Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 6

by Pu Songling

  “Our lady is benevolent,” explained the maidservant, “so she set up the ‘Orphans’ Garden’ as a resting place for ghosts from the underworld who died a violent death, and hence couldn’t find a place to settle in. Each day, there are a thousand such ghosts of the dead, and we have to carry them to where their spirits can be put at rest. Please, come take a look at the place.”

  Shortly thereafter, they passed through the gate of the government office near a sign reading “Orphans’ Garden.” As they entered, Wang saw that the lettering of the building’s name was all askew, and a foul smell assailed the nostrils of anyone who came there. A crowd of ghosts gathered when they saw the maidservant’s light—all were missing their severed heads, a sight so terrible that Wang found it unbearable to look at them.

  When he turned his head away, wanting to go, he spotted a pile of corpses at the base of a wall; when he drew closer to examine them, he discovered that their bloody flesh had been gnawed by wolves. “They haven’t been carried away for more than half a day,” the maidservant exclaimed, “so they’ve already been chewed by wild animals.” Wang backed away from the scene. He appeared reluctant to view any more such sights.

  The maidservant observed, “You look like you can’t take this sort of thing—so please go home and enjoy a peaceful life.” Wang refused to be dissuaded and carried the bodies to a more secluded place. Then he begged the maidservant to keep her distance from him, so the contamination from the corpses wouldn’t defile her. She agreed to do so.

  As they went back to the house, she told him, “For the time being, you can have a seat here, while I go inside and explain things. Feeding the dogs is a comparatively easy task to take care of, so as soon as that’s finished for the present, I hope my report of your intentions will be considered proper.” She left for a little while, then hurried back out, crying, “Come, come! My lady will see you.” Wang followed her inside.

  Four covered lanterns were hanging at the head of a hall where a lady was seated along with twenty other extraordinary people. Wang proceeded to prostrate himself on the floor. The lady ordered someone to help him up, saying, “This Confucian scholar can’t take care of the dogs, so let him manage the archives and live in the west hall.” This pleased Wang, who humbly prostrated himself in gratitude. “You seem to be honest and sincere,” declared the lady, “so I trust you to take care of this business. But if anything is mishandled, the penalty for the offense will not be light!” Wang eagerly agreed to her terms.

  The maidservant then led him to the west hall, where he observed that the beams and walls were quite clean, which made him very happy, and he thanked her. Wang asked her then about the lady’s family background. “Her birth name is Jinse,” she replied, “daughter of the Marquis of the East China Sea. My name is Chunyan. Call on me if there’s anything you need, day or night, and I’ll be able to hear you.”

  When Chunyan left, Wang turned around and discovered that clothing and shoes, a large quilt, and a mattress had all appeared and been placed on a bed for him. Wang cheerfully thought the place to be ideal.

  At dawn he woke up early and went to look after the business of recording the ghosts in the archives. All the servants passed through his door to visit him, leaving gifts and wine in generous quantities. Uneasy about the work that they did in the household, Wang carefully stepped back away from the offerings. He ate two meals each day, both of which he paid for himself.

  Lady Jinse carefully examined his sincere spirit and prudence, deciding that he deserved to receive a Confucian scholar’s robe made from new cloth. Whenever the lady sent Wang gifts, Chunyan was sent to deliver them. She was quite pretty, and after they became familiar with each other, she began darting flirtatious glances at Wang with her eyes. But Wang was particularly on his guard, not daring to take even the slightest misstep, so he pretended to be completely ignorant of her signals.

  Over the next two years, Lady Jinse gave him many such rewards, but Wang showed the same careful self-restraint as before.

  One night, just as he was falling asleep, Wang heard someone cry out. Jumping up, he snatched up a sword and ran out of his room where he could see flaming torches that shone as bright as daylight. When he went closer to spy on their source, he discovered a gang of robbers filling the courtyard, while the other male servants were fleeing in terror.

