Call to Arms Read online

  “Rubbish! I'm not paid for my work or for my teaching, why should they charge my sons for a bit of schooling?”

  She felt he was being unreasonable, taking out his anger on her instead of on the school head. It was not worth arguing with him.

  They ate their lunch in silence. He thought things over, then went out in a temper.

  It had been his rule in recent years, the day before New Year or a festival not to come home till midnight, when he would walk in, groping in his pocket, and announce loudly, “Hey, I've got it!” Then, a complacent look on his face, he would give her a wad of brand-new bandnotes issued by the Bank of China or the Bank of Communications. But today, the fourth, he broke his rule, arriving home before seven. Mrs. Fang was most dismayed, thinking he had resigned; but stealing a glance at his face, she could not see that he looked particularly down on his luck.

  “What's up?... So early?...” She asked, eyeing him.

  “Not issued, couldn't get it. The banks are closed, have to wait until the eighth.”

  “Did you go yourself?” She asked anxiously.

  “That's no longer necessary, they say it will still be sent over by the accountants' office. But today the banks have already closed, for three days. Have to wait till the morning of the eighth.” He sat down, his eyes on the floor. After a sip of tea he went on slowly, “Luckily there's no problem in the yamen, so I should be getting it for sure on the eighth.... It's really troublesome trying to borrow from relatives and friends one's not on good terms with. After lunch I swallowed my pride and called on Jin Yongsheng. We chatted for a while. First he praised me for not going to demand payment and refusing to fetch my pay, calling me most high-minded, a fine example to others. When he learned that I wanted a short-term loan of fifty yuan, he looked as if I'd stuffed his mouth with salt—every wrinkle on his face crinkled. He said he hadn't been able to collect his rents, his business was losing money, and to go to fetch one's salary from a colleague was nothing to worry about. He sent me packing.”

  “In an emergency like this, who's willing to lend money?” Said Mrs. Fang mildly and impassively.

  Fang Xuanchuo hung his head, feeling hardly able to blame Jin Yongsheng, especially as they were not on terms. Then he recalled an incident last New Year's Eve, when a fellow provincial had asked for a loan of ten yuan. He had manifestly received his cheque from the yamen, but for fear this man might fail to pay him back he pretended to be in difficulties, saying that he could not get his official stipend and the school had not paid his salary, so much as he would like to help he could not. He sent him away empty-handed. Though he had not seen the expression he had assumed then, he now felt put out. His lips quivering, he shook his head.

  Before long, however, as if suddenly seeing the light, he ordered the servant to go out at once and get him a bottle of Lotus-Flower White on credit. The storekeeper, he knew, was hoping he would settle his bills tomorrow, so probably wouldn't dare to refuse him credit. If he did, then not a cent would he get the next day—he deserved to be penalized.

  The Lotus-Flower White was duly bought on credit. After two cups his pallid face flushed, and after supper he was in fairly high spirits. He lit a Hatamen cigarette, and picked up from the table a copy of An Experimental Collection, then lay on the bed to read it.

  “Well, how to cope with the tradesmen tomorrow?” Mrs. Fang, who had pursued him, was standing in front of the bed looking into his face.

  “The tradesmen?... Tell them to come in the afternoon of the eighth.”

  “I can't do that. They wouldn't believe me, wouldn't be willing.”

  “Why shouldn't they believe you? They can ask around. Nobody in the yamen will be paid until the eighth.” Under the mosquito net he sketched a semi-circle with his forefinger. Mrs. Fang saw the semi-circle, saw his hand continue leafing through the book.

  Seeing him so unreasonably overbearing, she could say no more for the time being.

  Finally, hitting on a different approach, she said, “I don't see how we can go on this wretched way. You must think of some way out in future, find something else to do.”

  “What way out? I can't be a copyist or join a fire-brigade. What else can I do?”

  “Didn't you write for that bookshop in Shanghai?”

