The Story of the Stone

13

We found a pleasant little park and bought grasshopper pies and plum juice with vinegar from one of the vendors, and sat down on the grass beneath a pagoda tree. Master Li had already scanned Brother Squint-Eyes’ forgery. He had also taken a detour through one of the scroll depositories, and he reached into his tunic and extracted an ancient scroll that was sealed with the stamp “Restricted Shelves: Authorized Staff Only.” He placed the scroll, the forged manuscript, and the report on the soil and plant samples beside him on the grass, and concentrated on his grasshopper pie. Then he included all of us in a wave of his finger.

“Tell me the story of the emperor and the tangerines,” he commanded.

We stared at him.

“Sir?” I said weakly.

“You heard me.”

We looked at each other, and finally Moon Boy shrugged. “Long ago there was an emperor named Li Ling-chi,” he said. “He was good. He was very good. In fact, he was so good that birds flew around his head singing songs of praise, and butterflies danced before him.”

“He was so good that fish and frogs jumped from ponds to receive his blessing,” said Grief of Dawn. “He was so good that on feast days a few of the gods always flew down from Heaven to have tea with him. Tea and tangerines, because his only weakness was a fondness for tangerines. His people were delighted that he wasn't fond of the things that usually entertain emperors, such as wars and massacres.”

“Li Ling-chi got better and better,” I said. “He became so good that he couldn't bear the sight of evil, so he had his craftsmen make him a headdress with a veil of two hundred eighty-eight jewels, and he couldn't bear to hear evil, so they added jeweled earflaps. That way he only saw pretty shining things and he only heard tinkle-tinkle-tinkle, except on feast days, when he took off his headdress to have tea with the gods.”

“Tea and tangerines, except one day there were no tangerines,” Moon Boy said “The emperor was outraged. ‘How can I have tea without tangerines?’ he cried. ‘O Son of Heaven,’ said the chamberlain, ‘it is winter, and in winter tangerines do not grow in your gardens.’ The emperor was not to be fooled. ‘I had tangerines last winter!’ he yelled. ‘O Son of Heaven,’ said the chamberlain, ‘last winter the roads were clear, but this winter there have been heavy snowstorms. Produce from the south, where tangerines still grow, cannot reach the capital.’ The emperor turned purple. ‘You mean to tell me that my subjects in the south are gorging themselves on tangerines when their emperor can't have any? We'll see about that!’ he shouted.”

“Emperor Li Ling-chi jumped up on top of his throne,” said Grief of Dawn. “He had become so good that when he waved his hands to the south, all the green growing things tore loose from the earth and flew north to be blessed, and in no time tangerines were growing in the capital in the middle of winter. The gods who were coming to tea cried in horror, ‘Stop! Stop!’ But the emperor still had his headdress on, and all he heard was tinkle-tinkle-tinkle. They sent comets and apparitions and omens, but all he saw was pretty shining jewels. Meanwhile there was no food in the south, and the peasants began to starve, and bodies piled up in ditches just as if there had been wars and massacres.”

“The August Personage of Jade gazed down from his throne,” I said. “His roar of rage shook all the tangerines from the emperor's trees, and he flew down from Heaven and made Li Ling-chi eat every piece of the fallen fruit, and the emperor swelled up like the Transcendent Pig. Then the August Personage of Jade waved his hand and all the green growing things flew back south where they belonged, and he picked up the emperor and hurled him into the sky. But the emperor was lopsided because of all those tangerines, so he curved, and that's why we still see him to this day.”

“Every seventy-five years,” said Moon Boy, “peasants can gaze up at the sky and see a bright comet curving back toward earth. The orange color is all those tangerines inside the emperor, and the sparkling tail is his jeweled veil and earflaps, and if you listen very, very closely, you will hear the sound of an emperor with a tummy ache.”

“Waa! Waa! Waa!” we chanted in unison. “Ling-chi cries, candle dies, little children close their eyes—so!”

