Bridge Of Birds (12 page)

I turned and walked rapidly out the door and down the maze of corridors that I knew like
the back of my hand, and then I jumped from a low window to the grass below and began
running across the hills.

I had no goal or purpose whatsoever, or perhaps I did in that I was subconsciously saying
farewell to the village of Ku-fu. All I knew was that when I am depressed or frightened, I
must do something physical, which is all I am good at, and if I keep at it long enough, I
can usually forget my cares. I ran for hours through the hills and fields and forest, and
lonely dogs began to follow me. I had quite a pack of them at my heels when my feet took
me up a tiny winding path to a dense clump of shrubbery on a hillside, and I got down on
my knees and wriggled through a tunnel into a small cave. The dogs squeezed in after me,
and we sat down upon piles of bones.

They were called dragon bones, because it had once been believed that dragons periodically
shed their bones as snakes shed their skins, but they actually were the shoulder bones of
domestic animals that had been used for prophecy. Scapulimancy is very ancient, and the
abbot had told me that the oracle bones of An-yang are the only solid proof that the
semi-mythological Shang Dynasty had actually existed.

Do other people revert to childhood when they are frightened? I know that I did. The cave
had been headquarters for youthful desperadoes when I was a small boy, and we had brought
all important questions to the infallible dragon bones. Now I lit a fire in the old
brazier and placed the poker in it. The dogs crowded around me and watched with interest
while I searched for a bone with a smooth unmarked side. I wrote Yes on the left and No on
the right, and I cleared my throat.

“O Dragon, will I find the Great Root of Power in the labyrinth of the Duke of Ch'in and
get out of there alive?” I whispered hoarsely.

I wrapped my hand in an old piece of horsehide and picked up the hot poker. The point
sizzled as it bored into the bone, and the crack started slowly, lifting toward the
answer. Then it split neatly in half, and the left crack shot up and speared Yes while the
right half impaled No. I stared at the message. I would find the root, but wouldn't live
to tell the tale? I would live to tell the tale, but wouldn't find the root? I was quite
upset until it occurred to me that I was no longer ten years old, and I blushed bright red.

“Idiot,” I muttered.

The sun had set. Moonbeams reached into the cave and touched my left hand, and the small
scar on my wrist gleamed like silver. I threw back my head and laughed. The childhood
friends who had passed the knife around the circle as we became blood brothers would have
died from envy had they known that the skeleton of Number Ten Ox was destined to rattle in
the duke's mysterious labyrinth, and I hugged a few dogs as I solemnly chanted the sacred
vow of the Seven Bloody Bandits of the Dragon Bones Cave.

“Bat shit, rat shit, three-toed-sloth shit, bones and blades and bloody oath writ -”

“Now that has real merit,” a voice said approvingly. “It beats the scholar's oath by a
mile and a half.”

The dogs barked excitedly as Master Li crawled into the cave. He sat down and looked
around.

“Scapulimancy was a racket,” he observed. “With a little practice a soothsayer could make
a bone crack any way he wanted to, or jump through a hoop, for that matter. Did you ever
cheat when you were a boy?”

“It would have spoiled our games,” I mumbled.

“Very wise,” he said. “The abbot, who is also very wise, told me that I would find you
here, and if not, I should simply sit and wait. Don't be ashamed of reliving your
childhood, Ox, because all of us must do it now and then in order to maintain our sanity.”

He was carrying a large flask of wine, which he extended to me.

“Have a drink, and a tale I will thee tell,” he said.

I sipped and choked on the fiery liquid. Li Kao reclaimed the flask and swallowed about a
pint.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “A
cold wind howled, and lightning flickered across the sky like the tongues of snakes, and
thunder roared like dragons, and rain fell in torrents. Piercing through the gale came the
sound of wheels and hoofbeats, followed by the most dreaded sound in all China: the
high-pitched hunting horns of the soldiers of the Duke of Ch'in.”

This time I choked without benefit of wine, and Li Kao pounded my back in a kindly fashion.

“A mule was pulling a buggy down a mountain path at a suicidal rate, and a man and a woman
were bouncing upon the seat,” he said. “The woman was nine months pregnant, and she
clutched a large burlap bag while the man wielded a buggy whip. Once more the terrible
horns sounded behind them, and then a volley of arrows shot into the night. The mule
staggered and fell, and the buggy crashed into a ditch. Apparently the soldiers were after
the bag that the woman carried, because the man tried to take it from her so that the
soldiers would attack him while she escaped, but the woman was equally brave and refused
to relinquish the bag, and they were tugging back and forth when the second volley of
arrows reached them. The man fell back mortally wounded, and the woman staggered away with
the shaft of an arrow protruding from beneath her left shoulder blade, and the rain
mercifully covered the small determined figure as she crawled up the winding path that led
to the Monastery of Sh'u.”