  “That bookshop in Shanghai? They pay by the word, not by the page. Look at all the blank spaces in that volume of vernacular poems I wrote. I'm afraid it'll only fetch three hundred dollars. And for half a year I've had no word about royalties. Distant water can't put out a nearby fire. Just have to lump it.”

  “Well then, write for the papers here.”

  “The papers? I've a student who edits one of the biggest of them. But even as a favour, he can't pay me more than a few dollars per thousand words. If I worked from morning till night, how could I keep you all? Besides, I haven't so much to write about.”

  “Well, after the festival, what then?”

  “After the festival?—I'll go on being all official.... When the tradesmen ask for money tomorrow, just put them off till the afternoon of the eighth.”

  He picked up his book again. Afraid to miss this chance, Mrs. Fang faltered:

  “I think, after the festival, on the eighth, we'd... better buy a lottery ticket....”

  “Rubbish! How can you talk in that uneducated way....”

  This suddenly reminded him of what had happened after Jin Yongsheng had sent him packing. Dejectedly passing Dao Xiang Cun he noticed an advertisement in big characters on the shop door: “First Prize Tens of Thousands of Yuan.” He had been tempted, he seemed to recall, and may have slowed down; but as if unwilling to part with the last sixty cents in his wallet, he had in the end gone resolutely on his way. His face changed colour. Mrs. Fang, supposing him annoyed by her lack of education, made haste to withdraw without having had her say out. Fang Xuanchuo, not having had his say out either, stretched and started intoning the poems in An Experimental Collection.

  June 1922

  ■ The White Light

  It was afternoon before Chen Shicheng came back from seeing the results of the county examinations. He had gone very early, and the first thing he looked for on the list was the name Chen. Quite a few Chens leapt to meet his eye, but none followed by the characters Shicheng, thereupon, starting again, he made a careful search through all twelve lists. Even after everyone else had left, the name Chen Shicheng had not appeared on the list but the man was still standing there, a solitary figure before the front wall of the examination school.

  A cool wind was ruffling his short greying hair and the early winter sun shone warmly on him, yet he felt dizzy as if from a touch of the sun. His pale face grew even paler; his tired eyes, puffy and red, glittering strangely. In fact, he had long stopped seeing the results on the wall, for countless black circles were swimming past his eyes.

  He had won his first degree in the county examination and taken his second in the provincial capital, success following success.... The local gentry were trying by every means to ally with him by marriage; people were treating him like a god, cursing themselves for their former contempt and blindness. The other families renting his tumble-down house had been driven away—no need for that, they would move of their own accord—and the whole place was completely renovated with flagpoles and a placard at the gate.... If he wanted to keep his hands clean he could be an official in the capital, otherwise some post in the provinces would prove more lucrative. Once more the future mapped out so carefully had crashed in ruins like a wet sugar-candy pagoda, leaving nothing but debris behind.

  Not knowing what he did, he turned with a strange sensation of disintegration, and shambled disconsolately home.

  The moment he reached his door, seven small boys raised their voices to drone their lesson together. He started as if a chime had been struck by his ear, aware of seven heads with seven small queues bobbing in front of him, bobbing all over the room, with black circles dancing between. As he sat down they handed in their homework, contempt for him
manifesting on every face.

  “You may go,” he said painfully after a brief hesitation.

  They snatched up their satchels, stuffed them under their arms, and were off like a streak of smoke.

  Chen Shicheng could still see a host of small heads dotted with black circles dancing in front of him, now higgledy-piggledy, now in strange formation; but by degrees they grew fewer, hazier.

  “Failed again!”

  With a violent start he leapt to his feet, for undoubtedly the sound came from just beside him. When he turned his head there was no one there, yet he seemed to hear another muffled chime and his lips formed the words:

  “Failed again!”

  Abruptly he raised one hand and reckoned it up on his fingers: eleven, thirteen times, counting this year made sixteen, yet not a single examiner had been capable of appreciating good writing, all had been completely blind. It was so pathetic, in fact, that he had to snigger. In a fury he snatched his neatly copied examination essays and poems from their cloth wrapper and started out with them; but in the doorway he was dazzled by the bright light outside, where even the hens were making fun of him. Unable to still the wild pounding of his heart, he slunk back inside again.