We sat there feeling like fools. Master Li polished off a few more grasshoppers and took a swig of wine from his flask.

“That bit of folklore has fascinated scholars for centuries,” he said. “Part of it is based upon a real emperor, Huang Ti, who actually did attempt to block out reality with a jeweled veil and earflaps, but does the rest of it refer to an ancient invasion of the south by the north? A long-forgotten plague? There are some scholars who insist that it's a racial memory of a very rare phenomenon: a sudden shift in the ch'i, the life force, in various climatic areas. As for the suddenness, in theory there is no reason why the appearance of an overpowering concentration of ch'i couldn't draw less powerful life forces to it, destroying anything in its path, whether the intention behind it was as good as Li Ling-chi thought he was or as bad as the Laughing Prince knew he was.”

He tossed the last of his grasshoppers to some fish in a pond and picked up the stolen scroll.

“Believe it or not, there's a point to this, but be patient,” he said. “Am I correct in assuming that every one of you gave up on Dream of the Red Chamber after the first two paragraphs?”

Grief of Dawn and Moon Boy and I turned red. The problem with “the crown jewel of Chinese literature” is that it has two thousand pages and an equal number of characters, and the hero is an effeminate ass who should have either been spanked or decapitated, both ends being equally objectionable.

“No matter,” Master Li said. The book has been revised countless times, by Kao Ngoh and lesser talents, and the later versions bear little resemblance to the original. This happens to be the original, and it contains a rather peculiar story. Listen carefully.”

He opened the scroll and searched for the place and began to read one of the strangest and most unsatisfactorily incomplete fairy tales I have ever heard.

” ‘Of the 36,501 stones selected by the goddess Nu Kua for the Wall of Heaven, there was one she was forced to reject because of a serious flaw. The flaw was an evil one. Contact with the goddess had enabled the stone to acquire a soul, but its soul was evil. The stone had also learned to move around at will, and it wandered through Heaven causing much malicious harm, and at last the emperor was forced to intervene.

” ‘The ways of the August Personage of Jade are subtle indeed. In Heaven there was also a flower named Purple Pearl, and Purple Pearl was even more flawed and evil than the stone. The emperor planted the flower in a barren spot beside the River of Spirits, and there it was discovered by the wandering stone. Evil attracts evil, and the stone began to bring moisture to nourish the flower. Purple Pearl bloomed and became beautiful, and her evil was exorcised by the dew and raindrops of Heaven, and she fell in love with the stone. She vowed that if ever she were reborn upon earth she would shun the Sphere of Banished Sufferings and seek the Source of Drenching Grief, and tears would build up inside her, and if the opportunity arose, she would repay her debt to the stone by shedding every tear in her body.

” ‘The strange vow of a flower is of the utmost importance. The stone has been returned to earth, where it passed into the hands of Lao Tzu, who cried, “Evil!” and hurled it away. It passed to Chuang Tzu, who also cried “Evil!” and hurled it away. The stone now lurks in darkness, waiting for the hand that will not hurl it away, and he who possesses the stone will be himself possessed. The stone is the Stone of Evil, and its malignancy will spread unchecked unless drowned in the tears of Purple Pearl.

” ‘Let no man interfere with the destiny of the flower, for the outcome is awaited by both the goddess Nu Kua and the August Personage of Jade.’ ”

Master Li tossed the scroll on the grass. I choked on a grasshopper. “That's all?” I said incredulously.

“Not according to Ssu-ma Ch'ien,” said Master Li. He picked up Brother Squint-Eyes’ copy and began rapidly decoding the complete hidden text.

