Call to Arms Page 14

  The children often caught the rabbits to play with. They were very affable. Ears erect, their noses twitching, they stood meekly in the small hands encircling them; but as soon as they had a chance, they lolloped away. Their bed at night was a box, strewn with straw, under the eaves jutting over the back window.

  After several months like this, they suddenly started burrowing, burrowing at top speed, fore-paws scrabbling, hind-legs kicking. In less than half a day they completed a deep burrow. Everybody marvelled, until a closer inspection revealed that one rabbit's stomach was much bigger than the other's. The next day, taking straw and leaves between their teeth, they busied themselves for hours moving these into the burrow.

  Everybody was delighted, looking forward to another batch of small rabbits. Third Mistress strictly forbade the children to pick them up any more. My mother, too, was delighted by their family's flourishing and said, once the litter was weaned, she would ask for a couple to keep outside her own window.

  After this they lived in the underground home they had made, sometimes coming out to eat. Then they disappeared. There was no knowing whether they had taken food inside in advance, or had really given up eating. More than ten days later, Third Mistress told me that the two rabbits had come out again. Most likely all their baby rabbits had died, because the doe had copious milk but showed no sign of going in to suckle her children. She sounded most indignant, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  One warm, sunny day, when there was no wind and not a leaf stirred on the trees, I heard a sudden chorus of laughter. Tracking down the sound, I discovered quite a crowd leaning out of Third Mistress's back window to watch: a baby rabbit was frisking in the yard. He was much smaller than his parents had been when purchased. But already he could take off from the ground on his hind-legs and jump. The children eagerly told me that another little rabbit had peeked out of the burrow, but promptly drawn back his head. That must be his baby brother.

  The little rabbit also nibbled at grass and leaves, but apparently this was not allowed by his parents, who kept snatching them out of his mouth, yet didn't eat them themselves. The children laughed so uproariously that finally the little rabbit took fright and hopped back to the burrow. The bigger ones followed him to the mouth of the burrow. With their fore-paws they pushed him inside, then scraped up earth to seal up the hole.

  After that the little yard was livelier, there were often people at the window watching.

  But then the rabbits, both small and big, disappeared. We were having a spell of dull weather. Once more Third Mistress worried that the malevolent black cat had done for them. I told her, no. Because it was cold, of course they were keeping under cover. Once the sun came out, they were sure to come out again.

  The sun came out, but still no sign of them. Then everybody forgot them.

  Only Third Mistress often thought of them, as she had been in the habit of feeding them spinach. Once, going into the small yard by the back window, she suddenly spotted another hole by the corner of the wall, and when she looked again at the old hole she saw a good many faint paw-prints round the entrance. Not even the big rabbits could have made such big prints. Once again her suspicion fell on the big black cat who was so often on the wall. Thereupon she felt impelled to dig up the burrow. She finally got out a hoe and dug down. Although fearing the worst, she hoped against hope to discover the small white rabbits; but a heap of mouldy grass and rabbit-fur, probably spread there for the doe's confinement. Apart from that the place was bare, with not a trace of the snow-white little rabbit, or of his baby brother who had peeped out but not emerged from the burrow.

  Anger, disappointment and grief impelled her to dig up the new burrow at the corner of the wall too. As soon as she started, out scuttled the two big rabbits. She was delighted, thinking they had moved house, but still she went on digging. When she reached the bottom, that too was strewn with grass, leaves and rabbit-fur, and on this were sleeping seven tiny rabbits, pink all over. A close look showed that they hadn't yet opened their eyes.

  All became clear. Third Mistress's earlier guess had been correct. To forestall further danger, she put the litter of seven in a box, and moved it into her room. She put the doe in too, ordering her to suckle her little ones.

  From that day on Third Mistress not only hated the black cat, but took a very dim view of the mother rabbit. She said, before the first two babies were killed, others must have died, because each litter was certainly more than two; but because of unequal suckling, those deprived of milk had starved. This sounded plausible, for two of the present litter of seven were very puny. So whenever Third Mistress had time, she would catch the mother rabbit and put the babies one by one on her belly to drink milk, no matter how long this took her.

