The carp presented Greedyguts with splendid gifts: a sack of gold coins, a chest of pink coral, and another chest of black. Each chest was filled with fabulous riches dredged from ships sunk on the ocean floor. But the thing that pleased Greedyguts most was a tortoiseshell tureen filled with a tasty soup made of rare molluscs from the Southern Sea. No sooner had the carp departed than Greedyguts sat down and devoured every drop of the soup. The rest of the gifts he took home. The betrothal still seemed unlikely to him, and he feared the scolding he would get from the Needle for not demanding even greater riches from one as fabulously wealthy as the Dragon Monarch. So he merely told his wife that the chests and coins had been brought to him by a courier, the bequest of his long-lost cousin, a sailor who had recently died in his home on the shore of the Southern Sea. The carp had said that a necklace from the coral chests – a simple chain holding a small, oddly coloured pearl – was to be given to the daughter, but Greedyguts wanted no awkward questions, so he quietly put it away in a corner somewhere and soon forgot all about it.
With their new wealth, Greedyguts and the Needle bought a fine new house and began a mad whirl of banquets and jewellery buying. Soon enough, the Needle told her husband she was expecting a child, but even then he kept silent about his meeting with the younger brother of the Dragon Monarch, knowing all too well what a tongue-lashing he would get if she found out he’d lied about the long-lost cousin. The whole thing came to seem to him no more than a story he had been told long ago, or a half-remembered dream.
So lavish were the betrothal gifts that even Greedyguts and the Needle lived well for many years. Their daughter grew up to be a beauty, as generous as her parents were grasping, remaining always dutiful and good-natured. She wove and embroidered beautifully and kept herself busy sewing fine things for the household and for her dowry. Raised as she was by a coffin merchant, she naturally had many chances to hear the sayings of the Buddhist priests who officiate at funeral services, and her devotions to the compassionate Lady Guan-yin were frequent and heartfelt.
The Needle, thinking of the jewellery she loved so much, and of the seafaring cousin who – she believed – had sent them such wealth, had named her daughter Seagem. One day, when the girl was fourteen or so, the Needle came in to her husband, her face alight with expectation. ‘Good news, old man!’ she said. ‘We have received a wonderful marriage offer for our Seagem. Goodwife Hsueh has come to us with a proposal from the Li family of the Yong-ning Ward. They have a fine son, a childless widower who is looking for a young wife, and it seems that one day he passed by our gate and happened to glance in and see Seagem at her embroidery. In short, he will have no other.’
Truly, members of the audience, is it not the case that
for beauty, strong men lose their heads:
a single glimpse will snare a heart?
Greedyguts’ stomach swelled with happiness. These Lis were a military family with aristocratic pretensions, only remotely related to the imperial clan but rather well-to-do. That even so distant a relative of the Brilliant Emperor should want their Seagem as his second wife amazed the merchant; her beauty had captivated him indeed. Greedyguts and the Needle had spent so extravagantly that they would soon come to the end of the wealth the carp had given him, so the proposal was timely enough. By now, Greedyguts had come to think of the money –when he thought of its source at all – as his reward for the rescue, pure and simple. Still, he cared for Seagem in his way and asked his wife if the intended bridegroom was a suitable match.
‘More than suitable, old man!’ the Needle snorted, pursing her lips and stopping to polish a jade bracelet on the sleeve of her jacket. True, Goodwife Hsueh tells me he’s actually the son of his father’s Turkish concubine, but there’s no shame in that, and having no other offspring the father dotes upon him. As for his present career, he’s an important officer in the Palace Guard, and they say he’s bound to move up quickly.’
Seagem herself bowed to her parents’ wishes, of course. She had grasped something of their financial straits, and it pleased her that she would be serving them so well in this marriage. But deep in her heart, she hoped her husband would be an understanding and gentle man and that her parents-in-law would be kind. Every morning she lit incense to Lady Guan-yin, praying that this might be so.
Indeed, it all came about as any bride might wish. Her wedding night went well enough, and her husband cared as much for her as for any woman. More important, Seagem’s parents-in-law treated her kindly, and the fortunes of Greedyguts and the Needle were secured.
