Jake Maroc - Shan Part 14

He felt the rus.h.i.+ng of the wind in his face and hair. He heard the thrumming of the horse's hooves, felt the complex coordination of muscle, bone and tendon as the great creature carried him along on its back.

He opened his eyes, and almost pa.s.sed out, as the first wave of vertigo swept over him. The world rushed by in a blur of brown and green and blue.

The sense of rapid movement without a vehicle's intervening walls and floorboards turned Zilin's stomach upside down. As a child suffering with a high fever and uncontrollable shakes, he had vomited up the warm fish soup his mother had fed him. He had been old enough and aware enough through the gauzy layers of his illness to feel the shame at wasting the food that other members of the family had foregone for him.

Now, as he felt the nauseating contractions in his lower belly, he became terrified that he would do again as an adult what he had promised himself as a child he would never do a second time. His loss of face would be incalculable a and to a barbarian. It was unthinkable!

So he closed his eyes and prayed to Buddha to calm his tumbling innards enough to keep his gorge down. Toward this end as well he began to exert the power of his inner discipline. He concentrated on his inner core, seeking the place where his qi resided.

Zilin was not yet as well acquainted with the extraordinary power of his qi as he would be in the coming decades. It was still an essentially raw and primitive source over which he exerted only sporadic and limited control.

Now he made his connection to a place known as shuijing ban de xiao-lu, the crystal path. It was a place midway between the conscious and the unconscious mind, a place where contemplation couldwith experience and practicebe transformed into action, deed, positive strategy. It was a s.h.i.+ning field with a vantage point on the world akin to no other. From its heart one could discern the strategy of one's foes, formulate one's own strategy by a.s.sessing the whole rather than a series of disa.s.sociated pieces. Within the aura of shuijing ban de xiao-lu everything was seen to fit into everything else, the connections like glimmering skeins, illuminated by an inner-directed light. It was qi, intrinsic energy, but it was something more as well.

Without quite knowing how, Zilin reached out and gained the crystal path. Now he was no longer afraid. Rather, he was connected with the powerful beast beneath him; he could see it for what it was: a mighty engine.

He felt with all of his senses the superb coordination of this animal and its power became his. Zilin's eyes opened and his heart expanded to the elation such a swift pa.s.sage through the world could bring.

High atop the galloping stallion Zilin embraced the streaming foliage all about him. He flew with the plovers and skylarks as they raced just above the treetops, below fleecy scudding clouds. He bounded through forest pathways, an animal on the move. He was one with the universe.

Much later, they rested in a glade beside a sparkling stream where water spiders skidded and frogs watched from the indolent shade of overhanging ferns. The buzzing of the insects was thick, the sound somehow applying itself to the honeyed sunlight, lending it a heavy, aqueous quality.

At their backs, giant Jinyun Shan, the Red Silk Mountain, rose on long, steeply sloping ridges, hairy with growth. The peculiar scent of the tea plants, young green shoots not yet ready for the harvest, laced the air.

The horse was gone, back at its mundane but crucial labor for the Pu family. Still, they smelled its essence on them, a rich musk that wafted like perfume from a row of jasmine.

Ross Davies pulled out his silver case, lit a cigarette. He squinted as he stared out into the deep golden light that lay along the slopes like a carpet. "One of these days," he said, "I must really give these up." He smoked leisurely, truly enjoying it; Zilin knew that he never would quit.

"How is it," Davies said, "that you never ask questions? I ask questions all the time; that's what I was taught to do. This cigarette case was a present from my father, a kind of graduation present. He was the first person who taught me to ask questions. How do you learn anything if you don't ask questions?"

"Perhaps," Zilin said gently, "there are other ways to learn." He watched an ant make its laborious way toward them. "I do so by observation."

"That's what I don't understand. In China, I've done my share of looking but I'm none the wiser for it. There are still so many things I can't fathom."

"That may be because you look but you do not observe. The two are hardly the same."

Davies sat up. "How d'you mean?"

Zilin pointed. "Take this ant, for example. What do you see?"

