Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk Page 5

  The scholar was nearly frightened to death, of course; but the old monk told him not to worry and gave him a little box, assuring him that if he put this by his pillow he could go to sleep without fear.

  But though the scholar did as he was told, he could not sleep—and that is hardly surprising. At midnight, to be sure, the monster came! There sounded a hissing and rustling, as if of wind and rain, outside the door. Just as he was shaking with fright, however—whizz—a golden ray streaked up from beside his pillow. Then outside the door utter silence fell, and the golden ray flew back once more to its box.

  And after that? After that the old monk told him that this was a flying centipede which could suck out the brains of a snake—the Beautiful-Woman Snake had been killed by it.

  The moral of this was: If a strange voice calls your name, on no account answer.

  This story brought home to me the perils with which human life is fraught. When I sat outside on a summer night I often felt too apprehensive to look at the wall, and longed for a box with a flying centipede in it like the old monk's. This was often in my thoughts when I walked to the edge of the long grass in Hundred-Plant Garden. To this day I have never got hold of such a box, but neither have I encountered the brown snake or Beautiful-Woman Snake. Of course, strange voices often call my name; but they have never proved to belong to Beautiful-Woman Snakes.

  In winter the garden was relatively dull; as soon as it snowed, though, that was a different story. Imprinting a snowman(by pressing your body on the snow)or building snow Buddhas required appreciative audiences; and since this was a deserted garden where visitors seldom came, such games were out of place here. I was therefore reduced to catching birds. A light fall of snow would not do: the ground had to be covered for one or two days, so that the birds had gone hungry for some time. You swept a patch clear of snow, propped up a big bamboo sieve on a short stick, sprinkled some rice husks beneath it, then tied a long string to the stick and retired to a distance to hold it, waiting for birds to come. When they hopped under the sieve, you tugged the string and trapped them. Most of those caught were sparrows, but there were white-throated wagtails too, so wild that they died less than a day of captivity.

  It was Runtu's father who taught me this method, but I was not adept at it. Birds hopped under my sieve all right, yet when I pulled the string and ran over to look there was usually nothing there, and after long efforts I caught merely three or four. Runtu's father in only half the time could catch dozens which, stowed in his bag, would cheep and jostle each other. I asked him once the reason for my failure. With a quiet smile he said:

  “You're too impatient. You don't wait for them to get to the middle.”

  I don't know why my family decided to send me to school, or why they chose the school reputed to be the strictest in the town. Perhaps it was because I had spoiled the mud wall by uprooting milkwort, perhaps because I had thrown bricks into the Liangs'courtyard next door, perhaps because I had climbed the well coping to jump off it.... There is no means of knowing. At all events, this meant an end to my frequent visits to Hundred-Plant Garden. Adieu, my crickets! Adieu, my raspberries and climbing figs!

  A few hundred yards east of our house, across a stone bridge, was where my teacher lived. You went in through a black-lacquered bamboo gate, and the third room was the classroom. On the central wall hung the inscription Three-Flavour Study, and under this was a painting of a portly fallow deer lying beneath an old tree. In the absence of a tablet to Confucius, we bowed before the inscription and the deer. The first time for Confucius, the second time for our teacher.

  When we bowed the second time, our teacher bowed graciously back from the side of the room. A thin, tall old man with a grizzled beard, he wore large spectacles. And I had the greatest respect for him, having heard that he was the most upright, honourable and erudite man in our town.

  I forget where it was that I heard that Dongfang Shuo was another erudite scholar who knew of an insect called guai-zai, the incarnation of some unjustly slain man's ghost, which would vanish if you doused it with wine. I longed to learn the details of this story, but Mama Chang could not enlighten me, for she after all was not an erudite scholar. Now my chance had come. I could ask my teacher.

  “What is this insect guai-zai, sir?” I asked hastily at the end of a new lesson, just before I was dismissed.

  “I don't know.” He seemed not at all pleased. Indeed, he looked rather angry.

  Then I realized that students should not ask questions like this, but concentrate on studying. Being such a learned scholar, of course he must know the answer. When he said he did not know, it meant he would not tell me. Grown-ups often behaved like this, as I knew from many past experiences.

  So I concentrated on studying. At midday I practised calligraphy, in the evening I made couplets. For the first few days the teacher was very stern, later he treated me better; but by degrees he increased my reading assignment and the number of characters in each line of the couplets I was set to write, from three to five, and finally to seven.

  There was a garden behind Three-Flavour Study too. Although it was small, you could climb the terrace there to pick winter plum, or search the ground and the fragrant osmanthus tree for the moulted skins of cicadas. Best of all was catching flies to feed ants, for that did not make any noise. But it was no use too many of us slipping out into the garden at the same time or staying out too long, for then the teacher would shout from the classroom:

  “Where has everybody gone?”

  Then everyone would slip back one after the other: it was no use all going back together. He had a ferule which he seldom used, and a method of punishing students by making them kneel which again he seldom used. In general, he simply glared round for a while and shouted:

  “Get on with your reading!”

  Then all of us would read at the top of our voices, with a roar like a seething cauldron.

