The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

by Barry Hughart

“So the peasant girl knelt before the Emperor of Heaven, and he placed the little gold crown upon her head. ‘Arise, Princess of Birds!’ he commanded, and when Jade Pearl stood up she was astonished to see that she shone with a divine light….”

  The Falcon flashed past, and mountains and valleys disappeared as though China were being folded up like a map beneath us, and we shot down the side of a low mountain where three more ghosts were seated upon a rock, gazing up at the Bridge of Birds.

  “You know, I feel in my heart that I had something to do with this, although it scarcely seems possible,” Miser Shen said wonderingly. “I cannot imagine how anything so beautiful could be associated with someone so ugly as myself.”

  His wife kissed his cheek, and the lovely little girl in his arms looked up in surprise. “But, Daddy, you are very beautiful,” said Ah Chen.

  They vanished behind us. Another mountain and another valley vanished in a blur, and then the Falcon slowed and feathered its wings above a cemetery, where a tired and lonely old man was trudging between gravestones with a cadaver on his back. He tilted the head of the corpse toward the Bridge of Birds.

  “Now look here, if the birds can pull off a trick like that, surely you can manage something so simple as resurrection,” Doctor Death said reasonably. “Perhaps it would help if you understood how important it is. My wife was not pretty, but she was the most wonderful wife in the world. Her name was Chiang-chao, and we were very poor, but she could make the most delicious meals from a handful of rice and the herbs that she picked in the woods. She sang beautiful songs to cheer me when I was depressed and she sewed dresses for wealthy ladies to help pay for my studies. We were very happy together, and I know that we will be happy together again.”

  The Falcon dropped like a rock, and the great talons shot out, and there was a dull thud. We lifted back up into the air while the old man toppled to the ground, and his ghost lifted from his body, and another ghost came running with open arms, and Doctor Death and the most wonderful wife in the world embraced beneath the Bridge of Birds.

  The stars above us were blending into a continuous blur and the landscape below was unrolling like a painted panorama: the hills and valleys that we had trudged across on our quest, and the Desert of Salt, and Stone Bell Mountain. We shot up the side of another mountain toward a stone pillar and a hammer and a gong and the black mouth of a cave. The wisest man in the world was standing there, gazing at the Bridge of Birds, and for a moment I thought that it might not be such a bad thing to lose one’s heart. There was real pleasure in his eyes. Then I saw that his hands were caressing a small pile of jewels, and I remembered that a man with no heart likes things cold, and there is nothing colder than treasure.

  “Cold,” crooned the Old Man of the Mountain. “Cold…cold…cold….”

  Then the wisest man in the world turned his back upon the beautiful Bridge of Birds, and shuffled down into the darkness of his cave.

  Another valley disappeared beneath us, and another river, and more hills, and we swooped up the side of another peak, and Master Li and I cried out as one: “But surely they have paid for their folly!”

  We stared down at the bodies of the three handmaidens, who still floated upon the cold water of the Lake of Death. The Falcon turned its head.

  “In life they were faithless, but in death they were faithful beyond belief,” said the prince of the birds of war. “Their courage has been brought to the attention of the judges of Hell, and even now the Yama Kings are making their decision.”

  We watched the bodies peacefully dissolve into dust, and we felt an indescribable wave of joy as the soul of Snowgoose and Little Ping and Autumn Moon shot past us to rejoin their mistress in Heaven.

  The mighty heart pounded beneath us, and the wings beat with all the Falcon’s strength, and we left the Bridge of Birds far behind, and China vanished. My eyes swam with tears from the wind, and I could see nothing, and I held on for dear life. For an hour I had no idea where we were, but then the racing wind began to bring a hundred familiar odors to my nostrils. The pace slackened, and I pried my eyelids open, and the Falcon slid down from the sky and dipped its wings in salute above the watchtower on Dragon’s Pillow. As the monastery grew closer we could see the watching bonzes point in wonder from the roof, and then the bells began to ring. Lower we drifted, and then the Falcon landed lightly in the courtyard.

  Li Kao and I climbed off and bowed deeply, and the prince of the birds of war looked at us with its yellow smoky eyes.

