the Monkey Sucking a Peach Dry. I must say modestly that I myself recently invented rather an interesting new one.”
“What was that?”
“It was done to an arsonist who had burned down the house of an enemy. He failed to get the enemy, who had gone on a journey, but burned to death the wife and children. So I decreed a punishment to fit the crime. I directed the Fondler to pack the man’s nostrils and mouth with huo-yao powder, and seal him tightly with wax. Then, before he could suffocate or strangle, the wicks were ignited and his head was blown to pieces.”
“While we are on the subject of meet punishments, Wei-ni”—we were by this time informally using first names—“what do you predict the Khakhan will inflict on you and me, for indigence in office? We have not got very far with our strategies for tax imposition. I do not believe Kubilai will accept rainy weather as an excuse.”
“Marco, why weary ourselves with the making of plans that cannot be put into practice?” he said lazily. “And today is not rainy. Let us just sit here and enjoy the sun and the breeze and the tranquil sight of your lovely lady gathering flowers from the garden.”
“Wei-ni, this is a rich city,” I persisted. “The only marketplace under roof I ever saw, and ten more market squares outdoors. All of them teeming—except when it rains, anyway. Pleasure pavilions on the lake islands. Prosperous families of fanmakers. Thriving brothels. Not a single one of them yet paying a single tsien to the new government’s treasury. And if Hang-zho is so wealthy, what must the rest of Manzi be like? Are you asking me to sit still and let
“Marco, I can only tell you—as both I and the Wang have told you repeatedly—every last tax record maintained by the Sung regime disappeared
“Yes, yes, I have accepted that as a fact. But I am not interested in knowing who paid how much to the late Sung’s tax officers! What do I care about a lot of old ledgers?”
“Because without them—look.” He leaned forward and held three fingers in front of my face. “You have three possible courses of action. Either you go yourself into every single market stall, every inn on every island, every whore’s working cubicle—”
“Which is impossible.”
“—or you have an army of men to do it for you.”
“Which you have declared impractical.”
“Yes. But, just for argument, say that you go to a market stall where a man is peddling mutton. You demand the Khan’s share of the value of that mutton. He says, ‘But Kuan, I am not the owner of this stall. Speak to the master yonder.’ You accost the other man and he says, ‘I am master here, yes, but I only manage this stall for its owner, who lives in retirement in Su-zho.’”
“I would refuse to believe either of them.”
“But what do you do? Wring money from one? From both? From whom you would get only a dribble. And perhaps overlook the real owner—perhaps the purveyor of all the mutton in Manzi—who really is luxuriating beyond your grasp in Su-zho. Also, do you go through the same fuss at every market stall at every tax time?”
“Vakh! I would never get out of the one market!”
“But if you had the old ledgers, you would
“Gramo mi! That alone would take my lifetime, Wei-ni. And meanwhile I am collecting nothing!”
“Well, there you are.” He sat indolently back again. “Enjoy the day and the view of the eye-soothing Hui- sheng. Salve your conscience with this consideration. The Sung dynasty had existed here for three hundred and twenty years before its recent fall. It had had that long to collect and codify its records and make its taxation methods workable. You cannot expect to do the same thing overnight.”
“No, I cannot. But the Khan Kubilai can expect just that. What do I do?”
“Nothing, since anything you did do would be futile. Do you hear that cuckoo in the tree yonder? ‘Cu-cu … cu-cu …’ We Han like to think that the cuckoo is saying ‘pu-ju ku-ei.’ That means ‘why not go home?’”
“Thank you, Wei-ni. I expect I will go home, someday.
There was some while of peaceful silence, except for the cuckoo’s reiterated advice. At last Fung resumed:
“Are you happy here in Hang-zho?”
“Exceptionally so.”
“Then be happy. Try to regard your situation like this. It may be a long and pleasant time before the Khakhan even remembers he sent you here. When he does, you may still evade his inquisition for a long and pleasant time. When he finally does demand an accounting, he may accept your explanation of your delinquency. If he does not, then he may or may not put you to death. If he does, your worries are all over. If he does not, but only has you broken by the chou-da scourge, well, you can live out your life as a crippled beggar. The market stallkeepers will be kind and let you have a begging station in the market square—
I said rather sourly, “The Wang called you an eminent jurist, Wei-ni. Is that a sample of your jurisprudence?”
“No, Marco. That is Tao.”
Some while later, after he had departed for his own dwelling, I said again, “What do I do?”
I said it again in the garden, but now it was the cool of the early evening, and the cuckoo had taken its own advice and gone home, too, and I was sitting with Hui-sheng after our dinner. I had related to her all that Fung and I had said about my predicament, and now appealed for her advice.
She sat pensive for a time, then signaled, “Wait,” and got up and went to the house kitchen. She came back with a bag of dry beans and indicated that I was to sit with her on the ground among a bed of flowers. In a bare patch of earth there, she traced with her slim forefinger the figure of a square. Then she traced a line down the center of that and another across it, to divide the square into four smaller ones. Inside one of those she scratched a single little line, in the next two lines, in the next three, and in the last a sort of squiggle, then looked up at me. I recognized the marks as Han numerals, so I nodded and said, “Four little boxes, numbered one, two, three and four.”
While I wondered what this had to do with my current and pressing and frustrating problems, Hui-sheng took out of the bag one bean, showed it to me and placed it on box number three. Then, without looking, she reached into the bag, took out a casual handful of beans and spread them beside the square. Very rapidly, she flicked out four beans from that spread, and four more, shoving them to one side, and kept on separating out four beans at a time from that spread. When they had all, by fours, been moved apart, there remained two beans over. She pointed to those two, pointed to the empty number-two box drawn on the ground, snatched up the bean from the box numbered three, added it to the ones she still had, grinned impishly at me, and made a gesture signifying “too bad.”
“I understand,” I said. “I wagered on box number three, but number two won, so I lost my bean. I am desolated.”
She scooped all the beans back into the bag, took one out, ostentatiously put it on a number for me again— this time number four. She started to reach into the bag again, but stopped, and motioned for me to do that. I understood: the game was totally fair, the counting beans were grabbed up at random. I took a considerable handful from the bag and spread them beside her. She rapidly flicked them aside again, four at a flick, and this time they happened to be divisible by four. There were none left to one side at the finish.
“Aha,” I said. “That means my number four wins.