  He sat down once more, a strange glitter in his eyes. He could see many things, but hazily—his wrecked future, in ruins like a sugar-candy pagoda before him, was looming so large that it blocked all his ways out.

  The neighbours' kitchen fires were long since out, their bowls and chopsticks washed, but Chen Shicheng had not started cooking a meal. His tenants knew from years of experience that after he had seen the results of the county examinations their best course was to close their doors early and mind their own business. First all voices were hushed, then one by one lamps were blown out, till nothing was left but the moon slowly climbing the cold night sky.

  The deep blue of the sky was like an expanse of sea, while a few drifting clouds looked as if someone had dabbled a piece of chalk in a dish for washing brushes. The moon discharged cold rays of light down upon Chen Shicheng. At first the orb seemed no more than a newly polished iron mirror but by some mysterious means this mirror projected light through him until he reflected the shadow of the iron moon.

  He paced up and down the yard outside his room, his vision clear now, all around him still. But this stillness was abruptly and rudely shattered as in his ear he distinctly heard the urgent whisper:

  “Left turn, right turn....”

  He pricked up his ears and listened intently as the voice repeated more loudly:

  “Right turn!”

  Now he remembered. This yard was the place, before his family fortunes declined, where he used to come with his grandmother on summer evenings to enjoy the cool. A boy of ten, he would lie on a bamboo couch while his grandmother sat beside him and told him interesting stories. She had it from her own grandmother, she said, that the founder of the Chen family was a man of great wealth who had built this house and buried a vast store of silver here, which some fortunate descendant was bound to find, although so far no one had discovered it. A clue to the hiding place was in this riddle:

  Left turn, right turn, forward, back!

  Gold and silver by the sack!

  Chen Shicheng often quietly cudgelled his brains to guess this riddle. Unfortunately he no sooner hit on a solution than he realized that it was wide of the mark. Once he was sure the treasure was under the room rented to the Tang family, but he lacked the courage to dig there and a little later it struck him as most unlikely. As for the vestiges of earlier excavations in his own room, these were signs of his depression over previous failures in the examination, and the sight of them later shamed and embarrassed him.

  But this iron light enfolding him today was gently persuasive. And when Chen Shicheng hesitated, the serious proofs it brought forward, backed up by some covert pressure, compelled him to cast his eyes towards his own room again.

  A white light, like a round white fan, was flickering in his room.

  “So it's here after all!”

  With these words he charged like a lion into the room, but once across the threshold he saw no sign of white light, nothing but a dark, shabby room, with some rickety desks half swallowed up in the shadows. He stood there irresolutely till by degrees his vision cleared and the white light reappeared beyond a doubt, broader this time, whiter than sulphurous flames and lighter than morning mist. It was underneath a desk by the east wall.

  Chen Shicheng charged like a lion to the door, but when he put out his hand for the hoe behind it he bumped into a dark shadow. He gave an involuntary shiver and hastily lit the lamp, but there was nothing there except the hoe, he moved away the desk and hardly stopping for breath raised four square flagstones. Kneeling, he saw the usual fine yellow sand, and rolling up his sleeves he removed this sand to reveal black earth beneath. Very carefully and quietly he dug down, stroke by stroke. The night was so still, however, that the thudding of his sharp-bladed hoe against the earth was plainly audible.

  The pit was over two feet deep yet still no crock had appeared and Chen Shicheng was beginning to lose heart when—clang!—he wrenched his wrist as the hoe struck something hard. He dropped his tool and scrabbled in the soil, discovering a large square brick beneath. His heart was throbbing painfully as with infinite care he prised up this brick, disclosing beneath it the same black earth as before. Although he loosened a great deal of earth, it apparently went down and down without end. All of a sudden, however, he struck a small hard object, something round, probably a rusty coin. There were some fragments of broken china too.