  My mother remarked to me that, in all her life, she had never so much as heard to so much trouble taken over raising rabbits. It deserved to be included in the Register of Eccentrics.

  The rabbit family was more flourishing than ever. Everybody was happy again.

  But after that I kept feeling disconsolate. In the middle of the night, sitting under the lamp, I would think of those two little lives which had been lost none knows when, unnoticed by men or spirits, leaving no trace in the history of living creatures. Not even S had barked. This brought back old memories of when I was staying in our provincial hostel. Getting up early one day I saw beneath the big locust tree some scattered pigeon feathers, obviously let fall by a hawk. In the morning the attendant came to sweep up, and nothing was left of them. Who would have known that a life had been cut off here? Another time, passing the Xisi Archway, I saw a puppy dying, run over by a horsecart. On my return it had gone, someone had removed it, and which of the passers-by would have known that a life had been cut off here? On summer nights, outside the window, I often heard the long drawnout drone of flies which must have been caught by a spider, but I never paid any attention, and other people did not even hear....

  If it is possible to blame the Creator, then I think he really creates life too much at random, and destroys it too much at random.

  A yowl—two cats are fighting outside the window again.

  “Xun! Are you beating cats again there?”

  “No, they're biting each other. Why should I beat them?”

  My mother has always disapproved of my cruelty to cats. Now doubtless suspecting me of employing sinister tactics to avenge the little rabbits, she had questioned me. Indeed, I was the byword of the whole household for my enmity to cats. I had killed cats, and often beat them, especially during the mating season. I beat them, however, not because they are mating, but because their caterwauling stops me from sleeping. I see no need for all that yowling when they mate.

  Besides, since the black cat had killed the little rabbits, I had a more righteous cause for which to fight. Mother, I felt, was really too soft-hearted. That was why I made such an evasive, almost disapproving, answer.

  The Creator goes too far. I cannot but oppose him, although this may be abetting him instead. That black cat must not be allowed to lord it much longer on the low wall, I resolved. Then, involuntarily, my eye fell on a bottle of potassium cyanide tucked away in my case of books.

  October 1922

  ■ The Comedy of the Ducks

  Not long after the blind Russian poet Eroshenko brought his sixstringed guitar to Beijing, he complained to me, “Lonely, lonely! Like the loneliness in a desert!”

  This was no doubt his honest feeling, but not mine: I was an old resident. “Stay long in a room filled with iris and epidendrum, and you become oblivious of their scent.” I simply found the place noisy. But perhaps what I called noisy was what he called lonely.

  It did seem to me though that Beijing had no spring or autumn. Old residents said that the warmth underground had shifted northward, making the climate milder. Still, in my opinion there was no spring or autumn; the end of winter merged with the start of summer; and as soon as summer ended, winter started.

  One day, or rat
her one night, at this time when winter ended and summer began, happening to be free I called on Eroshenko. He stayed in Zhong Mi's home. By this hour the rest of the household was in bed, and the place was very quiet. Eroshenko was resting alone on his couch, his high brows slightly wrinkled under his long yellow hair as he thought of his travels in Burma, of summer nights in Burma.

  “On a night like this,” he said, “there is music all over Burma. Buildings, grass and trees, all have insects shrilling there. Those different sounds merge into a most extraordinary harmony. Now and then snakes hiss, but their hisses blend into the insect's shrilling....”

  He fell silent, as if eager to recapture that scent.

  There was nothing I could say. I had certainly never heard miraculous music of that kind in Beijing; so no matter how patriotic I was I could put up no defence, for although blind he was not deaf.

  “You haven't even frogs in Beijing....” he sighed.

  “Frogs? We do!” This sigh of his emboldened me to protest, “In summer, after the big rains, you can hear no end of frogs croaking in the gutters, because there are gutters all over Beijing.”

