BAF 64 - Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, page 22
part #64 of Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series
“All this is according to a definite line of augury and moves toward an end,” remarked the Mandarin, leaving his ceremonial chair and indicating that those concerned should follow him. “If this celestial creature can be brought to earth and is found to fit a place upon the sculptured block, Chan Chun’s contention need not be gainsaid, while distinction of a very special kind will appertain to Kin. Let the most skilful with his bow stand forth.”
“Wang, of the Crouching Leopard Band, display the opening attitude!” commanded an under-captain of the guard.
“A weighty bar of silver for thy needy sleeve if the first shaft shall reach its destined mark,” promised Chan Chun in a beseeching voice.
“Begin to prepare to affix a trusty arrow to thy bow in accordance with the prescribed requirements of the distance to be attained,” continued the one who led the movements. “Extending a propitious hand in the direction of the up-
“All-powerful chief!” exclaimed Kin suddenly, casting himself before the Mandarin’s feet. “Suffer the inoffensive bird to live in safety, and the penalty that Chan Chun has merited I will myself incur.”
“Rise, estimable Kin,” replied Tseng Hung, raising a jewelled hand with a gesture indicating that if his position had been slightly less exalted he might even have extended it; “your orthodox way of behaving in this emergency, together with the low-class efforts of the usurpatory Chan Chun, make any display of judicial alertness on this one’s part superfluous. Your humane wish is granted.”
“In any case,” remarked the morose Wang, as one who forebodes oppression, “the discriminating bird has by this time passed out of the range of a merely human skill. Yet as a certain sum was specified—”
“Revert to your original attitude of unalertness!” interposed the under-captain definitely.
“There is still another page to be unrolled if the Destinies are to be fulfilled as the Omens would direct,” declared Tseng Hung expectantly. “Turn your capable eyes toward the west, Kin Weng, and search the path that gives access to our weed-grown park.”
“None approaches from your well-kept grounds, esteemed,” replied Kin, after a penetrating scrutiny.
Tseng Hung leaned upon his staff and his lips moved, but so discreetly that none save Kin (who saw in this an added likeness to the one called Cheung) detected the enchantment.
“A vision of the inner chamber lifts your latch and makes as though an unseen power directs her steps this way,” reported Kin.
“Is she known to your remembrance?” asked the other, with a warning glance.
“He who dreams by night may also dream by day, but who shall recall the colours of a rainbow that is past?” was the guarded answer.
Tseng Hung signified his approval of this speech and moved his staff again.
“Should any further auspice seem worthy of remark, do not hesitate to free your mind,” he said protectingly.
“She holds a white bird in her arms, which nestles there; but to presume a mutual bond from that would not be opportune,” replied Kin with ingrained diffidence.
“Do not hesitate: remember that it is better to be the forefront of a rabbit than the hind quarters of an ox; and should the portents be maintained, your preeminence is well assured. But the moment for the final test is now at hand. Come.” With this condescending familiarity of speech, the unworldly Mandarin led Kin aside and brought him back into the Hall where they had lately been. Here, without actually concealing themselves, they stooped behind an upright beam of sufficient size, and thus screened they watched the maiden enter. Straight to the spot where Kin’s work had stood she bent her feet, then stopped, and there from her releasing hands the bird flew lightly down and, taking up again its exact place upon the sculptured block, passed at once into its former state of lifelike poise.
“Fa Ming, daughter of my all-but-extinct Line, what aim has brought you to this spot?” mildly inquired Tseng Hung, discovering himself to her.
“That is a matter which lies beyond my feeble lore, revered,” was the suitable reply. “As I sat in my leafy bower, sewing pearls upon a golden ground, a white bird entered by an open lattice and flew into my heart, filling its empty void. Then with a message that I may not speak, it drew me on and on until, about this place, its purpose being fulfilled, it passed into another state, leaving me tranquil.”
