should simply sit and wait. Don't be ashamed of reliving your childhood, Ox, because all of us must do it now and then in order to maintain our sanity.”
He was carrying a large flask of wine, which he extended to me.
“Have a drink, and a tale I will thee tell,” he said.
I sipped and choked on the fiery liquid. Li Kao reclaimed the flask and swallowed about a pint.
“It was a dark and stormy night,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “A cold wind howled, and lightning flickered across the sky like the tongues of snakes, and thunder roared like dragons, and rain fell in torrents. Piercing through the gale came the sound of wheels and hoofbeats, followed by the most dreaded sound in all China: the high-pitched hunting horns of the soldiers of the Duke of Ch'in.”
This time I choked without benefit of wine, and Li Kao pounded my back in a kindly fashion.
“A mule was pulling a buggy down a mountain path at a suicidal rate, and a man and a woman were bouncing upon the seat,” he said. “The woman was nine months pregnant, and she clutched a large burlap bag while the man wielded a buggy whip. Once more the terrible horns sounded behind them, and then a volley of arrows shot into the night. The mule staggered and fell, and the buggy crashed into a ditch. Apparently the soldiers were after the bag that the woman carried, because the man tried to take it from her so that the soldiers would attack him while she escaped, but the woman was equally brave and refused to relinquish the bag, and they were tugging back and forth when the second volley of arrows reached them. The man fell back mortally wounded, and the woman staggered away with the shaft of an arrow protruding from beneath her left shoulder blade, and the rain mercifully covered the small determined figure as she crawled up the winding path that led to the Monastery of Sh'u.”
Master Li hoisted the flask and drank thirstily. I had no idea why he was telling me the story, but at least he was taking my mind off my troubles.
“The arrow was her passport,” he said. “It was stamped with the tiger emblem of the Duke of Ch'in, and the Monastery of Sh'u hated the Duke of Ch'in. They did all they could for her, and with the first faint light of dawn the tiny wail of a newborn babe lifted above the walls. The abbot and the midwife had worked a small miracle to save the child, but nothing could be done for the mother.
“ ‘Brave Soul,’ the abbot whispered, wiping the sweat from her fevered brow. ‘Brave rebel against the evil Duke of Ch'in.’
“The midwife lifted the wailing child. ‘A thousand blessings, my lady, for you have given birth to a healthy son!’ she said.
“The dying woman's nostrils twitched, and she opened her eyes. With an immense effort she lifted a hand and pointed to the midwife.
“ ‘Kao,’ she panted. ‘Li… Li… Li… Kao…’ ”
I jerked up my head and looked wide-eyed at Master Li, who winked at me.
“Tears blurred the abbot's eyes. ‘I hear, my daughter,’ he sniffled. ‘Your son shall be named Li Kao.’
“ ‘Kao!’ the woman gasped. ‘Li… Li… Li… Kao…’
“ ‘I understand, my daughter,’ the abbot sobbed. ‘I shall raise Li Kao as my own son, and I shall place his tiny feet upon the True Path. He shall be instructed in the Five Virtues and Excellent Doctrines, and at the end of his blameless life his spirit shall surely pass through the Gates of the Great Void into the Blessed Regions of Purified Semblance.’ ”
Master Li swallowed another pint and offered me another sip, which produced the same choking result.
“The woman's eyes blazed with a strong emotion that strangely resembled fury,” he said, “but her strength was spent. Her eyes closed, and her hand fell limply to her side, and her soul departed to the Yellow Springs Beneath the Earth. The midwife was greatly moved, and when she whipped a small goatskin flask from her robe and drank deeply, the smell of the stuff brought a cold chill to the abbot's heart. That revolting odor could only come from the finest paint remover and worst wine ever invented: Kao-liang. Repeat: Kao-liang. Was it possible that the dying woman had not been naming a baby but demanding a snort? It was indeed possible, and it further developed that she had not been pursued by the duke's soldiers because she was an heroic rebel, but because she and her husband had stolen the regimental payroll. My parents were the most notorious crooks in China, and my mother could have escaped quite easily if she had not tried to battle my father for the loot.”
Master Li shook his head wonderingly.
“Ox, heredity is a remarkable thing. I never knew my parents, yet at the tender age of five I stole the abbot's silver belt buckle. When I was six I made off with his jade inkstone. On my eighth birthday I stole the gold tassels from the abbot's best hat, and I still take pride in the feat because he happened to be wearing the hat at the time. When I was eleven I exchanged the abbot's bronze incense burners for a couple of jars of wine and got royally drunk in the Alley of Flies, and at thirteen I borrowed his silver candlesticks and tiptoed into the Alley of Four Hundred Forbidden Delights. Youth!” cried Master Li. “How sweet yet sadly swift pass the halcyon days of our innocence.”
He buried his nose in his wine flask again, and burped comfortably.
“The abbot of the Monastery of Sh'u was truly heroic,” he said. “He had vowed to raise me as his own, and he kept his word, and so well did he pound an education into my head that I eventually did quite well in my chin- shih examination. When I left the monastery, it was not in pursuit of scholarship, however, but in pursuit of an unparalleled career in crime. It was quite a shock for me to discover that crime was so easy that it was boring. I reluctantly turned to scholarship, and by the accident of handing in some good papers I was entombed in the Forest of Culture Academy as a research fellow, and I escaped from that morgue by bribing the court eunuchs to get me an appointment as a military strategist. I managed to lose a few battles in the approved manner, and then I became one of the emperor's wandering persuaders, and then Governor of Yu, and it was in the last occupation that the light finally dawned. I was trying to get enough evidence to hang the loathsome Dog-Meat General of Wusan, but he was so slippery that I couldn't prove a thing. Fortunately the Yellow River was flooding again, and I managed to convince the priests that the only way to appease the river god was through the custom of the ancients. So the Dog-Meat General disappeared beneath the waves tied to a gray horse—I was sorry about the horse, but it was the custom—and I tendered my resignation. Solving crime, I had belatedly discovered, was at least a hundred times more difficult than committing it, so I hung the sign of a half-closed eye above my door and I have never regretted it. I might add that I have also never left a case half-finished.”
I gulped noisily, and I suppose that the hope in my eyes was shining as brightly as the moon.
“Why do you think I've been telling you this?” said Master Li. “I have a very good reason to be angry at the Duke of Ch'in, since one of his ancestors killed my parents, and if nothing else, my various careers have uniquely prepared me for the task of stealing ginseng roots.”
He patted my shoulder.
“Besides, I'd take you for a great-grandson any day,” he said. “I would never dream of allowing you to go out on your own to be slaughtered. Get some sleep, and we'll leave at dawn.”
Tears blurred my eyes. Master Li called to the dogs and crawled from the cave, and they gamboled happily around him as he danced down the path toward the monastery, waving his wine flask. The high-pitched four-tone liquid-voweled song of High Mandarin drifted back upon the night breeze.
