The Great Wall of China Read online

  Just so, just as hopelessly and as hopefully, do our people regard the emperor. They do not know which emperor is reigning, and there are even doubts as to the name of the dynasty. Many things of that kind are learnt by rote at school, but the universal uncertainty in such matters is so great that even the best pupils are affected by it. Emperors long since departed are raised in our villages to the throne, and one who only survives in song has recently issued a proclamation which the priest reads out before the altar. Battles of our most ancient history are fought now for the first time, and with glowing cheeks one’s neighbour comes rushing into one’s house with the news. The ladies of the emperors, overfed and sunk in their silken cushions, estranged from noble custom by wily courtiers, swollen with their lust for power, passionate in their greed, unbounded in their debauchery, perform their dreadful deeds ever anew; the more time that has passed, the more terrible the hues in which everything glows, and one day the village hears with loud lamentation how an empress, thousands of years ago, drank in long draughts the blood of her husband.

  Thus, then, do our people behave towards the past emperors, but those of the present they mingle with the dead. If once, once in a lifetime, an imperial official on a tour of the provinces happens to arrive at our village, makes certain demands in the name of the ruler, examines the tax rolls, attends the school classes, questions the priest about all our doings, and then, before stepping into his litter, calls the whole community together and sums up his findings in a long speech of admonishment – then a smile will pass over all the faces, each man will steal a glance at his neighbour, people will bend over their children so as not to be observed by the official. Why, they think, he speaks of a dead man as if he were still alive; this emperor died long ago, the dynasty is extinct; the worthy official is making his sport with us, but we will behave as if we did not notice, so as not to offend him. But our serious obedience we shall give only to our present ruler; all else would be sinful. And behind the back of the official, as he is hurried away in his litter, some ruler who has been arbitrarily resurrected from a crumbling urn asserts himself with a stamp of his foot as lord of the village.

  If one were to conclude from such phenomena that basically we have no emperor at all, one would not be far from the truth. Over and over again I must repeat: There is perhaps no people more faithful to the emperor than our people in the south, but our fidelity is of no benefit to the emperor. True, the sacred dragon stands on the little column at the end of the village, and from time immemorial it has been breathing its fiery breath in homage exactly in the direction of Peking; but for the people in our village Peking itself is far stranger than the next world. Can there really be a village where the houses stand side by side, covering more fields than can be seen from the top of our hill, and can crowds of people be packed between these houses day and night? Rather than to imagine a city like that, it would be easier for us to believe that Peking and its emperor were a single entity, say a cloud, peacefully voyaging beneath the sun through the course of the ages.

  Now the result of holding such views is a life that is in a certain sense free and unconstrained. By no means immoral; such moral purity as exists in my native region I have scarcely ever met with on my travels. But it is a life that is subject to no law of the present, and obeys only the instructions and warnings reaching down to us from ancient times. I must beware of generalizing, and will not assert that this holds good for all the ten thousand villages of our province, far less so for all the five hundred provinces of China. But all the same I may perhaps be permitted, on the strength of the many works that I have read on the subject, as well as on the strength of my own observations – the building of the wall in particular, with its abundance of human material, afforded any man of feeling the opportunity to explore the soul of every province – on the strength of all this, then, I may perhaps be permitted to say that the attitude which prevails in respect of the emperor has always and everywhere certain basic features in common with the attitude in my own village. However I do not at all wish to represent this attitude as a virtue; on the contrary. It is true that the basic responsibility for it lies with the government, which in this most ancient empire on earth has been unable or else too preoccupied with other things to develop imperial rule into an institution of sufficient clarity for it to be immediately and continuously effective right to the furthest frontiers of the land. On the other hand, however, this attitude also conceals a weakness of imagination or faith on the part of the people, for they fail to draw out the imperial power from the depths of Peking where it lies buried, and to clasp it in its full living presence to their obedient breasts, while at the same time they wish for nothing better than to feel its touch upon them at last, and so be consumed. So this attitude can hardly be considered a virtue. It is all the more striking that this very weakness should apparently be one of the most important unifying influences among our people…

