The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

by Barry Hughart

  “Nice of him to write!” I shouted back.

  “Sha la jen la!”

  “Hao! Hao! Hao!”

  “Who has taken my bronze belt buckle and my python skin belt!”

  “Whangity-whangity-whangity-whang!”

  That was a cobbler who had taken aim at my right ear and was advertising by smashing his metal foot-frame with a hammer. The head just chopped off by Devil’s Hand, I noticed, was rolling like a ball across the cobblestones toward two little girls who were seated facing each other, playing the handclap game: clap opposing hands, clap left hands, clap right hands, clap own hands, and so on, while singing an ancient nonsense rhyme. They watched the severed head approach with large eyes, lifted their stubby legs in unison to let it roll past, and resumed clapping. Shrill happy voices reached through a momentary pause in the din:

  “Kuang kuang ch’a

  Kuang kuang ch’a,

  Miao li he shang

  Mei yu t’ou fa!”

  Did barbarian children in the Sabine Hills chant something like that while clapping hands?

  “Cymbals a pair,

  Cymbals a pair,

  The old temple priest

  He has no hair!”

  Master Li leaned over and began yelling again. “Ox, this barbarian is a remarkably sound critic! Listen to this. ‘Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter adsuitur pannus, ut proicit ampullus! Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.’ A bit prolix, but beautifully phrased, isn’t it?”

  I have no idea why he asks questions like that. I continued to sit with my mouth slackly ajar in flycatching position while another prisoner received last words from the junior official and was dragged to the chopping block. Master Li placed his lips back against my ear.

  “A rough translation might be: ‘Often on a work of grave purpose and high promise is tacked a purple patch or two to give it color, but throw away the paintpot! Your mountains labor to give birth to a laughable little mouse.’”

  “Very nicely phrased,” I said.

  “That’s not all,” said Master Li. “He gets better, except he still uses more words than he should and like all uncivilized writers his prose is strangled by unnecessary punctuation. I’m half tempted to send friend Flaccus a manual on Chinese Poetic Shorthand. Do you know Li Po’s ‘Short Song’?

  “‘Earth too big

  Sky too far

  Ride six dragons

  Around North Star

  Crazy dragons stinking drunk

  Enjoy self!’

  “Think, my boy, of the benefit to the barbarian’s style if he studied Li Po’s technique and altered his missive accordingly.

  “‘Purpose grave

  Promise high

  Mountains labor

  By and by

  Out creeps mouse with purple nose

  Throw away paintpot!’”

  “A vast improvement,” I said.

  I forgot to mention the venders of soft drinks. These fellows are almost alone in advertising their wares with their own voices, and the reason is that each and every one is convinced he’s but a temporarily undiscovered star of Peking opera, and one of the bastards had crept up behind me and was pointing his gaping maw at both my ears. Along with the rest of it, the result was like this:

  “Sha la jen la!”

  “Hao! Hao! Hao!”

  “Hao tao!”

  “Soothing syrups chilled with ice!

  Try mine once you’ll try them twice!

  Ten cash a cup to beat the heat

  With a taste like snow, but sweet-sweet-sweet!”

  “Who has made off with my costly silk trousers! My pure velvet loincloth!”

  “Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang!”

  That last was a scissors grinder. They advertise by clashing rows of metal discs sewn into the linings of their long, wide sleeves, and the sound has the peculiar quality of cracking the porcelain of your teeth. The latest severed head rolled to the little girls, who didn’t even look up as they automatically raised their legs, and the sweet childish chant continued as the head joined the row of its bodiless colleagues, and I suddenly leaned forward and started to count: “…twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six.” Twenty-six meant Devil’s Hand had just tied the record, and the next would set a new one! I was going to lose my bet unless a miracle happened, but I didn’t mind. In fact, for the first time that day I felt a glow of well-being, because I knew the next prisoner in line all too well. How delightful that the record should be set by Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu!

