to be the difficulty…’the venerable ministers muttered, exchanging glances.
‘If only the skin and flesh hadn’t been boiled away,’ observed a dwarf, kneeling down, ‘we’d easily work out whose was whose.’
There was, it seemed, no alternative but to subject the skulls to careful examination. And yet they were all largely identical in colour and size – they couldn’t even differentiate the boy’s. The queen said that the king had had a scar on his right temple from a fall he had taken as a prince; perhaps it would have left a trace on his skull. Just as everyone was rejoicing after one of the dwarves had found such a mark on one of the skulls, another dwarf noted a similar one on a slightly more yellowed skull.
‘I know!’ said the third concubine triumphantly. ‘Our great king had a very high-bridged nose.’
The eunuchs immediately set to researching the respective height of the noses before them; though one of them did indeed seem rather high, the difference with the other two was far from significant. And sadly, there was no mark to the right temple.
‘Besides,’ the aged ministers said to the eunuchs, ‘was the back of our great king’s head so pointed?’
‘We were too humble ever to take a proper look.’
The queen and the concubines now set to remembering; but while some said it had been steeply domed, others claimed the opposite. The king’s hairdressing eunuch would not commit himself.
A great council of princes and ministers was gathered that very night, in an effort to decide which was the king’s head, but the outcome remained as indeterminate as ever. Even the hair posed problems of identification. The white hair, of course, belonged to the king; but as his hair had been only greying, it was very hard to attribute the black. After discussions that went deep into the night, the elimination of even a few strands of red beard was vehemently resisted by the ninth concubine. She swore she had seen the occasional brown hair in the king’s beard – so how could it be proven there was no red, either? The red was reunited with the other colours, and the case reopened.
As the night edged towards dawn, there was still an absence of agreement. The debates were now interspersed by yawns, and when the second cockcrow was heard, the most discreet and appropriate course of action was finally decided upon: to bury the three heads together with the king’s body in a single golden coffin.
By the day of the funeral, seven days later, the entire city was alive with anticipation. The subjects of the realm rushed from near and far to witness the king’s grand exit. From first light, every street was packed with men, with women, with tables of offerings squeezed in between them. Later on that morning, cavalry trotted slowly through to clear the way, followed, after another while, by the royal insignia (banners, truncheons, spears, bows, halberds, and so on), then by four carriages of drums and wind instruments. Behind, the king’s yellow-canopied carriage bumped along, the golden coffin – containing its three heads and one body – mounted on top.
The tables of offerings now emerged from among the kneeling ranks of the crowds. A few of the empire’s more zealously loyal subjects wept with rage that the souls of two regicides would enjoy the same memorial sacrifices as their king; but it was not to be helped.
Then came the carriages of the queen and the host of concubines, weeping as they gazed at the assembled crowds, and the assembled crowds gazed back at them. After them came the ministers, eunuchs, dwarfs, and so on, their faces draped with expressions of woe, as they jostled their way chaotically forward, ignored by their audience.
October 1926
Laozi
1
sat, still as a block of wood.
‘It’s Confucius again, master!’ his student Gengsang Chu whispered, bursting impatiently into the room.
‘Ask him in.’
‘Do I find you well, master?’ Confucius said, saluting him reverently.
‘Same as ever,’ Laozi replied. ‘And you? Read all the books in our little collection yet?’
‘Yes. But…’ Confucius’s face soured with an unusual irritation. ‘It’s taken time, but I’ve mastered all six of the classics – The Books of Poetry, History, Rites, Music and Changes, and the Annals of Spring and Autumn. I’ve visited seventy-two princes – but not one would take my advice. To be understood is hard indeed. Or is it the Way that is hard to explain?’
‘You were lucky,’ Laozi replied, ‘not to encounter a ruler of real talent. The six classics are the remains of the former kings. What use are they for the future? Your words are like a path; and a path is tramped out by sandals – but are they the same thing?’ He paused. ‘White herons conceive through eye contact; insects conceive through their calls; hermaphrodites conceive spontaneously, both sexes contained within one body. Nature is unchangeable; fate is unalterable; time is unstoppable; the Way is unblockable. Once the Way is within your grasp, all will go your way. Without it, you are lost.’
As if dazed by a direct blow to the head, Confucius sat down, dejectedly inert – like a block of wood.
After perhaps eight minutes, he heaved a long sigh, then got up to say goodbye, politely thanking Laozi – as always – for his instruction.
Making no effort to keep him, Laozi rose to his feet and, leaning on his stick, escorted him out to the library’s main gate.
‘Leaving so soon?’ he muttered mechanically, waiting until Confucius was about to get back into his carriage. ‘Won’t you stay for tea…?’
Mumbling a refusal, Confucius got into his carriage and cupped his hands deferentially in farewell, leaning against the horizontal bar across the vehicle. With a flick of the whip and a cry of ‘gee-up’ from his disciple Ran You, the carriage rumbled into motion. When it was some dozen paces from the main gate, Laozi went back inside.
