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CHAPTER 1
Zhen Shi-yin makes the Stone’s
acquaintance in a dream
And Jia Yu-cun
finds that poverty is not incompatible
with romantic feeling
CHAPTER 1
Zhen Shi-yin makes the Stone’s
acquaintance in a dream
And Jia Yu-cun
finds that poverty is not incompatible
with romantic feeling
GENTLE READER,
What, you may ask, was the
origin of this book?
Though the answer to
this question may at first
seem to border on the absurd, reflection will show
that there is a good
deal more in it than meets the eye.
Long ago, when
the goddess Nǚ-wa
was repairing the sky, she melted down a great quantity of
rock and, on the
Incredible Crags of the Great Fable Mountains, moulded the
amalgam into
thirty-six thousand, five hundred and one large building blocks,
each
measuring seventy-two feet by a hundred and forty-four feet square. She
used thirty-six thousand five hundred of these blocks in the course of her
building operations, leaving a single odd block unused, which lay, all on its
own, at the foot of Greensickness Peak in the aforementioned
mountains.
Now this block of stone, having undergone the melting and
moulding of a goddess, possessed magic powers. It could move about at will and
could grow or shrink to any size it wanted Observing that all the other
blocks
had been used for celestial repairs and that it was the only one to
have been
rejected as unworthy, it became filled with shame and resentment
and passed its
days in sorrow and lamentation.
One day, in the midst of
its
lamentings, it saw a monk and a Taoist approaching from a great
distance, each
of them remarkable for certain eccentricities of manner and
appearance. When
they arrived at the foot of Greensickness Peak, they sat
down on the ground and
began to talk. The monk, catching sight of a
lustrous, translucent stone—it was
in fact the rejected building block
which had now shrunk itself to the size of a
fan-pendant and looked very
attractive in its new shape—took it up on the palm
of his hand and
addressed it with a smile:
‘Ha, I see you have magical
properties! But
nothing to recommend you. I shall have to cut a few words on you
so that
anyone seeing you will know at once that you are something special.
After
that I shall take you to a certain
brilliant
successful
poetical
cultivated
aristocratic
elegant
delectable
luxurious
opulent
locality on a little
trip.’
The stone was delighted.
‘What words will you cut? Where is this
place you will take me to? I beg to be enlightened.’
‘Do not ask,’
replied
the monk with a laugh. ‘You will know soon enough when the time
comes.’
And
with that he slipped the stone into his sleeve and set off
at a great pace with
the Taoist. But where they both went to I have no
idea.
*
Countless aeons went by and a certain
Taoist called Vanitas in quest of the
secret of immortality chanced to be
passing below that same Greensickness Peak
in the Incredible Crags of the
Great Fable Mountains when he caught sight of a
large stone standing there,
on which the characters of a long inscription were
clearly
discernible.
Vanitas read the inscription through from beginning to
end and learned that this was a once lifeless stone block which had been found
unworthy to repair the sky, but which had magically transformed its shape
and
been taken down by the Buddhist mahasattva Impervioso and the Taoist
illuminate
Mysterioso into the world of mortals, where it had lived out
the life of a
man before finally attaining nirvana and returning to the
other shore. The
inscription named the country where it had been born, and
went into considerable
detail about its domestic life, youthful amours, and
even the verses, mottoes
and riddles it had written. All it lacked was the
authentication of a dynasty
and date. On the back of the stone was
inscribed the following
quatrain:
Found unfit to repair the azure
sky
Long years a foolish mortal
man was I.
My life in both worlds on
this stone is writ:
Pray who will
copy out and publish
it?
From his reading of the inscription
Vanitas realized that this was a stone of
some consequence. Accordingly he
addressed himself to it in the following
manner:
‘Brother Stone,
according to what you yourself seem to imply in
these verses, this story of
yours contains matter of sufficient interest to
merit publication and has
been carved here with that end in view. But as far as
I can see (a) it has
no discoverable dynastic period, and (b) it contains no
examples of moral
grandeur among its characters—no statesmanship, no social
message of any
kind. All I can find in it, in fact, are a number of females,
conspicuous,
if at all, only for their passion or folly or for some trifling
talent or
insignificant virtue. Even if I were to copy all this out, I cannot
see
that it would make a very remarkable book.’
‘Come, your reverence,' said
the stone (for Vanitas had been correct in assuming
that it could speak)
‘must you be so obtuse? All the romances ever Written have
an artificial
period setting—Han or Tang for the most part. In refusing to make
use of
that stale old convention and telling my Story of the Stone exactly as it
occurred, it seems to me that, far from depriving it of anything, I have given
it a freshness these other books do not have.
‘Your so-called
“historical
romances”, consisting, as they do, of scandalous anecdotes
about statesmen and
emperors of bygone days and scabrous attacks on the
reputations of long-dead
gentlewomen, contain more wickedness and
immorality than I care to mention.
Still worse is the “erotic novel”, by
whose filthy obscenities our young folk
are all too easily corrupted. And
the “boudoir romances”, those dreary
stereotypes with their volume after
volume all pitched on the same note and
their different characters
undistinguishable except by name (all those ideally
beautiful young ladies
and ideally eligible young bachelors)— even they seem
unable to avoid
descending sooner or later into indecency.
“The trouble
with this last
kind of romance is that it only gets written in the first place
because the
author requires a framework in which to show off his love-poems. He
goes
about constructing this framework quite mechanically, beginning with the
names of his pair of young lovers and invariably adding a third character, a
servant or the like, to make mischief between them, like the chou in a
comedy.
‘Wat makes these romances even more detestable is the stilted,
bombastic language— inanities dressed in pompous rhetoric, remote alike from
nature and common sense and teeming with the grossest
absurdities.
‘Surely my "number of females", whom I spent half a
lifetime studying with
my own eyes and ears, are preferable to this kind of
stuff? I do not claim
that they are better people than the ones who appear in
books written
before my time; I am only saying that the contemplation of their
actions
and motives may prove a more effective antidote to boredom and
melancholy.
And even the inelegant verses with which my story is interlarded
could
serve to entertain and amuse on those convivial occasions when rhymes and
riddles are in demand.
‘All that my story narrates, the meetings and
partings, the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs of fortune, are recorded
exactly as they happened. I have not dared to add the tiniest bit of
touching-up, for fear of losing the true picture.
‘My only wish is that
men in the world below may sometimes pick up this tale when they are recovering
from sleep or drunkenness, or when they wish to escape from business
worries or
a fit of the dumps, and in doing so find not only mental
refreshment but even
perhaps, if they will heed its lesson and abandon
their vain and frivolous
pursuits, some small arrest in the deterioration
of their vital forces. What
does your reverence say to that?’
For a
long time Vanitas stood lost in
thought, pondering this speech. He then
subjected the Story of the stone to a
careful second reading. He could see
that its main theme was love; that it
consisted quite simply of a true
record of real events; and that it was entirely
free from any tendency to
deprave and corrupt. He therefore copied it all out
from beginning to end
and took it back with him to look for a
publisher.
As a consequence of
all this, Vanitas, starting off in the
Void (which is Truth) came to the
contemplation of Form (which is Illusion); and
from Form engendered
Passion; and by communicating Passion, entered again Into
Form; and from
Form awoke to the Void (which is Truth). He therefore changed his
name from
Vanitas to Brother Amor, or the Passionate Monk, (because he had
approached
Truth by way of Passion), and changed the title of the book from The
Story
of the S tone to The Tale of Brother Amor.
Old Kong Mei-xi from
the
homeland of Confucius called the book A Mirror for the Romantic. Wu Yu-feng
called it A Dream of Golden Days. Cao Xueqin in his Nostalgia Studio worked on
it for ten years, in the course of which he rewrote it no less than five
times,
dividing it into chapters, composing chapter headings, renaming it
The Twelve
Beauties of Jinling, and adding an introductory quatrain. Red
Inkstone restored
the original title when he recopied the book and added
his second set of
annotations to it.
This, then, is a true account of
how The Story of
the Stone carne to be written.
Pages full of idle
word
Penned with hot and bitter tears:
All men call the
author
fool;
None his secret message
hears.