  “Ox, here’s a very interesting comment from Flaccus the Fourth!” Master Li was yelling. “He begins by bemoaning your excessive sensationalism, and then writes, ‘Ut turpiter atrum desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne—’”

  I nudged his arm and pointed, and Master Li arose and adjusted his robes. He stepped to the front of the platform as the bailiffs dragged the prisoner forward, and I could see the old man compose himself and begin formulating suitably dignified Confucian comments to help the hosteler resign himself to his imminent demise. Unfortunately Master Li couldn’t quite attain the proper tone of serene gravity since he had to contend with the mob, the venders, the gamblers, and two little girls clapping hands, and the result was something like this:

  “Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu—”

  “Six to five! Last chance at six to five! Money-money-money!” howled Gold Tooth Meng.

  “Your crimes are debased beyond belief—”

  “Whap-whong! Whap-whong! Whap-whong!”

  That was a peddler of combs and hairbrushes who advertised by bashing a drum and a gong simultaneously.

  “And were it in my power to do so—”

  “Soothing syrups chilled with ice!”

  “Stop, thief! Bring back the lint from my navel!”

  “I would sentence you to the Thousand Cuts—”

  “Kuang kuang ch’a

  Kuang kuang ch’a,

  Miao li he shang

  Mei yu t’ou fa!”

  “Beginning with your polecat prick and baboon balls, you miserable turd!” Master Li yelled at the top of his lungs.

  Further words would be redundant. He waved to the bailiffs who hauled Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu to the chopping block and kicked his legs out from under him. Devil’s Hand began his breathing exercises and prepared to hoist his sword for the record-breaking attempt, and that was when the first of the extraordinary events that were to entangle us in the affairs of the Eight Skilled Gentlemen occurred.

  I wouldn’t have believed anybody could scream loud enough to make the mob in the Vegetable Market shut up and pay attention, or make the Chief Executioner of Peking come to a halt with his sword raised high, but that is exactly what happened. All eyes turned to six figures that were racing into the square through the Gate of Prolonged Righteousness. The five men in the lead had wide staring eyes, faces bleached white with terror, and mouths gaping like coal bins as they emitted one earsplitting scream after another. The sixth figure was the cause of the commotion, and one look was enough to freeze my blood. I had heard tales of vampire ghouls from Auntie Hua since I was five years old, but I had never expected to see one, and this cb’ih-mei, as Master Li later confirmed, was a specimen so classic it could have been used to illustrate the famous scientific study by the great P’u Sung-ling, Recorder of Things Strange.

  It had long greenish-white hair growing all over it, tangled and rank, dripping with decaying fungus from a tomb. Its huge red eyes glared like charcoal fires, and its vulture claws dripped with somebody’s blood, and its huge tiger teeth glittered in the sunlight. The terrible thing moved with immense powerful strides and would surely have caught the fleeing men in no time if it had run in a straight line. Instead it weaved and stumbled, clawing the air with impotent fury, and when it ran into one of the vender’s carts I finally realized what Master Li had grasped instantly. The monster was blind and dying. That was what Auntie Hua had alway
s told me: “Number Ten Ox, if you are chased by a ch’ih-mei, run to daylight! The sun is poison to the living dead!”

  The old lady had been right. The vampire ghoul stumbled around in circles, and when it started toward the chopping block Devil’s Hand almost twisted himself in half. Instinctively he had started his great sword down toward the block, and then he tried to stop in mid-swing and arc the blade toward the monster, and the result was that he missed the neck of Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu by three feet and the sword shot up a shower of sparks as it struck the cobblestones.

