| WE flew all night, drifting with the wind toward we knew not where, and as the sky grew pale we began to descend. When the sun lifted over the horizon we discovered that we were floating across a beautiful valley toward a range of snow-capped mountains. We drifted through fleecy little clouds that glowed pink and orange against the turquoise sky, and tiny wisps of smoke lifted from the valley below where farmers were burning weeds. The leaves of the trees had turned red and gold, and all the world was filled with the fragrance of autumn, and the tangy breeze that brushed our faces was crisp and marvelously refreshing. |
1 |
| "Li Kao, this is the only way to travel," Miser Shen said solemnly. |
2 |
| "And the only country worth traveling through. Miser Shen, we Chinese are unfairly accused of arrogance when we point out the obvious," I said as I pointed out the obvious, meaning the boundary of the Yellow Sea. "Yet nowhere else on earth can one find valleys like this: lush, ordered, harmonious, perfect. Beyond that ocean lies nothing but the bleakness of unspeakable barbarism, where the ingredients of a perfect valley are haphazardly scattered hither and yon in the pathetic disarray of mindless anarchy." |
3 |
| "How can barbarians tolerate such deformity?" said Miser Shen. "Notice that the mountains just ahead of us are not too tall and not too short; rocks piled neatly but not too neatly - Li Kao, I am not an educated gentleman like yourself. My poor halting tongue has never learned to express my feelings. But at least I am Chinese, and thus I know in my bones that a perfect mountain must have artistic imperfections properly placed to delight the eye and inspire the mind, such as those impossible cliffs where fantastic trees precariously perch with branches spread to capture wisps of clouds, and to weave them into the patterns of dreams." |
4 |
| "Miser Shen, beneath your repulsive exterior beats the heart of a poet! I said warmly. We were flying through a mountain pass so narrow that I was able to reach out and scoop two handfuls of snow from the side of a cliff. I gave one to Miser Shen, and we sampled it delicately. |
5 |
| "Perfection," sighed Miser Shen. |
6 |
| "Pure Chinese snow," I agreed. "Carefully manufactured in Heaven and deposited where it can beat refresh the palate of the traveler and reinvigorate his jaded taste buds." |
7 |
| "Everywhere in China one finds the fingerprints of the gods," Miser Shen agreed. |
8 |
| "Beauty," I said. |
9 |
| "Harmony," said Miser Shen. |
10 |
| "Serenity," I said. |
11 |
| "Tranquility," said Miser Shen. |
12 |
| "Fertility," I said. |
13 |
| "Merciful Buddha, what the hell is this?" howled Miser Shen, for we had drifted through the pass and had emerged from the other side into the landscape of a nightmare. Stretching endlessly in front of us was a horrible white desert. The glare of reflected sunlight nearly blinded us; blasts of merciless heat scorched our bodies; angry whirlwinds whipped stinging particles against our faces. I tasted some. It was salt. We were flying above a terrible Desert of Salt which appeared to stretch on and on without end. I was quite speechless, but Miser Shen rose superbly to the occasion. |
14 |
| "Li Kao, our beloved China is Heaven on earth, but there cannot be a Heaven unless there is also a Hell." he said. "Obviously this place is the lid on top of Hell, and the gods have very considerately placed it at the farthest corner of civilization, so that it may usually be avoided by the Chinese and enjoyed by the barbarians, who no doubt consider it suitable for summer vacations." |
15 |
| "Well spoken," I said. |
16 |
| "Do you know how to turn this thing around?" said Miser Shen. |
17 |
| I didn't have the slightest idea, but I decided to try by tilting the kite a trifle. It promptly shot straight down, completely out of control. At the last possible moment it straightened out, and a horrible blast of heat grabbed us and tossed us angrily back up into the air, and then we were sailing straight ahead in precisely the same direction as before. I helped Miser Shen unwrap his legs, which had somehow become tangled around his neck. "Li Kao," he wheezed when he was able, "if this thing insists on continuing in this direction I do not believe that we should argue with it." |
18 |
| So we sailed on and on. The mountains vanished behind us, and then there was nothing but the desert where the hot wind howled horribly, and whirlwinds danced in mad patterns, and multiple images of the sun glared through orange and violet halos which spun round and round through the salt-streaked sky. |
19 |
| "I shall be sick," moaned Miser Shen. |
20 |
| It was something of a relief when the mirages began. We were able to control our terror somewhat by comparing notes. I would clearly see a castle with a bright silver dome standing in the center of an emerald lake. Miser Shen would say: "No no! It is a large rock in the middle of a green river, and the rock is covered with birds. Seagulls of some sort. And there are rows of beautiful palm trees all along the banks." |