*
The origin of The Story of the
Stone has now been made clear. The same
cannot, however, be said of the
characters and events which it recorded. Gentle
reader, have patience! This
is how the inscription began:
Long, long
ago the World was tilted
downwards towards the south-east; and in that
lower-lying south-easterly
part of the earth there is a city called Soochow; and
in Soochow the
district around the Chang-men Gate is reckoned one of the two or
three
wealthiest and most fashionable quarters in the world of men. Outside the
Chang-men Gate is a wide thorough-fare called Worldly Way; and somewhere off
Worldly Way is an area called Carnal Lane. There is an old temple in the
Carnal
Lane area which, because of the way it is bottled up inside a narrow
Cul-de-Sac,
is referred to locally as Bottle-gourd Temple Next door to
Bottle-gourd Temple
lived a gentleman of private means called Zhen Shi-yin
and his wife Feng-shi, a
kind, good woman with a profound sense of decency
and decorum. The household was
not a particularly wealthy one, but they
were nevertheless looked up to by all
and sundry as the leading family in
the neighbourhood.
Zhen Shi-yin
himself was by nature a quiet and
totality unambitious person. He devoted his
time to his garden and to the
pleasures of wine and poetry. Except for a single
flaw, his existence
could, indeed, have been described as an idyllic one. The
flaw was that,
although already past fifty, he had no son, only a little girl,
just two
years old, whose name was Ying-lian.
Once, during the tedium
of a
burning summer's day, Shi-yin was sitting idly in his study. The book had
slipped from his nerveless grasp and his head had nodded down Onto the desk in a
doze. While in this drowsy state he seemed to drift off to some place he
could
not identify, where he became aware of a monk and a Taoist walking
along and
talking as they went.
‘Where do you intend to take that thing
you are
carrying?’ the Taoist was asking.
‘Don't you worry about him!’
replied
the monk with a laugh. ‘There is a batch of lovesick souls awaiting
incarnation
in the world below whose fate is due to be decided this very
day. I intend to
take advantage of this opportunity to slip our little
friend in amongst them and
let him have a taste of human life along with
the rest.’
‘Well, well,
so another lot of these amorous wretches is
about to enter the vale of tears,’
said the Taoist.’ How did all this
begin? And where are the souls to be
reborn?’
‘You will laugh when I
tell you,’ said the monk. 'when this 8tone
was left unused by the goddess,
he found himself at a loose end and took to
wandering about all over the
place for want of better to do, until one day his
wanderings took him to
the place where the fairy Disenchantment
lives.
‘Now Disenchantment
could tell that there was something unusual
about this stone, so she kept
him there in her Sunset Glow Palace and gave him
the honorary title of
Divine Luminescent Stone-in-Waiting in the Court of Sunset
Glow.
‘But
most of his time he spent west of Sunset Glow exploring the
banks of the
Magic River. There, by the Rock of Rebirth, he found the beautiful
Crimson
Pearl Flower, for which he conceived such a fancy that he took to
watering
her every day with sweet dew, thereby conferring on her the gift of
life.
‘Crimson Pearl's substance was composed of the purest cosmic
essences, so she was already half-divine; and now, thanks to the vitalizing
effect of the sweet dew, she was able to shed her vegetable shape and assume the
form of a girl.
‘This fairy girl wandered about outside the Realm of
Separation, eating the Secret Passion Fruit when she was hungry and
drinking
from the Pool of Sadness when she was thirsty. The consciousness
that she owed
the stone something for his kindness in watering her began to
prey on her mind
and ended by becoming an obsession.
‘ “I have no sweet
dew here that I
can repay him with,” she would say to herself “The only way
in which I could
perhaps repay him would be with the tears shed during the
whole of a mortal
lifetime if he and I were ever to be reborn as humans in
the world
below.”
‘Because of this strange affair, Disenchantment has
got
together a group of amorous young souls, of which Crimson Pearl is one,
and
intends to send them down into the world to take part in the great
illusion of
human life. And as today happens to be the day on which this
stone is fated to
go into the world too, I am taking him with me to
Disenchantment's tribunal for
the purpose of getting him registered and
sent down to earth with the rest of
these romantic creatures.’
'How
very amusing 1' said the Taoist. 'I
have certainly never heard of a debt of
teats before. why shouldn't the two of
us take advantage of this
opportunity to go down into the world ourselves and
save a few souls? It
would be a work of merit.'
'That is exactly what I
was thinking,' said
the monk. 'Come with me to Disenchantment's palace to get
this absurd
creature cleared. Then, when this last batch of romantic idiots goes
down,
you and I can go down with them. At present about half have already been
born. They await this last batch to make up the number.'
'Very good, I
will go with you then,' said the Taoist Shi-yin heard all this conversation
quite clearly, and curiosity impelled him to go forward and greet the two
reverend gentle-men. They returned his greeting and asked him what he
wanted.
'It is not often that one has the opportunity of listening to a
discussion of the operations of karma such as the one I have just been
privileged to overhear,' said Shi-yin. 'Unfortunately I am a man of very limited
understanding and have not been able to derive the full benefit from your
conversation. If you would have the very great kindness to enlighten my
benighted understanding with a somewhat fuller account of what you were
discussing, I can promise you the most devout attention. I feel sure that
your
teaching would have a salutary effect on me and—who knows—might save
me from the
pains of hell.'
The reverend gentlemen laughed. 'These are
heavenly
mysteries and may not be divulged. But if you wish to escape from
the fiery pit,
you have only to remember us when the time comes) and all
will be
well.'
Shi-yin saw that it would be useless to press them.
'Heavenly
mysteries must not, of course, be revealed. But might one perhaps
inquire what
the "absurd creature" is that you were talking about? Is it
possible that I
might be allowed to see it?'
'Oh, as for that,' said
the monk: 'I think
it is on the cards for you to have a look at him,' and
he took the object from
his sleeve and handed it to Shi-yin.
Shi-yin
took the object from him
and saw that it was a clear, beautiful jade on one
side of which were carved the
words 'Magic Jade'. There were several
columns of smaller characters on the
back, which Shi-yin was lust going to
examine more closely when the monk, with a
cry of 'Here we are, at the
frontier of Illusion', snatched the stone from him
and disappeared, with
the Taoist, through a big stone archway above
which
THE LAND OF
ILLUSION
was written in large characters.
A couplet in smaller characters was
inscribed vertically on either side of
the arch:
Truth becomes fiction when the
fiction's true;
Real becomes not-teal
where the unreal's
real.
Shi-yin was on the point of
following them through the archway when
suddenly a great clap of thunder
seemed to shake the earth to its very
foundations, making him cry out in
alarm.
And there he was sitting in
his study, the contents of his dream
already half forgotten, with the sun still
blazing on the ever-rustling
plantains outside, and the wet-nurse at the door
with his little daughter
Ying-lian in her arms. Her delicate little
pink-and-white face seemed
dearer to him than ever at that moment, and he
stretched out his arms to
take her and hugged her to him.
After playing
with her for a while at
his desk, he carried her out to the front of the house
to watch the bustle
in the street. He was about to go in again when he saw a
monk and a Taoist
approaching, the monk scabby-headed and barefoot) the Taoist
tousle-haired
and limping. They were behaving like madmen, shouting with
laughter and
gesticulating wildly as they walked along.
When this
strange pair
reached Shi-yin's door and saw him standing there holding
Ying-lian, the
monk burst into loud sobs. 'Patron,' he said, addressing Shi-yin,
'what are
you doing, holding in your arms that ill-fated creature who is
destined to
involve both her parents in her own misfortune?'
Shi-yin realized that
he was listening to the words of a madman and took no
notice. But the monk
persisted;
'Give her to me! Give her to
me!'
Shi-yin was
beginning to lose patience and clasping his
little girl tightly to him,
turned an his heel and was about to re-enter the
house when tine monk
printed his finger at him roared with laughter and then
proceeded to intone
the following verse:
'Fond man, your
pampered child to cherish so--
That caltrop-glass which
shines on melting
snow!
Beware the high feast of the fifteenth day,
When
all in smoke
and fire shall pass away!"1
Shi-yin
heard all this quite plainly and was a little worried by
it. He was
thinking or asking the monk what lay behind these puzzling words when
he
heard the Taoist say, 'We don't need to stay tether. Why don’t we part
company here and each go about his own business? Three kalpas from now I shall
wait far you on Bei-mang Hill. Having joined forces again there. we can go
together to the Land of illusion to sign off.”
'Excellent!' said
the other. And the two if them went off and soon were both lost to
sight.
'There must have been something behind all this,' thought
Shi-yin to himself. '1 really ought to hive asked him what he meant, but now it
is too late.'