“This is the end to which I have striven through many gloomy years, and it was with this in view that I finally applied myself, with varying results, to the questionable arts,” remarked the gratified father, beckoning Kin Weng forward and addressing himself chiefly to that one’s ear. “At an early age the last enduring offspring of my decrepit trunk came under the perfidious influence of the spirit of an uprooted banyan tree, who, to revenge itself for an imaginary slight in the choosing of her name, deprived her of the gentle and confiding habit which up to that time she had invariably displayed and in its stead imposed its own unbalanced and vainglorious nature. To neutralize this powerful influence was by no means so simple as an ordinary person might at first imagine, as it necessitated gaining a profound knowledge into the customs and circumstances of every kind of Being, Force, Spirit, Demon, Vampire, Shadow, Ghost, and other supernatural creature inhabiting earth, air, water, fire, and wood. The possible intervention of dragons, phoenixes, tortoises, and unicorns, both ill and well disposed, had also to be delicately balanced, and the contending influences of tides, planets, winds, inundations, eclipses, and dynastic changes accurately divined. In addition to these, no single omen, portent, augury, prediction, conjecture, foreboding, dream, or imprecation could safely be ignored. In the end, the movements of practically every living person in Tai-chow and its surroundings were more or less drawn into the scheme, so involved had the counter-charm become, while the discovery that only one short measure of time during the next ten thousand years was really auspicious for the test necessitated an immediate effort.”
“Your labours have been both wide and profound, esteemed,” remarked Kin deferentially. “Yet,” he added, with an admiring glance in the direction of Fa Ming, “were they multiplied by ten their troubles are repaid a hundredfold.”
“It will be gratifying if all concerned, Chan Chun specifically, prove as outspoken in their loyalty,” replied Tseng Hung.
“Omniscience,” reported a privileged slave, entering hurriedly, “the populace has begun to assail the keepers of the routes with missiles of the riper sort, and the official few, fearing a popular rising, await your gracious word to announce that the promised entertainment is not yet commenced or has already reached its determined end.”
“Let all be freely admitted whatever their degree, and bid the several troupes of music-players to engage at once in harmony to the full extent of their capacity,” commanded the Mandarin resourcefully. “We ourselves will display our interest in the animated scene from the seclusion of this conveniently arranged cupola.”
Yet, despite the attraction of his urbane presence, Kin Weng and Fa Ming neglected to accompany him, and when the Hall became thronged with persons of the usual kind, it was noticed by the more observant that the two referred to stood side by side apart, and that, although without having anything in the nature of spoken language to exchange, they did not appear to realize a deficiency.
When Kai Lung had related the story of Kin Weng, there was no longer any reason for his presence, nor, with sincere courtesy, did the hospitable band around make an actual effort to detain him. For a moment he had the low-minded impulse to pass round his penurious bowl, but seeing that those about had become inextricably absorbed in conversing with each other, he judged that the movement would be deemed inept.
Outside the door, Hwa-mei was waiting, an inconspicuous bundle at her feet and a trimmed lantern placed beside it.
“The oppressive closeness of the day has gone, and presently the great sky light will rise to guide our footsteps,” she remarked agreeably, after they had exchanged words of an appropriate nature. “Is there any reason why we should not at length return to the scene of our disturbed felicity?”
“It had been somewhat to my purpose that the trivial Li-loe might journey by our side, he having in a measure contributed to our cause,” was the rejoinder. “But the witling was ever of a stunted warp, and now he steadily declines to forsake the valley. He is even now there, digging ■—doubtless for the cask of wine, of which he cannot recognize the no-existence.”
“Doubtless,” assented Hwa-mei abstractedly, and they set forth together, she still maintaining a grasp upon the slight burden she had brought while he sustained the lantern. The lights of Chi-U grew fewer, less, and vanished, and soon even the melodious clamour of hollow wooden drums, resonant stones, bells, gongs, and cymbals that marked Hai Shin’s exultant homeward progress sank to a faint tremor on the unruffled air…then, when sought for again, had faded.
“Though it was but a small cottage it was seemly,” remarked Kai Lung, with the first trace of sadness. “Alas, this time, cherished, there is nothing but a ruin.”
