Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book by Maxine Hong Kingston
“The King of Monkeys, using his magic pole, polevaults away into the sky. He’s off to war and party. His patriotic people beat the taiko big drums, a beat that he can hear and take heart from.
“More sound effects—bomb-like fireworks—signal for back-up. Fighting men and fighting women enter on horseback, riding from over the mountains. They sail up the streams and rivers. A band of a hundred and eight superheroes punt swift boats out of the sloughs. An offstage voice will call out the names of heroes and heroines that were once not long ago—less than twenty years ago—star roles in American theater. They have left us. We will call them back. Where are you? Come back. Gwan Goong and his brothers—Liu Pei and Chang Fei. Yue Fei, and his lifelong friends—Hong, Cheung, and Wong. And the great warrior women—Red Jade, Flower Wood Orchid, the fighting aunties from the Sung Dynasty, the ladies and goodwives of the Water Margin, Night Ogress and Pure Green Snake alias the Tigress. And Mrs. Gwan Goong, that is, Gwan Po. And the Red Peony alias Oryu alias Lady Yakusa. No, no, no. Wait. We keep the men’s Chinese names, we keep the women’s names untranslated too, no more Pearl Buck Peony Plum Blossom haolefied missionary names. No more accessible girls and unspeakable men. The women: Hoong Ngoak, Fa Moke Lan, Ku San the Intelligent, Mrs. Shen the Earth Star. Let the gringo Anglos do some hard hearing for a change. I don’t forget actresses. I remember them better than you women do. At this roll call of paladins and mariners, the monkeys kit-chak kit-chak like Molucca-Sulu relatives. Everybody has come from eras and places to unite together on the same stage. War has bust through time.
“The heroes rein in their champing steeds and lie on their oars. On a shadow-puppet screen, they and we watch Monkey King fight the havoc monster, whose black shape looms into the sky and shoots through the crowds of armies and audience. (We can, vice versa, have Monkey en scène, and his drumming nation as shadows.) Ah Monkey dodges the snapping claw that swings out of the wings. The havoc monster is enormous; our special-effects people can build only one claw, which pokes into a side door of the theater and gropes across the stage. Ah Monkey whacks the claw with his sword-size rod, which grows—whoomp—into a battering ram. The king-size monster of havoc keeps clawing, knocking everything on the set around. The magic monkey plucks a few of his own hairs, bites them up, and blows them out, shouting, ‘Beeen!’ And they change presto into a myriad of little monkeys, each one wielding a monkey stick. They worry the monster, and it goes through changes—a malevolent baby, a white bone demoness, a king of swords, who mentally commands a rain of swords, a king of the lute, whose music drives the monkeys crazy, like The Fiddler against the Batman and the Flash. The other monkeys leave the cave and fight too. Wars involve everyone; every war is a world war. Ah Monkey too goes through his changes—a cormorant, a falcon, a koi fish, a temple with a flagpole tail. The war goes on for a long time. ‘Kingdoms rise and fall.’ ”
Judy Louis was smiling her boar-like smile at this line from the classics. Wittman was encouraged to begin another movement of his play:
“Meanwhile—if this were a movie, we could use a split screen. Walt Disney ought to make the animated epic cartoon. Elsewhere—soldiers are going about the marketplace plastering recruiting posters on poles and walls. A man out of uniform had better not walk upright and show his face. The young Liu Pei, who is braiding a sandal, gets up from his squat-sit among the straw, to see what the army has to say. He reads that his country needs him badly, and he sighs, ‘Aiya-a-a.’
“ ‘Hey, you!’ says a neighbor, the butcher and vintner, wiping his hands on an apron stained with reds. ‘Yeah, you, the romantic young fellow, yearning for glory while hiding from the draft.’
“ ‘I’m not a coward,’ says Liu Pei, letting rip another sigh. ‘I’d fight in wars if I didn’t have to take orders. I want my own army. I have a cause of my own. I don’t waste my abilities on jerkwater duels.’ He hardly has to turn around to look at the heckler behind him; his eyes are far apart in his bulletlike leopard-like head.
