The Story of the Stone mlanto-2 Page 5
“Buddha,” he whispered. “Whoever did this should be deified, but why would he make the forgery so obvious?”
“We may never know the answer to that,” Master Li said pensively. “The rest seems fairly simple. Brother Squint-Eyes came across a fake Ssu-ma Ch'ien in the ancient library scrolls. It probably doesn't matter whether or not he recognized it as a forgery. If real it would be worth a small fortune to historians, and if fake it would be worth the same to collectors of frauds.”
Master Li shook his head sadly.
“Brother Squint-Eyes succumbed to temptation, but he was woefully ill equipped for crime. He tried to forge the forgery by tracing, and then he took a sample page of the original to Ch'ang-an and made a deal with a collector. In order to divert suspicion from the librarian, the collector agreed to fake a burglary. The foolish monk received a small down payment with which he purchased an elegant meal, and then he returned to put his own little scheme in action. My guess is that he wanted it both ways. He would salve his conscience by keeping the original for the library, and pass off his tracing to the collector. He tried to swindle the wrong man.”
Master Li turned to me. “Ox, those iron bars had to be bent by large levers, which would make quite a bit of noise. All Brother Squint-Eyes had to do was draw the bolt and run out to the hall for help, but he stayed right where he was. That means he was an accomplice.”
He turned back to the prince. “I can well imagine the collector producing a knife and saying that since the good monk imagined he was Ssu-ma Ch'ien, the resemblance should be completed by castration. At any rate, Brother Squint-Eyes screamed and quite literally died of fright. The collector had forced him to produce the original. He snatched it from the dead man's hand and ran, and then he and his accomplices went into their act. Anybody who wants to steal something from the Valley of Sorrows is advised to dress as a mad monk in motley. Witnesses will probably keep running until they land in the Yellow Sea.”
The prince poured more tea. Master Li added a splash of wine to his.
“Prince, your ancestor tunneled all over the valley for iron, and Buddha knows what else. He also doused the place with acids and mysterious substances of his own invention. Suppose one of the tunnels collapsed. It isn't impossible that underground echoes could have produced a strange compelling sound, and that a pocket of ancient acids—or whatever—could have been released into that particular area of Princes’ Path. I don't know of any substance that retains its potency for seven centuries, but that doesn't mean there isn't one, and we'll find out at the academy in Ch'ang-an. We'll also find the person responsible for the burglary,” Master Li said confidently. “The problem will be proving murder. The abbot is willing to settle for a new roof. Do you have any objections?”
The prince pointed to his chest. “Me? My family hasn't had a claim to this valley since the ghastly days of feudalism, so beloved by Neo-Confucians. All we do is go bankrupt maintaining Princes’ Path, and a few other things. I have no say in it.”
Master Li looked at him quizzically. “I wonder if the peasants look at it that way,” he said. “Your family served as lords of the valley for almost five centuries, and I rather suspect that when it comes to the welfare of the valley, they won't turn to the emperor. They'll turn to you, and they won't ask for help. They'll demand it. Rather unfair, since you don't collect a penny of rent or a share of the crops, but there it is.”
Prince Liu Pao looked at him thoughtfully. Then he turned and examined my callused hands and large coarse body and homely face with peasant printed all over it.
“Number Ten Ox?”
I flushed with embarrassment. “Your Highness, Master Li is right,” I said. “Nothing will convince them that the welfare of the Valley of Sorrows isn't the responsibility of the Liu family, and as for fairness, it's like Princes’ Path. Peasants can't afford it.”
The prince laughed and stood up.
“It seems I have no choice but to go through the motions,” he said. “I assume I'm supposed to make sure that my abominable ancestor is safely tucked in, with the famous Master Li as witness?”
“That's all for now,” Master Li said.
The prince took a key from a cabinet and led the way outside and through a gate and down a winding path toward the face of a cliff. As we came closer I saw an iron door set in the rock, almost covered by tall weeds and thistles. The door was old but the lock was new, and the prince's fingers were trembling as he inserted the key.
