Two Translators of Li Shangyin 李商隱

  

One corner of my bedroom is occupied by a pair of bookcases which formerly stood in my living room at Oude Singel 112, Leiden, back in the dear days when I was a young student who still believed ‘paper books’ had a future. The shelves still contain much of the American, British, Chinese, Dutch, and German poetry which I bought and devoured in those days, as well as ‘many a quaint volume’ which testifies to the development of my life in later years – a wonderful bound set of Wen Yiduo’s 聞一多 complete works, a copy of Tu Fu: China’s Greatest Poet[1] which formerly belonged to the Dutch poet Willem Hussem, and a copy of the 1909 printing of A. E. Taylor’s Elements of Metaphysics which I bought in Shanghai in 1979, to name but three.

        Does a house, as the Chinese believe a person does, reincarnate from time to time, the accidentalia assuming each time a new configuration while traces of an underlying motif remain? The bookshelves, when I first built them, stood beside a canal in what had once been the residence of the Dutch Idealist philosopher G. J. P. J. Bolland (1854-1922, also called ‘The Dutch Hegel’). Now they stand in an upstairs room on a noise-wracked approach route to Schiphol Airport; but the sun that falls upon them in the afternoon, and the love of poetry that brought them into being, is the same.

        But if my house is the metempsychosis of a former house, the institute where I worked till 2004 was no less a reincarnation of another ambience: the legendary Sinologisch Instituut lodged on the Third Binnenvestgracht in what had formerly been the operating rooms of a hospital. How well I remember, one sunlit afternoon in that upstairs library, searching among the volumes of Chinese poetry to see whether James J. Y. Liu’s The Poetry of Li Shang-yin,[2] long listed as ‘borrowed, overdue’, had been returned! The answer was no; and when I enquired at the desk, I was told the book had been borrowed ‘by somebody at the Jelgersma Clinic,’ and the tone in which the librarian pronounced those words was as if to say: once a book gets into the hands of one of them, you’ll never see it again! (‘The Jelgersma’ is a famous insane asylum; one of its most famous denizens, for a while, was the great twentieth-century Dutch poet Gerrit Achterberg.) I had visions of someone in a straitjacket, perhaps frothing at the mouth, whose one remaining link with reality was ‘Peonies Damaged by Rain at Hui-chung’ in Professor Liu’s translation.

        It was not till years later that I discovered the borrower of that book had been Hans Faverey (1933-1990), who was not a patient but a therapist at the Jelgersma Clinic in addition to being, of course, one of the great Dutch poets of our time. The time came when thin volumes of Hans’ poetry, signed in his fittingly half-legible hand, appeared in my bookshelves alongside the already-fading, already read-to-pieces paperback copy of A. C. Graham’s Poems of the Late T’ang[3] that I had bought in Oude Singel days and my very own copy of The Poetry of Li Shang-yin: for by then I was teaching Chinese at the university, and although I no longer had the time to read books, I could finally afford to buy them in hardcover.

        That little book by Graham was one of the handful of things that decisively captured my heart for Sinology. Even after the passage of decades, there are lines in Graham’s translation which thrill me all over again each time I read them. And though I am grateful to James Liu for his helpfully detailed explications of the poems, his translations, lucid and admirable as many of them really are, do not speak to my heart. The reason, as I will shortly explain, is to be sought in my character.

        Let us consider some of my favorite lines in Graham, side by side with Liu’s versions. In Graham’s rendering of the first poem of The Walls of Emerald, the final couplet reads:

If the pearl of dawn should shine and never leave its place,

All life long we shall gaze in the crystal dish.

Liu (his title is The Green Jade City) has:

If the morning pearl were not only bright but also fixed,

One would always face the crystal plate all one’s life.

In ‘The Patterned Lute,’ Graham’s final couplet reads:

Did it wait, this mood, to mature with hindsight?

In a trance from the beginning, then as now.

In Liu’s phrasing (the poem’s title is ‘The Ornamented Zither’) this is:

This feeling might have become a thing to be remembered,

Only, at the time you were already bewildered and lost.

What is obvious in both these examples is that because of the verb tenses and moods used, in Graham’s versions the sense of amazement, the fundamentally passive state of mixed wonder and uncertainty, is still actual, still going on, whereas Liu sounds more distant, more in rational control. Liu has stopped wondering whether the ‘bright morning pearl’ might ever turn out to be ‘fixed,’ as clearly shown by his use of the subjunctive or conditional ‘were’ and ‘would.’ And in the second example, evidently he feels in a position to designate what the feeling ‘might have become’: he has already left it behind, and almost as if telling a child there is no Santa Claus, he tells himself: you were bewildered, that’s all!

        In other words, Graham ends each poem on a note of potentially endless uncertainty, but with a hint that in the very uncertainty, something precious is still present. ‘Mature’ and ‘hindsight’ suggest that something has accrued; one’s feeling not only ‘might have’ but actually has become ‘a thing to be remembered.’

        That feeling of uncertainty, paradoxically combined with gratitude for what I can only call the blessedness of my ‘lost’ experience, lies at the very heart of my character, so that it is understandable I prefer the creative irresolution of Graham to the workaday reasonableness of Liu.

        I am aware, of course, that not everybody likes that sort of thing. When Hans Faverey was still alive in this world, once in a while we would get together to drink a bit and talk. One afternoon soon after my book Wijl wij dansen was published,[4] he came to my house to tell me what he thought was strong and weak in it. I was amazed to hear he especially liked the poem ‘Cézanne: pommes,’ which begins:

Door de tijd lijkt de appel

rond, in het onvoltooide.

Scheppen is dus dulden: murwe dingen

murw laten blijken.

