The Story Of The Stone (18 page)

We walked across a long gray plain that led to the great gray walls of the Sixth Hell. Gray grass bent beneath a cold gray breeze, and the gray sky seemed to press down upon us.

“Master Li, I don't understand about the stone,” I said. “Isn't it evil? Ssu-ma thought so, and he wrote that the author of Dream of the Red Chamber had been quoting from the Annals of Heaven and Earth.”

Master Li walked on in silence for some time. Then he said, “Ox, we can't be sure that the legendary annals were actually involved, but we do know that both Ssu-ma and Tsao Hsueh Chin accepted as proof the reactions of two great men who possessed the stone. Both Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu cried, ”Evil!“ and hurled it away, but did they really mean that the stone was evil? Could they have meant something else? There's at least one other possibility, and it has to do with the shape of the stone.”

The shape? I tried to recall the words of Ssu-ma. “Flat smooth area rising to round concave bowl shape.” What did that have to do with evil?

“But Tou Wan said that it drove her husband mad,” Moon Boy pointed out. “Doesn't that imply the stone was evil?”

“No,” Master Li said flatly. “Her words make it perfectly clear. The inner power of the stone tempted the Laughing Prince to use it in the ridiculously dangerous discipline called Taoist Ideal Breathing. The goal is personal immortality, which is always an invitation to disaster. You lie on your back with your tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth to catch brain dew, which is what Taoists call saliva. Normally you press the middle finger of each hand against the opposite palm, but I suspect that the Laughing Prince pressed his fingers against the ch'i pulse of the stone. You suck in air and hold it for thirty seconds, and then purify it by releasing drops of brain dew and send it through your chest and heart. That's called the Little Tour. Every lunar month you increase the time you hold your breath by five seconds, and when you can do so for one hundred fifty seconds, you're ready for the Big Tour.”

“Holding your breath for two and a half minutes can be dangerous,” Moon Boy pointed out.

“You get dizzy and disoriented,” I said, “If you keep it up, you might damage your brain.”

“You might indeed,” said Master Li. “That's only the beginning. The Big Tour is to send purified air through your chest, heart, abdomen, liver, kidneys, and sexual organs, and every lunar month you continue to hold your breath five seconds longer. When you reach one thousand seconds you will supposedly produce inside your body something called the Embryonic Pearl, which is a divine Elixir of Life.”

“Of life? You'd be dead!” I exclaimed.

“Not necessarily. The body is capable of amazing things,” said Master Li. “The problem is the brain. It must have a steady supply of fresh air, and the Laughing Prince went mad.”

I saw the Laughing Prince clutching the stone, holding his breath longer and longer, holding it until the physicians shook their heads and ordered the Cloud Gong to sound the death knell; I saw a mad prince wrapped in darkness, clutching the stone and holding his breath as the centuries passed; I saw his eyes open, and the lid of his coffin lifting up, and a lunatic encased in jade stalking from his tomb; I saw a shadow in the moonlight, and Grief of Dawn on her sickbed—

“Ox, this is your department,” Master Li said.

I snapped back to reality. I had thought that the gray plain was smooth and unbroken, but I was wrong.

“Did either of you happen to glance back after we first stepped out into Hell?” Master Li asked.

Neither of us had.

“The door closed behind us and vanished. Nothing but the blank wall of a cliff,” he said. “That means we have only one exit from the underworld, the Great Wheel, which means we must reach the Tenth Hell.”

Ahead of us was Yin-Yang Gorge, which is spanned by a swinging rope no more than two inches wide. We stood at the edge and peered down, but there seemed to be no bottom.

“What do you think?” Master Li asked.

I looked around. Demons have lowly servants called raksha. Some of them carried huge water buckets on the ends of long wooden yokes, and I said, “Sir, I think the two aristocrats should beat the insolent peasant, and punish him by slapping a yoke on his stupid shoulders.”

The demons appeared to approve as Master Li and Moon Boy whacked me, and they made no objection when the fierce old dignitary commandeered a raksha and took his yoke. I dumped the water from the oversize buckets and told Master Li and Moon Boy to climb in. Master Li added rocks to his bucket until the weight was balanced, and I fixed the yoke on my shoulders and approached the rope bridge.