“Nightmares of childhood,” he said wryly. “You see, the Laughing Prince's successor decided to keep the famous grotto precisely as he found it, and place the family tablets inside. Every succeeding prince has been forced to pray and sacrifice inside a monument to the abuse of power. Makes it rather difficult for us to pull wings off butterflies, if our instincts run to that kind of thing.”
I expected blackness, but there were fissures in the stone that let in a greenish-yellow light. The famous Medical Research Center should, I think, be part of the early education of emperors. It is hard to forget.
A long row of iron racks against one wall held the essential instruments for scientific research, such as thumbscrews and iron whips and testicle crushers and pinchers and various things for slicing and gouging. Ancient operating tables still stood in the center of the floor, and gutters beneath them ran to stone troughs for the blood. Grim-looking machines whose purpose I didn't understand lined another wall, and a third wall was lined with something I did understand: iron cages where peasants were held. They allowed the peasants a good view of what was happening to members of their families. The worst thing was the back wall.
It was naturally smooth stone, almost like a huge board of slate, and it was covered with annotated experiments, drawn with painstaking accuracy. Mysterious mathematical formulas and ancient script alternated as annotations, and Master Li was quite puzzled as he translated the script for my benefit.
“True path of the stone… False path of the stone… Stone strongest here… Total failure of stone… Stone branches three ways… No reaction from stone…”
It made no sense at all, nor did the jumble of arrows pointing to various gruesome aspects of the experiments.
“What on earth did he mean by all these references to a stone?” Master Li asked.
“Nobody knows, but his obsession appears to have been overpowering,” the prince said.
He took a torch from a bracket and lit it, and led the way toward a shadowed corner. There I saw the family tablets, and I shuddered to think of small boys being led in here to pray, with grim lectures about the curse the family carried. The tablets were lined up in front of an ancient sacristy, which was empty. On the wall above it an inscription had been chiseled, and again Master Li translated for my benefit.
In darkness languishes the precious stone.
When will its excellence enchant the world?
When seeming is taken for being, being becomes seeming.
When nothing is taken for something, something becomes nothing.
The stone dispels seeming and nothing,
And climbs to the Gates of the Great Void.
The prince smiled at my bewilderment. “I agree,” he said. “It has the same quality of apparently leading somewhere and then disappearing that distinguishes the very finest Taoist mumbo jumbo.”
Master Li scratched his head. “Lao Tzu?” he wondered. “His third step toward Heaven was to hear the sound of stone growing in a cliff, but he didn't climb to the Gates of the Great Void on the screams of his victims.” He winked at me. “He rode an ox,” he said.
In the shadows of the alcove was a darker shadow that resolved itself into a narrow tunnel as the prince again led the way with the torch. At the end of it was another iron door, but this one had neither a lock nor a handle. On the wall was a large bronze plaque engraved with a map of the Valley of Sorrows, and beside it hung an iron hammer on an iron chain. The prince grimaced.
“Sense of humor,” he said sourly.
“My ancestor was a mystery from beginning to end,” he said. “He amassed an enormous fortune, but didn't spend a catty of silver on his own final resting place. What did he do with it? He certainly didn't pass his wealth on to his personal family, and there is no evidence that it was seized by his imperial brother. For several centuries after his death the family had to spend half its time chasing away people who dug holes all over the valley, and crooks still do a thriving business in fake treasure maps. The sarcophagus on the left is that of his principal wife, Tou Wan, who predeceased him, and my ancestor sleeps on the right.”
Master Li nodded to me. I stepped up and tested the stone lid. It weighed at least a ton, but it rested in smooth grooves, and I got in position and heaved. I almost broke my back before I could persuade it to move, but then it began to slide down toward the foot with a painful screeching sound. A mummy wrapped in tarred linen appeared. Part of the wrappings had crumbled away, but they had prevented the bone itself from crumbling, and a piece of a white skull was exposed. An empty eye socket gazed up at us, and I will confess that I was relieved to see that the Laughing Prince was not in shape to laugh and dance in the moonlight.
