I snapped back to reality. I had thought that the gray plain was smooth and unbroken, but I was wrong.
“Did either of you happen to glance back after we first stepped out into Hell?” Master Li asked.
Neither of us had.
“The door closed behind us and vanished. Nothing but the blank wall of a cliff,” he said. “That means we have only one exit from the underworld, the Great Wheel, which means we must reach the Tenth Hell.”
Ahead of us was Yin-Yang Gorge, which is spanned by a swinging rope no more than two inches wide. We stood at the edge and peered down, but there seemed to be no bottom.
“What do you think?” Master Li asked.
I looked around. Demons have lowly servants called raksha. Some of them carried huge water buckets on the ends of long wooden yokes, and I said, “Sir, I think the two aristocrats should beat the insolent peasant and punish him by slapping a yoke on his stupid shoulders.”
The demons appeared to approve as Master Li and Moon Boy whacked me, and they made no objection when the fierce old dignitary commandeered a raksha and took his yoke. I dumped the water from the oversize buckets and told Master Li and Moon Boy to climb in. Master Li added rocks to his bucket until the weight was balanced, and I fixed the yoke on my shoulders and approached the rope bridge.
Anyone who has seen rope-walkers at festivals knows they balance themselves with long poles, and peasants spend a great deal of time carrying heavy things balanced on the ends of a yoke. I knew it wouldn’t be difficult so long as I didn’t panic. Besides, I had an umbrella far better than any rope-walker’s.
I placed my left sandal upon the rope and started slowly across, using the state umbrella for added balance. The rope was swinging, but that was no problem so long as I didn’t fight it. I quickly gained confidence. There was nothing to it, and I got to the center of the gorge with no difficulty. Then from the black depths came a sound so horrible that I knew whatever lurked down there was far worse than anything we had yet seen.
“Buddha! Moon Boy, what was that?” Master Li called from his bucket.
The sound came again, louder and even more horrible, and the hair on the back of my neck lifted so stiffly that it stretched the skin of my face back, and my teeth involuntarily bared in a wide mirthless grin.
“The evil minister!” Moon Boy yelled in terror. “It’s the lips of Ch’in Kuei, moving over a sinner who fell.”
I very nearly toppled off the rope. Ch’in Kuei is the prime minister who assassinated the great Yueh Fei, and has been punished by being given the body that reflects his soul. He’s made of nothing but huge slimy lips. They have jagged little teeth set in them, and the minister eats and eats, sucking the flesh from sinners, starting with the eyeballs, and the sickening sound was like a great wind that sucked the rope back and forth, swinging wildly over the gorge.
Sweat was blinding me. I wiped it away and tried to concentrate on the rope beneath my feet, but I kept imagining that fat drooling lips were lifting over my toes. In a moment I was going to fall. The only thing I could do was lean forward and start to run. The state umbrella was a life-saver, catching air and pulling up, but the problem was keeping my shoulders straight so the buckets didn’t swing, and I had to use short rapid steps because the rope kept moving. Sooner or later I was going to miss.
I knew from the moment that my right sandal started down that I would miss the moving rope, and if I leaned to the left to catch up to it, I would be completely unbalanced. A smacking slobbering sound from below helped me to push off with my left foot and leap ahead. My hands reached out as far as they could, and as I fell, my fingers just reached the edge of the cliff at the far side of Yin-Yang Gorge. I dangled there, kicking wildly for a foothold, and my right foot hit a jutting rock. In half a minute I had made it over the edge, and Master Li and Moon Boy tumbled from the buckets to the gray grass. We crawled forward while the sickening sounds of Ch’in Kuei feeding on flesh gradually faded away.
“Ox, I wondered when things were going to get exciting,” Moon Boy said, and then he leaned over and threw up.
