had no intention of instituting the unspeakable atrocities of the Tibetan World of Darkness.
According to the Register of Souls, Tou Wan had been damned not for murder and torture but for wanton carnality, and the Fifth Hell provides such sinners with beds in which to cool down. We marched down rows of beds formed from sheets of ice to which sinners were held by frozen iron chains, and naked bodies shuddered unceasingly and the air was loud with the sound of cracking joints. We came to the wife of the Laughing Prince in the fiftieth row.
I was not prepared for her youth and beauty. Like the others, she shuddered and jerked in her chains, but she made not a whimper and her eyes were open instead of being fastened shut by eyelids thick with frozen tears. Master Li bowed deeply.
“Princess, I hope you will forgive the intrusion,” he said. “We had hoped to interview your noble husband, but he appears to be unavailable.”
Her lips parted with the sound of cracking ice. “Unavailable?”
“Somehow he managed to dodge the bailiffs. Do you have any idea how he managed it?”
She managed an ironic laugh, and I decided she was the toughest person I had ever met. “They should have searched for his soul inside the stone,” she said.
“The stone!” Master Li exclaimed. “Wherever we go, we keep running into references to that stone. Would you be kind enough to enlighten me on the subject?”
Tou Wan's voice was as cold as the ice she lay on. “Guess, if you like. If you guess right, I may answer one or two questions.”
“I shall guess that the stone was broken into three pieces, and the largest piece was placed in a sacristy, and the second largest was used by your husband as an amulet, and the last sliver became the tip of your hairpin,” said Master Li.
“You guess well, old man,” the princess said. “Ssu-ma Ch'ien broke it, the meddling fool, and he wasn't even half-right about it. He called it the Stone of Evil, and his mistake cost him his balls. What would you call the stone, old man?”
Master Li looked thoughtfully at her. “I would not call it evil, and I would not call it good,” he said slowly. “I would call it a concentrated life force that in the hands of a saint could heal all wounds, but in the hands of your husband could wound all heals, if you will forgive the sophistry.”
“Better and better, old man,” Tou Wan said. Her eyes closed. Ice began to form over her lips. I thought she had ended the interview, but then her body shuddered and jerked, and the ice over her mouth cracked.
“It was not his, it was never his, it was mine… A lover gave it to me… Lovers always gave things to me… I was ten when I let a boy think he had seduced me; he gave me his mother's rings… A pretty boy, so easy to train, like a dog… Lie down! Sit up!… His father came for the rings and I trained him too… Roll over! Beg!… I led him around on a leash that only women could see; how they hated me, the sluts… He made me his number seven wife, and I persuaded him and his pretty son to go to a war where they were sure to be killed… Hsu was the lawyer and Kung-sun was the magistrate… Lie down! Sit up! Roll over! Beg!… I threw the other wives out into the street, and then Yi Shou the merchant with his jewels and carriages, Governor Kuo with his houses and land, wriggling like good little dogs begging to be petted… I could not train Prince Liu Sheng, but he gave me a crown… It was his steward who gave me the stone… The stone… Holding it against my skin, feeling the pulse… My husband stole it from me and it drove him mad, madder than I believed possible… The Little Tour, the Big Tour, one thousand seconds, the Embryonic Pearl, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!… Ssu-ma broke the stone, and all I had was the sliver for my hairpin… That maid, always looking at it, always wanting it, trying to steal it… I stabbed her, but she ran away with my stone… My maid and that concubine with the ring of Upuaut my husband gave her… The soldiers killed them, but they could not find the stone… It was mine, all of it was mine… My husband refused to give me a second piece… He laughed and showed me a tender poem for my coffin, and then he made me drink poison… Mad monks in motley dancing and laughing around my bed… Cold… Colder… Mist, sounds of water, bailiffs pulling me into a gray world, Yama Kings, freezing, freezing, freezing…”
Tou Wan's eyes opened. She looked at me. “Peasant boy, you would have made a good little dog.” Her eyes were deep and wondering as they moved to Moon Boy. “You I would have worshipped.” Her eyes moved to Master Li.
“You I could neither have worshipped nor broken and trained,” said the princess. “Old man, I fear you. Go away.”
Master Li bowed, and Moon Boy and I followed his example. Tou Wan's eyes closed and her mouth shut with a sound like the click of a lock. I raised the state umbrella and we marched on down the path.
“What an extraordinary young woman,” Master Li said admiringly. “The phrase ‘tougher than Tou Wan’ must enter the language, and we should try to do something about her bed of ice.”
19
We walked across a long gray plain that led to the great gray walls of the Sixth Hell. Gray grass bent beneath a cold gray breeze, and the gray sky seemed to press down upon us.
“Master Li, I don't understand about the stone,” I said. “Isn't it evil? Ssu-ma thought so, and he wrote that the author of Dream of the Red Chamber had been quoting from the Annals of Heaven and Earth.”
Master Li walked on in silence for some time. Then he said, “Ox, we can't be sure that the legendary annals were actually involved, but we do know that both Ssu-ma and Tsao Hsueh Chin accepted as proof the reactions of two great men who possessed the stone. Both Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu cried, “Evil!” and hurled it away, but did they really mean that the stone was evil? Could they have meant something else? There's at least one other possibility, and it has to do with the shape of the stone.”
The shape? I tried to recall the words of Ssu-ma. “Flat smooth area rising to round concave bowl shape.” What did that have to do with evil?
“But Tou Wan said that it drove her husband mad,” Moon Boy pointed out. “Doesn't that imply the stone was evil?”
“No,” Master Li said flatly. “Her words make it perfectly clear. The inner power of the stone tempted the Laughing Prince to use it in the ridiculously dangerous discipline called Taoist Ideal Breathing. The goal is personal immortality, which is always an invitation to disaster. You lie on your back with your tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth to catch brain dew, which is what Taoists call saliva. Normally you press the middle finger of each hand against the opposite palm, but I suspect that the Laughing Prince pressed his fingers against the ch'i pulse of the stone. You suck in air and hold it for thirty seconds, and then purify it by releasing drops of brain dew and send it through your chest and heart. That's called the Little Tour. Every lunar month you increase the time you hold your breath by five seconds, and when you can do so for one hundred fifty seconds, you're ready for the Big Tour.”
“Holding your breath for two and a half minutes can be dangerous,” Moon Boy pointed out.
“You get dizzy and disoriented,” I said, “If you keep it up, you might damage your brain.”
“You might indeed,” said Master Li. “That's only the beginning. The Big Tour is to send purified air through your chest, heart, abdomen, liver, kidneys, and sexual organs, and every lunar month you continue to hold your breath five seconds longer. When you reach one thousand seconds you will supposedly produce inside your body something called the Embryonic Pearl, which is a divine Elixir of Life.”
“Of life? You'd be dead!” I exclaimed.
“Not necessarily. The body is capable of amazing things,” said Master Li. “The problem is the brain. It must have a steady supply of fresh air, and the Laughing Prince went mad.”
I saw the Laughing Prince clutching the stone, holding his breath longer and longer, holding it until the physicians shook their heads and ordered the Cloud Gong to sound the death knell; I saw a mad prince wrapped in darkness, clutching the stone and holding his breath as the centuries passed; I saw his eyes open, and the lid of his coffin lifting up, and a lunatic encased in jade stalking from his tomb; I saw a shadow in the moonlight, and Grief of Dawn on her sickbed—
“Ox, this is your department,” Master Li said.
I snapped back to reality. I had thought that the gray plain was smooth and unbroken, but I was wrong.
