Bridge of Birds

by Barry Hughart

  There was a good deal of iron beneath his meek exterior. We heard the sound of shovels striking the coffin, and then the sound of the lid being removed.

  "This stuff any good?" asked a voice that was oddly familiar.

  There was a pause for inspection, and then another oddly familiar voice answered, "First-rate."

  The mist cleared enough so that I could see a blade glint in the moonlight.

  "You use the knife," said the first voice. "I'm scared of corpses."

  "Ho, we can't let them desecrate your daughter's body!" I whispered.

  "Hair and fingernails," he whispered back.

  "What?"

  "Hair and fingernails," Master Li said quietly. "It's a very ancient practice. Grave robbers dig up the bodies of ladies of quality and clip their silken tresses and flawless fingernails, which they sell for a high price to an expensive courtesan. The courtesan claims the hair and fingernails to be her own, and gives them as a fidelity gift to a wealthy lover. The lover assumes that the lovesick lady has handed him the power of life and death — any decent witch could use such things to destroy the donor — and is inspired to reply in kind with immensely valuable fidelity gifts, and thus many a departed beauty has continued to bankrupt lovers long after her demise. A rather interesting form of immortality," said Master Li.

  The shovels were pitching earth back into the grave, to delay discovery and pursuit, and I stuck my head through some bushes. My eyes very nearly popped out of their sockets.

  "Who, pray tell, is shoveling earth so that it piles up neatly on the other side of the hole?" snarled Pawnbroker Fang.

  "In answer to your question, my esteemed colleague," hissed Ma the Grub, "I would advise you to piss upon the ground and examine your reflection in the puddle!"

  Li Kao stuck his head out beside me, and his eyes narrowed as he examined the unlovely pair.

  "Strange," he said thoughtfully. "Destiny, perhaps, since Pawnbroker Fang is not the sort of man who would write down all he knows in his files. How do I look?"

  "Look?" I asked stupidly.

  "Lacquer holding?"

  I examined him with a slight shudder. The lacquer was cracking, and he resembled a six-month-old corpse.

  "You look ghastly," I whispered.

  "Careful with that shovel!" yelped Ma the Grub, leaping back in fear. "You almost trapped my shadow inside the grave!"

  "Why don't you tie your shadow to your body with a cord, like a sensible person?" Pawnbroker Fang grumbled.

  "Splendid. Superstition has its uses," Master Li said happily.

  Li Kao slipped from the bushes, and a lacquered lohan drifted eerily through the mist. "Oooooooooooooooooooo," the horrible spectre moaned.

  Ma the Grub toppled upon the half-covered coffin in a dead faint, and Pawnbroker Fang dropped to his knees and covered his eyes, and a hollow haunted voice with a thick Tibetan accent vibrated through the night.

  "I am Tso Jed Chonu, the Patron of Ginseng. Who dares to steal my Root of Power?"

  "Spirit, spare me!" howled Pawnbroker Fang. "I knew that the Ancestress possessed such a root, but I swear that I did not know where it was hidden!"

  "Not the lesser root!" roared the Patron of Ginseng. "I mean the Great Root!"

  "O Spirit, only one Great Root of Power exists in all the world, and no lowly pawnbroker would dare to touch it," Fang sobbed.

  "Who has my root? Where has he hidden it?"

  "I dare not say!" Fang wailed.

  Tso Jed Chonu lifted his horrible face to Heaven and extended his hand for a lightning bolt.

  "The Duke of Ch'in!" screamed Pawnbroker Fang. "It's hidden in his labyrinth!"

  The terrible lohan stood lost in thought for nearly a minute. Then he flicked a finger.

  "Begone!"

  Ma the Grub's faint was not what it appeared to be. He vaulted from the coffin and passed Pawnbroker Fang in twenty steps as they raced away into the mist. Li Kao was looking thoughtfully down into the grave, and then he got down on his knees and reached for something. He stood up with an object in his hands, which he turned this way and that in the moonlight, and then he walked back and handed it to Henpecked Ho, who yelped in delight. It was a fragment of a clay tablet, and it was covered with the same ancient ideographs as the fragments that Ho had been working on for sixteen years, but it was big enough to contain whole paragraphs.

