The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

by Barry Hughart

  “Number Ten Ox, eh? Muscles are highly overrated but yours may come in handy,” he said. “We will have to hurry, and for a variety of reasons you be required to twist somebody’s head off.”

  I could scarcely believe my ears.

  “Master Li, do you mean that you will come to my village and find out how a plague can learn to count?” I cried.

  “I already know how your plague learned to count,” he said calmly. “Bend over.”

  I was so stunned that I bent over backward until he advised me to try it the other way around. Master Li hopped nimbly upon my back and wrapped his arms around my neck and stuck his tiny feet into the pockets of my tunic. He was as light as a feather.

  “Number Ten Ox, I am no longer as fast on my feet as I used to be, and I suspect that time may be crucial. I would suggest that you take aim to your village and start running like hell,” said the ancient sage.

  My head was spinning, but my heart was wild with hope. I took off like a deer. Li Kao ducked as I bolted through the door and my head struck something, and when I skidded from the alley and glanced back I saw that my head had struck the bottom of an old shabby sign, and that half-closed eye was spinning around and around as though it was peering at mysteries in every corner of the empire.

  I have no idea whether or not it was premonition, but the image remained with me throughout our journey back to Ku-fu.

  Auntie Hua looked somewhat askance at the sage I had brought back to our village, but not for long. That antiquated gentleman stank of wine, and his robe was as filthy as his beard, but such was his air of authority that even the abbot accepted his leadership without question, and Li Kao walked from bed to bed, peeling back the children’s eyelids and grunting with satisfaction when he saw that the pupils of their eyes were not fixed and dilated.

  “Good!” he grunted. “It is not a question of teaching a plague how to count, which is quite simple, but of which agent was used, and I had feared that there might be brain damage. Now I shall need samples of mulberry leaves from every grove, clearly labeled so that we will know where they came from.”

  We raced to do his bidding. Basket after basket of mulberry leaves was carried up the hill to the monastery and Li Kao placed them in vials and added chemicals, while the abbot adjusted the fires beneath alchemists’ stoves. When the eighteenth batch of leaves turned the chemicals pale orange Li Kao began to work with great speed, boiling the leaves to a pulp, adding more chemicals a drop at a time, increasing the heat and reducing the liquid. The pale-orange color began to turn green. When the liquid had been reduced to nothingness a tiny pile of black crystals remained in the vial, and Li Kao placed half of them into a new vial to which he added some colorless liquid. Then he straightened up and stretched wearily.

  “Another minute and I will be sure,” he said, and he walked over to the window. Some of the younger children who had escaped the plague were wandering disconsolately in the abbot’s garden, and Li Kao pointed to a small boy. “Watch,” he said.

  We watched and nothing happened. Then the boy absentmindedly plucked a leaf from a tree, and he lifted it to his mouth and began to chew.

  “All children do that,” Master Li said quietly. “The children of your village who were old enough to work in basket brigades chewed mulberry leaves, but the older they were, the more self-conscious they became about doing childish things, and that is why the seizures were limited to children between the ages of eight and thirteen. You see, we are not dealing with a plague but with an agent that was deliberately designed to kill silkworms.”

  He turned and pointed to the vial. The liquid had the evilest color that I had ever seen: slick and green and slimy and garish, like gangrene.

  “That is ku poison, for which there is no known antidote,” he said grimly. “It was smeared upon the leaves in the mulberry grove that belongs to a certain Pawnbroker Fang.”

  A lynch mob poured down the hill, but the warehouse door was locked. “Ox!” the abbot snarled. I kicked the door halfway across the room, and a pathetic sight met our eyes. Ma the Grub was lying on his back. Traces of ku poison smeared his lips, and he was as dead as Confucius. Pawnbroker Fang was still alive, but barely. His glazed eyes tried to focus on us, and his lips moved.

  “We never intended to…. It was the silkworms,” he whispered. “If they died…the IOUs…own everything…. Now my daughter….”

