BAF 45 - Kai Lung;s Golden Hours, page 23
part #45 of Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series
The large-meaning but never fully-accomplishing Emperor Kong reigned for yet another year, when he was deposed by the powerful League of the Three Brothers. To the end of his life he steadfastly persisted that the rebellion was insidiously fanned, if not actually carried out, by a secret confederacy of all the verse-makers of the Empire, who were distrustful of his superior powers. He spent the years of his exile in composing a poetical epitaph to be carved upon his tomb, but his successor, the practical-minded Liu-yen, declined to sanction the expense of procuring so fabulous a supply of marble.
When Kai Lung had repeated the story of the well-intentioned youth Hien and of the Chief Examiner Thang-li and had ceased to speak, a pause of questionable import filled the room, broken only by the undignified sleep-noises of the gross Ming-shu. Glances of implied perplexity were freely passed among the guests, but it remained for Shan Tien to voice their doubt.
“Yet wherein is the essence of the test maintained,” he asked, “seeing that the one whom you call Hien obtained all that which he desired and he who chiefly opposed his aims was himself involved in ridicule and delivered to a sudden end?”
“Beneficence,” replied Kai Lung, with courteous ease, despite the pinions that restrained him, “herein it is one thing to demand and another to comply, for among the Platitudes is the admission made,* ‘No needle has two sharp points.’ The conditions which the subtlety of Ming-shu imposed ceased to bind, for their corollary was inexact. In no romance composed by poet or sage are the unassuming hopes of virtuous love brought to a barren end or the one who holds them delivered to an ignominious doom. That which was called for does not therefore exist, but the story of Hien may be taken as indicating the actual course of events should the case arise in an ordinary state of life.”
This reply was not deemed inept by most of those who heard, and they even pressed upon the one who spoke slight gifts of snuff and wine. The Mandarin Shan Tien, however, held himself apart.
“It is doubtful if your lips will be able thus to frame so confident a boast when tomorrow fades,” was his dark forecast.
“Doubtless their tenor will be changed, revered, in accordance with your farseeing word,” replied Kai Lung submissively as he was led away.
Chapter 11
Of Which it Is Written: “In Shallow Water Dragons Become the Laughing’ stock of Shrimps”
At an early gong-stroke of the following day Kai Lung was finally brought up for judgment in accordance with the venomous scheme of the reptilian Ming-shu. In order to obscure their guilty plans all justice-loving persons were excluded from the court, so that when the storyteller was led in by a single guard he saw before him only the two whose enmity he faced, and one who stood at a distance prepared to serve their purpose.
“Committer of every infamy and inceptor of nameless crimes,” began Ming-shu, moistening his brush, “in the past, by a variety of discreditable subterfuges, you have parried the stroke of a just retribution. On this occasion, however, your admitted powers of evasion will avail you nothing. By a special form of administration, designed to meet such cases, your guilt will be taken as proved. The technicalities of passing sentence and seeing it carried out will follow automatically.”
“In spite of the urgency of the case,” remarked the Mandarin, with an assumption of the evenly-balanced -expression that at one time threatened to obtain for him the title of “The Just,”
“there is one detail which must not be ignored—especially as our ruling will doubtless become a lantern to the feet of later ones. You appear, malefactor, to have committed crimes—and of all these you have been proved guilty by the ingenious arrangement invoked by the learned recorder of my spoken word— which render you liable to hanging, slicing, pressing, boiling, roasting, grilling, freezing, vatting, racking, twisting, drawing, compressing, inflating, rending, spiking, gouging, limb-tying, piecemeal-pruning and a variety of less tersely describable discomforts with which the time of this court need not be taken up. The important consideration is, in what order are we to proceed and when, if ever, are we to stop?”
“Under your benumbing eye, Excellence,” suggested Ming-shu resourcefully, “the precedent of taking first that for which the written sign is the longest might be established. Failing that, the names of all the various punishments might be inscribed on separate shreds of parchment arid these deposited within your state, umbrella. The first withdrawn by an unbiassed—”
“High Excellence,” Kai Lung ventured to interrupt, “a further plan suggests itself which—”
“If,” exclaimed Ming-shu in irrational haste, “if the criminal proposes to narrate the story of one who in like circumstance—”
“Peace!” interposed Shan Tien tactfully. “The felon will only be allowed the usual ten short measures of time for his suggestion, nor must he, under that guise, endeavour to insert an imagined tale.”
“Your ruling shall keep straight my bending feet, munificence,” replied Kai Lung. “Hear now my simplifying way. In place of the cited wrongs—which, after all, are comparatively trivial matters, as being merely offences against another or in defiance of a local usage—substitute one really overwhelming crime for which the penalty is sharp and explicit.”
“To that end you would suggest—?” Uncertainty sat upon the brow of both Shan Tien and of Ming-shu.
“To straighten out the entangled thread this person would plead guilty to the act—in a lesser capacity and against his untrammelled will—of rejoicing musically on a day set apart for universal woe: a crime aimed directly at the sacred person of the Sublime Head and all those of his Line.”
