Страница 66 из 78
Kong Jiesheng – The Sleeping Lion
It is hot today. In this place, it is hot every day. There are no distinct seasons, so no one can ever remember what month it is. To be sure, the weeks and months bring incidents of note, but after a while even those merge and blur. In this remote corner of the world, we have forgotten even the year.
We are, in any event, dripping sweat, even a little blood. Not that a man would die here; it is only that staying alive somehow doesn't seem to be one of our major concerns.
Old Wu-Number Five-is scraping his metal pipe.
I position our homemade level.
Beads of sweat fall on the scalding trowel, hissing into steam, and the mountains quiver in the summer heat. At this latitude, the sun is eternally fierce, the day eternally long. The body's biological clock all but stops. If it weren't for the stone wall rising layer by layer, you would think today is a carbon copy of yesterday or perhaps of one day sometime last month. There are moments in this green basin when we desperately wish something would happen to dot the white expanse of time-like the night when someone who went outside to take a leak looked up to see a white spot streaking upward, receding into the heavens' canopy, finally melting into hazy silver. Presented with this rare display, we carried on for several days, pondering how these spirits augured for the future. Then when the newspaper was delivered, already many days late, we learned that our own satellite had traveled into space! Old Wu, for whom there are no mysteries, a
The trowel taps monotonously. Under the scaffold sits a pile of sheer-white plaster. Bright, silvery clouds float overhead, effortlessly reflecting the red sun, sweeping away human shadows without a twinge of conscience. Who knows how many of these masses of steam have been wrung from our bodies?
Even men can be scorched to a crisp. I think of cursing but save my breath. With a parched throat, there is little point in swearing. Blame it all on the legendary Yi, who shot down only nine of the ten suns.
Suddenly, an explosion.
"Thunder?" I hear myself ask.
Hey, thunder god, is that you? Deafening, blinding noise.
Only then do I see the brown smoke curling slowly over the opposite ridge. What is it? "Over there," we call to one another and scramble down the wobbly scaffold.
At last, a special event to make up for the tedium. The outside laborers, having blasted open an underground tomb, are ru
Few people take themselves less seriously than the membership of our little group. Valor wells up in me, for I have nothing to lose, and in spite of the presence of a strange, vile smell, I leap inside. There I see the sleeping lion.
It has been blown onto its side and lies among fragments of coffin planks, but I am awestruck. Heavy and icy, the brass green manifests an ageless deep sleep. The long day we once cursed has now become so short and abrupt that we lose all sense of time.
Vessels and pots are also strewn about. Neither Old Wu nor I turn them over, so completely are we seized by the simplicity and majesty of this sleeping lion.
We have stumbled into the Bronze Age!
It is all I can do to keep from shouting. The resident expert has yet to speak. He covers his nose with his hand, frowning, thinking, as history rests quietly, waiting for his verdict.
Western Xia, Yin, Shang? Spring and Autumn period, Warring States? Each fabulously distant and remarkable.
"A Han grave," Old Wu a
I breathe a heartfelt sigh and bend respectfully toward the sleeping brass lion, only to hear Old Wu rebuke me: "Don't touch it!"
I withdraw my hand, sobered by the singular wonder of this event.
"What does it mean?" he asks.
From deep in my pant pocket, I pull out a watch with a cracked crystal.
"Ten oh-three. Note this time." Old Wu is quite solemn.
But reality drags us back to the present.
Master mason Yellow Hair is shouting at us from the opposite slope. The Farm Headquarters boss may be on patrol, and though it puts a damper on things, we had best not linger. In any case, it is nearly quitting time. We slip back to camp.
Old Wu isn't old, nor does the five indicate that he is the fifth child. His name is Wu, and he is my age. Next to him, everyone appears a head shorter-of course, I am referring to physical stature. In terms of intelligence, I'd venture to say he surpasses us by more than a head. He is very bright-in astronomy, geography; in matters foreign or domestic. Everyone can benefit from his instruction. And those who refuse to believe him-someone like me, for instance-can never get him to change his side. In any event, here in the wilderness, where there are neither sages nor scholars, there is little harm in listening.
"How can you be so sure it's Han?" I have to ask.
"Aiiii-some ancestor of the Yellow Emperor you turn out to be! The Bronze Age did not achieve aesthetic perfection until the Han. Everything declines when it reaches its peak-" He is about to elaborate.
"Shhhh. Do you want to lose your head? There can be absolutely no casual talk about peaks." [4]
"Yes, yes." Ever vigilant, he agrees that his choice of words was imprudent; then, glancing about, he begins again. "After the Bronze Age, stone was the vogue, up until Wei and Jin, when stone carvings reached their, uh-you know what. The Tang had three-color glazes, as did the Song."
I earnestly accept the wisdom imparted from his lips. Still, I don't think I'm stupid, and I read a fair amount in my spare time. I ca
"Not true," he says. "There was also the illustrious Madame Xi, the female warrior of the Northern and Southern dynasties."
Maybe so, but the distance between the Northern and Southern dynasties and the Han is the thickness of Tales of the Three Kingdoms-all 120 chapters' worth!
He persists in his rebuttals. "Although Emperor Han Wudi lacked for literary talent, when it came to military prowess, he lacked for naught. Under heaven, no spot was unclaimed by this emperor; from shore to shore, no prince failed to pay fealty." Observing that I refuse to alter my foolish notions, he points out with some irony the absurdity of my logic: why must I always think of history in terms of famous people? Those old bones, whether of a local tyrant or evil gentry-had to be a dull fellow. Don't hope to find his chronicle in the a
This round of academic contention brings out other emotions in me. Our nation is indeed amazing. Any ancestral grave one treads upon can be traced back hundreds of generations. Take the thatched hut we live in, for example; six or seven thousand years ago, the people of Banpo village built their huts in the very same style-a civilization ancient enough to make one sigh in wonder.
[4] In the late 1960s, Lin Biao and Jiang Qing pronounced that Mao Zedong thought was the "peak" of Marxist-Leninist ideology.