Call to Arms Page 5

  She huddled there on the ground, and the rickshaw man stopped. As I did not believe the old woman was hurt and as no one else had seen us, I thought this halt of his uncalled-for, liable to land him in trouble and hold me up.

  “It's all right,” I said. “Go on.”

  He paid no attention—he may not have heard—but set down the shafts, took the old woman's arm and gently helped her up.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I hurt myself falling.”

  I thought: I saw how slowly you fell, how could you be hurt? Putting on an act like this is simply disgusting. The rickshaw man asked for trouble, and now he's got it. He'll have to find his own way out.

  But the rickshaw man did not hesitate for a minute after hearing the old woman's answer. Still holding her arm, he helped her slowly forward. Rather puzzled by this I looked ahead and saw a police-station. Because of the high wind, there was no one outside. It was there that the rickshaw man was taking the old woman.

  Suddenly I had the strange sensation that his dusty retreating figure had in that instant grown larger. Indeed, the further he walked the larger he loomed, until I had to look up to him. At the same time he seemed gradually to be exerting a pressure on me which threatened to overpower the small self hidden under my fur-lined gown.

  Almost paralysed at that juncture I sat there motionless, my mind a blank, until a policeman came out. Then I got down from the rickshaw.

  The policeman came up to me and said, “Get another rickshaw. He can't take you any further.”

  On the spur of the moment I pulled a handful of coppers from my coat pocket and handed them to the policeman. “Please give him this,” I said.

  The wind had dropped completely, but the road was still quiet. As I walked along thinking, I hardly dared to think about myself. Quite apart from what had happened earlier, what had I meant by that handful of coppers? Was it a reward? Who was I to judge the rickshaw man? I could give myself no answer.

  Even now, this incident keeps coming back to me. It keeps distressing me and makes me try to think about myself. The politics and the fighting of those years have slipped my mind as completely as the classics I read as a child. Yet this small incident keeps coming back to me, often more vivid than in actual life, teaching me shame, spurring me on to reform, and imbuing me with fresh courage and fresh hope.

  July 1920

  ■ The Story of Hair

  On Sunday morning, I turned over a page of my calendar and looked at the next one. Taking a second look I remarked, “Why, it's the tenth of October—so today is the Double Tenth Festival. But there's no mention of it here!”

  Mr. N, one of my seniors, had just dropped in for a chat. Hearing this, he retorted irately, “They're right. They've forgotten—so what? You remember—so what?”

  This Mr. N is rather irascible. He often loses his temper for no reason and makes tactless remarks. At such times, I generally let him talk to himself, without putting in a word. After he has finished his monologue, that's that.

  “The Double Tenth Festival in Beijing strikes me as admirable,” he observed. “In the morning a policeman comes to your gate to order, ‘Put up a flag.’ ‘A flag, right!’ Most families lackadaisically bring out a national flag, and that cloth of many colours is hung up till the evening, when they take it down and shut the gate. A few may forget and leave it up till the next morning.

  “They have forgotten the anniversary, and the anniversary has forgotten them.

  “I'm one of those who forget it. If I were to commemorate it, all that happened before and after the first Double Tenth would come back to my mind and upset me.

  “Many faces from the past float before my eyes. Some young people kept on the go, hard as it was, for over ten years, till a bullet in the back ended their lives. Others, who weren't shot, were tortured for a month or more in jail. Yet others with high ideals suddenly vanished without a trace—no one knows where their corpses are.

  “They were scoffed at, cursed, persecuted and betrayed all their lives by society. Now, little by little, their graves have crumbled away in oblivion.

  “I can't bear to commemorate such things.

  “Let's talk about more pleasant memories.”

  Suddenly N smiled. Reaching up to stroke his head he went on loudly, “What pleased me most was the fact that, after the first Double Tenth, people stopped laughing at me or cursing me in the street.

  “You know, my friend, in China hair is our pride and our bane. How many people since ancient times have suffered because of it, all to no purpose!

