A Husband for Kutani

by Frank Owen

  Creep into my heart

  Where I have built a home for you.”

  Kutani closed her eyes. She forgot the fisherman, forgot everything but that haunting music which carried her off to the hills of dream.

  Before the fisherman left the garden, Kya Koen gave him so much money his eyes glowed with astonishment. Now he was a man of wealth. The comfort of his old age was assured. And Kya Koen talked with him about the poet who had employed him to sing those songs. He discovered where the poet dwelt.

  “‘Songs to Kutani,’” he mused. “Perhaps some day they will become world-famed in the literature of China, and my little mistress will live forever in legend.”

  Phen Hsu had taken a small room in a tavern a few miles above the garden. Distance from Kutani added to his melancholia. At least now he was able to converse with the fisherman whose boat every day drifted past the garden. Perhaps occasionally the old man might catch a glimpse of Kutani. He might hear her voice. Phen Hsu hungered for those crumbs of information.

  Phen Hsu eked out his living by singing nightly in the tavern. His haunting music was popular with the patrons. It was so different from the harsh music to which they were accustomed. By day Phen Hsu crouched in the alleys and begged. At other times he wrote poems which infrequently he succeeded in selling. He had within him infinite capacity for accomplishment but he lacked the urge to pursue anything for long. He lived solely for the minute. What use storing up bounty for the future when there might not be any future? Phen Hsu was indolent. It gave him pleasure of a sort to converse with people who passed through the tavern.

  One night a distinguished old gentleman sat down in the seat opposite him at a table. “My name is Kya Koen,” he said simply, “and you must excuse me for intruding upon your thoughts but I was intrigued by the songs you sang.”

  “I am glad you liked them,” said Phen Hsu.

  “The music of the spheres could hardly be more beautiful.”

  “That is high praise.”

  “Music that touches the stars is worthy of high praise. I hope you will permit me to buy a glass of wine for you.”

  “That is a request I cannot refuse.”

  They had many drinks together and their friendship became quite mellow. Over the wine, time had ceased to be of any importance. They could not have been closer companions had they known each other always. Kya Koen permitted the conversation to take its own course. No use to show that he had any ulterior motive in this meeting, else a door might forever swing shut between them. They talked of wine and tea and wine again, and the infinite varieties of love. Finally in a fit of confidence, Phen Hsu spoke of Kutani who had inspired his songs.

  “Her father was a mandarin of great wealth,” he said. “Had I persisted in my wooing I would have spoiled her life, for a princess cannot be happy with a beggar.”

  “Unless,” mused Kya Koen, “the beggar really was a prince of fellows.”

  “Well this particular beggar certainly was not,” said Phen Hsu emphatically. “For the good of Kutani I have tried to banish her from my life.”

  “You choose an odd method.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Writing love songs to her.”

  Phen Hsu raised his hands in irritation. “I must do something!”

  “Something, yes,” said Kya Koen, “but not that. What you need is other women, caresses, soft bodies.”

  “I have tried that, too. It is useless.”

  “Perhaps because you give no thought to the matter. You must pick a companion for a night of love with as much care as you might choose a wife.”

  “I’ve taken the women I’ve found.”

  “That accounts for your failure.” Kya Koen paused for a moment; then he added, “I can help you.”

  “How?” asked Phen Hsu eagerly.

  “I have a slave-girl so beautiful that even flowers tremble at her approach. Her body is in perfect proportion. Her lips are like honey. Her eyes are black pools of love in which a fool might drown in ecstasy. No girl could have a softer body. The bloom of the peach is upon her flesh. Do you think you would tire of such a girl?”

  Now Phen Hsu had drunk much wine and his blood was warm. “I wish she were here now,” he said, “though perhaps it would do no good, for I lack the money to buy her.”

  “She is in a small house not far away,” explained Kya Koen. “Speak not of money until you have viewed her. If you wish, I will lead you to her. Bring your lute. Perhaps she might enjoy your songs.”

  “Let’s go at once,” said Phen Hsu.