I have tried many times to translate these lines into English verse and have never been satisfied with the result. But let’s just say the literal meaning is something like:

In time the apple seems

round: in the unfinished.

So, creation

is toleration –

letting worn-down things

show up worn-down.

But though Hans liked the poem, he very much disliked the word ‘dus,’ meaning ‘so’ or ‘thus,’ and called it an ‘error’ in an otherwise perfect poem. He thought ‘dus,’ implying a conclusion passively drawn, weakened and diluted the third line, which could otherwise have been so emphatic: creation isn’t just thus or so; it is toleration! I remember he said: je moet het wél weten (you have to know).

        I know, Hans. I know This World wants us to know the Answers, and to know them fast. No ‘creative irresolution’ here, create is tolerate, period!

        But that poem was inspired by a long-faded, incurably curling, partly torn Cézanne reproduction which hangs in a different corner of my bedroom from the bookcases. It was written, undoubtedly, during one of the sleepless nights without which I might be somewhat less ‘bewildered and lost’ than I so often am. And you will just not hear me say – sorry here, Hans – that creation is this or is that. The kind of person to whom ‘creation’ (with its aura of muscular deliberateness in action) is a household word, is not going to share my idea that creation, like creations, somehow mysteriously ‘shows up’ in its own time.

        In other words, that little word ‘dus,’ that ‘thus’ or ‘so, evidently’ was my way of translating into my terms what the People of This World say we ‘artists’ or ‘poets’ do when we ‘make’ something. I say we do not actually ‘make’ anything: we just finally bear the full brunt of the rich irreparability of things – perhaps indeed, as the ninth-century Li Shangyin whispers through Graham’s twentieth-century words, after they have ‘matured with hindsight.’

-- Lloyd Haft

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[1] By William Hung. Harvard University Press, 1952.

[2] University of Chicago Press, 1969.

[3] Penguin, 1973 (orig. 1965).

[4] Amsterdam: Querido, 1987.

Astrology: Is Where I Am, Who I Am?

Is Where I Am, Who I Am?[1]

1. Charts, changes, and changed charts

Even for those of us (like me) who don’t strictly ‘believe in’ it, astrology can be a helpful source of liberating alternative suggestions – possibilities of getting beyond the limiting recursiveness of rationality. ‘Putting on a different pair of glasses,’ as the Dutch idiom puts it. And as the American astrologer Marc Edmund Jones liked to say, sometimes we can learn a lot from make-believe.

        One of the less well-known types of horoscope is the so-called ‘relocation chart.’ This, like our birth horoscope, is calculated for the exact day and time of our birth, but unlike the birth chart, it is geographically anchored not in our birthplace but wherever we want the relocation to refer to. It could be the place where we are now living, a place where we are considering living in the future, or even the place where we will attend an important meeting next week. The idea is that such a chart shows how our inalienable (and unvarying) ‘potential,’ given a new focus in a new setting, may gain a different, perhaps a more favorable ‘manifestation’ or ‘actuality.’[2] We can never re-stage our birthday, nor fundamentally change the physical body that we received as of then – what Wallace Stevens once called ‘the unalterable necessity of being this unalterable animal.’[3] But a change of environment does amount to a new ‘body’ of circumstances, a new em-bodi-ment of the interactive energies that we bring with us. Call it if you will a ‘virtual’ body.

        When I turned sixty – attained, in other words, what the Chinese call the da shou 大壽or Great Longevity – I happened to be not in my country of birth which is the USA, nor in my country of residence which is Holland, but in my dream country which is Taiwan. Musing about the roles played by these various ‘locations’ in my life so far, I sat down and calculated the relevant relocation charts. The results were amazing.

        Even the manner of calculation betrayed me as a Relocator. Unlike American astrologers, I calculate the ‘house’ boundaries by the Ascendant Parallel Circle method, and figure the place of the planets by their so-called Actual Positions (werkelijke plaats), as advocated by a specifically Dutch wing of astrology called the ‘Ram School.’ Theo Ram (1884-1961), whose book Psychologische Astrologie came out in the 1930s and as far as I know has never been translated, is one of the great theorists of 20^th-century astrology. One of the many reasons why I am thankful to have learned Dutch is that otherwise I could never have read Ram, or some relevant works of his friends A. E. Thierens (1875-1941) and Leo Knegt (1882-1957). The studies and discussions of these three resulted in a type of horoscopy that must seem, to practitioners of more traditional systems, a heady brew indeed. These Dutch pioneers, and their latter-day followers, not only routinely work with planets that have ‘not yet’ been discovered by astronomers; you can even download an ephemeris giving the zodiacal positions of these ‘hypothetical’ planets![4] And even the positions of the known planets are not determined in the usual way, which is simply to take the zodiacal longitude as the position. Rather, the ‘actual position’ of each planet is calculated in a complex and time-consuming way (but here again, software can be downloaded) which relates the planetary positions to the individual’s horoscope frame, so that in contrast to the traditional method, not all persons born at the same moment have the same planetary positions. For example, in my own birth horoscope, by traditional reckoning the planet Venus is in Scorpio, but by the Ram School calculations it is in Sagittarius. If I had been born not in Wisconsin but in Holland, it would have been in Scorpio – but I am getting ahead.

        Supposedly our ‘radix’ (i.e., birth chart) is a fixed, unchanging picture of our ‘potential’ (Sun), our ‘being’ or ‘essence’ (Moon), and our ‘actuality’ or ‘manifestation’ (the Ascendant, i.e. the rising sign at the time of birth, which represents the body as the visible focus of our life). Yet the fixity seems difficult to maintain in practice. In interpreting one and the same horoscope, Ram uses both the recognized and the ‘hypothetical’ (what the opponents of this school would call ‘imaginary’) planets. Knegt, whose fanatical mathematical experiments and theorizings – Ram called him ‘the calculator’ – led to the notion of the all-important Actual Positions, ironically enough was never quite satisfied as to what his own Ascendant was, oscillating between the two very different signs Sagittarius and Capricorn.