” ‘Red Chamber story correct about stone, tablet from Cave of Yu… Confirmation of reactions of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu… Have traced stone to Prince Liu Sheng… Consumed by evil, has become Laughing Prince… Secret hiding place… Down stairs… Cold room… Tunnel to construction site… Stone in sacristy… Plain appearance… Flat smooth area rising to round concave bowl shape… Found axe… Blow broke flat area from bowl area… Second blow broke off small chip… Soldiers seized, could not destroy… Imprisoned… Terrible sentence… Scholars, seek Stone of Evil!… Destroy it!… Evil that consumes men can consume world.’ ”

Master Li placed the copy beside the scroll.

“Ssu-ma Ch'ien was a very brave man,” he said. “The question is whether or not he was correct about the mysterious stone, and he suggests that Tsao Hsueh Chin, the author of Red Chamber, may have taken the stone story from a tablet from the Cave of Yu. Do you know what that means?”

We shook our heads negatively.

“The legendary Emperor Yu is said to have received certain tablets from Heaven, which he concealed in a cave,” Master Li explained. “They're called ‘Annals of Heaven and Earth’ because they supposedly deal with matter affecting men and gods alike. Now and then somebody produces an old clay tablet said to have come from the Cave of Yu. Usually the message involves something lucrative for the discoverer but one or two of the tablets have contained prophecies that proved to be astonishingly correct.”

He picked up the soil and plant report and waved it in my direction. The expression on his face made me very uneasy.

“Number Ten Ox, according to this, there isn't one damn thing wrong with Princes’ Path, just as there wasn't one damn thing wrong with the green growing things in the south until Emperor Li Ling-chi waved his hand,” Master Li growled. “If one allows for tale-telling embellishment, there's nothing impossible about the tangerine story. A tremendous concentration of ch'i would draw lesser life forces to it like iron filings to a magnet.” The old man's eyes bored toward my brain. “Just after a section of Princes’ Path was destroyed, you had a dream. In it you sensed an extraordinary ch'i, a pulsing life force, coming from a small round piece of clay that was colored orange. Was your sleeping mind guiding you to the story of the emperor and the tangerines?”

My mind was as blank and opaque as a pool of mud. I automatically swallowed my plum juice with vinegar.

“A stone touched by Heaven?” Master Li wondered out loud. “A stone worshipped by the Laughing Prince? All we know for sure is that something destroyed sections of Princes’ Path, and a strange sound seems to be associated with it.”

Moon Boy gulped. His eyes were wide and wondering. “I think I can tell you what the sound is,” he said in a small hushed voice.

Confucian temples have no priests or formal worship, but they have a regular congregation of makers of bells. That's because of the pien-chung, a row of sixteen stone bells hanging in a wooden rack. The bells have no clappers and are struck by wooden beams swinging on ropes, and to most people the sound is dull and uninteresting, but bell makers view them differently. On the wooden frame is the inscription “When the bell speaks, the stone answers,” because a perfectly tuned metal bell will produce a matching echo from a similar stone bell, and it's the most accurate tuning device known.

A Confucian temple wasn't far away. Moon Boy ran his hands lovingly over the stone bells. He was in his professional element, and he was all business.

“The ancients separated musical instruments into categories corresponding to the trigrams of Fu Hsi,” he said, and for a mad moment I thought I was going to hear another lecture on the Wen-Wu lute. “Each instrument is defined by four qualities: the material it's made from, the cardinal point of its greatest strength, the season it suggests, and the related sound phenomenon.”

He began fashioning a framework from pieces of bamboo.

“The mouth organ is classified as gourd, northeast, winter/spring, and the sound of thunder. The zither is silk, south, summer, and the sound of fire. All instruments were easily classified until they came to the sonorous stone, and then the ancients became entangled in an argument that lasted nearly six centuries. They easily provided stone, northwest, and autumn/winter. The problem was the related sound phenomenon, and their final decision is still fiercely debated. It won't be easy, but I'll try to show you why they chose as they did.”

He lifted two of the stone bells to the bamboo frame and arranged them so the mouths were almost touching. He took two of the striking beams and swung them over so the ends were almost touching the sides of the bells.

