The Song of King Gesar, page 1
Also by Alai
Red Poppies
THE SONG OF KING GESAR
Alai
Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
www.canongate.tv
This digital edition first published in 2013 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Alai, 2013
Translation copyright © Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin, 2013
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84767 233 9
Export ISBN 978 1 84767 235 3
ePub ISBN 978 0 85786 895 4
Typeset in Van Dijck by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire
Contents
Publisher’s Note
Part I BIRTH
The Story First Beginning
The Story Second Beginning
The Storyteller The Shepherd’s Dream
The Story The Wish of the Deities’ Son
The Storyteller Light in the Blind Eye
The Story The Deities’ Son Descending
The Story The First Sign of Magic
The Storyteller Teacher
The Story What Came Before
The Storyteller Chance
The Story Exile
The Story Tea Leaves
The Storyteller Fate
The Story Snowstorm
The Story The Bend in the Yellow River
The Story Bodhisattva
The Storyteller The Temple
The Storyteller The Ferry Landing
The Story The Temple
The Storyteller Sickness
The Story The Beginning
Part II THE HORSE RACE
The Story Mother in Heaven
The Story Khrothung’s Dream
The Storyteller The Hat
The Story Brugmo
The Story Love
The Storyteller A Horserace
The Story The Race for the Throne
The Story Winning a Horserace to be King – II
The Storyteller A Fine Charger
The Story The Consort
The Storyteller Romance
The Story The Weapons Tribe
The Story The King Forgets to Return
The Story The Death of Gyatsa
The Story The King’s Return
The Storyteller On the Road
The Story Solitude
The Story Gralha the Youth
The Story War between Monyul and Gling
The Story War between Monyul and Gling – II
The Storyteller Salt Lake
The Storyteller Salt Road
The Storyteller Reprimand
The Story Aku Tonpa
The Story Dream Encounter
The Storyteller Cherry Festival
The Storyteller Digging up the Treasure
The Story Puzzlement
Part III THE LION RETURNS TO HEAVEN
The StoryGyatsa Zhakar Shows Himself
The Storyteller Statues
The Story Inspection or Farewell
The Storyteller Rejection
The Story News from China
The Story A Demon Consort Wreaks Havoc
The Storyteller Dajian Lu
The Story Minyag or Meza
The Story Khrothung’s Death
The Storyteller In Minyag
The Story Treasure and Vows
The Story The Demon in China
The Story Shanpa Merutse’s Death
The Storyteller Saving a Wife from Hell
The Story Saving His Wife from Hell
The Storyteller The Future
The Story The Lion Returns to Heaven
Myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives — they explore our desires, our fears, our longings and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human. The Myths series brings together some of the world’s finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include: Alai, Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Michel Faber, David Grossman, Milton Hatoum, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Klas Östergren, Victor Pelevin, Ali Smith, Su Tong, Dubravka Ugrešić, Salley Vickers and Jeanette Winterson.
Publisher’s Note
With the permission of the author and translators, the book has been abridged from the much longer text translated from the Chinese. We hope we have succeeded in preserving the spirit of the original.
Part I
BIRTH
The Story
First Beginning
It was the time when domesticated horses separated from their wild counterparts, and when the deities went up to live in Heaven while the demons stayed in this world.
It saddened the deities to see the humans struggle with the demons, although their sympathy never went beyond sending down one of their number to help. In fact, they often made matters worse. Their visits became rare. Yet once the deities stopped meddling, the demons seemed also to disappear. Perhaps they had plagued humans simply to taunt the deities, and lost interest when only the feckless humans remained. But it has been said that the demons never left this world, that instead they transformed themselves, perhaps into a beautiful girl or into a tree trunk that gave off the sweet smell of rot.
Then the demons began to wonder why they had changed only into wicked figures. Why not assume human form? So they did, and then there was no telling them from the real thing. For centuries humans and deities pursued them relentlessly, until they found the perfect hiding-place: the human heart.
Let us go to the place where the story begins.
It was called Gling, which is present-day Khampapa. To be more precise, the Gling of the past is now part of the immense land named Khampapa. Its grasslands are in the shape of an enormous drum, the plateau encircling a slight rise in the middle. Sometimes you can almost hear surging drumbeats or a pounding heart inside. Snowcapped mountains circle the grasslands, like fierce beasts galloping at the edge of the sky.
In those days, people felt that the earth was big enough to contain many different worlds. Not different countries, different worlds. We speak now of the earth as a village, but back then people looked towards the sky’s edge and wondered if there might be more worlds beyond the horizon – wickeder than theirs, perhaps, or more prosperous.