  “Our earliest ancestors don't seem to have taken hair too seriously. Judging by the criminal code, what counted most was naturally the head, so beheading was the worst punishment. Next in importance was the sexual organ, so castration and sterilization was another fearful punishment. As for having one's hair cut off, that hardly counted; but when you come to think of it, goodness knows how many people must have been downtrodden all their lives because they had shaved heads.

  “When we talked about revolution, a lot was said about the ten days in Yangzhou and the Jiading massacre, but actually that was just a subterfuge. In fact, the Chinese people in those days revolted not because the country was on the verge of ruin, but because they had to wear queues.

  “By the time all refractory subjects had been killed off and the survivors had died of old age, the queue was here to stay. But then Hong and Yang made trouble. My grandmother told me how hard it was in those days for common citizens: those who didn't shave off the hair over their temples were killed by government troops, those with queues were killed by the Long Hairs.

  “Hair is insignificant, yet I've no idea how many Chinese suffered or died just on account of it.”

  N fixed his eyes, reflectively, on the rafter.

  “Then, just fancy, it was my turn. Hair landed me in trouble.

  “I went abroad to study, so cut off my queue. Not for any mysterious reason, just because it was too inconvenient. To my surprise, that made me an object of loathing to a few classmates who had coiled up their queues. Our supervisor was furious too. He threatened to stop my government grant and send me back to China.

  “A few days later, though, that supervisor fled, as his queue had been cut off by other people. Among them was Zou Rong, who wrote The Revolutionary Army. For this reason he was not allowed to go on studying abroad and went back to Shanghai, where he subsequently died in a western jail.

  “A few years later, my family had become so badly off that unless I found a job I would have starved, so I had to go back to China too. As soon as I reached Shanghai I bought an artificial queue, which then cost two yuan, and took it home with me. My mother said nothing about it, but it was the first thing scrutinized by all the other people I met; and once they found out it was false, with a scornful laugh they adjudged me guilty of a capital offence. One of my own family planned to indict me, but he later refrained from doing this for fear the rebels of the revolutionary party might succeed.

  “I thought, a sham is less straightforward than the truth so I discarded that artificial queue, and went out dressed in a Western suit.

  “Wherever I went I heard jeers and abuse. Some people even tagged after me cursing, ‘Lunatic!’ ‘Fake foreign devil!’

  “Then I stopped wearing a suit and wore a long gown, but they cursed me harder than ever.

  “It was then, at a dead-end, that I took to carrying a cane, and after I had given several people a good trouncing, they gradually stopped cursing me. But if I went to some new place where I hadn't beaten anyone, I was still cursed.

  “To this day, I keep remembering how wretched this made me. While studying in Japan, I read in some Japanese paper an account of Dr. Honda's travels in the South Seas and China. Being unable to speak Chinese or Malaysian, or to understand the questions asked him, how could he travel? He expressed himself by brandishing a cane, for this was a language everyone understood! This had incensed me for days, yet here was I no
w unconsciously doing the same, and all those people understood....

  “At the start of the Xuantong era, when I was dean of our local middle school, my colleagues kept at a distance from me, officialdom mounted a strict watch over me. I felt as if sitting all day in an ice-house, or standing by an execution ground. And the sole reason for this was my lack of a queue!

  “One day, without warning, some students came into my room. They said, ‘Sir, we want to cut off our queues.’

  “I told them, ‘Don't!’

  “ ‘Is it better to have queues or not?’

  “ ‘Better not.’

  “ ‘Then why tell us not to cut them?’

  “ ‘It's not worth it. Better not cut them off—wait a while.’

  “They said nothing but marched out, pursing their lips. In the end, however, they cut them.

  “Ha, what a to-do! What an uproar! But I simply turned a blind eye and let those shorn heads into the assembly hall together with all the queues.

  “But this queue-cutting proved contagious. Three days later, six students in the normal school suddenly cut off their queues too, and that evening they were expelled. They could neither remain in the school nor go home. Not till a month or more after the first Double Tenth did they stop being branded as criminals.