  In the distance we could hear that his wife and her seven fat sisters had joined the Ancestress. "Off with their heads!" they howled, and Henpecked Ho wondered whether his joy might be made complete.

  "Li Kao, in your journeys around the estate did you happen to encounter any more old wells?" he asked hopefully.

  "I would advise using an axe," said Master Li.

  "An axe. Yes, an axe by all means."

  We started off again, toward the wall beside the old well. Li Kao hooted like an owl, and a dog replied with three yelps and a howl. We said our farewells to Henpecked Ho, rather tearfully on my part, and Li Kao climbed upon my back. The patch in the wall was now a cleverly painted piece of canvas, and I pulled it aside and raced across the empty corridor. As I began to climb a rope ladder up the side of the opposite wall I glanced back and saw that Henpecked Ho was holding the precious clay tablet in one hand while his other hand wielded an imaginary axe.

  "Chop-chop!" he chanted happily. "Chop-chop-chop-chop-chop!"

  The mist swallowed him up, and I swung down the other side to Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang and his scum of the earth. It had been twenty years since they had enjoyed a windfall like the funeral of Fainting Maid, and they begged Master Li to stay as their leader. We had other things to do. I was off like the wind, racing across the hills toward the village of Ku-fu, while Master Li rode upon my back clutching the Root of Power.

  11. A Tale I Will Thee Tell

  It was early afternoon, and dust danced in the sunlight that filtered into the monastery. The only sounds came from Li Kao and the abbot as they prepared the essence, and from bird songs that drifted with the breeze through the windows. The children had not moved so much as an eyelash since we had left, and the bonzes had been able to do no more for them than to bathe them and move them to different positions at regular intervals. It was hard to believe that the small pale bodies could still show faint vital signs, and the parents were as silent as the children.

  An alchemist's stove burned beneath a bubbling vial of sugared water, in which Master Li had placed the Root of Power. The water began to turn orange, and the ginseng root took on a copperish-orange color that was almost translucent, like amber. Master Li moved the root to a fresh vial that was filled with mild rice wine. The abbot heated the liquid, and as it slowly bubbled down Master Li replaced it with the orange liquid from the first vial. Then the level of the liquid lowered until the root was barely covered, and the liquid turned saffron, and Master Li sealed the vial and placed it in a pan of boiling water. Both the liquid and the root began to turn orange-black, and then jet-black. Only a small puddle of liquid remained, and Master Li removed the vial from the pan and opened the seal. An incredible fresh and pungent aroma filled the room, like a whole forest of mountain herbs just after a rain.

  "That's all there is to it, and now we will see what we will see," he said calmly.

  The abbot and Li Kao walked from bed to bed. The abbot parted the children's lips and Li Kao dipped the blackened root into the liquid and carefully applied three drops to each tongue. Three times the treatment was repeated, and there was just enough of the ginseng essence to go around.

  We waited while the sounds of chickens and cows and water buffaloes drifted upon the breeze, and willows brushed their branches against the gray stone walls, and a woodpecker hammered in the garden.

  Color was returning to the pale faces. The bedcovers began to lift and fall with strong regular breathing, and warmth flushed the cold limbs. Fang's Fawn sighed, and a wide smile spread across the face of Bone Helmet. All the children began to smile happily, and with a sense of humble a
we I realized that I had witnessed a medical miracle. Parents wept for joy as they embraced their sons and daughters, and the grandparents danced, and the bonzes ran to the ropes and swung lustily up and down as they rang every bell in the monastery. The abbot was dancing a jig while he bellowed, "Namo Kuanshiyin Bodhisattva Mahasattva!" which is how good Buddhists say "hallelujah."

  Only Li Kao remained unmoved. He walked from bed to bed, examining each child with analytical coldness, and then he signaled for me to pry Big Hong loose from his son. He bent over the boy and began testing his pulse: first the left wrist for the functions of the heart, liver, kidneys, small intestine, gall bladder, and ureter; then the right wrist for the lungs, stomach, parta ulta, large intestine, spleen, and vital parts. He beckoned for the abbot to come and repeat the same process and compare results.

