| TO be young and rich in Ch'in! It was a world of flowers and incense and exotic perfumes, flutes and gongs and silver bells, tangles of luscious bare limbs, and endless streams of gold pouring into greedy hands. Screaming crowds thronged the boat races and cricket fights, and magnificent banquets in upper-class restaurants were followed by magnificent riots in lower-class wineshops. Brightly painted brothel barges floated like butterflies upon endless ornamental lakes. On emerald islands pallid priests with twitching hands and flabby faces sold the most peculiar things in strange pagodas. Every vice known to mankind was in full flower in the glorious pleasure city of Ch'in, and there I was right in the middle of it with a seemingly inexhaustible fortune! I rode through the streets in a palanquin so huge that it was carried by sixty swearing servants. Naked dancing girls were draped around me. I dipped a jade cup into a cask of rare wine, and with the other hand I scooped silver coins from a brassbound chest and hurled them to the lower classes. |
1 |
| "For the love of Buddha, buy clean clothes!" I yelled. "Get rid of your loathsome lice! Sweeten your foul breaths with decent wine! Bathe!" |
2 |
| And the adoring mob screamed: |
3 |
| "LONG LIVE LORD LI OF KAO!" |
4 |
| The enemy of dissipation is boredom, and I was saved from yawning ennui by the most unlikely source imaginable. Early one morning when the sky was just turning pink I was returning alone from yet another orgy - everyone else including my servants had passed out - when suddenly I stopped in my tracks. A woman was laughing on the other side of a low garden wall. Something about that carefree laughter drew me like a magnet, and I climbed to the top of the wall and peered over at a modest house, and at a modest garden that ran down to the edge of one the ornamental lakes that were scattered around Ch'in like jewels. A young woman was standing at the water's edge. I could not make out her features, but my heart told me that she was beautiful. Then she reached down and picked up a small flat stone and wound up and let fly, and that throw told her history. Only a peasant girl who had been the terror of crows could throw like that. The stone skipped seven times across the water and sailed smack into its target: a gross bullfrog upon a lily pad that had been admiring the center of the universe, meaning itself. |
5 |
| "Bwork!" squawked the frog as it plopped indignantly into the water. |
6 |
| The young woman laughed again. Then she yawned, stretched, scratched, spat unselfconsciously, plucked a young bamboo shoot, and strolled back toward the house chewing on the stem. |
7 |
| "To hell with perfumed beauties!" I said to myself. "Li Kao, what you want is a yawning, spitting, rock-throwing peasant girl!" |
8 |
| Old Mother Wan, the procuress, knew everybody. |
9 |
| "Why, that is the house of the Key Rabbit" she said. "The young woman can only be his wife, and I feel duty bound to warn you that there is a slight flaw in her character." |
10 |
| "You don't say!" |
11 |
| "I do say. The Key Rabbit married her in a moment of insanity and has regretted it ever since," said Mother Wan. "Lotus Cloud is a dear sweet girl, but she suffers from greed. Her greed is quite insatiable. Everyone knows that the Key Rabbit has not one penny to call his own, and in his madness he married the most expensive woman in the whole world. Why, he cannot even breathe easily when his wife finds a wealthy lover, for she is certain to bankrupt the fellow in a week! The Key Rabbit is convinced that he committed some horrible crime in a former incarnation, and is being punished for it now by being married to Lotus Cloud," said Mother Wan. |
12 |
| I considered my inexhaustible wealth and decided that it was my charitable duty to brighten the existence of the Key Rabbit. |
13 |
| The easiest way to meet the Assessor of Ch'in was to incur a whopping fine, and since I was renting a small palace that belonged to the duke I trotted home and set fire to the place. I was roasting a goose over the embers when the Key Rabbit arrived. |
14 |
| "Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear! Regulation two hundred and twenty-six, palaces, rented, accidental destruction thereof--" |
15 |
| "Willful," I yawned. "I found the view boring." |
16 |
| "Regulation two hundred and twenty-seven, palaces, rented, willful destruction thereof: full value plus fifty percent, plus fire fighting costs, plus wreckage removal costs, plus triple the standard fine for disturbing the peace, plus twenty-five percent of the total for defaming the view provided by the duke, plus--" |
17 |
| "Great Buddha!" I roared. "Stop babbling and give me the grand total!" |
18 |
| I thought that the little fellow was going to die. He rolled his pink-rimmed eyes toward Heaven and shrieked: "Nineteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-six pieces of gold!" |
19 |
