Master Li took a deep breath. “Well, Ox, you always knew you’d come to a terrible end if you continued to assist me,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. I was so miserable with fear for Yu Lan that I really didn’t care one way or another, but I went through the motions. “Which terrible end did you have in mind?” I asked.
“That’s up to Li the Cat,” he replied. “I’ve just realized we have no choice but to try swan dives into boiling oil, so we’re going to accept his kind invitation. The moment the gates to the Forbidden City open we’re going to pay him a call, and if you can sleep during the hours until then you’ll be immortalized by P’u Sung-ling, Recorder of Things Strange.”
21
The morning of the double fifth is traditionally one of the busiest times of the year. Before dawn on the fifth day of the fifth moon the streets of Peking were already crowded with people, and I knew some of them.
Mrs. Wu of the bakery was standing in line at the shop of the Persian alchemist to buy arsenic, sulphur, and cinnabar mixed into an insect repellent lotion, and her next stop would be a public scribe’s booth to buy a paper stencil of the written word “king.” Then she would hurry home and apply the stencil and lotion to her sleeping children to give each one the 3- mark on his forehead. It resembles the wrinkles on the forehead of a tiger. Even sickness and bad luck run away from tigers, and it’s most effective for children early on the fifth day of the fifth moon.
Old P’i-pao-ku, “Leatherbag Bone,” was Mrs. Wu’s grandmother, and she was waiting at the confectioner’s to get hard sugar decorations of the five poisonous insects (centipede, scorpion, lizard, toad, snake) to spread over the top of her wu tu po po cake, which she would purposely make as inedible as possible without being actually deadly. Every family member eats a slice on the fifth day of the fifth moon, and sickness demons stare at people capable of eating stuff like that and go elsewhere.
Feng Erh, “Phoenix,” was the chandler’s concubine, and she was waiting for the first finger of sunlight to reach a patch of grass she had staked out in a park. She would pluck a hundred blades and put them in a jar and walk straight home without looking left, right, or back. Boiling water would be added to the jar to make Hundred Grass Lotion that the whole family would use as a cure-all until the next double fifth.
Ko Sheng-erh never had any luck. His name means “Left Over from a Dog,” and he had idiotically gone up on his roof to fix some thatching three days ago, and he was waiting for a down-at-heels shaman to open shop and chant “Grow, grow, grow!” at his head, not that it would do any good, because everyone knows that working on a roof during the fifth moon will cause you to go bald.
T’ien-chi, “Field Chicken,” was a God Boy, meaning a male prostitute, who wasn’t getting any younger and he was waiting with his best friend, Lan-chu, “Lazy Pig,” an ageing courtesan. They had been saving for years, and they were disguised in beggars’ rags as they clutched sacks of gold and waited at the door of Szu Kui, “Dead Ghost,” a mysterious magus three times arisen from the grave, who would sell them pieces of polished cedar wood, hollowed out and filled on the fifth day of the fifth moon with twenty-four beneficial and eight poisonous ingredients, and if they used the logs as pillows for one hundred consecutive nights the lines on their faces would smooth out, and after four years their youth would be completely restored. The ingredients are a closely guarded secret, but Master Li once told me they included cassia, ginseng, dry ginger, magnolia, broomrape, angelica, plumeless thistle, kikio root, Chinese pepper, japonica, aconite seeds and root, slough grass, and cockscomb.
The Imperial Way was jammed almost from the Phoenix Towers to the Altar of Earth and Grain with the crowd waiting for the Meridian Gate to open and admit them to the Forbidden City: aristocrats in sedan chairs and palanquins and blue-painted carriages; merchants and entrepreneurs in donkey carts with canvas hoods emblazoned with crimson slogans praising the occupants’ genius; scholars ostentatiously listening only to little songbirds they carried in bamboo cages at the ends of long poles; petitioners of all sorts who wore artistically ripped rags to prove the hazards of their journeys and waved buffalo horn lanterns to show they had traveled without rest day and night; legions of secretaries, battalions of bureaucrats, armies of clerks. Rumors flew as thickly as the flocks of vultures that circle a peace conference, and leading the list was the news that for the first time in a thousand years there might not be a Dragon Boat Race. There were four principal reasons:
1) Six reliable members of the Tanners’ Guild had seen a white bird (white is the color of mourning) fly over North Lake carrying a burning candelabrum, following the exact route the race would take.
