Landscape with Figures 24 – Fraser · Verses Across
Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 24Chapter 23
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Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 24
Chapter 23
FraserEnglish
In due course the visit was returned by the three Chinese gentlemen, who brought with them several beautiful girls. To entertain them, Lord Sombrewater decreed a picnic; so under an enamel sky, blue to apricot, tables were spread on the lawn between the horns of the grove, and echoes of laughter and sprightly conversation quivered among the delicately shimmering clumps of bamboo. Before them an exceedingly up-to-date lawn-mower was cutting green swathes in a carpet of daisies, like a plough driving through the Milky Way. Willow and elm and plane-tree were mirrored in the glassy lake. Everybody was happy—even Blackwood, who enjoyed the opportunity to reject the opportunity of enjoyment. Old Wang Li, wearing the appearance of an aged villager who has for some time lapsed from mental efficiency, laughed much to himself at nothing; but from time to time there issued from his vacuity some startling observation, and terrifying depths of knowledge were sometimes revealed in a sudden lightning that flickered through the veils of his eyes. Hsiao Chai abandoned himself frankly to the pleasures of the table and occasionally to silent contemplation of the landscape. Yuan engaged in discussion with a certain smiling ardour and charm of youth. But it seemed to Lychnis that he, too, was absentminded part of the time, even when he discussed. His eyes, she said, were not seeing what was around them. There was a rapt, a heart-chilling look in them, she said, as if they pierced through appearances and contemplated realities that might have been frightening for ordinary people to perceive. Ambrose makes it clear that there was nothing impolite in the behaviour of the three guests. They were self-effacing, unself-conscious and simple, but, watching their patrician faces, one felt oneself to be in the company of great gentlemen. It was beyond their power to obscure themselves. All three were in touch, as inconspicuously as might be managed, with some fountain—in communion, secretly, with some tremendous reality. They had become vehicles for it, and it could not be hidden. With Wang it flowered in unexpected and unreasonable laughter; with Hsiao in the frown of creative inspiration; with Yuan in an imperious raptness of gaze. On him also there sat a certain majesty of self-dedication and the foreknowledge of some difficult paradise.
As the meal progressed, the system of thought that was to be inferred from the talk of the three Chinese gentlemen seemed to the others more and more curiously upside down. But perhaps not to Quentin.
“You are a man to be much admired,” said Hsiao at some free remark of his.
“So he is, indeed,” said Lord Sombrewater dryly, “though it has been our experience, on our travels, to hear him referred to less sympathetically.”
“That is doubtless because men seek to impose their own ideas of conduct on the rest of mankind,” observed Yuan.
“He has discarded purpose,” said Hsiao. “He behaves as his impulses dictate.”
“I am appreciated,” said Quentin.
“He despises,” continued Hsiao, “the artificial bonds that check our natural impulses. He has become primitive. He gives rein to his nature. He gratifies it, and this is right, because life is short, and our days should not be occupied with conforming to external practices and submitting our natures to impossible inhibitions. There is only one virtue, and that is to behave according to our natures. Men are remembered not for their virtue or their wickedness, but only for having lived to their full bent. And all is soon enough forgotten. Indulge, therefore, the ear and the eye, the mouth and the belly—indulge the desires of body and mind.”
“I am understood,” said Quentin.
“It will be observed,” put in Yuan, “that Hsiao has halted in the pleasures of sense. He has been caught, like a fly in amber, in the beauty of appearances. He perceives, and indicates to us, the spirit, the underlying reality of Nature, but he permits himself the desires of sense, thus adding to the sum of human emotion. Such a man is not the perfect man.”
“I should think not, indeed,” said Sprot. “Such a man is most dangerous.”
“And what in your view is the perfect man?” asked Lord Sombrewater, with interest.
“The perfect man,” replied Yuan, to an accompaniment of profound hilarity on the part of Wang Li, “is without passion, desires nothing and indicates nothing. He has the appearance of a fool and is usually ugly. In speaking I depart from wisdom. In speaking we limit truth. Yet, to come in the neighbourhood of definition, let me say that the perfect man neglects himself and is preserved; forgets himself and is remembered; takes what comes; makes no plans; eats what he likes; sleeps without dreams; wakes without care; breathes deep; conforms to custom, lest he become self-conscious; seems to be of the world while his thoughts are with eternity; uses language while communing in silence with what is beyond language; ignores the distinction between spirit and matter; is neither benevolent nor malevolent, wicked nor good, adding nothing to the sum of human emotion; and, his mind being utterly in repose, he dwells for ever with the unnameable.”
“That again,” said Quentin, toying with a dish of spiced wild duck, “is me.”
“But does not the true Sage calmly await annihilation?” ventured Blackwood.
“The true Sage awaits nothing, calmly or otherwise.” It was Wang Li who thought fit to speak. He spoke or kept silence at random, recognizing no rule. “He pays no heed either to becoming or ceasing-to-be. He rejects distinctions of life or death, remaining as nearly as possible unconscious until, in the course of Nature, he returns to the non-relative—which is not to be described as annihilation.”
“Mr. Blackwood is wrong,” said Hsiao, with decision, “in rejecting life. One should reject nothing that is in accordance with Nature. And Wang Li is wrong to spend his years in a state of unconsciousness. For even now as he talks to you he is unconscious. He is not even conscious that he is unconscious—otherwise there would be in his mind the shadow of pride, which is a shadow of passion. He is with eternity, and only peripherally speaks. Yuan, I fear, is going the same way. For me, the object of life is enjoyment. One is born and one will die. In between one has life. I do not reject it. I accept it and gratify my senses while they can be gratified. I perceive the unnameable, but one can perceive without embracing. When one has returned to the unnameable one will have no senses. In the meantime, from the point of view of the senses, death is a fact; life’s another.”
“Neither is a fact,” said Wang, his eyes lit with a terrifying gleam of amusement. “There is only one Fact. From it all apparent distinctions derive. In it they disappear.”
“Do you mean to say,” clamoured Sprot incredulously, “that I ... Me ...” (he pointed to himself) “am not a fact?”
“You are as the shadow of a non-existing cloud passing over a lawn that isn’t there,” said Quentin, with a wink at Hsiao.
“Did I hear a voice?” asked Wang. “How can I, that am not, hear a voice from nothing?” And Sprot clasped his head in desperation, proving himself to himself by the hardness of his skull.
