The White Light

The White Light

Chen Shicheng had gone to see the list early, and it was already afternoon by the time he got home. As soon as he saw the list, he had first looked for the character Chen. There were quite a few Chens, and they seemed to leap into his eyes one after another, but what followed was never the two characters Shicheng. So he began again, searching carefully through all twelve circular lists. The spectators had long since dispersed, and Chen Shicheng had finally not found his name on the list, standing alone before the wall of the examination hall.

Although the cool breeze gently stirred his graying short hair, the early winter sun still shone on him quite warmly. But he seemed dizzy from the sun, his face turning ever more ashen, strange flashes of light streaming from his weary, red and swollen eyes. By now he could no longer see the list on the wall at all; all that appeared before his eyes were many black circles drifting vaguely about.

Having passed the county examination, going up to the province for the provincial examination, and passing consecutively after that... The gentry would then try every means to seek his acquaintance, and people would look upon him with awe, as if he were a god, deeply regretting their former contempt and folly... He would drive out the miscellaneous families renting rooms in his dilapidated house—though there was no need to say "drive," they would move out of their own accord—the house would be made entirely new, with flagpoles and a plaque at the gate... If he wanted prestige he could become a metropolitan official, otherwise he might as well seek an appointment in the provinces... The future he had so carefully arranged for himself now collapsed like a sugar pagoda that had gotten damp, crumbling in an instant, leaving nothing but a pile of fragments. Without thinking, he turned his body, which felt as if it were dissolving, and walked dully toward home.

He had just reached his door when the seven schoolboys opened their throats and began to recite their lessons with a buzzing sound. He was greatly startled, as if a chime had been struck beside his ear. He could only see seven heads with little pigtails swaying before his eyes, swaying all around the room, while the black circles danced among them. He sat down, and they brought him their evening lessons, their faces all showing an expression of slighting him.

"Go home," he said, after a moment of hesitation, his voice mournful.

They gathered their schoolbags in a hurry, tucked them under their arms, and scampered away in a flash.

Chen Shicheng still saw many small heads with black circles dancing before his eyes, sometimes in confusion, sometimes arranged in strange formations, but gradually they grew fewer and blurred.

"This time I've failed again!"

He was greatly startled and leaped to his feet. The words had clearly been spoken right beside his ear, but when he turned around there was no one there. It seemed he again heard a chime struck with a hum, and his own mouth said:

"This time I've failed again!"

He suddenly raised one hand and counted on his fingers, thinking: the eleventh time, the thirteenth time—this year made the sixteenth—and not a single examiner had understood his essays, blind as they were, which was really pitiable. Without meaning to, he burst out laughing. But then he was enraged. He abruptly pulled out the fair copies of his examination essays and poem from beneath the cloth of his schoolbag, took them and started to walk out. But just as he reached the door, everything before his eyes blazed with light, and even a flock of chickens seemed to be laughing at him. He could not help but feel his head pounding wildly, and had to retreat back inside.

He sat down again, his eyes especially bright. He gazed upon many things, but they all seemed blurred—it was the collapsed sugar pagora of a future lying before him, and this future only spread out further, blocking all his paths.

The cooking smoke from other houses had long since died down, and their bowls and chopsticks had been washed, but Chen Shicheng still did not cook his dinner. The miscellaneous families lodging there knew the old custom: whenever the year of the county examination came and they saw such a look in his eyes after the list was posted, it was best to shut their doors early and not meddle in his affairs. First the sound of voices ceased, then the lights went out one after another, and only the moon slowly appeared in the cold night sky.

The sky was a deep, blue-green like a stretch of sea, with just a few floating clouds, swaying as if someone had washed a chalk brush in a brush-washer. The moon cast its cold light down upon Chen Shicheng. At first it was nothing more than a newly polished iron mirror, but this mirror mysteriously illuminated Chen Shicheng's entire body, reflecting the iron moon upon him.

He was still pacing in the courtyard outside his room, his eyes quite clear, and his surroundings silent. But this silence suddenly became disturbed for no reason, and he distinctly heard a hurried, low voice say:

"Turn left, turn right..."

He started and listened intently, and the voice repeated, louder:

"Turn right!"

He remembered. This courtyard was the one where, before his family had fallen into such decay, he and his grandmother had sat cooling themselves on summer nights. At that time he was a child of barely ten, lying on a bamboo couch, while his grandmother sat beside the couch telling him interesting stories. She said she had heard it from her own grandmother: the Chen ancestors had been immensely wealthy, this house was the ancestral foundation, and the ancestors had buried countless pieces of silver there—their fortunate descendants would surely find it, though it had not yet appeared. As to the place, it was hidden in the middle of a riddle:

"Turn left, turn right, go forward, go back—measuring gold and silver, not by the bushel."

