The Carnal Prayer Mat (Rou Putuan)

by Li Yu

"An old technique of his, haven't you heard?" asked the neighbors. "A wall may be dozens of feet high, but he'll clear it at a single bound! Or it may be hundreds of courses thick, and he'll get through it the first time! That cottage of yours will give him no trouble at all. He's sure to get in, by one means or another, and not only will your wife be taken off, all your property may well go with her as dowry. You'll have to be on your guard against a double loss."

  Honest Quan grew even more alarmed and, kneeling down in front of the neighbors, begged them to think of some plan for avoiding such a disaster. The neighbors sympathized with his plight and tried to think of a solution. Some urged him to divorce his wife and cut off the danger at the root. Others told him to take his wife and flee with her to some distant place. Quan was in a dilemma until another neighbor, a man of some experience, offered his opinion.

  "Neither solution will work," he said. "Even if Quan's wife could be evicted under the law, he hasn't gathered any evidence. On what grounds is he going to divorce her? And the Knave knows every road in the land. He'll track you down no matter where you move to, and when he does, you'll have delivered your life into his hands, I'm afraid. In my humble opinion, the only thing to do is make the best of a bad deal. Since your wife has no desire to stay with you, there's no point in trying to keep her. You'd be far better off getting a little money from selling her, so that you won't suffer a loss. If you sell her to anyone other than the Knave, she'll refuse to go, and when he hears about it, he'll resent your trying to break up his affair and will retaliate. The best thing would be to sell her to him. A thief can easily get his hands on some money, and since he's in love with your wife, he may be willing to put up a hundred or two. With that you should have no difficulty getting a second wife. Find a homely one who'll give you no trouble, and you'll be ahead in two respects: you'll have a wife and you'll be able to keep your property."

  "Excellent idea!" said Quan. "Although it's not what a husband ought to be doing, it's the only option I have. But there's just one problem. I can hardly ask him myself, so I shall need a middleman. Would one of you gentlemen be willing to act for me?"

  "If that's what you want," said the neighbors, "we wouldn't mind helping out. But once you've sold her, you're not to go stirring up trouble by saying we conspired with a scoundrel to seize your wife."

  "If this works out, I will owe my life and property to you gentlemen. I would never do anything so two-faced."

  "Quan is an honest man," said the experienced neighbor. "He'd never do such a thing, you can set your minds at rest."

  They consulted and chose someone known for his diplomatic skills to go and negotiate with the Knave the next day.

  Meanwhile, ever since parting from Fragrance, Vesperus had been suffering from lovesickness. In his desperate state he was counting on the Knave's magical powers to reunite him with Fragrance.

  "If you want her abducted," said the Knave, "that's no trouble. The only problem is that you won't be able to go on living here afterward. If you wish to be husband and wife, you'll have to take her to the ends of the earth, somewhere you can't be traced, and settle down there. Are you prepared to do that? It's a question you'll have to decide before I can take any action."

  Because of the two other summa beauties whom he had yet to seduce, Vesperus was reluctant to leave the area. At first he could not make up his mind, but then, seeing how outspoken Fragrance was in her letter, he felt in honor bound to agree.

  "I'll never be able to drop out of sight unless I move a long way off. Of course I'm ready to leave."

  "In that case it will be simple," said the Knave, "except for one thing. Abducting a man's wife is a far more serious crime than stealing his money. Money is all a matter of chance anyway; if you lose it today, you can always earn some more tomorrow. But if a man's primary wife is abducted, the loss will be too much for him. Moreover, Honest Quan is poor. If he loses this wife, how will he ever be able to afford another one? A man's life is at risk if you push him too far. We need to think of some form of consolation for the victim. We should bring a hundred or more taels with us when we abduct his wife and leave them in his house, as if to suggest that he take them and buy himself another wife. If we deprive him of one wife but enable him to get another, it may not help our moral credit at all, but at least I'll have been true to myself as a hero."

