Finding The Way Page 6

  As the youngest son of a humble farmer, I was a long way from the village of my birth. For me to be appointed to the Royal Court was as unimaginable as a prince riding a donkey into battle. This offer of renewed purpose was unlikely in the extreme and perhaps ill-begotten through Li Su’s suspect actions. But it was also serendipitously timed and not easily ignored. Long-lost youthful impulses re-asserted themselves and directed me to accept.

  At my insistence, Yi Ban traveled ahead of me to the capital with his retinue. It required a few days and much heartache for me to conclude the past twenty years of my life. One of my scholars offered to join me while others left in disgust, seeing me as hypocritical and self-serving, just as I had seen Li Su. I understood how they felt, though I did not see myself as a traitor. I saw myself rather as fulfilling a destiny.

  Before I left, one of my scholars came to warn me that the previous archivist I would replace was said to have been a spy. He had poisoned the guards before fleeing to Chu with a chest of jewels and treasure. The Son of Heaven already trusted few others besides his sons and now he would see even less value in yet another intellectual. This should have been warning enough. Yet strange as it may sound, there is a certain freedom when one is ill-regarded and little is expected of you.

  And so it was done, twenty years of work. Two days later I released all who remained and began my long walk to Chengzhou, accompanied only by a donkey.

  5

  The Road to Chengzhou

  A gentle sun had barely managed to dry the morning dew when I set out towards the capital. As I left the valley, I encountered two peasants knee-deep in mud, struggling with a wooden plough in a small plot of young millet. Neighboring plots had similar crops, as well as soybeans and water oats. One of the peasants was shirtless and likely the grandfather of the young boy beside him. The elder had sagging, crinkled skin with recent scarring, probably from a master’s belt. The younger one could not have been more than twelve years old, around my age when I fled with Shun. I thought of Shun often, wondering if he had survived the perpetual violence, the many wars, and whether he had been able to have a peaceful life.

  The elder plodded stiffly through the mud, each movement laborious. He stopped for a water break. His eyes barely left the ground and he hardly acknowledged my greeting when I approached. I offered him a preserved duck egg that I had bartered from a farmer in exchange for some sesame flat cake purchased in a village. He studied me with suspicious eyes before accepting my offering. In return, he passed me his water vessel.

  I explained briefly who I was. He replied in a tone that implied I was an imbecile.

  “If you’re hoping that Tian, our Heavenly God, will protect an elderly scholar travelling these dangerous roads alone, then think again.”

  “But I am not alone,” I replied. “I am never alone, and neither are you.”

  I pointed out that I was sharing the moment with him, and that wherever I walked, I had all that Nature had created around me.

  He cracked a toothless grin. “I once believed in the justice of the gods, their generosity. That was long ago.”

  “True. But I suggest you look beyond them. Look inwards.”

  He gave me a puzzled look, then told me that his family had for many generations farmed a large and productive plot sixty li to the west. But his eldest son had disgraced the family by becoming intimate with a girl who was promised to a lord and the clan was thrown off their land. His shamed son ran off and joined a lord’s army battling the Qin and the rest of the family also scattered, hiding their humiliation as best as they could. The plot he currently worked belonged to a nobleman landlord adjacent to him. He explained that all arable land was divided into nine compartments, each a hundred paces long and only one pace wide. Eight families labored on their own, leaving the ninth plot for all to work in the King’s name, or for a noble currently in his favor. The outer-lying farms, such as his, fell under the domain of the lesser-ranked landlords, whereas those closest to the city walls enjoyed better protection from the military and rich landlords.

  He shared his story without malice or anger. In his mind, this was simply his fate. For others, though not for many from what I could see, their Gods of Nature had been in a good mood for some time. It had been many years since their anger swelled the many rivers and flooded the vast territories. Nor had their God of Sun recently punished the world by hardening the land and withholding water from even the smallest of life. I wondered how long this blessing would continue, as wars forever raged. Indeed the rich mud and pungent manure told me that food should have been in abundance here.

  I shared meals on the road with the many peasants who were forever on the move. Not all shared equally in Nature’s harvest. The lucky ones had straw shoes, but many wore only the mud on their soles. Those with wearable tunics, or who possessed animals, appeared content despite their station.

  After a week on the road, I had witnessed many a hungry family, mostly farmers, each actively searching for a better life. One such family likely saved my own journey from disaster. Not long after I entered Chu territory, my donkey was stolen as I slept. Perhaps I was too easy a target for thieves. I naïvely assumed there was an unwritten code of honor among travelers. After that, I followed the narrow road to Chengzhou much like a beggar. Most of the farmers I encountered along the way refused to feed me, decrying their own lack of stock and recent robberies. None of them looked especially robust or healthy, and as I wore the robes of a scholar, I looked better off than they.

  Feeling weak from hunger, I admonished myself for not having taken Yi Ban’s offer to leave with him for Chengzhou. The sentimental side in me had drawn out my goodbyes with those of my former students who had not already left and were still speaking with me. I had never really had an orderly parting of ways and transition into a new life. I felt so old, so foolish even thinking of it.

