Bridge Of Birds (7 page)

Four of the thugs grabbed their leader and forced him forward. Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang
was shaking so hard that he could barely stand, but he managed to slide his own right hand
inside his sleeve, and the sleeve began to flutter in response. Master Li's sleeve moved
faster and faster, Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang replied in the same silent fashion, and so it
went for many minutes. At last Li Kao extracted his hand from the sleeve and gestured
dismissal, and to my astonishment the thugs and their leader backed out of the room on
their knees, humbly banging their heads against the floor.

Li Kao smiled and opened a jar of better wine and motioned for me to join him at a table.

“The lower the criminal, the more impressed he is with the childlike mumbo-jumbo of the
Secret Societies,” he said complacently. “For some reason Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang is
under the impression that I am a great grand master of the Triads, and that I intend to
cut his gang in for a share of the loot when I make my move against the Ancestress. In the
latter respect,” said Master Li, “he is absolutely right.”

Two days later some aristocratic ladies who were returning to the estate of the Ancestress
were ambushed by villains whose appearance was so terrifying that the guards fled and left
the ladies to their fate. Things were looking very bad for them until two intrepid
noblemen rode to the rescue.

“On your knees, dogs, for you face the rage of Lord Li of Kao!” Master Li yelled.

“Cower, knaves, before the fury of Lord Lu of Yu!” I shouted.

Unfortunately, our lead horse slipped in some mud, and our carriage crashed into the
ladies' carriage, and we were pitched on top of half-naked females who were screaming
their heads off. We gazed groggily at a pretty jade pendant that was dangling between a
pair of pretty pink-tipped breasts, and it took a moment for us to remember what we were
doing there. Then we jumped down to engage the ruffians.

Li Kao stabbed right and left with his sword, and I swung away with both hands - he was
missing, of course, and I was pulling my punches short - and the thugs remembered that
they weren't actually supposed to rob and rape anybody and began to do a very good job of
acting. Once, when my foot slipped in the mud, a punch accidentally landed and sent the
leader of the bandits sprawling. I forgot about the accident, and soon the bandits fled in
terror and we turned to accept the gratitude of the rescued ladies.

Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang had already lost his nose and both of his ears in back-alley
battles, and he did not appreciate losing several teeth as well. He crept up behind me
with a log in his hands.

“A present for Lord Lu of Yu!” he yelled, and he swung with all his might, and I saw a
glorious burst of orange and purple stars, and then everything turned black.

I awoke in a very expensive bed surrounded by very expensive women who were battling for
the honor of bathing the bump on my skull.

“He wakes!”
they shrieked at the tops of their lungs.
“Lord Lu of Yu opens his divine eyes!”

I had been brought up to be courteous, but there are limits.

“If you don't stop that infernal racket, Lord Lu of Yu will strangle you with his divine
hands,” I groaned.

They paid no attention to me, and the ear-splitting babble continued, and gradually I
began to make some sense out of it. Our miraculous intervention had saved them all from
rape and ruin, and the esteem in which we were held was not diminished by our fine
tasseled hats, green silk tunics, jade-bordered silver girdles, Szech'uen fans, and money
belts that bulged with Miser Shen's gold coins. This was all according to plan, but I was
rather puzzled by repeated references to “the bridegroom,” and I was trying to get up
enough strength to ask a few questions when I began to realize that my wounds were far
more serious than I had thought.

I was sick enough to imagine that the floor was shaking, and that my bed was starting to
bounce up and down. The hallucination was accompanied by a dull, rhythmic, pounding noise
that gradually increased in volume, and the ladies suddenly stopped babbling. They turned
pale and tiptoed quietly from the room through a side door, and I began to smell a
revolting odor of rotting flesh.

The bedroom door crashed open, and the woman who marched inside weighed approximately five
hundred pounds. The floor shook as she marched toward my bed. The coldest eyes that I had
ever seen, even in nightmares, glittered between puffy rolls of sagging gray flesh, and a
massive swollen hand shot out and grabbed my chin. The icy eyes moved over my face.

“Satisfactory,” she grunted.

She grabbed my right arm and probed the biceps.

“Satisfactory,” she grunted.

She jerked the covers down and squeezed my chest.

“Satisfactory,” she grunted.

