by Ben Stevens
‘The other three are dead also, Ennin-sensei?’ queried the magistrate.
‘That is so,’ returned my master. ‘Those three men whom Li Du befriended when they were all still in their youth. All of them remarkable for some particular ability – poetry, in Li Du’s case; another young man was expert at the sheng, one of the most ancient of China’s reed instruments; another was so skilled at gong fu that he could allegedly break twenty bricks piled one on top of the other using only his little finger, while the fourth…’
My master paused, appeared a little uncertain and then gave a slight shrug.
‘I forget what it was the fourth man could do – ah! I believe he was chiefly famous for his remarkable wit. At a notorious suicide spot at the top of a mountain, it is said, he regularly dissuaded people from jumping simply by rendering them helpless with laughter.’
‘Fascinating, Ennin-sense,’ said the magistrate dryly, giving me a glance. ‘Yet for all their ability, along with their apparent immortality, they are all now dead, you say?’
Although he’d recently said something concerning his appreciation for Li Du’s poetry, I realized from his last comment that this magistrate was still an obviously slightly staid and unremarkable character, who did not appreciate hearing about these four rather exceptional individuals.
‘That is so,’ repeated my master. ‘Their very nickname – that is, the ‘Four Immortals of the Wine Cup’ – arose from their penchant for hard-drinking, and resultant hard-living. Such habits hardly make for a long and healthy lifespan, after all.’
‘Well, I need hardly linger here, anyhow,’ sighed the magistrate, as the dripping body of the Chinese poet was carried from the boat onto the shore by the two men. ‘There is obviously no ‘dark secret’ behind his death, after all. He was clearly drunk, as darkness fell, and using his small wooden boat he set sail upon this little lake for some reason which we shall never know. Then he stood up and slipped, or merely passed out, fell into the water and sadly drowned.’
‘That is his hut, over there?’ asked my master, pointing at a small dwelling made from bamboo, with a sloping roof covered with green reeds.
The magistrate glanced at one of the men who’d been on the boat, the one who’d declared that he’d often seen Li Du in the ‘pleasure quarters’.
The man replied –
‘That’s it; that’s where this Chinaman lived. He liked it here, I think, slightly out of town by this lake. Of course, when he wanted to come into town – to drink – he could do so easily enough. He didn’t speak Japanese very well, but he never seemed short of money, and he had a… Well, a woman friend.’
‘Someone in the pleasure quarter, you mean?’ demanded the magistrate, arching his eyebrows in a manner that was at once suggestive.
‘Yes, sir,’ nodded the man. ‘That sort of woman; but they seemed happy enough together, the few times I saw ‘em.’
‘Very good,’ snapped the magistrate. ‘Carry his body to my office, and we’ll see about getting him buried.’
The two men grunted as they picked up the corpse. (I guessed that they were laborers, employed for a little extra money now and again by the magistrate for such casual, although unpleasant work as this.)
‘Do you mind if I take a look in Li Du’s hut?’ my master asked the magistrate, who at once appeared a little suspicious at this request.
‘You… suspect something, perhaps, Ennin-sensei?’ asked the magistrate, trying (but failing entirely) to make his voice sound light and uncaring.
‘I do not,’ returned my master firmly. ‘I believe that you are entirely correct, in your description of how the Chinese poet met his unfortunate demise.’
The magistrate could not help but puff out his chest slightly with pride, at being so complimented by my famous master.
‘No,’ continued my master. ‘I would just like to… Well, see where this great poet lived, is all.’
‘You may do as you please, Ennin-sensei,’ shrugged the magistrate. ‘As for me, I still have a full day’s work ahead me, so if you’ll excuse me…’
With a bow, the magistrate departed, the two men carrying the body of the Chinese poet trailing along behind him. I followed my master over to that small bamboo hut, which was set slightly back from the lake. It was the sort of tranquil place I should imagine a poet would like to live; yet also (as that laborer had said) it was no great distance from the town, with its red-light district, where Li Du could freely indulge his baser passions…
Almost cautiously, we opened the small door and ventured inside. It was dim, the only light coming through the open doorway. A futon was set slightly up from the earthen floor, on a frame of branches. Beside this was an oil lamp, a sheaf of papers and some ink and standard writing equipment. A few empty flasks of wine and sake, also. Some clothes and blankets were piled against one of the bamboo walls. Although somewhat ‘basic’, I judged that this hut would be suitable for a man with no particular need for luxury.
