| I awoke to a hot sun, a head like a smithy, and a mouth like a glue factory. "Wine!" I croaked, as I crawled toward the jar. Fortunately there was quite a lot left in the jar, and after the tenth swig the hammers stopped pounding inside my skull. I had more sense than to try an eleventh swig. |
1 |
| "Worst damn mongrel in the history of the world," I growled, glaring at the skull in the pool. |
2 |
| But it was not the fault of a skull that I had hallucinated. I made a careful note of the manufacturer of that wine, and vowed to pay him a visit some day. The thought of slitting the bastard's throat cheered me up immensely, and my recovery was complete when I remembered the treasure that stood all around me, just begging to be lifted. I poured the rest of the wine into the pool. |
3 |
| "I promise to bring a better brand of wine when I return with twenty men, some carts, oxen, and a derrick," I said to the skull of Chang Heng. "Kan pei!" |
4 |
| I scooped up my sack of silver candlesticks and skipped back down the path without a care in the world. The masters and students of the Academy of Chang Heng were still killing themselves with productive human activity, and it was no great trick to slip past the damn fools and climb a winding path to the top of the cliff. Then I set off across the hills. |
5 |
| A storm was brewing. In an hour the sky was completely dark, and then a heavy rain began to fall. I needed to find the nearest town where I could rent a derrick, and when I peered through the rain and saw a carriage and a group of people on a road at the base of the hill I was crossing I decided to go down and ask for directions. |
6 |
| I have only the haziest recollection of what happened then. The rain had turned the hill into slippery mud, and half-way down I slipped, scooted over the mud like a sled sliding over snow, hit a bump, sailed out into space, and landed with a terrible crash right in the center of chaos. Meaning that I landed right in the center of that carriage, which was filled with half-naked women who were screaming their heads off. I was admiring a very pretty jade pendant - as well as the pair of very pretty pink-tipped breasts that the pendant was dangling between - when a club bounced off my shoulder. I belatedly realized that the young lady and her friends were merely being robbed and raped by a gang of highwaymen, and I yelled: "Stop! Friend! Friend!" But the thugs paid no attention, so I had no choice but to grab the heaviest of the silver candlesticks and begin flailing in all directions. |
7 |
| "Base-born knaves!" I roared. "You dare to attack the greatness of Lord Li of Kao?" |
8 |
| I believe that I did quite a lot of damage in the following few minutes but I have no memory of it. The next thing I remember is waking up in a very expensive bed in a very expensive room surrounded by a bunch of very expensive women who were battling for the honor of bathing the bump on my skull. |
9 |
| "He wakes!" they shrieked. "Lord Li of Kao opens his divine eyes!" |
10 |
| "If you do not stop that ghastly racket Lord Li of Kao will strangle you with his divine hands," I groaned. |
11 |
| The babble continued, and I gradually began to realize that I had held off the bandits until help arrived, and that the high esteem in which I was therefore held was not diminished by the fact that I was attired in a tunic of sea-green silk secured by a silver girdle with a border of jade, and a fine tasseled hat, and a gold-spattered Sze-ch'uen fan, and wore a moneybelt which held fully five hundred pieces of gold, and carried a sackful of expensive silver candlesticks. Pious offerings, no doubt, to the temples that I passed on my travels. I was slightly confused by the word "bridegroom", and I was about to ask what they meant by that when the women suddenly fell silent. |
12 |
| They turned deathly pale. Then they fell on their knees facing the door and began banging their heads against the floor, and I heard heavy footsteps approaching and I whiffed a revolting odor of rotting flesh. |
13 |
| The door crashed open. The woman who plodded into the room weighed approximately five hundred pounds and possessed sixteen chins, tiny glittering eyes encased in folds of fat, bad breath, and a large moustache. This obscene creature marched up to me and grabbed my chin with fingers like decayed sausages and examined my face. |
14 |
| "Satisfactory," she wheezed. |
15 |
| She jerked the covers down and prodded my biceps. |
16 |
| "Satisfactory," she wheezed. |
17 |
| She jerked the covers down farther and poked my chest. |
18 |
| "Satisfactory," she wheezed. |
19 |
| She jerked the covers all the way down and examined my private parts. |
20 |
| "Satisfactory," she wheezed. |
21 |
| Then she stepped back and leveled a finger at me. |
22 |
| "They call you Lord Li of Kao," she grunted. "I have never heard of Kao. Probably it does not exist. Probably you are some sort of low criminal. No matter. You are acceptable to my granddaughter. It appears that you saved her from rape and ruin, and I want great grandchildren. As soon as you recover from your wounds you will wed my granddaughter and present me with seven great grandchildren. They will be boys. I intend to overthrow the T'ang Dynasty and restore the Sui, and boys are more suitable for the purpose. After the wedding you will leave this miserable little farm and accompany me to my palace in Tsingtao. In the meantime you are not to annoy me by showing your silly face any more than is absolutely necessary, and you are not to speak in my presence unless ordered to do so. One those rare occasions you will address me as Ancestress. Insolence in my household is punishable by decapitation," she wheezed, and then she plodded back out to the hall and slammed the door behind her. |