21 |
| Then the mirage would dissolve into nothingness, and we would gaze again at an endless emptiness of salt. We saw cities and palaces and armies arrayed in battle formation, and always there was the green oasis, and always the oasis melted away like a dream. How many hours passed I cannot tell, but it seemed an eternity before Miser Shen leveled a trembling finger and cried: |
22 |
| "Great Buddha! Just look at that ghastly mirage!" |
23 |
| I examined the mirage with a sinking heart. |
24 |
| "Tell me what you see," I said. |
25 |
| "Well, I see the usual green oasis, but it is standing in the middle of a mess of shattered stones," said Miser Shen. "There is a horrible stench of sulfur, and geysers of steam are hissing up from the bowels of the earth. A sickening sort of bubbling sound is coming from somewhere. The whole mirage is circled by a broad belt like a moat, which is filled with some sort of fiery liquid." |
26 |
| I had been afraid of that. |
27 |
| "Miser Shen, I see precisely the same thing," I said gloomily. "We have been approaching the ghastly hallucination for several minutes but it has not vanished. And since when do mirages stink and hiss and bubble? I am greatly afraid that this is not a mirage." |
28 |
| No sooner had the words escaped my lips than the cursed kite began to descend. |
29 |
| "Up!" I yelled, pounding the frame of the kite. "Fly up, you silly son of a syphilitic silk worm!" |
30 |
| "Up! Up! Up!" screamed Miser Shen. |
31 |
| The kite paid no attention. It drifted silently down from the sky and gently - very gently - landed right in front of the fiery moat. |
32 |
| For several minutes we just sat there with silly expressions on our faces. At last 1 cleared my throat and said: |
33 |
| "Well, at least there is a real oasis somewhere in the center of this mess." |
34 |
| "And there seems to be a bridge across this terrible moat, and unless I have gone mad I see a pair of enormous bronze gates which are standing open," said Miser Shen. "Li Kao, this place used to be a city." |
35 |
| He was right. We were outside the ruins of a great walled city that had been smashed to pieces by some horrible catastrophe. The moat that encircled it had once sparkled with blue water, and small golden fish, and graceful white swans. Now it was filled with a fiery red-black substance so thick that it was barely liquid - lava. |
36 |
| "There must have been some great volcanic eruption," I said, |
37 |
| "I believe it is the lava what makes that awful bubbling sound," said Miser Shen. "Do you think that we dare cross that bridge?" |
38 |
| "We have to reach the oasis or die," I replied. |
39 |
| Actually it proved to be much easier than we thought. The bridge was very narrow and built of stone, but the stones were not as murderously hot as I had feared. We took off our tunics and trousers and wrapped them around our sandals, and then we raced across the bridge with smoking feet and lungs stinging from the sulfur fumes. It only took a minute. Then we stamped out the smoldering spots in our clothes and put them back on, and slowly walked through the huge open gates into the ruined city. |
40 |
| We found ourselves standing on what must have been the central thoroughfare. It was a broad avenue that ran straight as an arrow toward an enormous mass of tumbled stones. |
41 |
| "Probably the palace of the king," said Miser Shen. |
42 |
| "Yes, and I think we had better climb to the top of the ruins," I said. "We cannot see the oasis from here and we need a high vantage point." |
43 |
| I cannot describe the horror and desolation of that tragic city. Our feet made clear prints in the fine salt that covered the avenue as we slowly trudged toward the fallen palace. A lunatic tangle of side streets branched from both Sides - if one could still call them streets since not one building remained standing. We gazed between the rows of tumbled stones and saw angry geysers of steam shrieking through cracks in the earth, or heard the heavy bubbling sounds that meant pools of lava. The wind howled through the ruins, and I have never heard a more mournful sound in my life. We finally reached the palace and began to climb, and as we neared the top we saw a stone barricades a circle nearly thirty feet high and five or six times as broad. The stones were neatly fitted together. |
44 |
| "Miser Shen, someone must have built this wall after the disaster, using the fallen stones of the palace," I said. |
45 |
| "What worries me is that someone else came along and knocked a hole in it," Miser Shen muttered. |
46 |
| The hole was torn right in the center of the wall. Some unimaginable force had jerked out enormous stone slabs and tossed them aside like pebbles. We stepped through the hole rather timidly, and when we did we stepped upon bones. Skeletons were everywhere. A small army had barricaded itself behind that wall, and there it had perished. And not pleasantly. |