Regarding this riddle, Chen Shicheng had often secretly tried to guess at it in his daily life, but unfortunately, just when he thought he had hit upon the answer, he would immediately feel it was wrong. Once, he had been quite certain, knowing it was beneath the house rented to the Tang family, yet he never had the courage to go and dig; after some time, he felt it was not at all like that either. As for the several old traces of digging in his own house, those had all been the actions of a deranged mind after previous failures in the examinations; later, when he saw them himself, he still felt ashamed and embarrassed.

But today, the iron light enveloped Chen Shicheng, and came to coax him softly; should he hesitate for a moment, it would give him a solemn proof, coupled with a sinister urgency, forcing him to turn his eyes once more toward his own room.

The white light, like a white round fan, flickered and swayed to life within his room.

"So it is here after all!"

He said, and like a lion, hastened into the room, but upon stepping inside, the white light vanished. There was only a vast, dim old room, and several old broken desks lost in the gloom. He stood, disappointed, then slowly focused his eyes again, and the white light clearly reappeared—this time even larger, purer white than sulfur flame, more ethereal than morning mist, and it was beneath the desk against the eastern wall.

Like a lion, Chen Shicheng dashed behind the door, reaching for his hoe, and collided with a dark shadow. For some reason, he felt afraid, and hastily lit the lamp. The hoe was simply leaning against the wall. He moved the table aside, and with the hoe, swiftly dug up four large square tiles. Squatting to look, there was, as expected, yellow fine sand; he rolled up his sleeves, pushed aside the sand, and the black earth beneath was revealed. Very carefully, very quietly, he dug downward hoe by hoe, but the late night was truly too still—the sound of iron striking earth was always blunt and heavy, unwilling to be concealed.

When the pit was over two feet deep, there was no sign of a jar's opening. Just as Chen Shicheng was growing anxious, a crisp sound rang out, quite jarring his wrist—the hoe's tip had struck something hard. He hastily put down the hoe and groped to see: a large square tile lay below. His heart trembled violently. He concentrated all his energy, dug up that tile, and beneath it was the same black earth as before. He loosened much of the earth, and below it seemed bottomless. But then he touched something hard and small—round, probably a rusted copper coin; besides, there were also several broken porcelain pieces.

Chen Shicheng felt a void in his heart. Sweat poured over his whole body, and he scratched about anxiously. In the midst of this, his heart trembled in the air, and he touched another strange little object—this seemed somewhat horseshoe-shaped, but felt very brittle to the hand. He again concentrated his energy, dug up that object, carefully pinched it, and examined it under the lamp: the thing was mottled and flaking, looking like a decayed bone, with a row of incomplete teeth still attached to its upper part. He had already realized this was probably a jawbone, and the jawbone began to tremble and move in his hand, and even revealed a smiling expression, until at last he heard it speak:

"This time it is finished again!"

He shuddered with a great chill, and at the same time let go. The jawbone floated lightly back to the bottom of the pit, and before long, he had fled into the courtyard. He stole a glance into the room—the lamp was so brilliant, the jawbone so mocking, unnervingly strange—and dared not look in that direction again. He lay in the shadow beneath the distant eaves, feeling somewhat safer; but in that safety, he suddenly heard a whispered voice at his ear:

"There is nothing here... go to the mountains..."

Chen Shicheng seemed to remember hearing someone say this on the street during the day. Before it finished speaking, he was suddenly enlightened. He abruptly looked up to the sky—the moon had already hidden itself toward the West Peak, and the West Peak, thirty-five miles from the city, was right before his eyes, standing like a court tablet, pitch-black all around, emitting a vast, shimmering white light.

And this white light was far ahead of him.

"Yes, go to the mountains!"

He decided, and fled out in despair. After several sounds of the door opening, no further sound came from within. The lamp formed a large oil flower, illuminating the empty room and the pit; it crackled and popped several times, then gradually shrank to nothing—the remaining oil had burned out.

"Open the gates~~"

A mournful cry, containing great hope and terror, trembled like a gossamer thread in the dawn before the West Gate.

The next day at noon, someone spotted a floating corpse in Wanliu Lake, about fifteen li from the West Gate. The news spread quickly and eventually reached the ears of the local constable, who had the villagers fish it out. It was a man's body, over fifty years of age, "pale-faced with no beard," and wearing scarcely any clothes at all. Some said it was Chen Shicheng. But the neighbors were too lazy to go look, and no next of kin came forward to claim the body. So after the county magistrate's deputy had performed his examination, the local constable had it carried away and buried. As to the cause of death, that was beyond question—stripping clothes from a dead body was a common enough occurrence, hardly grounds for suspicion of murder. Moreover, the coroner confirmed that the man had drowned while alive, for he had clearly struggled at the bottom of the water; all ten of his fingernails were packed full of river mud.

(June, 1922.)