At this significant admission the Mandarin’s expression faded; he stroked the lower part of his face several times and unostentatiously indicated to the two attendants that they should retire to a more distant obscurity. Then he spoke.
“When did this—this alleged indiscretion occur, Kai Lung?” he asked in a considerate voice.
“It is useless to raise a cloud of evasion before the sun of your penetrating intellect,” replied the storyteller. “The eleventh day of the existing moon was its inauspicious date.”
“That being yesterday? Ming-shu, you upon whom the duty of regulating my admittedly vagarious mind devolves, what happened officially on the eleventh day of the Month of Gathering-in?” demanded the Mandarin in an ominous tone.
“On such and such a day, benevolence, three score and fifteen years ago, the imperishable founder of the existing dynasty ascended on a fiery dragon to be a guest on high,” confessed the conscience-stricken scribe, after consulting his printed tablets. “Owing to the stress of a sudden journey the significance of the date had previously escaped my weed-grown memory, tolerance.”
“Alas!” exclaimed Shan Tien bitterly, “among the innumerable drawbacks of an exacting position the enforced reliance upon an unusually inept and more than ordinarily self-opinionated inscriber of the spoken word is perhaps the most illimitable. Owing to your profuse incompetence that which began as an agreeable prelude to a busy day has turned into a really serious matter.”
“Yet, lenience,” pleaded the hapless Ming-shu, lowering his voice for the Mandarin’s private ear, “so far the danger resides in this one throat alone. That disposed of—”
“Perchance,” replied Shan Tien; then turning to Kai Lung: “Doubtless, O storyteller, you were so overcome by the burden of your guilt that until this moment you have hidden the knowledge of it deep ’Within your heart?” “Magnificence, the commanding quality of your enduring voice would draw the inner matter from a marrowbone,” frankly replied Kai Lung. “Fearful lest this crime might go unconfessed and my weak and trembling ghost therefrom be held to bear its weight unto the end of time, I set out the full happening in a written scroll and sent it at daybreak by a sure and secret hand to a scrupulous official to deal with as he sees fit.”
“Your worthy confidant would assuredly be a person of incorruptible integrity?”
“The repute of the upright Censor K’o-yih had reached even these stunted ears.”
“Inevitably: the Censor K’o-yih!” Shan Tien’s hasty glance took in the angle of the sun and for a moment rested on the door leading to the part where his swiftest horses lay. “By this time the message will have reached him?”
“Omnipotence,” replied Kai Lung, spreading out his hands to indicate the full extent of his submission, “not even a piece of the finest Pong-hi silk could be inserted between the deepest secret of this person’s heart and your all-extracting gaze. Should you, in your meritorious sense of justice, impose upon me a punishment that would seem to be adequate, it would be superfluous to trouble the obliging Censor in the matter. To this end the one who bears the message lurks in a hidden comer of Tai until a certain hour. If I am in a position to intercept him there he will return the message to my hand; if not, he will straightway bear it to the integritous K’o-yih.”
“May the President of Hades reward you—I am no longer in a position to do so!” murmured Shan Tien with concentrated feeling. “Draw near, Kai Lung,” he continued sympathetically, “and indicate—with as litde delay as possible—what in your opinion would constitute a sufficient punishment.”
Thus invited and with his cords unbound, Kai Lung advanced and took his station near the table, Ming-shu noticeably making room for him.
“To be driven from your lofty presence and never again permitted to listen to the wisdom of your inspired lips would undoubtedly be the first essential of my penance, High Excellence.”
“It is gran—inflicted,” agreed Shan Tien, with swift decision.
“The necessary edict may conveniently be drafted in the form of a safe-conduct for this person and all others of his band to a point beyond the confines of your jurisdiction—when the usually agile-witted Ming-shu can sufficiently shake off the benumbing torpor now assailing him so as to use his brush.”
“It is already begun, O virtuous harbinger of joy,” protested the dazed Ming-shu, overturning all the four precious implements in his passion to comply. “A mere breath of time—”
“Let it be signed, sealed and thumb-pressed at every available point of ambiguity,” enjoined Shan Tien.
“Having thus oppressed the vainglory of my self-willed mind, the presumption of this unworthy body must be subdued likewise. The burden of five hundred taels of silver should suffice. If not—”
“In the form of paper obligations, estimable Kai Lung, the same amount would go more conveniently within your scrip,” suggested the Mandarin hopefully.
“Not convenience, O Mandarin, but bodily exhaustion is the essence of my task,” reproved the storyteller.
“Yet consider the anguish of my internal pang if, thus encumbered, you sank spent by the wayside, and being thereby unable to withhold the message, you were called upon to endure a further ill.”
“That, indeed, is worthy of our thought,” confessed Kai Lung. “To this end I will further mortify myself by adventuring upon the uncertain apex of a trustworthy steed (a mode of progress new to my experience) until I enter Tai.”
“The swiftest and most reputable awaits your guiding hand,” replied Shan Tien.
