BRIDGE OF BIRDS..
A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was.
by Barry Hughart.
Part One - MASTER LI
1. The Village of Ku-fu
I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.
My surname is Lu and my personal name is Yu, but I am not to be confused with the eminent author of The Cla.s.sic of Tea. My family is quite undistinguished, and since I am the tenth of my father"s sons and rather strong I am usually referred to as Number Ten Ox. My father died when I was eight. A year later my mother followed him to the Yellow Springs Beneath the Earth, and since then I have lived with Uncle Nung and Auntie Hua in the village of Ku-fu in the valley of Cho. We take great pride in our landmarks. Until recently we also took great pride in two gentlemen who were such perfect specimens that people used to come from miles around just to stare at them, so perhaps I should begin a description of my village with a couple of cla.s.sics.
When p.a.w.nbroker Fang approached Ma the Grub with the idea of joining forces he opened negotiations by presenting Ma"s wife with the picture of a small fish drawn upon a piece of cheap paper. Ma"s wife accepted the magnificent gift, and in return she extended her right hand and made a circle with the thumb and forefinger. At that point the door crashed open and Ma the Grub charged inside and screamed: "Woman, would you ruin me? Half of a pie would have been enough!"
That may not be literally true, but the abbot of our monastery always said that fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.
p.a.w.nbroker Fang"s ability to guess the lowest possible amount that a person would accept for a p.a.w.ned item was so unerring that I had concluded that it was supernatural, but then the abbot took me aside and explained that Fang wasn"t guessing at all. There was always some smooth shiny object lying on top of his desk in the front room of Ma the Grub"s warehouse, and it was used as a mirror that would reflect the eyes of the victim.
"Cheap, very cheap," Fang would sneer, turning the object in his hands. "No more than two hundred cash."
His eyes would drop to the shiny object, and if the pupils of the reflected eyes constricted too sharply he would try again.
"Well, the workmanship isn"t too bad, in a crude peasant fashion. Make it two-fifty."
The reflected pupils would dilate, but perhaps not quite far enough.
"It is the anniversary of my poor wife"s untimely demise, the thought of which always destroys my business judgment," Fang would whimper, in a voice clotted with tears. "Three hundred cash, but not one penny more!"
Actually no money would change hands because ours is a barter economy. The victim would take a credit slip through the door to the warehouse, and Ma the Grub would stare at it in disbelief and scream out to Fang: "Madman! Your lunatic generosity will drive us into bankruptcy! Who will feed your starving brats when we are reduced to tattered cloaks and begging bowls?" Then he would honor the credit slip with goods that had been marked up by 600 percent.
p.a.w.nbroker Fang was a widower with two children, a pretty little daughter we called Fang"s Fawn and a younger son that we called Fang"s Flea. Ma the Grub was childless, and when his wife ran off with a rug peddler his household expenses were cut in half and his happiness was doubled. The happiest time of all for the team of Ma and Fang was our annual silk harvest, because silkworm eggs could only be purchased with money and they had all the money. Ma the Grub would buy the eggs and hand them out to each family in exchange for lOUs that were to be redeemed with silk, and since p.a.w.nbroker Fang was the only qualified appraiser of silk for miles around they were able to take two-thirds of our crop to Peking and return with bulging bags of coins, which they buried in their gardens on moonless midnights.
The abbot used to say that the emotional health of a village depended upon having a man whom everyone loved to hate, and Heaven had blessed us with two of them.
Our landmarks are our lake and our wall, and both of them are the result of the superst.i.tion and mythology of ancient times. When our ancestors arrived in the valley of Cho they examined the terrain with the greatest of care, and we honestly believe that no village in the world has been better planned than the village of Ku-fu. Our ancestors laid it out so that it would be sheltered from the Black Tortoise, a beast of the very worst character, whose direction is north and whose element is water and whose season is winter. It is open to the Red Bird of the south, and the element of fire and the season of summer. And the eastern hills where the Blue Dragon lives, with the element of wood and the hopeful season of spring, are stronger than the hills to the west, which is the home of the White Tiger, metal, and the melancholy season of autumn.