“The butcher-winemaker sizes him up, and says, ‘I myself have some abilities, and wherewithal. I’ve been looking for bold allies. Suppose you and I talk further.’ The two of them leave their businesses unattended, and go to a tavern to drink and plan. The tavern is two tables under an awning. The crowd passes around them.
“ ‘We Changs have been in this county for many generations,’ says Chang Fei, for it is he. ‘We grow peaches and grapes, distill wine, raise pigs. I can outfit knights. I can outfit an army.’
“Among the average-size people comes a huge and mighty man pushing a handcart. The times are bad, that a man thus built be an unemployed tramp of the road. The old Chinese audience will be moved with pity because they recognize our grandfather, Grandfather Gwan Yee, also called Gwan Cheong Wun, sounds like Long Cloud, that excellent man, Gwan Goong, horseless, and no squire to carry his luggage. He sets down the cart, and ducks his head to enter the shade that the two world-changers are at work under. He’s no ordinary bum-how. He sings, ‘I place my bow against the wall, but I do not take off my moon-curved broadsword.’ ‘Be quick, innkeeper,’ he shouts. ‘Bring me wine. I’m in haste to get to the city and join the army.’
“Well, the effect would be the same if you shouted out your martial intentions at Enrico’s or Vesuvio’s or La Val’s. A stalwart is making the scene; he casts his glamour over the sidewalk of tourists and regulars.
“ ‘Hey, stranger,’ calls Chang Fei. ‘Sit with us. This shoe-and-mat weaver wants to buy us drinks. I’ve never seen you in these parts before. Where do you come from? And where are you going pushing your belongings?’
“The interesting stranger quaffs the wine, and Chang Fei refills his cup. ‘I’ve been a fugitive wandering the roads and the rivers for five years now,’ he says. ‘I can’t go home to my family village.’
“ ‘Did you kill someone?’ asks Liu Pei. ‘Are you a wanted man?’
“Granddad puts his quick-draw hand on his sword hilt. His eyes flare like a pair of red birds flying up.
“ ‘You don’t look like a pig thief to me, nor an adulterer either,’ says Chang Fei. ‘I’m sure if you killed a man, you had good reason.’
“Granddad drinks more wine, which sloshes on his thick and beautiful beard. Later kings and ladies will try bribing him with silk beardbags, which were once a fashion. These two brotherly men are trying to get his story.
“ ‘I see you keep red and healthy on wine,’ says Liu Pei. ‘Were you drinking the day you killed a man? If you had it to do over again, what would you do?’ ”
Wittman played Gwan Goong speaking out of his coffee cup, fierce eyebrows shooting rays, head down and mumbling, like Marlon Brando about to tell difficult bad memories. Brando can say anything, the ladies will listen. “ ‘I come from a place where the idea of governing was to make everybody obey the biggest man, and give him things, and do him favors. This executive officer taxed us for seasonal deliveries of firewood, harvest, game, three-horn joong, moon cakes, maidens. That story about mice belling the cat came from my hometown. “You do it.” “No, you do it.” I was the next-biggest man. It was up to me to bring the cat to justice. He was carrying off a maiden when I dragged him from his horse and ran him through. I killed him with this cold and beautiful sword, whose name is Black Dragon. And then I left town. I’ve been on the run ever since.’
“Chang Fei invites these two men, each of them free of the grubmoney life, to his ranch and home. They learn that one’s cause is the others’ cause. In the peach orchard, they invent a ritual of friendship. That friendship ritual was one thousand six hundred and twenty-nine years old when the Forty-Niners, our great-great-grandfathers, brought it to the Gold Rush. Every matinee or evening for a hundred years, somewhere in America, some acting company was performing The Oath in the Peach Orchard, then it disappeared, I don’t know why. The theater has died. The words of that oath used to be printed on programs, and it was inscribed on walls for the World War II audience, when we were kids—that recently—to ch
Anybody American who really imagines Asia feels the loneliness of the U.S.A. and suffers from the distances human beings are apart. Not because lonesome Wittman was such a persuader but because they had need to do something communal against isolation, the group of laststayers, which included two professional actors, organized themselves into a play. Players took the parts of the three brotherly friends, and improvised a ritual that made the playwright’s sketch up-to-date and relevant, and showed him what happens next. Wittman thought whaddayaknow, I’ve written one of those plays that leave room for actors to do improv, a process as ancient as Chinese opera and as far-out as the theater of spontaneity that was happening in streets and parks. Everyone is a poet-actor adlibbing and winging it.
