conceive through thought alone, which made parentage impossible to establish, so “turtle egg” became a euphemism for bastard. Master Li swore that the insult had last been delivered during the Usurpation of Wang Mang, and he was willing to bet that at some point in her wanderings Grief of Dawn had found work in one of the moldy priories where antiquated old maids preserve ancient sayings and customs they learned from their great- great-grandmothers. Another time Grief of Dawn got mad at Moon Boy and called him “Forgetter of the Eight!” and even Master Li had to pause before connecting it to the corrupt courtiers whom Mencius swore had turned their backs on filial piety, politeness, decorum, integrity, fidelity, fraternal duty, loyalty, and sense of shame: the Eight Rules of Civilization.
Grief of Dawn was perfectly aware of Master Li's growing interest. She began to regard him with a speculative expression that had a hint of mirth in it, and I wondered if Moon Boy could read her mind, because he picked up the exact same expression. One scorching afternoon we reached a stream and in an instant Moon Boy had stripped and was gliding through the cool water like one of his swans. Grief of Dawn had plenty of secluded places to use if she liked, so Master Li and I undressed and dove in after Moon Boy. There was another splash. Grief of Dawn swam like a seal, and wasn't exactly shy about displaying her supple athlete's body. She stood in a shallow spot, apparently to give Master Li a good view of her lovely firm breasts.
“Venerable Sir, how many wives have you had?” she asked innocently.
“Buddha, I started to lose count somewhere back toward the beginning of the Sui Dynasty.”
“And how many wives do you have now?”
“Not one,” the old man said complacently. “They kept growing old and dying on me, so when I reached the point where I could no longer enjoy the Play of Clouds and Rain, I decided to settle for selfishness and comfortable clutter, and I haven't had a wife since.”
“But is that wise?” Grief of Dawn batted her eyes as though the bright sunlight bothered her. (She had beautiful eyelashes.) “Wives are useful for many things, and there are potions and incantations that can do wonders with the Play of Clouds and Rain…”
I stopped listening and tried to make my clumsy mind come to grips with Grief of Dawn's point of view. The more I thought of it, the more sensible it became. Prostitutes are called “flowers of smoke,” and brothels are “smoke and blossom camps” because worldly pleasures are transitory, and nothing is more transitory than beauty. A whore's hopes can be measured in the distance between two wrinkles, and what could Grief of Dawn look forward to? If she married me, it would mean a farm and children and heartbreak when she was compelled to run off after Moon Boy and resume her restless wanderings. But if she married an ancient sage? Master Li would merely laugh if she ran off, and take the opportunity to smash up the shack with some old-fashioned drinking brawls, and laugh some more when she returned, and when he died she would become a respectable widow with a roof over her head.
“… then you wash the dragon bones and grind them into a fine powder, and put the powder into tiny silk bags and put the bags into the body cavities of dead cleaned swallows and leave them overnight…”
Master Li was smiling faintly as he listened to the innocent folk remedy. He began whistling very softly. I felt my face turn red, and Moon Boy had a hard time suppressing laughter, and Grief of Dawn flushed and began stumbling over words. The tune was “Hot Ashes,” and for some peculiar reason the phrase “scraping hot ashes” refers to incest between in-laws—a young wife and her son-in-law, for example—and could it be said that I was something of a substitute son to Master Li? The arrangement that Grief of Dawn had in mind could become rather complicated, and Master Li held up a hand and cut her short.
“Forget about resurrecting erections,” he said dryly. “At my age the last thing a man wants is one more petrified part. As for the rest of it, I'll think it over, and if I were you, I'd work on a young fellow who wears his peasant propriety like a suit of armor.”
Grief of Dawn dove beneath the water and popped up in front of me like a dolphin. Her waving hand encompassed Master Li and Moon Boy and the water and the sunlight and the grass and the flowers and everything else we were sharing. “Oh, Ox, what fun we could have, and how happy we could be,” she said pleadingly.