2) At the exact same time a huge lizard had appeared at the Bakers’ Guild dock and breathed flames over their Dragon Boat, reducing it to cinders.
3) The ghost of Emperor Wen had walked into the great hall of the Salt Monopoly and passed right through the hull of their Dragon Boat while wailing, “Beware the fifth day of the fifth moon!”
4) The Physicians’ Guild had issued a statement saying all the above was rank superstition. What wasn’t superstition was seventeen fatalities in the past ninety-six hours from a disease that looked suspiciously like a form of plague, and the authorities would be wise to consider canceling any activity that would bring great masses of people into close contact, such as squeezing together on the banks to watch the Dragon Boat Race.
And finally, as a considerable anticlimax, Master Li and I were waiting for the gate to open so we could go in and be killed in a ghastly manner by Li the Cat.
It was not a pleasant period. Pain is bearable because there’s a limit to it. The body takes only so much and then goes into shock, but I had plenty of time to think about clever eunuchs and their little games and I didn’t think I could take it if he had me sewn up in a sack with the mangled remains of Yu Lan. Master Li, as usual, kept his own counsel. It was quite impossible to tell from his face whether he was agonized or bored, and when the gate did open and our palanquin carried us toward the Palace of Eunuchs he decided to entertain me with a witty travelogue, pointing out things that should certainly be interesting since I wasn’t likely to see much else on this earth. I must admit that little stuck, although I do remember the “prettiest and most pathetic prison in the world,” the Garden of Dispossessed Favorites, where imperial concubines who lacked the means to properly bribe eunuchs were sent to live lives of celibacy, after having been slandered and removed from favor. Lonely ladies were made to suspire in the shadow of the Tower of Raining Flowers, which is a tall white cylindrical structure capped with a pink dome, from the top of which splashes a river of white oleander blossoms. “The delicacy of the deballed is somewhat overrated,” observed Master Li.
I remember nothing else until we came in view of the eunuchs’ palace. “Notice, my boy, how eunuchs have cleverly arranged to have their quarters rise a good fifty feet higher than the neighboring Palace of Southern Fragrance, where portraits of the emperors are displayed. Thus, in China, do the gelded squat above the gilded,” said the sage, but I was not in the proper mood to provide an appreciative chuckle.
I doubt that an imperial audience could be more impressive. Massed trumpets and a roll of drums announced the opening of great gilded doors, and a gorgeous creature with a golden censer marched in front of us down a dragon carpet between ranks of soldiers who stood at attention in uniforms of red brocade studded with pearls, with gold-sprinkled turbans emblazoned with the emblem of the double phoenix. The walls of the audience chamber were studded with turquoise, tourmaline, amethyst, topaz, malachite, and opal, and more soldiers stood against them: red armor and a yellow banner with a green dragon at the west wall, blue armor and a white banner with a yellow dragon at the east. Li the Cat sat upon a throne facing south, like an emperor, and as on an imperial throne, the back bore the seven-jeweled pattern and the arms were five-clawed. The eunuch himself was dressed quite simply, however, in a red gown embroidered with flowers and
stars, and a hat with a single straight plume that designated a Eunuch of the Presence. As befitted one allowed to attend the emperor, his face glowed with Protocol Soap and his breath was sweet with Chicken Tongue Aromatic, meaning cloves. The only jewelry I could see was the crystal vial on a golden chain around his neck that contained his pickled parts. (Castration in China is total emasculation, performed with a special tool like a small sickle, and the unsexed person keeps the organs to be buried with him so he can be made whole again in Hell.) At the approach of Master Li there was a flurry of bowing by lesser dignitaries, and Li the Cat graciously descended from the throne and offered a courteous greeting as to an equal. It was impossible to ignore the charm of the eunuch’s smile, accentuated as it was by perfectly placed dimples, but I noticed that the smile didn’t lift as far as his eyes. They were completely without expression, and cold as first-moon clams.