He was still standing outside his door brooding
when Jia Yu-cun, the poor student who lodged at the Bottle-gourd Temple
next door, came up to him. Yu-cun was a native of Hu-zhou and came from a family
of scholars and bureaucrats which had, however, fallen on bad times when
Yu-cun
was born. The family Fortunes on both his father’s and mother’s side
had all
been ten spent. and the members of the family bad themselves
gradually died off
until only Yu-cun was left There were no prospect for
him in his home town, so
he had set off for the capital, in search of fame
and fortune. Unfortunately he
had got no further than Soochow when his
funds ran out, and he had now been
living there in poverty for a year,
lodging in this temple and keeping himself
alive by working as a copyist.
For this reason Shi-yin saw a great deal of his
company.
As soon as he
caught sight of Shi-yin, Yu-cun clasped his
hands in greeting and smiled
ingratiatingly. 'I could see you standing there
gazing, sir. Has anything
been happening in the street?'
'No, no,' said
Shi-yin. 'It just
happened that my little girl was crying, so I brought her out
here to amuse
her. Your coming is most opportune, dear boy. I was beginning to
feel most
dreadfully bored. Won't you come into my little den, and we can help
each
other to while away this tedious hot day?'
So saying, he called
for a
servant to take the child indoors, while he himself took Yu-cun by the
hand
and led him into his study, where his boy served them both with tea. But
they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words before one of the servants rushed in
to say that 'Mr Yan had come to pay a call.' Shi-yin hurriedly rose up and
excused himself: 'I seem to have brought you here under false pretences. I
do
hope you will forgive me. If you don't mind sitting on your own here for
a
moment, I shall be with you directly.'
Yu-cun rose to his feet too.
'Please do not distress yourself on my account, sir. I am a regular visitor
here
and can easily wait a bit.' But by the time he had finished saying
this, Shi-yin
was already out of the study and on his way to the
guest-room.
Left to
himself, Yu-cun was flicking through some of
Shi-yin's books of poetry in order
to pass the time, when he heard a
woman's cough outside the window. Immediately
he jumped up and peered out
to see who it was. The cough appeared to have come
from a maid who was
picking flowers in the garden. She was an unusually
good4ooking girl with a
rather refined face: not a great beauty, by any means,
but with something
striking about her. Yu-cun gazed at her
spellbound.
Having now finished
picking her flowers, this anonymous
member of the Zhen household was about
to go in again when, on some sudden
impulse, she raised her head and caught
sight of a man standing in the window.
His hat was frayed and his clothing
threadbare; yet, though obviously poor, he
had a fine, manly physique and
handsome, well-proportioned
features.
The maid hastened to remove
herself from this male presence;
but as she went she thought to herself,
'What a fine-looking man! But so shabby!
The family hasn't got any friends
or relations as poor as that. It must be that
Jia Yu-cun the master is
always on about. No wonder he says that he won't stay
poor long. I remember
hearing him say that he's often wanted to help him but
hasn't yet found an
opportunity.' And thinking these thoughts she could not
forbear to turn
back for another peep or two.
Yu-cun saw her turn back
and, at once
assuming that she had taken a fancy to him, was beside himself with
delight. What a perceptive young woman she must be, he thought, to have seen the
genius underneath the rags! A real friend in trouble!
After a while the
boy came in again and Yu-cun elicited from him that the visitor in the
front
room was now staying to dinner. It was obviously out of the question
to wait
much longer, so he slipped down the passage-way at the side of the
house and let
himself out by the back gate. Nor did Shi-yin invite him
round again when,
having at last seen off his visitor, he learned that
Yu-cun had already
left.
But then the Mid Autumn festival arrived and,
after the family
cdnvivialities were over, Shi-yin had a little dinner for
two laid out in his
study and went in person to invite Yu-cun, walking to
his temple lodgings in the
moonlight.
Ever since the day the Zhens'
maid had, by looking back
twice over her shoulder, convinced him that she
was a friend, Yu-cun had had the
girl very much on his mind, and now that
it was festival time, the full moon of
Mid Autumn lent an inspiration to
his romantic impulses which finally resulted
in the following
octet:
‘Ere on ambition's path my feet are
set,
Sorrow comes often this poor
heart to fret.
Yet, as my brow
contracted with new care,
Was there not
one who, parting, turned to
stare?
Dare I, that grasp at shadows in the
wind,
Hope, underneath
the moon, a friend to find?
Bright orb, if with my
plight you
sympathize,
Shine first upon the chamber where she
lies.'
Having delivered himself of this
masterpiece, Yu-cun's thoughts began to run
on his unrealized ambitions
and, after much head-scratching and many heavenward
glances accompanied by
heavy sighs, he produced the following couplet, reciting
it in a loud,
ringing voice which caught the ear of Shi-yin, who chanced at that
moment
to be arriving:
'The jewel in the
casket bides till one shall come to
buy.
The jade pin in the drawer
hides, waiting its time to
fly.'2
Shi-yin smiled. 'You are a man of no mean ambition,
Yu-cun.'
'Oh no!'
Yu-cun smiled back deprecatingly. 'You are too
flattering. I was merely
reciting at random from the lines of some old poet. But
what brings you
here, sir?'
'Tonight is Mid Autumn night,' said
Shi-yin. ‘People call
it the Festival of Reunion. It occurred to me that you
might be feeling
rather lonely here in your monkery, so I have arranged for the
two of us to
take a little wine together in my study. I hope you will not refuse
to join
me.'
Yu-cun made no polite pretence of declining. 'Your
kindness is
more than I deserve,' he said. 'I accept gratefully.' And he
accompanied
Shi-yin back to the study next door.
Soon they had
finished their
tea. Wine and various choice dishes were brought in and placed on
the
table, already laid out with cups, plates, and so forth, and the two men
took their places and began to drink. At first they were rather slow and
ceremonious; but gradually, as the conversation grew more animated, their
potations too became more reckless and uninhibited. The sounds of music and
singing which could now be heard from every house in the neighbourhood and the
full moon which shone with cold brilliance overhead seemed to increase
their
elation, so that the cups were emptied almost as soon as they touched
their
lips, and Yu-cun, who was already a sheet or so in the wind, was
seized with an
irrepressible excitement to which he presently gave
expression in the form of a
quatrain, ostensibly on the subject of the
moon) but really about the ambition
he had hitherto been at some pains to
conceal:
'In thrice five nights her
perfect O is made,
Whose cold light bathes
each marble balustrade.
As her bright wheel starts on its starry ways,
On earth ten
thousand heads look up and gaze.'
'Bravo!' said Shi-yin loudly. 'I have always insisted that you were a
young
fellow who would go up in the world, and now, in these verses you have
just
recited, I see an augury of your ascent. In no time at all we shall see you
up among the clouds! This calls for a drink!' And, saying this, he poured Yu-cun
a large cup of wine.
Yu-cun drained the cup, then, surprisingly,
sighed:
'Don't imagine the drink is making me boastful, but I really do
believe that if it were just a question of having the sort of qualifications now
in demand, I should stand as good a chance as any of getting myself on to
the
list of candidates. The trouble is that I simply have no means of
laying my
hands on the money that would be needed for lodgings and travel
expenses. The
journey to the capital is a long one, and the sort of money I
can earn from my
copying is not enough—'
'Why ever didn't you say this
before?' said
Shi-yin interrupting him. 'I have long wanted to do something
about this, but on
all the occasions I have met you previously, the
conversation has never got
round to this subject, and I haven't liked to
broach it for fear of offending
you. Well, now we know where we are. I am
not a very clever man, but at least I
know the right thing to do when I see
it. Luckily, the next Triennial is only a
few months ahead. You must go to
the capital without delay. A spring examination
triumph will make you feel
that all your studying has been worth while. I shall
take care of all your
expenses. It is the least return I can make for your
friendship.' And there
and then he instructed his boy to go with all speed and
make up a parcel of
fifty tales of the best refined silver and two suits of
winter clothes.
'The almanac gives the nineteenth as a good day for
travelling,' he went
on, addressing Yu-cun again. 'You can set about hiring a
boat for the
journey straight away. How delightful it will be to meet again next
winter
when you have distinguished yourself by soaring to the top over all the
other candidates!'
Yu-cun accepted the silver and the clothes with only
the most perfunctory word of thanks and without, apparently, giving them a
further moment's thought, for he continued to drink and laugh and talk as if
nothing had happened. It was well after midnight before they broke
up.
