Rare Earth/Chapter 5

by Frank Owen

 

Chapter V

 

Thus in that Chinese garden was his childhood lived and as the years advanced he became quite renowned for verses in the small circle in which he moved. He loved to walk through the garden in the moonlight chanting his lyrics to the star-perfumed sky. It mattered little to him whether his poems were bound in costly cloths and widely circulated. The supreme pleasure was in the creating of them. He believed that for every perfume there was a poem, for every jewel, a sonnet. Poems are merely variations of perfumes, songs, color. Some of his best loved volumes were entitled, Painted Legends, Poems in Lacquer, Porcelain Poems, Poems in Amber, Moon Chants, Perfume Pictures. They were slender books, scarcely more than pamphlets.

"Collections of poems," he used to say, "should not be heavy. Heavy, ponderous jewels are in bad taste. So too poems in volume form should be fragile."

Hung Long Tom poured his very soul into his work. He worked with an intensity that made him a genius. Genius is nine-tenths enthusiasm. It is enthusiasm that makes poems and stories burn with a living fire. He wrote with utter simplicity. Long words and unintelligibility do not denote masterpieces. The Mystic Rose was a fair sample of his style.

"O lovely flower,
From thy sweet perfume
The nightingale draws song,
The stars themselves
Reflect your sadness.
When your head is bowed
In grief over some tragedy
In the garden
They hide behind curtains

Of gray mist.
O Rose,
Perhaps in your fragile
Loveliness
You are but a ghost,
The ghost of a slim
Young girl
Whose passing
Multiplied the sorrows
Of the world."

Now it so happened that in those days there lived in old Canton a girl of such peerless beauty that people gazed upon her face in speechless wonder. So beautiful she was her father who was a mighty Mandarin directed her to hide her face from the insolent gaze of passers-by. Her name was Lotus Blossom. Her father, the Mandarin, like the father of Hung Long Tom, was a collector of jades and ambers. He was a frequent visitor at the house near the Pearl River and while the two gem connoisseurs sipped tea and talked in hushed voices about shimmering jewels, Lotus Blossom and Hung Long Tom walked hand in hand through the garden, supremely happy, supremely young. Sometimes she perched on the top of a stone wall while he recited love chants to her. It was easy to invent poems while she was with him. His very soul seemed to be singing in ecstasy when she was in the garden. There was a time when he wrote a tiny book for her eyes alone called, "Garden Love Songs." It pleased her enormously, especially the closing verse.

"Good-night, Good-night,
The Lantern Moon
Is sinking over China.
My little book of songs
At last is done.
Vastly will I be repaid
If Moon-Girl
Retains within her heart
A single one."

Life in that garden for Hung Long Tom was almost too perfect. Perfect happiness angers the gods. They fear that their estate is being usurped by man. He had reached the highest pinnacle of happiness for a few moments. What matter if thereafter his life was to be wrecked?

Meanwhile the Mandarin and the Jade Master studied their gems and thought not of the boy and girl who wandered in bliss through the garden. In fact it was seldom that the Mandarin thought of his daughter at all. Certainly she was not of an elegance to be classed with pearls or emeralds. It was a regrettable incident that she had not been a son, a son who could carry on the tradition of his father in a grand manner. Women were not worth the deep consideration of any man, certainly not that of the renowned Mandarin. Sing-song girls to cause meals to be pleasurable were all right. Broadly speaking they were not human. They were merely spices to add piquancy to a feast. But a daughter—it was too bad that he could not have had a son.