“Ox has tried to describe the strange sound in Princes’ Path to me,” he said. “Now Master Li has spoken of a stone that might have been touched by Heaven, and which might be possessed of an overpowering ch'i. All I know is that stone produces two different sounds, and most people have only heard the sound from the surface. The other sound comes from the soul.”

He began to tap the beams against the bells, very lightly and rapidly. A dull stone sound filled the temple. His hands moved faster and faster. A vibration made my stomach feel queasy. Moon Boy's hands were blurs and the vibration became a humming sound that made the temple shake. His head bent down and his mouth almost touched the narrow crack between the two bells. Moon Boy's throat began to vibrate like a lark's. I realized that he was somehow pitching his voice into the two bell mouths simultaneously, but all I heard was the hum. Sweat was pouring down Moon Boy's face. His throat vibrated faster and faster. “When the bell speaks, the stone answers,” and the stones were beginning to answer. It was a nearly inaudible echo beneath the vibrating hum, gradually growing louder. Then the echo broke through, and my heart nearly broke loose from its moorings.

Kung… shang… chueeeeeeeeeeh…

Master Li had not been able to hear the sound on Princes’ Path, but now he looked as though somebody had smacked him with a barge pole. Grief of Dawn was weeping. “That's it!” I cried. “The sound I heard was a thousand times as pure and strong, but that's it!”

Kung… shang… chueeeeeeeeeeeh…

Moon boy stepped back, drenched in perspiration.

“The ancients,” he said, panting, “decided that the related phenomenon of the soul-sound of stone was nothing less than the Voice of Heaven.”

“Well, well, well,” said Master Li.

All the way back to the Valley of Sorrows Master Li kept it up. “Well, well, well… Well, well, well… Well, well, well…”

I hadn't seen him so happy in months.

Prince Liu Pao was delighted to see us. At first I was delighted to see him too, but then Master Li introduced Grief of Dawn. The prince jumped a foot into the air and his complexion switched back and forth from pink to white and the conversation went something like this.

“Would you care for tea?”

“No, thank you, Your Highness,” said Grief of Dawn.

“Wine, perhaps?”

“No, thank you, Your Highness,” said Grief of Dawn.

“Cakes? Fruit?”

“No, thank you, Your Highness,” said Grief of Dawn.

“How about a few swans?” the prince said hopefully. “Cash? Lambs? Silk?”

Since those were the classic wedding gifts, I decided I was in trouble. The prince's reaction to Moon Boy was almost as strong, and within minutes the three of them were so close that I began to think deep thoughts about Grief of Dawn's belief that part of the soul she shared with Moon Boy had been lost on the Great Wheel of Transmigrations. Had the wandering soul settled inside Prince Liu Pao? I asked Master Li about it, but he only grunted noncommittally.

He had something else to think about. Now all his attention was focused upon the mysterious stone of the Laughing Prince, and he settled down in the library at the monastery and began poring over ancient records in search of any mention of an unusual stone. He asked the prince to do the same with family papers, and I was sent out to see what I could find in peasant tales and legends.

It was something to keep my mind off the prince and Grief of Dawn. The stone stories of the old women in the village were the same ones I had heard all my life, so I tried a different kind of folk tale. Blacksmiths are surrounded by boys as flowers are surrounded by bees, so I decided to lend the village smith a hand. After I had lifted the anvil a few times and bent a few iron bars in my hands I had all the boys I needed, and within two days I was able to race into the library at the monastery.

“A stone! A magical stone!” I shouted. Master Li looked up from the scrolls and blinked at me. “It's a boys’ story, and very ancient,” I said excitedly. “So far I've only heard a vague description, but I know it deals with a hero who sneaks into a secret cavern and finds a magical stone. Know what he's trying to do with it?” I said rhetorically. “Kill the Laughing Prince, that's what.”

Master Li leaned back and pressed the tips of his fingers together. “Well, well, well,” he said.