Master Li hoisted the flask and drank thirstily. I had no idea why he was telling me the
story, but at least he was taking my mind off my troubles.

“The arrow was her passport,” he said. "It was stamped with the tiger emblem of the Duke
of Ch'in, and the Monastery of Sh'u hated the Duke of Ch'in. They did all they could for
her, and with the first faint light of dawn the tiny wail of a newborn babe lifted above
the walls. The abbot and the midwife had worked a small miracle to save the child, but
nothing could be done for the mother.

" 'Brave Soul,' the abbot whispered, wiping the sweat from her fevered brow. 'Brave rebel
against the evil Duke of Ch'in.'

"The midwife lifted the wailing child. 'A thousand blessings, my lady, for you have given
birth to a healthy son!' she said.

"The dying woman's nostrils twitched, and she opened her eyes. With an immense effort she
lifted a hand and pointed to the midwife.

“'Kao,' she panted. 'Li... Li... Li... Kao...'”

I jerked up my head and looked wide-eyed at Master Li, who winked at me.

"Tears blurred the abbot's eyes. 'I hear, my daughter,' he sniffled. 'Your son shall be
named Li Kao.'

"'Kao!' the woman gasped. 'Li... Li... Li... Kao...'

“ 'I understand, my daughter,' the abbot sobbed. 'I shall raise Li Kao as my own son, and
I shall place his tiny feet upon the True Path. He shall be instructed in the Five Virtues
and Excellent Doctrines, and at the end of his blameless life his spirit shall surely pass
through the Gates of the Great Void into the Blessed Regions of Purified Semblance.'”

Master Li swallowed another pint and offered me another sip, which produced the same
choking result.

“The woman's eyes blazed with a strong emotion that strangely resembled fury,” he said,
“but her strength was spent. Her eyes closed, and her hand fell limply to her side, and
her soul departed to the Yellow Springs Beneath the Earth. The midwife was greatly moved,
and when she whipped a small goatskin flask from her robe and drank deeply, the smell of
the stuff brought a cold chill to the abbot's heart. That revolting odor could only come
from the finest paint remover and worst wine ever invented: Kao-liang. Repeat:
Kao-li
ang. Was it possible that the dying woman had not been naming a baby but demanding a
snort? It was indeed possible, and it further developed that she had not been pursued by
the duke's soldiers because she was an heroic rebel, but because she and her husband had
stolen the regimental payroll. My parents were the most notorious crooks in China, and my
mother could have escaped quite easily if she had not tried to battle my father for the
loot.”

Master Li shook his head wonderingly.

“Ox, heredity is a remarkable thing. I never knew my parents, yet at the tender age of
five I stole the abbot's silver belt buckle. When I was six I made off with his jade
inkstone. On my eighth birthday I stole the gold tassels from the abbot's best hat, and I
still take pride in the feat because he happened to be wearing the hat at the time. When I
was eleven I exchanged the abbot's bronze incense burners for a couple of jars of wine and
got royally drunk in the Alley of Flies, and at thirteen I borrowed his silver
candlesticks and tiptoed into the Alley of Four Hundred Forbidden Delights.
Youth!
” cried Master Li. “How sweet yet sadly swift pass the halcyon days of our innocence.”

He buried his nose in his wine flask again, and burped comfortably.

“The abbot of the Monastery of Sh'u was truly heroic,” he said. “He had vowed to raise me
as his own, and he kept his word, and so well did he pound an education into my head that
I eventually did quite well in my
chin-shih
examination. When I left the monastery, it was not in pursuit of scholarship, however,
but in pursuit of an unparalleled career in crime. It was quite a shock for me to discover
that crime was so easy that it was boring. I reluctantly turned to scholarship, and by the
accident of handing in some good papers I was entombed in the Forest of Culture Academy as
a research fellow, and I escaped from that morgue by bribing the court eunuchs to get me
an appointment as a military strategist. I managed to lose a few battles in the approved
manner, and then I became one of the emperor's wandering persuaders, and then Governor of
Yu, and it was in the last occupation that the light finally dawned. I was trying to get
enough evidence to hang the loathsome Dog-Meat General of Wusan, but he was so slippery
that I couldn't prove a thing. Fortunately the Yellow River was flooding again, and I
managed to convince the priests that the only way to appease the river god was through the
custom of the ancients. So the Dog-Meat General disappeared beneath the waves tied to a
gray horse - I was sorry about the horse, but it was the custom - and I tendered my
resignation. Solving crime, I had belatedly discovered, was at least a hundred times more
difficult than committing it, so I hung the sign of a half-closed eye above my door and I
have never regretted it. I might add that I have also never left a case half-finished.”