  Such was the world into which the news of the building of the wall now penetrated. It too came belatedly, some thirty years after it had been announced. It was on a summer evening. I, then aged ten, was standing with my father on the river bank. As befits the importance of this much-discussed occasion I can recollect the smallest details. He was holding me by the hand, something he loved to do into extreme old age, and was running his other hand up and down his long, very thin pipe, as though it were a flute. His long, sparse, stiff beard was raised in the air, for as he smoked his pipe he was gazing up into the heights beyond the river. At the same time his pigtail, object of the children’s veneration, sank lower, rustling faintly on the gold-embroidered silk of his holiday robe. At that moment a bark drew up before us, the boatman signalled to my father to come down the embankment, while he himself climbed up towards him. They met halfway, the boatman whispered something in my father’s ear; he put his arms round him to get really close. I could not understand what was said, I only saw that my father seemed not to believe the news, the boatman tried to assure him of its truth, my father still could not believe it, then the boatman, with the vehemence of sailor folk, almost ripped apart the clothes on his chest to prove the truth of his words, whereupon my father fell silent and the boatman leapt heavily into the bark and sailed away. Thoughtfully my father turned towards me, knocked out his pipe and stuck it in his belt, stroked me on the cheek and drew my head against his. That was what I liked best, it filled me with good spirits, and thus we returned home. There the rice-pap was already steaming on the table, a number of guests were assembled, the wine was just being poured into the goblets. My father paid no attention to any of this, and while still on the threshold he began to recount what he had heard. I cannot of course remember the exact words, but the sense impressed itself on me so deeply, owing to the exceptional nature of the circumstances that were enough to entrance even a child, that I do feel able to give some version of what he said. I do it because it was so very characteristic of the popular attitude. Well then, my father said something like this:

  [A strange boatman – I know all those who usually pass here, but this one was a stranger – has just told me that a great wall is going to be built to protect the emperor. For it seems that infidel tribes, and demons among them, often gather in front of the imperial palace and shoot their black arrows at the emperor.]

  THE KNOCK AT THE MANOR GATE

  IT was summer, a hot day. On my way home with my sister I was passing the gate of a manor-house. I cannot tell now whether she knocked out of mischief or out of absence of mind, or whether she merely threatened the gate with her fist and did not knock at all. A hundred paces further on along the high road, where it turned to the left, a village began. It was not a village we knew, but from the very first house people emerged, making friendly but warning signs to us; these people were terrified, bowed down with terror. They pointed to the manor we had passed and reminded us of the knock at the gate. The proprietors of the manor would charge us with it, the interrogation was to begin immediately. I kept quite calm and
calmed my sister down as well. Probably she had not struck the gate at all, and even if she had, nowhere in the world would one be prosecuted for that. I tried to make this clear to the people around us; they listened to me but refrained from passing an opinion. Later they told me that not only my sister, but I too, as her brother, would be charged. I nodded and smiled. We all gazed back at the manor, as one watches a distant smoke-cloud and waits for the flames to appear. And sure enough, we presently saw horsemen riding in through the wide open gate; dust rose and obscured everything, only the points of their tall spears glittered. And hardly had the troop vanished into the main courtyard when they seemed to have turned their horses again and were on their way to us. I urged my sister to get away, I myself would set everything to rights; she refused to leave me on my own; then, I told her, she should at least change her clothes, so as to appear better dressed before these gentlemen. At last she obeyed and set out on the long road to our home. Already the horsemen had reached us, and from the saddle they began asking for my sister; she wasn’t here at the moment, was the apprehensive reply, but she would be coming later. This response left them almost cold; the most important thing seemed to be that I had been found. The two chief members of the party were the judge, an energetic young man, and his silent assistant, whose name was Assmann. I was ordered into the parlour of the village inn. Slowly, swaying my head from side to side and hitching up my trousers, I set off under the watchful gaze of the party. I still half believed that a word would be enough to get me, the townsman, released – perhaps even honourably released – from this group of peasants. But when I had stepped over the threshold of the inn, the judge, who had hastened in front and was already awaiting me, said: ‘I am sorry for this man.’ And it was beyond all possibility of doubt that he was not referring to my present situation, but to what was about to happen to me. The room looked more like a prison cell than an inn parlour. Great stone flags, a dark-grey bare wall, an iron ring embedded somewhere in the masonry, in the middle something that was half pallet, half operating table.

