Before you embark on this “back in time” journey with Evelyn, I will offer this story of Xue Tao. The child prodigy, at eight years old, upon hearing her father making up this couplet:
“In the desolate courtyard, the Wu-tong (Phoenix) tree reaches to the sky, soaring in the cloud.”
immediately followed with:
“Perches for the birds from the South and the North its branches’ fallen leaves dance in the draft of the wind.”
Xue Tao’s father, it is told, in awe of her prodigious talent, remained in silence for a long time.
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK Mary Kennedy for allowing me to use her version of Hung Tu’s works, copyright to which she retains. My apologies must go to Chinese scholars everywhere, for whom this image of their country in the ninth century may be an obvious never-never land. Yet Donn Byrne wrote his Marco Polo in pure Irish brogue, and if Marianne Moore’s imaginary garden has a real toad in it, so this imaginary China has a real poet in it. If Go Ask the River helps to bring her work to a wider public, I hope both she and the scholars will forgive me for my errors and blunders. I do not remember the ninth century as well as I once thought I did, when I was in Cheng-tu.
—EVELYN EATON
March 1968
THE PUBLISHER gratefully acknowledges Chungliang Al Huang for bringing this important work to our attention for re-issue and Marte Brengle for her invaluable assistance in bringing this novel to life once again.
EVELYN EATON
One of the twentieth century’s most remarkable authors, Evelyn Eaton was born in Switzerland in 1902. Her parents were staunchly Anglophile Canadian, and she was brought up and educated in England and France, her rather proper Edwardian upbringing culminating in presentation at court in 1923, around the same time as her first volume of poems was published. She spent the years until 1936 mostly in France, and the war years as a war correspondent in China, Burma and India. At the age of forty-two she became an American citizen. From 1949 to 1951 she lectured at Columbia University, and from 1951 to 1960 at Sweet Briar College. In ten different years she was a fellow of the MacDowell Colony. Other creative writing posts took her to Mary Washington University in Virginia, The University of Ohio, Pershing College, and Deep Springs College in Nevada.
In later life she turned increasingly towards Native American culture, with a particular “homecoming” within the ceremonial and mystical aspects. She was, through her soldier father, related to the Algonquians of New Brunswick, but in 1960 moved to the Owens Valley of California, where she made strong ties with the Paiute and Arapaho peoples, out of which came perhaps her best known work, I Send a Voice.
She spent her final years in the small community of Independence, California, dying in 1983. Her papers and manuscripts are permanently housed in the Mugar Memorial Library at Boston University.
She was the author of some thirteen novels, five volumes of poetry, two short story collections, works of nonfiction and works for children. She was a regular contributor of short fiction to The New Yorker—twenty-five of her short stories appeared in that magazine between 1949 and 1960, making Evelyn Eaton one of the leading writers of the mid-twentieth century.
Go ask the river
which are longer,
its eastward-flowing waters
or the thoughts that fill us
at this parting hour.
—Li T’ai Po
(T’ang Dynasty)
TRANSLATED BY HENRY H. HART
Calligraphy by Chungliang Al Huang
PART ONE
PROLOGUE
CIRCA 1100 A.D.
I
IN THE HUNG WU PERIOD of the reign of the Ming Dynasty, about the year eleven hundred, a young scholar named T’ien Chu was traveling on foot from Canton toward the city of Cheng-tu, to assume the post of tutor to the Governor’s household.
It was twilight when he reached the outskirts of the city and passed within its walls. He was tired and dusty, hungry and thirsty too. He thought it might be wisdom to spend the night at an inn, and present himself in the morning, clean and refreshed, to his employer.
He saw lights on the right side of the road, coming from what seemed to be a teahouse. The gates were open and there were more lights shining on a pathway to the door. He turned in gratefully and was welcomed by a servant, who took the pack from his back and led him to a room where everything was prepared for the comfort of travelers, even to a clean silk robe laid out for his use. After he had bathed and changed, a second servant appeared and showed him to an inner court, where she seated him before a lacquered table, more elegant than any in his father’s house. The bowls were of finest jade and the chopsticks of hammered silver.
Wine was brought at once, and before he could express a preference, delicious food, steaming with spicy fragrance. It was obvious that he had come to a superior inn. He seemed to be the only guest, and he was troubled that the reckoning might be beyond his means. He tried to hint to the servant in charge that he was a modest man, a poor scholar, who did not expect to be treated like a rich prince, but his words had no effect. More succulent dishes arrived, with more pretty girls to serve them, more wine was poured, and presently musicians entered with their instruments and arranged themselves at the far end of the court.
When the music began he was astonished at its quality. Canton had excellent musicians, but these were better than any he had heard there. Cheng-tu was a small provincial city, but if this was the standard of food and entertainment at an inn, even the best inn, what must it be like in the great rich houses? And he was going to be living in the greatest and richest, the Governor’s Palace!
He listened with added pleasure to the performers. Three of them brushed the strings, one of them played the flute. They had a distinctive style, a pure sort of silken playing, suited to the ancient classics, which these pieces were. He did not recognize all of them and called out after a while,
“What was the name of the song that you just finished?”
The flute player answered, “‘Green Water.’”
“And the one before that?”
“‘The Queen of Shu.’”
“I have never heard them.”
She smiled politely. She was young, and if not exactly pretty, very graceful and elegantly dressed. They were all graceful and elegant and skillful, but he was beginning to see them and everything about him through a growing haze.
The smooth rich wine was strong, and he was drinking it by the flagon.
“Play ‘The Day of No Fire,’” he said.
They shook their heads. They looked puzzled.
“Never mind,” he said thickly, while the room turned about him. “Play anything you like.”
The heart-shaking music went on. He shut his eyes and leaned his head down, resting it on his arms, on the edge of the table. Someone brought him a cushion, and hot wet towels for his neck. After a while, he did not know how long, he began to feel better. The room stopped turning about him. He was able to sit up. He glanced shamefaced about him. Now