  He was almost gone. The abbot knelt and placed a small jade Buddha in the pawnbroker’s hands and began to pray for his miserable soul. Fang’s eyes opened one last time, and he looked blindly down at the jade Buddha, and he made a truly heroic effort.

  “Cheap, very cheap,” he sneered. “No more than two hundred….”

  Then he too was dead.

  Li Kao gazed down at the bodies with a rather strange expression on his face, and then he shrugged his shoulders.

  “So be it,” he said. “I suggest that we leave them here to rot and return to the monastery. We have far more important things to worry about.”

  Pawnbroker Fang and Ma the Grub had almost certainly killed the children of my village, but when I looked back at the bodies I could find no anger in my heart.

  The abbot led the way. We lit candles, and our shadows loomed like twisted giants upon the gray stone walls as we trudged down the long winding flight of steps to the great vaulted cellar where the scrolls were stacked in long rows of wooden shelves. Our monastery is very old, and over the centuries the abbots had added to the library. The medical texts numbered in the hundreds, and I helped the novices bring scroll after scroll to the long tables where the abbot and his bonzes checked every reference to ku poison. The references were extensive, since the poison has been a favorite agent for assassination for nearly two thousand years, and the information was always the same: The victims’ vital signs would drop so low that they expended almost no energy at all and could last for months, but nothing could restore them to consciousness, and death was inevitable. There was no antidote.

  The poison was said to have been imported from Tibet. Li Kao was the only scholar who was qualified to interpret the ancient Tibetan texts such as Chalog Job Jad, and he said that the abbot’s copy of Zaraga Dib Jad was so rare that there might not be another one in existence. The rustle of the old parchment was punctuated by Master Li’s soft curses. The Tibetan physicians had been magnificent at describing treatments but terrible at describing symptoms, and apparently it had been taboo to mention by name any agent whose sole purpose was murder—possibly, he pointed out, because the alchemists who invented such things belonged to the same monkish orders as the physicians. Another problem was the antiquity of their texts, which were faded and spotted to the point of illegibility. The sun had set and was rising again when Master Li bent close to a page in Jud Chi, The Eight Branches of the Four Principles of Special Therapy.

  “I can make out the ancient ideograph for ‘star,’ and next to it is a badly spotted character that could mean many things, but among them is the ideograph for ‘wine vessel,’” he muttered. “What would you get if you combine the ideographs of ‘star’ and ‘wine vessel’?”

  “You would get the logograph ‘to awake from a drunken stupor,’”said the abbot.

  “Precisely, and ‘drunken stupor,’ if used figuratively, is such a maddeningly vague description of symptoms that it could mean almost anything. The interesting thing is that the preceding text suggests seizures and clawing of air,” said Master Li. “Can we say that the children are now lying in stupors?”

  He bent close to the text and read aloud.

  “‘To awake from a drunken stupor, only one treatment is effective, and this will succeed only if the physician has access to the rarest and mightiest of all healing agents….’” He paused and scratched his head. “The ancient ideograph for ‘ginseng’ is accompanied by an exceptionally elaborate construction that I would translate as ‘Great Root of Power.’ Has anyone ever heard of a ginseng Great Root of Power?”

  Nobody had. Li
Kao went back to the text.

  “The Great Root must be distilled to the essence, and three drops must be applied to the tongue of the patient. The treatment must be repeated three times, and if it is truly the Great Root, the patient will recover almost immediately. Without such a root no cure is possible….” Master Li paused for emphasis. “And while the patient may remain in his stupor for months, he cannot be awakened, and death is inevitable.”

  “Ku poison!” the abbot exclaimed.

  Now the bonzes checked every reference to ginseng, which meant almost every page because at one time or another the plant had been prescribed for almost every ailment known to man, but nowhere was there a reference to a Great Root of Power. We had reached a dead end.

  Li Kao suddenly smacked the table and jumped to his feet.

