The Girl with No Face

by M. H. Boroson

  “Beijing was beautiful,” my father said, “but I was too poor to afford its luxuries. I did eat hotpot with lamb, several times, and I enjoyed the favor of a flower girl.”

  “A flower girl?” I asked.

  He did not respond. We continued in silence, taking in the weird and the marvelous.

  “In Beijing,” my father said, “they served a style of duck, crisp, prepared with rice wine and five-fragrance seasoning. I remember dipping each bite in garlic, served with scallions and brown bean sauce.”

  Before I could say anything, Gan Xuhao stopped and turned to us. “Honored guests,” he oozed, “I introduce you to an important individual here at the Ghost Yamen; he is my master’s bailiff.”

  Three figures were visible in the luminous mists of the courtyard. The first two emerged, heads low: the ox-head and the horse-face I had encountered before.

  Then the third figure sloped out of eternal evening’s haze and into my view. My mind began screaming No, no, no, it can’t be, but it was clear. It was clear from the antlers on his head, the face of a lion, his skin as red as iron, his murderous intensity, and the smoke spewing from his nostrils.

  The Ghost Magistrate’s bailiff was a luosha demon. But it couldn’t just be any luosha, with their tremendous variety of forms and sizes, could it? No, it needed to be the luosha whose cruel and blazing haughty face still haunted my memories.

  The demon who spent forty-two days torturing my mother’s naked soul.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  If such things were possible, then my gaze on the luosha’s face would have scorched him out of existence, leaving only a scar in the air; the atmosphere would reek forever of rotten meat, and ugly smoke that stank of blood would hover there forever. Yet nothing happened; I did nothing, said nothing. I stood stupefied.

  Gan Xuhao preened, unconsciously smoothing his silken robe. “As you can see,” the red rat said, “my master’s bailiff here is a mighty luosha demon. His name is Biaozu.”

  Time seemed to stand still. Nothing moved; nobody spoke; the world froze into wintry clarity and everything around me stilled into stasis as I decided what to do next. Even though I already knew what I was going to do. What I was going to say. Even though I knew it was a terrible idea, I knew I was going to say it anyway.

  Because sometimes, the peaches at the banquet table, which you aren’t supposed to eat, look so succulent and delicious, and they’re right within your hand’s reach.

  And my willpower was not infinite.

  And the name of the luosha demon who tortured my mother was Biaozu. Biaozu meant something like Whirlwind Ancient, but it sounded a little like—

  “Biaozi?” I said. And Biaozi meant Bitch.

  There were not many mouths there, so there couldn’t have been as many gasps as I heard. In that moment, it sounded like all the mouths in the world sucked in a sudden breath, shocked at what I said.

  “Li-lin!” My father’s voice sounded louder than usual. A lot louder.

  Flames wolfed from the demon’s nostrils. The Hell Guardians both turned to face him. They watched him cautiously, momentary allies wise enough not to trust the luosha in their midst.

  “What did you call me, female?” the demon asked, his voice an ax-blade dipped in poison. That last word carried a venom all its own; he could think of no greater insult.

  “Is that not your name?” I said, my phony sweetness cloying in my mouth. “I apologize if I heard your name wrong.”

  The demon’s shoulders tensed. He was as tall as the tallest human. His muscles, partly concealed in a vest and loincloth cut from a tiger’s pelt, looked large and powerful. His rack of antlers spread out over his head like thorns; wisps of smoke curled from his mouth and nostrils. Even armed with talismans and peachwood, it was unlikely I’d stand a chance against this powerfully built, antlered, fire-breathing demon. But ai, how I wanted to make this demon suffer; I wanted to make him swim, this time, in a lake of his own blood.

  Aflame, Biaozu’s breath unfurled in the night air, little whirlwinds of smoke and flares of spiteful fire.

  The ox-headed guardian spoke, his voice gruff and grinding. “One would need to be a fool to insult Da Biaozu.” Here the Niutou added the term Da, meaning great or big, to the luosha’s name. “The demon has the strength of ten men.”

  “Li-lin,” my father snarled, “don’t antagonize the demon.”

  He was right. It was a terrible idea and I knew it. I knew I should lower my head. Knock it to the earth. Be humble, subservient, and grovel; show the demon all the respect in the world.