Considerable thought was given to the shape of the village, on the grounds that a man who built a village like a fish while a neighboring village was built like a hook was begging for disaster. The finished shape was the outline of a unicorn, a gentle and law-abiding creature with no natural enemies whatsoever. But it appeared that something had gone wrong because one day there was a low snorting sort of a noise and the earth heaved, and several cottages collapsed and a great crack appeared in the soil. Our ancestors examined their village from every possible angle, and the flaw was discovered when one of them climbed to the top of the tallest tree on the eastern hills and gazed down. By a foolish oversight the last five rice paddies had been arranged so that they formed the wings and body of a huge hungry horsefly that had settled upon the tender flank of the unicorn, so of course the unicorn had kicked up its heels. The paddies were altered into the shape of a bandage, and Ku-fu was never again disturbed by upheavals.
They made sure that there would be no straight roads or rivers that might draw good influences away, and as a further precaution they dammed up the end of a narrow little valley and channeled rivulets down the sides of the hills, and thus produced a small lake that would capture and hold good influences that might otherwise trickle away to other villages. They had no aesthetic intent whatsoever. The beauty of our lake was an accident of superst.i.tion, but the result was such that when the great poet Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju pa.s.sed through on a walking trip five hundred years ago he paused at the little lake and was inspired to write to a friend:
The waters are loud with fish and turtles, A mult.i.tude of living things; Wild geese and swans, graylags, bustards, Cranes and mallards, Loons and spoonbills, Flock and settle on the waters, Drifting lightly over the surface, Buffeted by the wind, Bobbing and dipping with the waves, Sporting among the weedy banks, Gobbling the reeds and duckweed, Pecking at water chestnuts and lotuses.
It is like that today, and Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju was not there in the season to see the ma.s.ses of wildflowers, or the tiny dappled deer that come to drink and then vanish like puffs of smoke.
Our wall landmark is far more famous. It is only fair to point out that there are many different stories concerning the origin of Dragon"s Pillow, but we in Ku-fu like to think that our version is the only correct one.
Many centuries ago there was a general who was ordered to build one of the defensive walls that were to be linked into the Great Wall, and one night he dreamed that he had been summoned to Heaven to present his plan for the wall to the August Personage of Jade. At his subsequent trial for treason he gave a vivid account of the trip.
He had dreamed that he had been inside a giant lotus, and the leaves had slowly opened to form a doorway, and he had stepped out upon the emerald gra.s.s of Heaven. The sky was sapphire, and a path made from pearls lay near his feet. A willow tree lifted a branch and pointed it like a finger, and the general followed the path to the River of Flowers, which was cascading down the Cliff of the Great Awakening. The concubines of the Emperor of Heaven were bathing in the Pool of Blissful Fragrances, laughing and splashing in a rainbow of rose petals, and they were so beautiful that the general found it hard to tear himself away. But duty called, so he followed the path as it climbed seven terraces where the leaves on the trees were made from precious stones, which rang musically when the breeze touched them, and where birds of bright plumage sang with divine voices of the Five Virtues and Excellent Doctrines. The path continued around the lush orchards where the Queen Mother w.a.n.g grew the Peaches of Immortality, and when the general made the last turn around the orchards he found himself directly in front of the palace of the Emperor of Heaven.
Flunkies were waiting for him. They ushered him into the audience chamber, and after the three obeisances and nine kowtows he was allowed to rise and approach the throne. The August Personage of Jade was seated with his hands crossed upon the Imperial Book of Etiquette, which lay upon his lap. He wore a flat hat rather like a board, from which dangled thirteen pendants of colored pearls upon red strings, and his black silk robe rippled with red and yellow dragons. The general bowed and humbly presented his plan for the wall.
Behind the throne stood T"ien-kou, the Celestial Dog, whose teeth had chewed mountains in half, and beside the Celestial Dog stood Ehr-lang, who is unquestionably the greatest of all warriors because he had been able to battle the stupendous Stone Monkey to a standstill. (The Monkey symbolizes intellect.) The two bodyguards appeared to be glaring at the general. He hastily lowered his eyes, and he saw that the symbol of the emperor"s predecessor, the Heavenly Master of the First Origin, was stamped upon the left arm of the throne, and on the right arm was the symbol of the emperor"s eventual successor, the Heavenly Master of the Dawn of Jade of the Golden Door. The general was so overcome by a dizzying sense of timelessness in which there was no means of measurement and comparison that he felt quite sick to his stomach. He was afraid that he was going to disgrace himself by throwing up, but in the nick of time he saw that his plan, neatly rolled back into a scroll and retied, was extended before his lowered eyes. He took it and dropped to his knees and awaited divine censure or praise, but none was forthcoming. The August Personage of Jade silently signaled the end of the interview. The general crawled backward, banging his head against the floor, and at the doorway he was seized by the flunkies, who marched him outside and across a couple of miles of meadow. Then they picked him up and dumped him into the Great River of Stars.
