The mist ahead of us was breaking up, and we were floating gently forward and then nudging to a stop at a long gray dock, and the ghosts were waiting for us.
The dead were in a festive mood as they climbed on board. They seemed to take up no space, no matter how many walked up the gangplank that Gliding Sliding One and Bounding and Rushing slid out, and I somehow understood that my job was done, and so was Master Li’s, and from now on the experienced crew would take over. The dock finally emptied. The lead oarsmen shoved off, and the boat began moving forward again into mist. I was standing with Master Li on the high prow and I could look back over the stern, past my steering oar, and see ghosts leaning out over the water, beckoning and calling. I turned to Master Li with questions in my eyes.
“The dead are trying to coax lung dragons to follow the boat and bring rain,” he said quietly. “You see, Ox, it’s a pact made long ago. At the Festival of Graves we bring summer clothes and food and wine to the dead, and clean the graves and make them comfortable. At the Hungry Ghosts Festival we feed spirits too unfortunate to have family to care for them, and we pray for their souls. At the Festival of All Souls we bring the dead paper money so they can redeem their winter clothes from the pawnshops of the Land of Shadows, and we bring new clothes when necessary and supplies of everything they might need for the winter. In return the ghosts help bring rain, and fight disease and illness, which no longer have any power over them.”
We had passed through the mist and were gliding out on North Lake. Fear had kept the crowds from the banks, but the old woman called Niao-t’ung, “Chamber Pot,” and the old man called Yeh-lai Hsiang, “Incense Which Comes by Night,” meaning the smell when he removed his sandals, were not going to be denied a ritual they’d performed since they were children, and they painfully hobbled to the water’s edge. Puzzlement was apparent in their gestures as they shaded their eyes and looked at us, and then right through us. The authorities had said there would be no boat race this year, but instinct told the two tottering wrecks that there was indeed a boat race, and they nodded firmly to each other and placed their little paper sung wen boats in the water. The boats carried the diseases their families might encounter during the next six months, and Incense Which Comes by Night tossed a pocketful of tiny dogs made of clay as well. The dogs would bite any diseases that slipped out of the paper boats and keep them from swimming back on shore.
Paper boats are drawn in the wake of racing ones, and the ghosts were calling and beckoning, and the little bobbing things drifted out and turned obediently to follow the gentle rippling trail behind us.
The boat was vibrating like a tuning fork. On the shore I saw buildings shake and loose tiles fall. The great Yu was sounding the final notes to announce the precise second of the solstice, and a gauzy graceful waterspout was lifting into the air on the port side, higher and higher, spreading dragon wings, forming a cloud. Another dragon followed, and another, and they turned on the dirty fingers of Yellow Wind and began chasing them back into Mongolia. Clouds were spreading across half the sky, just in time to catch the light of the setting sun, and rain began to fall, and a cool fresh breeze washed the city, and people began pouring out, running to the water carrying their families’ paper boats.
“Ox…”
I turned and cried out as two ghosts came through the crowd of the dead. My mother embraced me, and my father smiled and twisted his hands together awkwardly.
Hundreds of ghosts were greeting Master Li. A huge flotilla of disease boats was following us now, bobbing up and down over gentle waves, glowing in the sunset, and when I looked up from my parents I saw some kind of dark barrier like a wall of low fog, with a shining open archway in the center, and the water that led into it was woven from the colors of the sky.
“But, Mother, Peking really isn’t all that much different from the village,” I said. “You shouldn’t believe all the alarming things you hear…”
The ghosts around Master Li had stepped back, bowing to the deck, and the sage was walking forward with a big smile of greeting on his face, and eight hooded gentlemen closed around him, and I could see hands lift and gesture in an animated conversation.
I laughed and pointed. “Look, that’s Master Li,” I said. “How could I possibly get into trouble working for a sweet little old man like that?”
The boat glided silently through the glittering arch. Ahead was the great looming shape of the Jo tree, where the goddess Kan-shui would catch the sun and bathe it and send it down the underground stream to the other side of the world, so it could climb branches of the Fu-sang tree and again reach the sky. The flowers of the Jo tree were beginning to open and form the first stars of night, and the water around us was gloriously woven from the glow of sunset.
“Ox!” cried Master Li. “Bring your esteemed parents and come say hello to some friends of ours!”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Примечания
1
Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu was never seen again. Three months later the magistrate in charge of digging up bodies in the hosteler’s basement discovered the 214 notebooks of recipes, culinary comments, and aesthetic essays that were to form the backbone of the second-greatest cuisine the world has ever known. Within a year a powerful lobby had formed to press for proper recognition, and in record time all charges against a mad innkeeper disappeared from the ledgers. Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu was elevated to the pantheon, where his godly form is that of a prominent star in the Hyades asterism, and in many parts of China he is still worshipped as Tu K’ang, Patron of Chefs and Restaurateurs.