I gulped noisily, and I suppose that the hope in my eyes was shining as brightly as the
moon.

“Why do you think I've been telling you this?” said Master Li. “I have a very good reason
to be angry at the Duke of Ch'in, since one of his ancestors killed my parents, and if
nothing else, my various careers have uniquely prepared me for the task of stealing
ginseng roots.”

He patted my shoulder.

“Besides, I'd take you for a great-grandson any day,” he said. “I would never dream of
allowing you to go out on your own to be slaughtered. Get some sleep, and we'll leave at
dawn.”

Tears blurred my eyes. Master Li called to the dogs and crawled from the cave, and they
gamboled happily around him as he danced down the path toward the monastery, waving his
wine flask. The high-pitched four-tone liquid-voweled song of High Mandarin drifted back
upon the night breeze.

Among the flowers, with a flask of wine,

I drink all alone - no one to share.

Raising my flask, I welcome the moon,

And my shadow joins us, making a threesome.

As I sing, the moon seems to sway back and forth;

As I dance, my shadow goes flopping about.

As long as we're sober, we'll enjoy one another,

And when we get drunk, we'll go our own ways.

Thus we'll pursue our own avatars,

And we'll all meet again in the River of Staaaaaaars!

I wished that I could have seen him when he was ninety. Even now his leaps and capers were
magnificent in the moonlight.

At the suggestion of the abbot I will explain for the benefit of barbarians that my
country is Chung-kuo, which can mean Central Country or Middle Kingdom, whichever one
prefers. The point is that it is the country in the exact center of the world, and the
only country that lies directly beneath Heaven. “China” is a barbarian invention that was
coined in awe and honor of the first Duke of Ch'in, who took over the empire in the Year
of the Rat 2,447 (221 B.C.). He was a remarkable reformer. Mass murderers are usually
reformers, the abbot tells me, although not necessarily the other way around.

“We are being strangled by our past!” roared the Duke of Ch'in. “We must make a new
beginning!”

What he had in mind was the suppression of every previous philosophy of government and the
imposition of one of his own, called Legalism. The abbot says that the famous first
sentence of the Book of Legalism is, “Punishment produces force, force produces strength,
strength produces awe, awe produces virtue; thus virtue has its origin in punishment,” and
that there is little need to read the second sentence.

The duke began his reforms by burning every book in the empire, with the exception of
certain technical and divinatory works, and since the scholars were burned along with the
books, there were vast areas of knowledge that vanished from the face of the earth. He
disapproved of certain religions; temples and priests and worshippers went up in flames.
He disapproved of frivolous fables; professional storytellers were beheaded, along with
vast numbers of bewildered grandmothers. The leading Confucianists were decoyed into a
ravine and crushed by falling boulders, and the penalty for possession of one line of the
Analects was death by slow dismemberment. The problem with burning and beheading and
crushing and dismembering is that it is time-consuming, and the duke's solution was a
masterstroke.

“I shall build a wall!” cried the Duke of Ch'in.

The Great Wall of China did not begin with the duke, nor did it end with the duke, but it
was the duke who first used it for the purpose of murder. Anyone who disagreed with him
was marched away to the desolate north, and men died by the millions as they labored on
the public-works project that insiders call the Longest Cemetery in the World. More
millions died as they built the duke's private residence. The Castle of the Labyrinth
covered seventy acres, and it was actually thirty-six separate castles connected by a
labyrinth of underground passageways. (The idea was that he would have thirty-six imperial
bedrooms to choose from, and assassins would never know where he slept.) Beneath the
artificial labyrinth was a real one, running deep through a sheer cliff, and it was said
that it was the home of a horrible monster that devoured the screaming victims of the Duke
of Ch'in. True or not, the thousands of people who were tossed into it were never seen
again.

The duke produced another masterstroke when he had the finest craftsmen in the empire
fashion a great golden mask of a snarling tiger, which he wore on all public occasions.
His successors continued to wear it for more than eight hundred years. Did a duke have
watery eyes, a weak chin, and facial tics? What his subjects saw was a terrifying mask,
“the Tiger of Ch'in,” and the abbot explained that the barbarian rulers of Crete had used
the mask of a bull for the same reason.