23 |
| In an instant I was out of bed and climbing out the window. The view made me pause. This "miserable little farm" as the Ancestress called it stretched for miles in all directions. I counted at least eight ornamental lakes decorating eight fantastic pleasure gardens, and the grooms in the stables - which could have supplied a regiment of cavalry - wore the sort of clothes which I had always associated with royalty. There were six lesser mansions and quarters for two hundred servants, and I hopped back into bed and pulled up the covers. |
24 |
| "Li Kao," I said to myself. "Someday all this will be yours!" |
25 |
| As the days passed my dream of marrying for money began to take on the aspect of a nightmare. The first warning came from my future father-in-law, whose name was Ho Wen. |
26 |
| He was the palest little fellow I had ever seen - even his eyes were a pale watery gray - and he was a mass of nervous twitches and terrified jerks. He was entitled to wear the little gold rose, which meant that he had passed first in all China in the imperial chin-shih examination, but was he addressed as Master Ho? Venerable Scholar Ho? Most-Learned-Of-Mortals Ho? Not exactly. He was addressed as Henpecked Ho, his status was slightly lower than that of the boy who carried away the night soil, and he lived in mortal fear of the Ancestress, his wife, her seven fat sisters, his daughter, and most of the servants. What this did to his scholarly mind may be judged by the answer that I received when I asked the name of a nearby mountain. Ho took a deep breath. |
27 |
| "The sacred mountains are five in number: Hengshan, Changshan, Huashan, Taishan, and Sungshan, with Taishan leading in rank and Sungshan in the center," he said. "Mountains not sacred but very distinguished include Wuyi, Wutang, Tienmu, Tienchu, Tienmuh, Niushu, Omei, Shiunherh, Chichu, Chihua, Kungtung, Chunyu, Yentang, Tientai, Lungmen, Kueiku, Chiuyi, Shiherh, Pakung, Huchiu, Wolung, Niuchu, Paotu, Peiyo, Huangshan, Pichi, Chinshu, Liangfu, Shuanglang, Maku, Tulu, Peiku, Chinshan, Chiaoshan, and Chungnan. Since the mountain you refer to is none of these--" |
28 |
| "Ho," I moaned. |
29 |
| "--it might not be too rash to assume that it is Kuangfu, although I would not wish to be quoted in the presence of the Ancestress since the slightest mistake can mean instant decapitation." |
30 |
| I decided that I had to risk another question. |
31 |
| "Ho, I am a trifle worried about the sanity of the Ancestress," I said. "Have I gone deaf or did I hear her say that she intended to overthrow the T'ang Dynasty and restore the Sui?" |
32 |
| "But she is quite serious, dear boy. In her day the Ancestress was the Sui Dynasty," said Henpecked Ho. "To be precise she was Emperor Wen's Number Three Wife. But one day the emperor refused to buy her something that she wanted, so she poisoned him, strangled his other wives and concubines, decapitated all but the youngest of his sons, elevated that weakling to the throne as Emperor Yang, married him, and settled down behind the scenes as the real ruler of China. Her reign was brief, but gorgeous. |
33 |
| "The Ancestress set about bankrupting the empire by decreeing that whenever a leaf fell in any of the imperial pleasure gardens it must be replaced by an artificial leaf fashioned from the costliest silk. When she decided that she needed a suitably imperial pleasure pond for her imperial pleasure barge - 230 feet long, four decks, 120 cabins decorated in gold and jade, and a three story throne room - she conscripted 3,600,000 peasants and had them link the Yellow and Yangtse Rivers by digging a ditch forty feet deep, fifty yards wide, and six hundred miles long. The Grand Canal has since proved to be invaluable for commerce, but what the Ancestress liked about it was that a half million men dropped dead in that ditch in one summer alone, and the total death count, counting starvation among the peasants who were forced to feed the workers, approached three million. |
34 |
| "When the canal was completed the Ancestress invited a few friends to accompany her on an important mission of state to Yangchow. The fleet of barges stretched stem to stern for sixty miles, was manned by 9,000 boatmen, and was towed by 80,000 peasants, some of whom survived. The important mission of state in Yangchow was to watch the famous moonflowers bloom. Poor little Emperor Yang did not see the moonflowers. He realized that the deeds of the Ancestress were being performed in his name, and he spent the entire trip gazing into the mirror which his faithful old nurse held ready at all times. 'What an excellent head,' he sobbed. 'I wonder who will chop it off?' The chopping was performed by the great hero Li Shih-min, who adopted the Imperial name T'ang T'ai-tsung and who sits up on the throne today. T'ang shows every sign of becoming the greatest emperor in history, but I must humbly insist that he made a grave mistake when he assumed that the excesses of the Sui Dynasty were the fault of little Yang, and allowed the Ancestress to retire in luxury." |