  “Back to Pawnbroker Fang’s office at the warehouse!” he commanded, and he started up the stairs at a trot, with the rest of us at his heels. “The Guild of Pawnbrokers represents the world’s second-oldest profession, and their records are older than the oracle bones of An-yang. The Guild publishes lists of extremely rare and valuable items that might escape the untutored eye, and a Great Root of Power, if such a thing exists, will probably be worth ten times its weight in diamonds and will look like a dog turd,” he explained. “A fellow like Fang would undoubtedly subscribe to the entire list, in hopes of swindling an heir who does not know the value of his inheritance.”

  He trotted rapidly down the path and through the door of the warehouse, and then he trotted right over the spot where two bodies should have been lying.

  “Those fellows?” he said in answer to our stunned expressions. “Oh, they got up and took to their heels a long time ago.”

  I grabbed the abbot and held him, but Big Hong and a number of others were closing in on the ancient sage in a menacing manner. “Do you mean that you knew all along that those murderers were faking their suicides?” the abbot roared.

  “Of course, but one should be careful about charging them with murder. So far as I know, they haven’t killed anyone yet, and they certainly never intended to,” Master Li said calmly. “Reverend Sir, have you considered the plight of Pawnbroker Fang’s children? His daughter will probably die, but even if she recovers, what sort of life could she look forward to when she discovered that her father had been torn to pieces by the people of her own village? Her little brother would be condemned to a life of shame at the age of five, which seems a trifle unfair. Surely there is a family that will care for innocent children, and explain that their father was only trying to improve the silk, but that he made a mistake and ran away, and all is forgiven.”

  I released the abbot, who bowed to the sage, and Big Hong cleared his throat.

  “My wife and I will take Fang’s Flea,” he said huskily. “Fawn, too, if she lives. They will have a loving home.”

  “Good man,” said Master Li. “As for Pawnbroker Fang and Ma the Grub, why not let them punish themselves? Greed such as theirs gnaws at the vitals like packs of rats, day and night, never ceasing, and when they arrive in Hell they will have already experienced whatever torments the Yama Kings may decree. Now let’s get to work.”

  Fang’s files were so extensive that they filled two large cabinets and a trunk, and the abbot found the first reference to a Root of Power. We had no idea whether it was the same as a Great Root of Power. The bonzes found three other references, but only one of them was contemporary.

  “Thirty years ago, at a price of three hundred talents, which I cannot possibly believe, a Root of Power was sold to the Ancestress,” said the abbot, looking up from his lists. “There is no further mention of it, and I assume that it is still in the dear lady’s possession.”

  Li Kao looked as though he had bitten into a green persimmon.

  “If that woman laid eyes on me, she’d have my head in two seconds,” he said sourly. Then he had second thoughts. “Come to think of it, it would be a miracle if she recognized me. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen when I was summoned to the emperor’s palace, and that was a good fifty years ago.”

  “Master Li, you were summoned by an emperor?” I asked with wide eyes.

  “Several, but this particular one was old Wen,” he said. “In the carefree days of my youth I once sold him some shares in a mustard mine.”

  We stared at him.

  “A mustard mine?” the abbot said weakly.

  “I was trying to win a bet concerning the intelligence of emperors,” he explained. “When I was summoned to court I assumed that I was going to be rewarded with the Death of Ten Thousand Cuts, but Emperor Wen had something else in mind. Oddly enough, it was sericulture. Some barbarians were trying to learn the secret of silk and the emperor thought that they might be getting close to the truth. ‘Li Kao,’ he commanded, ‘sell these dogs a mustard mine!’ It was one of the most ghastly experiences of my life.”

  Li Kao turned and trotted back out the door, and we followed like sheep as he started back toward the monastery. I was learning that there were many sides to Master Li, and I listened with fascination.