Now we were in the Sixth Hell, where sacrilege is punished, and the torments we stared at didn’t make it easier to control our stomachs. Finally we made it to our feet, and I picked up the state umbrella, which had fallen in front of me. We took deep breaths and started out again, marching arrogantly in our armor of Neo-Confucian superiority. Master Li avoided confrontations as we reached boundaries. The Seventh Hell punishes those who violate graves or sell or eat human flesh, and the Eighth Hell is for those lacking in filial piety, and I have no intention of describing the terrible things we saw. (I will, however, strongly advise against winding up in the Eighth Hell so long as Neo-Confucians are in charge.) Master Li could no longer avoid confrontations at the border of the Ninth Hell. The only way to get to the Tenth and the Great Wheel was to go right through the palace of the Ninth Yama King, and Master Li was thinking deeply as we approached the walls where long lines of sinners shuffled toward their doom, weeping gray tears.
“Goo-goo-goo.”
“Ox, did you hear that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Goo-goo-goo.”
“Great Buddha! It’s the entire congregation from the Eye of Tranquility,” Master Li exclaimed.
Indeed it was, and he walked up the line peering at faces.
“Hello, Hsiang!”
“Hello, Li Kao. What are you doing here?” the toad asked mournfully.
“I was about to ask the same of you,” said Master Li.
The toad shook his fist in the general direction of Peking. “Those cursed vendors!” he yelled. “Kao, it occurred to the greedy bastards that gentlemen in search of salvation should mortify the flesh, so along with worms they began selling cheese.”
I shuddered. Like most Chinese I find cheese disgusting, and I could well imagine that eating the stuff would be mortification of the first order.
“Cheese killed all of you?” Master Li asked skeptically.
“Well, no,” the toad said. “Competing vendors began selling raw sea slugs.”
Master Li shrugged. “I prefer them minced and steamed with eels, but they shouldn’t have done much more than make you throw up when they squirmed in your stomach.”
“Well, you see, Li Kao, they came from the bay where the boys deposit the night soil,” the toad said sadly.
“You didn’t eat them!” Master Li exclaimed in horror.
“We lived through that, but then the vendors began stuffing the sea slugs with the cheese.”
Master Li turned pale, and Moon Boy and I turned green.
“I remember it precisely,” the toad groaned. “It was the double hour of the cock on the third day of the eighth moon when a homicidal vendor came up with the idea of peddling all his wares at the same time, so he began stuffing the worms into the cheese inside the sea slugs.”
“Jade Emperor, preserve us,” Master Li said. “I assume that the next thing you knew, you were shuffling toward the basilica of the God of Walls and Ditches.”
“The god was furious,” the toad sniffled. “Nothing in the Register of Life and Death covered the combination of worms, cheese, and sea slugs, and since we had prematurely departed from the red dust of earth, we were sentenced to the Ninth Hell.”
“Goo-goo-goo,” the codgers chanted, hoping that Heaven could still see them release worms from jars.
“Look at the bright side,” Master Li said soothingly. “In three years you’ll be allowed to return in ghost form, and you can haunt the vendors as much as you like.”
The toad turned purple. “You don’t know those vendors!” he shouted. “They’ll stuff our ghosts inside the worms inside the cheese inside the sea slugs and call it the Four Fetid Flavors of Suffering Serenity and make a goddamn fortune!”
Master Li’s eyes moved to the gate ahead. The demons were the most ferocious we had seen, and the devils were obviously high officials, and we weren’t going to get very far with a b
adge of office and a state umbrella. A side gate led to a garden of gray flowers, and Master Li bent down and slipped his lock picks from the false heel of his left sandal.
“Hsiang, are you going to give up this easily? No, by all the gods!” Master Li exclaimed. “You’ve been treated most unfairly, and surely Heaven will hear your plea if you all put your hearts into it. Where’s His Holiness? There you are! Come on, men. One last grand effort!”
“Goo-goo-goo,” the codgers chanted timidly, but the saintliest of them all was made from stronger stuff:
“I pray to the Heavenly Master of the First Origin!” he bellowed. “I pray to the Heavenly Master of the Dawn of Jade of the Golden Door! I pray to the Queen Mother Wang! I pray to Chang-o and the Hare! I pray to Mother Lightning and the Master of Rain and My Lord Thunder and the Earl of Wind and the Little Boy of the Clouds.”
“Goo-goo-goo-goo-goo!” cried the codgers, gaining a little backbone.