“Well, Most Exalted One—congratulations on the recent promotion, incidentally—how goes your scientific inquiry into the strength of square holes?” asked Master Li, who seemed to be employing the badinage of the court.
Square holes meant money, of course, and the eunuch modestly displayed a lack of rings. “Paupers and braggarts are reduced to vomiting clouds and spitting out mist, and since gold still flees my fingers I do the best I can with fog.”
“And no man in the empire can better becloud an issue,” Master Li said warmly. “I’ve obviously been misled, since I was informed you’d joined me in investing in the tea business.”
“Indeed? And how much had you invested?” the eunuch asked blandly.
“Too much,” said Master Li. “In fact, I was just thinking about trading my shares for an equal equity in the flower business, although one investing in flowers must first inspect them for aphids or beetles. It’s shocking to consider how much damaged merchandise is offered for sale.”
“Shocking and silly,” Li the Cat said sympathetically. “One continually hears of such things, yet it’s such a stupid business practice! After all, one can always get a far higher price for flowers whose beauty is intact. The trade you had in mind was without conditions?”
“Providing the goods are undamaged, yes,” Master Li said. “I might even toss in a bonus, for the simple reason that I’ve become fascinated with certain unusual teas and have some ideas about improving the taste.”
“Better and better,” the eunuch said warmly. “The taste we’ve been able to get is just one step up from awful.”
I didn’t know what to think. Clearly the flower they meant was Yu Lan (“Magnolia”), and clearly Li the Cat was saying she was still in one piece, and clearly Master Li was offering to buy her back in exchange for forgetting he knew anything about the tea racket—but would Master Li really do such a thing? Could Li the Cat be trusted to make an honest trade? It was too much for me, and my head was chasing thoughts in circles as the eunuch led the way out a side door and down a flight of steps. He and Master Li seemed to be getting on splendidly as they quite freely discussed the difficulty of making fake Tribute Tea taste better than donkey piss.
“Your profit margin couldn’t stand the expense of enough real hyson to make a significant difference?” Master Li asked.
“It was ruinous. You must remember, Li Kao, that we need to make enormous profits and then get out of the business fast. The chances of winding up as tsang shen yu are simply too high,” the eunuch said matter-of-factly.
That means “bodies buried in fish bellies,” and Master Li nodded sympathetically. “What I had in mind was something nowhere near as costly as pure choo-cha. Specifically, a blend of light but acidic Yunnan such as Drunken Concubine Wang with semi-fermented oolong like Iron Goddess of Mercy.”
“Expensive!” Li the Cat protested.
“Not if used in minute quantities, and I think I see the way to manage it. But you’re right, I’ve chosen the very finest of the types I have in mind, and experiments involving slightly lesser grades would certainly be called for.”
They continued to discuss fake tea like partners, considering the virtues of adding Trouser Seat as opposed to Old Man’s Eyebrows, or Purple Fur and Hairy Crab combined to equal the same quantity of White-Haired Monkey, and I was actually charmed by the dimpled smile as Li the Cat stopped and turned and said with an apologetic gesture, “Number Ten Ox, would you mind? I’m quite incapable of moving the thing.”
He meant a heavy iron door. I had to grunt as I hauled it open, and then we started down a steep flight of stone steps.
“I apologize for the environment, but the builders provided no other quarters for sudden guests,” the eunuch said wryly.
He meant the dungeons, and I briefly thought I was getting all too familiar with dank dripping stone walls covered with rotting lichen, clanging metal doors, guards stamping heavy nail-studded boots, weeping sounds from cells, and all the rest of the atmosphere that so frequently embraces those who accompany Master Li. Li the Cat delicately held his nose. I wanted to ask about Yu Lan, but what could I say? Whether or not she was in one piece she would be down here, and we reached the end of the corridor, where two guards flanked an iron door, and at the eunuch’s gesture they tugged and panted and finally got the door open. We entered into darkness.