  Kya Koen led the way out of the tavern and through the crowded alleys. Phen Hsu followed him. He was keyed up to a high pitch. He doubted if this slave-girl could make him forget Kutani, but nevertheless it was a pleasing adventure. They walked along in silence for fully five minutes, then Kya Koen entered the narrow doorway of a house. A single lantern burned on a teakwood table in front of a spirit screen. The yellow glow brought out objects in the far corners grotesquely.

  “Can you see?” asked Kya Koen.

  “Not so well,” confessed Phen Hsu.

  “Wait then, I will light another lantern.” As the old philosopher spoke, he struck a match and kindled a flame in a lantern that was like a shimmering bit of jade. It cast off an unearthly bluish green glow. Then they continued onward to a door in the rear of the house. Kya Koen pushed it open. Now they were in a room in which there was a divan and several chairs. Kya Koen hung the jade-lantern on a hook projecting from the wall. “I will get the girl,” he said.

  Phen Hsu felt at peace, as though he had died and earned the blessed sleep of death. Idly his fingers wandered over his lute. Softly he commenced singing “Songs to Kutani.”

  “Your breasts are gentle pillows

  Against which my love is sleeping.”

  And then she came to him. Like a breath of love she was dancing. She was attired in a single garment that served only as a veneer for the perfection of her body. Phen Hsu gazed upon her in amazement.

  “Kutani,” he whispered. “Kutani.”

  Trembling, she paused. As in the garden that night so long ago, she closed her eyes and murmured, “Take me, O Moon.”

  Phen Hsu sprang to his feet. The next moment she was in his arms. “Kutani!”

  “Don’t ever leave me,” she pleaded, “I would sooner be a beggar and be able to hear your songs, than an empress and dwell in silence.”

  Kya Koen watched them with sparkling eyes.

  “What is the price of this slave?” asked Phen Hsu whimsically.

  “Eternal love,” Kya Koen told him.

  And Kutani said, “I want to live always in the little house you have built for me in your heart.”

  DOCTOR SHEN FU

  PAN TUN’S HANGCHOW ITINERARY WAS MOTIVATED by three desires. To visit “The Monastery of Manifest Congratulations,” “The Cave of the Purple Cloud” and “The Drug Shop of a Thousand Years.” Although Pan Tun was young, he felt as though the weight of centuries was bearing down upon him, for he had lived violently. He had drawn pleasures about him until he was satiated. He had experienced every emotion, the love of many slender women, and now he was weary. What use great wealth if it could not give him the gift of continence? And so though he was still young, he had journeyed far up the mountains of sensation, until the path was growing cold. Frequently he looked back, sighing for spring.

  He had heard of the drug shop of Dr. Shen Fu, poet, mystic, apothecary extraordinary who mixed his drugs with knowledge only to be whispered and with divine understanding. He was reputed to have discovered the formula for a concoction that could successfully combat the onslaughts of the Tau-kwei, those strange wraithlike beings who have eluded death by exchanging their physical bodies for natures ethereal that float about as filmy as the dusk rise of the moon. It is their province to afflict men with torment by robbing them of their vital forces. They creep on men by stealth while they are sleeping. This is the reason for nightmares, for starting in one’s sleep, f
or waking suddenly in a cold sweat and for exhaustion at dawn. Tau-kwei are vampire spirits, not feeding on the blood of their victims, but gnawing at the very soul. And Dr. Shen Fu had invented an elixir that represented repose, calm sleep undisturbed by dreams. Those who partook of it, marvelled, but Dr. Shen Fu only smiled. After all it was but one of his lesser accomplishments. Why be concerned over the conquest of evil spirits when, in the quietness of his drug shop, he had fought an even more amazing battle? Not only was he able to control life, to sublimate all emotions, but he had surmounted the most lofty pinnacle of alchemy as well. In all the universe, his power was supreme for he had conquered death, the poison of oblivion, the dropping of a huge velvet net from which no one, hitherto, had ever escaped.

  Dr. Shen Fu was tall and thin and his face was colorless parchment. No one would have denied that he was seventy, but that he was two hundred and seventy would have met with incredulity. Yet such was the case. He was the oldest man in China and therefore the oldest man in all the world.