Lance Kamiyama will be Liu Pei; Charles Bogard Shaw will be Chang Fei; Wittman will be Gwan Goong. Nanci Lee and the other women will be audience for the time being.
“Gong boy!” said Charley Shaw, lifting his cup of coffee. “Yum sing! Mahn sing!” Which are the toasts at banquets and gambling. “Raise your wine cup! Drink to victory! Ten thousand victories!”
“Kanpei!” said Lance, taking off his apron. “Banzai!” Which were the banquet toasts, in Japanese, drunk to him and Sunny at their wedding.
“Here we are, three unrelated people,” said Wittman/Gwan Goong. He stood at the butcher block, his podium. “Nobody from my family village, not even that girl that I rescued”—a thumb at Nanci—“rode with me into exile. Before I do battle again, I’d like to hear you vow that we stand by one another no matter what.”
“You aren’t getting me ready to kill people, are you?” asked Lance/Liu Pei, laying down his spatula. “I’m going to feel very bad if I have to kill anybody. I want to be a dove.” He walked up the kitchen ladder, and sat on its top rung. Oh, come on, Lance, co-operate. These men were military heroes. And the first rule of improv is: Don’t say No. “I’m warning you, I’d rather be killed than kill.”
Wittman was as tall as Lance on the stepladder, and spoke in his face. “There’s a war on. It comes this way, we have to take part. You can’t stand aside and let your people be slaughtered. You have to be realistic.”
Lance stood up on the ladder. “I’m speaking as a veteran of life and war. You should have stayed longer at that job of yours. It was your responsibility to keep track of the kids you sold war toys to. You could’ve guided them playing with soldiers. One day, those kids, after Ragnaroking their toy armies, will straighten out the dogpile of G.I. Joes and Sailor Bobs, and make them shake hands and become friends. As taidomo of my last gang, I led the maneuverings and the shaking of hands at the Alameda County Fair Grounds gang war of 1956. Nobody got killed or hurt much. I’m experimenting on leading people out of back-to-back, hand-to-hand situations.” He tried on a pot-helmet, took it off. “You give me an army, I have additional creative ideas to try out.”
“What kind of creative ideas?” asked Charley, an actor generous with the spotlight. “I was at that county fair—blue-ribbon pigs, blue-ribbon wine—I didn’t see any gang trouble.”
Lance walked back and forth between Charley, who sat in a straightback chair as if upon a throne, and Wittman, who leaned against the butcher block, his horse, Red Rabbit. “I carried out a war without an incurrence of cops, neither Security nor the Oakland P.D. nor the National Guard. I was working out further-along methods for taking over the world without anybody noticing. Like I am blood with the French. I gave at a Parisian mobile bloodbank. They gave me a ham sandwich and vin rouge, and saluted me, ‘The people of France are grateful.’ I move that we offer ourselves to the enemy as hostages-for-peace. You especially, Chang, are a valuable citizen. They’ll agree to take you, especially if we throw in your land too. They can come over and live on it, feed the pigs, water the orchards. Who’s ahead in this war? We are, sitting around, drinking wine, living. We can afford to experiment as to whether more lives are lost fighting or in ‘unilateral surrender.’ It’s our duty as the latest evolvement of man to find out. I’m curious. When they get here, let’s have our populace be doing something flabbergasting like spinning Gandhiesque wheels, like Frisbee, like Slinky. Invent a Frisbee-Slinky combination. Some satyagraha so interesting that they’ll lay down their weapons and do it too, have us teach it to them. They’ll kill a few of us from momentum, but they’ll calm down by and by. What can they do to us, a wonderful country like us, we put ourselves into their arms.” He was out among the audience, who could hiss or crook him or take him into their arms.
