TOMBS AND RUMORS
We climb and then descend; we pass by the great banyan which, like Atlas, settling himself powerfully on his contorted haunches, seems awaiting with knee and shoulder the burden of the sky. At his feet there is a little edifice where are burned all papers marked with black characters, as if a sacrifice of writing was offered to the god of the tree.
We turn and turn again, and by a sinuous road we enter into a country of tombs. Not, indeed, that they were not everywhere, because our steps since our departure have been accompanied by them. The evening star, like a saint praying in solitude, sees the sun disappear beneath her under the deep and diaphanous waters. The funereal region that we scan in the pallid light of a dreary, waning day, is covered with a rude and yellow growth like the pelt of a tiger. From the base to the ridge are hillocks between which our road winds; and, on the opposite side of the valley, as far as the eye can reach, are mountainsburrowed like a rabbit-warren with tombs.
In China death holds as great a place as life. As soon as they have gone the dead become more important and more to be suspected, enduring as morose and malevolent powers whom it is well to conciliate. The bonds between the living and the dead are broken with difficulty. The rites continue and are perpetuated. The living must go frequently to the family tomb. They burn incense, fire off crackers, and offer rice and pork. In the shape of a scrap of paper they leave a visiting-card held in place with a pebble. The dead in their thick coffins rest a long time inside the house. Then they are carried out of doors and piled up in low sheds, until the geomancer has found the proper site and location. Then the final resting-place is determined on with great particularity, for fear that the dissatisfied spirits should wander elsewhere. They cut the tombs in the sides of mountains, in the solid and primordial earth; and, while the living, in unhappy multitudes, are crowded in valley-bottoms, in low and malarial plains, the dead open their dwellings to sun and space in high and airy places.
The form of an Omega is chosen, placedflat against the hill-slope; and the semi-circle of stone, completed by the brace, surrounds the dead person, who makes a mount in the center like a sleeper under his coverings. It is thus that the earth, opening her arms, makes him her own and consecrates him to herself. In front is placed the tablet inscribed with the titles and names; because the Chinese believe that certain portions of the soul, that stop to read the name, linger above the tomb. This tablet forms the reredos of a stone altar on which are deposited the symmetrically arranged offerings. In front of this the tomb, by the formal arrangement of its terraces and balustrades, welcomes and receives the living family who go there on solemn days to honor the remains of the deceased ancestor. Primordial and testamentary hieroglyph! Facing it, the hemi-cycle reverberates the invocation. All earth which is above the level of mud is occupied by these vast low tombs, like the openings of pits crammed full. There are little ones, simple ones and elaborate, some new and others which seem as old as the rocks where they lean. The most important are high on the mountain, as if in the folds of its neck. A thousand men together could kneel in this tomb.
I myself live in this country of sepulchers, and by a different road I regain my house on the summit of the hill.
The town is below on the other side of the wide yellow river Min, which precipitates its deep and violent waters between the arches of the Bridge of Ten Thousand Ages. During the day one can see, like the copings of the tombs, the rampart of jagged mountains that enclose the city. The flying pigeons and the tower in the middle of a pagoda make one feel the immensity of this distance. And I can see the two-horned roofs, two wooded hills rising between the houses, and on the river a confusion of wooden rafts and junks whose poops are painted with pictures. But now it is too dark. Scarcely a fire pricks the dusk and the mist beneath me, and by a road I know, slipping into the funereal darkness of the pines, I gain my habitual post, this great triple tomb blackened with moss and age, oxidized like armor, which thrusts its frowning parapet obliquely into space.
I come here to listen.
Chinese cities have neither factories nor vehicles. The only noise that can be heard, when evening comes and the fracas of trade ceases, is the human voice. I come tolisten for that; for, when one loses interest in the sense of the words that are offered him, he can still lend them a more subtle ear. Nearly a million inhabitants live here. I listen to the speech of this multitude far under a lake of air. It is a clamor at once torrential and crackling, shot through with sudden abrupt rips like the tearing of paper. I am sure one can distinguish now and then a note and its modulations, as one does a chord on a drum, by putting his fingers on the right places. Has the city a different murmur at different times in the day? I propose to test it. At this moment it is evening. They are volubly publishing the day’s news. Each one believes that he alone is speaking. He recounts quarrels, meals, household happenings, family affairs, his work, his commerce, his politics. But his words do not perish. They carry—part of the innumerable additions to the collective voice. Shorn of their meaning they continue only as the unintelligible elements of the sound which carries them; utterance, intonation, accent. As there is a mingling of sounds, is there a blending of the sense? And what is the grammar of this general discourse? Guest of the dead, I listen longto the murmur, the noise that the living make afar!
Now it is time to return. The pines, between whose high shafts I pursue my road, deepen the shadows of night. It is the hour when one commences to see the fire-flies, hearth fires of the grass. As in the depth of meditation an intuition passes, so quickly that the spirit can perceive merely a glimmer, a sudden indication; so this impalpable crumb of fire burns, and in the same moment is extinguished.