| "Take one of those chests over there, one of the blue ones," I sighed. "Actually the blue ones each contain twenty thousand pieces of gold, but I simply cannot be bothered with change." |
20 |
| It took quite a few minutes to revive him, but the Key Rabbit grasped the possibilities as soon as he regained consciousness. Lord Li of Kao now had no place to stay, and while the Key Rabbit's own miserable hovel was scarcely suitable it might do for one night, and since the Key Rabbit had to spend the night counting the duke's money his dear young wife would be all alone, and women require protection. |
21 |
| "Protection among other things," he said, kissing the hem of my robe. "Such as pearls," he sobbed. "Jade!" |
22 |
| "May I offer you some roast goose? My own recipe," I said, "marinated twenty-four hours in the lees of fine wine, with honey and crushed apricots. After a light repast we shall visit the nearest jeweler, and purchase a wheelbarrow load of pearls and jade, for in the immortal words of Chang Chou: I prefer my own cooking, but other people's wives." |
23 |
| "Joy!" squealed the Key Rabbit. |
24 |
| Late that night I leaned against a tree in the Key Rabbit's garden. |
25 |
| The path of pearls and jade that I had strewn over the grass sparkled prettily in the moonlight, and I felt a breathless excitement as I watched Lotus Cloud approach. Surely the most expensive woman in the world must also be the most beautiful. She uttered little cries of wonder and delight as she trotted toward me picking up the expensive baubles, and then she came close enough for me to make out her features. |
26 |
| "Li Kao, you have been robbed!" I said indignantly to myself. |
27 |
| She was not beautiful. She was not even pretty. She was pure peasant: short thick legs, big feet, strong arms and shoulders, large square hands, and a broad flat face. I was just about to cut my losses and get out of there when she saw me. I decided to make the best of it so I stepped forward. |
28 |
| "My surname Is Li and my personal name is Kao and there is a slight flaw in my character," I said with a polite bow. |
29 |
| Lotus Cloud regarded me with interest. Her eyes were narrowed and her head was cocked a little to one side, and it occurred to me that she looked precisely like a farm girl who was deciding whether or not to buy a pet at a country fair. Then her eyes said, "Yes, I think I will take this cute little thing home with me," and she grinned. |
30 |
| I cannot describe that grin. It was unearthly. It was as though all the hope and joy and love and laughter and sheer delight in being alive that there was in the universe came together, gathered into a fist, and reached out and belted me right over the heart. The next thing I knew I was on my knees with my arms wrapped around her legs and my face pressed against her thighs, and her fingers played with my hair and she said in a soft laughing voice: |
31 |
| "I shall call you Boopsie." |
32 |
| If I cannot even describe her grin, how can I describe the rest of her? |
33 |
| "Key Rabbit," I said a few days later, "I seem to have lost my mind. Your wife is not witty. She is not wise. She can barely read. She has no social graces whatsoever. She is not even pretty, and I worship the ground she walks on." |
34 |
| "That is what all her protectors say," sighed the Key Rabbit. |
35 |
| It was a mystery, and I decided that beauty was a highly overrated commodity. |
36 |
| "Key Rabbit, allow me to bore you with a comparison of your wife and a beautiful woman," I said. "In the morning a beauty must lie in bed for three or four hours gathering strength for another mighty battle with Nature. Then, after being bathed and toweled by her maids, she loosens her hair in the Cascade of Teasing Willows Style, paints her eyebrows in the Distant Mountain Range Style, anoints herself with the Nine Bends of the River Diving-water Perfume, applies rouge, mascara, and eye shadow, and covers the whole works with a good two inches of the Powder of the Nonchalant Approach. Then she dresses in a plum-blossom patterned tunic with matching skirt and stockings, adds four or five pounds of jewelry, looks in the mirror for any visible sign of humanity and is relieved to find none, checks her makeup to be sure that it has hardened into an immovable mask, sprinkles herself with the Hundred Ingredients Perfume of the Heavenly Spirits who Descended in the Rain Shower, and minces with tiny steps toward the new day. Which, like any other day, will consist of gossip and giggles." |
37 |
| I paused to catch my breath. |
38 |
| "Lotus Cloud wakes up, hops happily from bed, plunges her head into a pail of ice cold water, bellows "eeeeaaaaAAAARRRRGGGGHH!", runs a comb through her hair, looks around to see if there is anyone handy who feels like making love, hops back into bed if that is the case or into some clothes if it is not. Then she dives out the door - or window, it doesn't matter - to see what wonders the new day will bring, and since Lotus Cloud views the world with the delighted eyes of a child everything is equally marvelous. She makes the beauties seem so pale." |