“He who can command four hands shall never lack a shelter,” replied Hwa-mei, undaunted; “and that which is built on mutual affection has a very sure foundation. Furthermore, if the roof is low it will be the nearer to our thoughts. Is it not, O story-teller, written, ‘When the wine is rich we overlook the gilding in the cup?’”
“Yet the peach tree at the gate has been destroyed, the sown field wasted, and the scanty store put by against the day of drought has melted.”
“As to that,” said Hwa-mei, with a certain gaiety in her manner, “an adequacy of, as it may be expressed, seed, has by the forethought of the Sustaining Ones been provided for the renewal of our harvest.” Thus speaking she untied the knots that bound the cords and then disclosed her burden. It consisted chiefly of a nest of pearls, but there were also eleven other varieties of precious stones and a reasonable amount of both gold and silver. “Ming-shu and Shan Tien would each seem to have provided for the morrow, and since neither of them will have occasion to pass that way again, it would have been inopportune not to search beneath the ground whereon their tents had stood.”
“As you must clearly have been led by the guiding spirits of your—no less than my own—ever-to-be-reverenced ancestors, it would, perhaps, be impious not to accept their gift in the way it was intended, and to make use of the various possessions here, in a good sense, gradually,” declared Kai Lung, after he had tested a chance selection of the gems and metals. “Inexorable is the saying, ‘However much the river winds it finds the sea at last.’”
PART TWO
The Great Sky Lantern
Chapter Ten
HOW KAI LUNG SOUGHT TO DISCOURAGE ONE WHO DID NOT GAIN HIS APPROBATION
To Kai Lung, reclining at ease within the lengthening shadow of his own mulberry tree, there came the sound of contest, as of one strong in his assurance, and the melodious laughter of another who derided what he claimed. Recognizing therein the voices of Chi Lin, the son of a rich neighbour, and Precious Jade, the matchless blossom of his own matured years, the discriminating relater of imagined tales slowly closed the scroll upon which he had been absorbed and imperceptibly composed himself into an attitude of wary unconcern—not with the ignoble purpose of listening to their words, but so that he might haply correct any inelegance of style in such stray phrases as should reach his ear.
“Thus and thus, perchance, it has been in the past,” came the boast of the vainglorious youth, “but this person will yet pluck a whisker from the tree of Fame, and even hang the silver buckle of his shoe upon the crescent of the great sky light itself.”
“Thus and thus indeed!” mocked the answering voice, and a laugh, musical as a stream of pearls falling into a crystal lake, stirred the perfumed air. “Beware of arousing the envy of the sleeping shades of Yaou and Shun, O thrice-valiant one!”
At the mention of these unapproachable heroes of the past, Chi Lin plainly realized the unseemly loudness of his challenge, for he moved yet closer to the maiden’s side and began to express himself very ardently into her well-placed ear. Kai Lung, therefore, had no alternative but to leave the shelter of his arbour and to display himself openly before them.
“Noble youth,” he remarked with becoming mildness,
“consider, if but for a breathing-space of time, the harmonious balance of the unisons. Trees put forth leaves, flowers, and fruit, each in due season; men—those who attain the honourable appendages of virtuous old age—wear whiskers or moustaches and the like. The analogy was ill-contrived.”
“Venerated master,” replied the self-confident one whom he had thus arraigned, “in the unsophisticated days of your distinguished minstrelsy, it was doubtless well enough to speak’ of things as they really were! In our own more exacting times, however, in order to entice the approbation of the throng it is necessary to cultivate a studied obliquity of style. To pluck the natural verdure of a tree foreshadows no romance, but what imagination is not stirred by the bold conception of a doubtless retaliatory arboreal whisker being tom from its parent stock?”
“Alas,” admitted Kai Lung sadly, “it is well written, ’The shell must crumble when the young emerge,’ and this obsolete person’s literary manner is both thin and very fragile.”
“Yet,” protested Precious Jade, rearranging his pigtail affectionately, “it has been freely said that no arising emergency has ever found you unprovided with an appropriate theme.”