  At last I encountered a more convivial family of twenty-six members, composed of three generations, coming from Chu territory. The head of the family was an old soldier named Tang Dengjie. I heartily accepted his invitation to share their camp. This was a fairly lucky group of peasants. Though they were homeless and dispossessed, they were free, and their situation was in many ways preferable to servants and slaves. They travelled with ample stores of food and were well-clothed, as exemplified by their well-kept hemp pants and cotton shirts. They had the same wrinkled, weathered skin as all peasants who had endured life’s challenges. But they were lucky because they shone with a joyous spirit and were filled with an uplifting mood.

  They had snared rabbits earlier in the day with sling shots, reminding me of Shun. I helped them pick mushrooms and fern roots for a stew and despite not having eaten meat in years, I had what was my finest meal in many days as we sat around a roaring campfire. Tang had an energetic, youthful smile, unusual since the lines around his bright eyes and forehead suggested an age closer to mine.

  His wife matched his geniality. She made an astonishingly invigorating pot of licorice root tea that reminded me of my father’s.

  “It’s a dangerous world for an old unarmed man to be traveling alone,” she said as she poured the steaming tea.

  “Indeed, the world is filled with evil, I tell you,” Tang said.

  “Such a cynic,” Tang’s wife admonished her husband. “I said dangerous, not evil. You forget there are good people, heroes among us.”

  “Good people, yes. But heroes?” Tang scoffed.

  “The White Renegade, you old fool. Don’t forget him.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “The White Renegade. Have you not heard of him?”

  I shook my head.

  She stood up and expanded her chest and slowly panned the forest with her eyes. “He’s powerful as a wolf, cunning like a fox and swift like the wind,” she said.

  “If he exists at all, he’s a thief and a murderer, and so are his band of outlaws,�
� Tang said.

  “Oh, and did I forget wise and handsome?” she chuckled.

  “Killing and banditry are not laughing matters,” Tang reproached his wife.

  “He kills only those lacking in virtue, and if you call it thievery when he takes only to survive and feed his fellow man, then I will share his saddle any time,” she said as everyone broke out in laughter.

  We shared tales well into the night most evenings. One night, Tang, with his remaining arm waving in the air and his finger pointing upwards for emphasis, shared his family’s story.

  He had lost his arm fighting for a baron many years ago. When he returned to farming, the baron compensated him for his service by reducing the tithe to be paid by his entire clan to farm. A neighboring warlord who killed those loyal to the baron overran the area but Tang and his family were spared because his father had once fought for the warlord’s father. However, their taxes were raised again and most of their harvest and livestock confiscated. The warlord had Tang and his wife beaten, and forced them to sell one of their granddaughters to him. With another war brewing, Tang knew his remaining grandsons would be forced to serve. He decided they must leave the land his family had farmed for as long as anybody could remember.

  “Our journey will take us to my cousin in Qi. He lives west of Linzi,” he told me. “It will be safe there and you are welcome to travel with us. My grandchildren and their children could use a scholar, even an old and feeble one at that.”

  He and the rest of the clan laughed.

  I told him I had business in Chengzhou, with the Palace. He fell silent and stared into the fire. He didn’t appear impressed, but rather concerned. With his remaining hand, he gripped mine like a brother and said if things did not work out, I would always be welcomed in Qi.

  We parted after four days of shared travel. By then, I had learned the names of each family member and shared much merriment. I felt a sensation of familial belonging that reminded me of the few years I had spent with my own family more or less intact, and also of the years at the Academy. The Tang family lived at ease, each member in harmony with the other, a formation that seemed as effortless and instinctive as wind fanning trees. Without knowing the Way, they lived it. Such honest people use no rhetoric, perhaps knowing it often cloaks deception. Many enlightened people are not cultured, and culture is not enlightenment, but people such as the Tang clan are content. And their lack of riches did not diminish their acquisition of contentment. They lived with an unforced and instinctive sense of charity: the more one gives, the more one receives. And these people were most adept at giving. At a fork in the road, they turned north and I continued east into the Royal territory that ensconced Chengzhou, but not before they insisted I take enough food to last me the rest of my journey.

  ******

  I had been told the capital was a beacon of prosperity and knowledge, that the civilized world clamored around it as bees around a hive. Indeed, the south road approaching Chengzhou was in sharp contrast to all that I had traveled through thus far. It was still crowded with weary peasants seeking opportunities and carrying what few possessions they had, but the road also bustled with carts laden with fresh cabbage, bitter melons, yams, mung beans and peaches. Well-guarded nobles and travelers carried tributes of silk, jewelry and animals ready to be slaughtered for the King.

  From a distance, the high walls of the city looked imposing, standing perhaps twice my height. I knew that three gates guarded each of the four walls of Chengzhou city. Each wall ran a full nine li on each side. A younger man than I would require at least two hours just to walk the full length of one wall. Yet as I passed through the main south gate under the watchful but weary eyes of heavily-armed soldiers, I could see the wall was made only of beaten earth and that sections of it were crumbling.

  I joined a column of wagons and other travelers awaiting clearance to proceed. Some were pulled aside and randomly searched. I overheard many rumors swirling about.