Anyone who has seen rope-walkers at festivals knows they balance themselves with long poles, and peasants spend a great deal of time carrying heavy things balanced on the ends of a yoke. I knew it wouldn't be difficult so long as I didn't panic. Besides, I had an umbrella far better than any rope-walker's.

I placed my left sandal upon the rope and started slowly across, using the state umbrella for added balance. The rope was swinging, but that was no problem so long as I didn't fight it. I quickly gained confidence. There was nothing to it, and I got to the center of the gorge with no difficulty. Then from the black depths came a sound so horrible that I knew whatever lurked down there was far worse than anything we had yet seen.

“Buddha! Moon Boy, what was that?” Master Li called from his bucket.

The sound came again, louder and even more horrible, and the hair on the back of my neck lifted so stiffly that it stretched the skin of my face back, and my teeth involuntarily bared in a wide mirthless grin.

“The evil minister!”
Moon Boy yelled in terror. “It's the lips of Ch'in Kuei, moving over a sinner who fell!”

I very nearly toppled off the rope. Ch'in Kuei is the prime minister who assassinated the great Yueh Fei, and has been punished by being given the body that reflects his soul. He's made of nothing but huge slimy lips. They have jagged little teeth set in them, and the minister eats and eats, sucking the flesh from sinners, starting with the eyeballs, and the sickening sound was like a great wind that sucked the rope back and forth, swinging wildly over the gorge.

Sweat was blinding me. I wiped it away and tried to concentrate on the rope beneath my feet, but I kept imagining that fat drooling lips were lifting over my toes. In a moment I was going to fall. The only thing I could do was lean forward and start to run. The state umbrella was a lifesaver, catching air and pulling up, but the problem was keeping my shoulders straight so the buckets didn't swing, and I had to use short rapid steps because the rope kept moving. Sooner or later I was going to miss.

I knew from the moment that my right sandal started down that I would miss the moving rope, and if I leaned to the left to catch up to it, I would be completely unbalanced. A smacking slobbering sound from below helped me to push off with my left foot and leap ahead. My hands reached out as far as they could, and as I fell, my fingers just reached the edge of the cliff at the far side of Yin-Yang Gorge. I dangled there, kicking wildly for a foothold, and my right foot hit a jutting rock. In half a minute I had made it over the edge, and Master Li and Moon Boy tumbled from the buckets to the gray grass. We crawled forward while the sickening sounds of Ch'in Kuei feeding on flesh gradually faded away.

“Ox, I wondered when things were going to get exciting,” Moon Boy said, and then he leaned over and threw up.

Now we were in the Sixth Hell, where sacrilege is punished, and the torments we stared at didn't make it easier to control our stomachs. Finally we made it to our feet, and I picked up the state umbrella, which had fallen in front of me. We took deep breaths and started out again, marching arrogantly in our armor of Neo-Confucian superiority. Master Li avoided confrontations as we reached boundaries. The Seventh Hell punishes those who violate graves or sell or eat human flesh, and the Eighth Hell is for those lacking in filial piety, and I have no intention of describing the terrible things we saw. (I will, however, strongly advise against winding up in the Eighth Hell so long as Neo-Confucians are in charge.) Master Li could no longer avoid confrontations at the border of the Ninth Hell. The only way to get to the Tenth and the Great Wheel was to go right through the palace of the Ninth Yama King, and Master Li was thinking deeply as we approached the walls where long lines of sinners shuffled toward their doom, weeping gray tears.

“Goo-goo-goo.”

“Ox, did you hear that?”

“Goo-goo-goo.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Goo-goo-goo.”

“Great Buddha! It's the entire congregation from the Eye of Tranquility,” Master Li exclaimed.

Indeed it was, and he walked up the line peering at faces.

“Hello, Hsiang!”

“Hello, Li Kao. What are you doing here?” the toad asked mournfully.

“I was about to ask the same of you,” said Master Li.

The toad shook his fist in the general direction of Peking. “Those cursed vendors!” he yelled. “Kao, it occurred to the greedy bastards that gentlemen in search of salvation should mortify the flesh, so along with worms they began selling cheese.”

I shuddered. Like most Chinese I find cheese disgusting, and I could well imagine that eating the stuff would be mortification of the first order.

“Cheese killed all of you?” Master Li asked skeptically.

“Well, no,” the toad said. “Competing vendors began selling raw sea slugs.”

