Sea of Ink Read Online Free PDF Page B

art, on the condition that he collaborated in the great history project.
    Poyun understood at once that this was not an invitation , but a veiled command which he must obey.
    But he refused to serve the authorities. Instead he threw himself on the ground, yelling and howling; or he roamed through the town laughing, and talked to the swallows. He sat down right in the middle of the town square. Now he was drumming on his belly and singing rude songs; now he was dashing in a fury through the market stalls, hurling vegetables into the air.
    The official responsible reported to the commission that Poyun had gone mad and so could not be recommended for working on the history of the former dynasty.
    ‘He’s mad? So why do the creations of his paintbrush have such immediacy and power?’ the official was asked. ‘And for what reason did the commission put him into the highest category of scholarship, the Sea of Ink ?’
    ‘What can I say?’ the official replied. ‘These are the creations of a madman. Should we wish to have the history of the empire written by a madman?’
    Observing the willingness with which former Chinese officials and tutors agreed to collaborate on the historical work filled Poyun with disgust and bitter sarcasm.
    They had been offered the bait and taken it.
    But able to see the hook in the bait, he had held himself back and continued to swim in the sea of ink.

 
    24 Sometimes a tightness gripped his chest. He felt both exuberant and deeply saddened, like a surging spring hemmed in by a rock, or a fire smothered by a wet blanket.
    He had a dream.
    He was lying on the petal of a giant lotus flower, a satiny, unshaded, fragrant surface. All at once this white carpet began to draw up at the edges until it formed a funnel. His body toppled and started rolling. As the petal goblet became steeper there was nothing he could hold on to, and he began to slip until he fell into a bowl. It was filled with black ink. The ink was warm, like his body, and he was not afraid, he felt secure in there. Now he dived into the dark liquid, closing his eyes and mouth. He did not gasp for air; the ink seemed to breathe for him.
    It sucked him in, through a long, narrow channel only as wide as his body. Inside the flower stem he slid down until at some point he felt a soft pad absorb the ink like sand does water. It became ever brighter until he could make out a silver strip of light in the distance. Carried on a gentle black wave, he approached the light. He stroked his hand over the ground and felt the rough surface of paper.
    Now he felt his body, too: he was wet and smooth. His skin had become scaly with a red shimmer. He tried to stand but his legs were missing. He had grown fins in their place and they stuck to the paper. He struggled to free them, but the struggling only stuck them more firmly to the paper.
    He called out to a man who was walking past, ‘I’ve become separated from my natural surroundings, I’m helpless. If I could just have a bucket of water, that would keep me alive!’
    The man bent down towards him. He recognized the face of the government commissar who had brought him the imperial assignment to work on the great history. The man stroked his smooth belly to check how wet it was and then said, ‘I’m on my way to the ink sea. I’m going to run a channel from there to here. So you’ll be able to swim over. Is that all right with you, goldfish?’
    ‘If you have your way, sir, you’ll soon be finding me in the shop that sells dried fish!’

 
    25 He and his wife became estranged. She found his mood swings and taciturnity intolerable, and went back to her family. He himself was in despair about his condition and he begged her not to spurn him. He lambasted her: ‘You made a show of insisting how we should eat and sleep together . But over the past thirty days there have been twenty-nine when we have not. Every night leaves fall from the wutong tree and the seeds become increasingly