        Far be it from me to assert that a relocation chart, being essentially a ‘birth chart’ for a birth that never actually happened, should have the same status as a radix. Still, I do believe these charts can shed a surprising and legitimate alternative light.

        Undoubtedly I have an inborn tendency to take just such an attitude. You can see it in my radix. At the time of my birth in America, neither Sun nor Moon was ‘in aspect with’ (i.e., a meaningful number of degrees away from) my Ascendant. In other words, my ‘potential’ and ‘essence’ could only link up indirectly, by mental and imaginative by-ways, with the physical ‘actuality’ around me. Having a radix that lacked concrete attachments to actuality, it was easy for me to conclude that one’s environment is not a stable entity but can always be traded in for a new one.

2. The Netherlands: Standing firm in the mud of Taurus

From the moment I arrived in The Netherlands in the fall of 1968, I was in a whole new ‘chart.’ The biggest obvious difference was that the Moon was now strongly ‘conjunct,’ i.e. together with, the Ascendant. My psyche or soul or ‘being’ was now right alongside my physical body in its interactions with the outer world. The Sun (vitality, spirit) was in aspect with the Moon, as were the planets of thinking and doing: Mercury and Mars. In short: this was a favorable time-and-space setting in which I could undertake things.

        But let’s be clear: much of my ‘undertaking’ remained more a private experience than a public reality. As I took up graduate study, and later teaching, at Leiden University, no one would have mistaken me for a go-getter. True, my Moon was conjunct the Ascendant, but she was in Taurus, sign of the earth and of matter in its heaviest, most unformed state. In describing this configuration, Ram writes: ‘First reactions are slow and mostly negative, so that the first impression made is of inactivity verging on the lazy.’

        In other respects as well, my career as a teacher in Leiden confirmed the words that Ram had written about me eleven years before I was born: ‘Not quite suited to being a professor, as concrete things do not really interest...’ In itself, it helped me that in my Leiden relocation chart both Venus (sense for art) and Neptune (mysticism and the fantastic) were in the sixth, the House of Analysis, so that Chinese poetry and philosophy were natural subjects for me to research. But I could never get excited about the newest book about just how many peasants had died in the so-manieth rebellion during such-and-such dynasty. To me such things were bookish details that were but marginal to the ‘essence.’

        Besides, in the relocation chart my House of Analysis was below the Horizon, remaining mostly invisible. The results of my research seldom reached the Mid-Heaven or Medium Coeli, the top of the chart as drawn on the page, which represents the socially most prominent and visible aspect of each ‘native.’ What I published or gave out during my classes was never the full barrel but at most something on the order of a shot glass. (In my own defense, I might add that in those days in Holland we had still not imported the American publish-or-perish mania.) In the bureaucratic ranking system that governed university life, I never rose above the lowest of the three tenured levels. I did make it onto a list of teachers who were recommended for advancement to the second tier, called Chief Docent – but before my promotion could go through, the Queen announced a nationwide freeze on university promotions. The endless downward spiral of retrenchment had set in.

        There was no reason for me to be surprised. After all, Saturn, ruler of formal hierarchies and Lord of my House of Fame, was trapped in a backwater of my Leiden chart, far down at the bottom, the farthest down of all the planets. He was shut away in the fourth House, aka the ‘Shed,’which devours all forms. With me, cognition (or as Thierens would have put it, ‘becoming conscious’) always took precedence over outward sharing. And so, I thought, it would always remain.

3. ‘Het Eylant Formosa’: Taurus at the top

In Leiden I did, of course, succeed in managing my other-worldly ‘potential’ well enough to make something worthwhile out of my world. But before the world itself could really make something out of me, I had to wait till my fifties, when I started to spend long periods of time in Taiwan. In the relocation chart for Taiwan, my horoscope turned out to have undergone a quarter-circle turn. The Moon was no longer at the Ascendant point near the eastern horizon, but all the way up at the southern Mid-Heaven, standing there as the highest of all the planets,[5] ready to advance through the House of Fame. The smooth connection with physical reality was not diminished: the Moon, as well as Venus this time, was in aspect with the Ascendant. During this period, my Dutch free-verse version of the Psalms, which I had written out of a personal and private sense of being ‘in a clinch with God,’ was published. It won a prize, and I received invitations to go on television with it. A second printing was soon followed by a third. Selections from it began to appear in Dutch death notices and obituaries – surely the ultimate proof that my spirit had put down roots in the deep Taurus soil of Holland.

        At the same time, I again took up Tai Chi, the slow and seemingly effortless traditional Chinese exercises that I had first learned thirty years previously from the legendary Phoa Yan Tiong in Amsterdam. (Given the role of Taurus in my horoscope – in Ram’s words ‘immovable till the next incarnation’ – it was natural that I should be most attracted to a non-strenous form of exercise!) At first it seemed this was again just a matter of my own study and inner enrichment. My teacher Lin Mingchang, though one of the most respected in Taiwan, has never published books or DVDs, never founded a school. He has never told me the name of his own teacher. In my Taiwan chart, the planet that represents the Teacher is in the twelfth House, the one Thierens calls ‘the House of Hidden Work.’