  “I shall not say good-bye. The Raven has told me that we are destined to meet again, at the great confrontation with the White Serpent in the Mysterious Mountain Cavern of Winds. The Raven is never wrong,” said the Falcon, and its wings beat once, twice, and then it shot into the air and sailed away to rejoin its bridge and its princess.

  Li Kao and I raced into the infirmary, where the abbot ran to meet us. He was wasted with weariness, and one glance told us that the endurance of the children was almost at an end.

  “We have the Great Root!” I yelled. “Master Li found the Queen of Ginseng, and she has agreed to help us!”

  Master Li and the abbot began preparing the vials, and I ran from bed to bed. I held the root toward the children’s faces and recited their names and gave brief ancestries. I suppose that it was a foolish thing to do, but I remembered that the story of Jade Pearl had begun when the Queen of Ginseng had taken pity upon a child and had asked if she was lost, and the children of my village were lost indeed. Then I ran up to Master Li and reverently placed the root in the first vial.

  I cannot possibly describe the aroma when Li Kao finally removed the vial from the pan of boiling water and removed the stopper, but old Mother Ho, who caught some of the steam full in the face, tossed her cane away and hasn’t used it since. The abbot and Master Li began making the rounds: three drops upon each tongue.

  The children’s faces flushed, and the covers lifted with deep breathing, and they sat up and opened their eyes to the private world of the Hopping Hide and Seek Game.

  The second treatment of three drops, and the happy smiling faces turned as one toward Dragon’s Pillow. “Jade plate, six, eight, fire that burns hot, night that is not, fire that burns cold, first silver, then gold!” chanted the children of Ku-fu.

  The third and final treatment, and there was just enough essence to go around. The children suddenly stopped chanting, and they sat motionless, with wide unseeing eyes. Nobody dared to breathe. The monastery was completely silent until Big Hong could stand it no more. He ran to his son and waved his hand in front of the boy’s bright eyes. Nothing happened.

  Big Hong fell on his knees, and his head sank to the little boy’s lap, and he began to weep.

  Master Li is convinced that the true story of the Bridge of Birds is far too crude to please priests and palace eunuchs, and that suitably polite and pious legends will be invented to account for the extraordinary event that stunned the empire on the seventh day of the seventh moon in the year of the Dragon 3,338 (A.D. 640), and that there will probably be a lovers’ festival that celebrates a meek little goddess who weaves seamless robes and a meek little god who milks cows, with a few magpies tossed in for comic effect. Perhaps, but in the village of Ku-fu in the valley of Cho we will continue to celebrate the moment when the Queen of Ginseng probed and tested, and then tentatively reached out and took ku poison into her heart. Little Hong blinked. His eyes lowered.

  “What’s the matter, Daddy?” he asked.

  Her majesty was gaining confidence, unleashing all of her power, and child after child blinked and shook his head, as though clearing cobwebs, and wanted to know why his parents were weeping. They were very weak.

  “Outside!” Master Li yelled. “Carry the children out to the courtyard!”

  A long row of beds moved out to the courtyard, and the children stared in wonder at a strange glow upon the horizon, like the rising of a second moon, and then the Bridge of Birds lifted above Dragon’s Pillow. Surely the Queen o
f Ginseng smiled to see her beloved goddaughter provide the final step to the cure. The world was wrapped in the fragrance of green twigs and branches, and a divine light climbed higher and higher toward the stars, to the great song of billions of birds. A trillion wings splintered moonbeams into rainbows, and a roar of thanksgiving came from the Great River, and the Star Shepherd hurled his crook away and bounded across waves and rocks, and the untended stars began to spill over the banks. The August Personage of Jade ordered all Heaven to erupt with bells and gongs and trumpets, and the children of Ku-fu jumped from their sickbeds and began to dance with their parents, and the abbot and his bonzes swung lustily through the air as they hauled on the bell ropes, and Master Li did the Dragon Dance with Number Ten Ox, and showers of stars, torrents of stars, great glorious explosions of stars streaked across the sky of China while the Bridge of Birds reached the boundary of paradise, and the Star Shepherd opened his arms to receive my darling Lotus Cloud, the Princess of Birds.

