The Real Story of Ah-Q (51 page)

His pleasure-trip about the mountains had brought the king no pleasure. Even worse, the depressing intelligence of an assassin had reached his ears in the middle of it, bringing him back to the capital. He was in a vile mood all that night – complaining even that his ninth concubine’s hair was not as beautiful as it had been the day before. It took over seventy captivating wriggles from the lady in question – perched all the while on his knee – to soothe the frown of displeasure from the royal brow.

But when the king got up the following afternoon, his low spirits were still with him. After breaking his fast, he was furious again.

‘I am so bored!’ he roared, yawning.

No one knew what to do with him, from the queen down to the court jester. He was long weary of his elderly ministers’ sermons, of his stout, japing dwarfs; recently, he had bored even of his extraordinary acrobats – tightrope-walkers, pole-climbers, jugglers, handstanders, sword-swallowers, fire-eaters, and so on. His frequent rages usually climaxed in him reaching for his blue sword and dispatching a few unfortunates for the most minor of transgressions.

Two young eunuchs had just returned to the throne room from an idle wander beyond the palace. Sensing imminent peril from the grim set to the courtiers’ faces, the one whitened with fear, while the other trotted merrily up to the king as if seized by the most wonderful inspiration.

‘Your slave,’ he prostrated himself, ‘begs to report he has just met a stranger, with the strangest of arts, who may be able to divert Your Majesty.’

‘What?’ the king said. (He had always been given to monosyllabic answers.)

‘A thin, dark man – the image of a beggar. Dressed all in blue, carrying on his back a round blue bundle, singing a song of tall tales. When asked, he says he can perform tricks of a like the world has never seen – tricks that can lighten the blackest of moods, and bring peace to the realm. Though everyone begged him to perform, he refused. He said he needs a golden dragon and a golden cauldron.’

‘A golden dragon? He must mean me, the king. A golden cauldron, that I have, too.’

‘My humble thoughts precisely.’

‘Bring him in!’

Before the words were out, four soldiers rushed out on the eunuch’s heels. Smiles rippled through the room – from the queen down to the court jester. A show of magic, they hoped, would dispel the king’s gloom, restoring peace to the realm. And were the trick not to come off, only the beggar would suffer the consequences. All they had to do was survive until he was brought in.

Soon enough, six people approached the golden throne: the eunuch at their head, the four soldiers at the rear, the dark man sandwiched between. Everyone saw, at close quarters, that he was indeed dressed in blue; that his beard, eyebrows and hair were black; that he was so thin his cheekbones, eye sockets and brow bone jutted out. When he knelt, then prostrated himself, they all noted a small, round bundle on his back, wrapped in blue cloth and embellished in dark red.

‘Speak!’ the king said irritably. Now he had seen the beggar’s simple appearance, he doubted he would have any great tricks to astonish the world with.

‘My dishonourable name is Yan Zhi’ao, of the village of Wenwen. As a child, I was taught no profession. Later in life, I encountered a master conjuror who taught me to perform magic with a child’s head. But the performance requires more than its conjuror: it needs a golden cauldron filled with water, heated with charcoal and set before a king. Within, I will place the child’s head, and once the water begins to bubble, the head will rise to the surface and entertain you with the most extraordinary songs and dances. Its tricks can lighten the blackest of moods, and bring peace to the realm.’

‘Begin!’ the king ordered.

A golden cauldron, of a size normally used for boiling oxen, was promptly set up in front of the throne and filled with water. Charcoal was piled up below and the fire was lit. Standing to one side, the dark man waited until the charcoal had turned red then took down his bundle and opened it. With both hands, he held aloft a child’s head: delicate eyebrows arched over elongated eyes, scarlet lips smilingly pulled back to reveal bright white teeth, hair wild, like a cloud of blue smoke. After walking around in a circle, holding the head up all the while, the dark man stretched his arms out over the mouth of the cauldron, his lips moving to say something no one caught. His hands opened out and released the head into the water. Five feet of boiling spray surged up; then all fell quiet.

For some time, nothing happened. First to lose patience was the king, followed by the queen, the concubines, the ministers and the eunuchs. Noticing the dwarfs smirking, the king decided he had been taken for a fool and looked to his guards.

But at the very instant the king thought to order them to hurl the villainous trickster into the cauldron and boil him to death, the water began to bubble and the flames to flare up, painting the dark man in the faint, glowing red of smelted iron. As the king turned back to the performance, the stranger lifted both hands up to the ceiling and – staring blankly into space – began dancing and shrilling a curious song.

The water began to surge with the rhythm of the song, into waves pointed at their crest, broad at their base, swirling like miniature mountains up to the surface of the water, then back down to its depths. The head bobbed up and down, turning circles, somersaulting; the audience could just make out the happy smile on its face – as if it were enjoying the exercise. Another while later, it suddenly began swimming against the current, still spinning round as it crossed back and forth. The water began spraying out, bringing showers of hot rain down on the court. A dwarf suddenly yelped in pain, rubbing his scalded nose.