‘You seem in good spirits today, master.’ Gengsang Chu returned to stand by Laozi’s side again, his hands hanging respectfully at his sides, once he had seen his teacher sit down. ‘Unusually talkative.’
Laozi sighed. ‘You are right,’ he replied mournfully. ‘I did indeed say too much.’ He suddenly seemed to remember something. ‘Confucius brought a gift of a wild goose, did he not? Was it dried and cured? Steam it for yourself. I don’t have the teeth for it.’
After Gengsang Chu left him, Laozi peacefully closed his eyes. Quiet reigned in the library, disturbed only by the clatter of bamboo poles against the eaves of the house – Gengsang Chu taking the goose down.
Three months passed. Laozi went on sitting, still as a block of wood.
‘It’s Confucius, master!’ his student Gengsang Chu entered and informed him in a surprised whisper. ‘We’ve not seen him for a while, have we? I wonder what he’s come about.’
‘Ask him in.’ The same sparing reply as always from Laozi.
‘Do I find you well, master?’ Confucius said, saluting him reverently.
‘As ever,’ Laozi answered. ‘It’s been a while. You have been burying yourself in books, no doubt?’
‘Dabbling, merely dabbling,’ Confucius said modestly. ‘But I have stayed at home, thinking. And I seem to have clarified one point: crows and magpies touch beaks; fish exchange saliva; the sphex metamorphoses; an older child will cry when his mother is pregnant again. If I do not embrace change myself, how will I succeed in changing others?’
‘Exactly so!’ Laozi said. ‘You are enlightened.’
Both fell silent as two blocks of wood.
After perhaps eight minutes, Confucius heaved a long sigh, then got up to say goodbye, politely thanking Laozi – as always – for his instruction.
Making no effort to keep him, Laozi rose to his feet and, leaning on his stick, escorted him out to the library’s main gate.
‘Leaving so soon?’ he muttered mechanically, waiting until Confucius was about to get back into his carriage. ‘Won’t you stay for tea…?’
Mumbling a refusal, Confucius got into his carriage and cupped his hands deferentially in farewell, leaning against the horizontal bar across the vehicle. With a flick of the whip and a cry of ‘gee-up’ from his disciple Ran You, the carriage rumbled into motion. When it was some dozen paces from the main gate, Laozi went back inside.
‘You seem in low spirits today, master.’ Gengsang Chu returned to stand by Laozi’s side, his hands hanging respectfully by his sides, once he had seen his teacher sit down. ‘Unusually withdrawn.’
Laozi sighed. ‘You are right,’ he replied mournfully. ‘You don’t understand: I must leave this place.’
‘Whatever for?’ Gengsang Chu sounded astonished.
‘Confucius understands me. And as he knows that only I can see through him, he will never relax. If I don’t go first, there will be trouble.’
‘But do you not share the same Way? Why should you go?’
‘No,’ Laozi waved his hands in disagreement. ‘We are different. Imagine we have the same pair of shoes: I walk mine into the desert of the north-west; he wears his to court.’
‘But you are his teacher!’
‘What touching naivety,’ Laozi smiled, ‘after all these years with me. Nature is unchangeable; fate is unalterable. You and Confucius are very different: he will never come back and never call me teacher again. From now on, he will call me an old fool, and conspire against me.’
‘Really? But then you are never wrong about people, master.’
‘That is not true. I often used to misjudge them.’
‘Then,’ Gengsang Chu gave the matter more thought, ‘we’ll stand and fight.’
Laozi smiled again, revealing his gums. ‘Do I have any teeth left?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Do I still have a tongue?’
‘Yes.’
‘My point being?’
‘The hard falls away, while the soft survives, master?’
‘Well said. Tidy up here, then go home to your wife. But before you go, give my black ox a brush-down, and air the saddle and blanket. I leave at dawn tomorrow.’
Laozi avoided the main, direct road to the Hangu Pass – the gateway to the north-west. Instead, he turned his ox down a fork in the road, riding him slowly around the edge of the city. His plan was to scale the wall: it was not too high and he was sure he would manage to scramble over if he stood on the animal’s back. The only difficulty lay in getting the ox out also. A crane would have levered it out, but neither of the great engineers of ancient China, Lu Ban or Mozi, had yet been born; and such contraptions lay far beyond his own imaginative capabilities. His own philosophy, in sum, was unable to furnish him a solution.
Unbeknownst to him, as he had taken the fork he had been spotted by a scout, who immediately reported his presence to the warden in charge of the pass. Before he was twenty yards into his detour, a horse-mounted party galloped up from behind, led by the scout, with the warden, Xi, four policemen and two customs officers following.
‘Halt!’ came the cry.
Smartly reining in his black ox, Laozi held still as a block of wood.
‘Well, well!’ the warden exclaimed, galloping closer, then rolling off his horse to cup his hands in salutation. ‘If it isn’t Laozi, the librarian! This
is
a pleasant surprise.’
Laozi, too, scrambled off his ox. ‘I have the most terrible memory…’ he mumbled, squinting at his interlocutor.