  One of the servants grabbed Wang to try to get him to escape with them, but Wang refused; disguising his face, he tightened the sash of his robe and walked into the crowd of thieves like one of them, yelling, “Don’t harm the lady of this household! Let’s just take any belongings we find, whatever we want.” Since all of the thieves gathered there were still searching for Lady Jinse, Wang realized that she hadn’t been captured, so he secretly went back inside with his lantern to search for her.

  He ran into an old woman servant who was hiding and learned that the lady and Chunyan had both escaped over the wall of the estate. Wang also climbed over the wall. He spotted Jinse and Chunyan hiding in a dark corner of it. “What kind of place is this to try to hide?” asked Wang.

  Jinse explained, “I couldn’t walk any further!” Wang tossed aside his sword and picked her up to carry her.

  They quickly covered two or three li, with sweat running down Wang’s body from the exertion, until they finally entered a dark gully, and he eased her from off his shoulder so she could sit down. Like a violent wind, a tiger suddenly appeared. Though Wang was terrified, he turned to face the beast, but the tiger had already picked Jinse up in its mouth. With all of his strength, Wang quickly grabbed the tiger and reached his arms around to pull open its mouth and free Jinse.

  This made the tiger so angry that it released the lady and sank its teeth into his arm with a crunching sound. When the severed arm fell to the ground, the tiger ran off. In tears, Jinse cried, “Oh, your pain! Your pain!” Wang was so preoccupied with worry about her that he hadn’t yet noticed his injury, but once he began to feel his blood spilling out like water, he told Chunyan to tear cloth from his robe and use it to bind up the wound at the point where his arm had been severed. Meanwhile, Jinse stooped to pick up the dismembered arm and joined it to Wang’s wound; afterward, she wrapped up all the wounded area, too.

  _________

  Li: A distance equal to 1/3 mile.

  It was starting to get light in the east, so they slowly turned their steps homeward. When they eventually entered the hall, it was like it had been abandoned. It was already well into the morning, so the old women servants began to gather there as usual. Jinse paid a visit herself to the west hall, to ask Wang about his injury.

  When she unwrapped his arm, they found that the limb’s sundered bones had already begun to grow back together; thus she brought out some medicine, administered it to his wound, and then took her leave. Subsequently the regeneration proceeded even more quickly, and she personally concocted everything that Wang was to use on the wound, as she already had done.

  As his arm began to improve more and more, Jinse placed wine in his room to express her appreciation for his heroism. She had Wang sit on a chair placed there, but Wang refused three times, choosing instead to sit in an inferior place. She toasted him as though he was a nobleman, treating him now like a respected guest.

  After a long while, she said, “Since I already feel myself beholden to you, I would like to make you my husband. But since I have no matchmaker, I must plead my own case.”

  Shaken and frightened, Wang replied, “I was ready to die in order to repay your gracious benevolence, not in order to be rewarded for it. I’m afraid I’d be struck by lightning if I dared to be so presumptuous, so I can’t possibly agree to what you propose. If you wish to reward me with a wife, please allow me to marry Chunyan.”

  One day, Jinse’s eldest sister, Yaotai, came to visit, a beauty who looked to be about forty years old. That night, she sent for Wang and told him to have a seat, remarking, “I’ve traveled a thousand li to oversee my younger sister’s wedding, so tonight we can
settle the match.” Wang then stood up and said he needed to leave.

  Yaotai hastily ordered some wine and sent a couple of servants for some wine cups. When Wang insisted upon taking his leave, Yaotai forcibly tried to prevent him. Wang then prostrated himself, apologized for causing offense, and agreed to drink with her.

  When Yaotai subsequently stepped out, Jinse then came and said to him, “It’s truly as I told you: I’m an immortal who was demoted for something I did. I voluntarily agreed to live in the mortal world, to adopt those ghosts whose spirits had been so horribly wronged, in order to atone for my misdeed. We happened to encounter some evil spirits who came to rob us, and since then I’ve felt a karmic affinity for you. My elder sister has come from far away at my invitation to consolidate our marriage and to act as our home manager until I can follow you to our home.”