After seeing Yu-cun off, Shi-yin went to bed and slept without a break
until the sun was high in the sky next morning. When he awoke, his mind was
still running on the conversation of the previous night. He thought he
would
write a couple of introductory letters for Yu-cun to take with him to
the
capital, and arrange for him to call on the family of an official be
was
acquainted with who might be able to put him up; but when he sent a
servant to
invite him over, the servant brought back word from the temple
as
follows:
'The monk says that Mr Jia set out for the capital at five
o'clock
this morning, sir. He says he left a message to pass on to you. He
said to tell
you, "A scholar should not concern himself with almanacs, but
should act as the
situation demands," and he said there wasn't time to say
good-bye.'
So Shi-yin was obliged to let the matter
drop.
*
It is a true saying that 'time
in idleness is quickly spent'. In no time at
all it was Fifteenth Night,
and Shi-yin sent little Ying-lian out, in the charge
of one of the servants
called Calamity, to see the mummers and the coloured
lanterns. It was near
midnight when Calamity, feeling an urgent need to relieve
his bladder, put
Ying4ian down on someone's doorstep while he went about his
business, only
to find, on his return, that the child was nowhere to be seen.
Frantically
he searched for her throughout the rest of the night; but when day
dawned
and he had still not found her, he took to his heels3 not dating to face
his master and mistress, and made off for another part of the
country.
Shi-yin and his wife knew that something must be wrong when their
little girl failed to return home all night. Then a search was made; but
all
those sent out were obliged in the end to report that no trace of her
could be
found.
The shock of so sudden a loss to a middle-aged couple
who had only
ever had the one daughter can be imagined. In tears every day
and most of the
night, they almost lost the will to go on living, and after
about a month like
this first Shi-yin and then his wife fell ill, so that
doctors and diviners were
in daily attendance on them.
Then, on the
fifteenth of the third month,
while frying cakes for an offering, the monk
of Bottle-gourd Temple carelessly
allowed the oil to catch alight, which
set fire to the paper window. And, since
the houses in this area all had
wooden walls and bamboo fences—though also,
doubtless, because they were
doomed to destruction anyway-the fire leaped from
house to house until the
whole street was blazing away like a regular Fiery
Mountain; and though the
firemen came to put it out, by the time they arrived
the fire was well
under way and long past controlling, and roared away all night
long until
it had burnt itself Out, rendering heaven knows how many families
homeless
in the process.
Poor Zhens! Though they and their handful of
domestics
escaped unhurt, their house, which was only next door to the temple,
was
soon reduced to a heap of rubble, while Shi-yin stood by helpless, groaning
and stamping in despair.
After some discussion with his wife, Shi-yin
decided that they should move to their farm in the country; but a series of crop
failures due to flooding and drought had led to widespread brigandage in
those
parts, and government troops were out everywhere hunting down the
mutinous
peasants and making arrests. In such conditions it was impossible
to settle on
the farm, so Shi-yin sold the land and, taking only two of the
maids with them,
went with his wife to seek refuge with his father-in4aw,
Feng Su.
This
Feng Su was a Ru-zhou man who, though only a farmer by
calling, had a very
comfortable sufficiency. He was somewhat displeased to
see his son-in-law
arriving like a refugee on his doorstep; but fortunately
Shi- yin had on him the
money he had realized from the sale of the farm,
and this he now entrusted to
his father-in-law to buy for him, as and when
he could, a house and land on
which he could depend for his future
livelihood. Feng Su embezzled about half of
this sum and used the other
half to provide him with a ruinous cottage and some
fields of poor, thin
soil.
A scholar, with no experience of business or
agricultural
matters, Shi-yin now found himself poorer after a year or two of
struggle
than when he had started. Feng Su would treat him to a few pearls of
rustic
wisdom whenever they met, but behind his back would grumble to all and
sundry about 'incompetents' and 'people who liked their food but were too lazy
to work for it', which caused Shi-yin great bitterness when it came to his
ears.
The anxieties and injustices which now beset him, coming on top of
the shocks he
had suffered a year or two previously, left a man of his
years with little
resistance to the joint onslaught of poverty and
ill-health, and gradually he
began to betray the unmistakable symptoms of a
decline.
One day,
wishing to take his mind off his troubles for a
bit, he had dragged himself,
stick in hand, to the main road, when it
chanced that he suddenly caught sight
of a Taoist with a limp—a crazy,
erratic figure in hempen sandals and tattered
clothes, who chanted the
following words to himself as he advanced towards
him:
'Men all know that
salvation should
be won,
But with ambition won't have
done,
have done.
Where are the famous
ones of days gone by?
In grassy graves
they lie now, every one.
Men all know that salvation should
be
won,
But with their riches won't have
done, have
done.
Each day they grumble they've not made
enough.
When
they've enough, it's goodnight
everyone
Men all know that
salvation should be won,
But with their
loving wives they
won't have done.
The darlings every day protest
their love:
But once you're dead,
they're off with another one.
Men
all know that
salvation should be won,
But with their children
won't have done, have done.
Yet though of patents
fond there is no
lack,
Of grateful
children saw I ne'er a
one.'
Shi-yin approached the Taoist and
questioned him. 'what is a" this you are
saying? All I can make out is a
lot of "won" and "done
'If you can make out
"won" and "done",' replied
the Taoist with a smile, 'you may be said to have
understood; for in all
the affairs of this world what is won is done, and what
is done is won; for
whoever has not yet done has not yet won, and in order to
have won, one
must first have done. I shall call my song the "Won-Done
Song"'
Shi-yin had always been quick-witted, and on hearing these words a
flash of understanding had illuminated his mind. He therefore smiled back
at the
Taoist: 'Wait a minute! How would you like me to provide your
"Won-Done Song"
with a commentary?
'Please do!' said the Taoist; and
Shi-yin
proceeded as follows:
'Mean hovels and abandoned
halls
Where courtiers once paid daily calls:
Bleak
haunts where
weeds and willows scarcely thrive
Were once with
mirth and revelry
alive.
Whilst cobwebs shroud the mansion's
gilded beams,
The
cottage casement with choice muslin
gleams.
Would you of perfumed
elegance
recite?
Even as you speak, the raven locks turn
white.
Who yesterday her lord's bones laid in
clay,
On silken
bridal-bed shall lie
today.
Coffers with gold and silver filled:
Now,
in a trice, a tramp by all reviled.
One at some other's short
life gives a sigh,
Not knowing that he, too, goes home—to
die!
The sheltered and well-educated lad,
In spite
of all your
care, may turn out bad;
And the
delicate, fastidious maid
End in a foul
stews, plying a shameful
trade.
The judge whose hat is too small
for his head
Wears, in
the end, a convict's cangue
instead.
Who shivering once in rags
bemoaned his
fate,
Today finds fault with scarlet robes of
state.
In such commotion does the world's theatre
rage:
As each
one leaves, another takes the
stage.
In vain we roam:
Each in the
end must call
a strange land home.
Each of us with that poor girl may
compare
Who sews a wedding-gown for another bride to
wear.'
'A very accurate commentary!'
cried the mad, lame Taoist, clapping his
hands delightedly.
But
Shi-yin merely snatched the satchel that hung from
the other's shoulder and
slung it from his own, and with a shout of 'Let's go!'
and without even
waiting to call back home, he strode off into the wide world in
the company
of the madman.
This event made a great uproar in the little
town, and
news of it was relayed from gossip to gossip until it reached the ears
of
Mrs Zhen, who cried herself into fits when she heard it. After consulting her
father, she sent men out to inquire everywhere after her husband; but no
news of
him was to be
It was now imperative that she should move in
with her
parents and look to them for support. Fortunately she still had
the two maids
who had stayed on with her from the Soochow days, and by
sewing and embroidering
morning, noon and night, she and her women were
able to make some contribution
to her father's income. The latter still
found daily occasion to complain, but
there was very little he could do
about it.
One day the elder of the two
maids was purchasing some silks
at the door when she heard the criers clearing
the street and all the
people began to tell each other that the new mandarin had
arrived. She hid
in the doorway and watched the guards and runners marching past
two by two.
But when the mandarin in his black hat and scarlet robe of office
was borne
past in his great chair, she stared for some time as though puzzled.
'where
have I seen that mandarin before?' she wondered. 'His face looks
extraordinarily familiar.' But presently she went into the house again and gave
the matter no further thought.
That night, just as they were getting
ready
for bed, there was suddenly a great commotion at the door and a
confused hubbub
of voices shouting that someone was wanted at the yamen for
questioning, which
so terrified Feng Su that he was momentarily struck dumb
and could only
stare.