Mystery and terror are the bulwarks of tyranny, and for fourteen years China was one vast
scream, but then the duke made the mistake of raising taxes to the point where the
peasants had to choose between starvation or rebellion. He had confiscated their weapons,
but he was not wise enough in the ways of peasants to confiscate their bamboo groves. A
sharpened bamboo spear is something to avoid, and when the duke saw several million of
them marching in his direction he hastily abandoned the empire and barricaded himself in
the Castle of the Labyrinth. There he was invulnerable, and since he still controlled the
largest private army in the country it was tacitly agreed that Ch'in would exist as a
state within the state.

Emperors came and emperors went, but the Dukes of Ch'in seemed destined to go on forever,
crouched and snarling in the most monstrous monument to raw power known to man.

The Castle of the Labyrinth lies in ruins now, a great gray mass of shattered slabs and
twisted iron scattered across the crest of a cliff overlooking the Yellow Sea. There the
tide is the strongest in China, and the tumbled stones shudder with the force of the
waves. Vines have covered the splintered steel gates, and lizards with rainbow bellies and
turquoise eyes cling to the fragments of walls, and spiders scuttle through the eternal
shadows cast by banana and bamboo. The spiders that currently occupy the castle are huge,
hairy, and harmless. The previous occupants were equally grotesque but not so harmless,
and when I first saw the Castle of the Labyrinth it was standing in all its glory.

The barge that we traveled on was inching through a dense morning fog toward the junction
with the Yellow Sea, and harsh commanding voices seemed to be shouting right in my ears.
The air vibrated with great metallic crashes and the clash of a thousand weapons, and the
heavy tread of marching feet. Then the fog began to lift, and my eyes lifted with it up
the side of a sheer cliff to the most powerful fortress in the world; vast, moated,
turreted, impregnable. I stared in horror at towers that scraped the clouds, and at
immense steel gates that glittered like terrible fangs, and at a central drawbridge that
could accommodate four squadrons of cavalry riding abreast. The great stone walls were so
thick that the men who patrolled on top on horseback looked like ants riding small
spiders, and ironshod hooves dislodged rocks that tumbled down the cliff and splashed in
the water around the barge. One of them banged upon the roof of the cabin where Li Kao was
sleeping off an overdose of wine, and he stumbled out on deck and gazed up, rubbing his
eyes.

“Revolting architecture, isn't it?” he said with a yawn. “The first duke had no aesthetic
sense whatsoever. What's the matter, Ox? A slight hangover?”

“Just a mild headache,” I said in a tiny terrified voice.

As the fog continued to fade away, I gazed fearfully toward what must surely be the
gloomiest and ghastliest city on earth, and I began to question my sanity when I heard the
happy songs of fishermen and sniffed a breeze that was fragrant with a billion blossoms.
And then the fog lifted completely and I stared in disbelief at a city so lovely that it
might have been the setting of a fairy tale.

“Strange, isn't it?” said Master Li. “Ch'in is beautiful beyond compare, and it is also
the safest city in all China. The reason, oddly enough, is greed.”

He took a morning-after sip of wine and belched contentedly.

“Every single one of the first duke's successors has lived only for money, and at first
their methods of acquiring it were crude but effective,” he explained. “Once a year the
reigning duke would choose a village at random, burn it to the ground, and decapitate the
inhabitants. Then the duke and his army would set forth upon the annual tax trip. The
severed heads led the way, mounted upon pikes, and the eagerness with which peasants lined
up to pay taxes was a source of great gratification to the Dukes of Ch'in. Sooner or later
an enlightened duke was bound to appear, however, and it is said that the one who has gone
down in history as the Good Duke suddenly jumped to his feet during a council with his
ministers, shot a hand into the air, and bellowed, 'Corpses cannot pay taxes!' This divine
revelation produced a change of tactics.”

Li Kao offered me some wine, but I declined.

“The Good Duke and his successors continued to murder peasants for fun and profit, and the
annual tax trip continues to this day, but the wealthy were allowed to fill the dukes'
coffers as a matter of free choice,” he explained. “The Good Duke simply transformed his
gloomy coastal town into the greatest and most expensive pleasure city on earth. Ox, every
luxury and vice known to man is available at Ch'in at exorbitant prices, and the cost is
more than offset by the fact that the dukes will not tolerate crime, which might divert
coins from their own pockets. As a result the rich do not have to hire large private
armies of guards, and in Ch'in and in Ch'in alone a wealthy man can lead a carefree
existence. So long as a man spends freely, he has nothing to fear from the rulers of the
Castle of the Labyrinth, and it is only a slight exaggeration to say that you and I are
about to enter Paradise on Earth.”