  The abbot's face turned puzzled, and then anxious, and then desperate. He ran for his pins and began testing acupuncture and pain points, with no reaction whatsoever from the children. Little Hong's color remained high, and his pulse remained strong, and the happy smile remained on his lips, but when Master Li lifted one of his arms and released it, the arm remained suspended in air. He moved the arm to different positions, and it stayed precisely where he placed it. The abbot grabbed Fawn and shook her violently, and she did not even register a change in her pulse.

  Li Kao straightened up and slowly walked back to the table and stared blankly down at the empty alchemist's vial. All eyes were fixed on him. He was immeasurably weary, and I could tell that in his tiredness he was struggling to think of words that would soften the fact that there is no such thing as an almost miracle. The Root of Power had almost done it, but it simply wasn't strong enough.

  I couldn't bear it if his eyes turned to mine. I knew that he had only one thing to tell me, and the words of the ancient Tibetan text echoed in my mind. "Only one treatment is effective, and this will succeed only if the physician as access to the rarest and mightiest of all healing agents, the Great Root of Power." I saw the terrified face of Pawnbroker Fang as he swore that only one Great Root existed in all the world, and I heard him scream, "The Duke of Ch'in! It's hidden in his labyrinth!" Even an ignorant country boy knew that the Duke of Ch'in was ten thousand times more dangerous than the Ancestress, and that copper coins do not purchase suicide. If I went after the Great Root, it would be on my own, and never in history had anyone returned alive from the duke's labyrinth.

  I turned and walked rapidly out the door and down the maze of corridors that I knew like the back of my hand, and then I jumped from a low window to the grass below and began running across the hills.

  I had no goal or purpose whatsoever, or perhaps I did in that I was subconsciously saying farewell to the village of Ku-fu. All I knew was that when I am depressed or frightened, I must do something physical, which is all I am good at, and if I keep at it long enough, I can usually forget my cares. I ran for hours through the hills and fields and forest, and lonely dogs began to follow me. I had quite a pack of them at my heels when my feet took me up a tiny winding path to a dense clump of shrubbery on a hillside, and I got down on my knees and wriggled through a tunnel into a small cave. The dogs squeezed in after me, and we sat down upon piles of bones.

  They were called dragon bones, because it had once been believed that dragons periodically shed their bones as snakes shed their skins, but they actually were the shoulder bones of domestic animals that had been used for prophecy. Scapulimancy is very ancient, and the abbot had told me that the oracle bones of An-yang are the only solid proof that the semi-mythological Shang Dynasty had actually existed.

  Do other people revert to childhood when they are frightened? I know that I did. The cave had been headquarters for youthful desperadoes when I was a small boy, and we had brought all important questions to the infallible dragon bones. Now I lit a fire in the old brazier and placed the poker in it. The dogs crowded around me and watched with interest while I searched for a bone with a smooth unmarked side. I wrote Yes on the left and No on the right, and I cleared my throat.

  "O Dragon, will I find the Great Root of Power in the labyrinth of the Duke of Ch'in and get out of there alive?" I whispered hoarsely.

  I wrapped my hand in an old piece of horsehide and picked up the hot poker. The point sizzled as it bored into the bone, and the crack started slowly, lifting toward the answer. Then it split neatly in half, and the left crack shot up and speared Yes while the right half impaled No. I stared at the message. I would find the root, but wouldn't live to tell the tale? I would live to tell the tale, but wouldn't find the root? I was quite upset until it occurred to me that I was no longer ten years old, and I blushed bright red.

  "Idiot," I muttered.

  The sun had set. Moonbeams reached into the cave and touched my left hand, and the small scar on my wrist gleamed like silver. I threw back my head and laughed. The childhood friends who had passed the knife around the circle as we became blood brothers would have died from envy had they known that the skeleton of Number Ten Ox was destined to rattle in the duke's mysterious labyrinth, and I hugged a few dogs as I solemnly chanted the sacred vow of the Seven Bloody Bandits of the Dragon Bones Cave.

  "Bat shit, rat shit, three-toed-sloth shit, bones and blades and bloody oath writ —"

  "Now that has real merit," a voice said approvingly. "It beats the scholar's oath by a mile and a half."

  The dogs barked excitedly as Master Li crawled into the cave. He sat down and looked around.

  "Scapulimancy was a racket," he observed. "With a little practice a soothsayer could make a bone crack any way he wanted to, or jump through a hoop, for that matter. Did you ever cheat when you were a boy?"