“Let it be enticed forth into a quiet and discreet spot. In the interval, while the obliging Ming-shu plies an unfaltering brush, the task of weighing out my humiliating burden shall be ours.”
In an incredibly short space of time, being continually urged on by the flattering anxiety of Shan Tien (whose precipitancy at one point became so acute that he mistook four score taels for five), all things were prepared. With the inscribed parchment well within his sleeve and the bags of silver ranged about his body, Kai Lung approached the platform that had been raised to enable him to subdue the expectant animal.
“Once in the desired position, weighted down as you are, there is litde danger of your becoming displaced,” remarked the Mandarin auspiciously.
“Your words are, as usual, many-sided in their wise application, benignity,” replied Kai Lung. “One thing only yet remains. It is apart from the expression of this one’s will, but as an act of justice to yourself and in order to complete the analogy—” And he indicated the direction of Ming-shu.
“Nevertheless you are agreeably understood,” declared Shan Tien, moving apart. “Farewell.”
As those who controlled the front part of the horse at this moment relaxed their tenacity, Kai Lung did not deem it prudent to reply, nor was he specifically observant of the things about. But a little later, while in the act of permitting the creature whose power he ruled to turn round for a last look at its former home, he saw that the unworthy no longer flourished. Ming-shu, with his own discarded cang around his vindictive neck, was being led off in the direction of the prison-house.
Chapter 12
The Out-passing into a State of Assured Felicity of the Much-Enduring Two with whom These Printed Leaves Have Chiefly Been Concerned
Although it was towards sunset, the heat of the day still hung above the dusty earth-road, and two who tarried within the shadow of an ancient arch were loath to resume their way. They had walked far, for the uncertain steed, having revealed a too contentious nature, had been disposed of in distant Tai to an honest stranger who freely explained the imperfection of its ignoble outline.
“Let us yet remain another space of time,” pleaded Hwa-mei reposefully, “and as without your all-embracing art the course of events would undoubtedly have terminated very differently from what it has, will you not, out of an emotion of gratitude, relate a story for my ear alone, weaving into it the substance of this ancient arch whose shade provides our rest?”
“Your wish is the crown of my attainment, unearthly one,” replied Kai Lung, preparing to obey. “This concerns the story of Ten-teh, whose name adorns the keystone of the fabric.”
The Story of the Loyalty of Ten-teh,
the Fisherman
“Devotion to the Emperor—”
The Five Great Principles
The reign of the enlightened Emperor Tung Kwei had closed amid scenes of treachery and lust, and in his perfidiously-spilled blood was extinguished the last pale hope of those faithful to his line. His only son was a nameless fugitive—by ceaseless report already Passed Beyond—his party scattered and crushed out like the sparks from his blackened Capital, while nothing that men thought dare pass their lips. The usurper Fuh-chi sat upon the dragon throne and spake with the voice of brass cymbals and echoing drums, his right hand shedding blood and his left hand spreading fire. To raise an eye before him was to ape with death, and a whisper in the outer ways foreran swift torture. With harrows he uprooted the land until no household could gather round its ancestral tablets, and with marble rollers he flattened it until none dare lift his head. For the body of each one who had opposed his ambition there was offered an equal weight of fine silver, and upon the head of the child-prince was set the reward of ten times his weight in pure gold. Yet in noisome swamps and in forests, hidden in caves, lying on desolate islands, and concealing themselves in every kind of solitary place were those who daily prostrated themselves to the memory of Tung Kwei and by a sign acknowledged the authority of his infant son Kwo Kam. In the Crystal City there was a great roar of violence and drunken song, and men and women lapped from deep lakes filled up with wine; but the rice-sacks of the poor had long been turned out and shaken for a little dust; their eyes were closing and in their hearts they were as powder between the millstones. On the north and the west the barbarians had begun to press forward in resistless waves, and from The Island to The Beak pirates laid waste the coast.
I: UNDER THE DRAGON’S WING
Among the lagoons of the Upper Seng river a cormorant fisher, Ten-teh by name, daily followed his occupation. In seasons of good harvest, when they of the villages around had grain in abundance and money with which to procure a more varied diet, Ten-teh was able to regard the ever-changeful success of his venture without anxiety, and even to add perchance somewhat to his store; but when affliction lay upon the land the carefully-gathered hoard melted away and he did not cease to upbraid himself for adopting so uncertain a means of livelihood. At these times the earth-tillers, having neither money to spend nor crops to harvest, caught such fish as they could for themselves. Others in their extremity did not scruple to drown themselves and their dependents in Ten-teh’s waters, so that while none contributed to his prosperity the latter ones even greatly added to the embarrassment of his craft. When, therefore, his own harvest failed him in addition, or tempests drove him back to a dwelling which was destitute of food either for himself, his household, or his cormorants, his self-reproach did not appear to be ill-reasoned. Yet in spite of all Ten-teh was of a genial disposition, benevolent, respectful and incapable of guile. He sacrificed adequately at all festivals, and his only regret was that he had no son of his own and very scanty chances of ever becoming rich enough to procure one by adoption.