Davies shrugged, watching as the ant approached the line of his outstretched legs. It began to climb his trouser and he brushed it off. "All I see is an annoying insect."

"Now you must observe him, Mr. Davies. Watch him with your heart instead of with your eyes."

"I haven't the vaguest idea what you mean by that."

"If we were back in our courtyard at Number Fifty Zengjiayan, beginning our tai chi, you would not say that."

"Mental discipline is one thing"

"Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Davies," Zilin said, "but mental discipline is not merely for certain times in one's life. One does not turn it on and off like running water. Mental discipline must be employed at every moment if one is to take advantage of life."

"But what does that have to do with an ant?"

"You see how it comes back from the tremendous blow you have dealt it?" Davies nodded and Zilin continued. "Now it approaches the spot where it was defeated before. What does it do?"

"It climbs."

"Yes, Mr. Davies. And without hesitation. To the ant, you are shan, the mountain. Imagine yourself climbing Jinyun Shan, Mr. Davies. Imagine further that you get to a certain spot and a storm of furious proportions throws you back down the mountainside. What will you do? Will you retreat? Or advance?"

"I'm a man, not an insect, s.h.i.+ tong zhi," Davies said. "I possess the ability to reason. This creature merely knows that it must go forward, even if that means being killed by some unknown force." Here he reached out and, taking the ant between his thumb and forefinger, crushed it into dust.

"Ah, Mr. Davies," Zilin shook his head, "tell me how you can have so much love and compa.s.sion for the stallion you just rode, and yet have none for the ant you have destroyed."

"How can an ant be useful to me?" Davies said.

"I see. That is your criterion for life and death." Zilin stared at the American. "Tell me, then, Mr. Davies. Would you kill me if you found that I was not going to be useful to you?"

"Don't be ridiculous!"

Zilin rose, "It is not I who has been ridiculous, Mr. Davies." He began to walk off.

Davies jumped up, came after him. "I have offended you, s.h.i.+ tong zhi," he said, "Please excuse me, though I confess I have no idea what I have done."

"That, I believe, is the heart of the matter." Zilin stopped and contemplated the other. "What is of concern to me is whether or not you can be made to learn."

Davies bridled visibly. "Like an animal."

"Or, to be blunt, a barbarian. Quite correct, Mr. Davies."

Davies blinked his large blue eyes. "I suppose I should be offended."

"Don't be. Most of my brethren believe that the faan gwai loh are without the ability to learn a that they can never become civilized."

I see.

"No, Mr. Davies, I regret to say that you do not." Zilin sighed. "You speak without sufficient thought; you see without observing. In short, you go through life as if the world were your own private playground, taking this and that at will, at your own pleasure, as if there were no other consequences involved.

"You are here but this is not your land. You are an alien and you are unwanted. You are feared, hated, at times barely tolerated. I should not have to remind you of this. It is humiliating for both of us."

Davies's boyish cheeks were flaming red and there was a look of pain and hurt in his eyes. "d.a.m.n you," he said. He was shaking with rage. "You certainly are a b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Zilin said nothing. His ears took in the sounds of the birds twittering, insects humming, the wind ruffling the treetops. These were sweet sounds; they were the sounds of life.

In time he said, "I meant what I said before. I think you can learn. I think, Mr. Davies, that you possess the ability to make your time in China constructive. This is, I believe, exceptionally rare in a Westerner, and I would give it the maximum amount of thought were I you."

"But you're not me, s.h.i.+." Davies's voice was strained with anger. He took out a sidearm from a hidden pocket. It was not particularly large but Zilin judged that its discharge would be lethal just the same. "You could never know what it's like to be me; to be Caucasian. You've got yellow skin and slanted eyes and you talk a bunch of nonsensedangerous nonsense, if you go by what's said by some mighty powerful people back home."

He c.o.c.ked the hammer of the gun. "I could kill you now just as easily as I killed that ant. How do you like that for power?"

Zilin shook his head. "What you present to me here is not power, Mr. Davies. It is force. The two are often confused and that is most often when lives are lost."

"Stupid talk!"

"Is that so? If you kill me, Mr. Davies, you are defeated. Why? Because you have lost me."