“Hai!” said Charley/Chang Fei. “Hai!” which could mean “Cunt!” or “Crab!” or “Yeah!” or “Look!” or “Hello there!” or it was just a noise. “I know you,” he said, in character—tough China Man of our childhood. “I know you. You are sly. There is nothing you won’t say. You say whatever, peace, whatever, and while they’re thinking about it, while we’re thinking about it, you do your idiocratic Dada.” A Chinatown coot has spoken, sitting on his bench at Portsmouth Square, telling you who you are, and what you do.
“Nothing flabbergasts like explosives,” said Wittman as Gwan Goong, sitting atop his horse. “Guns. Bombs.”
“No guns. No bombs. I’m using my deepest brains to ban bombs, and to help you plan the barbecue in the orchard. You are throwing a barbecue, aren’t you? You’ve got enough meat and wine to feed everybody.” Lance/Liu poured hot coffee all around. “Invite the enemy. Always invite your enemies to parties. What to do with belligerents, we’ll hold a tournament on your ranchland. And find out: Do contact sports exhaust the war energy, or is there escalation and dominoes? At pre-game activities and half-time, and everywhere they go, we’ll be playing the enemy’s ethnic music and speaking their language. We’ll take on their ways, and slow them down, unable to distinguish themselves from us.” Lance/Liu is not letting go of his tack. “For uniforms: skins versus shirts. Naked, integrated boy-girl teams. Defense—nudity as camouflage, bare skin and hair blending into nature. Nudity also works as offense; I’ve scared off Seventh-Day Adventists and Mormons by answering the door naked. They’ll hide-and-seek us; they’ll capture our flag; they won’t be able to resist us. Let’s invite everybody to marry everybody. For the finale, we’ll have a multitudinous wedding. Our foreign policy will be: We want to marry you. Propose to every nation. Leaflet them with picture brides. We’ll go anywhere and marry anybody! How do unrelated people get together? They get married.” His wife smiled at this homage to marriage. Lance has already used marriage to solve a war problem. When he married Sunny, he got out of the draft. He is a Kennedy husband.
“Listen here, Running Nose,” said Wittman/Gwan Goong, for that is the way Liu Pei’s name sounds in American dialect. “I can tell you how many will die before they calm down. Thirty million. That’s the record the human race is shooting for. Look in the Guinness Book of World Records. The record for Greatest Mass Killing is twenty-six million three hundred thousand, which is how many were sacrificed for the communizing of China. That broke the Russians’ World War II record for the Most Killed in a War Against Invaders, twenty-five million. The number keeps going up as history goes along. There’s something in us that loves to break records.” These numbers had been lumbering like dead planets in Wittman’s head, ruining life.
“We’re inviting soldiers and civilians to a place where they quit ending up at the hillpiles of skulls,” explained Chang Fei. “The right disarming, tough Zen non-violence?! What is it?” His chop-socky hand sliced the prana-filled air. He swiveled his head, eyes wide, and came to a hard stop, his foot stomped—bang!—and he held the one brother, then the other with his glare—me-ay. Charley has seen a lot of Hong Kong movies. “My dove brother. My hawk brother. These peach trees are at their fullest and reddest bloom. We vow friendship. Repeat after me. ‘We three—Liu Pei, Gwan Goong, and Chang Fei—though not born to the same families, swear to be brothers. Thoug
“ ‘In war, we will fight side by side.’ ” Wittman Goong gave the next part.
But Lance chimed in, and made this up: “Wherever we find a sit-in, we’ll sit. A salt march along the coast? We’ll march. A spinning wheel, we’ll spin.”
“ ‘Heaven and Earth, read our hearts,’ ” Chang Fei continued. “ ‘If we turn aside from righteousness or forget kindliness, may Heaven and man take out vengeance on us.’ ”
“Bless our chosen family,” said Lance, sprinkling each man’s and each woman’s hair with salt from the saltshaker. “You are my chosen family.” The audience, their ladies, liked that part the best, and repeated after him, “My chosen family.”