        But here again, I could not long succeed in keeping the results for myself. Via my student Alvin Dahn, whose representative planet was strongly in aspect with my Mid-Heaven, I came into contact with the television hostess Wenyuan ‘Dodo’ Lee, whose cultural programs were avidly viewed not only in Taiwan but in other areas of the Chinese-speaking world. Before long she signed me on for a show called ‘Tai Chi and Poetry.’

        In these and other ways, in my Taiwan epoch, things that I had originally done ‘for myself’ were picked up and propagated by the larger world around me. They were such personal things that in a way, it was myself being disseminated. I was no longer trying to find ways of focusing on reality; I myself had become a reality that other people focused on. The world brought out sides of myself that I would not have thought could be so relevant to other people.

        But so...has it all been growth, all advancement? Has it all fitted together to form a unity in which past and present contribute to each other? Sitting in the ‘actuality’ of a recording studio with Dodo Lee, talking about my experiences with Tai Chi...would I need to bring something of my American ‘potential’ and my Dutch ‘being’ into our conversation? Wear an American baseball cap and occasionally lapse into Dutch idiom while we are on the Taiwanese air? Of course not. There is no need to repeat past happiness in the present. It remains where it always was.

And now, looking back on my three ‘actualities,’ my three births or three lives so far – should I try to evaluate, to compare? Should I wonder which of the three ‘charts’ was the best, the most fitting, the most truly ‘mine’? Impossible. How to judge, how to know what a life is about? Maybe the hours, the days that seem to us less important are exactly those in which we are most irreplaceable to someone else.

        In the self-made prayer that I say on getting up each morning (and yes, I do this in American English), one of the first phrases is: ‘I thank Thee for this day of my life, and for all the days of my life.’ Not: thanks, now let’s see here, for two percent of my life; the other ninety-eight percent that was not consciously ecstatic is well forgotten. And not: tonight, after I’ve seen how this coming day turned out, I’ll tell Thee whether I think it was worth being thankful for. No, it’s ‘for all the days of my life’ or it’s nothing. Thankful is thankful.

--Lloyd Haft

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[1] This is a revised adaptation of an article originally published in Dutch: ‘Welke verjaardag noem ik de mijne?’ Tirade 421 (2007 no. 5, dec. 2007), pp. 48-53.

[2] I am using ‘potential/being or essence/actuality or manifestation’ to translate the recurrent Dutch trio ‘aanleg/wezen/werkzaamheid,’ which presumably has its origin somewhere in Schelling’s or Hegel’s philosophy and subsequently came down through writers like Ram and Thierens who were much influenced by Theosophy.

[3] From his poem Esthétique du Mal, section 13.

[4] See the website http://www.wva-astrologie.nl/, under ‘publicaties.’

[5] In astrology, the sun and moon are both called ‘planets.’

Waterwegen (twee gedichten)

GEUL

Daar stroomt het:

waar kolk naar kolk,

wiel naar wiel doorwil,

leeg in leeg doorlengt,

lus aan lus reikt,

oor naar oor open, door-

zwijgend horend.

VAART

Van kolk naar kolk beschrijft de stroom,

laat de lijnen komen

die ontbindende verbinden,

wissende doen weten:

waar het komt

daar zal ik zien,

waar het klinkt

daar zal ik zingen:

ademend beamende
van oog tot oog.

--Lloyd Haft

Lichtgaten (gedicht)

Altijd wist ik ramen mij

nabij, vensters,

bressen in de lange muur

van mensen met hun woorden,

poorten van een licht dat niet verluidde,

gloren zonder galm.

Nis met altijd nog

een nis erachter: uit-

sparing, in-

dieping, zien,

ademen: want licht en adem

komen samen,

worden waar ik nader één:

één met één erachter in nog niet:

nis waar het altijd wakend licht

mij altijd nader wacht.

--Lloyd Haft

Poems by Willem Hussem (Part 1)

Willem Hussem (1900-1974) was a Dutch artist and poet of the post-World War II period. After decades of experiment and development, in the 1960s he came out with a strong voice of his own in both fields, producing works that are still being studied and appreciated. Opinions differ as to why he did not win greater fame. It has been suggested that he would have done better to live in the wide-open world of Amsterdam rather than staying in The Hague, or better still to emigrate to the United States. In any case, in the Netherlands of his day it was not easy for artists of other plumages to compete with the better publicized painters associated with the Cobra group.

        Hussem’s poetry reflects his artistic and philosophical interest in the Far East. He wrote more than a thousand short, trenchant poems: a genre that in Dutch was sometimes called just the korte gedicht or ‘short poem,’ and sometimes jokingly ‘white poetry’ because the printed pages remained mostly white. Built mostly on visual perceptions and nature images, his poems sometimes suggest the haiku but do not stick to its conventions and restrictions. In 1965 Hussem was awarded the Jan Campert Prize for Dutch poetry.

Though Hussem did not read Chinese, he published well-considered reworkings of classical Chinese verse based on existing translations. His versions of the Tang-dynasty poet Wang Wei, in particular, are among the best I have ever seen.

His best-liked poems have been reprinted in various editions. I have consulted the originals in volumes titled Zet het blauw van de zee..., Zienderogen, Ruimte vergt jaren groei, Met inkt zeggen, Motet, Voor twee scharren blauwbekken, Breels aan de vleet, and Schaduw van de hand.

