Profiles from China Sketches in Free Verse of People and Things Seen in the Interior

A Scholar

You sit, chanting the maxims of Confucius. On your head is a domed cap of black satin and your supple hands with their long nails are piously folded. You rock to and fro rhythmically. Your voice, rising and falling in clear nasal monosyllables, flows on steadily, monotonously, like the flowing of water and the flowering of thought. You are chanting, it seems, of the pious conduct of man in all ages, And I know you for a scoundrel.

None the less the maxims of Confucius are venerable, and your voice pleasant. I listen attentively....

The Story Teller

In a corner of the market-place he sits, his face the target for many eyes. The sombre crowd about him is motionless. Behind their faces no lamp burns; only their eyes glow faintly with a reflected light. For their eyes are on his face. It alone is alive, is vibrant, moving bronze under a sun of bronze. The taut skin, like polished metal, shines along his cheek and jaw. His eyes cut upward from a slender nose, and his quick mouth moves sharply out and in.

Artful are the gestures of his mouth, elaborate and full of guile. When he draws back the bow of his lips his face is like a mask of lacquer, set with teeth of pearl, fantastic, terrible.... What strange tale lives in the gestures of his mouth? Does a fox-maiden, bewitching, tiny-footed, lure a scholar to his doom? Is an unfilial son tortured of devils? Or does a decadent queen sport with her eunuchs?

I cannot tell. The faces of the people are wooden; only their eyes burn dully with a reflected light. I shall never know. I am alien ... alien.

The Well

The Second Well under Heaven lies at the foot of the Sacred Mountain. Perhaps the well is sacred because it is clean; or perhaps it is clean because it is sacred. I cannot tell.

At the bottom of the well are coppers and coins with square holes in them, thrown thither by devout hands. They gleam enticingly through the shallow water. The people crowd about the well, leaning brown covetous faces above the coping as my copper falls slantwise to rest.

Perhaps it will bring me luck, who knows? It is a very sacred well. Or perhaps, when it is quite dark, someone who is hungry.... Then the luck will be his!

The Abandoned God

In the cold darkness of eternity he sits, this god who has grown old. His rounded eyes are open on the whir of time, but man who made him has forgotten him.

Blue is his graven face, and silver-blue his hands. His eyebrows and his silken beard are scarlet as the hope that built him. The yellow dragon on his rotting robes still rears itself majestically, but thread by thread time eats its scales away, And man who made him has forgotten him.

For incense now he breathes the homely smell of rice and tea, stored in his anteroom; For priests the busy spiders hang festoons between his fingers, and nest them in his yellow nails. And darkness broods upon him. The veil that hid the awful face of godhead from the too impetuous gaze of worshippers serves in decay to hide from deity the living face of man, So god no longer sees his maker.

Let us drop the curtain and be gone! I am old too, here in eternity.

The Bridge

The Bridge of the Eight Scholars spans the canal narrowly. On the gray stone of its arch are carvings in low relief, and the curve of its span is pleasing to the eye. No one knows how old is the Bridge of the Eight Scholars.

In our house-boat we pass under it. The boatman with the rat-like face twists the long broken-backed oar, churning the yellow water, and we creep forward steadily. On the bridge the village is assembled. Foreign devils are a rarity. The gold-brown faces are not unfriendly, merely curious. They peer in rows over the rail with grunts of nasal interest. Tentatively, experimentally, as we pass they spit down upon us. Not that they wish us ill, but it can be done, and the temptation is too great.

We retire into the house-boat. The roof scrapes as we pass under the span of the Bridge of the Eight Scholars.

The master of the shop is a pious man, in good odor with the priests. He is old and honorable and his white moustache droops below his chin. Mencius, I think, looked so.

The shop behind him is a mimic world, a world of pieties and shams--the valley of remembrance--the dwelling place of the unquiet dead. Here on his shelves are ranged the splendor and the panoply of life, silk in smooth gleaming rolls, silver in ingots, carving and embroidery and jade, a scarlet bearer-chair, a pipe for opium.... Whatever life has need of, it is here, And it is for the dead.

