The Chinese Story

MY friend, this is how it was. I was at a gathering where a man told the story about the Chinese who dreamed he was a butterfly. He told it reasonably well. He said that a young Chinese fell asleep in a meadow and when he awoke he was sad. His friends asked him what his trouble was and he said, “A while ago when I was asleep I dreamed I was a butterfly. Now I am unhappy because I cannot tell whether I am a man who dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who dreams he is a man.”

Everyone complimented the story and said it was charming, and full of meaning, and beautifully told. I said nothing. The storyteller — his name was Sloan — noticed my reticence and asked for my opinion.

“The meat of the story was there, no doubt,” I said, “but the supporting facts were all wrong.” “Is that so?” Sloan said. “I suppose you can correct me?”

“Easily,” I said. “The Chinese could not have been a young man because he was a Mandarin, and anyone who knows anything knows that a Mandarin is a man advanced in years. He has to be to have had time to store up the wisdom he has in his head.

“Nor did the Mandarin fall asleep in a meadow. What would a Mandarin be doing in a meadow where everything grows wild and uncultivated, where the bumblebees and the grasshoppers set up a disturbance, and where nothing is calculated for serenity and peace?

“No,” I said, “it was not a meadow. It was the Mandarin’s formal garden. He smelled the odor of chrysanthemums as he slept, the nightingales sang, and he was rocked in his barge as it floated on the fragrant waters.

“Nor was it his friends he awoke among, unless a man’s concubines are his friends. I have never heard it said so. I never knew anyone, certainly not a man of the Mandarin’s years, who chose his concubines as he does his friends, for loftiness of mind and nobility of character. It would be unreasonable to expect young and beautiful girls to have such attainments.

“Another thing wrong with your version of the story,” I said to Sloan, “is that a man’s friends would be so used to seeing him sad that they would not bother to comment on it. With his concubines, it would be different. They would expect him to wake up refreshed, and happy, and contented. If he did not, what would he want concubines for? Therefore, it would be natural for them to be astonished at the Mandarin’s being unhappy, and reasonable for them to ask him why.

“However, you did have the gist of the story, the meat of it. Which is good enough for those who like meat any way it is cooked, or raw, and do not care how heavy it lies on the stomach when they are trying to digest it.”

I expected Sloan to be grateful to me for instructing him, but he was not. Just the opposite. Instead of thanking me and admitting it was the way I said, and being glad he could tell the story properly next time, he could scarcely wait for me to finish. So it is with people like Sloan. You go out of your way to help them, and instead of loving you for it, they resent it.

I had barely closed my mouth, and was not certain I had said all I wanted to, before he was telling me how wrong I was. “Oh, no,” he said, “that’s not the way it was. It was a young man, a meadow, and friends.”

“A Mandarin,” I said, “a formal garden, and concubines. I have told it often enough. I ought to know.”

“Many times wrong do not make right,” Sloan said. He was an unpleasant fellow. “What you have done is to color up the original with fanciful details of your own. To show off what passes with you for learning, no doubt, and to impress your audience.”

Now I might have been willing to let the thing drop except for that last remark. And this would have been wrong of me, for when a man comes across an officious, opinionated fool like Sloan, it is his duty to improve him.

“Have it your own way,” I said, “if it makes you any happier. Nonetheless, the reason I know the right way to tell the story is that I invented it.”

Sloan should have been warned when I said that. There still was time for him to apologize and withdraw. Instead he challenged me.

“You invented it,” he said. “That’s wonderful. I suppose you have the original manuscript with the date on it attested by a notary?”

You can see the kind of mind and disposition he had. He was not satisfied to confess the truth when he heard it. The psychological impact of veracity was not enough for him. He had to have documents. Not just ordinary, run of the mine documents, either. They had to be certified by a notary.

I decided to give him documents. “Do you believe in the Constitution?” I said.

“What has that got to do with it?”

“You’ll find out. Just answer the question. Do you believe in the Constitution?”

“Certainly I do.”

“And the Bill of Rights?”

“Yes.”

“And the legal principle that a man must be presumed innocent until proved guilty?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Very well, then. I invented the story. That is true until you can prove it false. And if I were you, I would find some documents. Some sound, legal, leather-bound documents with all the i’s dotted and the semicolons in their proper places.”

2

THESE were the events that led up to Sloan’s troubles, and I shall always contend that he brought them upon himself. He said nothing more that night, but I could tell by the bleak way he looked at me that he meant business. I was not too disturbed. I believed he would have trouble pinning that story down.