She ripped the covers all the way down and prodded my private parts.

“Satisfactory,” she grunted.

Then the creature stepped back and I stared pop-eyed at a leveled finger that resembled a
gangrened sausage.

“They call you Lord Lu of Yu,” she growled. “I know Yu well, and there is no Lord Lu. They
call your antiquated companion Lord Li of Kao, and the province of Kao does not exist. You
are frauds and fortune hunters, and your criminal activities do not interest me in the
least.”

She slapped her hands to her hips and glared at me.

“My granddaughter has taken a fancy to you, and I want great-grandchildren,” she snarled.
“The wedding will take place as soon as your wounds have healed. You will present me with
seven great-grandchildren, and they will be boys. I intend to overthrow the T'ang Dynasty
and restore the Sui, and boys are more suitable for the purpose. In the meantime you will
not annoy me by showing your silly face any more than is absolutely necessary, and you
will not speak unless spoken to. Insolence in my household is punishable by immediate
decaptiation.”

The monster turned and plodded from the room, and the door slammed viciously behind her.
For a moment I lay there paralyzed, and then I jumped from the bed and ran across the
floor and started to climb out of the window. The view made me stop. That immense estate
boasted no less than seven pleasure gardens, and one of them, in the tradition of great
houses, was a pretty artificial peasant village. I gazed at simple thatched roofs, and
crude water wheels, and green fields, and pigs and cows and chickens and water buffaloes.
I felt tears well in my eyes and trickle down my cheeks.

My village was praying for a ginseng root.

I made my way back to the bed, and I lay there wrapped in misery and terror.

When I had recovered enough to take stock of my surroundings it gradually dawned on me
that the monster had decided upon seven great-grandchildren some time ago, and that her
granddaughter would be ordered to see to it that they were twelve years old at birth. I
was lying in the dormitory of the boys who were going to aid in overthrowing the T'ang
Dynasty, and I will confess that I wept when I considered the life that my poor children
were to lead.

Seven small beds were aligned side by side with geometric precision. Seven small desks
were placed precisely in front of them, and the writing brushes lay exactly three inches
to the right of the inkstones. Nothing in that cold inhuman room was so much as an eyelash
out of alignment, and that included the signs on the walls. Some were
kung kuo-yo
, Tables of Demerits, and I will give an example.

EACH DEMERIT IS TO BE PUNISHED BY STROKES OF THE BIRCH ROD

Exciting lustful thoughts in oneself 5

Showing one's nakedness when easing nature at night 2

Lewd dreams 2

If such dreams occasion lewd actions 10

Singing frivolous songs 5

Studying frivolous songs 10

Not yielding the way to a woman 10

If at the same time one looks at the woman 20

If one looks longingly at her 30

If one conceives lewd thoughts about her 40

Insolence to a woman 50

Insolence to the Ancestress 500

If such insolence is recurrent Decapitation

Other signs were lessons to be memorized, and my frightened eyes jerked from one to
another. Now and then in my dreams I find myself in a classroom with fragments of lessons
plastered all over it.

The effectiveness of the flame throwers known as
meng huo yu
may be enhanced by the addition of pulped bananas and coconuts to the oil, which will
cause the fiery mixture to stick to the flesh...

The Fire Drug will release deadly gas upon explosion with the addition of five ounces of
langtu
, two and one half ounces of pitch, one ounce of bamboo fibers, three ounces of arsenic
oxide...

An excellent poison can be swiftly produced under field conditions by boiling two baskets
of oleander leaves, distilling the essence, and adding three ounces of dried aconite
tubers. At sea a simple extraction of the sac of the blowfish...

A more subtle approach was employed by Wang Shih-chen, who presented his victims with
pornographic novels after smearing the edge of each page with arsenic, and when the victim
licked his finger to turn the pages...

Testicle crushers are easily manufactured by...

Severed heads may be preserved for display by...

I slid down and pulled the covers over my head, and I did not emerge until I heard the
door open and a familiar voice said, “What a stroke of luck! Your engagement is a godsend
- incidentally, how did you like the winsome damsel who recently ruled China?”

I jumped up and embraced him. “Master Li,” I sobbed, “if my fiancŽe resembles her
grandmother in any way, I can never go through with this!” A happy thought suddenly
occurred to me. “But if we're engaged, I won't see her until the wedding.”