  Wang stood up respectfully and said, “The underworld is the happiest place of all! My own house has a shrewish woman in it, and it’s a shabby place that you couldn’t stand to live in.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jinse smiled.

  After drinking until they became rather tipsy, they returned to Wang’s room, where they joyfully made love.

  Several days passed, then Jinse told Wang, “Our harmony can’t last long in the underworld, hence you must return home. When you finish managing your household affairs, I’ll join you.” She gave Wang a horse, unfastened the gate so he could go out, and once again the cliff face opened up.

  Wang rode his horse to his village, where the other villagers were quite shocked to see him. When he reached the gates of his own home, he discovered a tall building shining brilliantly in the daylight. Earlier, when Wang first left home, his wife summoned her two brothers so they could give him a sound thrashing for having ridden off; but when night fell and he still hadn’t returned home, they prepared to leave. Someone had spotted one of Wang’s shoes in a ditch, so they suspected that he was already dead.

  Following this, a year went by without any news of him. There was a certain merchant from Shanxi who had a matchmaker speak for him with the Lan brothers, then personally made arrangements with them and made their sister his wife. Over the course of six months, he renovated the property. Then he left on a business trip, in the course of which he bought a concubine and brought her home with him, henceforth ensuring that there was no peace in his household. Thus the merchant was regularly away from home for several months at a time.

  An angry Wang wanted to find out what was going on, so he tied up his horse and entered his gates. He saw an old maidservant who’d been with his family for a long time, startling her so badly that she prostrated herself on the ground. Wang cursed and scolded for quite a while, then had her lead him inside to speak with his wife, whom, upon searching further, they discovered to have fled; after looking behind the house, they found that she’d already hanged herself. He had some people carry her body home to the Lan family.

  Wang called and the concubine came out, looking to be eighteen or nineteen years old, with a distinguished bearing and quite lovely, and afterwards they went back inside to her bedroom. The merchant complained to some villagers, begging them to help him retrieve his concubine, but the concubine, who could be heard wailing from inside, was unwilling to leave.

  Wang then wrote up formal charges against the merchant and was on the verge of filing a legal suit asserting that the merchant had criminally occupied his home and seized his wife. The merchant didn’t dare say anything further, so he accepted the situation and headed west instead.

  Wang began to worry that Jinse had broken her marriage agreement with him; one night, he was just taking the concubine to have some drinks with him, and as he was shutting the gate behind his horse and carriage, Jinse arrived. She only retained Chunyan, and sent the rest of her servants back home.

  They entered the house, where the concubine paid her respects to them. “You have the face of someone who can give birth to sons,” said Jinse, “so you can replace me for the hard work.” Immediately she gave the concubine some brocade skirts and jewels. The concubine bowed her thanks to Jinse, then stood up to wait upon her; Jinse, however, pulled her over to a chair and they proceeded to chat happily.

  After a long while, Jinse declared, “I’ve had enough to drink and now I’d just like to go to sleep.” When Wang also took off his shoes to climb into bed, the concubine started to leave the room; by the time she’d entered another room, Wang was already lying down on the bed there; curious, the concubine returned to take a peek at where the couple had been, but found that the light had already been extinguished. Indeed, there wasn’t a night when Wang didn’t go to sleep in the concubine’s room.

  One night, when the concubine got up to sneak a peek in Jinse’s bedroom, she heard her apparently laughing and talking with someone. She found this really odd. She was going to hurry back and tell Wang, but when she went back to her room, there was no one in her bed. The next morning, she secretly told Wang what she’d seen; Wang also didn’t know what to make of it, but he felt sometimes like loitering in Jinse’s room, and sometimes like sending the concubine to sleep there. Wang advised the concubine that they should keep Jinse’s odd behavior to themselves.