  I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.

  May your villages remain ignorant of tax collectors, and may your sons be many and ugly and strong and willing workers, and may your daughters be few and beautiful and excellent providers of love gifts from eminent families that live very far away, and may your lives be blessed by the beauty that has touched mine.

  Farewell.

  This is one for the Sacred and Solemn Order of Sinologists

  Jen Wu is a day Master Li sets aside for my literary endeavors, and I was pleased that it was cold and rainy and fit for little else than splashing ink around.

  “Ox,” he said, “the writing of your memoirs is doing wonders for your calligraphy, but I must question the content. Why do you choose the rare cases in which matters run melodramatically amok?”

  I heroically refrained from saying, “They always do.”

  “When you allow sensationalism to do the work, you’re eliminating the need for thought. Besides,” he added somewhat petulantly, “you give the impression that I’m violent and unscrupulous, which is only true when there’s a need for it. Why not explain a case that was calm and rather leisurely and lovely, in which the issues were philosophical rather than frenzied?”

  I scratched my nose with my mouse-whiskered writing brush as I tried to think of such a thing. All I wound up with was ink in my nostrils.

  “Shi tou chi,” he said.

  I stared at him incredulously. “You want me to try to explain that awful mess?” I said in a high strangled voice. “Venerable Sir, you know very well it almost broke my heart, and I—”

  “Shi tou chi,” he repeated.

  “But how can I tell The Story of the Stone?” I wailed. “In the first place I don’t understand where it begins and in the second place I’m not sure it has an ending and in the third place even if I understood the ending it wouldn’t do me any good because I don’t understand the beginning in the first place.”

  He gazed at me in silence. Then he said, “My boy, stay away from sentences like that. They tend to produce pimples and permanent facial tics.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Begin at the beginning as you understood it, proceed through the middle, continue to the end, and then stop,” said Master Li, and he sauntered out to get drunk, leaving me to my current misery.

  What can I say about the affair of the stone? All I know for certain is the date when we first became involved: the twelfth day of the seventh moon in the Year of the Serpent 3,339 (A.D. 650). I remember it because I had a premonition that something dramatic was about to happen, and had been checking the calendar for auspicious days, even though I wasn’t so much foreseeing but wishing because I was worried about Master Li. He’d been in a foul mood for a month. For days he did nothing but lie on his pallet and drink himself into oblivion, and when he was sober he pinned up sketches of government officials and riddled the wall of the shack with throwing knives. He never spoke to me about it, but he was old, old almost beyond belief, and I think he was afraid he’d drop dead before something interesting turned up.

  I didn’t like that at all, but I couldn’t afford a decent fortune-teller so I had to rely on Ta-shih to tell me whether my premonition was favorable or disastrous, and that meant I could only get six possible answers: “grand peace and luck,” “a little patience,” “prompt joy,” “disappointment and quarrels,” “scanty luck,” and “loss and death.” I didn’t dare tempt the anger of the gods by trying more than once a day. I took the first reading on the eighth day of the seventh moon, and my heart sunk when I saw “loss and death.” On the ninth I tried again, and again I got “loss and death.” My heart bounced up and down upon my sandals when “loss and death” appeared on the tenth day, and on the eleventh, before dawn, I slipped out to pray at the temple of Kuan-yin. Not even the goddess of mercy could help. “Loss and death” came up again, and I read it in the shadow of the goddess’s statue as the sun lifted above the city walls, and just then I heard wails of woe drifting from Master Li’s alley, and then the dread peal of the Cloud Gong.

  I ran back, blinded by tears, and knocked Ming Number Six head over heels, nearly crushing the delicate tapers of sacrificial Buddha’s Fingers incense that he had just bought at great expense. He didn’t mind. I have never seen anyone happier, and it was only then that I realized that the wails and the Cloud Gong were coming from his house, not Master Li’s shack, because Great-grandfather Ming (a loathsome tyrant if ever there was one) had finally condescended to breathe his last. Master Li was still with me, and he even felt well enough to invite a few people over that night.