There was real yearning in her voice, and deep inside me it struck a sympathetic chord. My parents had died when I was nine. That had probably been the age of Moon Boy when he was first disowned, and Master Li hadn't experienced family life for years, and Grief of Dawn couldn't even remember if she had a family, and somehow I found myself thinking of the little shack in the alley in the coming winter, warm in the wind and snow, and I could smell the good food and fresh-scrubbed cleanliness that a young wife would bring, and I could hear the easy jokes and laughter, and I could see Moon Boy suddenly appearing like an exotic tropical bird—besides, if Master Li wasn't worried about who slept where, why should I be?
Grief of Dawn started a water fight. We said no more about her hope. It was Master Li's decision, and he would let her know in due course.
We didn't want to be sidetracked by several years in jail. Grief of Dawn made Moon Boy promise to be on his best behavior when we arrived in Ch'ang-an, and Master Li was in high spirits when he entered the Academy of Divination and Alchemic Research to get the report on the soil and plant samples. When he came out he was spitting nails.
“According to the finest minds in China, there is no trace of acid or poison or any other harmful substance,” he snarled. The only thing wrong with Princes’ Path is that parts of it are stone cold dead, and some oaf has scribbled on the bottom: ‘Extinction through natural decay.’ ”
Master Li swore without repeating himself all the way down the hill to Serpentine Park, where he said he wanted to try something.
“I'm reduced to grasping at straws,” he said sourly. “One straw concerns the last meal of the late librarian, Brother Squint-Eyes. I've been assuming that he paid for it with the down payment for Ssu-ma Ch'ien's manuscript, and that his tracing copy was stolen during the crooks’ second visit to the monastery, but there could be another explanation. Let's go to the exhibits.”
Bored schoolmasters were guiding classes around. Master Li found one with weak watery eyes and a nose covered with crimson veins. Money changed hands, and the delighted schoolmaster dove into the nearest wineshop. Master Li took over the class, and after huddling with the brats he started off toward the Boar Pavilion. The boys, I saw with surprise, were marching behind the old man with the precision of the Imperial Guard. It really was quite impressive—an ancient gentleman of the old school and his beautifully behaved charges—and a crowd began to follow Confucius and sons.
“The hope of the empire!” exclaimed an emotional matron.
Master Li lined the boys up and gave the downbeat, and they honored the exhibits of past glories with the most perfect rendition of “Evening Lake Scenes” I have ever heard. The applause was deafening. Vendors were mobbed, and the lads disappeared behind mounds of gooey sweets. Master Li lined them up again and marched off to the Gallery of Beautitude, and there the lads delivered a flawless “Shadows on the Eastern Window.” Then they actually performed obeisances and kowtows.
“The hope of the empire!” the matron bawled, and a fierce old fellow with a floppy mustache told one and all that he had planned to return his medals to the General Staff in protest against the decline of standards, but now he wasn't so sure about the decline.
The Temple of Immaculate Illumination was next, and the boys’ performance of “The Twin Pagodas of Orchid Stream” was so superb that every vendor in sight was cleaned out, and candy and crystalized fruit and honey cakes by the ton vanished into the boys’ gaping maws.
“The hope of the empire!” cried Moon Boy and Grief of Dawn, beating the matron to it, and the fierce old gentleman with the medals vowed to move Heaven and earth to get his great-grandsons enrolled with Master Li.
The most sacred of all exhibits is the Confucian Stones (a row of stones engraved with all two hundred thousand characters of the master's writings). A low railing surrounds them, and the rule is, look but don't touch. Master Li lined up the little angels for a tribute worthy of the Ultimate, and the rendition of “The Tower of Floating Blue-Green” brought tears to every eye, including mine.
“The hope of the empire!” I bellowed, along with Moon Boy, Grief of Dawn, the matron, and the gentleman with the medals.
The vendors were cleaned out within minutes. The boys, I noticed, were beginning to turn green. They turned as one and groped for support, which happened to be a low rail, and leaned over it and began heaving their cherubic
