Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 4

by Pu Songling

  More and more Wang felt consumed by the disgrace of the sisters’ words, so he’d been repeatedly afraid that he wouldn’t be shown to the bridal chamber; fortunately, although Fangyun’s words had been cruel, by the time he passed through the curtains in the room, they were still together and in love.

  Wang lived peacefully and carefree, and often performed recitations. On one occasion, Fangyun remarked, “I have advice for you, but I don’t know—will you accept it or not?”

  “What do you have to say?” asked Wang.

  “Henceforth you should compose no more poetry,” she replied, “and make a practice of hiding your inadequacy as a poet by keeping quiet.” Wang felt so ashamed that he stopped writing.

  After quite some time had passed, he gradually began engaging in sex with Mingdang. He told Fangyun, “Mingdang kindly rescued me, so I’d like to treat her specially and well.” Fangyun then agreed.

  Every time Wang was in the house writing more verse to perform, he invited Mingdang to work together with him, and the two grew even more truly devoted, their looks conveying their tender feelings for each other. Fangyun was aware of this, and blamed her husband with words piled upon words; Wang merely chattered back, then did his best to avoid her.

  One night, while they were sitting together drinking, Wang felt bored, so he tried to persuade her to allow him to invite Mingdang to join them. Fangyun said she wouldn’t allow it.

  “You read almost every kind of book,” Wang then commented, “so why wouldn’t you remember the words, ‘Make yourself happy’?”

  Fangyun replied, “I said that you were unable to make sense when writing, and now my words turn out to be true. If asking for something for yourself makes you happier than when someone else asks for it, should you keep on asking for it for yourself? The answer is ‘No.’” She uttered a laugh and then ceased.

  It happened that Fangyun and her sister had an appointment to visit a neighbor woman, so Wang took advantage of the opportunity and quickly made love to Mingdang, enjoying their sticky and sweet relationship very much. That same night, Wang felt a slight pain in his lower abdomen; the pain went away, but his genitals became extremely swollen. Terribly frightened, he went and told Fangyun about his condition.

  With a laugh, Fangyun replied, “This is surely a reaction to Mingdang’s favors.” Wang didn’t dare conceal the truth, so he confessed. “You’ve brought this misfortune on yourself,” Fangyun told him, “and truthfully, there’s nothing that can be done. Already you’re not suffering specific pain, so just let it run its course.”

  Several days later, he still hadn’t improved, so he became depressed and joyless. Fangyun knew what was passing through his mind, but didn’t ask him about it, instead gazing fixedly at him, with her limpid eyes’ clarity, bright as a morning star. Wang remarked, “An official once said, ‘If everything’s right in one’s heart, the eyes will reflect this.’”

  Smiling, Fangyun retorted, “The official said ‘If things aren’t right in one’s heart, you can see it in one’s eyes.’” Since the character for “not” in the phrase “not to have” is commonly mistaken for the character for “eye,” Fangyun was making a clever pun.

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  Since … clever pun: The first character in meiyou (没有), meaning “not to have,” can be read as mei or mo (the latter meaning “to sink, submerge”); the character for eye in this case, mou (眸), is pronounced very similarly to the alternative pronunciation for 没, and Fangyun’s reordering of characters in the quotation allows her to make the homonym pun.

  Wang couldn’t help but laugh, and implored her for a prescription to cure his problem. She told him, “You didn’t listen to my good advice, and previously you may not have done so because you thought I was responding out of jealousy. You don’t know this maidservant, or you couldn’t have been intimate with her. In the past we said we truly loved each other, but for you it was as if that went in one ear and out the other, and so you’ve spurned me pitilessly. Reluctantly, I’ll have to cure you. Otherwise, you’ll need to expose your affected area for the doctor to check.”

  Then she opened up his clothing and spoke an incantation: “Oriole, oriole, don’t stop at the Chaste Tree!” Wang unconsciously began laughing uproariously, and as soon as his laughter stopped, he was healed.