Gling was a small world, its people divided into clans. By the time the newly enlightened inhabitants of Gling began to separate domesticated horses from wild ones, other worlds had long since left behind the age of barbarism. Those peoples cultivated the seeds of many plants; they smelted gold, silver, copper, iron, featherweight mercury and heavy lead. They erected statues; they wove hemp and silk; they became civilised. They believed they had destroyed all of the demons – or, at least, if there were still demons, they were hidden in human hearts, scurrying around in human blood, laughing like hyenas.
But in Gling the curtain was about to rise on a battle between humans, deities and demons.
The people of Gling began to pursue wealth – pastures, palaces, treasure and, for the men, beautiful women. Tyrants fought one another for power, and life in Gling became a struggle between the noble and the lowly, the powerful and the powerless. An unlucky shadow shrouded their eyes as desire burned in their hearts, just as rivers, wishing to flow beyond their beds, are muddied as they rush against their banks. The people of Gling believed that an evil wind had blown the demons into their world to destroy Gling’s peace and quiet.
Who could have blown the evil wind their way? They were not expected to ask – if they did, the sages might look foolish. They could ask: Where did the demons come from? And the answer would be: They came with the evil wind. Once the evil wind began to blow, dark clouds covered the bright sky. The grass of the pastures yellowed. Worst of all, the kindly were revealed as wicked, and it became impossible for the people of Gling to live in harmony. War horns echoed over the grasslands and among the snowcapped mountains.
It was to these grasslands, riven with the cries of battle, that King Gesar descended from Heaven.
The Story
Second Beginning
One morning, the deities went on an excursion. As they floated into the great void, they saw clouds of sorrow rising above Gling. Their mounts – lions, tigers, dragons and horses – flared their nostrils at the scent of misery in the air. One of the deities sighed. ‘There are so many ways to rout demons yet these humans do nothing.’
The Supreme Deity joined in: ‘I thought they would fight back, but they do not.’ In Heaven the deities had physical forms, all but the Supreme Deity, who was, in a way, the final cause of every effect. He was formless but for his breath.
‘Then let us help them.’
‘We will wait,’ the Supreme Deity said. ‘They have no solution to rid themselves of the demons because they do not want one.’
‘Why—’
‘Let me finish. It is because they hope I will send someone to save them. If we wait, they may find their own way.’
He pushed aside a cloud to watch a celebrated monk preaching to an anxious audience. The monk had travelled thousands of miles, crossed mountain ranges and traversed roaring rivers to spread his faith in the demon-infested land. He spoke: ‘If we purify our hearts, the demons will vanish.’
How could he expect the common folk to believe that such fierce demons had been released into the world from human hearts to bring such harm? A black cyclone followed the demons when they appeared: how could that wild energy have come from themselves? The crowd, which had arrived full of hope, left disappointed.
Another deity, watching from above, said, ‘You are right. They wish us to destroy the demons.’
The Supreme Deity sighed. ‘We must send someone familiar with demon containment to evaluate the situation.’
So there came another monk, this one with powerful magic. The first, who had preferred contemplation to magic, had walked all the way, and it had taken three long years. But Master Lotus was different. He could catch a ray of light as though he were scooping up water, wave it as though it were a willow branch and fly on the light’s back. When he arrived on the majestic plateau, he fell in love with the view before him: the undulating ranges, like running lions, seemed to stretch for ever, the rivers roared with clear water and lakes dotted the plain, like a chess-board, their quiet waters glittering, like gemstones. It was strange that in such a beautiful place the people were so unhappy.
Master Lotus inspected Gling’s four rivers and six hills. The wearying number and power of the demons far exceeded what he had imagined, and it was no longer possible to distinguish them from humans. In some parts a king had been lured into the demons’ Tao; in others the demons had infiltrated the palaces to become powerful officials. Master Lotus could fight demons one at a time, but he could not battle a countryful of them. Luckily he had been sent only to inspect, not to eradicate, them.
The people said to each other that Heaven would come to their aid, but a resentful old woman sobbed: ‘Damn them! They have forgotten us.’
‘Whom do you curse?’
‘Certainly not my husband, who has become a foot soldier for the demons. I curse the deities who have forgotten the suffering in our world.’
‘You must not be disrespectful of deities!’
‘Then why do they not come to save us?’
They all began to wail.
*
Meanwhile, the demons howled with laughter as they feasted at a banquet of human flesh. First to be eaten were those who had spread rumours. Their tongues were cut out, then their blood was poured into jars and placed on the altar as an offering to evil deities. The demons consumed some of these poor souls, but there were more than they could eat, so the rest were left without their tongues, weeping in remorse and pain. Their wailing streamed past people’s hearts, like a dark river of grief.
Above, the sky was a vacant blue that imbued sorrow and despair with beauty. Some who had heard the wailing sang in praise of the colour, but they could not be sure if they sang of the blue or of the despair in their hearts. It seemed that as they sang their sorrow became bearable, and their despair lessened. But the demons would not allow them to sing for long: they feared the sound would reach the heavens. They released vaporous incantations of an invisible grey that suffused the air, entering the noses and throats of the singers. Those who inhaled them were cursed, their vocal cords paralysed, and they could make but one sound, that of a meek lamb.