47 |
| "Li Kao, I swear that these poor souls were chewed!" gasped Miser Shen. |
48 |
| I had reached the same conclusion. Nothing but monstrous grinding teeth could nave mangled men and armor like that. I looked glumly at the scattered weapons and finally saw something that cheered me considerably. |
49 |
| "Miser Shen, these weapons and armor are museum pieces!" I cried. "Whatever happened probably occurred a thousand years ago! All we have to worry about is finding that oasis." |
50 |
| I climbed up to the top of the barricade like a monkey. |
51 |
| "I see it!" I yelled. "I can see the tops of the trees, but the entire back of the palace is nothing but a lake of lava. We will have to go back and try to get through one of the side streets to the oasis." |
52 |
| "Li Kao, I have found something! I think it is writing!" cried Miser Shen from below. |
53 |
| "What does it say?" |
54 |
| I looked down at a face turning scarlet. |
55 |
| "I must shamefully confess that I never did learn to read or write," sighed Miser Shen. "I was too busy working when I was a poor farmer, and when I became a miser I was too busy making money." |
56 |
| I scrambled back down. Time and the wind had made much of what had been written on a large rock illegible, but enough remained to make the hair stand straight up on my head. |
57 |
| "Miser Shen, it begins with a prayer to some gods I have never heard of, and then there are a number of words missing. Then it says: '...punished for our pride, and the earth opened with a great roar, and flames engulfed us, and fiery black rock ran forth like water, and then the horrible Hand That No One Sees crawled up from the deepest bowels of Hell.'" |
58 |
| "The what did what?" |
59 |
| "The Hand That No One Sees crawled up from the deepest bowels of Hell. Don't ask me what it means. Then there are more missing words, and then it says: '...sixth day, and we labor on the main fortress but we are faint of heart. We make sacrifice and pray to the gods. Our supplies of food and water are low.' Then there are more missing words, and then it says: '...the queen and her ladies have chosen the easier death and have jumped into the lake of fiery black rock. We did not try to stop them. The Hand That No One Sees moves closer. Our spears are hurled at nothingness, and bounce away from nothingness. We watch the prints of the horrible fingers as it crawls toward us through the salt. The first stone has fallen. The Hand---'" |
60 |
| I stood silently for a moment. "That Is all there is," I said, and we stood there with the lonely wind-howling around our heads thinking of an invisible hand that crawled up from Hell, and smashed stone walls to pieces and chewed armored men like bamboo shoots. |
61 |
| "Whoof!" said Miser Shen. "I don't care how many centuries ago that happened. This place makes me nervous. Let's go find that oasis." |
62 |
| We retraced our steps to the main avenue, but we soon discovered that getting to the oasis through the side streets was not going to be easy. We labored through a maze of tumbled stones, and we kept coming to dead ends where lava bubbled and murderous geysers of steam hissed high into the sulphurous air. We were not the only ones to reach those dead ends. Again and again we came to more pathetic piles of chewed skeletons and armor. |
63 |
| "Whatever that thing was, it certainly ate well," said Miser Shen with a shudder. |
64 |
| "Look here, Shen, it may be that we cannot reach the oasis at all," I said. "As a last resort we can get our kite and carry it back to the palace. If we launched it from the top of the barricade there might be enough of a drop to get it airborne." |
65 |
| "If this humble one might make a suggestion, I think we should go get the kite at once. If one of those whirlwinds hits it we will never see it again," said Miser Shen. |
66 |
| We had barely started toward the gates when we stopped dead in our tracks and gazed speechlessly at a miracle: those enormous bronze gates must have weighed tons and there was nothing to press against them but the wind, yet they were slowly swinging shut! As we stood rooted to the spot the gates crashed together with a great metal crash. Now we were trapped inside that devastated city and what happened next made the hair rise straight up upon our heads. |
67 |
| "Do you see what I see?" I yelled. |
68 |
| "I wish I didn't!" howled Miser Shen. |
69 |
A huge mark had appeared in the salt that covered the avenue. It was like the print of a gigantic thumb. Another mark followed, like a fingerprint. Then three more fingerprints. Then a broad path appeared in the salt, sliding behind the fingers. Our eyes insisted upon a fact that our brains refused to believe: a huge invisible hand was sliding toward us, dragging the heel and palm behind the crawling fingers!
|
70 |