I was not surprised, therefore, that it was some months before I heard from Sloan again. The only news I had of him was at second hand. He was spending all the time he could spare at the public libraries, methodically going through histories of the Chinese, philosophic sayings, fables, and books of Oriental travel.

He was thorough. At first he only worked evenings, Saturday afternoons, and Sundays at his search. He thought that would be enough, but as time went on and he got nowhere, he saw that a greater effort was needed. Fortunately, he had saved a considerable sum of money and had a small independent income. He quit his job and devoted all his energy and attention, from then on, to trying to prove me a liar.

The effort wore on him. Those of our mutual friends who saw him said that he had lost weight, and was haggard, and scarcely stopped to eat or sleep.

It was about this time that his wife came to see me. She said that the situation had become impossible. All he could talk about was the Chinese story. All he could think about was the clues he unearthed, and they always ended in nothing. She said they had been happy once and lovers, but she could stand it no longer. She said if it went on she would have to run away with a stockbroker. She begged me to admit to Sloan that I did not invent the story.

I answered her as dispassionately as I could, although it is difficult to be sweet, and reasonable, and sane when a beautiful woman pleads with you. “My dear Mrs. Sloan,” I said, “ I sympathize with you and wish I could help, and believe me, I would if I could. But the difference between Sloan and me transcends personalities. It is not a simple question of whether or not I am a liar. It is a question of the eternal verities. Besides, he started it.”

Three days later, she ran away with the stockbroker.

This may have been a help to Sloan, for he now had nothing to distract him from his purpose. He spent his mornings patroling the streets of the city asking all the people he met if they knew the Chinese story. Some people thought he was crazy, but harmless. Others resented him, actively and violently. Either way, it was the same to him.

When he found anyone who knew the story, he asked him where he had heard it or read it, and jotted the answers down in his notebook. Afternoons and nights he culled through the libraries, public and private. He read thousands of books and millions of words — or scanned them, rather. None of them left a permanent record on his intellect. They flowed over it like water over a rock, with as little trace.

Yet, the human mind being the marvelous instrument it is, he trained himself instantly to recognize a book he had searched before. He could not tell you its name, or what was in it, or who wrote it, or the color of its binding. But he could tell you that the Chinese story was not in it, and he would be right.

When he did find it, as so often happens, it was a stroke of pure luck. He was walking past a secondhand-book store, footsore, weary, and dull of mind. There was a display of ten-cent books on a stand before the door, resurrections from a long dead library. Sloan started to sort idly through them, expecting nothing, hoping nothing, and there it was. Annals ofthe Chinese, compiled by Daniel Harrington. The story was on page 34.

I was shocked at his appearance when he stood before me with the book in his hands. His clothes were torn and dirty, his face was pale, his eyes wild. He was so thin his hands were like scraped bones, and a blue vein throbbed continuously in his left temple.

I was filled with compassion.

Or would have been, except for one thing. His suffering had not improved his character. He remained as stubborn, willful, and opinionated as before. “Here is the book,” he said to me without preamble, “that proves you a liar. Turn to page 34.”

I did so, and read the following sentence: “The story is told of a Mandarin named Wu Chow who fell asleep one day in his formal garden surrounded by his lovely concubines.” I read no further.

“You see,” I said to Sloan, “he was a Mandarin.”

“Yes,” Sloan said, “so he was. And you a liar. You didn’t invent the story. When were you born?”

“In 1901,” I said.

“This book,” he said, “was published in 1897, four years before you reached this vale of tears to brighten it with your lies.”

He thought he had me. He stood there gloating and superior, which is human nature for you. Anyhow, Sloan’s variety of it.

I turned to the flyleaf, and sure enough the publishing date was 1897. Then I saw something else. “I am sorry,” I said, “I truly am, because I know how hard you have worked on this. But your proof is not conclusive. Your document of gold is made of brass.”

“How so?” Sloan said.

“Because,” I said, “this edition was revised in 1927. It was at that time, no doubt, that my story was inserted.”

He grabbed the book from my hands to look at it, and I thought he was going to cry.

“If this were a first edition, now,” I said, “you might have something. I do not guarantee it, but you might.”

He caught the next train to Boston to interview the publishers. It was no use. The type had been destroyed and no one in their organization was willing to swear before a notary that the Chinese story had been in the unrevised edition. There was nothing for Sloan to do but to find a first.

