The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (48 page)

In fact the holy man grew easier over the next few days, could open his mouth more, swallow cold tea.

Then Ch’ien-lung arrived. At the window seat that Chia-ch’ing had occupied, the great Emperor waited and fought for the dying man’s soul.

For Ch’ien-lung there were no more censors, no more Court of Astrologers. With a senile narrowing of his thoughts he held fast to the Panchen Rinpoche, whom he held responsible for the disturbances in the northern provinces and who held back the truth, the real truth. Yes, only Paldan Ishe could help.

His face immobile, the Yellow Lord sat behind the red-painted paper window, waited for the holy man to wake. Ch’ien-lung, hands folded in his lap, followed every movement in the room with dumb eyes. He was quite devoid of impatience. Paldan Ishe could not slip away from him.

The next day he came again and waited.

On the afternoon of the third day Paldan Ishe kept his brown eyes open for a long while, gazing from beneath the mask of black pock crusts recognized Ch’ien-lung and moved his lips. He also recognized the six bishops who stood in beggar rags along the walls, not leaving the room for an instant in order that they might attend at the onset of death.

Ch’ien-lung bent to the sick man’s ear. “I am desolate that you should be suffering in my country, Your Holiness.”

Paldan Ishe seemed to want to laugh. He shook his head and gurgled.

Unperturbed by the enormity of the event that was about to pass, the parting of the Buddha from his most recent body, the old Emperor spoke. He asked often if the sick man understood him. Firm nods. With hard precision Ch’ien-lung related recent events, the disturbances, Mien’s infamy. Paldan Ishe’s eyes grew lively as Ch’ien-lung whispered. The holy man was in his element among heavy downcast souls. When Ch’ien-lung was finished he saw the brown globes of eyes move, but the sick man’s lips twitched, formed no words.

The Emperor rose, sternly threw back his head.

The next afternoon he sat again at the holy man’s bedside. The six bishops stood unmoving in their beggar rags along the walls, waited. The Emperor whispered more urgently, repeated his account, grasped the sick man’s knuckles, desired new advice, promised to erect new monasteries for the yellow church in every province.

The sick man strove for words, smiled. Only his look spoke, was silent. Anger twisted the Emperor’s face.

When the Emperor came next afternoon he found the holy man sitting up in bed. Only four bishops stood along the walls, barefoot, browncowled. Two were supporting the holy man, who kept his eyes closed, unable to open them again beneath the cushionlike swelling of cheeks, lids, forehead. The two shavenheads were supporting him because he had shown by signs that he wanted to walk. A heavy fug of incense shrouded the room. The Yellow Lord stood transfixed in the smoke. No glance met his. The holy man was turned with his face to the west. Ch’ien-lung’s palanquin went hastily back.

On a seesaw of delirium, turbidity, bright confusion Paldan Ishe woke and dreamed. Fleshtrussing cramps, hollow swaying over chasms, a clear feathery brightness alternated. The great weariness evaporated. The white walls of the labrang rose up, roofs gleamed in dull gold. The dead Dalai Lama appeared and walked quickly past under his umbrella. Master the images, meditate, meditate! Short rest in white halls. People, so many people, on camels, in carts; plunging, sinking people. Courtyard gates, sedan chairs, gongs. Help across the sea, great boats, small boats. Gigantic, incorporeal he dragged his luminous body leaving a phosphorescent wake, he was a pillar high as Heaven, revolving. No trembling beset him. He couldn’t tell if it was his feelings that he felt, if they were the feelings of others, many, countless others. Poised. Poised mysteriously between six mysterious syllables.

For three days and two nights the six bishops supported the holy man, who must die a Buddha. In pairs they propped up his back that grew ever rounder. One clasped the head and held it high. One pressed the peeling hands against the breast and several times pushed jutting elbows into the sides. One crossed the dying man’s legs. The sixth turned up the soles of his feet, which flamed red.

On the morning of the third day Amitabha left the body of Lobsang Paldan Ishe. The corpse stiffened in the position of a praying Buddha.

Weeks passed before Ishe’s body set off on the return journey to Tibet, months before it arrived in Tashilunpo, town of tears. The spirit of Buddha had already wandered long over beloved fields of snow, grassy steppe, stroked shaggy yaks, wandered here and there, sought the child in whom he would make his new home.

The people in the monastery Huang-szu in Peking embraced the snuffed out body of Lobsang Paldan Ishe, son of a civil official in Tibet. They embalmed it.