I will describe the city later on, but our first task was to find out who might be able to
get us into the labyrinth and out again, and we discovered him inside an hour after we
docked.

Every place of business was equipped with an iron chest with the duke's tiger emblem
stamped upon it. Half of the coins from every transaction went into the chest and half
into the proprietor's cash box, and somebody had to collect the duke's share. The position
of Assessor of Ch'in had to rank very high among the most miserable occupations on earth,
and the fellow who was stuck with it was universally known as the Key Rabbit - inescapably
so, because he was a cringing little man with pink-rimmed eyes and a long pink nose that
twitched in permanent terror, and as he pattered through the streets he was festooned with
jangling chains of keys.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” the poor fellow whimpered as he trotted into wineshops and
brothels and gambling dens. “O dear, oh dear, oh dear!” he wailed as he trotted back out
again.

He was followed by a platoon of soldiers and two carts, one to hold the loot and the other
to hold the massive scrolls that listed every rule and regulation in the duke's domain.
Magistrates could impose sentences, but only the Assessor could impose fines, and it was
generally agreed that if the Key Rabbit missed a point of law that cost the duke one penny
he would shortly be missing his head.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” he whined as he trotted into the Lucky Gambler Cricket
Fighting Arena. He searched through his thousands of keys for the right one, unlocked the
chest, counted the coins, checked the records to see if the amount was suspiciously low,
conferred with spies to confirm that no cheating had taken place, relocked the chest, and
pattered down the street to the next place of business. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” he
whimpered, which was a reasonable comment because if the duke's share was off by a penny,
his head would also be off.

As the sun set over the Castle of the Labyrinth the Key Rabbit pattered up the path to the
duke's treasure chambers, where clerks counted the coins, and then as often as not he
would be forced to spend the night recounting the loot to make sure that the clerks hadn't
pocketed a penny. Who had to accompany the Duke of Ch'in on the annual tax trip and
determine how much was owed by each village? The Key Rabbit, of course, and it was common
knowledge that if he failed to squeeze the final grain of rice from the peasants he would
fail to keep his head.

That should have been enough grief for anyone, but not for the Key Rabbit. In a moment of
raving insanity, he had married.

“Don't misunderstand me,” said the old lady who was filling our ears with the gossip of
the town. “Lotus Cloud is a dear, sweet country girl with the kindest heart in the world,
but she was not prepared for the seductions of city life, and she has fallen victim to
insatiable greed. Her husband, who has not one penny to call his own, cannot even relax
when his wife takes a wealthy lover, because she is sure to bankrupt the fellow in a week.
The Key Rabbit has decided that he committed some horrible crime in a previous
incarnation, and he is being punished by marriage to the most expensive woman in the whole
world.”

For once my ignorant mind was keeping pace with that of Li Kao.

“The key to the labyrinth is the Key Rabbit, and the key to the Key Rabbit is his wife,”
said Master Li as we strolled away. “I'd do it myself if I were ninety, but it appears
that Lotus Cloud will be your department. You may console yourself with the thought that
the most expensive woman in the world is likely to be the most beautiful.”

“Master Li, I shall do my duty,” I said bravely.

“Yes indeed,” he sighed. “Ox, you aren't going to make much of an impression upon a
walking case of insatiable greed with what's left of Miser Shen's gold coins. We must get
our hands on a fortune.”

Li Kao led the way to the customs shed, and an hour later he found what he wanted.
Everything that was shipped in or out of the port of Ch'in was heavily taxed, and an
enormously fat merchant was paying an export tax that amounted to an emperor's ransom. A
small army of guards - a rare sight in Ch'in - was positioned around four rectangular
wooden cases, and since it would be several hours before his ship sailed, the merchant
waddled away to enjoy a light lunch.

“Ox, follow that fellow and come back and tell me what he eats,” said Master Li.

“What he eats?”

“What he eats.”

When I returned I was rather shaken. “Master Li, you won't believe this, but that merchant
began with four large tureens of pimento and dumpling soup,” I said. “Then he devoured
three bowls of mussel stew, a pound of pickled mallows, two pounds of steamed snails,
three servings of soft-shelled crabs, two plates of sweetmeats, ten honey cakes, and a
watermelon. The proprietor wondered whether the esteemed guest might care for six or seven
quarts of peaches in heavy syrup, but the merchant explained that he was on a diet and
would be forced to settle for a gallon of green tea flavored with pine kernels.”

“Where is he now?”

“He's having a steam bath and a massage, while two waiters from the restaurant stand ready
with a stomach pump.”