“Venerable Sir, I am not accusing you,” the merchant said contritely. “But I need scarcely point out that some error must have been made, since your great-grandson's poor bride… ah… Is it possible that rice flour was used?”
“Don't be an ass, young man!” Master Li said angrily. “Rice flour would have assassinated every single guest at the banquet! Only the purest Hua wheat flour was used, mixed with a little salt and exposed precisely six hours to the sun.”
“With a veil to keep out the dust? Dust can be fatal!”
“With a veil to keep out the dust. Then the flour and beans were mixed into the paste and placed into a jar, which was in turn covered by an earthenware basin and sealed with lime, and I need not mention that only pure river water was used, since the slightest trace of well water would have been fatal.”
“I cannot understand it,” the merchant whispered. “Everything done properly, yet… Wait! What month was it?”
“Are you a raving lunatic? To prepare porcupine paste in any month but June is to commit suicide!” Master Li yelled.
The merchant had turned very pale. It was dawning on him that unless a flaw could be found, he himself could never safely enjoy the delicacy of all delicacies.
“Extraordinary,” he whispered. “Everything done according to the instructions of the great Li Tsening, yet the porcupine proved fatal after all. We must find the error! Venerable Sir, I beg you to describe the precise method by which your chef cooked the porcupine.”
It occurred to me that I had become too interested in porcupine cookery to mourn my departed bride properly. “Woe!” I shrieked. “Woe! Woe! Woe!”
Li Kao patted my shoulder. “To think that such tragedy should strike the only one of the great-grandsons who is neither mentally deficient nor morally degenerate,” he sniffled. “But you are right; the error must be found. My chef began by removing the eyes, stomach, internal organs, and embryos, if any were present. While he cut the meat into pieces, my poor great-grandson cleaned every clot of blood from each piece with his own noble hands. Then the chef boiled the meat in pure river water—”
“With the skin still attached?”
“With the skin still attached. He then removed the meat from the pot and placed it upon a cutting board —”
“A wooden cutting board?”
“Merciful Buddha, I am perfectly aware of the fact that a metal or ceramic cutting board can be fatal!” Master Li snarled. “My chef picked out every bristle and quill with fine pincers, cut the flesh into smaller pieces—and I assure you that they were square pieces—and sauteed them in pork fat. Then and only then did he mix in the bean paste and fry the mixture in hot oil. He took infinite care to keep dust from the pot, and when he judged the meat to be done, he dipped a paper roll into the sauce and held it to the flame of a candle. Not until the paper caught fire easily did he remove the porcupine from the pot and serve it to the guests.”
Not a flaw. Not one single error. The merchant's gluttonous world was crashing around him, and he buried his face in his hands—oddly enough he reminded me of Bright Star when she thought that the Sword Dance had been defiled. His passion was not so noble, but it was equally sincere. Li Kao took the opportunity to lift me to my feet, and I wept upon his shoulder while he patted my back.
“How many died?” the merchant whispered.
“Only my bride!” I howled. “Woe! Woe! Woe!”
“She alone among two hundred,” Master Li sobbed. “And I myself selected the porcupines! I myself made the bean paste! I myself supervised the preparation of the meat! My beloved great-grandson removed the clots of blood with his own hands! It was he who selected the choicest piece to present to his bride! It was I who—”
“Wait!” cried the merchant. He grabbed my shoulders. “My dear tragic boy,” he whispered, “when you cleaned the blood from the meat, what kind of pin did you use?”
I was really quite touched. Li Kao had done all the work to bring the whale alongside, and now he was letting me use the harpoon.
“What kind of… why, I don't remember!” I said.
“You must remember!” the merchant howled. “Was it or was it not a silver pin?”
“Yes, it was,” I said thoughtfully. “Now I remember clearly. It was a pin of the purest silver, although it fell to the ground as I came to the final piece of meat, so of course I had to use another one.”
“Silver?” he asked breathlessly.
I let the tension mount while I wrinkled my brow in thought. “Gold,” I finally said.
The abbot had always warned me against judging by appearances, and that merchant was a classic example. His hoggish appearance suggested self-indulgence at the expense of all else, yet he did not rejoice because his gluttonous world had been saved. Tears streamed down his cheeks and his belly shook with sobs.
“Oh my boy, my poor tragic boy, the slightest contact between porcupine and gold is fatal,” he wept. “By the evil curse of some malign spirit, you used gold for that one last piece, and then with loving hands you placed it upon the plate—”
“Of the woman I loved!” I shrieked. “My stupidity has slain my beautiful bride!”
I fell over the coffin in a faint, which allowed me to open the jar of the Elixir of Eighty Evil Essences that was concealed on the other side.
“To think that my beloved great-grandson could have been responsible for such a ghastly death!” Master Li gasped.
“I have often heard of porcupine poisoning, but I confess that I have never seen it,” the merchant said in a tiny voice. “Is it very terrible?”
The guards and customs officials had been edging closer, with quivering ears, and they glanced nervously at the coffin.
“She began by breaking out in red spots, which spread until every inch of her skin was covered,” Master Li whispered. “Then the red began to turn green.”
The Elixir of Eighty Evil Essences was performing splendidly, and an unbelievable stench was lifting from the coffin.
“Gllgghh!” gagged the Chief of Customs.
“Then the ghastly glaring green began to turn black,” Master Li whispered.
“Black?” the merchant said, waving fumes from his face.
“Well, to be pedantically accurate, it was a greenish-purplish-yellowish black that tended to run at the edges,” Master Li said thoughtfully. “Then the smell began.”
“Smell?” said the Chief of Customs, gagging through the noxious cloud.
“I cannot describe that loathsome smell!” Master Li wept. “Guests began to run for their lives, and my beloved great-grandson reached out to touch his bride—oh, how can I describe the horror of that moment? His fingers actually entered her body, for her smooth and supple skin had become soft jelly from which green and yellow corruption oozed. And the smell, the smell, the hideous toxic stench that caused dogs to collapse in spasms and birds to topple lifelessly from trees…”
For some reason we appeared to be alone.
A few minutes later we staggered from the customs shed and joined the others, who were heaving their guts out over the rails of the pier. Allow me to inform you that the Elixir of Eighty Evil Essences can make a stone vomit. The merchant, the guards, and the customs officials held a conference and voted to toss us, along with the coffin, into the sea before corruption killed them all, but Li Kao appealed to their patriotism by pointing out that if my bride landed in the sea, she would destroy the Chinese fishing industry for at least three thousand years. A compromise was reached, and they provided us with a wheelbarrow for the coffin, a couple of shovels, and a terrified bonze who led the way to the lepers’ cemetery, banging upon a gong and bellowing “Unclean! Unclean!” The bonze took to his heels, and we watched the sails of the merchant's ship disappear in the mist as he sped away with his four wooden cases, one of which was a coffin from which the funeral decorations had been removed.
We ripped the funeral decorations from the merchant's case and I pried the lid open. Inside I found a small bag lying upon a canvas cover, and I dumped the contents into my hand and stared in disbelief.
“Pins? Master Li, why would that merchant hire an army of guards to protect some cheap iron pins?”