"On the contrary, s.h.i.+. I will have killed you, taken your life. I will have exerted my power over you in the ultimate fas.h.i.+on."

"No, you will have done nothing more than you accomplished with the ant. A uselessand far worse, a careless act. You will exert a tangible power over me if you protect me, keep me alive and become my friend. Then you will have recruited me to your cause or, at the very least, obtained an ally in times of trial. Then you will have acted with forethought and courage. So your strategy will be created."

For a long time the two stood facing one another. Between them the gleaming barrel of the pistol, the hammer c.o.c.ked, as ready as an adder to strike. An ethereal stillness had come between them. For years afterward, Ross Davies would swear that he felt a tangible presence spring up in that glade on the lush slope of Jinyun Shan. He had, he would tell his drinking mates, been choked by rage and humiliation. He could admit to himself only much later that Zilin's words had struck him to the very core of his being. At the time, however, he only knew that he had been made to feel small and insignificant. All the anger he had been bottling up at his inability to puncture the tensile fabric of this strange and fascinating country had welled up, exploding in the face of Zilin's admonition.

It was most odd, Davies would think in years to come, just how close he had been to pulling the trigger. An army man, he knew well the draw of the killing urge and he felt it now as strongly as if a fire had been lit along the mountainside. The smoke he scented was the smell of his own ego being singed.

It was at this precise instant that the peculiar stillness crept over him. It was as if he felt the heartbeat of the earth upon which he stood rising up through him, entering his body by what means he knew not, suffusing his bloodstream.

He thought of tai chi, of the rivers of silver thought that, like strings from a master puppeteer's fingers, lifted leg and arm, turned torso and neck, locking him into the rhythms of the rising day.

In a moment, he blinked. He stared down at the weapon in his hand and, abruptly aghast at its portent, dropped it into the thick gra.s.s.

"What happened?"

It was night. Darkness crept along the slopes of Jinyun Shan as, hours before, sunlight had slid away before the blue of the lengthening shadows.

One of the Pu girls, the one who had asked about the fire in the faan gwai Soft's hair, had brought them food: a sharing of the gifts Zilin had given the family, and which they could not now refuse.

They had eaten in silence, concentrating on the workings of their mouths and the tastes of the food. It was only after they had put aside their bowls and chopsticks that Davies had spoken.

"There are some questions," Zilin said quietly, "that require no answers."

"But"

"You must learn to accept mysteries, Mr. Davies. Often enough life does not enjoy giving up answers to its enigmas." He looked up. Through the inky blackness of the leaves the stars glittered in blue-white splendor. It had been some time, he realized, since he had seen such a sight. For far too long the stars.h.i.+ne had been blurred and dimmed by the vapors of war.

"I will tell you a secret, Mr. Davies. It is a mystery how I enjoyed myself so much this afternoon."

"Did you really like riding?"

"I did, indeed."

The cicadas' clatter was magnified by the vast wall of the mountainside.

"They think you're the Devil incarnate, you know." Davies's voice seemed very close in the night, as if he were whispering in Zilin's ear. "In the Bible's Book of Revelations, it speaks of the Beast. According to Allan Dulles you are the Beast. You and Mao and all the rest of the Communists."

"Is Mr. Dulles the only one who thinks so?"

"Good G.o.d, no. A great many wealthy and influential people agree with him. Henry Luce, Bill Donovan, Henry Ford, the lot of them." Davies turned his head. "Do those names mean anything to you?"

"I believe they do, yes." Zilin pondered whether to ask the question. He felt the thunder of the horse still beneath him, his connection to it. His closeness to Ross Davies. And, of course, he thought of the stillness that had overcome both of them in the afternoon.

"And does President Roosevelt agree with these wealthy and influential people?"

"To be honest, I don't think it matters a good G.o.dd.a.m.n what Mr. Roosevelt thinks."

Zilin thought about this. It had been his opinion that the American president hated and feared Mao. "The President runs the country, does he not?"

"Ye-es," Davies said, "but only in some senses. Besides there being checks and balances built into our const.i.tutional system of government, the President in a very real sense is subject to the pressures brought to bear on him."