  We all read from different texts:

  “Is humanity far? When I seek it, it is here.”

  “To mock a toothless man, say: The dog's kennel gapes wide.”

  “On the upper ninth the dragon hides itself and bides its time.”

  “Poor soil, with good produce of the inferior sort interspersed with superior produce; its tribute, matting, oranges, pomelos.”

  ......

  The teacher read aloud too. Later, our voices grew lower and faded away. He alone went on declaiming as loudly as ever

  “At a sweep of his iron sceptre, all stand amazed... The golden goblet brims over, but a thousand cups will not intoxicate him...”

  I suspected this to be the finest literature, for whenever he reached this passage he always smiled, threw back his head a little and shook it, bending his head further and further back.

  When our teacher was completely absorbed in his reading, that was most convenient for us. Some boys would then stage puppet shows with paper helmets on their fingers. I used to draw, using what we called “Jingchuan paper” to trace the illustrations to various novels, just as we traced calligraphy. The more books I read, the more illustrations I traced. I never became a good student but I made not a little progress as an artist, the best sets I copied being two big volumes of illustration, one from Suppressing the Bandits, the other from Pilgrimage to the West. Later, needing ready money, I sold these to a rich classmate whose father ran a shop selling the tinsel coins used at funerals. I hear he is now the shop manager himself and will soon have risen to the rank of one of the local gentry. Those tracings of mine must have vanished long ago.

  September 18

  ■ Father's Illness

  It is probable over ten years now since this story of a well-known doctor was the talk of the town in S—:

  He charged one dollar forty a visit, ten dollars for an emergency call, double the amount for a night call, and double again for a trip outside the city. One night the daughter of a family living outside the city fell dangerously ill. They sent to ask him out there and, because he ha
d more money at the time than he knew what to do with, he refused to go for less than a hundred dollars. They had to agree to this. Once there, though, he simply gave the girl a perfunctory looking over.

  “It isn't serious,” he said.

  Then he made out prescription, took his hundred dollars, and left.

  Apparently the patient's family was very rich, for the next day they asked him out there again. The master of the house met him at the door with a smile.

  “Yesterday evening we gave her your medicine, Doctor,” he said, “and she's much better. So we've asked you to have another look at her.”

  He took him as before into the bedroom, and a maid drew the patient's hand outside the bed curtain. The doctor placed his fingers on the wrist and found it icy cold, without any pulse.

  “Hmm.” He nodded. “I understand this illness.”

  Quite calmly he walked to the table, took out a prescription form, and wrote on it: “Pay the bearer one hundred silver dollars.”

  Beneath he signed his name and affixed his seal.

  “This illness looks rather serious, Doctor,” said the master of the house, behind him. “I think the medicine should be a little more potent.”

  “Very well,” said the doctor. And he wrote another prescription: “Pay the bearer two hundred silver dollars.”

  Beneath he signed his name and affixed his seal again.

  This done, the master of the house put away the prescription and saw him politely out.

  I had dealings with this famous physician for two whole years, because he came every other day to attend my father. Although by that time very well known, he had not yet more money than he knew what to do with; still, his fee was already one dollar forty a visit. In large towns today a ten-dollar fee is not considered exorbitant; but in those days one dollar forty was a great sum, by no means easy to raise—especially when it fell due every other day.

  He probably was unique in some respects. It was generally agreed that his prescriptions were unusual. I know nothing about medicine: what struck me was how hard his “adjuvants” were to find. Each new prescription kept me busy for some time. First I had to buy the medicine, then look for the adjuvant. He never used such common ingredients as two slices of fresh ginger, or ten bamboo leaves minus the tips. At best it was reed roots, and I had to go to the river to dig them up; and when it came to sugar-cane which had seen three years of frost, I would have to search for two or three days at the least. But, strange to say, I believe my quest was always successful in the end.

  It was generally agreed that herein lay his magic. There once was a patient whom no drugs could cure, but when he met a certain Dr. Ye Tianshi, all this doctor did was to add phoenix-tree leaves as the adjuvant to the old prescription. With only one dose the patient was cured. “Medicine is a matter of the mind.” Because it was autumn then, and the phoenix tree is the first to feel the approach of autumn, where all other drugs had failed, Dr. Ye could now use the spirit of autumn. When spirit reacted on spirit, the patient was thus.... Although this was not clear to me, I was thoroughly impressed and realized that all efficacious drugs must be difficult to get. Those who want to become immortals even have to risk their lives to go deep into the mountains to pluck the herb of long life.

  After two years of his visits, I gradually came to know this famous physician fairly well; indeed we were almost friends. Father's dropsy grew daily worse, till it looked as if he would have to keep to his bed, and by degrees I lost faith in such remedies as sugar-cane which had seen three years of frost, and was not nearly as zealous as before in finding and preparing adjuvants. One day just at this time, when the doctor called, after inquiring after my father's illness he told us very frankly:

  “I've used all the knowledge I have. There is a Dr. Chen Lianhe here, who knows more than I do. I advise you to consult him. I'll write you a letter of introduction. This illness isn't serious, though. It's just that he can cure it much more quickly....”