  A long time passed, then Wang also began sleeping with Chunyan, though Jinse prtended not to know about it. When the maidservant unexpectedly went into labor and was having a difficult time of it, she called out for “my lady.” Jinse rushed in just as the baby appeared; when she lifted it up, they could see it was a boy.

  Jinse cut the umbilical cord and placed the infant on the maidservant’s breast, smiling as she declared, “You won’t be doing this again! If you give birth to many children, it’ll increase your suffering, for when you leave, you’ll feel how hard it is to give them up.” Indeed, the maidservant did not bear any more children. The concubine, however, produced five sons and two daughters.

  After she’d lived there for thirty years, Jinse felt that it was time for her to return to her home and she began coming and going throughout the night. One day, she took Chunyan with her and left, but never came back. And when Wang turned eighty, he suddenly went out one night, taking an old servant with him, never to return again.

  485. The Taiyuan Court Case

  There was a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law, both widows, who lived in Taiyuan. The middle-aged mother-in-law had a terrible reputation, and there was a village troublemaker who often spent the night with her. Disapproving of these dealings, the daughter-in-law stood quietly near the entrance to their home, hoping to dissuade the man from staying. This embarrassed the mother-in-law, so she tried to drive the daughter-inlaw away; however, she refused to leave, which led to a tremendous quarrel.

  The mother-in-law’s hatred for her became so intense that she brought a false accusation of indecency against her daughter-in-law, delivering a full report to a local government official. The official asked her the name of the adulterous male with whom her daughter-in-law was consorting, but the old woman replied, “He always comes and goes at night, so I really don’t know his name, but if you interrogate the hussy, she’ll know.”

  Accordingly, the daughter-in-law was summoned. Though she knew the name of the man who’d been coming around, she testified that he’d been coming to see her mother-in-law, thus each woman accused the other.

  When the man was arrested and brought before the official, he made a tremendous uproar, crying, “These two can’t resolve their private matters or get along with each other, so they start saying crazy things and slandering me.”

  _________

  Taiyuan: A prefecture in Pu’s time, now the capital of Shanxi province.

  “Then why, in a village of a hundred people,” commented the official, “are you the only man who’s been accused?” Thus he ordered the man to be given a severe beating. The troublemaker kowtowed, begging to be released from his punishment, so he identified the daughter-in-law as the woman he’d been coming to see.

  She was accordingly thrown
into shackles, but in the end she wouldn’t confess to anything. Finally, she was released and left. The daughter-in-law then angrily went and told her side of the story to the prefectural court, but just as before, a long while elapsed without the matter being resolved.

  At that time, Sun Liuxia, from Zichuan, was the magistrate in Linjin and had a talent for resolving challenging court cases, so the matter was referred to him. When the three figures involved in the case arrived in Linjin, Sun interrogated each of them, then had them imprisoned and directed his servants to gather together bricks, stones, knives, and drilling tools, and to leave them nearby where they’d be available for use.

  The servants, unsettled by the request, inquired, “Since we already have tools to facilitate our interrogation, why are you intending to use these objects for the purpose of torture to solve the court case?” They didn’t understand that Magistrate Sun just wanted the defendants to hear them gathering the items he requested.

  The next day, when he entered the court hall, he asked whether the necessary items had been prepared, then ordered all of them to be conveyed there. Calling for the three prisoners to be brought out, he questioned them one by one. Next he told the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law, “This matter doesn’t need to be entirely clarified. I haven’t been able to determine which of you is the lewd woman, but this miscreant’s guilt has been established with certainty. You’re innocent of wrongdoing, for it’s clear that this felon seduced you, and the weight of the crime is entirely on him. Knives and stones and such have been placed in the hall here so you can use them to carry out his death sentence.”

  _________

  Linjin: In modern times, a county in Shandong province.

  The two women were averse to take action, fearing that they’d be condemned if they killed the man, so Sun told them, “Don’t fret about it, you have me here to vouch for you.”