Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, page 10
Her own husband, whose name was Wu, also came to pay his respects and persuaded them to stay a second night.
In the morning, Huangfu came to speak to Kong, a woeful expression on his face. ‘We are facing disaster! I beseech you to save us!’
Kong asked him to explain his trouble, and eagerly assured him that he would do whatever lay within his power. Huangfu hurried out, and assembled his whole family in the main hall, where they proceeded to kneel and give thanks to a bewildered Kong.
‘The truth is,’ explained Huangfu at last, ‘we are not of human stock. We are all foxes. And today a terrible thunderstorm is about to strike us. If you are willing to risk your own life to protect us, we may yet be saved. If not, then take your child now and go; do not let yourself be caught up in our fate.’
When Kong swore to live or die with them, Huangfu told him to stand in the doorway sword in hand.
‘When the thunder and lightning strike, stand firm, do not move!’
Kong followed his instructions and took up his stand. Soon black clouds obscured the midday sky, and it grew dark as night. When he looked around him, Huangfu's mansion had vanished, and in its place he saw a solitary earthen mound projecting into the sky, while beneath it a huge, bottomless chasm had opened up in the ground. As he looked aghast at this desolate sight, a crash of thunder shattered the heavens, shaking the hills to their foundations, followed by driving rain and a fierce gale which uprooted trees in its path. Dazzled and deafened by the tempest, Kong nonetheless continued to stand his ground firmly when suddenly, through the swirling darkness, he saw a gruesome monster, with great pointed beak and long claws, rise up from the depths of the chasm, bearing in its arms a human form. As it began to soar upwards through the mist, Kong knew at a glance that the body it was carrying was that of Grace. He leaped forward and struck out with his sword, whereupon the monster let Grace fall from its arms. Another great crack of thunder burst from the heavens, and Kong himself lay dead on the ground.
In a little while the storm passed, and Grace regained consciousness, only to see Kong dead by her side.
‘How can I continue to live,’ she sobbed bitterly, ‘when he has given his life for me?’
Pine came forward, and the two cousins carried his body into the house. Grace bade Pine lift up Kong's head, while her brother Huangfu prised open his mouth with a golden hairpin. Grace then pinched his cheeks and pressed a red bolus into his mouth with her tongue, pressing her lips to his and pushing the bolus deep into his throat with her breath. There was a gurgling sound as it descended, and a minute later he regained consciousness and to his great joy saw his family gathered around him. It was as if he had awoken from a dream.
The place was too desolate for him to be able to settle there, and he proposed instead that they should all return with him to his former home. They agreed to this, except for Grace. When Kong saw how downcast she was, he suggested that she should bring her husband with her, but that left the unresolved problem of his parents, who would be loth to be separated from their son. They had been discussing the matter all day, when suddenly a young servant came rushing in from the Wu household, breathless and drenched in perspiration, to announce that the entire Wu family had perished that very day in a natural calamity. Grace was beside herself with grief, and stamped the ground, sobbing inconsolably.
There was nothing now to prevent them from returning with Kong. He made all the necessary arrangements, while they spent several days packing their things. When they reached Kong's home, Huangfu and Grace were installed in a separate compound in the garden, where they kept their gate permanently shut, only opening it for Kong and Pine. Kong joined Huangfu and his sister for occasional games of chess, a cup of wine, a convivial conversation. They were like members of a single family. His son Little Lord grew up into a good-looking young man, always with a touch of the fox about him. Every time he went into town, folk knew he was the son of a fox.
22
A MOST EXEMPLARY MONK
A man named Zhang died suddenly and was escorted at once by devil attendants into the presence of Yama, King of the Underworld. Yama checked his registers and turned angrily to the attendants, informing them that they had brought the wrong man and were to take him back immediately.
As they left, Zhang secretly entreated his devil guards to let him have a quick look at Hell and they led him all the way through the Nine Dark Places, past the Mountain of Knives and the Forest of Swords, pointing out the various sights one by one. By and by they reached a place where a Buddhist monk was hanging upside down in the air, suspended by a rope through a hole in his leg. He was crying out in excruciating pain. As Zhang approached, he saw to his great horror and distress that the man was his own brother. He asked his guards the reason for this appalling punishment, and they informed him that the monk had been condemned to this torment for having collected alms on behalf of his order, which he had then squandered on gambling and debauchery.
‘Nor,’ they added, ‘will his punishment cease until he repents his misdeeds.’
When Zhang regained consciousness, fearing that his brother must already be dead, he hurried off to the Xingfu Monastery, where he had been in residence. As he went in at the door, he heard a loud shrieking and, on proceeding to his brother's cell, found him upside down, just as he had seen him in Hell, with his legs tied up above him to the wall, and an abscess oozing blood and pus between his thighs. Appalled, he asked him for an explanation, and his brother told him that he was in terrible
Caption
A Buddhist monk was hanging upside down in the air.
pain and that this was the only position in which the pain was at all bearable.
Zhang now described what he had seen in Hell, and the monk was so terrified that he at once gave up drinking liquor and eating meat, and devoted himself humbly to the recitation of the sutras and mantras of his religion. In a fortnight he was well again, and became known ever afterwards as a most exemplary monk.