Oddly enough, the general testified, he had not been frightened at all. It was the rainy season in Heaven, and billions of brilliant stars were bouncing over raging waves that roared like a trillion tigers, but the general sank quite peacefully into the water. He drifted down farther and farther, and then he fell right through the bottom, and the glittering light of the Great River receded rapidly in the distance as he plunged head over heels toward earth. He landed smack in the middle of his bed, just as his servant entered to wake him for breakfast.
It was some time before he could gather enough courage to open his plan, and when he did he discovered that the Emperor of Heaven - or somebody - had moved the wall 122 miles to the south, which placed it in the middle of the valley of Cho, where it could serve no useful purpose whatsoever.
What was he to do? He could not possibly defy the mandate of Heaven, so he ordered his men to build a wall that led nowhere and connected to nothing, and that was why the general was arrested and brought before the Emperor of China on the charge of treason. When he told his tale the charge of treason was tossed out of court. Instead the general was sentenced to death for being drunk on duty, and desperation produced one of the loveliest excuses in history. That wall, the general said firmly, had been perfectly placed, but one night a dragon leaned against it and fell asleep, and in the morning it was discovered that the bulk of the beast had shoved the wall into its current ludicrous position.
Word of Dragon"s Pillow swept through the delighted court, where the general had clever and unscrupulous friends. They began their campaign to save his neck by bribing the emperor"s favorite soothsayer.
"O Son of Heaven," the fellow screeched, "I have consulted the Trigrams, and for reasons known only to the August Personage of Jade that strange stretch of wall is the most important of all fortifications! So important is it that it cannot be guarded by mortal men, but only by the spirits of ten thousand soldiers who must be buried alive in the foundations!"
The emperor was quite humane, as emperors go, and he begged the soothsayer to try again and see if there might not have been some mistake. After pocketing another bribe the soothsayer came up with a different interpretation.
"O Son of Heaven, the Trigrams clearly state that wan must be buried alive in the foundations, but while wan can mean ten thousand, it is also a common family name!" he bellowed. "The solution is obvious, for what is the life of one insignificant soldier compared to the most important wall in China?"
The Emperor still didn"t like it, but he didn"t appear to have much of a choice, so he ordered his guards to go out and lay hands on the first common soldier named Wan. All accounts agree that Wan behaved with great dignity. His family was provided with a pension, and he was told that Heaven had honored him above all others, and he was given a trumpet with which to sound the alarm should China be threatened, and then a hole was cut in the base of the wall and Wan marched dutifully inside. The hole was bricked up again, and a watchtower - the Eye of the Dragon - was placed upon the highest point of Dragon"s Pillow where Wan"s ghost could maintain its lonely vigil.
The emperor was so sick of the whole affair that he refused to allow that cursed stretch of wall, or anyone connected with it, to be mentioned in his presence. Of course that is what the clever fellows had been planning all along, and their friend the general was quietly set free to write his memoirs.
For nearly a century Dragon"s Pillow was a favorite of sightseers. A small number of soldiers was detached to maintain the wall, but since it served no purpose except as a watchtower for a ghost it was eventually allowed to fall into decay. Even the sightseers lost interest in it, and weeds grew and rocks crumbled. It was a paradise for children, however, and for a few centuries it was the favorite playpen of the children of my village, but then something happened that left Dragon"s Pillow abandoned even by children.
One evening the children of Ku-fu were beginning one of the games that had originated somewhere back toward the beginning of time, and suddenly they stopped short. A hollow, bodiless voice - one boy later said that it might have been echoing through two hundred miles of bamboo pipe - drifted down to them from the Eye of the Dragon. So strange were the words that every one of the children remembered them perfectly, even though they took to their heels as soon as their hearts resumed beating.
Was it possible that poor Wan, the most important of all sentinels on the most important of all watchtowers, was sending a message to China through the children of the humble village of Ku-fu? If so, it was a very strange message indeed, and sages and scholars struggled for centuries to wrest some meaning from it.
If my ill.u.s.trious readers would care to take a crack at it, I will wish them the very best of luck.
Jade plate, Six, eight.
Fire that burns hot, Night that is not.
Fire that burns cold, First silver, then gold.