It was almost autumn, though, and getting chilly in the evening. In the winter, the cold would be brutal.
I said as much to my master.
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘But a man such as Li Du would have only used the discomfort caused by this to further aid the composition of his poetry – which, judging from the papers we can see piled up beside his bed, remained prodigious right up to his death.’
My master picked up some of these ‘papers’, and read through them. The poems were written in Chinese – Li Du’s native tongue – in which (as the regular reader of these cases will know) my master is fluent.
‘What do you make of this, Kukai?’ said my master then. And he translated –
No man has ever held you
Yet so earnestly do I desire you
Your complexion so fair
You bewitch me
You shine your charms upon me
As temptation
Can I bridge the infinite time and distance between us?
If only once
‘It sounds like a poem of… longing, perhaps, master,’ I declared uncertainly. ‘As though he left some dear lover behind in China, and he knew that never again could he see her.
‘But then he writes that ‘No man has ever held you’…’
‘Yes,’ returned my master thoughtfully. ‘And also, he –’
We were disturbed by the sudden entrance of a woman inside this hut, whom I at once somehow knew was the woman Li Du had associated with within the town’s pleasure quarters. Although not unattractive, and still partially in her youth, she nevertheless had that look about her – the one which shows that someone is involved in what is euphemistically known as the mizu shobai – the ‘water trade’.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘And what are you doing here?’
Her expression was hostile, yet also showed deep grief. Clearly, she’d just heard about the unfortunate demise of the man who’d been her lover.
‘My name is Ennin,’ said my master gently. ‘Forgive me – I admired Li Du’s work. I only wished to see a little more of it, while I had the chance.’
‘Ennin… sensei?’ murmured the woman; and from the way her eyes had abruptly widened, her expression now displaying a little surprise, it was obvious she’d already heard of my master’s name.
‘That is so,’ returned my master, with a perfunctory inclination of his head.
‘I have heard of you, and your servant,’ she said, glancing at me. I couldn’t help but feel a slight pride at this recognition. Usually it was my master – famous for his skill at what I can only weakly label as being ‘detection and deduction’, but also striking in appearance with his unusual height and bald and curiously elongated skull – who commanded complete attention. In contrast with him, both in appearance as well as ‘ability’, I freely confess that I pale somewhat into insignificance.
‘He loved me,’ said the woman then, her voice low but still somehow fierce. ‘Everyone thought he just came to me because… Because of where I w
ork, and what I do… But he always asked for me, and he spoke with me…’
My master gave a slight cough.
‘I was under the impression,’ he began carefully, ‘that the poet Li Du spoke only limited Japanese. So, you… you have some knowledge of the Chinese tongue, perhaps?’
The woman appeared a little embarrassed.
‘Well, no,’ she admitted; then she quickly continued, ‘But what need did we have for mere words? Our hearts spoke the same language. In time, I am sure, he would have left here, his romantic nature causing him to go wandering far and wide – and he would have asked me to go with him.’
‘And you would have gone?’ asked my master, his expression unreadable.
‘Any time at all,’ replied the woman; and for a moment her expression almost crumbled under the weight of her misery. I sensed the endless nights, the crashing of cups, the drunken, false laughter, the pawing hands and the inevitable, reluctant surrender… And then a truly remarkable man had presented himself to her, giving her a gleam – no matter how slight – of hope; that maybe there was, in fact, a way out of this grinding existence which devours who knows how many women each year…
‘Please,’ she said then to my master, seeing what he held in his hands. ‘I cannot read… even my own language. Li Du wrote in Chinese, I know – but they say that you can understand this tongue? If so, please, just a few lines…’
‘Of course,’ said my master; and he read –
If I lived for a million years
Yet still would you captivate me
Women have come and gone
Alcohol provides but fleeting pleasure
Laughter among friends fades away
But you alone remain
My one passion
My one dream
The knower of my thoughts
The mistress of my passions
‘Oh…’ sighed the woman, as my master’s voice faded in silence. ‘Oh…’
She now wore a serene smile; I realized that she assumed the words had been written about her. And, after all, maybe they had. Maybe the poet Li Du – that man of strange and mercurial nature, given to excessive drinking – had formed such a strong affection for her, for some reason only his now-departed soul would ever know…
‘I have to go now,’ she said. ‘I will return early tomorrow morning, as soon as my… work is finished, to sort through the few… possessions, here in Li Du’s hut.’