Such was the twisted way in which the mind of the Mandarin worked. He could not see that his daughter was lovelier than any flower that grew in the garden. He could not see that she was a jewel more precious than any poor dead stone that glitters only with a cold fire. He could not see that even birds stopped to listen when she spoke, so soft and sweet was her voice. But though the Mandarin was blinded by age-old custom and tradition, there was nothing wrong with the faculties of Hung Long Tom. All the love which was denied by her father was showered upon the exquisite Lotus Blossom by him. He liked to watch her as she moved about among the flowers. She was beautifully formed. Her silken garments clung to her gentle form like flower petals. Pale yellow were her cheeks, a lovely yellow which emphasized the deep red of her lips and the intense blackness of her almond eyes. Her black hair glistened in the sunlight with a faint suggestion of blue in the texture. Her eyebrows were as thin and even as the new moon's crescent. When she stooped and pressed her lips to a fragrant flower, the perfume itself was sweetened by her breath. And yet her father, the foolish Mandarin, had ever grieved that she was not a boy.

At this period of his life it seemed as though Hung Long Tom was to be favored by the gods but soon dark clouds commenced to scurry across the sky and there came a downpour of misery. For the Mandarin had decided that Lotus Blossom was old enough to marry. It is always good to get a girl safely off one's hands. He went about plans for the nuptials without consulting his daughter in any manner whatsoever. It was no concern of hers whom she was to marry. Such matters were best dealt with by her father. Her brain capacity was too limited to be capable of a worthy choosing.

And it so happened in one of the Northern Provinces above the Mongolian border there was a Mandarin even wealthier and more renowned than the father of Lotus Blossom. His estates were limitless. He had money invested in business enterprises in the four corners of the world. He too was a collector of gems though he was also a collector of women. Numerous were the concubines in his establishment. But for his legal wife he was indulgent enough to choose the graceful Lotus Blossom. He clicked his teeth together as he beheld her. It was well. When he acquainted her father with his desires, her father felt justly complimented. Here was a connection that mitigated somewhat the stigma of being possessor of a girl-child. Not for a moment did he imagine the arrangements would not be to the liking of his daughter. Nor did he care. The mighty Mandarin who was to be her husband was one of the richest men in China. The fact that he was four times her age, withered and ugly, mattered not a trifle. Here was more luck than had ever come his way before.

When Lotus Blossom heard of her good fortune she rebelled. She did not intend to marry the man of her father's choosing. Her love was all for gentle Hung Long Tom who chanted poems to her so beautifully. She begged her father to have mercy upon her. Her entreaties met with cold fury. The mind of the Mandarin was made up. Perhaps the present of thirty bits of jade of thirty blended colors which he had received from the prospective bridegroom had dulled his ears. Anyway he would not heed her pleading. Date for the wedding was set. It was to be but a few nights after 'The Feast of Lanterns' had ended. His decision was final.

Now all poetry had gone from the garden. There was no poetry in the perfume of jasmine and wistaria. The willows moaned in sympathy as Hung Long Tom walked through the quiet paths with bowed head. Then once more came Lotus Blossom to the garden for the last time. Her father was in conference with the Jade Master. There was naught to prevent their holding earnest conversation. Through the garden paths they walked as sadly as though the garden were a tomb. Hung Long Tom placed his arm gently about her fragile shoulders. Beneath a willow tree he paused and crushed her to him. It was renunciation, the end of everything.

He pleaded with her to run off with him, to quit China and flee to some far country where no one could ever find them, where they could live their lives as though they were part of a beautiful poem. But Lotus Blossom shook her head. She was a true daughter of China. If she ran away she would lose 'face' among all the people who knew her. Away from China she could not be happy. It was impossible for her to go. But though Hung Long Tom could not have her she would never be possessed by any other man. For one long moment she lay passively in his arms, then suddenly she drew a dagger from her garments and plunged it into her breast. She was smiling as she fell, smiling as her body grew cold, smiling as Hung Long Tom pressed his lips to hers. With her last breath she murmured of her love but so low was her voice he could scarcely hear the words.

