“They'll keep that up for a year?” the prince said. “I think I know what they want, but I'd prefer to have it explained to me.”
“You and you alone have the right to dispose of your ancestor in the old way,” Master Li said gently. “By the old way they mean pre-Confucian.”
“Which is punishable by torment in the Eighth Hell!” the prince said angrily.
“Yes, according to our Neo-Confucian overlords, who also impose upon rivals the sacred duty of retiring from public life for three years upon the death of a father, and then they poison the father,” Master Li said sardonically.
Prince Liu Pao was made from tough stuff. He turned without another word and began marching up Dragon's Left Horn toward his estate. He turned off the path and took a shortcut to the grotto. The horror of the Medical Research Center seemed even worse with the muffled sounds of drums and chanting in the distance. The prince opened the door to the tomb and marched inside to the sarcophagus of his ancestor.
“Ox, can you get the lid all the way down?”
I spat on my hands. The lid was so heavy I couldn't stop it after it slid down to the mummy's feet, and it crashed to the floor. Prince Liu Pao stood looking down at the remains of his ancestor, and Master Li beckoned for me to open the other sarcophagus.
“While we're at it, I want to look for something,” he said.
The lid was easier to move, and the mummy of Tou Wan, the Laughing Prince's wife, was intact. Master Li reached inside and came up with some jewelry, which he examined closely.
“Good stuff, but not the best,” he said thoughtfully. “Tou Wan was said to have been a spendthrift of epic proportions, and I doubt that this would have met her standards. One wonders whether their highnesses might not have been buried by a light-fingered steward.”
He stood there scratching his forehead.
“Strange,” he muttered. “The Laughing Prince apparently worshipped a stone, and possibly his wife also did, yet the stone wasn't included in either coffin. The faithful steward again?”
A sound made us turn. The prince was struggling to lift his ancestor's mummy from the coffin. The tarred wrappings made it heavy and awkward. I stepped forward to help, but Master Li held me back. Prince Liu Pao was sweating heavily, but he kept going: through the tomb, through the grotto, and outside to the path. He turned off the path and carried the mummy to a flat jutting rock overlooking the Valley of Sorrows. Every eye must have been lifted there.
The drums stopped. The prince searched for a heavy rock, and I closed my eyes. I kept them closed while I listened to ancient bones splintering but I opened them too soon and saw the rock descend on the skull and smash it to pieces. A white cloud of crushed and powdered bones drifted down to the valley, followed by the scraps of linen from the wrappings, and then by the stone used for the sacrifice. I have seldom admired anyone as much as I admired Prince Liu Pao. He turned toward us and managed to keep his voice steady.
“According to Tsao Tsao, my next step on the path to damnation is either to violate my sister or fail to return for my mother's funeral, but I can't remember which comes first,” he said.
“The mother,” said Master Li, “takes precedence, but I wouldn't be so sure about damnation if I were you. Prince, this time the criminals have made a very bad mistake, and the mummy of your ancestor puts the seal on it. You and I have something interesting to talk about.”
From below came one last roll of sheepskin drums: “Hurrah for our lord! May he live forever and ever!”
7
Before we had seen the living quarters. Now the prince led the way to his studio, and the breath went out of me as I stepped through the door into forty captured sunsets. I was in the presence of genius.
Paintings and sketches were everywhere, and they were alive. I could swear that real sap was flowing through painted trees, and real dew was dripping from flowers. The most extraordinary thing was the glowing light that seemed to come from inside the paintings, and the prince smiled at the stunned expression on my face.
“It's just a trick, Ox,” he said modestly. “Its called p'o-mo and it means the technique of applying dark ink over light. The effect is scarcely noticeable when you first put it on, but when it dries, it gives the effect of glowing with inner light—“like focused eyes,” my teacher used to say.”
“Ah! You studied with Three Incomparables?” Master Li asked.
“Li Kao, you know everything,” the prince said admiringly “Yes, I was his student for several years, and he was without doubt the most disagreeable man I've ever met.” He graciously included me in the conversation. “His name is Ki K'ai-chih, but he's called Three Incomparables because of his boast that he's incomparable in painting, in genius, and in stupidity. Unquestionably he's the greatest master of p'o-mo in the empire.”
“He used to be, but you surpassed him long ago,” Master Li muttered. “Prince, this is incredible work, but have you considered the likelihood of disgrace and exile?”
“Oh, I have no intention of showing my paintings,” the prince said. “This is practice. I'm trying to learn, and I have a long way to go.”
Being back in his beloved studio had done wonders for him. It was as though the smell of paint had wiped away the recent experiences, and his eyes were shining happily.
“Ox, Master Li means that our overlords have decreed that all art must follow supposedly classical techniques, which are set down in a manual called “Mustard Seed Garden,”’ he explained. “Rocks, for example, may only be painted using kou strokes for outline, p'o strokes for the tops and sides, ts'un strokes for texture, and ts'a strokes for expression. Any other technique can lead to a trial and exile.”
Master Li laughed at the expression on my face.
“It gets worse,” he said. “Ts'un strokes, for example, are broken down into the exact lines suitable for individual rocks: curling cloud strokes, axe cut, split hemp, loose rope, ghost face, skull-like, woodpile, sesame seed, golden blue, jade powder, spear hole, pebbles, and boneless. An artist who uses ghost face for painting granite instead of the officially approved axe cut faces six years in the Mongolian desert.”
The prince waved around the room. “You are looking at approximately one and a half million years worth of exile,” he said proudly. He was becoming quite animated, and he eagerly tossed aside paintings from a pile on the floor and came up with a simple sketch of a tree. “Laws are liars,” he said. “Look here. Every single law of painting insists that the shih, the movement force, of a tree like this must be concentrated in the principal branch that thrusts so proudly toward Heaven. Except it isn't. I tried it the correct way eight times, and it sat there as lifelessly as a lohan. Finally I said to myself, “Stop trying to think, you idiot! Paint!” So I let my hand take over, and this lovely tree came to life. Do you see why?”
He covered the proud principal branch, and gradually I saw what he meant. The energy of the tree didn't run that way at all. It spread out and up from the trunk, reached a knot in a branch, doubled back down the trunk, and then lifted up the far side and throbbed with life as it reached for the sky from a tiny insignificant branch that was barely more than a twig.
“Laws lie, the eyes see only what they have been conditioned to see, and the mind is a refuse pile of other people's ideas,” the prince said. “Only the hand tells the truth. The hand!” he cried passionately. “Trust the hand, and it will never lie to you.”
Master Li looked at him approvingly. “Prince, that is precisely what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “I'm beginning to suspect that this case is one lie piled on top of another lie, but for the first time we have