The days and nights flew past with the flickering speed of an arrow. Seagem and her husband regretted only that she had not yet conceived a child, not even a daughter who might call forth a younger brother. Then the husband – who was General Li by now – received orders posting him to a desert garrison town on the far northwest frontier. Bidding farewell to his young wife and his parents, he set off at the head of the column of troops. Seagem climbed a tower to watch him go.
Look, members of the audience!
Twin banners flutter gay before
a thousand prancing mounts,
as the warrior-husband leads them down
the road out of the east.
By day he travelled and by night he rested, as the saying goes, and so he reached his destination. But let us speak no more of him, but rather tell of Greedyguts, who one rainy afternoon about six years after his son-in-law’s departure heard a heavy knocking at his door.
The stranger whom the little maidservant showed in turned to Greedyguts with a fishy smile. ‘Good day, good friend,’ he said. ‘I have come to fetch the betrothed bride of my nephew and take her to the Dragon Monarch’s realm for the wedding. I trust that she and you and the honoured lady your wife have all been well?’
Greedyguts hummed and hawed, but eventually the truth came out: Seagem was already married.
The stranger’s eyes bulged, and his skin reddened with rage. He demanded the return of the betrothal gifts, but alas, Greedyguts told him, that too was quite impossible. The stranger rolled his red-rimmed eyes, and his sides heaved as he drew in great breaths. ‘Very well, then,’ he said, flinging a few drops of water from a vermilion sleeve as he turned sharply to go, ‘we shall make the arrangements in our own way.’ And he left.
Greedyguts pondered the situation that night after dinner, but he saw nothing he could do except hope for the best. It was a year later to the day that a messenger came from the Li household to tell him that Seagem had been seized by a mysterious illness and lay in a deep sleep, neither alive nor dead. This troubled Greedyguts greatly, and even the Needle sorrowed.
Seagem’s kindly parents-in-law did not wish to disturb their faraway son with the worrisome news, but they summoned every Taoist practitioner and master of medicine who claimed to know a cure. All failed. The young woman lay as if entranced, not talking and not moving, neither wasting away nor growing well. Finally, during a great storm, a foreign doctor dressed all in red came to the Li mansion promising to save their daughter-in-law from what ailed her.
The foreign doctor took her wrist and felt the yin and yang pulses of her body. ‘She is the victim of a broken pledge,’ he said, rolling his bulging eyes, ‘though there is no blame to her. Clear the room, please, and I will set things to rights.’
Seagem’s mother-in-law and the maids left the bedroom with some reluctance, but so eager were they to have the smiling, compliant Seagem back with them that they would have done almost anything the doctor requested. Soon wisps of incense drifted under the door, bringing with them an odour of lotus blossoms and watercress. The incense dissipated, the members of the household waited, but the doctor never came forth.
Finally, Seagem’s mother-in-law could wait no longer. She broke into the room and found it empty. When Greedyguts heard the news, and the description of the foreign doctor, he sobbed bitterly. His neglect of a promise had sent his only child off to languish in the Dragon Monarch’s watery realm. Under the circu
mstances, they would certainly never let her return. After thinking over all that had happened, he remembered the little pearl necklace he had tucked away so long ago, and went to look for it. But it had vanished, though he could not say when.
Our story forks there. Let us say no more of Greedyguts, but rather tell of the daughter of General Li, born to an Iranian concubine in the jade-rich city of Khotan soon after he was stationed there. The concubine died giving birth, and the girl was raised to honour her mother in Chang-an. When word of the child had reached Seagem, her open heart had rejoiced, wishing only that – since it was impossible for her husband to return to her just then – he might also sire a son. Indeed, one night Lady Guan-yin had appeared to Seagem in a dream, smiling and praising her for showing the proper generosity towards a concubine’s child.
General Li, wishing to honour his good wife Seagem and at the same time commemorate the child’s birth in the city famous for its rich green jade, named her Greenpearl. But such a name seemed too fancy, so he called her simply ‘Little Imp’, as so many doting papas do. Her Iranian nursemaid, a devout Buddhist from Soghdiana, hoped to protect the little girl from jealous demons and did the same.