  "It would have spoiled our games," I mumbled.

  "Very wise," he said. "The abbot, who is also very wise, told me that I would find you here, and if not, I should simply sit and wait. Don't be ashamed of reliving your childhood, Ox, because all of us must do it now and then in order to maintain our sanity."

  He was carrying a large flask of wine, which he extended to me.

  "Have a drink, and a tale I will thee tell," he said.

  I sipped and choked on the fiery liquid. Li Kao reclaimed the flask and swallowed about a pint.

  "It was a dark and stormy night," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "A cold wind howled, and lightning flickered across the sky like the tongues of snakes, and thunder roared like dragons, and rain fell in torrents. Piercing through the gale came the sound of wheels and hoofbeats, followed by the most dreaded sound in all China: the high-pitched hunting horns of the soldiers of the Duke of Ch'in."

  This time I choked without benefit of wine, and Li Kao pounded my back in a kindly fashion.

  "A mule was pulling a buggy down a mountain path at a suicidal rate, and a man and a woman were bouncing upon the seat," he said. "The woman was nine months pregnant, and she clutched a large burlap bag while the man wielded a buggy whip. Once more the terrible horns sounded behind them, and then a volley of arrows shot into the night. The mule staggered and fell, and the buggy crashed into a ditch. Apparently the soldiers were after the bag that the woman carried, because the man tried to take it from her so that the soldiers would attack him while she escaped, but the woman was equally brave and refused to relinquish the bag, and they were tugging back and forth when the second volley of arrows reached them. The man fell back mortally wounded, and the woman staggered away with the shaft of an arrow protruding from beneath her left shoulder blade, and the rain mercifully covered the small determined figure as she crawled up the winding path that led to the Monastery of Sh'u."

  Master Li hoisted the flask and drank thirstily. I had no idea why he was telling me the story, but at least he was taking my mind off my troubles.

  "The arrow was her passport," he said. "It was stamped with the tiger emblem of the Duke of Ch'in, and the Monastery of Sh'u hated the Duke of Ch'in. They did all they could for her, and with the first faint light of dawn the tiny wail o
f a newborn babe lifted above the walls. The abbot and the midwife had worked a small miracle to save the child, but nothing could be done for the mother.

  " 'Brave Soul,' the abbot whispered, wiping the sweat from her fevered brow. 'Brave rebel against the evil Duke of Ch'in.'

  "The midwife lifted the wailing child. 'A thousand blessings, my lady, for you have given birth to a healthy son!' she said.

  "The dying woman's nostrils twitched, and she opened her eyes. With an immense effort she lifted a hand and pointed to the midwife.

  "'Kao,' she panted. 'Li... Li... Li... Kao...'"

  I jerked up my head and looked wide-eyed at Master Li, who winked at me.

  "Tears blurred the abbot's eyes. 'I hear, my daughter,' he sniffled. 'Your son shall be named Li Kao.'

  "'Kao!' the woman gasped. 'Li... Li... Li... Kao...'

  " 'I understand, my daughter,' the abbot sobbed. 'I shall raise Li Kao as my own son, and I shall place his tiny feet upon the True Path. He shall be instructed in the Five Virtues and Excellent Doctrines, and at the end of his blameless life his spirit shall surely pass through the Gates of the Great Void into the Blessed Regions of Purified Semblance.'"

  Master Li swallowed another pint and offered me another sip, which produced the same choking result.

  "The woman's eyes blazed with a strong emotion that strangely resembled fury," he said, "but her strength was spent. Her eyes closed, and her hand fell limply to her side, and her soul departed to the Yellow Springs Beneath the Earth. The midwife was greatly moved, and when she whipped a small goatskin flask from her robe and drank deeply, the smell of the stuff brought a cold chill to the abbot's heart. That revolting odor could only come from the finest paint remover and worst wine ever invented: Kao-liang. Repeat: Kao-liang. Was it possible that the dying woman had not been naming a baby but demanding a snort? It was indeed possible, and it further developed that she had not been pursued by the duke's soldiers because she was an heroic rebel, but because she and her husband had stolen the regimental payroll. My parents were the most notorious crooks in China, and my mother could have escaped quite easily if she had not tried to battle my father for the loot."