Bridge Of Birds (14 page)

Li Kao shrugged and pointed toward a long row of chests. “Take one of the blue ones,” he
said indifferently. “Actually the blue ones each contain twenty thousand pieces of gold,
but Lord Li of Kao and Lord Lu of Yu can scarcely be bothered with change.”

The Key Rabbit toppled over backward. It took a few minutes to revive him, but he grasped
the possibilities instantly.

“Alas!” he panted. “Lord Li of Kao and Lord Lu of Yu have no place in which to spend the
night, and while my humble abode is scarcely suitable... You see, I will probably have to
stay in the castle all night counting the duke's money, and my dear wife will be all alone
and unprotected. Women require protection, among other things.”

He fell to his knees and began kissing the tips of our sandals.
“Such as pearls!”
he wailed.
“Jade!”
he howled.

“May we offer you some roast goose?” Master Li said not unkindly. “It is Lord Lu of Yu's
own recipe, marinated twenty-four hours in the lees of fine wine, with honey and crushed
apricots. Lord Lu of Yu, incidentally, is a disciple of Chang Chou, who said that he
preferred his own cooking, but other people's wives.”

“Joy!”
shrieked the Key Rabbit.

That night I prepared to meet the most expensive woman in the world. The moon was playing
tag with fingers of clouds, and the breeze was warm and fragrant with flowers, and
crickets chirped in the shadows of the Key Rabbit's garden. The path of pearls and jade
that I had strewn upon the grass sparkled like a reflection of the Great River of Stars,
and I found it difficult to breathe as I watched a young woman trot toward rne, exclaiming
with wonder as she picked up each glittering bauble. Then she got close enough so I could
see her clearly.

“Number Ten Ox,” I said to myself, “you have been robbed!”

She wasn't even pretty. Lotus Cloud was pure peasant, with big feet, short thick legs,
large square hands, and a plain flat face. She stopped short and examined me with her head
cocked at an angle, and she looked for all the world like a country girl who was trying to
decide whether or not to buy a pet at a fair. I could almost hear her think, Yes, I'll
take this cute thing home with me. And then she grinned.

I cannot describe that grin. It was as though all the hope and joy and love and laughter
that there was in the whole world had gathered into a fist that reached out and belted me
in the heart, and the next thing I knew I was on my knees with my arms wrapped around her
legs and my head pressed against her thighs.

“My surname if Lu and my personal name is Yu, but I am not to be confused with the eminent
author of
The Classic of Tea
, and everyone calls me Number Ten Ox,” I moaned.

She laughed softly, and her fingers played with my hair.

“I shall call you Boopsie,” she said.

The measure of my enchantment may be judged from the fact that I enjoyed being called
Boopsie. In fact, I felt like wagging my tail whenever Lotus Cloud came into view.

“Key Rabbit,” I said a couple of days later, “your beloved wife is not witty, and she is
not wise, and she cannot read or write, and she has no social graces whatsoever, and she
isn't even pretty, and I worship the very ground that she walks on.”

“That,” sighed the Key Rabbit, “is what all her protectors say.”

“Master Li, have I lost my mind?” I asked.

“Well, beauty is a ridiculously overrated commodity,” he said. “Over the past eighty or
ninety years I have known a great many beautiful women, and they've all been the same. A
beauty is forced to lie late in her bed in the morning in order to gather 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 Nine Bends of the River Diving-Water
Perfume, applies rouge, mascara, and eye shadow, covers the whole works with two inches of
the Powder of the Nonchalant Approach, squeezes into a plum-blossom-patterned tunic with
matching skirt and stockings, adds four or five pounds of jewelry, looks into the mirror
for any visible sign of humanity and is relieved to fine none, checks to make sure that
her makeup 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, consists of gossip and
giggles.”

“That's part of it!” I cried. “Lotus Cloud hops out of bed and plunges her head into a
pail of cold water, bellows ”Aaarrrggghh!“ runs a comb through her hair, and looks around
to see if there's anyone handy who feels like making love. If such is the case, she hops
back into bed. If not, she jumps into whatever clothes are lying around and leaps out the
door - or window, it doesn't matter - to see what wonders the new day will bring, and
since she views the world with the delighted eyes of a child, the day is bound to be
marvelous.”

“That,” sighed the Key Rabbit, “is what all her protectors say. How I wish that I could
afford my dear wife for myself.”

