toward Yenyu, hit the backwash, skidded around the sharp stone corners, and plowed through the woman's-hair spray without suffering a scratch.
Grief of Dawn and I grabbed for fresh wine jars.
The speed was incredible as we raced straight at and then past Fairy Girl Peak, where the rocks are shaped like a nude nymph, and the Frog, where a forty-foot plume of water shoots from a stone bullfrog mouth. We passed through the Shiling and Chutang gorges without incident. Master Li and Moon Boy had their arms around each other's shoulders and were roaring a bawdy song, and I was foolish enough to think the worst of it was over. Then I saw what was coming and nearly fainted. Wu Gorge was looming through the spray.
Day turned into night. We had shot into a gorge so narrow that only at noon could one see the sun in a tiny ribbon of sky at the top of towering cliffs. The narrower the Yangtze became, the faster it ran. The noise was beyond belief. A stinging mist mercifully blocked out the rocks that reached like fangs to tear us to pieces. If our bodies had been rigid with sobriety there wouldn't have been an unbroken bone, but we were as limp as sacks of meal. I would have preferred being unconscious, because Five Misery Rapids was leaping toward us at a hundred miles an hour.
Master Li happily waved his wine flask. “One!” he bellowed, and suddenly we were airborne. The little boat turned completely around twice as we sailed over the falls, and we hit the surface again with a splash that sent spray fifty feet up the sides of the cliffs. I somehow got my stomach back in place just as Master Li bellowed, “Two!” We ascended toward Heaven again, practically grazing one of the walls as we shot through the air. It was a long way down to the level below the second falls, and Grief of Dawn and I clung to each other in terror. No sooner had we landed and scraped ourselves up from the deck than we felt our stomachs say farewell again. “Three!” Master Li yelled, and we sailed out into space. I don't even remember landing. “Four!” Master Li yelled, and I opened my eyes to discover we were headed somewhere in the direction of Venus. The boat spun around as we descended, and we landed backward, which allowed me to notice that we had missed a rock like a fifty-foot saw by two inches. The boat spun around. Now I could see that we were hurtling toward the narrowest part of the gorge, and I stared at a spume of water that was wrapped in rainbows as it shot a hundred feet out into nothingness. We joined the spume. “Five!” Master Li bellowed. I realized that we were flying from Wu Gorge, sailing into a million acres of bright blue sky, and then the spray settled around us and we soared down blindly. Down and down and down, while I prayed we were still right side up. We hit with a shock that nearly drove me through the bottom of the boat.
I think I was stunned, because it took some time for me to get my scrambled senses functioning, and then I wondered what was wrong. The noise had gone. The boat was peacefully floating upon placid water. I had the distinct sensation that I was about to be devoured by an enormous mouth, and I sat up and stared at the serene smile of the Great Stone Buddha of Loshan: three hundred sixty feet high, carved in the side of Yellow Buffalo Mountain at the safe end of Wu Gorge. Five Misery Rapids was behind us, and so was the King of Chao, and the only problems were Master Li and Moon Boy.
They wanted to go back and do it again, but Grief of Dawn and I sat on them until they regained their senses.
12
The next few days were rather interesting, although exhausting. I made a few notes, and perhaps I should include a couple of them.
Wake up, rub eyes, examine bug crawling into left nostril. Grief of Dawn sleeping, Master Li snoring, Moon Boy gone. Get up to gather firewood. Dogs barking, screams of rage in distance. Make tea, get more water for rice. Screams of rage closer, plus beautiful voice singing obscene song:
Rest of it unprintable. Hear six hawk moths diving at my tea, look around for hawk moths, see Moon Boy doing something with his throat. Screams of rage very close, lynch mob gallops over hill. Leader has pitchfork, drags weeping boy. Moon Boy accepts tea. Leader screams accusations, Moon Boy sips tea. Leader charges with pitchfork. Moon Boy smiles—air turns sulphurous. Smiles wider—hills shimmer with heat waves. Moon Boy tickles leader beneath chin, purrs like cat: “Come here, sugar.” Escorts leader behind large rock, boy stops weeping and starts laughing. Offer tea to lynch mob. Lewd sounds from behind rock, boy can't stop laughing. Offer rice to lynch mob. Leader emerges, adjusting clothing. Refuses tea and rice and drags boy away by ear. Moon Boy saunters from behind rock, whistling. Master Li awakes, regards Moon Boy and departing lynch mob, mutters, “If only I could be ninety again, goes back to sleep.
Our route back toward Ch'ang-an took us past the village of Moon Boy's birth, at which point I began to suspect that Moon Boy's moral turpitude resembled his art: almost supernatural.
Road past small temple, priest emerges. Stares at Moon Boy, lifts robe, races toward village: “Lock up the boys! Lock up the men! Lock up the goats and donkeys!” Moon Boy smiles proudly. Enter village, woman emerges from cottage: “My son!” Faints. Father emerges waving horsewhip: “Shame! Scandal! Infamy! Ignominy! Odium! Obliquity!” Father apparently fairly well educated. Priest runs up and sprinkles Moon Boy with holy water, begins beating with rod. Moon Boy tickles beneath chin: “Kitchy-koo.” Priest faints. Mother revives: “Witness, O Heaven, that I was blameless!” Topples back to ground, Moon Boy smiles proudly. Neighbors gather, Moon Boy blows kisses. Father follows from village waving horsewhip: “Agony! Abasement! Depravity! Degradation!” Moon Boy blows kisses. Horses, goats, bulls, donkeys: whinnies, bleats, bellows, brays. Moon Boy blows kisses, Master Li mutters, “Rather an active childhood.” Buy boat, push off into stream. Strange low hoarse sound, Moon Boy doing something with throat. Swans swim up. Great white glowing clouds of swans, canopy of wings lifting over Moon Boy, feathers shining in sunlight. Beautiful. Unreal.
If I am ever invited to take a ride on one of those tubes of Fire Drug that streaks up into the sky, goes bang! and hurls sparkling comets across the sky, I will bow politely and say, “A thousand pardons, but this humble one has already made the trip.”
One of Moon Boy's most remarkable attributes was that he was completely without jealousy. When Grief of Dawn felt like climbing into my bedroll, which she did now and then, all Moon Boy did was lift his handsome head to the night sky and sing to the rabbit in the moon, asking for a soft silver blanket of moonbeams for Grief of Dawn and Number Ten Ox. Master Li would cry in mock agony, “Ah, if only I could be ninety again!” (actually, I think he was happy to be free from the tyranny of sexual desire), and it was clear that, for reasons of his own, he was becoming fascinated by the maid without a memory.
Grief of Dawn was a walking collection of contradictions. She was a simple peasant who spoke the pal hua of the people, like me, but at times she would unconsciously toss in wen li phrases that would have done credit to a courtier. She painted her forehead yellow but refused to pluck and paint her eyebrows: half-patrician, half-peasant. She was shameless enough to walk around with her hair uncovered, yet she was furious when she saw a man in mourning for his mother who carried a staff of oak rather than the appropriate mulberry. She was a prostitute who indignantly refused a fan Moon Boy bought because it was folding, and the symbolism was indecent, and ladies should always carry fixed fans.
Master Li's eyes lit up. “I haven't heard the fan taboo since I was a tad of six or seven!” he exclaimed.
“Little Miss Spotless Sandals,” I teased.
“Everybody should dust his sandals now and then,” she said demurely, and then she stepped behind me and dusted hers with two swift kicks to my rear end. “Turtle Egg!” she yelled.
Master Li collapsed with laughter. When he recovered he explained that people once believed turtles could