  It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. The gentlemen were collected from a wineshop, and the ladies came from one of the bawdy Yuan Pen troupes that I far preferred to Tsa Chu opera, and things went very well except for the Mings’ cat. They had tied the beast to Great-grandfather’s coffin, hoping to chase away evil spirits that might come for the corpse’s po (sentient) soul while his hun (personality) was down in Hell being judged. I thought it was a terrible idea—a dog, yes, but everybody knows that if a cat jumps over a coffin the corpse will sit up and climb out and cause all sorts of trouble—and the cat also thought it was a terrible idea and began howling its head off. Then one of the guests, a pasty-faced fellow I didn’t know, started a dice game called Throwing Heaven and Nine, and the ladies got tipsy and decided to try to drown out the cat by bellowing bawdy songs from the classic lowbrow farce “The Merry Dance of Mistress Lu,” and at that point a storm began moving toward Peking. A wild wind howled in counterpoint with the cat, and a hole about a foot across suddenly appeared in the roof. I fished some fallen thatching from a pot of rice and turned the cooking over to the ladies, and then I went out to the alley and climbed up on the roof to make repairs.

  I checked my thatching and twine and mallet and nails, and began sliding across the ridgepole toward the hole. The ladies were catching their breaths before launching into another chorus, but the wind and the cat and the gamblers’ doggerel were still going strong.

  “Red Mallet Six, easy to fix!” yelled the pasty-faced gambler, meaning he had to beat a throw of one and five.

  “Ooooooooooooooo,” moaned the wind.

  “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!” howled the cat.

  “Halfway to Heaven with the One-leg Seven, money-money-money!” yelled the gambler, who had just tossed one and six.

  I slid farther along the ridgepole and cautiously tried my weight on a bamboo rafter. It held, and I took out a length of twine and began measuring the hole. Directly below me the ladies got their second wind, and I vaguely recalled that more than one sheltered mandarin was reputed to have been sent to his grave by accidental contact with the Yuan Pen songs of the great unwashed.

  “Make your pile while you’re young, dear, for beauty must flee,

  And middens greet maidens whose image you’ll be,

  Wrinkled belly and breasts, features mottled and gray,

  Lurching lonely through nights while yo
ur nose lights the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!”

  Another two or three jars of wine, I thought, and they should really loosen up. I didn’t want to miss it.

  “Ooooooooooooooobhh,” moaned the wind.

  “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!” howled the cat.

  “Hear what I said?” the lucky gambler yelled. “It’s the Tiger Head! Money-money-money!”

  Faintly through the din I could hear the watchman crying the double hour of the rat. A new day had begun, and for some reason I automatically grabbed some nails, totaled them, added the numbers of the moon, day, and hour, and started one last Ta-shih reading. I rapidly counted across the upper six joints of the three middle fingers of my left hand, and stared in disbelief as my counting finger came to a stop on the deadly sixth joint.

  “Loss and death?” I whispered.

  What could it mean? Surely the prophecy had been fulfilled by Great-grandfather Ming, unless he had arisen…. I hastily slid down and peered through Ming’s window to see if that damned cat had jumped over the coffin. The lid was still securely in place, so why did I keep getting the death reading? Something was very, very wrong, and it took a moment to register what it was.

  Only the cat and the wind were serenading the night. The shack was silent. Not a peep. I hastily slid back up and peered through the hole, and it was apparent that the phenomenal luck of the pasty-faced gambler who had just beaten double fives with a five and a six had run out. The lash of a donkey whip was wrapped around his right arm, jerking the sleeve up to reveal a leather tube strapped to his forearm. The dice he had palmed and switched for loaded ones fell from the tube and rolled over the floor, and I stupidly noted that he would have won anyway: “Heaven,” double sixes, gazed up at me.

  The idiot decided to try something even more dangerous than loaded dice. The handle of the donkey whip was in Master Li’s left hand, and surely the cheater could see that Master Li’s eyes looked like narrow chips of ice, but he reached into his robe with his left hand and awkwardly pulled out a knife. He never had a chance, of course. I hit the roof between two rafters and crashed through like a water buffalo stepping upon a half inch of river ice, and my aim was good—I landed upon the idiot’s left shoulder—but I was way too late. When I climbed to my feet I was dripping with red ooze.