  “Oh....”

  A few days later, sure enough, I was proved right, as Eroshenko bought a dozen or so tadpoles. He put them into a miniature pool in the middle of the yard outside his window. Three feet long and two feet wide, it had been dug by Zhong Mi to serve as a lotus pool. Although no one had ever seen even half a lotus growing there, it was a most appropriate place to raise frogs.

  Clustered tadpoles swam through the water, and Eroshenko often went over to visit them. Once, the children told him, “Mr. Eroshenko, they've grown legs.” Then he smiled with pleasure and said, “Oh!”

  But raising a poolful of musicians was only one of Eroshenko's projects. A great advocate of self-sufficiency, he was all in favour of women keeping livestock and of men tilling the land. So whenever he met a good friend, he would advise him to go plant cabbages in his yard; and many a time he urged Mrs. Zhong Mi to keep bees, poultry, pigs, cows and camels. Subsequently, sure enough, many chicks appeared in the Zhong Mi household and flapped all over the yard, pecking it bare of the tender leaves on the ground. This was probably the outcome of his advice.

  After that, the countryman selling chicks often called, and each time they bought a few, because chicks are prone to forage for themselves and fall ill—they are seldom very long-lived. One of them, moreover, became the central figure in The Tragedy of the Chicks, the only story Eroshenko wrote in Beijing. One morning, unexpectedly, the countryman brought along some cheeping ducklings, but Mrs. Zhong Mi said she did not want them. Eroshenko hurried out too. They put a duckling in his hands, and it cheeped as he held it. He thought the little creature so lovable, he felt he had to buy it. He bought four in all, for eighty cash apiece.

  And those ducklings were really lovable, covered with golden down. Set on the ground they waddled about, calling to each other and always keeping together. Everybody praised them and said they must buy some loaches the next day to feed them. Eroshenko said, “You must let me pay for it.”

  Then he went off to a class, and the others dispersed. When presently Mrs. Zhong Mi took out some left-over rice for the ducklings, she heard a distant splashing and, running over to look, saw the four of them having a bath in the lotus pool. They were turning somersaults too and eating something. By the time she shooed them ashore, the water in the pool was muddy. When eventually the mud settled, all that could be seen were a few thin lotus roots. Not a single tadpole that had grown legs was left.

  “They've gone, Mr. Eroshenko, the baby frogs.” The smallest child made haste to announce this as soon as he came back that evening.

  “Eh? The frogs?”

  Mrs. Zhong Mi came out too, to report how the ducklings had eaten all the tadpoles.

  “Well, well!” he said.

  By the time the ducklings shed their down, Eroshenko had suddenly become so homesick for “Mother Russia” that he hastily set off for Chita.

  By the time frogs were croaking all around, the ducklings had grown into ducks, two white, two speckled, and they no longer cheeped but had started quacking. The lotus pool was too small for them to sport in; but luckily Zhong Mi's compound is so low-lying that each time it rained in summer it filled with water. Then they swam, dabbled in the water, flapped their wings and quacked joyfully.

  Now the end of summer has once more merged with the start of winter, and still there is no news of Eroshenko. There is no knowing where he is.

  Only four ducks are left, still quacking in the desert.

  October 1922

  ■ Village Opera

  In the past twenty years only twice have I been to see Chinese opera. During the first ten years I saw none, lacking both the wish and the opportunity. The two occasions on which I went were in the last ten years, but each time I left without seeing anything in it.

  The first time was in 1912 when I was new to Beijing. A friend told me Beijing had the best opera and that seeing it was an experience not to be missed. I thought it might be interesting to see an opera, especially in Beijing, and hurried in high spirits to some theatre, the name of which escapes me. The performance had already started. Even outside I could hear the beat of the drums. As we squeezed in, gaudy colours flashed into view, then I saw many heads in the auditorium; but when I collected myself to look around there were still a few empty seats in the middle. As I squeezed my way in to sit down, someone addressed me. Already there was such a buzzing in my ears that I had to listen hard to catch what he was saying— “Sorry, these seats are taken!”