  Over the last few months, I had matured. Grown less impulsive. But I was not so forbearing that I could hold my tongue when face-to-face with the evil monster that spent six weeks torturing my mother’s naked soul.

  “Great Biaozu,” I said, “you must indeed be mighty, for I see you feel no need to arm yourself.”

  “What are you implying, female?” Again he spit the term as if it befouled his lips.

  “You stand side-by-side with heavily-armed Hell Guardians,” I said, “yet I see no weapon in your hands. Even the rat carries a sword.”

  “You think a weapon would be necessary, female? I could roast you with a hiccup. I would pluck the cooked meat off your bones and eat it while you’re still alive and squealing like a sow.”

  “You never carried a weapon, Great and Venerable Biaozu? I thought I had heard tales of your prowess, but that legendary demon was said to wield a wolftooth rod.”

  No one spoke, but my father was daggering me with his eye, and the luosha demon’s entire body looked like a firecracker at the end of its fuse.

  “You used to wield a wolftooth rod, didn’t you, Da Biaozu?” I said, trying to sound like a fawning admirer. “Whatever could have happened to that potent weapon?”

  “That—” he said, his voice thick, while scorches of flame flickered from his nostrils, “was you?”

  “Li-lin,” my father growled at me, “what are you two talking about?”

  “The female and I have met before.” Snarls of fire rode the demon’s breath; the air was hot with hate.

  “He carried a weapon then,” I told my father. “I was a little girl; he had a huge iron rod, with spikes designed to resemble the teeth of wolves. It was a lethal weapon, very impressive, very regal. I threw it into the sea.”

  The horse-headed guardian chortled. “Is this true, Biaozu? Did this female disarm you?”

  The demon snorted spits of flame and turned his rage-filled face toward the Mamian. “I would have slaughtered her, if her father hadn’t intervened.”

  “Are you so certain of that, Biaozu?” I said. “Perhaps you survived that day only because I showed mercy and let you live.”

  “Let me? Let me?” The demon turned to the ministerial rat. “Let me kill her.”

  “Our master would not approve, Da Biaozu. Her father can still interfere with the Investiture, and many other problems for our master could develop as a result of killing her.”

  “Li-lin, why,” my father whispered urgently, “are you acting such a fool? We can’t afford to pick fights with every demon we meet.”

  “That demon,” I said, my voice stony, “tortured my mother.”

  “He did what?” Father’s question fell away; I could see in his face that the pieces arranged themselves and answered him. He gazed on me, and I thought it was regret, as if to say he wished he’d never sent a girl with yin eyes on a symbolic voyage to Hell. Moments later I saw the veins in his neck begin to bulge. His countenance transformed, his mouth a warlike grimace, his face purpling.

  A being of pure wrath in my father’s shape turned and faced the luosha demon. Father’s intensity, his righteous fury, and his massive accumulated spiritual power gave everyone the sense that it would only take a few seconds for my father to rip the demon to a mess of meat. Biaozu cringed, cowering.

  But then the moment passed, and the aura of legend slid from around my father’s slender shoulders. He looked frail and tire
d, a half-blind man with pain in his chest and stiffness in his neck. I saw my father’s fragility, his mortal vulnerability, in that moment; for all his power, he was still a human being; age and infirmity hobbled him more and more, day after day.

  The red rat goblin interposed his tiny body. No taller than a toddler, still he was all refined etiquette and courtly diplomacy, formal poetry and the swish of silken robes.

  “Sifu,” he said, addressing my father, “your voyage must have been tiring, making the journey from Chinatown to the Ghost Yamen. Perhaps I could interest you in a hot bath? We steep the bathwater in lotus blossoms, their fragrance so sweet and pure. We could send a few flower girls to help you relax.”

  “What manner of creature,” my father rounded on the rat, “are these ‘girls’ you’re trying to pander to me? Have you forced ghost maidens to whore for you, you freakish pimp?”

  “Nothing so morbid, Sifu,” the rat goblin said with a chuckle meant to sound disarming. “Our bath-houses only employ the very loveliest of the huli jing, Sifu! We have a delectable assortment of fox women available; some vixens are plump, some are—”

  “I don’t fornicate with animals,” my father said, “but I’m going to slaughter one if he doesn’t shut his rodent mouth.”