“Normally that would be the case, but an exception has been made because you've already
seen almost all of her,” he said. “She was the one in the carriage with the pretty jade
pendant between the pretty breasts. Don't worry about it. All you have to do is to take an
occasional stroll with her in the gardens, while I figure out whom we have to kill in
order to get the Root of Power.”

“But the Ancestress...”I quavered.

“Has not recognized me,” said Master Li. “Her natural distaste for fortune-hunting
criminals has been reinforced by my unfortunate habit of rolling my eyes, drooling saliva,
giggling at inopportune moments, and popping my cheek with an unwashed finger. I doubt
that she will seek out your company, and all you'll have to worry about will be your
fiancŽe, her father, and the butler.”

My future father-in-law turned out to be the sweetest and gentlest of men, and as a
scholar he bowed only to Li Kao. Ho Wen had earned second place in the
chin-shih
examinations, and I would have had to enter Hanlin Academy to find two such minds under
one roof. The contrast between them was fascinating.

Li Kao would toss an idea into the air and watch it sparkle, and then he would toss a
second one, and then he would send handfuls of associated ideas spinning into space, and
when they returned to earth they would be neatly linked into a necklace that fit perfectly
around the throat of the subject. Ho Wen, on the other hand, was a plodding
one-step-at-a-time scholar who never made a mistake, and whose memory was so prodigious
that not even Li Kao could match it. I once asked him the name of a distant mountain, and
this is the answer that I received.

“The sacred mountains are five in number: Hengshan, Changshan, Huashan, Taishan, and
Sungshan, with Taishan leading in rank and Sungshan in the center. Mountains not sacred
but very distinguished include Wuyi, Wutang, Tienmu, Tienchu, Tienmuh, Niushi, 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 to
which you refer is none of these -”

“Ho,” I moaned.

“- it might not be too rash to conclude that it is Kuangfu, although I would not like to
be quoted in the presence of the Ancestress because the slightest mistake can mean instant
decapitation.”

Li Kao immediately grasped the potential of Ho's memory. He told him to drop our titles
when we were alone and address us as Li Kao and Number Ten Ox, and at the first
opportunity he turned the subject to ginseng. Ho's eyes lit up, but before he could begin
a discourse that might last several weeks Li Kao asked him if he had ever heard of a Great
Root of Power. Even Ho Wen had to stop and think about that, and then he said, slowly and
hesitantly,

“I was four years old, visiting a cousin at the Blessings of Heaven Library in Loyang.” He
paused for more thought. “Third basement, fifth row on the left, second rack from the top.
Behind
Chou-pi Mathematics
I found Chang Chi's
Typhoid Fever and Other Diseases
, behind which I found the sixteen volumes in fifty-two rolls of Li Shih-chen's
Outline of Herb Medicine
, behind which I found a mouse's nest. I was chasing the mouse at the time. In the nest
was a scrap of parchment with a pretty picture that was labeled 'Great Root of Power,' but
the parchment had been so badly chewed that I could not make out what species the root
belonged to.”

He squinted and pursed his lips as he tried to visualize the picture.

“It was a very strange root,” he said. “There were two tiny tendrils that were the Legs of
Power, two more that were the Arms of Power, and a fifth tendril that was the Head of
Power. The central mass of the root was the Heart of Power, which was labeled 'The
Ultimate.' Unfortunately the mice had devoured everything else, so I do not know what the
word 'ultimate' referred to. I very much doubt that the root was ginseng, because I have
never heard of ginseng that resembled it.”

His interest in ginseng had a specific origin. One day a grave was being dug in the family
cemetery and a shovel had pitched out some fragments of clay tablets. Ho Wen had instantly
recognized ideographs of immense antiquity. He had persuaded the workmen to gather every
fragment that there was, and then he had settled down to an impossible task. The fragments
were almost illegible, but he was determined to decipher the text or die in the attempt.
His face was flushed with pride when he took us to his workshop and showed us the tiny
clay fragments, and the theories of mathematical probability that he had devised to
suggest the sequence of characters in the ancient script. He had been working on it for
sixteen years, and already he had deciphered ten whole sentences, and if he lasted another
sixteen years he hoped to have four whole paragraphs.