Whatever life has need of, it is here. Yet it is here in sham, in effigy, in tortured compromise. The dead have need of silk. Yet silk is dear, and there are living backs to clothe. The rolls are paper.... Do not look too close.

The dead I think will understand. The carvings, too, the bearer-chair, the jade--yes, they are paper; and the shining ingots, they are tinsel. Yet they are made with skill and loving care! And if the priest knows--surely he must know!-- when they are burned they'll serve the dead as well as verities. So living mouths can feed.

The master of the shop is a pious man. He has attained much honor and his white moustache droops below his chin. "Such an one" he says "I burned for my own father. And such an one my son will burn for me. For I am old, and half my life already dwells among the dead."

And, as he speaks, behind him in the shop I feel the presence of a hovering host, the myriads of the immortal dead, the rulers of the spirit in this land....

For in this kingdom of the dead they who are living cling with fevered hands to the torn fringes of the mighty past. And if they fail a little, compromise....

The dead I think will understand.

My Servant

The feet of my servant thump on the floor. Thump, they go, and _thump_--dully, deformedly. My servant has shown me her feet. The instep has been broken upward into a bony cushion. The big toe is pointed as an awl. The small toes are folded under the cushioned instep. Only the heel is untouched. The thing is white and bloodless with the pallor of dead flesh.

But my servant is quite contented. She smiles toothlessly and shows me how small are her feet, her "golden lilies."

Thump, they go, and thump!

The Feast

So this is the wedding feast! The room is not large, but it is heavily crowded, filled with small tables, filled with many human bodies. About the walls are paintings and banners in sharp colors; above our heads hang innumerable gaudy lanterns of wood and paper. We sit in furs, shivering with the cold. The food passes endlessly, droll combinations in brown gravies--roses, sugar, and lard--duck and bamboo--lotus, chestnuts, and fish-eggs--an "eight-precious pudding." They tempt curiosity; my chop-sticks are busy. The warm rice-wine trickles sparingly.

The groom is invisible somewhere, but the bride martyrs among us. She is clad in scarlet satin, heavily embroidered with gold. On her head is an edifice of scarlet and pearls. For weeks, I know, she has wept in protest. The feast-mother leads her in to us with sacrificial rites. Her eyes are closed, hidden behind her curtain of strung beads; for three days she will not open them. She has never seen the bridegroom.

At the feast she sits like her own effigy. She neither eats nor speaks. Opposite her, across the narrow table, is a wall of curious faces, lookers-on--children and half-grown boys, beggars and what-not--the gleanings of the streets. They are quiet but they watch hungrily. To-night, when the bridegroom draws the scarlet curtains of the bed, they will still be watching hungrily....

Strange, formless memories out of books struggle upward in my consciousness. This is the marriage at Cana.... I am feasting with the Caliph at Bagdad.... I am the wedding guest who beat his breast.... My heart is troubled. What shall be said of blood-brotherhood between man and man?

Across the narrow street it lies, the street where little children are. It is rocking its body back and forth, back and forth, ingratiatingly, in the noisome filth. Beside the body are stretched two naked stumps of flesh, on one the remnant of a foot. The wounds are not new wounds, but they are open and they fester. There are flies on them. The Thing is whining, shrilly, hideously.

Professionally maimed, I think. Christ!

Interlude

It is going to be hot here. Already the sun is treacherous and a dull mugginess is in the air. I note that winter clothes are shedding one by one.

In the market-place sits a coolie, expanding in the warmth. He has opened his ragged upper garments and his bronze body is naked to the belt. He is examining it minutely, occasionally picking at something with the dainty hand of the Orient. If he had ever seen a zoological garden I should say he was imitating the monkeys there. As he has not, I dare say the taste is ingrained.

At all events it is going to be hot here.

The City Wall

About the city where I dwell, guarding it close, runs an embattled wall. It was not new I think when Arthur was a king, and plumèd knights before a British wall made brave clangor of trumpets, that Launcelot came forth. It was not new I think, and now not it but chivalry is old.