  The whole household seemed rather unhappy that day, but I saw him out as respectfully as ever to his sedan-chair. When I went in again, I found my father looking very put out, talking it over with everyone and declaring that there was probably no hope for him. Because this doctor had treated the illness for two years to no purpose, and knew the patient too well, he could not help feeling rather embarrassed now that things had reached a crisis: that was why he had recommended someone else, washing his hands of the whole affair. But what else could we do? It was a fact that the only other well-known doctor in our town was Chen Lianhe. So the next day we engaged his services.

  Chen Lianhe's fee was also one dollar forty. But whereas our first well-known doctor's face was plump and round, his was plump and long: this was one great difference between them. Their use of medicine was different too. Our first well-known doctor's prescriptions could be prepared by one person, but no single person could cope satisfactorily with Dr. Chen's because his prescriptions always included a special pill or powder or an extraspecial adjuvant.

  Not once did he use reed roots or sugar-cane that had seen three years of frost. Most often it was “a pair of crickets,” with a note in small characters at the side: “They must be an original pair, from the same burrow.” So it seems that even insects must be chaste; if they marry again after losing their mates they forfeit even the right to be used as medicine. This task, however, presented no difficulties to me. In Hundred-Plant Garden I could catch ten pairs easily. I tied them with a thread and dropped them alive into the boiling pan, and that was that. But then there was “ten ardisia berries.” Nobody knew what there were. I asked the pharmacy, I asked some peasants, I asked the vendor of herb medicines, I asked old people, I asked scholars, I asked a carpenter: but they all simply shook their heads. Last of all I remembered that distant great-uncle of mine, the old fellow who liked to grow flowers and trees, and hurried over to ask him. Sure enough, he knew: the ardisia was a shrub which grew at the foot of trees deep in the mountain. It had small red berries like coral beads, and was usually known as Never-Grow-Up.

  You wear out iron shoes in hunting round,

  When all the time it's easy to be found!

  Now we had the adjuvant, but there was still a special pill: broken-drum bolus. Broken-drum boluses were made from the leather of worn-out drums. Since one name for “dropsy” is “drum-tight,” the leather from wornout drums can naturally cure it. Gangyi of the Qing Dynasty, who hated “foreign devils,” acted on the same principle when he prepared to fight them by training a corps of “tiger angels,” for the tigers would be able to eat the sheep, and the angels could subdue the devils. Unfortunately there was only one shop in the whole town which sold this miraculous drug, and that was nearly two miles from our house. However, this was not like the case of the ardisia which we groped in the dark to find. After making out his prescription Dr. Chen Lianhe gave me earnest and detailed instructions as to where to obtain it.

  “I have one medicine,” Dr. Chen told my father once, “which applied to the tongue would do you good, I'm sure. For the tongue is the intelligent sprout of the heart.... It is not expensive either, only two dollars a box....”

  My father thought for some time, then shook his head.

  “This present treatment may not prove too effective,” said Dr. Chen another day. “I think we might ask a diviner if there is not some avenging spirit behind this.... A doctor can cure diseases but not fate, isn't that correct? Of course, this may be something that happened in a previous existence...”

  My father thought for some time, then shook his head.

  All the best doctors can bring the dead to life, as we know from the placards hanging outside their houses which we see when we walk past. But now a concession has been made, for physicians themselves admit: “Western doctors are best at surgery, while Chinese doctors are best at internal medicine.” But there was no Western-trained doctor in S—at that time. Indeed it had never occurred to anyone that there was such a thing in the world as a Western doctor
. Hence, whenever anyone fell ill, all we could do was ask the direct descendants of the Yellow Emperor and Qi Bo to cure him. In the days of the Yellow Emperor, wizards and doctors were one; thus right down to the present his disciples can still see ghosts and believe that “the tongue is the intelligent sprout of the heart.” This is the “fate” of Chinese, which not even famous physicians are able to cure.

  When he would not apply the efficacious remedy on his tongue and could not think of any avenging spirit he had wronged, naturally it was no use my father simply eating broken-drum boluses for over a hundred days. These drum pills proved unable to beat the dropsy, and finally my father lay at his last gasp on the bed. We invited Dr. Chen Lianhe once more—an emergency call this time, for ten silver dollars. Once more, he calmly wrote out a prescription. He discontinued the broken-drum boluses, however, and the adjuvant was too mysterious either; so before very long this medicine was ready. But when we poured it between my father's lips, it trickled out again from one side of his mouth.

  That ended my dealings with Dr. Chen Lianhe; but I sometimes saw him in the street being carried swiftly by in his fast sedan-chair with three carriers. I hear he is still in good health, practising medicine and editing a paper on traditional Chinese medicine, engaging in a struggle with those Western-trained doctors who are good for nothing but surgery.

  There is indeed a slight difference between the Chinese and Western outlook. I understand that when a filial son in China knows that his parents' end is approaching, he buys several catties of ginseng, boils it, and gives it to them, in the hope of prolonging their lives a few more days or even half a day. One of my professors, whose subject was medicine, told me that a doctor's duty was to cure those who could be cured, and see to it that those who could not die without suffering. But this professor, of course, was Western-trained.