(1) 

people are clouds

wherever they come

it's overcast

(2)

put the blue

of the sea

up against the blue

of the sky

brush the white

of a sail into it

and the wind

comes up

(3)

by the hearth

all that wood

for a single fire

warmth takes years

to grow

(4)

scoop up water

from the rain barrel

don't wait till it's

a cloud again

(5)

rural the setting

by dusky light

a house in an older style

the owner asks me in

the wooden walls surrounding

don’t hem me in

unnoticed at first my host

ferries me across a river

we moor by a green piece of land

in the same dusky light

this ground goes with the house he says

and leaves me alone

(6)

vanished stars

shining still

in the night

dying can’t

hold back light

(7)

where the trees blossom

where the fruits come

the top of the mountain

stays under snow

(8)

whether you laugh

or cry

you’re on your way

(9)

the setting sun

ripens in the trees

at the end of the path

(10)

last year

a dead branch

now glowing charcoal

(11)

the river

that can’t talk

tells of sunset

(12)

high in the mountains

there are no more paths

only the rain

finds a way

(13)

the ebb took longing along

the flood brings it back in breakers

(14)

last night sea and sky

were one

now at dawn’s coming

they drift apart

(15)

cloudless sky

motionless sea

horizon as a hinge

a shell opens

(16)

in the silence of morning

the cry of an oriole

the sound colors the forest

(17)

in one leap

a fish splits the cloud

on the water’s surface

(18)

now that the sun shines

the mud glistens

(19)

at the moment

you asked me for a match

lightning struck

fire and wind now

blazing between us

(20)

shadows shoving

across the land

climbing the dune

gliding into the ocean

dark fishes

leaving shore behind

--translated by Lloyd Haft

英蓮

英蓮

                              選自 «漢齋誌異» 漢樂逸原著  蘇桂枝翻譯

當時是下午四點，英蓮累斃了。也難怪，這已經是國際詩歌節的第二天，也是她生平第一次離開中國的第三天。她搭機長途飛越過歐亞板塊，來到1985年的資本主義異國。時差加上新鮮事物的衝擊，有些承受不來。打從她在蘇黎世國際機場，第一次實際接觸到西方，看到了亮麗光鮮的機場大廳、商店，保養極好的地板、乾淨的窗簾，笑臉迎人的接待人員，她行走在如宮殿般的環境卻不禁自卑起來。她懂什麼？在這裏又能做什麼？坐在候機室，身著雪白褲裝、頭帶著隨身聽、穿冰刀鞋，大約九歲的一個瑞士女孩，正在看一本西方語言的雜誌，看來都比她這32歲的人懂得多。

此刻，坐在旅館房間的桌旁，她回想機場穿白色褲裝的小女孩，她本想挨著她坐，抱抱她，親她一下，就像一般西方人的習慣一樣。但她必需快步趕上一方面很緊張，另一方面也自以爲傲的李團長。他身上穿著作家協會爲此次會議特別製作贈送的西裝。李團長之所以緊張，是因為中國大使館派人接機，他覺得很重要，必需給他們好印象，往後幾天他若申請批准比原官方計畫多些日子，延簽到歐洲其他國家旅遊，可能需要他們幫忙。而所謂的驕傲，也不僅是穿著西裝，而是因為他在黨裡的層級，無疑的比大使館那些拿筆頭的人高。

李團長在當今中國現代文學界裏是個大人物。他寫了一篇“中國新詩中永遠重要的民族性”發表在名爲“中國文學創作”的英文雜誌，去年美國一所大學因此邀請他當客座教授，但最後他還是沒去。官方說法是因為他身體不舒服，實際上則是他覺得不能離開北京，他要好好鞏固他與黨內高層的人脈關係。之所以如此，事出前一陣子，有人曝露他施壓，要作家協會副主席不讓某某年青輩前衛詩人前往牛津參加亞洲作家座談會。這位某某詩人的一些朋友中，也包含國務院的官員，將這事告到上層，且幾乎勝算。但李團長也有他的人脈，最後雙方達成協議，把李團長的批評轉化成無傷大雅的學術性談論，特在華東的一個大學開了一個座談會，主題是“新詩歌意象的國際性和民族性”。李團長是專題演講者，以新民歌風寫了一組詩並登載在人民日報。接著還擔任座談會後報告的主編，俾發表在具有權威性的“無名報”上。英蓮就是參加這個座談會的年輕詩人，和李團長同牀多次。在李團長的座談會報告中聲稱英蓮是“我國年青詩人中體現健康思考趨向者”，英蓮也在申請書上引用了這句話，因此獲准這次的出國。

李團長一方面是很懂得在官僚體系中運作帷幄，另一方面也很會喝酒。有一次喝了整瓶杜康酒，和英蓮做了愛後，曝露很多個人生活狀況包括他太太於文革期間從16層高窗戶跳樓自殺後的性生活；有關他被判為修正主義份子送勞改，清了好幾年廁所；他兒子在美國唸書交了一位黑人女友，以及他計劃只要他兒子在西方找到工作，他就要移民等等。

英蓮聽了這些話覺得很有意思，一來她很高興得知就連像李團長這般在公衆場合強烈反對所謂中產階級趨向，具有聲望的高官，卻是很想移民美國不願再住中國。另一方面，知道那麼多有關他的事也是危險的，她希望他是醉到不記得自己說過些什麼，但也真沒把握。

        那天晚上英蓮背著他坐著哭了。但這並非李團長所認爲因擁抱與性滿足後的鬆弛導致的哭泣。事實上，她當時想念著已離開六個星期的“某某詩人”。某某人之所以與她斷絕秘密關係是因爲之前與李團長間的爭論，她不敢出面支持他，還被指責是“膽小妓女”。這句話出自她在文革期間被紅衛兵拿槍指著頭威脅輪姦後的第一個男人口裏，傷透她的心。