  Gan Xuhao stood gaping a moment longer, trying to find some words to charm his way out of the situation. But it was beyond even the skill of the noted essayist.

  Into the silence then, a fanfare of bells rang out. In an instant the red rat goblin scurried to all fours, while the two huge beastmen and the luosha took a longer time to clamber down to their knees and knock their heads to the earth. My father bowed deeply from his waist, and bowed his head deeply; I’d never seen him take such a respectful posture. “Li-lin,” he said, “when under someone else’s roof . . .”

  “. . . lower your head,” I finished. I was tired of feeling diminished, but how low could it truly be if the former Hell Guards, the famous rat, and the luosha demon all knelt with their heads to the ground? I followed suit, touching my forehead to the cool, smooth mosaic stones.

  I heard footsteps, many of them. They came in an orderly procession, each step marching in time. Ceremonial music played, formal and proclamatory. Even from my knees, with my head touching the road, I could sense my father’s rigidity, his distanced, studious formality.

  All the marching footsteps ceased at once. The sudden halt scuffed dust into the air, and I had to struggle not to cough. I hoped Biaozu’s throat also scraped; I hoped he resented humbling himself on his knees as much as I did.

  “Announcing the venerable Ghost Magistrate Kang Zhuang, soon to be Tudi Gong!”

  I heard the swish of fabric pushed back, a waterfall of velvet brocade; a curtained litter, perhaps? Carried on the shoulders of . . . whom? Or what? Slow and formal, I saw my father’s stance alter as he raised his head to look upon the visage of the Ghost Magistrate.

  I could not tell what Father saw, but I knew him so well that I could read his emotions even by observing only his feet. His stance spoke of bewilderment, but not fear. The Ghost Magistrate must look bizarre to my father, in ways he found baffling yet not menacing. What could he look like? A face drawn on an egg shell? A mouse of normal size? A frog of human size, draped in elegant robes? A bear with bright green fur? A bear with three eyes?

  “Most honored guest,” a voice said. The voice itself boomed, deep, rich, and masculine. The speaker’s tone sounded like a man well-schooled in courtly etiquette, likely bred among the rich; sophisticated, practiced in the ways of soothing the conflicts of more powerful men—and soothing the consciences of corrupted men. Beneath the rich, rumbly resonance of his voice, this was the picked-clean, expertly deceptive tone of a ruthless bureaucrat. “We are so pleased to welcome the great and venerable Daoshi Xian Zhengying of the Maoshan Linghuan lineage to the crumbling cottages of this humble village.”

  The Ghost Magistrate’s smooth speech and affectation of humility did nothing to ease my father’s discomfort. His feet were fidgeting as if he was overwhelmingly perplexed by the Guiyan’s appearance. Did he look like a woman? A pheasant with nine heads? A three-headed turtle? An eggplant? Tofu? Tofu with three eyes?

  “You may bid your servant to rise,” the Ghost Magistrate said, with that smooth, bored voice.

  “Stand up, Li-lin,” my father said.

  I clambered to my feet, and, maintaining a humble demeanor, I glanced up at the litter. It was carried on the shoulders of a vague dozen shadows in human shape. Aboard the litter, through a curtained window, I saw what left my father so flabbergasted.

  The sight of the Ghost Magistrate made my eyes boggle. My mouth slackened into an open, incredulous circle, as I observed the ridiculous figure in front of me, festooned in ancient, royal robes, a well-groomed man in his fifties who would have looked utterly majestic, had it not been for all the extra arms.

  A number of deities, mostly Buddhist, had many arms. Paintings and statues always depicted them elegantly, their manifold appendages choreographed together, their graceful limbs well-coordinated in a perpetual dance of divinity. The arms of the Ghost Magistrate were not so elegant.