For a moment her voice choked with a sob; but again regaining control over herself, she finished –
‘Please, stay here as long as you like. Read more of his poetry. And when I return tomorrow, if you are still here, if you could recite just a little more for me…’
‘Of course,’ returned my master. ‘Of course.’
She left, and there was silence as my master glanced at a few more sheets of paper, the characters written upon them in black, spidery strokes. Then he left the hut, a slight, inscrutable smile upon his face. He stood gazing out at the small lake, the small wooden boat which Li Du had slipped out of into the water having been pulled to the shore, at the same time as his body had been retrieved.
‘Master?’ I said quietly.
‘We wait, Kukai. We wait till nightfall. And then we will see, perhaps, what Li Du saw – the source of his total and consuming desire…’
At my master’s request, I left to get us some food and sake. We had something of a long wait ahead of us, for it was still barely mid-morning. Then we sat for several hours in the small hut, slowly eating and drinking as my master again glanced through the mass of poems, frequently smiling that strange smile to himself and nodding.
Occasionally he read aloud some line, presumably for my benefit, although (if I am to be completely honest) I considered that Li Du’s poetic ability was hardly that remarkable. I’m sure I could write a few words about the dubious pleasures of being drunk, after all, should someone ever force me to do so.
Speaking of being drunk, by the time it finally began to grow dark, both my master and I were just a little unsteady on our feet as we left the hut and walked outside. We had, after all, been consuming sake, slowly but steadily, for the past several hours.
I couldn’t help but sense that this was my master’s way of trying to get inside the head, as it were, of the recently-deceased poet; this way to see, to think, what Li Du had seen and thought, during the nighttime of the previous day…
But what had he seen…?
‘There…’ said my master, in what was scarcely a whisper. ‘There…’
It was now fully dark; and there hung the moon, above the lake, almost supernaturally large and bright.
If I lived for a million years
Yet still would you captivate me
I heard myself murmuring these words; these two lines penned by the dead poet.
You bewitch me
You shine your charms upon me
As temptation
Can I bridge the infinite time and distance between us?
If only once
My master said these words, as he slowly raised his arm and pointed out towards the centre of the still lake, there where the reflection of the autumn moon was strongest and brightest.
Yes, so that it almost appeared as though it was tangible – solid.
As if you could reach out and –
Touch it.
‘He thought he could,’ murmured my master, as though he could read my thoughts. ‘In his intoxicated state, and thus overcome by romantic passion, Li Du really thought that he could touch it. Embrace the moon; take it in his arms…
‘But in trying to do so, he reached too far out of the boat, slipped into the water and…’
There was no need to continue. After a few moments, my master raised his cup of sake towards that white, shining celestial body, and when I had done the same, we said almost at the same time –
‘To Li Du!’
In the morning, the woman returned. Although she was obviously grieving, still she wore the slightest of smiles, so deeply had the words my master had read her yesterday touched her heart.
‘At least now I truly know how much I meant to him,’ she said softly, as she began to sort through the few, pitiful possessions inside that crudely-made hut. ‘I have that consolation, no matter what. It gives me such strength, to know that a man like Li Du felt so passionately for me.’
‘Actually, what he meant was –’
One look from my master was enough to silence me. Shamed, I glanced back at the woman. Fortunately, however, she appeared to have not even heard my words.
‘Yes. Even though Li Du is… dead, still what he wrote in those poems is now engraved in my heart,’ she said then. ‘But would you read me a little more, Ennin-sensei, if it would not take up too much of your time?’
‘Of course,’ said my master; and as he began to translate those Chinese characters, written in that thin and spidery hand, I knew that he was carefully removing, or subtly changing, anything which might have made the woman realize that Li Du had actually been writing his tribute for something that has shone for as long as this world has existed –
And not her.
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