  "That would be the perfect plan, except that I'm embarrassingly short of money and there's nowhere I can get any. I'd have to trouble you for it, as a friend, and that is something I'd feel very uncomfortable about."

  "Where my money's concerned, it's easy come, easy go," said the Knave. "If I begrudged you the money, do you think I'd have dared to speak up so boldly? Just leave the expenses to me. Write to her and say that I'll go and get her whenever she wishes, so long as Quan isn't at home; tell her there's nothing for her to worry about."

  Vesperus was in high spirits as he hastily ground up the ink. Because her letter had been simply written, he replied in the same simple language, to save her trouble in interpreting it. The letter ran,

  To Mistress Fragrance:

  The two months since we parted seem like decades. Your heart and other organs have wasted half away, while mine have swollen to the same extent. Otherwise why would they block my throat so that I cannot swallow a morsel of food? I have been pleading all this while with the Knave to help us, but he was afraid that you were not fully committed and did not dare embark on it lightly. However, when he saw your letter to me, he realized that your love was as firm as iron or stone and he now undertakes to try his best. To do as Red Whisk did would be far too dangerous; with him helping us, it would be better just to emulate the Girl in Red. It is hard to predict when our tryst will occur, but the day your warden leaves home will be the same day Chang'e flees to the moon. [61] Send us the glad tidings as soon as you know, so that we can take action. If I prove faithless, whether I am pigmeat or dogmeat, your honorable mouth will not need to bite me, for there will be crows and curs aplenty to drag me off and devour me. I shall say no more.

  Respectfully,

  As a precaution I shall not sign my name.

  After delivering the letter to Fragrance, the Knave took out a hundred and twenty taels and packed them up in readiness. But while he and Vesperus waited anxiously for news, Quan never left the house. Then one day, to the Knave's surprise, one of Quan's neighbors appeared and, after exchanging a few casual remarks, came to the point.

  "Honest Quan's business has been losing money and he can't make ends meet. As a result he is unable to keep his wife and proposes to sell her. It occurred to me that other people either had no money at all or else hadn't enough to keep her, whereas you, with your great generosity in helping others, might come to the rescue. So I'm here to beg you to do a good deed that would not only save this woman from starvation but that would also provide Honest Quan with some bride money as capital. You would be doing a great service to two people."

  The Knave was perplexed. What an extraordinary thing! Here was I, just about to go off and see to him, when he sends someone over with an offer to sell her, as if he knew what I had in mind. He may have heard that I was acting for someone and, thinking he could not escape my trap, he may have decided to take this way out. Since he has done so, I'd better buy her openly rather than covertly. Why take the money along and then abduct her?

  "Why on earth would he want to sell his wife?" he asked the neighbor.

  "He's been driven to it by poverty, nothing else."

  "In that case is the wife willing to leave him for someone else?"

  "She can't stand the misery at home and is eager to get away. There's no question of her willingness."

  "What would the price be?"

  "He intended to ask for two hundred, but you don't need to stick to that. As long as he gets a bit over half, I daresay he'd be satisfied."

  "In that case let's make it a hundred and twenty."

  Having obtained the Knave's consent, the neighbor asked him to weigh
out the money while he sent for Quan to come and close the deal.

  The Knave's first idea had been to name Vesperus as principal and the neighbor and himself as intermediaries, but he thought better of it. It's a risky business taking another man's wife, he reflected. My reputation is sufficient to deter anyone from hauling me into court, but if I let him give his name, he'll be in trouble at once. So he said nothing about Vesperus, and he made out he was taking Fragrance as his own concubine.

  Quan arrived and a marriage certificate was drawn up, to which he affixed his thumbprint. The neighbor also made his mark and passed the paper to the Knave, who handed over a packet of silver in the amount promised plus another ten taels as broker's fee for the neighbor.