  Faint and soaked in sweat, Chen Shicheng burrowed desperately. His heart nearly turned over when he struck another strange object shaped somewhat like a horseshoe, but light and brittle in his hands. Having extracted it with infinite care, he picked it up cautiously and studied it intently by the lamp. Blotched and discoloured like a mouldering bone, it bore an incomplete row of teeth on the upper side. He realized that it must be a jawbone twitched disconcertingly in his hands and gaped as if with laughter. Finally he heard it mutter:

  “Failed again!”

  An icy shudder went through him. He let it go. The jawbone had barely dropped lightly back into the pit before he bounded out into the yard. He stole a glance at his room. The dazzling lamp and supercilious jawbone made it strangely terrifying. Averting his eyes in fear, he lay down in the shadows of the eaves some distance away, where he felt slightly safer. But another sly whisper sounded through the stillness in his ear:

  “Not here.... Go to the hills....”

  Chen Shicheng had a faint recollection of hearing this remark in the street that day, and at once light dawned on him. He threw back his head to look up at the sky. The moon was hiding itself behind West Peak, so that the peak a dozen miles from the town seemed immediately before him, upright, black, and awesome as the tablet carried by ministers to court, while from it pulsed great flickering beams of white light.

  And this white light in the distance seemed just before him.

  “Yes, to the hills!”

  This decision taken, he rushed wildly out. Doors hanged as he opened them, then all was still. The lamp, its wick heavily furred, lit up the empty room and the gaping pit. Presently it sputtered a few times and by degrees dwindled and died as the oil burned out.

  “Open the gate!...”

  In the dawn this cry, fearful and despairing yet fraught with infinite hope, throbbed and trembled like a floating thread before the West Gate of the town.

  At noon the next day someone noticed a drowned man floating in the Wanliu Lake five miles from the West Gate. He lost no time in spreading the news till word reached the local bailiff, who got some villagers to recover the corpse. It was the body of a man in his fifties, “of medium height, pale and beardless,” completely naked. It may have been Chen Shicheng. But since none of his neighbours could be troubled to go and look and no kinsmen went to identify and claim him, after the county authorities had held and inquest
the bailiff buried him. The cause of death was beyond dispute and the theft of a dead man's clothes a common occurrence, insufficient grounds for suspicion of foul play. In fact, the post-mortem established that he had fallen in while still alive, for he had undoubtedly struggled under the water—embedded under all his nails was mud from the bottom of the lake.

  June 1922

  ■ The Rabbits and the Cat

  In summer, Third Mistress in our back courtyard bought a pair of white rabbits to amuse her children.

  Apparently these two white rabbits had not left their mother long. Although a different species, their carefree innocence was evident. But they also raised their long, small crimson ears and wrinkled their noses, a very apprehensive look in their eyes. Probably, after all, they felt this place and the people here strange, and were less at ease here than in their old home. If you went to a temple fair yourself to buy creatures like these, they cost no more than two strings of cash apiece; but Third Mistress had spent a dollar, because she sent a servant to a shop to buy them.

  The children, naturally, were overjoyed and crowded round boisterously to have a look. The grown-ups crowded round too. A puppy called S also came running over. Dashing up to sniff at them, he sneezed, then backed away a couple of paces. Third Mistress cried, “Listen, S! You're not to bite them!” Then she slapped his head, so that S ran off, and after that he never bit them.

  These rabbits were kept most of the time in a small courtyard behind the back window. We were told this was because they were too fond of tearing the wall-paper and chewing the legs of furniture. In this little courtyard grew a wild mulberry tree. When the mulberries fell, these were what they liked eating most, and they would pass over the spinach given them. When crows and magpies wanted to fly down, they would hump their backs, stamp hard with their hind-legs on the ground and—whoosh!—bound straight up like flying snowballs. The frightened birds promptly took flight, and after several repetitions of this they no longer dared come near.Third Mistress said crows and magpies didn't matter, at most they would just steal a little food; the real menace was a big black cat, which often watched malevolently from the top of the low wall—they must be on their guard against it. Fortunately, S and the cat were enemies, so perhaps there would be no trouble after all.