Master Li reached into the coffin and came up with a small enameled container like a pillbox. There was nothing inside but a tiny pile of gray dust, and when he cleaned off the top, we saw the picture of a toad seated upon a lily pad.
“I have heard that the Laughing Prince was expected to recover from his final fever, and this may explain why he didn't,” Master Li said thoughtfully. “Even in his day it was known that tear-like secretions of certain toads are heart stimulants even more effective than foxglove, and usually Toad Elixir was prescribed only for severe cardiac disorders. An overdose can be fatal, of course, and this could have been placed in his coffin either to signify a natural cause of death or the fact that the emperor had indeed sent him the yellow scarf and he had chosen to hop into the underworld upon the back of a toad. Not that it matters.”
There was nothing else in the coffin. In death as in life the lunatic lord was a mystery. I slid the lid back in place. We walked back into the tunnel, and the prince closed the door. The grotto was as ghastly as ever, but when we stepped outside I knew it was as dead and gone as the Laughing Prince. A lovely sunset was spreading across the sky, and birds were singing their last songs of the day, and down below us we could see the Valley of Sorrows in a haze of green and gold and purple shadows. As pretty as the setting of a fairy tale, and far more alive.
5
There was no point in starting to Ch'ang-an with plant and soil samples until morning—besides, it was the fifteenth day of the seventh moon, and my ears had not misled me about the abbot. He had indeed muttered “forty-two kettles of fish,” and the monastery smelled like Yellow Carp Pier. Smells of rice, pork, cabbage, eggs, and traditional eggplant tarts drifted up the hill from the village. Word that the Laughing Prince was safely in his tomb had spread like wildfire, and the Valley of Sorrows was ready for a festival.
“Mark my words,” Brother Shang said gloomily. “Somebody will break a leg.”
Master Li listened to the faint sounds of music from the village. “Peasant dancing can get rather wild,” he agreed.
“Smell that pepper sauce! Every child in the valley will be sick to his stomach,” said Brother Shang.
“For at least a week,” said Master Li.
“Monks by the dozens will forget their vows. I'll have to mop up the vomit and brew hangover remedies,” said Brother Shang, whose full name was Wu Shang and who lived up to it by always drawing the short straw. (Wu Shang means “Difficult Birth.”) This time he had to stand the lonely vigil at the monastery while the other monks enjoyed the festivities.
“Somebody is sure to toss a torch into a barn,” Master Li predicted direly.
“They'll be lucky if one cottage remains standing,” said Brother Shang, who was beginning to cheer up. “Family feuds will erupt all over the place! Broken skulls will be beyond counting! Mark my words: This date will be marked in black in the annals of the valley.”
We left the poor fellow to his self-pity, a very useful emotion, and started down the hill to the village. The Feast of Hungry Ghosts has been my personal favorite ever since I began traveling with Master Li, since I am almost certain to become a hungry ghost myself. (It honors, among others, those who have died in distant and desolate lands, or whose bodies have been mangled beyond recognition.) I was slightly surprised to see that Master Li was on his best behavior. As the visiting dignitary he was required to pass judgment on the wines of the valley, and I was prepared for the worst when he approached the reeking pots and uttered the formal “Ning szu che hou t'uen,” which means “I'm ready to die; I'll try it,” but he only took a small sip of each vitriolic product and praised all without restraint, even the brew that spilled on the ground and killed two lizards and three square feet of grass.
The abbot kept the formal prayers and ceremonies mercifully brief, and I was delighted when the hit of the early going turned out to be Brother Shang. He couldn't attend, but he had spent the winter carving and tuning tiny bamboo flutes and he tied them to the tails of the monastery's pigeons and sent them flying over the village to serenade us with a bawdy song called “Chu Chang's Chamber Pot.” The abbot said something about disciplining the impious rogue, but his heart wasn't in it.