  That same day, still without letting Vesperus know, the Knave hired a sedan chair and fetched Fragrance. Only after he had found a house, furnished it, and engaged a maid for her, did he arrange the wedding and see the couple to their bridal chamber-behavior unsurpassed even by Bao Shuya with his loyal friendship or Curlybeard with his gallantry. [62] The only pity is that the Knave answered the wrong question in the examination and cannot qualify as a true hero. If he had applied his loyalty to the case of a worthy friend and his gallantry in a real emergency, he would have been entitled not only to rank as a hero among robbers but also to feel superior to the official classes.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  By means of kowtowing, he succeeds in seduction; In spite of her jealousy, she arranges a pact.

  Lyric:

  My love I dearly love,

  My love I idolize.

  But jealousy springs from love too dear;

  I glare-but with the fondest eyes.

  This beauty I hold dear,

  That beauty I adore.

  If I can get these beauties not to fight,

  Romantically, my fame will soar.

  (To the tune "Love Eternal")

  Once Vesperus and Fragrance had become husband and wife, they enjoyed themselves to the full, day and night, hot weather and cold. After joining his household, she had just one period and then became pregnant. Vesperus was delighted at the news, believing that the adept had been proven wrong and that he could still father a child. His instrument of pleasure had been successfully restructured.

  After four or five months her body began to swell up, making sex a little awkward. Normally Vesperus would stop thrusting only when there were no more cries to be heard from her, and now, on hearing a cry of alarm, he was not startled enough to detach himself, draw in his stomach, and proceed less passionately. As a result she told him that rather than exhaust himself, he should put off sex for the time being and husband his strength for a grand celebration after the baby's birth. From that time on they slept in separate rooms.

  Vesperus spent his nights in the study where, amid peace and quiet, he inevitably longed for action, hoping for another affair. Before his marriage to Fragrance, he had felt that if only he could have her, he would be able to get through life without ever taking another mistress. But once he had married her, he began to think how much nicer it would be if he had another one like her, to form a pair. Although the idea occurred to him soon after the wedding, he was still able to enjoy himself, so he shelved it. In his present state of frustration, however, he began to treat this shelved idea as a matter of the highest priority.

  "Of all the women I've seen," he thought, "only those two whose names I don't know are truly outstanding, fit to put beside the one I've just married. Unfortunately I don't know where they live or even where to start looking for them. I'll have to content myself with the second best and turn to someone from the magna class in my notebook for relief in this present crisis. There'll be time enough later on, when I'm free, to go looking for the others."

  Without letting Fragrance know what he was doing, he shut the study door, took out his notebook, and leafed methodically through it until he came to the name Cloud of Scent. Although his comments on her amounted to no more than a few sentences, they were a little more positive than the rest; they were straightforward praise without irony, whereas the other comments were either praise with a dash of criticism or criticism with a dash of praise. She clearly stood at the head of the magna class and only a notch below Pale Rose Maid and Lotus Pink Beauty.

  Comment:

  There are many special features to her beauty. She has grace to spare. She trips so lightly as to leave no sign, and could be lifted on the palm of the hand. Her charm is unaffected, and her looks are as in a painting. The breeze wafts a rare fragrance from her, as if she were steeped in the scent of flowers. At her side one hears exquisite tones, like the warbling of innumerable orioles: She is without doubt an outstanding beauty, the most charming of women. I place her in the magna class, above the other beauties.

  Rereading his comments, Vesperus recalled her face and remembered her as being in her twenties, a young woman who gave an impression of great charm. As she passed by, he had sensed a fragrance imbued with freshness and sweetness that was quite unlike the perfumes women use on their clothes or skin. After she departed, he had found a fan with a poem on it lying beside the incense altar and realized that she had left it for him. She was on his mind for days, and he fully intended to seek her out. But after meeting with the two summa women, he had begun to treat her as "a fish thrown back into the river." When he came upon this comment in his notebook, however, he felt the cold ashes of his desire rekindling and examined the tiny handwriting that followed the comment to see her address. It turned out that she was living in the same lane as he was!

  He was overjoyed. There cannot be more than a few dozen families in this lane, he said to himself, so she must live quite close by. It shouldn't be too difficult to get hold of her. He went out at once to ask where her house was.