A light flickered, a wick flared up, and we saw the bright points of a circle of spears aimed at us.
“What is the meaning of this?” Master Li asked.
“Li Kao, how is it that a man who has seen so many moons speaks with a mouth still redolent of mother’s milk?” the eunuch said contemptuously. “Did you seriously think I would bargain with an antique? Frankly I am disappointed to find a senile petitioner where I hoped to enjoy a formidable opponent, but I will at least honor the man you once were.”
Yes, first-moon clams, I thought as I watched the eunuch’s eyes in the lamplight. No more emotion than a sea creature reaching into the food chain. But then I decided I was wrong.
“You have annoyed and inconvenienced me,” Li the Cat said softly. “Not many people can do that, and therefore I shall honor you with the most remarkable last minutes known to man.”
That wasn’t clam-cold. A tic momentarily disturbed the perfect dimples, and then the eunuch turned and marched out. The soldiers closed around us and in seconds we were chained to two thick wooden posts in the center of a circular cell, and then the soldiers marched out and slammed the iron door shut, taking the lamp with them. Pitch-blackness closed around us. I listened to my heart pound, and then to the slow drip of water from the rank lichen-covered stone walls.
“I’ll be damned,” Master Li finally said. His voice was slightly incredulous. “I didn’t dare dream we’d be so lucky. Is this some sort of trick?”
What could I say? I was trying to get my tongue unwrapped from my larynx, and that might take days.
“I thought he’d at least string us from the ceiling by our heels, although there are very good reasons why he wouldn’t ruin the final effect by wrapping the wires around our balls,” Master Li said. “You know, Ox, I’ve underestimated that creature. I thought it would take an artist to understand that the best torture would be none, since pain creates its own universe in which further considerations are impossible. A greater agony depends upon thought, upon imagination, upon expectation growing wilder and wilder with each drip-drop from dank walls, and then the hideous reality finally appears and it’s far worse than imagination can conceive—ah, that is the stroke of artistry! Yes, I’ve badly underestimated Li the Cat, and I hope I don’t do it again.”
Again? What did he mean by again? If he meant some tenuous Buddhist concept of a later existence as a mosquito I wasn’t interested, but I was interested in a fate far worse than hanging from the ceiling by my balls. What on earth did the eunuch have planned for us? I had to admit that Master Li had a point about subtlety when I noticed that moving my left thumb three inches to touch the chains binding my wrists took six and a half minutes, according to the count of my pulse, and I seemed to be measuring the drip-
drop of water in terms of months.
I won’t speculate how long it took. All I know is that I wasn’t 306 years old at the time—although I would have taken bets on it—when the silence of our cell was shattered by an incredible scream, and then another, and then a ghastly sequence of shrieks, howls, squishy squealing noises, loathsome sucking popping sounds, a final sequence of screams so horrible I thought my bones would shatter like vibrating porcelain, and then silence. A silence that grew to be as horrible as the screams, and was finally broken by slow, sucking, squishing, slithering noises moving toward our cell door.
The door creaked open. A low, squat, hulking black outline was briefly visible against the dim light from the corridor, and then the door squealed shut. The blackness was as heavy as a shroud of velvet soaked in blood. Slithering sounds were slowly moving toward the stakes we were chained to, and I began to hear something panting moistly. I glimpsed a faint yellow streak that gradually resolved itself into a pair of tiny luminous eyes. A slobbering noise was followed by heavy hard panting, and a hiss of insane excitement, and a spray of spittle: “— and tell you of the dried oysters of Kwantung! The frogs of Kuei-yang! The summer garlic of south Shensi and the limes of the Yangtze Valley! The clams of the Shantung coast and the sugar crabs of southern Canton and the dried ginger and thorn honey of Chekiang!” shrieked Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu.
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