‘Of course – of course you will have forgotten me, master. My name is Xi, I’m the warden of the pass. I came to see you once, when I visited the library to consult
The Quintessence of Taxation
.’
During this speech, the customs officials had turned over the ox’s saddle and blanket. One made a hole with a sharp stick, and wiggled an exploratory finger inside. He then walked off, scowling, without a word.
‘Are you taking a turn about the walls?’ Xi asked.
‘No. I was thinking of heading out, for a little fresh air.’
‘Excellent! Excellent! Healthy lifestyles are all the rage at the moment – nothing more important. But this is such a rare pleasure – you must rest at our lodge for a few days, and share with us a few pearls of your wisdom.’
Before Laozi was able to reply, the four policemen gathered round and lifted him back on to the ox. With a jab from the customs official’s stick, the ox flicked up its tail and galloped off towards the pass.
Once they had arrived, his hosts immediately opened the main hall to receive him – the central room in the gate-tower, overlooking loess plains that levelled infinitely off to the horizon, beneath a vast, blue sky; the air was indeed excellently clear and sharp. The huge fortress surmounted a steep slope; just beyond the gate, a cart track wound between the pass’s impregnable dirt precipices – so narrow it seemed a mere ball of mud would block it.
After hot water and cornbread had been passed around and Laozi left to rest a while, Xi proposed that his lecture begin. Aware from the outset that resistance would be futile, Laozi readily assented. After a certain amount of hustle and bustle, an audience slowly filled the room: the eight who had escorted him up to the lodge, plus four more policemen, two more customs officers, five more scouts, a secretary, an accountant and a cook. Some brought brushes, knives and wooden slips, ready to take notes.
In the middle of them all sat Laozi, still as a block of wood. After a long silence, he cleared his throat a few times, and the lips within his white beard began slowly moving. Everyone held their breath and leant in to listen.
‘The Way that can be spoken, is not the eternal Way; the name that can be named, is not the eternal name. Heaven and earth began from namelessness; that which is named is the mother of all creatures…’
2
Everyone exchanged glances; no one wrote anything down.
‘Only he that has rid himself of desire will see the secret essences,’ Laozi went on, ‘while he that still has desire will see their results. Though both spring from the same mould, they take different names. This sameness of mould is the Mystery; or – the Darker than Mystery. It is the gateway to the secret essences…’
Expressions of perplexed discontent rippled about the audience. A great yawn issued forth from the mouth of one of the customs officers, while the secretary surrendered to a nap, his knife, brush and wooden slips clattering out of his hands on to the mat.
Apparently unperturbed by his reception, or perhaps even encouraged by it, Laozi responded by going on in even greater detail. His lack of teeth, his poor enunciation, and his Shaanxi accent with its Hunan lilt – which mixed his l’s with his n’s, and prefaced everything with an ‘errr’ – ensured no one understood a thing he said. Time crept on, his audience suffering unusual torments all the while.
For the sake of appearances, his audience did not attempt to leave, but as the lecture dragged on, postures slumped, with each listener increasingly lost in his own thoughts. When Laozi finished with ‘The Way of the sage is to act without striving’, no one moved. After a pause, Laozi decided to add one more aperçu:
‘The end.’
At last, everyone awoke – as if from the longest dream of their lives. Even though, having lost all sensation in their legs after remaining seated for so long, they were powerless to move, they still felt a sense of joyful release.
Laozi was escorted to one of the side-rooms, and entreated to rest a while. There, he drank a few mouthfuls of hot water, then sat, still as a block of wood.
In the other rooms, animated conferences were ongoing. Soon enough, four representatives went in to see Laozi, to deliver the following message: because he had talked too fast, and his pronunciation was not what you might call received, no one had managed to take any notes. As a result, there was a lamentable lack of a written record of his talk – could he leave any lecture notes?
‘Arr coodn’t anderstind a worrrrd he soud,’ the accountant complained, in an accent that leaned now to the north, now to the south.
‘Whoo deen’t ya gust writt it orl eet yoorsel?’ tried the secretary, mangling his suggestion with thick south-eastern vowels and consonants. ‘Sar ya wamt huf woosted ya broth.’
Although Laozi struggled to make out what they were saying, from the fact that the other two were laying out a brush, knife and wooden slips before him, he supposed that they wanted him to write his lecture down. Aware, again, that resistance was futile, he readily agreed, but said he would not start until tomorrow – it being too late to begin today.
Well pleased with this outcome, the envoys retreated.
The next morning, the sky was overcast. Although uneasy at heart, Laozi set promptly about his task, because he was anxious to leave – and there would be no leaving until he had produced his transcript. The sight of the pile of wooden slips before him made him even more uneasy.
He sat stoically down and began writing. Remembering what he had said the day before, he gave it some further thought, then wrote a sentence down. Glasses were still some way off invention, and the labour cost his eyes – cloudy with old age – no little effort. Through a day and a half, he wrote, squinting fiercely all the way and breaking only to drink hot water and eat bread – at the end of which he had produced a text of no more than five thousand characters.