“Who stoops to gather fallen leaves when the full fruit bends to meet his hand?” replied the one concerned. “Since your curiosity clearly tends that way, however, doubtless this opportune and intellectually replete young man will relate by what means the great sky lantern came to have that crescent point toward which the latter part of his painstaking ambition is directed.”
’The requirement finds me unprepared,” stammered Chi Lin, by no means grasping how the exigency had arisen. “It is one thing to speak in terms of classical allusion, as of a ‘peach’; it is quite another to have to declare who grafted the stem that bore the analogous fruit and where he performed his Rites. The words were but in the nature of an imagined feat.”
Kai Lung shook his head as one not wholly satisfied.
“Before setting out for a distant and barbarian land, it is prudent to learn all that is available of the difficulties to be encountered by the way,” he stubbornly contested. “Turn, accordingly, your highly connected footsteps in the direction of my very incommodious summer-house, O Chi Lin, and then, after this deformed and altogether unattractive she-thing of my decaying Line has brought fruit and wine wherewith to sustain you through the ordeal, I will endeavour to remove your lamentable want of historical polish as agreeably as possible.”
Chi Lin would have refrained, it having been his intention to pass the time pleasurably in Precious Jade’s society without any reference to Kai Lung himself, but this no longer seemed feasible, and he began to recognize that he had conducted the enterprise in a manner unworthy of his all-embracing reputation. Nor did the engaging maiden return with the promised viands, her place being taken by a one-eyed hag of forbidding outline, but the self-opinionated storyteller behaved with all the narrow-minded obstinacy of his unsympathetic tribe, for ignoring his reluctant guest’s well-displayed air of no-enthusiasm, he seated himself upon the floor and proceeded leisurely to unfold the story of the alluring Chou.
THE STORY OF THE PHILOSOPHER KUO TSUN AND OF HIS DAUGHTER, PEERLESS CHOU
In the reign of the patriarchal Chun-kuh a venerable philosopher occupied a position of some distinction outside a small village in what is now the Province of Shan Si. This versatile person, Kuo Tsun by name, had an only she-child, Chou, in whose welfare he was sincerely concerned. In view of what happens even within the limits of this badly told and ill-constructed story, it is hardly necessary to describe Chou’s outward semblance, beyond stating generally that, for some time afterward, it was not unusual to meet quite elderly ascetics whose necks had become permanently bent from an inability to remove their eyes from her perfection after they had passed.
At that remote cycle of time, matters had not become organized on stable and harmonious bases. A thick mist still obscured the land (for the canals were not yet dug), and under the cover of its malignant shade Forces of various kinds, both Good and Bad, were accustomed to frequent the earth and to reveal their conflicting energies more openly than they are prone to do to-day. Dragons of all the eleven sorts might be encountered anywhere. Winged snakes and phoenixes disturbed the air. Unicorns and celestial tortoises wrought the omens of their presence, and from numerous watercourses the voices of singing serpents—whose song is like the clashing of melodious rocks—tempted the passer-by. The more ordinary manifestations of spectres, ghouls, vampires, demons, voices, presages, and homeless shadows excited no comment. For lengthy periods, sometimes exceeding years, the rain never ceased to fall, the lightning to be displayed, and the thunder to announce the labour of the High Ones, as the Immortal Principle strove to adjust the Eternal Equipoise. Owing to the absence of fixed barriers between the Upper and the Lower Airs many of the deities strayed down upon the earth and formed connections of the more intimate kind with ordinary beings. From this cause it came about that not a few people found themselves to possess qualities for which it was difficult to account, and it was widely admitted that, sooner or later, anything might be expected to come to pass.
Besides being a discriminating sage, Kuo Tsun was also a powerful magician, and it was, indeed, chiefly due to his attainments in the latter capacity that he was able to procure the means of sustenance. While not failing to profit by the circumstance, the contrast was one that did not gladden his understanding.
“It cannot cease to be an element of bitterness in this one’s stomach,” he was wont to remark, “that while he has no difficulty, as a mediocre wizard, in converting the baser metals into gold, as a far-sighted philosopher the full extent of his laborious system has been to reduce Everything to Nothing.”