  “I had to turn their brains to butter with strong wine, and every morning I pried my eyelids open and glared at red-bearded barbarians who were snoring in puddles of vomit,” he said. “They had the constitutions of billy goats, and it was a month and a half before I was able to persuade them that silk is extracted from the semen of snow-white dragons that breed only in caverns concealed in the mysterious Mongolian glaciers. Before sailing away with the sad news, their leader came to see me. He was an oaf named Procopius, and the wine had not improved his appearance. ‘O great and mighty Master Li, pray impart to me the Secret of Wisdom!’ he bawled. A silly smile was sliding down the side of his face like a dripping watercolor, and his eyeballs resembled a pair of pink pigeon eggs that were gently bouncing in saucers of yellow won-ton soup. To my great credit I never batted an eyelash. ‘Take a large bowl,’ I said. ‘Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy. Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow kan pei—which means “dry cup”—and drink to the dregs.’ Procopius stared at me. ‘And I will be wise?’ he asked. ‘Better,’ I said. ‘You will be Chinese.’”

  Li Kao led the way back to the infirmary and slowly walked up the long line of beds. Weariness bowed his shoulders, and in the bright morning sunlight his wrinkled skin was nearly transparent.

  The children of Ku-fu looked like wax effigies. Fang’s Fawn had always been pretty, but now the bone structure was showing beneath her smooth skin. She was exquisite as a carving in white jade is exquisite, without warmth or life. On the bed next to her was a woodcutter’s daughter named Bone Helmet, a thin, plain girl who had been gentle and loving. Since she had been old enough to thread a needle, she had worked on her father’s burial garment and he had proudly worn it at every festival, and now the heartbroken father had dressed his daughter in his own garment. Bone Helmet looked incredibly small and helpless in a blue silk robe that was five times too big for her and the irony of “longevity” that she had embroidered over it in gold thread was not very funny.

  Favorite toys had been placed near each child’s limp hands, and the parents sat silent and helpless beside the beds. Mournful howls drifted up from the village, where lonesome dogs were searching for their young masters.

  Li Kao sighed and straightened his shoulders and beckoned for me to come closer. “Number Ten Ox, I have no idea whether or not a Root of Power is the same as a Great Root of Power, and for all I know the only use for such a thing is to mix it with glue and use it to repair sandals,” he said quietly. “Two things I do know. Anyone who tries to steal a valuable item from the Ancestress is begging for an unpleasant death, and I am now too old to attempt it without having some muscle to back me up. I have accepted your five thousand copper cash, and you are my client, and the decision is yours.”

  “Ma
ster Li, when do we leave?” I asked eagerly.

  I was ready to race out the door, but he looked at me wryly.

  “Ox, if the children die suddenly there is nothing that we can do about it, and if the textbook prognosis holds true, they should last for months. The worst thing that we could do would be to arrive at our destination weary and unprepared,” he said patiently. “I’m going to get some rest, and if you can’t sleep, perhaps the abbot will be kind enough to expand your education on the subject of the quest. Ginseng is the most interesting as well as the most valuable plant in the whole world.”

  He yawned and stretched.

  “We’ll have to go back through Peking to pick up some money, and we’ll leave at the first watch,” he said.

  Li Kao lay down in the bonzes’ bedchamber. I had never been so wide awake in my life. The abbot took me into his study for instruction, and what I learned about ginseng was so interesting that I was almost able to forget the children for an hour.

  Root of Lightning

  No medicinal plant is quite so controversial, the abbot explained. There are eminent physicians who swear that it is no more effective than strong tea, and there are those who swear that it is effective in treating anemia, cachexia, scrofula, gastrointestinal catarrh, and malfunctions of the lungs, kidneys, liver, heart, and genital organs. Long ago when the plant was plentiful, peasants would mix the ginseng root with owl brains and turtle fat and smear the mixture over the heads of patients to cure insanity, or blend it with the powdered horns of wapiti deer and sprinkle it over the patients’ chests to cure tuberculosis. Strangest of all is the professional ginseng hunter, because for him it is not a plant but a religion.