Master Li bent to the lock of the side gate, hidden by the crowd. His Holiness obligingly drowned out the scrape of the pick.
“I pray to the Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak! I pray to the Princess of Streaked Clouds! I pray to Kuan-yin and Kuan-ti and the Eight Immortals! I pray to Lady Horsehead and King-of-Oxen and the Transcendent Pig and Prince Millet and Hun-po Chao, patron deity of the armpits!”
“Goo-goo-goo-goo-goo!”
The lock snapped open and we slipped through the gate and closed it behind us. The noise faded as the line shuffled on toward the palace. We saw that there was a series of small gardens, each secured by a locked gate, and we would have to get through seven of them to reach the side of the palace. Master Li swore under his breath as he tackled the next lock. None of the picks was the right size, and he had to work with infinite care and patience. At last it opened and we raced through the next garden. The lock on the second gate was easier, but the third one was almost impossible. Master Li broke two picks and was trying to get leverage with a third when we heard footsteps crunching over gray gravel. It sounded like the approach of an elephant, and Moon Boy slipped back through the shrubbery to take a look.
“Got it,” Master Li whispered.
The gate swung open. We left it ajar for Moon Boy and ran through the next garden to the fourth gate. The crunching footsteps had stopped. Then I heard a noise that made the hair lift on my head.
A demon was angrily sniffing the scent of living flesh. The sound indicated something huge and horrible, and we heard a growl like muffled thunder. Master Li worked furiously on the lock, but it was another difficult one and when the footsteps started toward us I knew we’d never make it through in time. I picked up a large gray rock as a weapon and slipped back through the bushes, and when I parted some branches and peered out I had to stifle a howl of horror.
This demon was enough to terrify the great Ehr-lang. It stood at least ten feet tall. Its muscles looked like rolls of steel piled together, and its talons could rip tigers apart, and its fangs might have come from one of those creatures found frozen in Mongolian glaciers, and its nostrils were sniffing furiously, and its red eyes were blazing with blood lust. I was paralyzed. As I stood there like a statue, I suddenly realized I wasn’t alone. Moon Boy stood across from me, mostly hidden by gray leaves, and he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. In ten more steps the monster would reach a clearing where it could see the gate and Master Li, but Moon Boy was sauntering out to the path. The demon stared. Fangs glittered; talons lifted to strike.
Moon Boy smiled—the gray sky blurred and produced a patch of blue. Moon Boy smiled wider—two gray flowers strained to produce pink blossoms. Moon Boy reached high up and tickled the terrible creature beneath its chin.
“Come here, sugar,” Moon Boy purred, and he led the demon back into the bushes.
Master Li had to spend a great deal of time on the fourth and fifth locks. He was working on the sixth when we heard a sound behind us and a handsome young man came limping up the path. He was pale and weak and shaky, but he managed an elegant wave of a hand.
“Hell,” he said, “is grossly maligned. I must come here often.” I honored him with the three obeisances and nine kowtows. “Buddha, the thing on that divine creature reminded me of the imperial flagpole at the funeral of General Ching!” Moon Boy said happily. “Better hurry. Any moment now the darling boy will catch his second wind and come looking for an encore.”
“Moon Boy, designing your medal will be one of the great challenges of the millennium,” said Master Li. “We’ll have to acquire the services of Deng the Debauched, and even Deng will be hard put to do you justice without landing all of us in jail.”
The lock snapped open and we hurried through the garden to the Seventh and last gate. Fortunately, it had an easy lock. We slipped through just as heavy crunching footsteps approached, and we reached the palace wall as a huge hoarse voice cooed, “Yoo-hoo?” I found a likely window and a moment later we were inside.
Down a corridor ahead of us was a huge room where endless rows of clerks scribbled in enormous ledgers, and above the doorway was the inscription “Tribunal of the Ninth Realm of Darkness.” We straightened our clothing and brushed off gray leaves and dirt. I raised the state umbrella proudly, and Master Li marched beneath it into the anteroom. Bureaucrats were dashing in and out of a doorway, and I actually got a glimpse of a Yama King: a dark crowned shape seated upon a throne, surrounded by clerks and courtiers. In all great bureaucracies the clerks are too busy and important to look up, so Master Li simply marched past rows of doors until he came to one with the title “Treasurer of the Ninth Realm of Darkness.” He shoved the door open and we walked inside. We marched past more busy clerks to a great desk where a spirit who resembled a shark was clicking like mad on two abacuses at once, and the nine buttons on his gauze cap indicated that we had reached the treasurer himself. Cold shark eyes lifted to Master Li’s emblems and state umbrella.