Wittman just about broke character. “Wait a minute. Hold it. Listen.” He knelt on the butcher block to talk better. Lance got him with salt in the back of the neck and down his collar. He jumped off the butcher block. “You’re right, we throw a barbecue. We’re out on a ranch, we do a rodeo tournament and a cookout.” Wittman zinged the cleaver from off the knife magnet. “Slaughter a black ox and a white horse, make them into steaks and hamburgers in full shocking en-scène view of the audience. Audience participation—they eat and they’re sworn in in this blood ceremony that will change everybody into a Chinese. Yes, we invite foes too to a theater of blood that cuts through t.v. souls. Serve dog. We ought to taste puppy dog and intestinally remember our heritage, our cuisine.” Nanci and Sunny put their hands over their mouths and squeezed their knees out of the way and said, “Oooo.” They were the little girls you gave worms and bugs to. Taña laughed. Judy frowned. “Three hundred people came to the peach orchard to witness that first vow. The young men volunteered for the brothers’ army. Later, here in the Far Out West, miners came in from the fields and paid a speck of gold for admission to The Three Kingdoms. And lowly brakemen came from railroad yards, and laundry guys, and migrant farm hands, and cooks from out of the basement kitchens of restaurants. They came to be part of a war oath. And to watch the rancher and the tatami-shoemaker and the fugitive be transformed into knights who fought in silks and armor and tiger shoes.” Wittman prowled up to the butcher block on tiger feet, and chopped it with his sword, Black Dragon. “Our generation, who have nothing left, will remember the first movies we ever saw—the camera shoots up at the heads of Chang Fei and his black horse against the sky. The dragon-scalloped flag on his eighteen-foot spear whips in the wind—‘Chang’ the word on the pennon, ‘Chang,’ one of the first Chinese words you learned to read. ‘Chang Fei,’ said our parents and grandparents. And us kids stopped running up and down the aisles. ‘It’s Chang Fei.’ We galloped along the bottom of the screen, part of the army that rides with the three brothers.” Making like slow kung fu tai chi moves, Wittman pushed hands and feet circularly. The second rule of improv: A new ritual is embarrassing, it’s okay. “Beneath the peach blossoms—close-up on veins and pollen—and the beginning green of leaves out of dark branches, Liu Pei rolls back his runningwater sleeves. He draws his sharp blade. And cuts the neck arteries of the black ox and the white horse. The unknowing animals step back from the red streams, then pass out. Red Rabbit, Gwan’s horse, is tethered to a peach tree, and the tree rains blossoms on him. Interspersed among the trees are yellow pennons, the mulberry on a yellow field, Liu Pei’s insignia and colors; the Southern Pacific flies a yellow standard to this very day. The chefs and sous-chefs of Chinatown will be cooking all through the show, and we’ll serve meat rare from the fire. Our faces will turn red on wine like Gwan Goong’s and Chang Fei’s. We’ll have dancing. Carouse all night for a week. A fat lady will dance to cave-thundering drums. Bonfires shoot overlapping shadows of her abundant body—her uplifted arms make many arms—against hillsides, where monkeys lean out like gargoyles to look at her. We could stage this at the Faculty Club at Cal—inside one of those mead-hall proscenium fireplaces. Light a fire in one fireplace, and she dances in the other. I got inside the Faculty Club as a desk clerk. I don’t know why they gave me the job. Everybody else was a Greek, not frat boys, Greeks from Greece. I wrote their love letters to our American girls, and in exchange they gave me waiter’s rights to turkey carcass, duck heads, champagne sleepers. You should see the goings-on—professors in drag dancing on tables. I checked-in Herman Kahn. Back to the enormous lady: Her tootsie rolls of fat bounce and jounce and rub together, breast rebounding on breast, wonderful crevices in her neck and waist and limbs and ankles, where gold coins flip and flap. Gold weights tug at the softest fattest pierced earlobes. She must turn herself on all the time. She twirls on the underbeddings of her toes. Her back is a continent of skin. She’s more nude than all of us put together. All by herself, she can be Lady Yakusa’s army, kimonos down to their hips and a tattooed dragon continuous across the row of their naked backs; rampant gardant, zigzagging their swords before them like the scythes of time, they scan the battlefield. The fattest lady on earth is laughing, and her laughter jiggles everything. The heroes shout and clap out rhythms for her.”