Hung Long Tom knelt and gazed down upon her as though life had stopped for him. Like a cold grim statue he gazed upon her. But he made no outcry of his anguish. Her love, her belief in him would always be a beautiful memory. Better far was she to accept death than existence with the shrunken Mandarin in his vast palace of concubines and cold wealth. Gently Hung Long Tom lifted, her lovely body in his arms and strained her to him. He crooned a bit of a threnody to her. Then at last he placed her in a flower bed among the blossoms that she loved. All the flowers seemed to sway toward her. Was there the sound of muffled sobbing in the wind? Quiet, still was the garden. Even the music of the birds was hushed. Solitude, solitude and utter desolation.

A few moments later Hung Long Tom fled from the garden never to return. He knew that if he stayed he would be accused of murder and the power of Lotus Blossom's father, the Mandarin, was sufficient to make justice speedy and sure. It was not hard to lose oneself among the maze of countless alleys that make a jig-saw puzzle of Canton. For miles he walked. How far he knew not. Later he loitered in a tea-house until night had descended in all its mystery over Canton. Then stealthily he made his way to the Pearl River where it was quite easy to book passage upon a junk for Bangkok. No one aboard was inquisitive. No one cared the slightest bit about him. In China one yellow man is much like any other.

From that time forth the life of Hung Long Tom was a thing without design. He drifted wherever the spirit moved him. Over the entire world he roamed. Sometimes for months at a time he never Left the sea. Once for two years he had lived as a hermit in a hut in the desert. He had much to think about, much to regret. His life was a series of pictures which he viewed in a detached manner. He had plenty of money. He had written his parents explaining everything to them but swearing them to secrecy. They believed his story. His father set large sums of money to his credit in a bank in Siam and continued to do so until his death. His parents had died almost within an hour of each other. They lived to a great age and to the last were supremely fond of one another. Everything was left to Hung Long Tom and he in turn, although he did not return to Canton, directed that affairs of the house he kept going as of yore. The head-man of the house was Cheng Foong who was possessed of eight sons so that it was quite likely that the house in the garden would be well taken care of. Hung Long Tom further directed that the window at which his mother used to paint was always to be kept open when the days were fair so that the music from the garden might float throughout the rooms. But Hung Long Tom had never returned to Canton. He hated the thought of going back. Hung Long Tom, the poet, was dead. The poet had died even as the light had died in the lovely eyes of Lotus Blossom. To go back would only make his grief more poignant.

As the years went on Hung Long Tom became much of a mystic, a philosopher. He viewed life through half closed eyes as if in fear lest he behold a shocking spectacle. He thought a great deal about life, trying to decide whether it had any meaning at all. In his loneliness he studied all religions and found most of them basically the same. Parables in the Bible have parallels in the teachings of Mohammed, of Confucius, of Buddha. The same stories are told by different authors and in different languages. The very form and structure of Christian churches and cathedrals is based on Pagan symbolism. Fundamentally there is only one religion and the tenets of it are extremely simple despite the treatises of profound scholars.

In his later years Hung Long Tom drifted to the United States. He traveled extensively throughout the country. He visited almost every state but the section he liked best was the broad level prairies of the middle west. From time to time he took positions, sometimes as a tutor, sometimes as a servant. There is no better way of learning the habits, the hidden life of a nation, than to view it from beyond a kitchen threshold. But always he kept moving on. He seldom stayed long in any position. When the family ceased being interesting to him he continued his journey. And eventually it happened that in Galvey he had run across Jethro Trent who was looking for someone to help in his household. With no enthusiasm he had accepted the position. He had not intended remaining at the farm for more than a few weeks but he had no sooner met Ardell Trent than he knew that his travels were over. For years and years he had wandered the earth, a lonesome man, rich but friendless. Now at last he had found a home, the home for which unconsciously he had been in search. When Ardell died leaving a baby boy, Hung Long Tom had remained to watch over the little fellow. With Scobee, Hung Long Tom was able to mold his career just as he would have joyed to watch over the son of Lotus Blossom if it had been granted to him. Now Scobee was a man and Hung Long Tom was still with him, for in his blindness Scobee needed him more than ever. His helplessness only served to weld more securely the bond between them.