“No inspection has been scheduled,” he snapped.
“Of course not,” Master Li said with equal coldness. “One who raids an illegal cricket-fighting parlor does not announce his plans in advance.”
The treasurer shot to his feet. “You dare to compare this office to a cricket-fighting parlor?” he said furiously.
Master Li shrugged. “In such establishments peculiar things happen to the odds, and it has come to the attention of the Son of Heaven that peculiar things have happened to the odds in this office.”
“Explain yourself, sir!”
“The emperor,” Master Li said, “has been informed that the fee which purchased his own release from Hell has been unaccountably increased, which makes it virtually impossible for those unfairly imprisoned to be saved.”
“A lie! A vicious and unfounded slander!” the treasurer yelled. “Emperor T’ang purchased his passage for thirteen casks of silver and gold, and thirteen casks remains the price!”
“I sincerely hope so. We are here to ensure that the system works smoothly and equitably, and there is but one way of doing so,” said Master Li. “The Son of Heaven, you will recall, had no funds with him but was able to borrow on the credit account of the saintly Hsiang Liang.”
The treasurer sat down. A smile was on his face and malice was in his eyes.
“The emperor indeed did so, but only on the authority of Minister Ts’ui,” he said softly. “It so happens that I currently occupy the ministerial position, and do you have my authority to borrow on the account of Hsiang Liang?”
Master Li wrinkled his nose. “Who said anything about using the same account? Since there are three of us we shall require three times the amount, and I doubt that even Hsiang Liang’s good deeds have deposited that much.”
“Less than twenty mortals in all history have amassed thirty-nine casks of silver and gold in their credit accounts,” the treasurer said with malicious laugh. “I sincerely hope for your sake that you are in a position to borrow from T’su T’sin, the priest of the Temple of Lepers.”
“Nothin
g so grand,” said Master Li, bowing reverently at the name. One hand was behind his back and the fingers were tightly crossed. “We request you to check the credit balance of—”
Moon Boy and I stared at each other. Who could possibly have that much virtue on deposit?
“—a common singsong girl and prostitute named Grief of Dawn,” Master Li said calmly.
We smothered yelps of astonishment. The treasurer grabbed ledgers and ran his finger down rows of names and numbers, and when the finger stopped I thought he had suffered a stroke. “You have proof of permission to borrow on this account?” he said in a choked whisper.
Master Li took the interlocking phoenix/dragon headband from Moon Boy and handed it across the desk. The treasurer’s finger moved to the fine print, and his voice took on a weak whine. “Well, why didn’t you say it was a joint account? Of course you can borrow the money. As much as you like! Sign here, here, and here.”
Moon Boy signed there, there, and there, and in about as much time as it takes to tell it, I was hauling a cart upon which were piled thirty-nine casks of silver and gold. Master Li and Moon Boy sat on a couple of the casks, and the state umbrella rose grandly above them. The treasurer led the way to a side door and clapped a perfumed handkerchief to his nose.
“Get out quickly,” he hissed.
The door opened, I pulled the cart through, and the treasurer hastily slammed the door shut behind us. We were in the Ninth Hell, and I hope I may be allowed to pause for a brief tirade.
The Ninth Hell is the delight of theologians and the despair of everyone else. Technically it houses wang-ssu-ch’eng, those who died in accidents, but it is also the destination for suicides, those who died without proper prayers and ceremonies, and all who died before the official date set down in the Register of Life and Death—like the toad and his goo-goo friends. In the Ninth Hell there are no torments, which is the worst torment of all. Without punishment there can be no repentance and purification and rebirth, and the poor lost souls of the Ninth Hell must serve the sentence of imprisonment for all eternity.
The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox Page 47