  Dr. Shen Fu’s expression was serene. He was little concerned with the discord of world affairs, a spectator rather than a participant. He dwelt on the threshold between two worlds. And because he had conquered death, he was able to endure life.

  Sometimes he sat for hours in his shop, lost in meditations. Now, however, he was troubled for the Mandarin, Pan Tun, had broken in upon his repose.

  “I possess great wealth,” sighed Pan Tun, “and yet in happiness, I am a beggar. I am consumed by a great hunger.”

  And Shen Fu replied, “Hunger is the force that moves the world, the greatest blessing the gods have bestowed upon us. Beggary is a careless term. Better a body clothed in rags and a soul dressed in fine raiment, then a body arrayed in purple splendour and a soul in tatters. After all, a beggar who sleeps outdoors by the shore of the sea, drinks in more glory of dawn than the prince who lies hidden beyond clay walls, in a silken incense-draped room that needs many lanterns to bring it cheer. The things of this earth concerned with enjoyment are so few, only a fool squanders them.”

  “I have indeed been a fool,” the Mandarin admitted. “Now I have come to you in quest of wisdom.”

  “Wisdom,” Dr. Shen Fu repeated thoughtfully. “Wisdom. So few of us even enter into the beginning of wisdom. There is so much that is appalling and awesome in the pages of life, though nothing more appalling than the knowledge that most of us never read more than the title-page. We accept the doctrines of our priests, without suspecting that they themselves are at grips with something beyond their comprehension.”

  “I do not wish to understand anything,” Pan Tun declared. “All that I ask is the path to a blind serenity. If only I could find my way back to tranquillity, I would never depart from it. Henceforth I would be a hermit in a garden of repose.”

  For awhile they talked. A servant brought tea which they sipped slowly. Dr. Shen Fu listened intently so that he might catch every inflection. The Mandarin interested him, like a specimen under a microscope for study. Why had Pan Tun squandered the good things of existence so fast that his life had become disordered? Why did he now dwell in confusion? Was it because he was old? True he had not as yet reached thirty but he had lived violently. He had wasted his energy? Is an engine old because it has been manufactured for a certain length of time, or is it old because it has been neglected and abused? Do all human bodies age at the same momentum? Is that vague thing that we call time an ill-advised measuring rod? Do we know the age of anything?

  Dr. Shen Fu smiled and now that the Mandarin was exhausted by the vehemence of his confession, he took up the broken threads of the conversation. His voice was gentle, rhythmic, slumbrous. It seem to drive the shadows of discord from the room.

  “How strange that one who has seen so little, should boast that he has exhausted all the panoramas of the universe. All about us are sights you have never beheld, songs you have never heard and wonders of whose existence you have never dreamed. What lies beyond that which we call reality? Most passengers of this earthly cart remind me of a man who has been presented with a gift encased in gaudy wrappings. So pleased is he with the case he never bothers attempting to peer inside.”

  Abruptly Dr. Shen Fu rose to his feet. “But enough of idle words. Come, follow me. For one brief moment we will attempt to fathom some of the lesser mysteries that lie enclosed in this package called life.”

  Dr. Shen Fu led the way through a door in the back of the shop and thence through a long winding hall that was dimly lit. The shadows loomed grotesquely as they walked, as though there were more beings in that hall than just the two of them. The Mandarin shuddered but his face remained calm. Not for a moment must it be even suspected that he was not without fear. Evil spirits may have lurked in that hall, echoes of all the strange feet that had passed down it over the thousand years it had existed. What strange sights had it witnessed?

  As though Dr. Shen Fu could read his thoughts, he murmured, “The poison of night is as deadly as the poison of death.”

  As the Doctor spoke, he drew aside a curtain and they were in a room made cheerful by a single large yellow lantern. There was little furniture in the room. A few teakwood chairs, a table, several books. Its bareness seemed to emphasize the large silver door in the wall that somehow resembled the entrance to a bank vault. Dr. Shen Fu stepped forward and commenced manipulating a complicated series of knobs and levers. The next moment, the door swung silently open and there before them was a yawning chasm of blackness.