  “Ten thousand blessings!” screamed Gold Tooth Meng, and every bookmaker in Peking joined in an earsplitting howl of “Money—money—money—money!” because Devil’s Hand had just missed his chance to break the record and the bookmakers had been saved from bankruptcy. They immediately took off after wealthy bettors they’d given credit to, joining the howling mob battling to escape from the square through the Gate of Peace and Harmony. I saw a young mother snatch up the little handclapping girls, one under each arm, and kick severed heads out of the way like calabashes as she galloped for safety. Venders’ carts and stalls were flying every which way, and showers of shattered bamboo poles and brilliantly painted canvas awnings joined goods of every description that covered the square. In an astonishingly short period of time the only occupants of the Vegetable Market were Devil’s Hand, Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu, bailiffs who couldn’t flee because they were chained to the hosteler and had dropped the keys and couldn’t find them in the litter, Master Li, a monster, and me. Master Li hopped down from the dignitaries’ stand and trotted over toward the monster just as it ran into the Wailing Wall behind the chopping block and fell on its back. I ran after Master Li. Just as I got there the vampire ghoul hissed horribly, clawed the air one more time, shuddered, and lay still. Slowly the terrible fire died in its staring blind eyes, and I didn’t need a medical examiner to tell me it was dead.

  “Fried internally by sunlight, which penetrates putrid flesh to the vital organs,” Master Li said matter-of-factly.

  Putrid flesh indeed. It stank horribly of decaying matter, and its own body was just as responsible for the reek as were the bits of flesh and gristle from the person it had recently eaten sticking to its claws and teeth.

  “Absolutely lovely,” Master Li said reverently. “A specimen this perfect hasn’t been seen in Peking for a thousand years, and I would very much like to know why it left the safety of a grave to commit suicide in burning sunlight.”

  The answer wasn’t long in coming, because seven more figures were running slowly and exhaustedly through the Gate of Prolonged Righteousness. I recognized the one in the lead, Sergeant Hsienpo of the City Guard, with six of his men behind him. They were panting like a pack of winded hounds when they reached us, and dripping with perspiration. It was clear that the sergeant was delighted to find the monster dead, and almost equally delighted to find a First Rank official to take responsibility. He saluted Master Li smartly.

  “Sergeant Hsienpo, sir, from the Coal Hill Watch,” he said. “Got a report that suspicious men were at the Lin family cemetery. Found five grave robbers at work in broad daylight, as bold as you please.”

  The sergeant made no attempt to disguise his admiration for the thieves, who had avoided the guard dogs that patrolled at night by forging a work order for a drainage ditch and marching up the hill with pick and shovels over their shoulders, whistling cheerfully. They could tunnel like moles, and by the time the sergeant and his men had been alerted by the head gardener (he was suspicious because he hadn’t received his customary kickback for Coal Hill contracts) they’d already cut two side passages from the central ditch and removed the jewelry and jade burial pieces from two coffins. They were starting on a third when the soldiers tiptoed up behind them.

  “So this fellow lifts the lid and freezes solid like a chunk of ice, and these god-awful claws come crawling out around the edge, and this horrible thing sits up in the coffin and lets out a roar of rage—”

  The sergeant told a vivid tale. The grave robbers had taken to their heels with the ch’ih-mei behind them, and the sergeant had rallied his men and given chase. The monster had hurled something at the robbers, but it had bounced harmlessly off the back of one of them, and then it had been a footrace which the vampire ghoul would easily have won at nighttime, but the searing sunlight had done its work and allowed the robbers to escape.

  “And a smart piece of work, Sergeant!” Master Li said admiringly. “There aren’t many men who would give chase to a ch’ih-mei, and if a promotion isn’t forthcoming I’ll be the most surprised man in Peking.”

  I could see that the sage was wrestling with temptation, and for once temptation lost.

  “Actually, Coal Hill isn’t my district,” he said regretfully. “That’s the responsibility of Magistrate Han-shan—you’ll never find a better audience for your tale than Han-shan, whose grandmother was eaten by a weretiger—and a shortcut to his yamen would be to retrace your path through the Lin family cemetery.”

  He had something in mind, of course. The soldiers made a litter for the dead monster from pieces of venders’ stalls while Master Li confronted an unfortunate fact concerning a fortunate gentleman. Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu could not now be executed.