23
MAGICAL ARTS
A gentleman by the name of Yu, in his youth a keen member of the sporting fraternity, delighted in boxing and feats of strength and was himself able to dance the whirligig while holding aloft a heavy metal jug in each hand.
During the Chongzhen reign of the former Ming dynasty, Yu was in the capital for the palace examinations when much to his distress his personal servant fell ill and took to his bed. At that time an expert fortune-teller frequented the marketplace, reputed to be capable of determining the span of a man's life with astonishing accuracy, and Yu decided to go and consult this man on his servant's behalf.
Before he had even spoken, the fortune-teller said to him, ‘You wish to put a question concerning your servant's illness, do you not?’
‘Why, yes!’ exclaimed Yu in amazement.
‘The servant's illness is nothing serious,’ said the fortune-teller. ‘But you, sir, are in grave peril.’
Yu asked to have his own fortune told, and the man proceeded to consult the hexagrams of the Book of Changes.
‘Dear sir,’ he exclaimed in a shocked voice, ‘you are fated to die three days from now!’
Yu was dumbfounded.
‘I do possess a trifling art in this connection,’ the fortune-teller went on, unperturbed. ‘For ten taels of silver I will undertake to intervene on your behalf.’
Yu, thinking to himself that if the time of one's death had already been determined by fate, such ‘trifling’ (and rather
Caption
The man consulted the hexagrams of the Book of Changes.
expensive) magical arts were probably of no use, rose silently to his feet and made to leave.
‘You will regret having denied yourself this petty expense,’ commented the fortune-teller.
Yu's friends were anxious on his behalf and urged him to pay whatever the fortune-teller asked, but he ignored their advice. The next two days passed uneventfully, and on the third he sat calmly in his room at the inn, waiting to see what would happen – and nothing did. Night fell, and he closed the door, trimmed his lamp and sat there quietly sword in hand, awaiting whatever fate held in store for him.
The first watch of the night was nearly ended, and there was still no sign of death's approach. He was about to lie down when he heard a rustling sound at the window and, hurriedly looking up, saw a tiny man with a spear on his back enter by the window and alight on the ground, where he grew to ordinary size. Grasping his own sword, Yu leaped to his feet and lunged out at the intruder, but his sword went swishing wide of the mark and meanwhile the man had shrunk in size again and headed for a crack in the window lattice, endeavouring to make good his escape. Yu hacked at him vigorously and finally brought him down. By the light of his lamp he saw the figure of a man cut out of paper, severed at the waist.
Yu now gave up all thought of sleep, and sat in wait. Presently another creature bored its way through a pane of the paper casement, a fearsome-looking, monstrous thing. The instant it touched the ground, Yu struck at it with force, splitting it in two halves, each of which went wriggling away. Fearing it might rise up a second time, he attacked it again and again, each time striking home, his sword ringing loudly with every stroke. Afterwards, looking closely, he saw a clay figure lying on the ground, broken into countless shattered shards.
He now moved his seat to beneath the window and kept his gaze fixed on the crack in the casement. After a while, he heard what sounded like an ox snorting outside, then the sound of something heaving against the window frame. The next thing he knew the whole wall of the room was shaking and seemed about to collapse. Afraid of being buried alive, Yu resolved to go out and fight. He threw open the door with a great swish and rushed out into the night. By the dim light of the moon he made out the figure of a huge ghoul, high as the eaves of the house, its face pitch-black and its eyes glowing with a sinister yellow light. It was naked to the midriff and barefoot, held a bow in its hand and had a clutch of arrows attached to its waist. Yu was still reeling from the shock of seeing this apparition when the ghoul let fly a shower of arrows. Yu fended them off with his sword and they fell to the ground, but when he tried to strike the creature directly, it counter-attacked by letting loose another arrow. Yu jumped to one side, and the arrow drove itself quivering into the wall – much to the fury of the ghoul, which now produced a sword and whirled it around, aiming at Yu's head. Yu ducked with monkey-like agility and the blade struck a stone, splitting it clean in two. Yu now darted between the ghoul's legs and slashed his own sword against its shins with a mighty whack. This enraged the ghoul more than ever, and it emitted a mighty thundering roar and began spinning round and chopping wildly at Yu, who ducked once more between its legs, so that when the monster's blade struck, it did no more than slice off a part of his robe. Yu now moved close up against the monster's ribs and dealt them a hefty thwack. The creature slumped to the ground and lay there. Yu continued to strike blow after blow at it, each one ringing into the night like a watchman's wooden clapper. Eventually he held high his lamp and beheld before him a man-sized wooden puppet, decorated in the most terrifying fashion, the arrows still tied at its waist. Blood was flowing from every place where his sword had struck.
Yu sat there until dawn, lamp in hand, knowing that each one of the three monsters had been sent against him by the fortune-teller, who was determined to prove his clairvoyant powers, even if it meant killing him in order to do so.
The next day, he told the story to all his friends, and some of them went with him to the fortune-teller's house. But the man had seen them coming, and had vanished into thin air.
‘He is using a spell of invisibility,’ said one of Yu's friends. ‘But we can break it with dog's blood.’