  “Come,” Dr. Shen Fu said softly.

  Without hesitation, although inwardly he was quaking, the Mandarin stepped into that yawning void. The next moment he heard the silver door swing shut. And now the air sweetened. It was as though the curtains of winter had been thrust aside and the breath of spring came drifting in. Aloes-wood and musk, irises and carnations, orange and cherry blossoms and the breath of a beloved woman. Odd that thoughts of women should become impregnated on his consciousness. Pan Tun sighed. He had had enough of women. He had tried so many of them and it was useless. He was tired of enamelled love, of painted embraces, of bodies as fragile and cold as porcelain. And now a soft light commenced to diffuse the room. The lamps did not flare out abruptly like knives cleaving the darkness. Rather the light came like the patter of stars and moonlight, or like the crouching slumbrous approach of the sun as it moves through the portals of dawn. Lights, colors, shadows, faint perfume, music—all are but interchanging moods, strands of silken treasure from which the rug of day is artfully woven. Rugs without design are valueless.

  When the light was strong enough, Pan Tun gazed about him. His expression reflected incredulity and amazement. He had imagined they were entering a room of dwarfed proportions, a vault cheerless and stuffy. Yet this room was so vast, the far corners blurred away into shadows. It seemed of boundless extent.

  “I had not imagined your shop was so large,” he murmured.

  Dr. Shen Fu smiled. “Nor is it,” said he. “That is, not above ground. This room is below the surface of the earth and therefore its size is relatively unimportant. For there are few who take advantage of earth’s boundless possibilities, even though flowers and trees are symbolic lessons. When a seed or bulb is hidden in the earth it begins to grow, so too when a man dwells for any length of time in a house that like the plants has taken root in the soil, he commences to grow in wisdom and understanding. All yesterday’s cares are snapped by the sheers of midnight. Each morn, he is born again, resurrected from night which many scientists now believe is really a sort of temporary death. It is the time when souls are set free from bodies to wander about at will. It is the time when a man does what he really wishes to do rather than the absurd necessities which he imagines a bloated, over-rated civilization demands of him. When he awakens he seldom remembers the happenings of the night, else he might be disenchanted by day. And one thing more. I anticipate your question and so I will answer it before it is framed. The winding hall through which we walked was all downhill which a
ccounts for our presence underground.”

  “I had not noticed the way was steep,” the Mandarin declared.

  “That was because you were more interested in the grotesque shadows about you. However, there was nothing unearthly about them. Few existed except in your own distorted imagination. Be not vexed with me if I speak bluntly. I feel that by so doing we will be able to arrive at a closer understanding.”

  Such a direct manner of speech between Chinese was extraordinary, a cause for wonder, and yet Pan Tun was not cognizant of it for he had lost the thread of the conversation. His attention had been caught and was now held as by a spell. He took a few steps forward as though impelled by some unknown urge. He breathed with difficulty so intense was his interest. And now he stopped before a statue, the divine lovely statue of a woman. She was arrayed in a costume of yellow silk, formless, yet it seemed to reflect the lovely contours of the girl it covered.

  “This,” Dr. Shen Fu said, “Is Ko Juan, named after the soft columbine that she loved.”

  “You speak of her as though she lived,” Pan Tun whispered through dry lips.

  The Doctor sighed. “She lives ever in my heart.”

  “And she is smiling. How real she looks, how lifelike.”

  Reverently Pan Tun stepped forward and touched his fingertips to her cheek. It seemed slightly warm to the touch, or did he imagine it? Now the air had sweetened and from the distance came the echo of music. Perhaps that, too, was only imagination.

  “Who wrought so wondrous a statue?”

  “Who wrought the stars in their soft sky sleep? What magic fingers fashioned the first flower? Who splashes the horizon with a frenzy of color when night grows old?”

  “Never have I beheld a girl more beautiful, perhaps because among all living women, whether princess or slave, none such as she has ever existed.”

  Dr. Shen Fu smiled. “That is untrue,” he said slowly. “The world is run on fallacies which puny men endeavor to shape into natural laws. Ko Juan exists today even as she existed more than two centuries ago.”