Davies could not see Zilin nod in the darkness. "And of course the universal law is that the wealthier one is, the more pressure one is able to exert."

Ross Davies stirred beside Zilin. "I think, yes. You've caught the nature of the situation."

At their next meeting on the slope of Jinyun Shan, Davies was not alone. Zilin recognized an officer from Chiang's hierarchy. He said nothing, waiting to see what was on the American's mind.

"s.h.i.+ tong zhi" Davies finally said, beginning the introductions, "this is Huaishan Han. A lieutenant colonel in the Nationalist army."

"And a confidant of Generalissimo Chiang," Zilin said. "I have heard of you." He gave a stiff little bow which was returned in much the same manner.

"Well," Davies said, rubbing his hands together, "shall we have lunch? I had our cook prepare something." His clear blue eyes darted from one man to the other as if waiting for the first bright spark to ignite. He set down a large wicker basket beneath the shade of a tree. The day was unusually stifling, the afternoon air somnolent and without breeze, weighing them all down.

Davies busied himself pulling out sandwiches, salads, condiments from G.o.d alone knew where, and a bottle of white wine.

"Are either of you hungry?" he asked hopefully. "I don't want all this food to go to waste."

Huaishan Han eyed the alien food. He was whip thin, with the kind of lower jaw one found among the Manchus and the peoples high up near the northern frontier. His ears were small, fitting close to his head. Through the bristle of his coa.r.s.e hair could be seen the beginnings of the inkblot outline of a purple birthmark crawling along his scalp. Perhaps because of the dominance of his jawline, his nose and eyes seemed crowded into the upper portion of his face.

Davies, looking around after spreading out the repast, said, "Doesn't any of this appeal to you?"

"Sandwiches," Zilin said.

"There is no tea?" Huaishan Han said.

Clouds obscured the sun for a time; the glade seemed to lose dimension, some of its quietude rolling away down the slope. In the near distance, the men could see Mr. Pu with his stallion, loading him up as his daughters handed over bushel after bushel of harvested tea plants.

"Won't the wine do?" Davies popped the cork, extracted crystal goblets from the recesses of the wicker basket.

"I don't mind," Huaishan Han said, settling himself next to the American, "but I doubt whether our comrade here will be similarly inclined." He turned his head as Davies handed him the gla.s.s and, taking a sip, lifted the sparkling crystal in a mock toast. "You needn't bother with this wine, Comrade, you'll only choke on such elitist liquor." He nodded his head and the sprawling birthmark appeared in full. "There's a small brook we pa.s.sed on the way up. The liquid of the earth is more fitting for a Communist to drink."

Zilin sat down on the other side of Davies. He wondered why the American had brought a member of Chiang's staff along. Very quickly he determined that there was nothing for him to do but observe. Att.i.tude was all. The men's att.i.tudes would reveal the answers to the puzzle.

Davies set a gla.s.s of wine before Zilin, having the good grace not to attempt to hand it to him.

Huaishan Han leaned forward. Liquor was glistening on his thin lips. "The wine is quite fine, Comrade," he said to Zilin, his voice slightly mocking. "Why not try it, after all? It, too, has its origins in the earth." He smiled, small even teeth showing like bits of patinaed ivory. "No matter that it is the drink of choice for capitalist captains of industry." He grunted. "But pardon me. I forgot that industry is a word you Communists know precious little about. I shudder to think what this country would come to if Mao gained power."

Zilin said, without a trace of rancor, "Without Communism, China is doomed to perpetual piecemeal warfare. Communism's cause is the only effective rallying point for the millions of peasants who comprise the bulk of our populace. Without the unity that Communism provides, China will remain weak, broken into shards through which the faan gwai loh will continue to pick like so many carrion-eaters."

Huaishan Han grunted in disgust.

"They are omnivores," Zilin went on, "the faan gwai loh. They have no sense of culture, propriety; no sense of the universality of nature. Without the bulwark of Communism to protect us, they will surely pick our bones clean. They will take out of China all that is prized and useful. Only then will they go, leaving a wasted hulk."