  “And I? It was the same. In the winter of 1912 I came to Beijing, and was still cursed several times. Only after those who had cursed me had their queues cut off by the police did I stop getting cursed; but I didn't go to the country.”

  N had been looking very smug. Now suddenly his face fell.

  “Nowadays, idealists like you are calling on girls to cut their hair. You're going to make many more people suffer for nothing! Aren't there already girls who can't take the school entrance examinations, or who are expelled because they've bobbed their hair?

  “Reform? Where are your weapons? Education for workers? Where are your factories?

  “Let girls keep their long hair and marry, becoming daughters-in-law. Forgetting everything they can be happy. If you remind them of that talk of equality and freedom, they'll be wretched all their lives.

  “Borrowing the words of Artzybashev, let me ask you: you subscribe to a golden age for posterity, but what have you to give these people themselves?

  “Ah, until lashed on the back by the Creator's whip, China will always remain the way she is, absolutely refusing to change a single hair on her body!

  “Since you have no poisonous fangs, why paste that big sign ‘Viper’ on your forehead, inciting beggars to kill you?...”

  N was talking more and more wildly. However, as soon as he noticed my lack of interest, he shut his mouth, stood up and picked up his hat.

  “Going home?” I asked.

  “Yes, it's going to rain,” he answered.

  I saw him out in silence.

  As he put on his hat he said, “So long! Excuse me for disturbing you. Fortunately, tomorrow isn't the Double Tenth, so we can forget all about it.”

  October 1920

  ■ Storm in a Teacup

  On the mud flat by the river, the sun's bright yellow rays were gradually fading. The parched leaves of the tallow trees beside the river were at last able to take breath, while below them a few striped mosquitoes danced and droned. The smoke from the peasants' kitchen chimneys along the riverside dwindled, as the women and children sprinkled the ground before their doors with water and set out little tables and low stools. Everyone knew it was time for the evening meal.

  The old folk and the men sat on the low stools, fanning themselves with plantain-leaf fans as they chatted. The children raced about or squatted under the tallow trees playing with pebbles. The women brought out steamed black dried rape and yellow rice, piping hot. Some literati passing in a pleasure boat waxed quite lyrical at the sight.

  “Such carefree tranquillity!” they exclaimed. “How idyllic!”

  However, these literati were wide of the mark, not having heard what Old Mrs. Ninepounder was saying. Old Mrs. Ninepounder was in a towering temper, whacking the legs of her stool with a tattered plantain fan.

  “Seventy-nine years I've lived, that's enough,” she declared. “I'm sick of watching this family go to the dogs.... Better die and be done with it. Just one minute to supper time, yet still eating roast beans—do you want to eat us out of house and home?”

  Her great-granddaughter Sixpounder was just running towards her with a handful of beans, but seeing the situation she flew straight to the river bank and hid herself behind a tallow tree. Sticking out her small head with its twin tufts, she hooted, “Old Won't-die!”

  Old Mrs. Ninepounder for all her great age was not deaf. She did not, however, catch what the child had called and went on muttering to herself, “Yes, indeed. Each generation is worse than the last.”

  It was the somewhat unusual custom in this village for mothers to weigh their children at birth and to call them the number of pounds they happened to weigh. Since Old Mrs. Ninepounder's celebration of her fiftieth birthday she had gradually become a fault-finder, for ever complaining that in her young days the summer had not been so hot nor the beans so tough as now. In a word, there was something wrong with the present-day world. Why else had Sixpounder weighed three pounds less than her greatgrandfather and one pound less than her father, Sevenpounder? Surely this was irrefutable evidence. So she reiterated emphatically, “Yes, indeed. Each generation is worse than the last.”