在和某某人斷絕後不久，她無可奈何的跟李團長上了牀。現在在瑞士，她預料李團長也同樣會對她要求，她沒有辦法拒絕。歸功於他，她才能夠受邀及批准前來參加座談會，也因為他的層級，中國大使館的人才不敢虧對作家代表團成員。謠傳受歐洲大學邀請前來的一些訪問學者，被當地中國大使館施壓交出回程飛機票，以供運用，他們只好從大學所給的生活雜費中省吃儉用再買回國機票。這次參加座談會的作家們可以保留西方基金會給的零用錢。當然一部份的費用也會入李團長口袋，他有權簽署各式各樣需求。不過，她總期望還會有一些剩餘款，足夠讓她溜開代表團，享受一下西方美食美景，也就是時下說的“開洋葷”，但這也要等李團長忙碌的時機。

就像今晚，李團長被一羣西方學者邀請一同去瑞士蒙特勒鎮旅行，隔一夜才回來。英蓮因此有了自由，可以接受在開幕招待會上認識，從事翻譯之瑞士青年的提議，一起參加當地天主教會在山上修道院辦理的斯拉夫教會儀式。英蓮就連什麼是天主教，東宗教都不知道，更不能分辨儀式差異性，但，她還是覺得至少可以寫下今晚這些經驗，日後再出版。

她不知道這個西方人究竟會如何打算，但她還是假設他遲早會在車子的後座或旅館跟她行周公之禮，或甚至於也會向她求婚。英蓮就曾有一個女性朋友，有一次在昆明街上偶然遇到一個美國遊客，聊了十五分鐘後，那人就向她求婚。英蓮最爲篤定的是假如在這次寶貴的出國機會中，有任何一位西方人想要跟她結婚，她都會立刻答應，那怕是很醜，邋遢，很臭或坦白的想利用她做爲“長髮字典”幫助他將來成爲漢學家，甚至於娶她是爲了在牀上做一些在中國只有妓女才會做的牀戲，不管怎麼樣，最起碼，最起碼可以就此逃離。

再過半個鐘頭這位西方人就要來接她了，因廣西的一位出版商答應她返國後出版她的旅行感想，她想利用短促的時間同時做一些筆記，很快的把小筆記本擺在面前。在首頁上原本已然以超大字寫著“飛躍山城”，其餘則是空白。

正當她手指間轉著筆，望著窗外街上時，她看見一個帶著勞工人民般帽子的老人，牽著馬拖著車走過，馬車上面都是報紙。

那些報紙底下有可能躺著年輕人嗎？那些年輕男女在黃昏時刻從領導指定的鄉村工作地點冒險逃回在城裏頭的家嗎？就像文革時她一位同學被下放到安徽省，她試著離開，於是和當地的一位農民協商好，答應和他有性交易後，送她到省城。結果，他居然完事後還把她交給剛從越南回來的幾個軍人，輪姦她後，將不醒人事的她丟棄在路旁。

不會的，她想，這種事在這裏不會發生的。她聽說在西方國家沒有下放的年青人。

但是，那個牽著馬的人真的是西方人嗎？她越看越像東方人，甚至於就是中國人。那些顴骨...瑞士人到底屬於什麼人種？當然是白種人，可是瑞士是不是離有亞洲少數民族的蘇聯很近呢? 她就連還可以唸書的那個時候就沒學過多少地理，後來她父親覺得她長得漂亮，走在鎮上很危險，所以將她和弟弟一起送到鄉下親戚那兒，但那兒的學校已經破壞關閉了。

這馬伕慢慢的通過，突然間，她確定他是中國人。他走路的樣子像極了多年前她看過一部電影中的角色。那是波蘭影片，是有關滿洲朝代中國漢人被壓迫的情節，其中一幕，是有一些中國人正趕著一羣馬、驢進到北京，然而他們根本不知道當天中國人沒有特別許可證是不准進城的。突然間出來了一些滿族的士兵攔住他們的路，把馬車隊最前頭的那個人用棍子活活打死，其餘的人都被鞭子打在臉上，以至於他們有生之年或者僅僅用單眼，或雙眼全瞎了。

這個人牽著馬，每走幾步路就四周圍看看，好像觀察這條路上前前後後任何狀況。他有可能是大使館給錢請來監督作家代表團的嗎？這也不無可能。她回想幾年前她的侄女在杭州電視大學學英文時，在一個美麗秋天的下午，正當走在西湖附近東坡路時，遇見一位帶著照相機的比利時漢學家。在親切簡單的交談後，她答應讓他拍照。突然間有一位穿著平民勞動裝的中國人三步做兩步走的飛奔過來，沒有出示任何證件，就以很權威的口氣詢問她和這位外國人到底是什麼關係，而她的工作又是什麼性質，爲什麼需要交談等等。最後知道她是學生身份，就拿出隨身帶著的筆記本，登記了她的名字和住址。

事情總會水落石出。那之後幾天，她回學校參加小考時，接獲學校正式的警告，還好，這件事就這樣結束，但她做了幾個月的惡夢。

不，英蓮想著，一切都沒準的。甚至在這裏也有許多中國人申請政治庇護，但八爪章魚就可以鉅細靡遺的偵測到你。早就聽聞中國學生在國外留學被要求加入“學習小組”，除了有就近觀察的作用外，亦不外乎是大使館用來督導的管道。就連看起來沒什活力的中國餐館，及其魚缸裡面養着肥胖而也沒精神的魚，都照樣有眼線在觀察。

正當這人及馬車轉彎離去時，她才警覺到還需要準備一些事，那西方人隨時都會到的。她放下原子筆打開桌子最上層的抽屜。裏面滿是她自已創作的詩手稿，也有朋友將自己的詩做成小冊子，上面寫著一些對或不正確的英文標題。她計劃將這些詩交給一些漢學家和翻譯家，希望有機會被讀到而後能邀請這些作者到他們的國家訪問。但今晚到底要將哪些詩交給西方人，哪些留著等下次和別人認識時再給？她將會在歐洲多停留六天，她或許在李團長和其他代表團作家不在時，會遇上在學術圈比這位西方人更有影響力的人。反正她對他一無所知。