  After several months had passed, Wang began worrying about his aged parents, and since he kept thinking about them all the time, he decided he’d better tell Fangyun. “Going home is no problem,” she replied, “but then I’m not sure that we could meet again.” Wang’s tears ran down his cheeks as he begged her to come with him. Fangyun kept calculating and thinking things over again and again, and then finally agreed to it.

  Old Huan then spread out a feast as a farewell dinner. Luyun entered with a basket, and said, “If Big sister goes away to a distant land, I won’t be able to present this gift to her. I’m afraid that when she gets to Hainan, she won’t be able to think of it as her home, so day and night, I worked to make this—and don’t complain that it’s rough.” Fangyun courteously thanked her and accepted the basket.

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  Oriole . . . Chaste Tree: The characters (黄鸟), huangniao, or oriole, can also be read as huang diao, or “impotent penis.” And chu (楚), an alternative name for the Chaste Tree (Vitex agnuscastus), also means “pain” or “suffering,” and hence there are two allusions here to Wang’s physical condition.

  As Wang drew close, attentive to every detail, he noticed that she’d used fine grass to make a pavilion tower, as big as a citron, but still as small as an orange, with more than twenty benches, each one at the base of a pillar with historical poetry written on it, individually distinct; and inside he saw that curtains made from grains of hemp had been placed around a bed. Wang acted as though it was a trifling matter while he examined it, but in his heart he secretly marveled at its craftsmanship.

  Fangyun explained, “What you were told is true: we’re all immortals living in the mortal world. Because I still have a long-standing obligation to you, I’ll come along. Originally, I had no desire to set foot in the mortal world, but when I realized you have an aged father, I couldn’t bear for you to be separated from him. We’ll wait for your father to reach the end of his natural lifespan, and then we’ll return again.” Wang respectfully promised he would do so.

  Huan then asked him, “Will you go by land? Or by boat?” Wang considered the danger of tempests on the sea, and decided he preferred to travel by land. By the time they stepped outside, there was a carriage already waiting at the gate. They thanked everyone and started forward, immediately speeding off on their way.

  Presently they arrived at the seashore, but Wang didn’t believe there was a route they could follow. Fangyun took out a measure of white silk and cast it into the distance southward, where it changed into a long dike, a full zhang in width. In a flash they galloped over it, till the dike gradually came to an end.

  As they arrived, the tide was rolling in, and they looked off into the distance in all directions. Fangyun stopped the carriage, got down from it and took the models made of straw from Luyun’s basket, then together with Mingdang and a few other servants, set them out in an arrangement that changed, in the blink of an eye, into an enormous mansion.

  When they went inside to relax, they found that the bedroom inside was no different than the one they’d occupied on the island, with the table and bed inside it seemingly perfect copies. Since it was already dark by this time, they prepared to stay for the night.

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  Zhang: A distance equal to 3.33 meters.

  The next morning, Fangyun was anxious to inform Wang’s parents of their coming, so Wang ordered someone to ride quickly to his home village, and they immediately arrived at his family’s home. Inquiring among villagers, they soon learned that his mother and wife had already died, so only his father was still living there. After the farmland owned by Wang’s s
on, who was fond of gambling, was lost along with all of their other possessions, the family had nowhere to stay, so they temporarily rented a house in the village to the west.

  When Wang returned home, he was still considered a man of official rank and scholarly prestige, and he wasn’t exactly indifferent to the fame; when he heard of his father’s circumstances, he felt deeply pained with grief, and thought to himself that although fame and wealth could be achieved, they were still just illusions.

  He drove the horse until he arrived at the village to the west and spotted his father there, dressed in worn-out rags, and pitied him for being old in such a state. As they looked at each other, they wept themselves hoarse. Wang asked the whereabouts of his unworthy son, and learned that he’d gone out to gamble but hadn’t returned. Then he took his father back home.