  Her granddaughter-in-law, Mrs. Sevenpounder, had just brought out a basket of rice. Plonking this down on the table, she said crossly, “There you go again, granny! Sixpounder weighed six pounds five ounces at birth, didn't she? Your family scales weigh light: eighteen ounces to the pound. With proper sixteen-ounce scales, Sixpounder would have weighed over seven pounds. I don't believe grandfather and father really weighed a full nine or eight pounds either. I dare say they were weighed with fourteen ounce scales....”

  “Each generation is worse than the last.”

  Before Mrs. Sevenpounder could answer, she saw her husband emerge from the top of the lane and rounded on him instead.

  “Why so late back, you zombie? I thought you must be dead, keeping us waiting all this time for supper!”

  Although a villager, Sevenpounder had always wanted to better himself. For three generations—grandfather, father and son—not a man in his family had handled a hoe. Like his father before him he worked on a boat which left Luzhen every morning for the town, returning to Luzhen in the evening. As a result he knew pretty well all that was going on; where, for instance, the thunder god had blasted a centipede spirit, or where a virgin had given birth to a demon. In the village he was quite a personage. Still he stuck to the country custom of not lighting a lamp for supper in the summer, so if he came home late he rated a scolding.

  In one hand Sevenpounder held a speckled bamboo pipe over six feet long with an ivory mouthpiece and a pewter bowl. He walked slowly over, his head bent, and sat on one of the low stools. Sixpounder seized this chance to slip out and sit down beside him, calling “Dad!” But her father made no answer.

  “Each generation is worse than the last,” repeated Old Mrs. Ninepounder.

  Sevenpounder slowly raised his head and sighed. “There's an emperor again on the Dragon Throne.”

  Mrs. Sevenpounder looked blank for a moment. Suddenly taking in the news she cried, “Good! That means another general amnesty, doesn't it?”

  Sevenpounder sighed again. “I've no queue.”

  “Does the emperor insist on queues?”

  “He does.”

  “How do you know?” she demanded in dismay.

  “Everybody in Prosperity Tavern says so.”

  At that Mrs. Sevenpounder realized instinctively that things were in a bad way, because Prosperity Tavern was a place where you could pick up all the news. She threw a glance at Sevenpounder's shaved head, unable to hold back her anger, blaming him, hating him, resenting him. Then, abruptly reduced to despair, she filled a bowl with ric
e and slapped it down before him. “Hurry up and eat. Pulling a long face won't grow a queue for you, will it?”

  The sun had withdrawn its last rays, the darkling water was cooling off again. From the mud flat rose a clatter of bowls and chopsticks, and the backs of all the diners were beaded with sweat. Mrs. Sevenpounder had finished three bowls of rice when she happened to look up. At once her heart started pounding. Through the tallow leaves she could see the short plump figure of Seventh Master Zhao approaching from the one-plank bridge. And he was wearing his long sapphire-blue glazed cotton gown.

  Seventh Master Zhao was the owner of Abundance Tavern in the next village, the only notable within a radius of thirty li who also had some learning. And because of this learning there was about him a whiff of the musty odour of a departed age. He owned a dozen volumes of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms annotated by Jin Shengtan, which he would sit poring over character by character. Not only could he tell you the names of the Five Tiger Generals, he even knew that Huang Zhong was also known as Hansheng, and Ma Chao as Mengqi. After the Revolution he had coiled his queue on the top of his head like a Taoist priest, and he often remarked with a sigh that if only Zhao Yun were still alive the empire would not be in such a bad way.

  Mrs. Sevenpounder's eyesight was good. She had noticed at once that Seventh Master Zhao no longer looked like a Taoist. He had shaved the front of his head and let his queue down. From this she knew beyond a doubt that an emperor had ascended the throne, that queues were required again, and that Sevenpounder must be in great danger. For Seventh Master Zhao did not wear his long glazed cotton gown for nothing. During the last three years he had only worn it twice: once when his enemy Pock-marked Asi fell ill, once when First Master Lu who had wrecked his wineshop died. This was the third time, and it undoubtedly meant that something had happened to rejoice his heart and bode ill for his enemies.