The dancing started, which meant the fights would start shortly, and I was very disappointed when Master Li decided to slip away and walk through the hills in the moonlight. His feet led him to the destroyed area of Princes’ Path, and he stood there for several minutes, rocking on his heels with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Ox,” he finally said, “what was wrong with the analysis of the situation that I gave to Prince Liu Pao?” he said.
“Sir?”
“I was trying to reassure him. I wish I could reassure myself,” the ancient sage said gloomily. “It's perfectly clear that crooks dressed in motley stole a manuscript and frightened a monk to death. After that, everything begins to run amok. A weird compelling sound is heard precisely as the crooks make their escape; some mysterious substance kills trees and plants precisely where they place their sandals. If it was a coincidental collapse of a tunnel and the release of old acids, as I suggested to the prince, it's the kind of coincidence that deserves priests, prayers, and an elaborate theology. If it wasn't a coincidence, why would crooks waste effects like that on the simple theft of a manuscript? They could walk off with the Imperial Treasury if they felt like it, or pilfer the emperor's undergarments while he was wearing them. My boy, this affair makes no sense at all.”
I said nothing, of course, but I noted that the old man was enjoying every moment of his confusion. He had feared that all he had to work with was a simple burglary, and now he was praying for a puzzle that could baffle the judges of Hell. He wiped off a flat rock and sat down beneath the stars. Just below us on the hill we saw tiny flickers of light moving through the woods. Little girls have large maternal instincts, and they take the Feast of Hungry Ghosts very seriously, and they were making their rounds with small lanterns made from candles inside rolled lotus and sage leaves. I could feel ghosts all around us, moving toward the warmth of the sweet singing voices: You are not alone, the girls sang, you are not forgotten, we care and understand, our own lives are but a candle flame from yours:
“Houtsu-teng,
Hoyeh-teng,
Chin-erh tien,
Ming-erh kojeng;
Sagebrush lantern,
Lotus leaf lantern,
Alight today,
Tomorrow thrown away.”
I wiped my eyes. The moonlight was shining upon Dragon's Left Horn and the ancient estate of the Lius, and I wondered how the Laughing Prince could have enjoyed torturing and murdering little girls like these. Apparently Master Li was thinking the same thing.
“I have a theory about the late lunatic lord,” he said. “Ox, what occupation is most closely linked to insanity?”
“Emperor,” I said promptly.
He laughed. “I can't argue with that, but I meant a commonplace occupation.”
I scratched my nose. “Making felt?” I guessed.
“Precisely,” said Master Li. “Felt is cured by immersion in mercury. People in certain trades—hatters, for example—practically swim in the stuff, and it's almost certain that the Laughing Prince drank it.”
“Sir?”
“In his youth he had been a promising scientist,” Master Li explained. “Sooner or later he was bound to experiment with the Elixir of Life. The formulas are beyond counting, but they all contain the common ingredient of cinnabar, and cinnabar is simply mercuric sulphide. For years I've been warning about mercury, but nobody listens. The reason is that the effect is cumulative and gradual, and one needs to live as long as I have to see the pattern.”
He hopped to his feet and began demonstrating expressions and body movements.
“It attacks the nervous system, and eventually produces tics and twitches and spastic movements, like this,” said Master Li, and he did a strange jerky series of steps that was oddly appealing. “I am most definitely thinking of the Laughing Prince's irresistible little dance step,” he said. “As the poisoning progresses, it leads to outbursts of hysterical laughter and fits of murderous rage, and the final result is insanity followed by death. Ox, it's perfectly possible that the crimes of the Laughing Prince were caused by experiments intended to achieve immortality by drinking cinnabar—not very dramatic, perhaps, but more people have been massacred because an emperor's sandals didn't fit properly than because he received a sign from Heaven, and whenever I hear a high priest howl for divine retribution, I suspect acid indigestion.”