  In the morning, when Fangyun finished paying her respects to Wang’s father, she heated water and invited the old man to bathe, offered him some brocade clothing, and scented the room where he slept. Then she sent far and wide for other venerable elders who would chat and feast with the old man, so he could enjoy the reverence accorded a member of an influential family.

  One day, Wang’s son was out looking for his grandfather, and when he arrived at the old man’s home, Wang turned him away and wouldn’t hear of him coming inside, yet he took out twenty gold taels, then sent someone to deliver them to him with the message, “You can use this to purchase yourself a wife, and set yourself up in some kind of business. But if you come again, you’ll be flogged to death!” The son began weeping and left.

  Once Wang took charge of his father’s household, he proved himself to be very aware of established etiquette; moreover, if one of his friends happened to come by, Wang was certain to receive the guest, encouraging him to linger, and was generally much more modest than before. There was a certain Huang Zijie, a long-standing acquaintance who’d been a fellow student, a talented individual who was down on his luck, and Wang invited him to stay as long as he wished, at which point he had some words in private with him, and very generously slipped him some money.

  When he’d been living there three or four years, his father died, so Wang paid a fortune-teller 10,000 copper coins to determine an auspicious burial site, and then observed the funeral rites appropriately in every respect. At that time, his son had already married a woman, and she regulated her husband quite strictly, so he rarely indulged his gambling tastes; on the day of the funeral, the new wife came to make the acquaintance of her husband’s parents. When Fangyun saw her, she let her into the house and bestowed three hundred gold taels on her, to serve as the fee for buying some land.

  The next day, Huang and the son went together to see Wang and Fangyun, but the house was completely empty, and no one knew where they’d gone.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “Could having such a beauty in the home make a man risk anything, even hell, in order to enjoy limitless pleasures? While the underworld immortals may allow one to marry a pretty woman, what’s worrisome is that there’ll be no one left to take care of matters in the mortal world. His acting rashly and lacking in warmth diminished his good fortune and reputation, yet that makes sense—so doesn’t it also make sense for the immortals to drive this person out? Then for a wife such as Fangyun, how cruel it would be if she was restrained from speaking her mind!”

  276. Dying in the Service of the Hell King

  There was a certain official whose father had earlier served as governor-general of the southern regions of the country, and who had been been deceased for quite some time. The official one night dreamed that his father appeared to him, looking as though he was bitterly cold, and told him, “In my entire life, I didn’t commit many offenses, only I once had a brigade of troops transferred—I shouldn’t have transferred them, it was a mistake—and when they encountered a huge contingent of bandits while they were in transit, the entire army was wiped out.

  “Now the Hell King is debating whether to punish me with a particularly awful imprisonment, where it’s horribly cruel. The Hell King is none other than a Registrar, named Wei, who’s inventorying the grain supplies and will pass through here tomorrow. You should intercede with him for me, so don’t forget about it!” The official woke up and thought it strange, but didn’t take the message seriously.

  When he went back to sleep, he dreamed that his father further entreated him, “I’m to suffer a terrible disaster, yet you still haven’t taken it to heart—are you just treating this dream as a nightmare?” The official found this very strange indeed.

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  The Hell King . . . Registrar: For other Pu tales in which mortals serve temporarily as the Hell King, see, for example, “The Hell King” (#96, vol. 2), and “Yama, the Hell King” (#247, vol. 3).

  The next day, he was careful to check into the matter, and it turned out there really was a Registrar named Wei, so the official invited Wei to visit him, forcing his guest to take the seat of honor, and then treating Wei as someone might treat an emperor.

  After he finished paying his respects, he grew so upset that he began weeping copious tears, and then explained the reason why. When Wei said there wasn’t anything he could do about it, the official prostrated himself on the ground and wouldn’t stand up. Wei then declared, “But there’s still the matter of the case. The laws in the underworld are not like those in your muddled mortal world, and though you may be able to collude and cheat on matters here, I’m afraid there’s nothing you can strive to do about this case.” The official’s sorrow became even more fervent.