Yu went again, armed this time with the blood of a dog, and when the fortune-teller vanished just as before, Yu acted quickly, smearing the dog's blood on the ground where the man had been standing. He saw him now, standing there, his head and face smeared with the dog's blood, his eyes blazing like those of some fearsome monster. They seized him and hauled him before the Magistrate, who had him put to death.
24
WILD DOG
During the rebellion led by Yu Qi, men died in countless numbers, mown down like fields of hemp. At this time, a peasant by the name of Li Hualong was trying to find his way home through the hills when he came across a detachment of government troops on a night march. Afraid of being rounded up indiscriminately as a bandit, and seeing nowhere to hide, he lay down in a heap of decapitated corpses, pretending to be dead himself and staying there until long after the troops had passed.
Then suddenly he saw the corpses, for the most part headless and armless, stand up in serried ranks like trees in a forest. One among them, his head still dangling from his shoulders, gasped, ‘The wild dog is coming! We are done for!’
The others answered in a ragged chorus, ‘Done for! Done for!’
The next instant, they all tumbled down again and lay there in motionless silence. Li was about to rise to his feet (trembling with fear though he was), when he saw a creature coming towards him, with the head of an animal and the body of a man. As the ‘wild dog’ came nearer, it bent down, sank its teeth into one after another of the heads and sucked out their brains. In terror, Li buried his own head under the nearest corpse. The monster tugged at Li's shoulder to get at his head, but Li burrowed down still further and succeeded for a while in staying out of its reach, until finally the monster pushed the corpse aside, thus exposing Li's head.
The terrified Li, groping around desperately on the ground beneath him, grabbed hold of a big stone the size of a bowl and
Caption
Li buried his own head under the nearest corpse.
clutched it tightly in his hand. As the creature bent down to bite into him, he heaved himself up and with a great cry smashed the stone into its mouth. The thing made an odd hooting noise like an owl and ran off clutching its face and spitting mouthfuls of blood on to the road. In the blood, Li discovered, when he looked more closely, two fangs, curved and tapering to a sharp point, each over four inches long. He took them home with him to show his friends, none of whom had any idea what sort of a strange beast it might have been.
25
PAST LIVES
A certain Mr Liu, a second-degree graduate of the same year as my father's cousin Pu Wengui, had the ability to remember his various past lives, and was able to relate them in some detail.
In one of these lives, he had been born into a family of scholar-gentlemen, and had died at the age of sixty-two, having led a somewhat dissolute life. When he came face to face with the King of Hell, he was at first received with the normal respect due to a provincial notable, shown to a seat and offered a cup of tea. He noticed, however, that the tea in the King's cup was clear, while his own cup contained a cloudy liquid, like unstrained liquor. Was this, he wondered, the fabled Soup of Oblivion, the potion given to the spirits of the dead to render them oblivious of their past? While the King was looking the other way, he emptied his cup on the floor, pretending afterwards that he had drunk it all up. The next moment, the King, who had been perusing the record of the various misdeeds committed during Liu's life on earth, flew into a great rage and ordered his assembled demons to take Liu away, sentencing him to reincarnation as a horse. Liu was immediately seized and bound, and the demons carried him off to a building, the door-sill of which was so high that he was unable to step over it. He hesitated at the sill, and the demons behind him lashed him with all their might, causing him such pain that he stumbled forward and collapsed unconscious on the ground. When he came to, he saw that he was lying in a stable and heard a voice crying, ‘The black mare has foaled!’ Everything was clear to him, but he could say nothing. The next he knew he was dreadfully hungry, and for lack of any other source ofra
Caption
He emptied his cup on the floor.
began sucking at the mare's teats. Four or five years went by, and he grew into a fine strong horse but always remained at heart a fearful animal, terrified of the whip, the very sight of which sent him running away. His considerate master, when he rode him, always used a saddle-cloth, kept the reins loose and went at a leisurely pace, which he found more or less bearable. But the servants and grooms rode him bareback, squeezing his flanks and digging their heels into him, which caused him a searing pain in his insides. At length he could stand it no longer, refused all food, and three days later he was dead.
He duly reappeared before the King of Hell, who, upon discovering that he had deliberately tried to escape his fate before his time was due, had him flayed and condemned to reincarnation as a dog. He stood there looking most woebegone and refusing to move, whereupon the demons came behind him and lashed him until he was in such pain that he ran away from them and out into the open country. Thinking he would be better off dead, he jumped off a cliff and plunged to the ground, where he lay quite unable to move.
It was then he became aware that he was lying in a hole in the earth, one of a litter of puppies, and that an old bitch was licking and suckling him by turns. He was back in the world of the living. As he grew up, he knew in his mind that his own excrement was a foul thing, even though it somehow smelt fragrant to his senses. He made a firm resolve not to eat it. Several years he lived the life of a dog, always wishing he could find a way to die, but afraid that if he took his own life again he would be punished a second time for having cut his sentence short. Once again his master was kind to him, fed him well and was certainly not the type to think of ever putting him down. In the end he deliberately bit the man and tore off a piece of his leg, causing him to fly into a sudden rage and beat him to death.