2. The Plague
My story begins with the silk harvest in the Year of the Tiger 3,337 (A.D. 639), when the prospects for a record crop had never seemed better.
The eggs that Ma the Grub handed out were quite beautiful, jet-black and glowing with health, and the leaves on the mulberry trees were so thick that the groves resembled tapestries woven from deep green brocade, and youngsters raced around singing, "Mulberry leaves so shiny and bright, children all clap hands at the sight!" Our village crackled with excitement. Girls carried straw baskets up the hill to the monastery, and the bonzes lined them with yellow paper upon which they had drawn pictures of Lady Horsehead, and the abbot blessed the baskets and burned incense to the patron of sericulture. Bamboo racks and trays were taken to the river and vigorously scrubbed. Wildflowers were picked and crushed, lamp wicks cut into tiny pieces, and the oldest members of each family smeared cloves of garlic with moist earth and placed them against the walls of the cottages. If the garlic produced many sprouts it would mean a bountiful harvest, and never in living memory had anyone seen so many sprouts. The women slept with the sheets of silkworm eggs pressed against their bare flesh, in order to hasten the hatching process through body heat, and the old ones tossed handfuls of rice into pots that bubbled over charcoal fires. When the steam lifted straight up, without a quiver, they yelled, "Now!"
The women brushed the eggs into the baskets with goose feathers. Then they sprinkled the crushed wildflowers and the pieces of lamp wicks on top and placed the baskets upon the bamboo racks. The goose feathers were carefully pinned to the sides of the baskets, and charcoal fires were lit beneath the racks. (The significance of wildflowers, lamp wicks, and goose feathers has been lost in antiquity, but we would never dream of changing the custom.) The families knelt to pray to Lady Horsehead, and in every cottage the eggs hatched right on schedule.
The Dark Ladies wriggled lazily, enjoying the heat of the fires, but they were not lazy for long. Unless one has seen them, it is quite impossible to imagine how much silkworms can - must - eat, and their only food is mulberry leaves. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the chewing sounds of ravenous silkworms are enough to waken hibernating bears, but sleep would be out of the question anyway. It takes thirty days, more or less, for silkworms to prepare to spin, and there are but three brief periods when they aren"t eating: the Short Sleep, the Second Sleep, and the Big Sleep. After the Big Sleep silkworms will die if an hour pa.s.ses without food, and we worked day and night stripping leaves from trees and carrying them to the cottages in basket brigades. The children were given regular rest periods, of course, but during the thirty days the rest of us were lucky to get sixty hours of sleep.
The old ones tended the fires, because silkworms must have steady heat, and the children who were too young to work in basket brigades were turned out to fend for themselves. In grove after grove we stripped the trees to the bare branches, and then we stumbled in exhaustion to the mulberry grove that belonged to p.a.w.nbroker Fang. That cost us more IOUs, but they were the finest trees in the village. Gradually the silkworms changed color, from black to green, and from green to white, and then translucent, and the oldest family members erected bamboo screens in front of the racks, because silkworms are shy when they begin to spin and must have privacy.
The deafening feeding noises dropped to a roar, and then to a sound like distant surf, and then to a whisper. The silence that finally settled over our village seemed eerily unreal. There was nothing more to be done except to keep the fires going, and if fortune favored us we would pull the screens away in three days and see fields of snow: the white coc.o.o.ns called Silkworm Blossoms, ma.s.sed upon the racks and waiting to be reeled onto spindles in continuous strands more than a thousand feet long.
Some of us made it to our beds, but others simply dropped in their tracks.
I awoke on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, which happened to be my nineteenth birthday, to the sound of a soft pattering rain. The clouds were beginning to lift. Slanting rays of sunlight slid through silver raindrops, and a soft mist drifted across the fields like smoke. In the distance I could see the hazy outline of Dragon"s Pillow, and nearby on the riverbank some boys were teasing Fang"s Fawn, who was riding a water buffalo. I decided that the boys were following her around because the rain had plastered her tunic around small shapely b.r.e.a.s.t.s that the pretty little girl didn"t have a month ago, and Fawn was enjoying the attention immensely. Bells were ringing from the monastery upon the hill.
I stretched lazily in bed, savoring the smells of tea and porridge from Auntie Hua"s kitchen, and then I jerked upright. The boys at the riverbank were staring wide-eyed at Fang"s Fawn, who had turned pale as death. She clutched her throat and gave a sharp cry of pain and toppled from the water buffalo to the gra.s.s.