Greenpearl grew apace during the years that Seagem awaited her husband’s – and her daughter’s – return to Chang-an. But on the very day that the mysterious doctor carried Seagem away, Tibetan raiders captured Greenpearl and her nursemaid outside the walls of Khotan. The nursemaid they murdered, and the child they sold into slavery.
A sad tale, members of the audience, yet we learn from it the importance of promises. For the nursemaid, just before she died, vowed to Greenpearl that she would return to her, so Yama, King of the Underworld, bade her do just that. Meanwhile, the good bodhisattva Guan-yin had taken note of Seagem’s plight, and charged the nursemaid to encourage Greenpearl to rescue her mother from beneath the waters.
But how, you ask, could a little slave girl rescue a woman held in the Mother-of-Pearl Villa in the aqueous realm of the Dragon Monarch? How, indeed, could any mortal enter that place? Alas, my time today is ended (thank you, sir, a fine gratuity), so if you want to know what happens (thank you, thank you, most kind), you will have to listen tomorrow when I tell of the ghostly workings of the nursemaid and the adventures of Greenpearl (thank you), a maiden as dedicated to her filial quest as any knight errant.
Dun-huang
Balanced on the acute, shifting angle between the city of yesterday and the city of tomorrow stands the rank, fragrant, bustling, dusty oasis of Dun-huang – its caravanserais crowded with camel dealers and curly-haired traders from across the desert, its markets rich with conjurers and fruit flies and hawkers and duck squawks and priests telling instructive tales. Or perhaps the city is balanced not upon an apex but at a particular notch on a sixty-year cogwheel, a notch named for one of the ten celestial stems and one of the twelve earthly branches, in a cycle that has rolled round since the long-ago reign of the Yellow Emperor. Or again, the city may be sliding downwards through time, as if down a firehouse-pole of time, forenoon to after, the past month above this one, the next month below. It is, in any case, certainly not riding on a line shot, arrowlike, one way, irredeemably, left to right across the page.
Outside the city wait the caves. Carved deep into the sandy bluffs, they hold a honeycomb of temples, dizzying the traveller with a thousand Buddhas and more. Painted in niches, on the walls and overhead, plump, delicate disciples cluster round their master. Bodhisattvas, male and female, float on lotus thrones beside the World-Honoured One. Fingers and palms curve into mudras signifying the peace of contemplation, or a radiance within, or comfort, or awe. Satin valances adorned with rosettes of pink and blue-grey and white cast deeper shadows on the frescoes; deer batiked in indigo on silken banners caper in any breath of air.
And in some of the caves rest the fruits of that other human effort to render in two dimensions a universe made up of four: not paintings, but written words. Some are in Sanskrit, some in Chinese. Others reveal – if the eye desires, and knows the script – words in Tibetan or Uighur or Nepalese. There is even a letter or two written in Persian with Hebrew letters. This welter of words marks silk. It marks leather. It marks palm leaves from the very homeland of the Buddha. It marks paper made of bamboo pulp and mulberry bark, or the fibres of less trustworthy plants, swamp ivy and kudzu and hemp.
These things will last for centuries in their arid tombs. The flamboyant colours will fade. Bits of the intricate patternings of flame auras and petals and jewels and clouds will slip into dust as a mural flakes and crumbles. Scrolls will rot, and morsels of palm leaf chip off, falling away from between the Indie boards that bind them into books. Here a graceful forearm disappears; there a text grows lacy with lacunae. Still, the desert air can keep them awhile, and in some of the caves – their mouths blocked for protection – documents and stories, contracts and sutras will remain walled up and safe for some time yet, as human reckonings go.
Look then to the city itself, at this moment when the caves and libraries swell towards fullness, lavish with signs of knowledge and beauty, but growing still, not yet sealed shut. Here a Turgesh envoy glares at an Arab caravan master. Here hook-nosed Nestorian Christians from Syria jostle usurious, wine-loving Uighurs, followers of the teachings of the prophet Manes. Here well-to-do Iranian merchants from the city-states of the Soghdians bargain with Tang citizens of Indian descent. Each is well enough accustomed to the other; each to the other is utterly strange.