On the afternoon following the death the Imperial gong reverberated outside the monastery. In white mourning clothes the Emperor stood beltless, ringless, bareheaded before the bier, on its purple velvet a terrible Buddha crosslegged in yellow pontifical splendour, enthroned in dreadful peace.

Black gangrenous scabs hung down in shreds from a bloated face. Bloody slime dropped minute by minute from the mouth. Thick round protuberances in place of lips traversed the lower half of the face. Eyelids closed; but in some strange way they had lost their swelling so that next to the lumpish nose two greenly shimmering hollows sank into the skull. On the head drooped the mitre with five bejewelled Buddha-images. Gobs of slime trickled over the embroidered gold brocade on the breast and behind the neatly placed sleeves.

Right and left of the enthroned Buddha offerings for the dead stood on little tables: low pyramids of rice and pottery. Incense sticks burned. The bishops, the Changkya, stopped their mouths on the floorboards.

Ch’ien-lung stood rigid for many minutes. His glance swept to the window seat on which he had waited for the holy man’s awakening, to the east wall, where the timbers of the deathbed were stacked. In cold resignation he examined the features of the ascended lama. He felt no horror, followed the slow progress of a blood blister on the corpse’s lower lip and the discharge of the loathsome fluid.

It was right that this man should have been marked out. His body was rotten with pusfilled sores. He was no better than the chanting priests. His fate showed it clearly. Here the Mongolian town, there the pox: balanced in one pair of scales. The departed priest king had been unable to advise, for all his piles of books, Kandjur and Tandjur.

And now Ch’ien-lung grew uncertain. His frostiness dissolved. He fell on his knees before the enthroned corpse and wept, but none in the room knew that he wept in rage at the lama, in furious recrimination because the glorious sage had deceived him. Ch’ien-lung had allowed himself to be drawn, dazzled, onto the ice of this deceiver. And the Overbrimming-with-Grace had slipped free before he could be pinned down. He’d known how to spit blood, the corpse, cast looks of consolation, but the scornful priest couldn’t bring himself to a single syllable.

Ch’ien-lung ordered a sarcophagus of gold made in the form of a reliquary pyramid. Into it they lowered the body of Paldan Ishe. The hollows and the body were sprinkled with white salt.

The hundred days of Masses for his soul followed, in which the northern provinces, all of Mongolia took part. A whole people broke down in grief for the departed Buddha. And still the body had not reached Tibet.

The endless mourning train set itself in motion, not to the north but to the west. It dragged its way through the western provinces; people closed around the golden stupa and held it fast as if it were a pagoda sent to protect the district. The heavy shrine containing the corpse did not touch ground day or night; it slid from shoulder to shoulder. Taken up at Huang-szu amid the braying of huge trumpets it was laid down seven months and eight days later in Tashilunpo, in the white labrang that rocked with lamentations. Near Huang-szu in that same year the marble obelisk was erected which Ch’ien-lung dedicated to the holy man’s memory: capped by his golden mitre, to one side the altar for offerings, fringed with long silk pennants.

Two days after Paldan Ishe’s death the favourites of Ch’ien-lung sat in the little reception hall before the Son of Heaven’s dais. He
himself gazed often through the wide open windows. Below him A-kuei squatted next to Chao Hui, Song; Chia-ch’ing too, whose courtesy visit had been granted by the Emperor, who was summoned to the audience without the boon of a private interview.

The twelve men were grouped at little tables, lacquered square tables around which black wooden stools were set, topped with yellow and red cushions. A larger, round table in the centre of the lower hall was laden with plates of fruit, melons, salads, salted duck eggs. Small bowls containing innumerable soups crowded the tables, swallows’ nests, shark’s fin with mushrooms, sea slugs, nenuphar root, bamboo shoots; roast duck with walnuts, chunks of roast pork. They concluded with sweetmeats, almonds, melon seeds. Servants flitted about with cups and winejugs. General bowing, raising of cups, taking seats all at once, murmuring.

Stringed instruments struck up. The use of fans was urged. Against the long wall of the hall opposite the Emperor’s dais a small stage opened. Dancers mounted the stage to nasal tones, the clack of wooden clappers. These bodies, so delicate and slender, belonged to eunuchs. Reserved mute glances from soft eyes; cheeks, mouths, eyebrows formed with the aid of paints; wigs and tinkling swaying silver pendants in black hair; black silk tunics in swelling folds, loose yellow trousers, small nimble feet in high green pumps of satin. Only now and then was one of the guests favoured with a glance. Dancing in pairs they placed peacock feathers on the stage, whirled quick as a flash through them, gracefully pulled each other close, sprang high over a feather and froze on tiptoe as they sprang, revolved slowly on their toes as crooked arms combatted above, sought and twined.

