Doc’s Chinese boy, an efficient, cheerful old man who never apparently opened his eyes, was waiting for the three travellers at Nankow with a string of donkeys. Stone proudly produced money whenever it was needed, and Edward had nothing to do except humour Doc’s passion for photography. Edward was certain, even while posing with a self-conscious smile between two donkeys, that, by the time the films were developed, Doc would have forgotten the very name of Edward R. Williams. The snapshot, stuck in an album, would be introduced to friends as “Yes, that’s a feller—I forgot his name—anyway we were starting off on donkeys—I forget where to....” The snapshottist is the most catholic of all artists.
They rode first through Kao-liang and then through orchards to the Ming tombs. Each rider rode in a little dream of donkey bells and of affectionate conversation between the donkeys and the running drivers. The drivers said “Trrk trrk” and “K’erh-to” and “Tsou-pa” and “Yueh,” and the donkeys danced along, crossing their delicate little hoofs as if on a tight rope, and signalling with their soft dusty ears.
Very close to a road of rust,
Very close to the red ground,
Till he dies he dwells
In the dust
Of his donkey’s feet, in the sound
Of his donkey’s bells....
The travellers reached the Ming tombs at Sunset. The precarious last light of the sun was spilled over the shining golden roofs. There was a master tomb crouching among its many courtyards, and the disciple tombs on the wooded slopes imitated it respectfully. The marble steps and the carved and knotted marble balustrades seemed to hold light. In the main hall of the main tomb great plain trunks of trees were the pillars bridging the dusky air between the candle-lit pavement and the ceiling. A little marble empty coffin in the innermost place was the only reminder of the fact that the brittle and ridiculous bones of a dead man were the treasure in this sombre splendid casket. This was man’s defence against his smallness. “Never dust to dust now,” said the dust of the dead Emperor. But his defence was crumbling. The marble and gold pavilion and the years were playing him false.
Edward could not sleep on his camp bed between the great pillars of the entrance. He leaned his chin upon the marble balustrade and watched the darkness. The writhing outlines of cedars and pavilions in the starlight were gold no more. The dragons and the branches of the cedars wrestled together in the dark and were entangled.