  We withdrew to the back, but then a man with a glossy queue led us to one side and indicated an unoccupied place. This was a bench only a quarter the width of my thighs, but with legs two-thirds longer than mine. To begin with I hadn't the courage to get up there. Then, being reminded of some instrument of torture, with an involuntary shudder I fled.

  I had gone some way when suddenly I heard my friend's voice asking, “Well, what's the matter?” Looking over my shoulder I saw he had followed me out. “Why are you marching along without a word?” he inquired in great surprise.

  “I'm sorry,” I told him. “There's such a dingdong skirling in my ears, I didn't hear you.”

  Whenever I thought back to this it struck me as most strange and I supposed that the opera had been a very poor one—or else a theatre was no place for me.

  I forget in what year I made the second venture, but funds were being raised for flood victims in Hubei and Tan Xinpei was still alive. By paying two dollars for a ticket, you contributed money and could go to the Number One Theatre to see an opera with a cast made up for the most part of famous actors, one being Tan Xinpei simply had to be seen. At that, I forgot the disastrous dingdong skirling of a few years before and went to the theatre—probably half because that precious ticket had cost so much that I would feel uncomfortable unless I used it. I learned that Tan Xinpei made his appearance late in the evening, and the Number One Theatre was a modern one where you did not have to fight for your seat. That reassured me, and I waited till nine o'clock before setting out. To my surprise, just as before, it was full. There was hardly any standing-room and I had to squeeze into the crowd at the rear to watch an actor singing and old woman's part. He had a paper spill burning at each corner of his mouth and there was devil-soldier beside him. After racking my brains I guessed that this might be Maudgalyayana's mother, because the next to come on was a monk. Not recognizing the actor, I asked a fat gentleman squeezed in on my left who he was. “Gong Yunfu!” he said, throwing me a withering sidelong glance. My face burned with shame over my ignorant blunder, and I mentally resolved at all costs to ask no more questions. Then I watched a heroine and her maid sing, next an old man and some other characters I could not identify. After that, I watched a whole group fight a free-for-all, and after that two or three people fighting together—from after nine till ten, from ten till eleven, from eleven till eleven-thirty, from eleven-thirty
till twelve—but still there was no sign of Tan Xinpei.

  Never in my life have I waited so patiently for anything. But the wheezes of the fat gentleman next to me, the dingdong skirling, gonging and drumming on the stage, the whirling of gaudy colours, combined with the lateness of the hour, suddenly made me realize that this was no place for me. Mechanically turning round, I tried with might and main to shove my way out and felt the place behind me fill up at once—no doubt the elastic fat gentleman had expanded his right side into the space I vacated. With my retreat cut off, naturally there was nothing to do but push and push till at last I was out of the door. Apart from the rickshaws waiting for playgoers, there were practically no pedestrians in the street; but there were still a dozen or so people by the gate looking up at the programme, and another group not looking at anything who must, I thought, be waiting to watch the women come out after the show ended. And still no sign of Tan Xinpei....

  But the night air was so crisp, it really “seeped into my heart.” This seemed to be the first time I had known such good air in Beijing.

  I said goodbye to Chinese opera that night, never thinking about it again, and if by any chance I passed a theatre it meant nothing to me for in spirit we were long since poles apart.

  A few days ago, however, I happened to read a Japanese book—unfortunately I have forgotten the title and author, but it was about Chinese opera. One chapter made the point that Chinese opera is so full of gongs and cymbals, shouting and leaping, that it makes the spectators' heads swim and is quite unsuited for a theatre; if performed in the open and watched from a distance, it has its charm. I felt that this put into words what had remained unformulated in my mind, because as a matter of fact I clearly remembered seeing a really good opera in the country and it was under its influence, perhaps, that after coming to Beijing I went twice to the theatre. It is a pity that, somehow or other, the name of that book escapes me.