Baa!
Baa, baa!
Oblivious, they continued to sing. Bleating, they roamed the land like sleepwalkers. When they grew exhausted, they chewed poisonous grasses that even sheep knew to avoid. Then, coughing up grey-green bubbles, they died by the river and the roadside. In that way the demons showed their power.
The people of Gling sank into indifference, their usually lively faces blank. They no longer looked into the sky – what could they expect to see? No deity had come. Rumour spread that one had arrived, but no one would admit to having seen it. True, they had not seen a demon either, but that was different: anyone who had seen a demon had been devoured by it.
In those sad days, wise men let their hair grow long and meditated in caves. They decided that there must be past and future lives, more and larger worlds than the one in which they lived. They wondered what those worlds looked like and whether soaring mountains or vast oceans separated them. And they gave a name to the terror, suffering and despair that the demons brought: they called it Fate.
It was under such circumstances that Master Lotus set off on his return journey to Heaven, intending to report the results of his inspection. Along the way he met farmers, carpenters and potters, all hurrying past him. From their stiff smiles and marionette gait, he knew they had been summoned by the demons. He took them by the shoulders and shook them, imploring them to return home, but no one heeded him. Although he might once have waged a battle against the demons, he knew he could not vanquish them all. Besides, his warnings had not brought the people to their senses, and he comforted himself with a phrase that we still hear now, a thousand years later: ‘What I cannot see cannot trouble me.’
Actually, what he said to himself was: ‘What I cannot see does not trouble me, so I must avoid the main roads.’
He pushed through bramble patches to reach hidden paths. In his weariness he forgot that a simple spell could protect him, and now his arms were torn by thorns, which angered him. The force of his rage made the bramble bushes bow down at his feet.
The paths were little better, for the shepherds, who had abandoned their flocks in the meadows, and the shamans, who had been collecting medicinal herbs in the hedgerows, were rushing to the beckoning demons, jostling him as they hastened past. He wondered what magic could be so powerful. His fatigue dropped away, and he followed them to a mountain pass where the rocky surface had been stripped of moss by the wind. He saw a clear blue lake in the hollow below, and remembered that he had passed this spot before and had vanquished three demons there, demons that could move in and out of the earth, like dragons that soar above water yet are at home in it. He’d used his magic powers to pick up lakeside boulders and drop them one by one at the base of the mountains: the impact had exposed the demons – one had died underground, the other two were buried beneath a colossal rock. Even now, the meandering banks of the lake are dotted with these boulders; once pitch black, they have been turned a dark, lustreless purple by the elements.
Master Lotus realised that he had spent a long time in Gling. A year? Two? Perhaps longer. At the place where he had once vanquished the three demons, a new demon had appeared, a giant snake that hid its body beneath the water, while its long tongue showed as a peninsula rich with enticing red flowers. Above it floated an alluring woman, a sorceress, cupping her breasts in her hands. She sang, and the humans were enchanted. If they retained a trace of free will, it was simply to walk towards her along the demon’s tongue and into its mouth.
Master Lotus flew to the top of a boulder and commanded the people to be deaf to the demon’s summons. But no one paused, not even for as long as it takes a grain of sand to drop through an hourglass, and the naked sorceress made her voice even more beguiling. Then she lifted her snake’s tail from under the lake and waved it provocatively, sending a gust of putrid wind towards him. Enraged, he flew to alight in the snake’s mouth, now transformed into the entrance to a dragon palace. He settled his mind, steadied his feet, and recited an incantation that filled his body with air. Bigger and bigger he grew in the serpent’s mouth, until the writhing creature stirred vast waves in the lake. The flowers and the lush grass vanished. The snake’s long tongue flipped the people into the water and its head split around Master Lotus’s giant body. He flung the snake’s body onto the lakeshore, where it was transformed into a range of rolling hills. But the lake had swallowed the people.
‘Rise!’ he cried. The drowned rose out of the water and were flung onto the shore.
Master Lotus’s strong magic restored many to life. As they got slowly to their feet, they knew they must flee, but their legs failed them. They lay down and wept, their tears falling, like hail, into the lake, made foul by the snake demon. The salt in their tears cleansed the filth, and a blue mist of sadness spread, soaking up the cruelty that had inhabited the water.
Then Master Lotus summoned sweetly chirping birds to gather in the trees, which cheered the people, who stood, stretched and set off for home, to their pastures and villages where barley and cabbage grew. Potters returned to their kilns, stone masons to their quarries; tanners gathered mirabilite crystals from the roadside to soften their leather. Master Lotus knew they might encounter bandits or evil spirits, and never find their homes, but he bestowed on them his blessing with auspicious words.
