The Chair Ride

The coolies lift and strain; My chair creaks rhythmically. It is not yet morning and the live darkness pushes about us, a greedy darkness that has swallowed even the stars. In all the world there is left only my chair, with the tiny horn lantern before it. There are also, it is true, the undersides of trees in the lantern-light and the stony path that flows past ceaselessly. But these things flit and change. Only I and the chair and the darkness are permanent. We have been moving so since time was in the womb.

The seat of my chair is of wicker. It is not unlike an invalid chair, and I, in it, am swaddled like an invalid, wrapped in layer on layer of coddling wool. But there are no wheels to my chair. I ride on the steady feet of four queued coolies. The tramp of their lifted shoes is the rhythm of being, throbbing in me as my own heart throbs.

Save for their feet the bearers are silent. They move softly through the live darkness. But now and again I am shifted skilfully from one shoulder to the other.

The breath of the coolies is short. They strain, and in spite of the cold I know they are sweating. It is wicked of course! My five dollars ought not to buy life. But it is all they understand; And even I am not precisely comfortable.

The darkness is thinning a little. On either side loom featureless black hills, their summits sharp and ragged. The Great Wall is somewhere hereabouts.

My chair creaks rhythmically. In another year it will be day.