If you wish to know what further calamity this
portended,
you will have to read the following
chapter.
What, you may ask, was the
origin of this book?
Though the answer to
this question may at first
seem to border on the absurd, reflection will show
that there is a good
deal more in it than meets the eye.
Long ago, when
the goddess Nǚ-wa
was repairing the sky, she melted down a great quantity of
rock and, on the
Incredible Crags of the Great Fable Mountains, moulded the
amalgam into
thirty-six thousand, five hundred and one large building blocks,
each
measuring seventy-two feet by a hundred and forty-four feet square. She
used thirty-six thousand five hundred of these blocks in the course of her
building operations, leaving a single odd block unused, which lay, all on its
own, at the foot of Greensickness Peak in the aforementioned
mountains.
Now this block of stone, having undergone the melting and
moulding of a goddess, possessed magic powers. It could move about at will and
could grow or shrink to any size it wanted Observing that all the other
blocks
had been used for celestial repairs and that it was the only one to
have been
rejected as unworthy, it became filled with shame and resentment
and passed its
days in sorrow and lamentation.
One day, in the midst of
its
lamentings, it saw a monk and a Taoist approaching from a great
distance, each
of them remarkable for certain eccentricities of manner and
appearance. When
they arrived at the foot of Greensickness Peak, they sat
down on the ground and
began to talk. The monk, catching sight of a
lustrous, translucent stone—it was
in fact the rejected building block
which had now shrunk itself to the size of a
fan-pendant and looked very
attractive in its new shape—took it up on the palm
of his hand and
addressed it with a smile:
‘Ha, I see you have magical
properties! But
nothing to recommend you. I shall have to cut a few words on you
so that
anyone seeing you will know at once that you are something special.
After
that I shall take you to a certain
brilliant
successful
poetical
cultivated
aristocratic
elegant
delectable
luxurious
opulent
locality on a little
trip.’
The stone was delighted.
‘What words will you cut? Where is this
place you will take me to? I beg to be enlightened.’
‘Do not ask,’
replied
the monk with a laugh. ‘You will know soon enough when the time
comes.’
And
with that he slipped the stone into his sleeve and set off
at a great pace with
the Taoist. But where they both went to I have no
idea.
*
Countless aeons went by and a certain
Taoist called Vanitas in quest of the
secret of immortality chanced to be
passing below that same Greensickness Peak
in the Incredible Crags of the
Great Fable Mountains when he caught sight of a
large stone standing there,
on which the characters of a long inscription were
clearly
discernible.
Vanitas read the inscription through from beginning to
end and learned that this was a once lifeless stone block which had been found
unworthy to repair the sky, but which had magically transformed its shape
and
been taken down by the Buddhist mahasattva Impervioso and the Taoist
illuminate
Mysterioso into the world of mortals, where it had lived out
the life of a
man before finally attaining nirvana and returning to the
other shore. The
inscription named the country where it had been born, and
went into considerable
detail about its domestic life, youthful amours, and
even the verses, mottoes
and riddles it had written. All it lacked was the
authentication of a dynasty
and date. On the back of the stone was
inscribed the following
quatrain:
Found unfit to repair the azure
sky
Long years a foolish mortal
man was I.
My life in both worlds on
this stone is writ:
Pray who will
copy out and publish
it?
From his reading of the inscription
Vanitas realized that this was a stone of
some consequence. Accordingly he
addressed himself to it in the following
manner:
‘Brother Stone,
according to what you yourself seem to imply in
these verses, this story of
yours contains matter of sufficient interest to
merit publication and has
been carved here with that end in view. But as far as
I can see (a) it has
no discoverable dynastic period, and (b) it contains no
examples of moral
grandeur among its characters—no statesmanship, no social
message of any
kind. All I can find in it, in fact, are a number of females,
conspicuous,
if at all, only for their passion or folly or for some trifling
talent or
insignificant virtue. Even if I were to copy all this out, I cannot
see
that it would make a very remarkable book.’
‘Come, your reverence,' said
the stone (for Vanitas had been correct in assuming
that it could speak)
‘must you be so obtuse? All the romances ever Written have
an artificial
period setting—Han or Tang for the most part. In refusing to make
use of
that stale old convention and telling my Story of the Stone exactly as it
occurred, it seems to me that, far from depriving it of anything, I have given
it a freshness these other books do not have.
‘Your so-called
“historical
romances”, consisting, as they do, of scandalous anecdotes
about statesmen and
emperors of bygone days and scabrous attacks on the
reputations of long-dead
gentlewomen, contain more wickedness and
immorality than I care to mention.
Still worse is the “erotic novel”, by
whose filthy obscenities our young folk
are all too easily corrupted. And
the “boudoir romances”, those dreary
stereotypes with their volume after
volume all pitched on the same note and
their different characters
undistinguishable except by name (all those ideally
beautiful young ladies
and ideally eligible young bachelors)— even they seem
unable to avoid
descending sooner or later into indecency.
“The trouble
with this last
kind of romance is that it only gets written in the first place
because the
author requires a framework in which to show off his love-poems. He
goes
about constructing this framework quite mechanically, beginning with the
names of his pair of young lovers and invariably adding a third character, a
servant or the like, to make mischief between them, like the chou in a
comedy.
‘Wat makes these romances even more detestable is the stilted,
bombastic language— inanities dressed in pompous rhetoric, remote alike from
nature and common sense and teeming with the grossest
absurdities.
‘Surely my "number of females", whom I spent half a
lifetime studying with
my own eyes and ears, are preferable to this kind of
stuff? I do not claim
that they are better people than the ones who appear in
books written
before my time; I am only saying that the contemplation of their
actions
and motives may prove a more effective antidote to boredom and
melancholy.
And even the inelegant verses with which my story is interlarded
could
serve to entertain and amuse on those convivial occasions when rhymes and
riddles are in demand.
‘All that my story narrates, the meetings and
partings, the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs of fortune, are recorded
exactly as they happened. I have not dared to add the tiniest bit of
touching-up, for fear of losing the true picture.
‘My only wish is that
men in the world below may sometimes pick up this tale when they are recovering
from sleep or drunkenness, or when they wish to escape from business
worries or
a fit of the dumps, and in doing so find not only mental
refreshment but even
perhaps, if they will heed its lesson and abandon
their vain and frivolous
pursuits, some small arrest in the deterioration
of their vital forces. What
does your reverence say to that?’
For a
long time Vanitas stood lost in
thought, pondering this speech. He then
subjected the Story of the stone to a
careful second reading. He could see
that its main theme was love; that it
consisted quite simply of a true
record of real events; and that it was entirely
free from any tendency to
deprave and corrupt. He therefore copied it all out
from beginning to end
and took it back with him to look for a
publisher.
As a consequence of
all this, Vanitas, starting off in the
Void (which is Truth) came to the
contemplation of Form (which is Illusion); and
from Form engendered
Passion; and by communicating Passion, entered again Into
Form; and from
Form awoke to the Void (which is Truth). He therefore changed his
name from
Vanitas to Brother Amor, or the Passionate Monk, (because he had
approached
Truth by way of Passion), and changed the title of the book from The
Story
of the S tone to The Tale of Brother Amor.
Old Kong Mei-xi from
the
homeland of Confucius called the book A Mirror for the Romantic. Wu Yu-feng
called it A Dream of Golden Days. Cao Xueqin in his Nostalgia Studio worked on
it for ten years, in the course of which he rewrote it no less than five
times,
dividing it into chapters, composing chapter headings, renaming it
The Twelve
Beauties of Jinling, and adding an introductory quatrain. Red
Inkstone restored
the original title when he recopied the book and added
his second set of
annotations to it.
This, then, is a true account of
how The Story of
the Stone carne to be written.
Pages full of idle
word
Penned with hot and bitter tears:
All men call the
author
fool;
None his secret message
hears.