When the dark man finally stopped singing, the head, too, paused in the centre of the water – its expression growing more solemn – and faced the king on his throne. Perhaps a dozen instants later, the head began to shudder, then to bob up and down a little faster, still maintaining its poise. After three bobbing circuits around the cauldron, its eyes suddenly flew open – the irises shining with an eerie brightness – and its mouth launched into song.

Suddenly perching on the crest of a wave, the head turned a few more somersaults then bobbed up and down again, darting artful glances to left and to right, and still singing:

It now sank back and failed to re-emerge, the remaining words of the song drowning at the bottom of the cauldron. Imitating the weakness of the singing voice, the simmering water, too, gradually subsided, like an ebbing tide, until there was nothing to be seen – from a distance – below the mouth of the vessel.

‘What’s happening?’ snapped the king, after a pause.

‘Great king,’ offered the dark man, half-kneeling, ‘the head is now engaged in the most extraordinary part of the performance – the Dance of Union – at the bottom of the cauldron. If you wish to see it, you must come closer. I fear my own humble arts are too inadequate to draw it to the surface – the dance must be performed at the base of the cauldron.’

The king strode down the golden steps and, undaunted by the fierce heat, craned his head over the top of the cauldron. All he saw was the surface of the water, calm as a mirror, and the head lying, face up, in its centre, both eyes fixed on his face. When the king’s gaze met its own, it suddenly flashed a merry smile. The smile made the king feel they had met before – though he couldn’t think where. In this instant of bewildered recognition, the dark man lifted the blue sword from behind his back and, with one clean stroke, brought it down on the king’s nape. The royal head fell, with a thump, into the cauldron.

When enemies meet, their responses are unusually keen – and especially at such close quarters. The moment the king’s head hit the water, Mei Jianchi’s head immediately rose up and bit it ferociously on the ear. The cauldron of water frothed noisily, as the two heads locked in a deadly struggle. After some twenty rounds, the king’s head had taken five wounds, to Mei Jianchi’s seven. For the king was sly, always finding ways to wind his way behind his enemy’s head. One careless miscalculation by Mei Jianchi, and the king had him by the nape – preventing him from spinning back round. The king sank his teeth into his opponent, gnawing his way in. The boy’s cries shrilled around the throne room.

Everyone, from the queen down to the court jester, was frozen with terror, until the boy’s yelps brought them back to life – as if communicating to them an infinitely dark sorrow. But even as their skin prickled with horror, they tingled also with a secret delight, and opened their eyes wider, as if waiting for something else yet.

Alarmed but not discomposed by the direction the fight was taking, the dark man casually stretched out the arm – resembling a withered branch – holding the sword and extended his neck over the cauldron, as if gazing into its base. With a neat slice of the blue blade, his own head tumbled into the cauldron, generating snow-white blossoms of spray.

The moment it hit the water, his head made for the king and took an enormous bite at his nose, almost taking the whole thing off. Shouting with pain, the king opened his mouth, and Mei Jianchi’s head seized the opportunity to escape, spun round and clamped down on the king’s jaw. On they hung, yanking the head to and fro between them, giving the king’s mouth no opportunity to hold a bite. Then they fell frenziedly upon him, like starving hens pecking at rice, mauling him until his entire face was a scaly, ruptured mess. In time, he stopped thrashing about the cauldron and merely floated, moaning, until even that lay beyond him. Finally, he breathed his last.

Slowly closing their own mouths, the dark man and Mei Jianchi let the king’s head alone and swam a circuit around the cauldron to check whether he truly was dead, or just playing dead. When they were satisfied that the king’s head was indeed finished, they locked glances, smiled, then closed their eyes, faced upwards and sank to the bottom of the cauldron.

The smoke dispersed and the fire burnt out; the water stopped bubbling. The extraordinary quiet brought the courtiers back to their senses. A first, solitary cry of horror was echoed by the rest of the room. The moment one of them moved towards the golden cauldron, everyone else frantically followed. Those jostled to the back caught only glimpses through the gaps between other people’s necks.

The steam was still scorching. The surface of the water lay flat as a mirror, topped by a layer of grease in which a vast collective of faces was reflected – the queen, concubines, guards, aged ministers, dwarfs, eunuchs, and so on.

‘Oh, heavens! Our king’s head is still in there!’ the king’s sixth concubine suddenly sobbed hysterically.

Everyone – from the queen down to the court jester – scattered, rushing uselessly about in panicked circles. Only the sharpest of the aged ministers stepped forward. He rested his hands on the edge of the cauldron, then winced in pain, whipping them back to his mouth, where he blew energetically on them.

After calm had returned, everyone reconvened outside the palace to discuss the best way of extracting the head. In about the time it would take to cook three pots of millet, a decision was reached: all the sieves from the royal kitchens would be sent for, and the guards ordered to fish it out.

The required implements – sieves, colanders, golden dishes and dishcloths – were quickly assembled and laid out by the cauldron. Rolling up their sleeves, the guards set respectfully about their task – some with sieves, some with colanders. Metal clinked on metal, churning the water. After this had gone on some while, the face of one of the guards was overcome by an expression of tremendous solemnity. He carefully lifted his sieve to reveal – pearl drops of water scattering from it – the white skull held within. The assembled company chorused gasps of astonishment, as the skull was dropped into a golden dish.