And here the slave market prospers. Most of the Chinese empire’s slaves come from the far south, but, though poets and emperors decry the trade, the good people of Tang prize more highly the slaves brought in from Central Asia along the Silk Road. On this particular day (whether apex or cog tooth or slide), a bearded Persian trader named Ghalib strolls through the marketplace with his lank-limbed nephew, who idly switches at the heels of four girls and a boy. Ghalib’s camels carried mostly loads of pepper and gemstones and myrrh, of healing thorn honey, and blue kohl and Persian brass. These thirsty, wide-eyed children he acquired more recently. Most of them look to be offspring of the nomads of the north and west, their bloodlines mingled with those of the Iranians of Soghdiana, or the Western Turks. In any case they are not, it seems, Chinese, so selling them is legal enough.
The boy’s dough face crumples easily; he blubbers. Small chance that he will fetch much of a price. Although no one may want him as a houseboy, his sturdiness signals a decent potential groom. Ghalib has higher hopes for the girls. They will look exotic enough once they pass on to the Chinese heartland, and one of the younger ones bears even now, beneath her cloak of fatigue and watchful silence, a snap of pride, the mark, perhaps, of a captivating artiste. Her green-flecked eyes will surely sweeten the exchange. In any case, he acquired them cheaply enough, and they have cost him less in food than if he had bought them farther west.
Ghalib’s assistant ambles forward and twitches his uncle’s sleeve. An old man is rushing from his shop to greet them. ‘You have returned!’ he cries out, as if Ghalib stands in a brother’s place within his heart. ‘Come in, come in. Sit down, if you please. Perhaps a cup of tea?’
Ghalib smiles a smile to match the other’s. His nephew grins and moves back where he can keep an eye on the children. The girls stand warily; the boy hangs his head. ‘A pleasure indeed to see you again. Master Ma,’ Ghalib says.
‘Master Ma!’ The old man clicks his tongue. ‘I tell you again, you must call me just Old Ma, as everybody does. I am ordinary, a simple man.’
Ghalib demurs, as well he might, and accepts the offer of refreshments. ‘The lad stays well enough outside,’ he says. Neither trader mentions the children. As ‘ the tea and sweetmeats are brought to them, Ghalib asks Old Ma for news of his children and of the town. ‘As for myself,’ he says, ‘I am anxious to return home – a new young wife, you see.’ He winks.
The Chinese dealer laughs and shakes his head. ‘Felicitations. But I fear the skin of my face has been too
thick. I cannot bear my rudeness any longer. The noble youth, your assistant, wearies himself with waiting. Let him come inside and drink some of this tea. It is certainly poor, but on a day like this, thirst adds savour to such tasteless stuff.’
‘Hardly poor!’ Ghalib says, pleased that Old Ma has been the one to open the negotiations. ‘He cannot refuse your bounteous kindness. A moment – ‘ He draws aside the curtain of the shop door and steps outside.
He frowns. The lad has wandered across the lane to where a professional storyteller lures a crowd with some foolish tale. Well, at least he’s keeping an eye on the children; they squat beside him in the dust. Ghalib calls and the little group hurries over.
Once inside, the children squat again, with the patience of the powerless. After a suitable interval of chitchat. Old Ma inquires, offhandedly, about them.
‘These?’ Ghalib replies. ‘I picked this lot up in Kashgar, from an Iranian out of Samarkand. They’re just nomad folk, he told me, but take a look at this one, with the pretty green eyes. She’s thin now, from the Road, but she’ll grow up a beauty, I warrant. Sings well, too.’ He reaches out and raises the girl’s chin with one hand. Ghalib has been kind enough to her on the passage to Dun-huang; she lifts her head easily. Then, as she looks squarely at Old Ma’s eyes for the first time, her face flashes with surprise. Her back straightens.
‘Huh!’ says Old Ma, wondering what it is about his looks that makes her respond so. No good showing too much interest at this point. ‘I’ll grant you, she’s got something of an air about her. Young, though. Take a lot of training. That boy now, would you be so good as to have him stand up?’
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