Find it he did, though it took him another six months to do it. He joined societies of bibliophiles; he attended rare-book sales; he had agents all over the world; he was here, there, and everywhere at the same time. He was a man possessed, but he found the book. It came to light when the estate of J. Ogden Fitch was liquidated, and Sloan bought it with the last dollar he had in the world. Another week, and it would have been too late.

I refrain from describing the utter desolation of Sloan’s appearance as he again stood before me with his precious first edition. Six months before he had been frayed, he was now in rags; then he was thin, now emaciated; then he was pale, now transparent.

One thing only was as before. He was unregenerate. Love was not in him.

“Here,” he said to me, “is the revised edition, and here the first edition. There is no important difference between them.”

“I am not surprised,” I said.

“Nor I,” Sloan replied. “You are a convicted and unmitigated liar in both.”

But no. He was determined to push me into a corner. Instead of trying to prove whether or not the Chinese was a Mandarin, h6 was trying to prove whether or not I was a liar. This intellectual dishonesty was the pit wherein he fell.

3

I had no choice but to continue. “Sloan,” I said, “I hate to say this. Perseverance and industry deserve a better reward. But you have put your faith in circumstantial evidence that misleads you. Next time you will know better.”

BY now it must be clear what Sloan’s disease was. He was an issue switcher. Our original disagreement had been whether the Chinese was a Mandarin. My statement that I had invented the story was supporting evidence only. When Sloan found the revised edition he knew he was wrong and should have admitted it.

“There is nothing circumstantial about the evidence,” he said, “except the circumstance that the story was published before you were born.”

“Sloan,” I said, and I shook my head with sorrow as I said it, “did you ever hear me say when I invented the story?”

He began to get my drift, because his eyes narrowed.

“No,” he said, “but you had to be alive to do it.”

“Sloan,” I said again, “did you ever hear of transmigration of the soul? Did anyone ever tell you that Pythagoras remembered being a rat and a prostitute in previous existences?”

That pierced his bubble for him. I could see him get smaller before my eyes. “Yes,” I went on, “I once was the Chinese Mandarin Wu Chow.”

I will say this for Sloan, he died hard. Almost anyone else would have admitted he was licked and have said so and have been done with it. Not he. I could see his mind darting from thought to thought looking for a crevice in my statement. I think he even considered the project of interviewing Wu Chow’s contemporaries, but he gave it up.

Now it is a queer thing, but you can tell it in a man when an idea begins to dawn on him. He seems to exude a kind of invisible smirk and to expand his opinion of himself. That is the way it was with Sloan.

“You say you were the Mandarin Wu Chow in a former existence?” he said to me.

“I was.”

“And you invented the story?”

“I did.”

“Then how does it happen,”he said, and he slapped the Chinese Annals open to page 34, “that you told your concubines you dreamed you were a butterfly? I will tell you why. Because you lived the story. You did not invent it, and you are still a liar for my money.”

Poor man. He could not believe that I really had been Wu Chow. It was contrary to his experience of reality; it did not jibe with the facts he accepted as true. He never stopped to think that the trouble might be with him, that his receiving set might be faulty, or that there might be waves of truth beyond his perception. No. Things had to be the way he saw them, or they could not be at all.

I did not blame him, but I made one last effort to convince him. Had I been a liar, I could not have done it. The facts I now revealed could have been known only to Wu Chow.

“Sloan,” I said, “it is true that when I was Wu Chow I awoke one day and told my concubines that I was unhappy because I dreamed I was a butterfly.

I admit this is what I said. It is not what happened.

“The fact is I had not dreamed at all that day. My sleep had been particularly deep and undisturbed. I remember the odor of chrysanthemums that greeted me when I awoke, and the harmonious singing of birds. My garden was a delight to the eye as it progressed in regular terraces of greenery artfully contrasting with the colors of flowers. The girls were beautiful.

“This pleasantness and joy were mine, and yet I awoke unhappy. When they asked me why, I could not tell. I did not know. Perhaps it was because a passing cloud had drenched me in its shadow. Perhaps it was because a small, chill wind had sprung up of which I was not directly conscious. Perhaps it was because I was eighty-one years old.

“Their question required an answer. After all these years I am ashamed to confess, but you have driven me to it. Sloan, I lied when I told my concubines that I had dreamed I was a butterfly. It was then I invented the story.”

Sloan at last believed me. He had to. The logic of my position was unassailable.