*
The origin of The Story of the
Stone has now been made clear. The same
cannot, however, be said of the
characters and events which it recorded. Gentle
reader, have patience! This
is how the inscription began:
Long, long
ago the World was tilted
downwards towards the south-east; and in that
lower-lying south-easterly
part of the earth there is a city called Soochow; and
in Soochow the
district around the Chang-men Gate is reckoned one of the two or
three
wealthiest and most fashionable quarters in the world of men. Outside the
Chang-men Gate is a wide thorough-fare called Worldly Way; and somewhere off
Worldly Way is an area called Carnal Lane. There is an old temple in the
Carnal
Lane area which, because of the way it is bottled up inside a narrow
Cul-de-Sac,
is referred to locally as Bottle-gourd Temple Next door to
Bottle-gourd Temple
lived a gentleman of private means called Zhen Shi-yin
and his wife Feng-shi, a
kind, good woman with a profound sense of decency
and decorum. The household was
not a particularly wealthy one, but they
were nevertheless looked up to by all
and sundry as the leading family in
the neighbourhood.
Zhen Shi-yin
himself was by nature a quiet and
totality unambitious person. He devoted his
time to his garden and to the
pleasures of wine and poetry. Except for a single
flaw, his existence
could, indeed, have been described as an idyllic one. The
flaw was that,
although already past fifty, he had no son, only a little girl,
just two
years old, whose name was Ying-lian.
Once, during the tedium
of a
burning summer's day, Shi-yin was sitting idly in his study. The book had
slipped from his nerveless grasp and his head had nodded down Onto the desk in a
doze. While in this drowsy state he seemed to drift off to some place he
could
not identify, where he became aware of a monk and a Taoist walking
along and
talking as they went.
‘Where do you intend to take that thing
you are
carrying?’ the Taoist was asking.
‘Don't you worry about him!’
replied
the monk with a laugh. ‘There is a batch of lovesick souls awaiting
incarnation
in the world below whose fate is due to be decided this very
day. I intend to
take advantage of this opportunity to slip our little
friend in amongst them and
let him have a taste of human life along with
the rest.’
‘Well, well,
so another lot of these amorous wretches is
about to enter the vale of tears,’
said the Taoist.’ How did all this
begin? And where are the souls to be
reborn?’
‘You will laugh when I
tell you,’ said the monk. 'when this 8tone
was left unused by the goddess,
he found himself at a loose end and took to
wandering about all over the
place for want of better to do, until one day his
wanderings took him to
the place where the fairy Disenchantment
lives.
‘Now Disenchantment
could tell that there was something unusual
about this stone, so she kept
him there in her Sunset Glow Palace and gave him
the honorary title of
Divine Luminescent Stone-in-Waiting in the Court of Sunset
Glow.
‘But
most of his time he spent west of Sunset Glow exploring the
banks of the
Magic River. There, by the Rock of Rebirth, he found the beautiful
Crimson
Pearl Flower, for which he conceived such a fancy that he took to
watering
her every day with sweet dew, thereby conferring on her the gift of
life.
‘Crimson Pearl's substance was composed of the purest cosmic
essences, so she was already half-divine; and now, thanks to the vitalizing
effect of the sweet dew, she was able to shed her vegetable shape and assume the
form of a girl.
‘This fairy girl wandered about outside the Realm of
Separation, eating the Secret Passion Fruit when she was hungry and
drinking
from the Pool of Sadness when she was thirsty. The consciousness
that she owed
the stone something for his kindness in watering her began to
prey on her mind
and ended by becoming an obsession.
‘ “I have no sweet
dew here that I
can repay him with,” she would say to herself “The only way
in which I could
perhaps repay him would be with the tears shed during the
whole of a mortal
lifetime if he and I were ever to be reborn as humans in
the world
below.”
‘Because of this strange affair, Disenchantment has
got
together a group of amorous young souls, of which Crimson Pearl is one,
and
intends to send them down into the world to take part in the great
illusion of
human life. And as today happens to be the day on which this
stone is fated to
go into the world too, I am taking him with me to
Disenchantment's tribunal for
the purpose of getting him registered and
sent down to earth with the rest of
these romantic creatures.’
'How
very amusing 1' said the Taoist. 'I
have certainly never heard of a debt of
teats before. why shouldn't the two of
us take advantage of this
opportunity to go down into the world ourselves and
save a few souls? It
would be a work of merit.'
'That is exactly what I
was thinking,' said
the monk. 'Come with me to Disenchantment's palace to get
this absurd
creature cleared. Then, when this last batch of romantic idiots goes
down,
you and I can go down with them. At present about half have already been
born. They await this last batch to make up the number.'
'Very good, I
will go with you then,' said the Taoist Shi-yin heard all this conversation
quite clearly, and curiosity impelled him to go forward and greet the two
reverend gentle-men. They returned his greeting and asked him what he
wanted.
'It is not often that one has the opportunity of listening to a
discussion of the operations of karma such as the one I have just been
privileged to overhear,' said Shi-yin. 'Unfortunately I am a man of very limited
understanding and have not been able to derive the full benefit from your
conversation. If you would have the very great kindness to enlighten my
benighted understanding with a somewhat fuller account of what you were
discussing, I can promise you the most devout attention. I feel sure that
your
teaching would have a salutary effect on me and—who knows—might save
me from the
pains of hell.'
The reverend gentlemen laughed. 'These are
heavenly
mysteries and may not be divulged. But if you wish to escape from
the fiery pit,
you have only to remember us when the time comes) and all
will be
well.'
Shi-yin saw that it would be useless to press them.
'Heavenly
mysteries must not, of course, be revealed. But might one perhaps
inquire what
the "absurd creature" is that you were talking about? Is it
possible that I
might be allowed to see it?'
'Oh, as for that,' said
the monk: 'I think
it is on the cards for you to have a look at him,' and
he took the object from
his sleeve and handed it to Shi-yin.
Shi-yin
took the object from him
and saw that it was a clear, beautiful jade on one
side of which were carved the
words 'Magic Jade'. There were several
columns of smaller characters on the
back, which Shi-yin was lust going to
examine more closely when the monk, with a
cry of 'Here we are, at the
frontier of Illusion', snatched the stone from him
and disappeared, with
the Taoist, through a big stone archway above
which
THE LAND OF
ILLUSION
was written in large characters.
A couplet in smaller characters was
inscribed vertically on either side of
the arch:
Truth becomes fiction when the
fiction's true;
Real becomes not-teal
where the unreal's
real.
Shi-yin was on the point of
following them through the archway when
suddenly a great clap of thunder
seemed to shake the earth to its very
foundations, making him cry out in
alarm.
And there he was sitting in
his study, the contents of his dream
already half forgotten, with the sun still
blazing on the ever-rustling
plantains outside, and the wet-nurse at the door
with his little daughter
Ying-lian in her arms. Her delicate little
pink-and-white face seemed
dearer to him than ever at that moment, and he
stretched out his arms to
take her and hugged her to him.
After playing
with her for a while at
his desk, he carried her out to the front of the house
to watch the bustle
in the street. He was about to go in again when he saw a
monk and a Taoist
approaching, the monk scabby-headed and barefoot) the Taoist
tousle-haired
and limping. They were behaving like madmen, shouting with
laughter and
gesticulating wildly as they walked along.
When this
strange pair
reached Shi-yin's door and saw him standing there holding
Ying-lian, the
monk burst into loud sobs. 'Patron,' he said, addressing Shi-yin,
'what are
you doing, holding in your arms that ill-fated creature who is
destined to
involve both her parents in her own misfortune?'
Shi-yin realized that
he was listening to the words of a madman and took no
notice. But the monk
persisted;
'Give her to me! Give her to
me!'
Shi-yin was
beginning to lose patience and clasping his
little girl tightly to him,
turned an his heel and was about to re-enter the
house when tine monk
printed his finger at him roared with laughter and then
proceeded to intone
the following verse:
'Fond man, your
pampered child to cherish so--
That caltrop-glass which
shines on melting
snow!
Beware the high feast of the fifteenth day,
When
all in smoke
and fire shall pass away!"1
Shi-yin
heard all this quite plainly and was a little worried by
it. He was
thinking or asking the monk what lay behind these puzzling words when
he
heard the Taoist say, 'We don't need to stay tether. Why don’t we part
company here and each go about his own business? Three kalpas from now I shall
wait far you on Bei-mang Hill. Having joined forces again there. we can go
together to the Land of illusion to sign off.”
'Excellent!' said
the other. And the two if them went off and soon were both lost to
sight.
'There must have been something behind all this,' thought
Shi-yin to himself. '1 really ought to hive asked him what he meant, but now it
is too late.'