I was out the door in an instant. Fawn"s eyes were wide and staring, but she didn"t see me while I tested her pulse, which was faint and erratic. Perspiration glistened on her forehead. I told the boys to run for her father, and then I picked her up and raced up the hill to the monastery.
The abbot was also our doctor, professionally trained at Hanlin Academy, but he was clearly puzzled by Fawn"s sickness. Her vital signs had dropped so low that he had to hold a mirror to her lips to find a trace of condensation, and when he took a pin and p.r.i.c.ked her flesh at various pain points there was no reaction. Her eyes were still wide and unseeing.
Suddenly the pretty little girl sat up and screamed. The sound was shocking in the hush of the monastery. Her hands clawed the air, fending off something that wasn"t there, and she jerked convulsively. Then she fell back upon the bed and her eyes closed. Her body grew limp, and once more her vital signs dropped to almost nothing.
"Demons!" I whispered.
"I sincerely hope so," the abbot said grimly, and I later learned that he had begun to suspect rabies, and that he would prefer to confront the most hideous demons from the most horrible corners of h.e.l.l.
There had been noises swelling up in the village below the hill, a confusion of sounds, and now we began to hear curses from the men and wails and lamentations from the women. The abbot looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I was out the door and down the hill in a flash, and after that things got so confusing that I have difficulty sorting them out in my mind.
It began with Auntie Hua. She had been tending the fire at the silkworm rack in her cottage and she had smelled something that worried her. When she cautiously peered through a crack in the screen she had not seen a field of snow, but a black rotting ma.s.s of pulp. Her agonized wails brought the neighbors, who raced back to their own cottages, and as howls arose from every corner of the village it became apparent that for the first time in living memory our silk harvest had been a total failure. That was merely the beginning.
Big Hong the blacksmith ran from his house with wide frightened eyes, carrying his small son in his arms. Little Hong"s eyes were wide and unseeing, and he screamed and clawed the air. The blacksmith was followed by w.a.n.g the wineseller, whose small daughter was screaming and clawing the air. More and more parents dashed out with children in their arms, and a frantic mob raced up the hill toward the monastery.
It was not rabies. It was a plague.
I stared in disbelief at two tiny girls who were standing in a doorway with their thumbs in their mouths. Mother Ho"s great-granddaughters were so sickly that the abbot had worked night and day to keep them alive, yet they were completely untouched by the plague. I ran past them into their cottage. Mother Ho was ninety-two and sinking fast, and my heart was in my mouth as I approached her bed and drew back the covers. I received a stinging slap on my nose.
"Who do you think you are? The Imperial p.r.i.c.k?" the old lady yelled.
(She meant Emperor Wu-ti. After his death his lecherous ghost kept hopping into his concubines" beds, and in desperation they had recruited new brides from all over, and it was not until the total reached 503 that the exhausted spectre finally gave up and crawled back into its tomb.) I ran back out and turned into cottage after cottage, where tiny children stared at me and cried, or laughed and wanted to play, and the old ones who wept beside the racks of rotting silkworms were otherwise as healthy as horses. Then I ran back up the hill and told the abbot what I had seen, and when we made a list the truth was indisputable, and it was also unbelievable.
Not one child under the age of eight and not one person over the age of thirteen had been affected by the plague, but every child - every single one - between the ages of eight and thirteen had screamed and blindly clawed the air, and now lay as still as death in the infirmary that the abbot had set up in the bonzes" common room. The weeping parents looked to the abbot for a cure, but he spread his arms and cried out in despair: "First tell me how a plague can learn how to count!"
Auntie Hua had always been the decisive one in our family. She took me aside. "Ox, the abbot is right," she said hoa.r.s.ely. "We need a wise man who can tell us how a plague can learn to count, and I have heard that there are such men in Peking, and that they live on the Street of Eyes. I have also heard that they charge dearly for their services."
"Auntie, it will take a week to squeeze money out of p.a.w.nbroker Fang, even though Fawn is one of the victims," I said.
She nodded, and then she reached into her dress and pulled out a worn leather purse. When she dumped the contents into my hands I stared at more money than I had ever seen in my life: hundreds of copper coins, strung upon a green cord.
"Five thousand copper cash, and you are never to tell your uncle about this. Not ever!" the old lady said fiercely. "Run to Peking. Go to the Street of Eyes and bring a wise man back to our village."