  MY NEIGHBOUR

  MY business rests entirely on my own shoulders. Two girls with typewriters and ledgers in the front office, my own room with writing-desk, safe, consulting-table, easy chair and telephone: that is my entire working apparatus. So simple to keep an eye on, so easy to manage. I am young and my affairs run along merrily; I don’t complain, I don’t complain.

  At the new year a young man rented without further ado the small vacant apartment next door, which for so long I had foolishly hesitated to take myself. It too consists of a main room and a front room, but with a kitchen in addition. I could well have made use of the room and the front room, already there have been times when my two girls have felt overstretched – but what use would the kitchen have been to me? This minor misgiving was responsible for my letting the apartment be snatched away from me. Now this young man sits there. Harras he’s called. What he actually does there I don’t know. On the door it says: ‘Harras, Office’. I have made some inquiries, and have been informed that it is a business similar to mine, that it would not exactly be right to warn against granting him credit, for after all he is an ambitious young man and his enterprise may have a future, but that it is not actually possible to advise granting him credit either, for by all appearances there are no assets at present. The usual information given when nothing is known.

  Sometimes I meet Harras on the stairs; he must always be in an extraordinary hurry, he literally shoots past me, I’ve never even seen him properly yet; he holds his office key ready in his hand, in a flash he has opened the door, like the tail of a rat he has slipped inside, and there I stand again in front of the plate ‘Harras, Office’ which I have already read far oftener than it deserves.

  These wretchedly thin walls, they betray the man engaged in honest activity but for the dishonest they provide cover. My telephone is fitted to the wall of my room that separates me from my neighbour, but I merely stress that as a particularly ironical fact, for even if it hung on the opposite wall one would be able to hear everything in the next apartment. I have trained myself not to mention the names of my customers on the telephone, but of course not much cunning is required to guess their names from characteristic but unavoidable turns of the conversation. Sometimes, goaded by anxiety, I dance round the telephone on tiptoe with the receiver at my ear, and still I can’t prevent secrets being divulged. This means of course that when I’m on the telephone I become unsure in my business decisions as well, my voice begins to quaver. What is Harras doing while I’m telephoning? If I were to exaggerate greatly – but one often has to do that so as to get things clear in one’s mind – I could say that Harras needs no telephone, he uses mine; he has pushed his sofa against the wall and listens; while I on the other hand must run to the telephone when it rings, take note of my customers’ requirements, reach decisions of great consequence, carry out grand exercises in persuasion, and above all, during the whole operation, give an involuntary report to Harras through the wall. Perhaps he doesn’t even wait for the end of the conversation, but gets up at the point where the matter under discussion has become sufficiently clear to him, flits through the town at his accustomed speed, and before I have hung up the receiver he is perhaps already at work thwarting my plans.

  A CROSSBREED

  I HAVE a curious animal, half kitten, half lamb. It is an heirloom that belonged to my father. But it has only developed in my own day; formerly it was far more lamb than kitten, now it is both in about equal proportions. From the cat it takes its head and claws, from the lamb its size and shape; from both its eyes, which are gentle and nickering, its coat which is soft and close-lying, its movements, which are both skipping and slinking. On the window-sill in the sunshine it curls itself up in a ball and purrs, in the meadow it rushes about like a mad thing and can scarcely be caught; it runs away from cats and has a tendency to attack lambs; on moonlit nights its favourite walk is along the tiles; it cannot mew and it has a horror of rats; by the hen-coop it can lie in ambush for hours, but it has never yet seized an opportunity for murder. I feed it on sweetened milk, which suits it perfectly; it sucks it down in long draughts through its predatory fangs. Naturally it is a great spectacle for the children. Sunday morning is the visiting hour; I sit with the little beast on my lap and the children of the whole neighbourhood stand round me. Then the strangest questions are asked, which not a soul can answer. And indeed I make no effort to do so, but confine myself without further explanation to showing off what I possess. Sometimes the children bring cats with them, once they even brought two lambs; but contrary to their expectation there was no recognition scene, the animals looked at each other calmly with their animal eyes and evidently accepted their mutual existence as a God-given fact.