Master Li shrugged. “I prefer them minced and steamed with eels, but they shouldn't have done much more than make you throw up when they squirmed in your stomach.”

“Well, you see, Li Kao, they came from the bay where the boys deposit the night soil,” the toad said sadly.

“You didn't eat them!” Master Li exclaimed in horror.

“We lived through that, but then the vendors began stuffing the sea slugs with the cheese.”

Master Li turned pale, and Moon Boy and I turned green.

“I remember it precisely,” the toad groaned. “It was the double hour of the cock on the third day of the eighth moon when a homicidal vendor came up with the idea of peddling all his wares at the same time, so he began stuffing the worms into the cheese inside the sea slugs.”

“Jade Emperor, preserve us,” Master Li said. “I assume that the next thing you knew, you were shuffling toward the basilica of the God of Walls and Ditches.”

“The god was furious,” the toad sniffled. “Nothing in the Register of Life and Death covered the combination of worms, cheese, and sea slugs, and since we had prematurely departed from the red dust of earth, we were sentenced to the Ninth Hell.”

“Goo-goo-goo,”
the codgers chanted, hoping that Heaven could still see them release worms from jars.

“Look at the bright side,” Master Li said soothingly. “In three years you'll be allowed to return in ghost form, and you can haunt the vendors as much as you like.”

The toad turned purple. “You don't know those vendors!” he shouted. “They'll stuff our ghosts inside the worms inside the cheese inside the sea slugs and call it the Four Fetid Flavors of Suffering Serenity and make a goddamn fortune!”

Master Li's eyes moved to the gate ahead. The demons were the most ferocious we had seen, and the devils were obviously high officials, and we weren't going to get very far with a badge of office and a state umbrella. A side gate led to a garden of gray flowers, and Master Li bent down and slipped his lock picks from the false heel of his left sandal.

“Hsiang, are you going to give up this easily? No, by all the gods!” Master Li exclaimed. “You've been treated most unfairly, and surely Heaven will hear your plea if you all put your hearts into it. Where's His Holiness? There you are! Come on, men. One last grand effort!”

“Goo-goo-goo,”
the codgers chanted timidly, but the saintliest of them all was made from stronger stuff.

“I pray to the Heavenly Master of the First Origin!” he bellowed. “I pray to the Heavenly Master of the Dawn of Jade of the Golden Door! I pray to the Queen Mother Wang! I pray to Chang-o and the Hare! I pray to Mother Lightning and the Master of Rain and My Lord Thunder and the Earl of Wind and the Little Boy of the Clouds!”

“Goo-goo-goo-goo-goo!”
cried the codgers, gaining a little backbone.

Master Li bent to the lock of the side gate, hidden by the crowd. His Holiness obligingly drowned out the scrape of the pick.

“I pray to the Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak! I pray to the Princess of Streaked Clouds! I pray to Kuan-yin and Kuan-ti and the Eight Immortals! I pray to Lady Horsehead and King-of-Oxen and the Transcendent Pig and Prince Millet and Hun-po Chao, patron deity of the armpits!”

“Goo-goo-goo-goo-goo!”

The lock snapped open and we slipped through the gate and closed it behind us. The noise faded as the line shuffled on toward the palace. We saw that there was a series of small gardens, each secured by a locked gate, and we would have to get through seven of them to reach the side of the palace. Master Li swore under his breath as he tackled the next lock. None of the picks was the right size, and he had to work with infinite care and patience. At last it opened and we raced through the next garden. The lock on the second gate was easier, but the third one was almost impossible. Master Li broke two picks and was trying to get leverage with a third when we heard footsteps crunching over gray gravel. It sounded like the approach of an elephant, and Moon Boy slipped back through the shrubbery to take a look.

“Got it,” Master Li whispered.

The gate swung open. We left it ajar for Moon Boy and ran through the next garden to the fourth gate. The crunching footsteps had stopped. Then I heard a noise that made the hair lift on my head.

A demon was angrily sniffing the scent of living flesh. The sound indicated something huge and horrible, and we heard a growl like muffled thunder. Master Li worked furiously on the lock, but it was another difficult one and when the footsteps started toward us I knew we'd never make it through in time. I picked up a large gray rock as a weapon and slipped back through the bushes, and when I parted some branches and peered out I had to stifle a howl of horror.