“
Nobody
can afford your dear wife,” Master Li snarled.

He had a point, although Lotus Cloud was not promiscuous in her greed. At an early age the
dear girl had become a specialist. Diamonds did not interest her. Emeralds bored her to
tears. I once gave her a casket filled with gold, and she promptly handed it to a friend.

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“Because she wanted it, Boopsie,” said Lotus Cloud, and it was clear that she thought I
was an idiot to ask such a stupid question.

Ah, but fill that same casket with pearls and jade! Never before or since have I known
anything to match Lotus Cloud's reaction to a gift of pearls and jade. Her eyes grew wide
with wonder, and her hands reached out reverently. A soul-shaking desire wracked her whole
body, and her face was transfigured by indescribable longing. The sheer force of her greed
would practically knock you off your feet, and she would fling herself into your arms and
vow to adore you throughout eternity.

A man will do practically anything to get a reaction like that, and that was the trouble.
Within ten minutes Lotus Cloud would forget all about your wonderful gift, and if you
wanted to produce another reaction, you had to produce another casket of pearls and jade.

“Like all classic swindles it is simplicity itself,” Master Li said with grudging respect.

“I greatly admire her technique, even as it drives me toward bankruptcy,” I said.

“That,” sighed the Key Rabbit, “is what all her protectors say.”

Li Kao was making splendid progress with the Key Rabbit. It was only a matter of time
before he would be able to persuade the duke's assessor to sneak us into the labyrinth and
get us out again, but in the meantime I had to keep Lotus Cloud supplied with pearls and
jade. Our chests of gold were melting like snow in August, and one terrible morning I
stared in disbelief at the tiny handful of coins that was all that remained of the largest
private fortune in China.

“Ox, don't look so guilty,” Master Li said comfortingly. “The dear girl's pigeon-plucking
technique is quite remarkable. Let's go pluck a few pigeons ourselves.”

Not long afterward a splendid fellow named Liverlips Loo, who was attired as the majordomo
of a great house, banged a gold-tipped staff against the door of the stingiest miser in
town. Behind Liverlips Loo was a palatial palanquin, upon which rode two elegant
aristocrats, a cart loaded with garbage, and a goat.

“Throw open the doors!” roared Liverlips Loo. “Ten thousand blessings have descended upon
you, for Lord Li of Kao and Lord Lu of Yu have condescended to rest in your miserable
hovel!”

I have decided that the problem with poetic justice is that it never knows when to stop.

The door crashed open and we stared at a gentleman who owned six different houses in six
different cities, and who was blessed with 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 drooping elephant ears from which sprouted thick tufts of coarse gray hair.

“What have you done with my five hundred pieces of gold?”
screamed Miser Shen.

Liverlips Loo escaped quite easily, but when Li Kao and I jumped from the palanquin we
landed on top of the Key Rabbit and his platoon of soldiers. Somehow we became entangled
in a chain that was around the Key Rabbit's neck, and he tugged frantically at his end.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” he wailed, and I assume that he thought that we were trying
to steal the key to the duke's front door. The single key on the end of the chain was
shaped like a flower, with sixteen tiny points that had to make contact with precisely the
right amount of force before the lock would open, and a pressure lock costs several
fortunes. The soldiers descended upon us. We were hauled off to court, but since Liverlips
Loo had taken the cart and the goat with him, there was no evidence. Miser Shen could do
little more than bellow accusations, but Miser Shen wasn't the problem. The problem was
that we were no longer in a position to pay the mandatory fine for disturbing the peace,
and the penalty for not paying a fine in the duke's city was death.

“Woe!” wailed the Key Rabbit. “Woe! Woe! Woe! To think that I should be partly responsible
for the decapitation of my dearest friend and the most generous protector that my dear
wife has ever had!”

Eventually he calmed down enough to find a bright side.

“Do not worry about Lotus Cloud,” he told me comfortingly. “I have discovered that Miser
Shen is the wealthiest man in town. I will invite him to tea, and unless my dear wife has
suddenly lost her touch, she will be rolling in pearls and jade.”

“Splendid,” I said.

There was no room in my heart for any more misery. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw the
children of Ku-fu lying as still as death, and the abbot praying, and the parents telling
each other not to worry because Master Li and Number Ten Ox were sure to return with the
wonderful root that could cure
ku
poisoning.