They danced in silence, a shadowplay. Ch’ien-lung kept glancing at Chia-ch’ing, who as usual sat alone in a reverie.

A tender female voice sang to viol and lute behind the stage.
As the old song said: in muffled tones veiled by sadness, the bass strings roaring like a flood, the treble strings whispering, and as the notes came livelier they were like a rain of pearls onto a marble dish. The plaintive voice sang Tu Fu’s song:
I am moved by deep sadness and lay myself down in the thick grass. I begin, my pain finds voice. Streaming with tears, streaming with tears. Oh, who could for long tramp the path of life, that all must travel alone?
And as the old poem said: the song ended like a broken jar from which water gushes; and at the end a bow was drawn across the strings, which vibrated under a single touch as if cloth were being torn.

Ch’ien-lung nodded. The pockmarked enthroned Buddha from Tibet stood before his eyes; shreds of gangrenous black skin hung from his bloated cheeks, the once smooth straight forehead bulged like a hydrocephalic child’s. Arrived in Jehol a living Buddha from Tashilunpo; departed an ulcerous lump of flesh.

Viol, lute and women’s voices, at the Yellow Lord’s wish, sang thrice more Tu Fu’s song of transience. Then Ch’ien-lung rose. A eunuch stood at Chia-ch’ing’s side and whispered in his ear. Dance, song, feasting were interrupted by a solemn ninefold touching of the floor. As gaiety heightened in the hall, wild ribbon dances swirling as music goaded, acrobats in green and red sacks springing up, weaving curiously in and out, burrowing into each other, the Yellow Lord paced rapidly at Chia-ch’ing’s side beneath the unapproachable blackness of the cypresses whose dark flames soared, pillar after pillar, into the pink evening sky.

Ch’ien-lung wanted his son, whose chocolate brown overgown threw out flame-red folds in the speed of their pace, to account for himself in this matter; he knew which one.

Chia-ch’ing sighed, did not answer right away; suppressed his irritation and impatience, referred quietly to his letter in which he had reported Mien-k’o’s high treason to Jehol.

Ch’ien-lung was not satisfied; he wanted an oral account. The word “pardon” slipped from him and gave Chia-ch’ing a hint.

The Emperor wanted peace. Chia-ch’ing was astonished. There was something distressing in the notion that Ch’ien-lung could feel himself so weak.

Chia-ch’ing overdid his expressions of courtesy and devotion, declared himself absolutely innocent, with not a trace of bitterness in his tone.

The Emperor broke out in wild reproaches: they were a fine set, here in the Forbidden City; children after their father’s life; all filial piety gone; he couldn’t assure Chia-ch’ing strongly enough how sick he was of being a father to sons who hardly knew even the words ‘social order’. Age was creeping up on him; they’d observed aright. The behaviour of his children disgusted him; he was ashamed of his children.

Without rising to the accusations Chia-ch’ing sighed: he had hoped that the late Paldan Ishe would have succeeded in dispelling his father’s unease. Had the great Jewel of Learning not provided illumination in Jehol, not lighted the way?

“Lighted the way! Chia-ch’ing, we are not little boys. Just see how this jewel shone on me before it went out: ha, didn’t it deceive me, this Jewel of Learning, before it went out? The prefects send me despatch after despatch about rebellion. I rejoice in the flames. And that was Paldan Ishe, Panchen Rinpoche, the Ocean of Wisdom, treasure of the Mountain of Grace. It really didn’t call for so much wisdom.”

Chia-ch’ing whispered, probing cautiously: “The foreigner doesn’t know the earth spirits of our land. He speaks and deliberates with wisdom. Men of the east can hardly be calmed with Tibetan wisdom.”

Ch’ien-lung darted a strange look at his son; his face grew
black as he turned again to the cypresses. He walked beside Chia-ch’ing like a stranger, after suffering so at his absence. To Chia-ch’ing’s horror, he sat down on the bench under the thuya tree at the foot of which the ghost doll of Mien-k’o and the woman P’ei had been buried. The Emperor sank heavily onto the little wooden bench, jutted his chin, looked at the ground that he brushed with his fan, spoke on, not releasing Chia-ch’ing from his gaze.