她不想馬上做決定，她已經準備一些禮物給他，可以將這些手稿一併裝進袋子裡，到時再觀察要把全部的手稿交他，或者不給，或者只是部分。

她站起來走到衣櫃，從裡頭取出禮物與紀念品，選擇了兩件，其一是絲質捲軸徐悲鴻畫的馬，另外是一張折疊的宣紙，上面題著一首李白的詩，是目前中國外交部部長的書法。她又從衣櫃架上取下上面繡有天上皇宮形象的旅行包，把捲軸放裡面，為了保護那折疊的書法，就把它夾在手稿中間。她正猶疑是不是該留一部份的詩手稿在飯店，以備萬一她今天帶出去的東西丟了。同時她也想再梳理一下自己的頭髮，但此時門鈴響了。

她面帶微笑，稍微的等了一下然後開了門，用英文說了一聲hello！其餘的英文，原本她已經背好準備說，想給人一些國際化的印象，這下子，在她看見這個高大、留著鬍鬚的瑞士男子，她什麼都忘了，看著他的眼睛，聽著他的聲音，她膝蓋開始發抖。

腳還發抖著，直到他們下了樓到街頭，他開啟那藍顏色”富豪”轎車門讓她先上車。這是她生平第一次上私人轎車。當她在那皮製椅坐定下來，浮上心頭的是她所謂成年時代的教育、寫作、被邀請參加國際性詩歌座談會等等都已經遺留在旅館房間、在機場、在中國。此時此刻的她是一位沒有名字沒有過去的年輕女孩，坐在有著閃亮燈座、香菸皮革的高級豪華車上，單獨與一個男人在一起。

往教堂的全程路途，哪怕交談中她口裏一直說著中國文學現階段的趨勢，西方人也講的一口好中文，而她心裏，肚裏一直想像著她是他的太太，在寒冬的早晨，在現代化、高檔設備的廚房裏爲他，以及也希望爲和他生的健康、自由的小孩準備早餐。

    這西方人對中國文化知道的不少，可是，對英蓮而言，覺得更重要的是他開車的方式，他抽煙斗，他不疾不徐很有信心的講自己的未來。她甚至不知道他這個人的政治背景，他很可能就是C.I.A.探員，甚至於現在就被大使館的人跟蹤著，或者被李團長的朋友觀察著。這些她越來越不多想，希望沉醉於車上浪漫微光以及專注聽著收音機播放傷感古典音樂。她想著：太可惜了，因為李團長的關係而吃避孕藥，不然，今晚或許就能懷孕。

  

    來到教堂的聖堂裏，排隊排在她前面的是一位烏克蘭女人，她到底幾歲？約75歲吧？英蓮看著這個老婦人慢慢的彎下頭向著圖像，然後吻著表面，再退一步做十字禱告狀，再把手交叉放在胸前。她認真的觀察這些動作，等一下自己也要如此做。

那個烏克蘭老婦人伸著她的右手把圖像前面一個歪斜的蠟燭弄正。英蓮感受到那個動作就像是自己的手臂在動。她其實也不太驚訝的，打從她進到這聖堂，她的身體好像已經融入了，沒有什麼界限，燒香味猶如從她的肺部散發到室內各角落，無數燭光如同她自己眼睛溫煦的光芒所投射。淚水因感動於唱詩班的歌聲音樂，禁不住直流。周遭每個人的走動彷彿是一種符號，是另外一個平靜優美境界傳來的訊息，是需要香味，聲音和影子才有可能通達的國度。

她就如同宋代理學家所說的“物我一體” ，而也因爲環繞她的各種形式，手勢，讓體物不止合一，也有不同詮釋。譬如執事每次要祈禱的時候，會舉起左手，那個動作讓她想起從前夏天在家裡她叔叔用左手弄涼麵的樣子，那時紅衛兵還沒抓他關進一個非常潮濕的地方。本來就有肺病的他因受不了，再也沒有活著出來。

同時，這個執事或者神父們，唱詩班，讀經者看起來就像那部有關滿洲人電影裡的演員般。她記得其中的一幕是，在夜晚時分，一羣中國人，反滿洲的愛國者聚集在廟口，那些領導者穿著他們所認爲的中國真正最後朝代明代的皇袍，以及高官服飾。他們舉行復明的儀式，希望由於他們的祈求會感動天地，驅走滿族而帶來充滿和平與愛的新時代。

誰知有人通報滿族的軍隊，他們全副武裝抵達廟口。男人當場被砍頭，女人被強姦並抓去當僕人，這擁有天命的滿族人，終歸還是當着專制的統治者。

但當時是如此，今晚此時她看到這儀式，從骨子裏就感覺到像是明朝忠貞者猶存，他們在這裏。穿著聖袍環繞著她，他們召喚全世界祈禱者以及正義之士聚集一起，舉起歡愉安靜的手勢，充滿歡欣的動作體現出他叔叔過去快樂的樣子，而且他們唱的禱文彷彿爲了祝福她訂婚而唱。

她確卻知道她要訂婚，福音朗讀時，她請西方人翻譯一下意思，她又感覺到了。當他說：“當祝福的聲音傳到我耳時，我腹內的小孩高興的跳了一下，相信的女子是有福的 ”，就在這個時候英蓮感到那個西方人更靠近她，攬著她的背膀。她真的感覺到了。