He was still standing outside his door brooding
when Jia Yu-cun, the poor student who lodged at the Bottle-gourd Temple
next door, came up to him. Yu-cun was a native of Hu-zhou and came from a family
of scholars and bureaucrats which had, however, fallen on bad times when
Yu-cun
was born. The family Fortunes on both his father’s and mother’s side
had all
been ten spent. and the members of the family bad themselves
gradually died off
until only Yu-cun was left There were no prospect for
him in his home town, so
he had set off for the capital, in search of fame
and fortune. Unfortunately he
had got no further than Soochow when his
funds ran out, and he had now been
living there in poverty for a year,
lodging in this temple and keeping himself
alive by working as a copyist.
For this reason Shi-yin saw a great deal of his
company.
As soon as he
caught sight of Shi-yin, Yu-cun clasped his
hands in greeting and smiled
ingratiatingly. 'I could see you standing there
gazing, sir. Has anything
been happening in the street?'
'No, no,' said
Shi-yin. 'It just
happened that my little girl was crying, so I brought her out
here to amuse
her. Your coming is most opportune, dear boy. I was beginning to
feel most
dreadfully bored. Won't you come into my little den, and we can help
each
other to while away this tedious hot day?'
So saying, he called
for a
servant to take the child indoors, while he himself took Yu-cun by the
hand
and led him into his study, where his boy served them both with tea. But
they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words before one of the servants rushed in
to say that 'Mr Yan had come to pay a call.' Shi-yin hurriedly rose up and
excused himself: 'I seem to have brought you here under false pretences. I
do
hope you will forgive me. If you don't mind sitting on your own here for
a
moment, I shall be with you directly.'
Yu-cun rose to his feet too.
'Please do not distress yourself on my account, sir. I am a regular visitor
here
and can easily wait a bit.' But by the time he had finished saying
this, Shi-yin
was already out of the study and on his way to the
guest-room.
Left to
himself, Yu-cun was flicking through some of
Shi-yin's books of poetry in order
to pass the time, when he heard a
woman's cough outside the window. Immediately
he jumped up and peered out
to see who it was. The cough appeared to have come
from a maid who was
picking flowers in the garden. She was an unusually
good4ooking girl with a
rather refined face: not a great beauty, by any means,
but with something
striking about her. Yu-cun gazed at her
spellbound.
Having now finished
picking her flowers, this anonymous
member of the Zhen household was about
to go in again when, on some sudden
impulse, she raised her head and caught
sight of a man standing in the window.
His hat was frayed and his clothing
threadbare; yet, though obviously poor, he
had a fine, manly physique and
handsome, well-proportioned
features.
The maid hastened to remove
herself from this male presence;
but as she went she thought to herself,
'What a fine-looking man! But so shabby!
The family hasn't got any friends
or relations as poor as that. It must be that
Jia Yu-cun the master is
always on about. No wonder he says that he won't stay
poor long. I remember
hearing him say that he's often wanted to help him but
hasn't yet found an
opportunity.' And thinking these thoughts she could not
forbear to turn
back for another peep or two.
Yu-cun saw her turn back
and, at once
assuming that she had taken a fancy to him, was beside himself with
delight. What a perceptive young woman she must be, he thought, to have seen the
genius underneath the rags! A real friend in trouble!
After a while the
boy came in again and Yu-cun elicited from him that the visitor in the
front
room was now staying to dinner. It was obviously out of the question
to wait
much longer, so he slipped down the passage-way at the side of the
house and let
himself out by the back gate. Nor did Shi-yin invite him
round again when,
having at last seen off his visitor, he learned that
Yu-cun had already
left.
But then the Mid Autumn festival arrived and,
after the family
cdnvivialities were over, Shi-yin had a little dinner for
two laid out in his
study and went in person to invite Yu-cun, walking to
his temple lodgings in the
moonlight.
Ever since the day the Zhens'
maid had, by looking back
twice over her shoulder, convinced him that she
was a friend, Yu-cun had had the
girl very much on his mind, and now that
it was festival time, the full moon of
Mid Autumn lent an inspiration to
his romantic impulses which finally resulted
in the following
octet:
‘Ere on ambition's path my feet are
set,
Sorrow comes often this poor
heart to fret.
Yet, as my brow
contracted with new care,
Was there not
one who, parting, turned to
stare?
Dare I, that grasp at shadows in the
wind,
Hope, underneath
the moon, a friend to find?
Bright orb, if with my
plight you
sympathize,
Shine first upon the chamber where she
lies.'
Having delivered himself of this
masterpiece, Yu-cun's thoughts began to run
on his unrealized ambitions
and, after much head-scratching and many heavenward
glances accompanied by
heavy sighs, he produced the following couplet, reciting
it in a loud,
ringing voice which caught the ear of Shi-yin, who chanced at that
moment
to be arriving:
'The jewel in the
casket bides till one shall come to
buy.
The jade pin in the drawer
hides, waiting its time to
fly.'2
Shi-yin smiled. 'You are a man of no mean ambition,
Yu-cun.'
'Oh no!'
Yu-cun smiled back deprecatingly. 'You are too
flattering. I was merely
reciting at random from the lines of some old poet. But
what brings you
here, sir?'
'Tonight is Mid Autumn night,' said
Shi-yin. ‘People call
it the Festival of Reunion. It occurred to me that you
might be feeling
rather lonely here in your monkery, so I have arranged for the
two of us to
take a little wine together in my study. I hope you will not refuse
to join
me.'
Yu-cun made no polite pretence of declining. 'Your
kindness is
more than I deserve,' he said. 'I accept gratefully.' And he
accompanied
Shi-yin back to the study next door.
Soon they had
finished their
tea. Wine and various choice dishes were brought in and placed on
the
table, already laid out with cups, plates, and so forth, and the two men
took their places and began to drink. At first they were rather slow and
ceremonious; but gradually, as the conversation grew more animated, their
potations too became more reckless and uninhibited. The sounds of music and
singing which could now be heard from every house in the neighbourhood and the
full moon which shone with cold brilliance overhead seemed to increase
their
elation, so that the cups were emptied almost as soon as they touched
their
lips, and Yu-cun, who was already a sheet or so in the wind, was
seized with an
irrepressible excitement to which he presently gave
expression in the form of a
quatrain, ostensibly on the subject of the
moon) but really about the ambition
he had hitherto been at some pains to
conceal:
'In thrice five nights her
perfect O is made,
Whose cold light bathes
each marble balustrade.
As her bright wheel starts on its starry ways,
On earth ten
thousand heads look up and gaze.'
'Bravo!' said Shi-yin loudly. 'I have always insisted that you were a
young
fellow who would go up in the world, and now, in these verses you have
just
recited, I see an augury of your ascent. In no time at all we shall see you
up among the clouds! This calls for a drink!' And, saying this, he poured Yu-cun
a large cup of wine.
Yu-cun drained the cup, then, surprisingly,
sighed:
'Don't imagine the drink is making me boastful, but I really do
believe that if it were just a question of having the sort of qualifications now
in demand, I should stand as good a chance as any of getting myself on to
the
list of candidates. The trouble is that I simply have no means of
laying my
hands on the money that would be needed for lodgings and travel
expenses. The
journey to the capital is a long one, and the sort of money I
can earn from my
copying is not enough—'
'Why ever didn't you say this
before?' said
Shi-yin interrupting him. 'I have long wanted to do something
about this, but on
all the occasions I have met you previously, the
conversation has never got
round to this subject, and I haven't liked to
broach it for fear of offending
you. Well, now we know where we are. I am
not a very clever man, but at least I
know the right thing to do when I see
it. Luckily, the next Triennial is only a
few months ahead. You must go to
the capital without delay. A spring examination
triumph will make you feel
that all your studying has been worth while. I shall
take care of all your
expenses. It is the least return I can make for your
friendship.' And there
and then he instructed his boy to go with all speed and
make up a parcel of
fifty tales of the best refined silver and two suits of
winter clothes.
'The almanac gives the nineteenth as a good day for
travelling,' he went
on, addressing Yu-cun again. 'You can set about hiring a
boat for the
journey straight away. How delightful it will be to meet again next
winter
when you have distinguished yourself by soaring to the top over all the
other candidates!'
Yu-cun accepted the silver and the clothes with only
the most perfunctory word of thanks and without, apparently, giving them a
further moment's thought, for he continued to drink and laugh and talk as if
nothing had happened. It was well after midnight before they broke
up.