  Devil’s Hand had swung his sword and missed, which meant that official soothsayers would have to ascertain that the phenomenon had not been caused by the will of Heaven, and the emperor would have to sign a new death warrant, but the emperor was off on another bandit-hunting expedition in Korea. So Devil’s Hand and the bailiffs dragged the horrible hosteler back into the dungeon at Executioner’s Tower, and then Master Li and I accompanied the soldiers and the dead monster back to Coal Hill.

  We climbed the long path all the way to the top where the Lin family estate was. The grave the monster had occupied yielded a great number of gnawed bones, and some fresh bloodstains which seemed to interest Master Li.

  “You say the creature hurled something that struck one of the robbers in the back?” he asked.

  “It looked like it,” Sergeant Hsienpo replied. “Right over here.”

  They searched through the tall grass until one of the soldiers let out a high sharp yell, and Master Li leaned over and took out his large green handkerchief, and when he straightened up he was carrying a man’s half-eaten head.

  “No wonder the monster was annoyed. Grave robbers interrupted his dinner,” the sage said mildly.

  The head had been ripped right from somebody’s body, and a nasty tangle of tendons and part of the vertebrae dangled down, making it look like some kind of obscene sea creature. Nobody was going to identify the poor fellow. The vampire ghoul had devoured the face, and I have seldom seen a nastier mess. Master Li had the soldiers look around on the odd chance that the body might be nearby, and then he added the head to the litter and sent the soldiers on toward the yamen, with a note to the magistrate praising the sergeant’s work.

  Coal Hill is the domain of the wealthiest families of Peking, and when Master Li walked to the edge of the cemetery he was enjoying the most expensive view available. All the city opened up below us, and almost directly down I could see the rosy walls and emerald foliage and blue and yellow and crimson roof tiles of the Forbidden City. The old man was rocking back and forth on his heels with his hands clasped behind his back, whistling tunelessly, and I realized with surprise that he was as happy as a flea surveying the imperial kennels.

  “Ox,” he said, “the gods have decided to reward us for our ghastly encounter with Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu.”

  “Sir?” I said.

  “Get plenty of brushes, ink, and notebooks,” he continued cheerfully. “It might be a nice gesture to send Flaccus the Fourth an account of what’s about to transpire.”

  “Sir?” I said.

  He reached inside his elegant robes and pulled out his odorous goatskin flask and removed the plug, sending an alcohol reek in my direction that caused me to choke.

  “
Ox, something about that half-eaten head is almost as unusual as the creature that ate it,” said Master Li. “The last criticism from our barbarian friend had to do with fish stories, and unless I am greatly mistaken a great white whale of a case is headed in our direction.”

  “Sir?” I said.

  He swilled a pint of the stuff, and I briefly wondered if a vampire ghoul could have survived it.

  “A livid leviathan,” he said. “My boy, the spout reaches toward the stars, and the wake rocks offshore islands as it swims toward us, circumnavigating sacred seas with the awesome inevitability of an iceberg.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Early on the following morning a palatial palanquin draped with white cloths of mourning and trailing plumes of smoke from sacrificial incense burners proceeded up the Imperial Way toward the Gate of Correct Deportment, with a bonze and a Tao-shih marching in front banging a gong and a wooden fish. I had no idea why I was riding in the thing with Master Li, both of us dressed for an aristocratic funeral. My experience with the old man has taught me to keep my mouth shut when the wrinkles around his eyes squeeze up in tight concentric circles, so I waited until his mind relaxed along with the wrinkles, and then he shook himself and turned toward me.

  “Ox, have you ever visited the Forbidden City?”

  Of course I hadn’t. I was scarcely a mandarin or member of the imperial staff, as he knew very well.

  “That’s where we’re headed. I have reason to believe something very peculiar is going on,” said Master Li.

  He reached into his robe and pulled out a Fire Pearl. (I don’t know what barbarians call them. They’re convex pieces of crystal or glass used to focus the sun’s rays and start fires, and they can also greatly magnify or diminish the image of things. In my village they’re “Big-Small Stones.”) Then he reached into another pocket and extracted his handkerchief, and when he unfolded it I discovered I was staring at somebody’s left ear.