  Little did he realize that he had been aided in his evil plans by the neatest of coincidences. It was as if the gods of Heaven and Earth were aiding the evildoer-for she proved to be his next-door neighbor, with only a wall in between! His study even backed onto her bedroom! Her husband, whose sobriquet was Master Felix, was a licentiate in his fifties, a man as long on talent as he was short on virtue, with a reputation as high as his character was low. Cloud was his second wife, his first wife having died. He ran a school and lived away from home, returning each month for only one or two nights.

  This must mean we are destined for each other, thought Vesperus. Supernatural powers have brought me here so that I can enjoy myself with her. Such a convenient arrangement-how can I fail to take advantage of it?

  Back and forth he paced, trying to think of a plan of action while surveying the terrain. The wall outside the study was not high, but it was part of the house and he could not get over it. The wall inside was not very substantial, but he could not drive a hole through it, because it was built of whitewashed brick and any attempt would have left obvious traces on both sides.

  So he abandoned the classic methods found in literature and went neither through the wall nor over it, but decided instead to rehearse his own text and drop down through the roof. However, on looking up, he noticed a section three feet high and five feet wide along the top of the wall where the bricks had not reached and the wall had been finished off in wood.

  Now that I've found this gap, he said to himself, I won't need to get up on the roof. Why not adapt the expression "drive a hole, climb a wall"? All I need do is pry a few boards off the wooden section and I shouldn't have any trouble getting over the wall. He fetched a ladder and leaned it against the wall, then brought from the study a set of tools that he had purchased but never used, a carton containing a knife, ax, saw, and chisel. Because he had never had occasion to use it, Vesperus had thought it useless and kept it in his study only as a curiosity. Little did he realize that there is nothing in the world without its function; for the tool kit, he had found a function in adultery.

  Carrying his set of tools, he climbed up the ladder and took a close look at the wooden section. Fortunately, strong as it was, there w
ere cracks in it. When it was being built, the boards had been tapped into place one by one, not mortised together, which would have made them impossible to budge. He set to work with a small file to grind away a fraction of an inch from the top of one of the boards so that there would be no resistance when he pried it off. Next he inserted a small chisel into the crack and jimmied the board toward himself. Before he realized it, one board was off, and when he went to jimmy the second board, he found he needed no tools at all; one pull and, with nothing to hold it in place, the board came away with ease.

  After taking off two or three boards, he craned his neck through to survey the scene. What met his eyes was a woman relieving herself on a commode. Before tying her trousers up again, she went to replace the cover, but it slipped from her hand and, in stretching down to pick it up, she bent her slim waist and raised a fine pair of slender buttocks in the air. The back part of her vulva was directly in front of him. Observing her from behind, he was still not certain that she was the woman he was seeking. But when she pulled up her trousers and turned around, he saw her face and knew that she was indeed the one he had admired, now more fetching than ever.

  He was about to call her, but feared someone else might hear. It also occurred to him that she wouldn't know him, hidden as he was, and would scarcely be inclined to give him a welcome. It would be awkward if she made a scene. He would have to think of some way of enticing her up to see him. One look at my face, he thought, and I won't have to plead with her. She'll come to hand of her own accord.

  Puzzling over what to do, he suddenly remembered the fan with the three Tang poems on it in her handwriting. "I expect she still remembers. I'll leave the wall open and go and find the poems. When she hears me reciting, she'll understand and come up to see me, at which point I'll work on her with a few clever remarks. She's bound to fall for my line."

  He scampered down the ladder and opened the trunk in search of the fan. While staying in the temple, each time he had picked up one of the many tokens of admiration left for him, he had put it away for safekeeping against the day when he found the woman and needed it in convincing her. Confident the women would be willing if only he had something to offer them, he treated the tokens as treasures and saw to it that they were not mislaid. Lest they get mixed up with his other possessions and be impossible to find in a hurry, he had had another trunk made for them, on the lid of which was inscribed, in two columns of four large characters for easy recognition, a line from one of the "Songs of the States" in the Poetry Classic: [63]