I had heard that Auntie Hua had been a rather wild beauty in her youth and I briefly wondered whether she might have reason to sacrifice to P"an Chin-lien, the patron of fallen women, but I had no time for such speculations because I was off and running like the wind.
I share my birthday with the moon, and Peking was a madhouse when I arrived. Trying to shove through the mobs that had turned out for the Moon Festival was like one of those nightmares in which one struggles through quicksand. The din was incredible, and I forced my way through the streets with the wild eyes and aching ears of a colt at a blacksmiths" convention, and I was quite terrified when I finally reached the street that I was looking for. It was an elegant avenue that was lined on both sides with very expensive houses, and above each door was the sign of a wide unblinking eye.
"The truth revealed," those eyes seemed to be saying. "We see everything."
I felt the first stirrings of hope, and I banged at the nearest door. It was opened by a haughty eunuch who was attired in clothes that I had previously a.s.sociated with royalty, and he ran his eyes from my bamboo hat to my shabby sandals, clapped a perfumed handkerchief to his nose, and ordered me to state my business. The eunuch didn"t blink an eye when I said that I wanted his master to explain how a plague could learn to count, but when I said that I was prepared to pay as much as five thousand copper cash he turned pale, leaned weakly against the wall, and groped for smelling salts.
"Five thousand copper cash?" he whispered. "Boy, my master charges fifty pieces of silver to find a lost dog!"
The door slammed in my face, and when I tried the next house I exited through the air, pitched by six husky footmen while a bejeweled lackey shook his fist and screamed, "You dare to offer five thousand copper cash to the former chief investigator for the Son of Heaven himself? Back to your mud hovel, you insolent peasant!"
In house after house the result was the same, except that I exited in a more dignified manner - my fists were clenched and there was a glint in my eyes, and I am not exactly small - and I decided that I was going to have to hit a wise man over the head, stuff him in a bag, and carry him back to Ku-fu whether he liked it or not. Then I received a sign from Heaven. I had reached the end of the avenue and was starting to go back up the other side, and suddenly a shaft of brilliant sunlight shot through the clouds and darted like an arrow into a narrow winding alley. It sparkled upon the sign of an eye, but this eye was not wide open. It was half-shut.
"Part of the truth revealed," the eye seemed to be saying. "Some things I see, but some I don"t."
If that was the message it was the first sensible thing that I had seen in Peking, and I turned and started down the alley.
3. A Sage with a Slight Flaw in His Character
The sign was old and shabby, and it hung above the open door of a sagging bamboo shack. When I timidly stepped inside I saw smashed furniture and a ma.s.s of shattered crockery, and the reek of sour wine made my head reel. The sole inhabitant was snoring upon a filthy mattress.
He was old almost beyond belief. He could not have weighed more than ninety pounds, and his frail bones would have been more suitable for a large bird. Drunken flies were staggering through pools of spilled wine, and crawling giddily up the ancient gentleman"s bald skull, and tumbling down the wrinkled seams of a face that might have been a relief map of all China, and becoming entangled in a wispy white beard. Small bubbles formed and burst upon the old man"s lips, and his breath was foul.
I sighed and turned to go, and then I stopped dead in my tracks and caught my breath.
Once an eminent visitor to our monastery had displayed the gold diploma that was awarded to the scholar who had won third place in the imperial chin-shih examination, and in school-books I had seen ill.u.s.trations of the silver diploma that was awarded to second place, but never did I dream that I would be privileged to see the flower. The real thing, not a picture of it. There it was, casually tacked to a post not two feet from my eyes, and I reverently blew away the dust to read that seventy-eight years ago a certain Li Kao had been awarded first place among all the scholars in China, and had received an appointment as a full research fellow in the Forest of Culture Academy.
I turned from the picture of the rose and gazed with wide eyes at the ancient gentleman upon the mattress. Could this be the great Li Kao, whose brain had caused the empire to bow at his feet? Who had been elevated to the highest rank of mandarin, and whose mighty head was now being used as a pillow for drunken flies? I stood there, rooted in wonder, while the wrinkles began to heave like the waves of a gray and storm-tossed sea. Two red-rimmed eyes appeared, and a long spotted tongue slid out and painfully licked parched lips.
"Wine!" he wheezed.
I searched for an unbroken jar, but there wasn"t one. "Venerable Sir, I fear that all the wine is gone," I said politely.
His eyes creaked toward a shabby purse that lay in a puddle. "Money!" he wheezed.