現在是該她親吻那個圖像。這個圖像的含義是“聖母之卒世”，西方人告訴她聖母得先在人間死了而後才升天。英蓮透過這些燭光，看見圖像中的聖母瑪麗亞躺在深色的袍中，西方人在她身後指著圖像解釋著說“聖母瑪麗亞旁邊那個人就是耶穌，他那個時候自己也死了並已經升天，所以他回來將他媽媽的靈魂帶回天上。看到圖像中耶穌將穿著白色衣服的小女孩抱在胳臂中嗎？他要帶她回天上。”

她是看到了圖像，但她覺得耶穌看來就像身邊這位西方人，而她自己就像穿著白色衣服的小女孩。她恍如在遠處無止境高山上的松樹林中，薰香籠罩她的頭，她彎身親了耶穌圖像，也像剛剛烏克蘭婦人般在胸前畫了十字。

她把手放在胸前，繼續跟著烏克蘭婦人往前幾步走向神父，烏克蘭婦人吻了神父的手，接著就是她要接受神父的祝福。神父手裡拿著一枝像毛筆般的小筆刷，還有一碟有香味的油，當她看著神父時，神父用筆刷慢慢的，安靜的沾了油，在她的額頭畫了十字。她彎身吻了神父的手，然後回到教徒們的座位上。

當走回頭時，她覺得額頭刺癢，這個感覺彷彿之前看波蘭電影時，她看到滿族兵用鞭子打中國人的眼睛時一般，那之後好幾天，還是存在那感覺。她很高興此時又有這個感覺，也有其他信仰者，忠貞者，熱衷者作伴一起。

西方人又過來站在她身旁。唱詩班開始一首新的，頗有感情的誦詞，她請他翻譯一下。

        “...最清純的處女啊，妳的卒世，是通往永生的橋樑。祂帶了妳這無玷染者，從這必死的凡間前去永生聖地，仰望著妳的子，妳的主。”

英蓮聽了，開始哭泣，西方人溫柔的挽著她，她的頭額刺癢，腳搖晃。

        之後的儀式中，她眼睛總是溼潤，接下來她與西方人一起領受聖餐時也是。她兩隻眼睛就像顆大淚珠，吸盡四周千把燭光，成一道熾熱光芒。

這道光停留到儀式結束，教友們紛紛走離聖堂。正當他們走回大廳一角的置衣間時，她發覺她的旅行袋不見了。似乎霎那間回到現實，她馬上想到她太天真的相信西方人說東西放在那兒是安全的。

或者？這可能成爲她丈夫的西方人也是偵探她的那一夥人之一？她的手稿正被地方警察局檢查著？或在中國大使館？現在除了她的手提袋外，其他的雨衣，雨傘，一張輪椅全不見了。到底是C.I.A.拿走了還是滿洲人？或紅衛兵，想利用這些證據來證實今晚在這裏發生的一切。

這一切的變化讓她手腳發軟：從三天前在中國，到現在歐洲；從中文到古帶斯拉夫文；從溫煦燭光到燈泡；從最神聖的聖堂到目前的憂慮；從代表團的李團長到一度度挽著她的西方人。

 “看，他們拿咖啡及蛋糕來了，放在衣架的旁邊”他說著，“看到沒？他們剛才把我們的東西都移到餐具室。” 在衣架旁有兩張摺疊桌，上面擺著蛋糕，一壺咖啡和紙杯等。

當她看見的那刻，她所有的自卑又回來了。才幾分鐘前，她半相信她的旅行包被滿洲軍隊取走了，而當下，卻又是穩踏在此，與這位新男朋友在一起，嗯，是的，男朋友。

她身旁有著 “男朋友”，直到回程中，她坐在微微車駛聲，幽暗燈光前座緊靠著他時，他說他真的必須把她送回飯店了，他太太等著他回家。

她居然沒有想到他已經有太太了。

她也沒想到等西方人送她回飯店，在她那層樓出電梯時，李團長居然醉醺醺的站在走廊大嗓門的和一羣西方人講話。

    “英蓮，妳回來了。” 他用中文大聲的說 “我們想妳啦!” 他滿臉通紅，無疑是喝了很多酒的效應。

   “唉，你今晚不是在蒙特勒嗎？”她以傳統中國式噘嘴，撒嬌的樣子回話“所以我才沒急著找你！”

   “沒事沒事，過來，我要介紹妳給他們認識，我一直說著妳的事—嘿，來來，她就是我說的那位好看的姑娘。”

    20分鐘後，走廊上剩下她和李團長。她早知道不可避免的，今晚李團長就要和她在一起，何況他也看到這麼晚她還跟一個西方人獨處。唯一的問題是除了對她身體的需求外，他是否也要她報告所有新的隱私以掌控她的未來，俾利於日後萬一他們有不同的新政治運動立場時，可以藉以攻擊。

就針對身體上的需求也已經夠辛苦了。進行性交的過程實在很煩人、沉悶及痛楚。對李團長來說，他不會很快罷休，而總強迫進行到結束。她最後只好從他那沉重，酒精熱的頭面轉身，痛苦而憎惡的咬緊枕頭。當他的精子傾盆大雨般佔滿她下腹，她全人被多年前在鄉下看到的一景所淹沒：一個剛出生的女孩，被勒死並用白色的布包裹起來，在滿天星空的午夜下埋葬了。

幾秒鐘後，李團長就睡著了。白色女嬰還在回憶中的同時，她從四肢推開他那笨重討厭的身體。要去浴室時，突然想起旅行袋遺忘在西方人的車子後座。假如他看了內容，他會喜歡她的詩嗎？他會翻譯它們，讓它們在這世界的某個地方有了新生命嗎？

        翌日的朝霞已經綴滿窗簾，她還在牀上默默無語的落淚。