  Wei had to try to settle him down, so he promised he’d do something. The official then begged him to take care of it expediently. Wei carefully thought through a plan, but mused that there was no quiet place to conduct business. The official asked Wei if they might make the hall’s office into an office of the underworld bureaucracy for him, and Wei was sure this could be allowed.

  The official then got up from off the ground. He inquired whether he might go along with the Registrar to sneak a peek and listen in on his negotiations, but Wei said he couldn’t. The official pleaded strongly again and again, till Wei advised him, “You can go, but don’t make a sound. Although each punishment in the underworld is cruel, things aren’t the same as they are in the mortal world, and though people seem to be subjected to what would cause them to die, they’re not really dead. In case you see something like that, don’t be shocked.”

  They arrived stealthily that night at the side of a large government office, and saw that there were steps leading downward towards the prisoners, where countless heads were being cut off and arms being broken chaotically. Halfway down the steps, there was a fire heating two cauldrons of oil, with several people blazing beneath them as fuel.

  Just then the official saw Wei take out a cap and silk belt, and he ascended to some seats, where the prevailing atmosphere was fierce and domineering, widely different than anything the official had experienced in the past. A crowd of ghosts were all prostrating themselves at the same time, uniformly crying out that they had been unjustly wronged.

  “It was your fate to be killed by bandits,” Wei told them, “and you’ve spoken out about the injustice, so how you can continue speaking so unreasonably against the officer in charge here?”

  The crowd of ghosts noisily cried, “If regulations shouldn’t provoke such a response, then how unreasonable was it for a call to arms to come, and given the cruel killings we’ve suffered, for us to ask who handed down the injustice?”

  Wei then started to get up as though preparing to explain further, and the crowd of ghosts howled out their complaints, making a terribly disturbing sound. Thus Wei called out to them, “I’ve ordered this officer to be taken over to the oil cauldrons, to be supervised as he fries, according to laws that have also been considered appropriate.” As the official scrutinized the reasoning for this remark, it seemed to him that Wei wanted to distract the ghosts with this matter, so it
would vent some of their anger.

  At that moment, a pair of demons, Oxhead and A-Pang, arrived with the official’s father in tow, stabbing at him with sharp pitchforks so he’d enter one of the cauldrons of boiling oil. When the official saw this, he was so heartbroken that he couldn’t stand the pain of it, and unconsciously released a scream, plunging the underworld court into complete silence, as the myriad entities there suddenly vanished. The official sighed and started home.

  When he came up into the light, he discovered Wei, already dead, beside the government office.

  Zhang Yuding, from Songjiang, told me about this. Not wanting to damage the official’s reputation, I’ve avoided mentioning his name.

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  Songjiang: Former county, now part of modern Shanghai.

  277. The Crazy Daoist

  There was a crazy Daoist—I don’t know his name—who lived at the temple on Mt. Meng. He’d alternate singing and crying, so folks never knew what to think about him, and some people even saw him boiling stones for his dinner.

  On the occasion of the Double Ninth Festival, there was a wealthy man from the city who brought some wine along for his ascent of the mountain (which he made in an umbrella-shaded sedan chair), and when he’d concluded his dining, he went for a walk around the temple grounds; just as he got to the gate, the barefooted Daoist, dressed in worn, patchwork clothing, and displaying a yellow umbrella, came out, warning everyone to clear the way, like a herald preceding the emperor, in order to mock the wealthy man. Embarrassed and angry, the wealthy man ordered his servants to yell at the Daoist and chase him away.

  The Daoist just laughed and ran backwards. As they were chasing him off, he tossed aside his umbrella, and when the servants ripped it to shreds, the fragments were transformed into hawks and falcons that flew away in all directions. The temple’s visitors were astonished.