  “Teams of assassins disguised as entire clans have been sent by neighboring states. They are intent on killing King Jing and other nobles.”

  “That would be foolish. They’d never get through. Moles from within the Palace are more likely to succeed.”

  “Does anybody even care any more?”

  “He is still the ceremonial leader of the Zhou dynasty.”

  “Yes, but that and two whores will get you two whores.”

  Mere figurehead or not, the King’s throne and what it represented still mattered to many. Breakaway territories had spies everywhere, seeking potential allies as well as identifying possible enemies. The Son of Heaven could not control the subterfuge, but he did attempt to douse the whispers of discontent with public beheadings and the burning of farms. I presented Yi Ban’s stamped pass to the guards, which allowed me to bypass much of the column.

  As I stepped through the gate in the wall, I walked onto the only stone road in the whole Empire. As wide as the outstretched arms of two men, it ran four li from the middle gate to the main entrance of the Yellow Palace. When the sun shone, quartz on the surface glistened and sparkled like a river of enormous jewels, beckoning towards a paradise of riches and purity. It was said that a Son of Heaven of the past had become so consumed with avoiding dirt and filth he had ordered this road paved to ensure that his wholesomeness would never be threatened by the filth of the street. I could not help but smile to myself at the foolish notion that a newly-laundered robe and a fresh bath could place a person closer to heaven than the most moral of mud-covered farmers.

  My eyes wandered over the throngs, more people than I had ever seen in one place in all my days. Teams of beggars competed for space and attention with street vendors, newly-arrived homeless peasants alongside shoppers, merchants and servants. Regardless of their station, all had to be watchful for pickpockets and to dodge the horse-drawn carriages of nobles, as well as the pushcarts hauling manure. The air hung heavy with the choking smoke rising off the small fires of the many craftsmen, toiling away on sunken dirt floors under thatched awnings.

  In the distance, past the throngs and narrow mud roads, loomed the towering Grand Celestial Hall, the very heart of the Yellow Palace, the Royal Residence and the core of the Zhou empire.

  A large gathering of peasants and villagers surrounded a small, raised platform not far from the gate, filling the air with excitement and regular applause. Just below the stage, a trickster juggled four peaches through the air. Several other performers formed a human tower, standing on each other’s shoulders, stretching towards the sky. A fortune teller foretold of unexpected wealth ready for the picking. A blind charlatan stopped me and implored me for a coin, saying that, “in return much grief shall be spared.” I glanced at him not only because he was rather hideous but because, except for the vacant look in his eyes, he closely resembled my Uncle on Master Xun’s farm decades ago. I was distracted away from him as the attention of the burgeoning crowd focused on the platform nearby.

  I had witnessed enough executions and had no desire to see another and I was about to move on when I overheard some of the peasants nearby.

  “For a farm girl, she is an extraordinary beauty.”

  “Yes, but look at those tiny hands; at thirteen she should not be so delicate. Her family will be lucky to get twenty dao.”

  “Perhaps. But that’s good for a jug of rice wine and a water buffalo.”

  “Forget the water buffalo: the stubborn beasts are only good for hauling manure. Take three jugs of rice wine.”

  Laughter broke out.

  So it was a slave auction, not an execution. The charlatan startled me by touching my arm. “The gods have decided,” he proclaimed. “She has been chosen.”

  Bewildered, I looked at him but he merely pointed into the din of the crowd. My eyes scanned the gathering and came upon a young woman, really not much more than a girl dressed in rags, surrounded by people examining her.
I asked the charlatan what was going on.

  “That is old Li Wei and his wife,” the charlatan replied.

  The charlatan didn’t seem to notice that he’d just blown his pretense at being blind. But his deception mattered little, as there can be few moments as painful as when a mother and father sell off their flesh and blood.

  “One would have to possess the heart of a barbarian to not feel remorse for them,” the charlatan continued. “It’s not enough that a plague of hungry locusts savaged their crops and a fire destroyed what little they had left of their home. If not for that girl’s alertness, they would have all perished. Nevertheless, they are now snake-bitten and cursed. Her sale is all that separates them from starvation and keeps the debt collector from delivering the final blow to the family. To those who only see with their eyes, she appears to be worth little now—a few goats, perhaps some chickens.”

  I looked at the charlatan and suddenly felt that there was more to him than his hideousness and similarities to Uncle’s gapped tooth and bald head. “This is nonsense,” I replied. “What madness continues to befall people that women can still be sold for a few animals?”

  “My Lord, you have been removed from the real world too long. These are the ways of the world. Do not deny that you have seen this many times over. Instead, see beyond the unrecognizable. For I have, and I know there is purpose for her. The gods have seen to it. Please sir, a single coin?”

  “For what? Even had I a dao to give, your pronouncements are meaningless.”

  “Then heed this, Master Scholar, ‘an ill wind scatters seeds of hope, but even the calmest breeze harbors pestilence’.”

  I was about to reply when the auctioneer’s voice boomed out, seizing my attention. He enticed a merchant to shout out an offer of ten dao for the girl. A farmer countered with two sacks of millet, three chickens and a large jar of barley sugar.