  On my lap the creature knows neither fear nor the urge to hunt. Pressed against me it feels happiest. It sticks by the family that brought it up. This is probably not a sign of any exceptional fidelity, merely the sure instinct of an animal which has indeed countless step-relations in the world but perhaps not a single close blood relation, and to which the protection it has found with us is therefore sacred. Sometimes I cannot help laughing when it sniffs round me and winds itself between my legs and simply will not be parted from me. Not content with being lamb and cat, it almost insists on being a dog as well. Seriously, I really do believe something of the kind. It has the restlessness of both creatures within it, that of the cat and that of the lamb, diverse as they are. That is why it feels unhappy in its own skin.

  Perhaps the butcher’s knife would be a release for the animal, but I have to deny it that because it is an heirloom.

  A little boy once received, as his sole inheritance from his father, a cat, and through it he became Lord Mayor of London. What shall I become through my animal? Where stretches the gigantic city?

  NEW LAMPS

  YESTERDAY I was in the directors’ offices for the first time. Our night shift has chosen me as their spokesman, and since the constr
uction and fuelling of our lamps is inadequate I was to go along there and press for these defects to be remedied. The appropriate office was pointed out to me; I knocked and went in. A delicate young man, very pale, smiled at me from behind his large desk. He nodded his head a great deal, a great deal too much. I did not know whether I ought to sit down; although there was a chair available I thought perhaps I had better not sit down straight away on my first visit, and so I told my story standing. But obviously I caused the young man some trouble by this very modesty of mine, for he was obliged to turn his face round and up at me, unless he was prepared to turn his chair round, and that he wasn’t prepared to do. On the other hand, in spite of all his willingness, he could not screw his neck round quite far enough, and so with it halfway round he gazed up askew at the ceiling during my story, and I could not help doing the same. When I had finished he got up slcwly, patted me on the back, said: ‘Well, well – well, well’, and pushed me into the adjoining room, where a gentleman with a great wild growth of beard had evidently been waiting for us, for on his desk there was no trace of any sort of work to be seen, on the contrary, an open glass door led out into a little garden full of flowers and shrubs. A short briefing, consisting of a few words whispered to him by the young man, sufficed for the gentleman to grasp our manifold complaints. He stood up at once and said: ‘Well now, my good –’, here he paused; I thought he wanted to know my name and so I was just opening my mouth to introduce myself again when he caught me up short: ‘Yes, yes, all right, all right, I know all about you – well now, your request, or that of your workmates and yourself, is certainly justifiable, I myself and the other gentlemen on the board of directors are certainly the last not to recognize that. Believe me, the welfare of our men is something that we have more at heart than the welfare of the concern. And why not? The concern can always be built up all over again, it only costs money, hang the money, but if a human being is destroyed, there you have it, a human being is destroyed and we’re left with the widow, the children. Ah dear me, yes! And so that is why every suggestion for the introduction of new safeguards, new reliefs, new comforts and luxuries, is most welcome to us. Anyone who comes along with such a suggestion is the man for us. So you just leave your proposals here with us, we shall examine them closely, and if it should turn out that any kind of brilliant little novelty can be appended, we shall certainly not suppress it, and as soon as everything is finished you men will get the new lamps. But tell this to your workmates below: we will not rest here until we have turned your shaft into a drawing-room, and we’ll see to it that you meet your end down there in patent-leather shoes, or not at all. And so a very good day to you!’