After seeing Yu-cun off, Shi-yin went to bed and slept without a break
until the sun was high in the sky next morning. When he awoke, his mind was
still running on the conversation of the previous night. He thought he
would
write a couple of introductory letters for Yu-cun to take with him to
the
capital, and arrange for him to call on the family of an official be
was
acquainted with who might be able to put him up; but when he sent a
servant to
invite him over, the servant brought back word from the temple
as
follows:
'The monk says that Mr Jia set out for the capital at five
o'clock
this morning, sir. He says he left a message to pass on to you. He
said to tell
you, "A scholar should not concern himself with almanacs, but
should act as the
situation demands," and he said there wasn't time to say
good-bye.'
So Shi-yin was obliged to let the matter
drop.
*
It is a true saying that 'time
in idleness is quickly spent'. In no time at
all it was Fifteenth Night,
and Shi-yin sent little Ying-lian out, in the charge
of one of the servants
called Calamity, to see the mummers and the coloured
lanterns. It was near
midnight when Calamity, feeling an urgent need to relieve
his bladder, put
Ying4ian down on someone's doorstep while he went about his
business, only
to find, on his return, that the child was nowhere to be seen.
Frantically
he searched for her throughout the rest of the night; but when day
dawned
and he had still not found her, he took to his heels3 not dating to face
his master and mistress, and made off for another part of the
country.
Shi-yin and his wife knew that something must be wrong when their
little girl failed to return home all night. Then a search was made; but
all
those sent out were obliged in the end to report that no trace of her
could be
found.
The shock of so sudden a loss to a middle-aged couple
who had only
ever had the one daughter can be imagined. In tears every day
and most of the
night, they almost lost the will to go on living, and after
about a month like
this first Shi-yin and then his wife fell ill, so that
doctors and diviners were
in daily attendance on them.
Then, on the
fifteenth of the third month,
while frying cakes for an offering, the monk
of Bottle-gourd Temple carelessly
allowed the oil to catch alight, which
set fire to the paper window. And, since
the houses in this area all had
wooden walls and bamboo fences—though also,
doubtless, because they were
doomed to destruction anyway-the fire leaped from
house to house until the
whole street was blazing away like a regular Fiery
Mountain; and though the
firemen came to put it out, by the time they arrived
the fire was well
under way and long past controlling, and roared away all night
long until
it had burnt itself Out, rendering heaven knows how many families
homeless
in the process.
Poor Zhens! Though they and their handful of
domestics
escaped unhurt, their house, which was only next door to the temple,
was
soon reduced to a heap of rubble, while Shi-yin stood by helpless, groaning
and stamping in despair.
After some discussion with his wife, Shi-yin
decided that they should move to their farm in the country; but a series of crop
failures due to flooding and drought had led to widespread brigandage in
those
parts, and government troops were out everywhere hunting down the
mutinous
peasants and making arrests. In such conditions it was impossible
to settle on
the farm, so Shi-yin sold the land and, taking only two of the
maids with them,
went with his wife to seek refuge with his father-in4aw,
Feng Su.
This
Feng Su was a Ru-zhou man who, though only a farmer by
calling, had a very
comfortable sufficiency. He was somewhat displeased to
see his son-in-law
arriving like a refugee on his doorstep; but fortunately
Shi- yin had on him the
money he had realized from the sale of the farm,
and this he now entrusted to
his father-in-law to buy for him, as and when
he could, a house and land on
which he could depend for his future
livelihood. Feng Su embezzled about half of
this sum and used the other
half to provide him with a ruinous cottage and some
fields of poor, thin
soil.
A scholar, with no experience of business or
agricultural
matters, Shi-yin now found himself poorer after a year or two of
struggle
than when he had started. Feng Su would treat him to a few pearls of
rustic
wisdom whenever they met, but behind his back would grumble to all and
sundry about 'incompetents' and 'people who liked their food but were too lazy
to work for it', which caused Shi-yin great bitterness when it came to his
ears.
The anxieties and injustices which now beset him, coming on top of
the shocks he
had suffered a year or two previously, left a man of his
years with little
resistance to the joint onslaught of poverty and
ill-health, and gradually he
began to betray the unmistakable symptoms of a
decline.
One day,
wishing to take his mind off his troubles for a
bit, he had dragged himself,
stick in hand, to the main road, when it
chanced that he suddenly caught sight
of a Taoist with a limp—a crazy,
erratic figure in hempen sandals and tattered
clothes, who chanted the
following words to himself as he advanced towards
him:
'Men all know that
salvation should
be won,
But with ambition won't have
done,
have done.
Where are the famous
ones of days gone by?
In grassy graves
they lie now, every one.
Men all know that salvation should
be
won,
But with their riches won't have
done, have
done.
Each day they grumble they've not made
enough.
When
they've enough, it's goodnight
everyone
Men all know that
salvation should be won,
But with their
loving wives they
won't have done.
The darlings every day protest
their love:
But once you're dead,
they're off with another one.
Men
all know that
salvation should be won,
But with their children
won't have done, have done.
Yet though of patents
fond there is no
lack,
Of grateful
children saw I ne'er a
one.'
Shi-yin approached the Taoist and
questioned him. 'what is a" this you are
saying? All I can make out is a
lot of "won" and "done
'If you can make out
"won" and "done",' replied
the Taoist with a smile, 'you may be said to have
understood; for in all
the affairs of this world what is won is done, and what
is done is won; for
whoever has not yet done has not yet won, and in order to
have won, one
must first have done. I shall call my song the "Won-Done
Song"'
Shi-yin had always been quick-witted, and on hearing these words a
flash of understanding had illuminated his mind. He therefore smiled back
at the
Taoist: 'Wait a minute! How would you like me to provide your
"Won-Done Song"
with a commentary?
'Please do!' said the Taoist; and
Shi-yin
proceeded as follows:
'Mean hovels and abandoned
halls
Where courtiers once paid daily calls:
Bleak
haunts where
weeds and willows scarcely thrive
Were once with
mirth and revelry
alive.
Whilst cobwebs shroud the mansion's
gilded beams,
The
cottage casement with choice muslin
gleams.
Would you of perfumed
elegance
recite?
Even as you speak, the raven locks turn
white.
Who yesterday her lord's bones laid in
clay,
On silken
bridal-bed shall lie
today.
Coffers with gold and silver filled:
Now,
in a trice, a tramp by all reviled.
One at some other's short
life gives a sigh,
Not knowing that he, too, goes home—to
die!
The sheltered and well-educated lad,
In spite
of all your
care, may turn out bad;
And the
delicate, fastidious maid
End in a foul
stews, plying a shameful
trade.
The judge whose hat is too small
for his head
Wears, in
the end, a convict's cangue
instead.
Who shivering once in rags
bemoaned his
fate,
Today finds fault with scarlet robes of
state.
In such commotion does the world's theatre
rage:
As each
one leaves, another takes the
stage.
In vain we roam:
Each in the
end must call
a strange land home.
Each of us with that poor girl may
compare
Who sews a wedding-gown for another bride to
wear.'
'A very accurate commentary!'
cried the mad, lame Taoist, clapping his
hands delightedly.
But
Shi-yin merely snatched the satchel that hung from
the other's shoulder and
slung it from his own, and with a shout of 'Let's go!'
and without even
waiting to call back home, he strode off into the wide world in
the company
of the madman.
This event made a great uproar in the little
town, and
news of it was relayed from gossip to gossip until it reached the ears
of
Mrs Zhen, who cried herself into fits when she heard it. After consulting her
father, she sent men out to inquire everywhere after her husband; but no
news of
him was to be
It was now imperative that she should move in
with her
parents and look to them for support. Fortunately she still had
the two maids
who had stayed on with her from the Soochow days, and by
sewing and embroidering
morning, noon and night, she and her women were
able to make some contribution
to her father's income. The latter still
found daily occasion to complain, but
there was very little he could do
about it.
One day the elder of the two
maids was purchasing some silks
at the door when she heard the criers clearing
the street and all the
people began to tell each other that the new mandarin had
arrived. She hid
in the doorway and watched the guards and runners marching past
two by two.
But when the mandarin in his black hat and scarlet robe of office
was borne
past in his great chair, she stared for some time as though puzzled.
'where
have I seen that mandarin before?' she wondered. 'His face looks
extraordinarily familiar.' But presently she went into the house again and gave
the matter no further thought.
That night, just as they were getting
ready
for bed, there was suddenly a great commotion at the door and a
confused hubbub
of voices shouting that someone was wanted at the yamen for
questioning, which
so terrified Feng Su that he was momentarily struck dumb
and could only
stare.
If you wish to know what further calamity this
portended,
you will have to read the following
chapter.
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