  I could not tell how many arms he had. Each went its own direction, and collectively they gave a sense of absolute chaos. One hand tapped absently on the wooden frame of the carriage’s window, another stroked the velvety cushions where he sat, a third scratched the crown of his head, a fourth tugged at his earlobe, while a fifth seemed to be swatting imaginary flies; two more were steepled pompously, another cradled his chin, and there was one in his lap, which seemed to be—eww. The Ghost Magistrate himself seemed to have no idea of what his many hands were up to; he studiously ignored their behavior, like an overworked parent with too many children. A legion of hands fluttered around him like a swarm of bees, a stampede of hands, smacking into each other as they moved. One hand pointed a finger at me; another made an obscene gesture; a third slapped that hand away.

  “He had a hand in every affair in the palace,” I murmured.

  Father hushed me swiftly; he must have reached the same conclusions I had: in the Tenth Court of the afterlife, the Hell Judge had condemned Kang Zhuang’s ghost to be reshaped into a kind of symbolic, visual punishment for his poor behavior as a human. Many of the more outlandish spirits had their origins this way; in the Tenth Court, men who peeped upon women were transformed into thousand-eyed ghosts, with eyes blinking open all over their skin; the ghosts of gossipers would find themselves with tongues eleven feet long; those who in life had been driven by need would die and become egui, hungry ghosts, whose cravings could never be satisfied.

  “Xiao Daonu,” the Ghost Magistrate smoothed. If addressing me as “little Daoist priestess” had not informed me of his opinion of me, his indulgent tone, as if speaking to a spoiled child, would have said it all.

  “Lao Guiyan,” I responded, and bowed low, my words meaning “Venerable Ghost Magistrate.”

  I thought I detected a slight sneer at his lips, but that might have been simply a reaction to the finger that was scratching the tip of his nose. One of his other hands punched it, and it stopped.

  “Now,” he said, his voice as rich as cream. He turned away from me and focused on my father. “Let us go sit and speak as men.”

  Good, I thought; let me be heard as little as possible. My father climbed into the litter across from the Guiyan, carried on the shoulders of spirit servants.

  Silently, I followed.

  The chamber was lit by lanterns. I gaped, seeing the source of the light, trying to absorb what I was seeing, and to understand it. The lanterns dangling from the walls were held in human hands, at the end of human arms, but the arms were attached to no human bodies; the arms protruded from the walls.

  The bright red globes reminded me of home—of Chinatown—at set of sun, but the disembodied arms (which trembled, slightly, at tensing muscles and flexing elbows) reminded me of nothing I’d seen before.

  Everywhere I looked, shadows gathere
d where no light flung them. Pools of pure, benumbed darkness, they rumbled and murmured, conspiring, only to scatter like a horde of tiny lizards.

  In one carpeted corner a blob of hollow shade bubbled upward and wobbled on a pair of stalks. It seemed like it was struggling to walk, for one fractured dreamlike moment; then it dissipated into guttering wisps.

  “This new land of yours,” the Ghost Magistrate said from a couch atop a dais, “is a frontier. In such chaos, I see possibility. Perhaps nothing is so important as the imposition of human order over the discord nature brings; the reestablishment of equilibrium, as when Yu the Great brought order back to the flood-wrecked, primeval mess of the ancient world.”

  My father sat on a throne-like chair at the bottom of the dais. He held out his cup. Standing behind him, I poured rice wine into it from a ceramic jug. Father did not drink, but he ran his finger along the cup’s rim, his self-control in contrast with the Guiyan’s distractingly gesticulating arms.

  “Look around you, Sifu,” the Ghost Magistrate said. “Here, where we have built this Ghost Yamen, there was nothing but wilderness, an overgrown, abandoned graveyard. Chinese fishermen crudely buried each other’s corpses on this land; not one of them had knowledge of feng shui to site the graves appropriately; above this untended graveyard where dead men’s bones went disregarded, we have created a place of sanctity and beauty; we made architecture. Unlike the pillars and domes of American government, which are so solemn, bland, and self-important, we have made a compound of celebratory boisterousness, splendors such as China itself hardly knows anymore. Have you ever seen the like?”

  “I visited the Forbidden City,” my father said, and in his tone I heard him, straining, inviting the Ghost Magistrate to give him some face, “twice.”

  “Twice!” the Guiyan marveled. He knew these social magnifications disturbingly well. “One must hold high stature indeed to be invited there at all. Twice!”

  “It was a small matter,” my father said.