Wang the Ninth

Wang the Ninth was born a few years before the end of the nineteenth century in a village called prosaically in the vernacular Ten Li Hamlet because it lay ten li or Chinese miles from the great imperial highway. He was the eighth child; that was why, according to immemorial custom, he was called the Ninth, since the numeral eight added to his patronymic signified that opprobrious epithet term "tortoise," a nickname which no Chinese could survive.

When he was little more than three and scarcely weaned (for the children of this land are suckled until they can run) he was unceremoniously put on a creaking wheelbarrow and trundled off into the unknown.

This inconsequential hegira was the beginning of his great adventures,-and was the natural aftermath of a curiously swift tragedy in an environment saturated with inaction.

Famine had suddenly descended on Ten Li Hamlet, and his brothers and sisters, having been leased or sold one after another to neighbours (you can use whichever expression you like), he and his father had become the last survivors in a disrupted family. For his mother, too, had tired of privation. She had sat ominously quiet for one whole week and had then slipped away with a travelling blacksmith, who had been working for a season not fifty feet from the family home of mud-bricks and who disappeared as he had come-like a wraith in the night.

It was this which had been the last straw for the father-not the hunger. For, he, too, was a blacksmith by trade. Added to the shame in his bosom for the beggarly condition to which he had been reduced, there had come a volcanic outburst of hurt professional pride. He was totally unable to reconcile himself to the idea that he had been abandoned in favour of another such as he-and for no better reason that there was want in the land. For there was always want; never could he remember a time when the people were not a-hungering, marching through the country in ragged bands, and spreading dismay wherever they camped.

So one dawn he had sullenly dragged out two baskets, put his last child into one, thrown on top of him some spare clothing, placed his few pots and pans and the implements of his trade (including the unwieldy bellows) in the other, and had marched down the rutted village road shouting curses on every one and declaring that he was shaking the dust of the poverty-stricken place for ever off his feet.

Thus had he gone angrily and vigorously, full of resolution, until he had covered the ten li which separated the village from the great highway. Then, when he had seen the broad road leading to the capital, and the carts and the travellers in their handsome clothing, and the long camel-trains with their rich loads of merchandise, a sense of unfamiliarity and loneliness had suddenly overwhelmed him, and he had sat down and wept loudly and unrestrainedly in the manner all Chinese will do.

Nobody had minded his weeping-not even the child in the basket who continued to sleep calmly and impassively, its pinched face turned in the direction of Heaven. Why indeed should any one mind? As far as the eye could reach there was nothing but brown country-the great Northern plains stretched into infinity and looked upon this evanescent emotion much as the Sphinx surveys the shifting desert sands. A little while you may weep, a little while you may laugh, they seemed to say; then the great silence which covers us all....

So presently the man had stopped and become angry once more. He rose to his feet, tightened his cord belt, and smearing the tears from his seamed face, surveyed the world indifferently. Somehow he would discover a brighter future.

In the basket the child lay in peace. The rising sun pushed golden fingers through the bamboo-work as if to caress its innocence. The father watched with eyes which saw and yet did not see; for he was too simple to know more than that a child is a great blessing, a jewel, because it is of one's flesh and a kind of indefinite prolongation of one's endeavours to conquer the devil. Disaster had been for him like a huge river in spate which had rushed down on him and left him marooned on a tiny rocking island in the very centre. Now he saw a causeway mysteriously growing out of these dread waters: and in his vague fancies he associated this with the presence of his child.

Presently as he sat gazing there was a thin cry. The little legs kicked with vigour, and the arms with their clenched fists sought to throw off the clothing.

"Ba-ba," wailed the eighth child who was called the Ninth, now thoroughly awake. "I am hungry. Give me to eat."

"Wait," said the father roughly yet kindly, brought back from his dreams. "Soon you shall eat."

He conjured up from the bottom of the other basket a big bowl half full of a sort of porridge made from little millet, which was cold and distasteful but which was all that he had. It was the work of a few minutes to light the tiny portable whiteclay stove which he had included in his salvage and which even the poorest in the land always possess. Soon his cooking was done and the child was eating and had become content.

"Ba-ba," it lisped again, struggling to get up. "Where do we go?"

"To the city," grumbled the father, beginning to pack up again. "To the city. Stay quiet. We have far to go."

Already he was off, trundling the wheelbarrow and still eating as he walked. The sun rose higher and higher and perspiration beaded his forehead, but now there was no question of turning back. He was following the mysterious causeway which led to his destiny. On and on he tramped, pushing the creaking wheelbarrow through the chasm of space and sometimes exchanging remarks with the passing muleteers and camel-drivers. Traffic was growing heavier as the city was approached and a veil of dust hung in the air. The highway was strung across the plain like a great frayed rope, which sometimes tightened to a rigid straight line, and sometimes was all knots and twists invented to dismay those who were weary and ill at ease.

In the middle of the day the man lay down and slept under a tree; but ere two hours had passed he was up again and pressing on.

The sun flared out; the stars twinkled brightly in the skies; and still he did not stop. Hardy as only a peasantry can be who know no comforts, he pressed on tirelessly-determined to reach his objective. The creaking wheel was a veritable lullaby to the child who slept as peacefully as if in its mother's arms, hardly stirring in spite of the bumping, always stretched motionless on its little back.

On and on in the darkness, one hour, two hours, three hours, four. Then at last in the middle of the night, when full forty miles had been covered, a low blaze of lights and the shadow of a great city-wall.

The man stopped abruptly and the jerk woke up the child.

"Ba-ba," came the inevitable cry.

He bent over it.

"The city," he exclaimed in his rude, guttural voice, "would you see the city?"

He picked up his son and holding him tightly in his arms, pointed with one finger.

"There, you see ... the lights and the city-wall. Beyond there is a great gate through which one passes but which is now closed."

The child no longer fretted: it was staring silently, drinking in everything as if its very life depended upon strict attention. The father felt its little body taut under the ragged blue clothes. Some new impulse possessed it. It leaned towards the city, as if a mysterious force were pulling.

"Well, what do you say?" inquired the father at last, feeling the need for a little talk.

"It is good," said the child very gravely, as only a very old nation can speak. "It is good," it repeated, nodding its head after the manner of its elders-"We shall find food."

Then it sank back content on the straw in the basket, and the father seizing the handles of the wheelbarrow pushed clumsily on.

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