39 |
| "I know precisely what you mean. How I wish that I could afford my dear wife for myself," sighed the Key Rabbit. |
40 |
| "Nobody can afford your dear wife," I sighed. |
41 |
| At an early age Lotus Cloud had become a specialist. Diamonds did not interest her. Emeralds bored her. I once gave her an ivory chest filled with gold and she promptly gave it to a girl friend. |
42 |
| "Why?" I howled. |
43 |
| "Because she wanted It, Boopsie," said Lotus Cloud, and it was clear that she thought it took a moron to ask a silly question like that. |
44 |
| But fill that same ivory chest with pearls and jade! Never have I seen anything to match her reaction. Her eyes grew wide with wonder, a soul- wrenching desire transformed her face, her whole body shook with an indescribable longing, the sheer force of her greed practically knocked me off my feet, and when I persuaded her that the stuff was a gift, that it was really hers, she dissolved into torrents of happy tears and threw herself into my arms and vowed to adore me forever. |
45 |
| A man would do almost anything to produce a reaction like that. That was the trouble. Before the day was out Lotus Cloud would forget all about my wonderful gift, and if I wanted to produce another spectacular reaction I had to produce another spectacular chest of pearls and jade. |
46 |
| "Like all great swindles it is simplicity itself," I said. "I greatly admire it even as it drives me toward bankruptcy." |
47 |
| "That is what all her protectors say," sighed the Key Rabbit. |
48 |
| The end came sooner than I had believed possible. |
49 |
| "Another wheelbarrow load of pearls and jade?" said my supplier, a splendid fellow who has since become one of my closest friends, and whose name is Cut Off Their Balls Wang. |
50 |
| "I will settle for the address of the wealthiest miser in town, the use of a palatial palanquin since I seem to have pawned mine, and a goat," I sighed. |
51 |
| Poetic justice is a loathsome thing. An hour later Cut Off Their Balls Wang rapped upon a door with a gold-tipped staff. "A thousand blessings have descended upon you, for Lord Li of Kao is weary and has condescended to rest in your miserable hovel!" he roared, and the door crashed open revealing a gentleman who possessed a pair of glittering little pig eyes, a bald and mottled skull, a sharp curving nose like a parrot's beak, the loose flabby lips of a camel, and two huge drooping elephant ears from which protruded thick tufts of coarse gray hair. |
52 |
| "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY FIVE HUNDRED PIECES OF GOLD?" screamed Miser Shen, who, I belatedly remembered, also possessed six different houses in six different cities. |
53 |
| Poetic justice is loathsome because it never knows when to stop. Cut Off Their Balls Wang escaped quite easily with the goat and the garbage, but when I dove off the palanquin I landed right on top of the Key Rabbit. Somehow a chain around the Key Rabbit's neck became wrapped around my neck as well. The key at the end of the chain was shaped like a flower and had sixteen points, each of which had to make contact with just the right amount of pressure before the lock would open, and since a pressure lock costs a fortune I was probably entangled with the key to the duke's front door - and that was why the Key Rabbit kept walling "Oh dear oh dear oh dear!" as he pulled on the chain with all his might. So the Key Rabbit nearly strangled me while his startled soldiers descended, and Miser Shen and his servants descended, and I was nearly smothered by the howling mob. The next thing I knew I was in court. |
54 |
| "Ridiculous!" I scoffed as Miser Shen bellowed accusations. "The man is mad!" |
55 |
| Since Cut Off Their Balls Wang had escaped with the evidence Miser Shen could prove nothing, but my last coins had been concealed inside that garbage and I was not in a position to pay the mandatory fine for disturbing the peace. The penalty for not paying a fine in Ch'in, and thus depriving the duke of part of his income, was death. |
56 |
| "Woe!" screamed the Key Rabbit. "Woe! Woe! Woe! To think that I should be partly responsible for the beheading of Lord Li of Kao, the most generous protector my dear wife has ever had!" |
57 |
| Eventually he calmed down enough to look at the bright side. |
58 |
| "During the trial I was able to determine that Miser Shen is the wealthiest man in town, so you do not have to worry about Lotus Cloud," he said comfortingly. "I shall simply invite Miser Shen to my house to have tea and to meet my dear wife, and in no time Lotus Cloud will be rolling in pearls and jade." |
59 |
| "Splendid," I said. |
60 |
Then they chained my wrists behind me, clamped a heavy yoke around my neck, linked me to a long line of prisoners who had also been sentenced to death, and marched us off to the Castle of the Labyrinth to amuse the Duke of Ch'in.
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