35 |
| Henpecked Ho paused to catch his breath. Then he said thoughtfully: |
36 |
| "I often think of poor little Emperor Yang. While the Ancestress was amusing herself by bankrupting the empire, the emperor was amusing himself with the only recreation she allowed him: writing songs. He was becoming quite good at it when he lost his head," said Henpecked Ho, and he lifted a high quavering voice:
"Spring tarries here In Loyang: |
37 |
| in all quarters there is Spring's radiance in plenty. |
38 |
| The willow leaves are beginning to fade; |
39 |
| the peach blossoms are falling, but not yet scarce; |
40 |
| darting under the eaves the swallows quarrel for entry; |
41 |
| deep in the woods the birds fly in disorder - |
42 |
| but for those on duty at the frontier passes |
43 |
| the steaming dew even now soaks their garments. |
44 |
| "Rather sad, isn't it? The little follow who wrote songs will go down as one of the most extravagant and vicious rulers in history, but no one will say a bad word about the Ancestress." |
45 |
| I began to wonder about heredity. |
46 |
| My bride-to-be was called Fainting Maid, and I discovered the reason for this unusual name on the occasion of our first stroll together in the garden. (Normally a groom does not see his bride until the wedding, of course, but since I had seen practically all of her already an exception was made. She was the one in the carriage with the jade pendant and the pretty pink-tipped breasts. Besides, we were chaperoned by Henpecked Ho.) |
47 |
| "Hark!" cried Fainting Maid. "A cuckoo!" |
48 |
| "Nay, my beloved, It is a magpie," I said. |
49 |
| "It is a cuckoo," she insisted. |
50 |
| "Precious one, it is a magpie which is imitating a cuckoo," I said, pointing to the magpie which was imitating a cuckoo. |
51 |
| "It is a cuckoo!" screamed Fainting Maid. |
52 |
| "Magpie," I sighed. |
53 |
| "0, thou hast slain me!" she wailed, and with that she clutched her heart, staggered backward, lurched to the left, and gracefully swooned. |
54 |
| "Two steps backward, six to the left," said Henpecked Ho. "Precisely two back, six left. She never varies by so much as an inch. And now, dear boy, you are to bathe her delicate temples and beg her forgiveness for your intolerable rudeness. My daughter," he said, "is never wrong. I might add that never in her life has she been denied anything she wanted." |
55 |
| When I think back to those days I hear a babble of voices - Henpecked Ho's wife and her seven fat sisters gabbling in the Garden of Forty Felicitous Fragrances; Fainting Maid and her ladies in waiting sipping tea in the Gallery of Precious Peacocks; the unspeakable Ancestress on the Terrace of Sixty-six Serenities with a servant who had dropped a cup: |
56 |
| "Gabble-gabble-gabble-gabble-gabble...0, thou hast slain me!... Off with his head...gabble-gabble-gabble-gabble-gabble...Forgive me, my lady! Of course the Book of Porcupine Cookery was written by Confucius!...Deposit the corpse in the pigsty." |
57 |
| What finished me off were not the lovely ladies. It was the butler. As the grandson-in-law of the Ancestress I would be responsible for maintaining the etiquette of a great houses so I was turned over to the butler for instruction. He was a cadaverous creature with a gray complexion and granite features, and his droning voice was completely without inflexion. Here is a sample. |
58 |
| "When the meat is cooked on ceremonial days the left shoulder, upper and lower foreleg, thigh, lower hindleg, spine, ribs, divided lung, three pieces of pork for the offering taken from over the breastbone, and one lung for the offering, are placed on the top tripod; nine fish, pike and carp, and placed in the middle tripod; in the lowest tripod are placed the game and the left half of the carcass, only without the rump: the cook hands the guest a ladle with an engraved handle and a stand which is placed west of the tripods, and the guest, grasping the left edge of the stand in his left hand and holding the stand straight out from himself, takes the handle of the ladle with his right hand, palm inward, and lays the ladle alongside the stand and goes and stands, facing east at the west of the tripods, to receive what food is to be his lot, which is determined by his attire beginning with his state umbrella: those of First and Second Rank officials have yellowish-black gauze covers, red raw silk linings, three tiers and silver spires; Third and Fourth Rank umbrellas are the same except that the spires are red; the umbrellas of Fifth Rank officials have blue gauze coverings, red raw silk linings, two tiers and silver spires; those of Sixth through Ninth Rank officials have blue, oiled, raw silk coverings, red raw silk linings, one tier and silver spires: the belts of First Rank officials are jade, those of the Second Rank are rhinoceros horn, those of the Third Rank are inscribed gold, those of the Fourth Rank are burnished gold, those of the Fifth Rank are inscribed silver, those of the Sixth Rank are burnished silver, those of the Seventh through Ninth Ranks are plain horn: First Rank officials, properly displaying their jade belts and yellowish-black gauze covered umbrellas with silver spires, are first served the Grand Soup, which is placed to the north of the snail stew--" |
59 |
I decided to run for my life.
|
60 |