Barry Hughart - Eight Skilled Gentlemen

(His organ was the sheng, which has been a standard orchestral instrument ever since. It’s a little hard on the lungs because it works by inhaling, so a totally false legend has grown around it to the effect that no great sheng master has lived past the age of forty. This allows a player to win wild applause and be pelted by bouquets hurled by lovely ladies, who often hurl themselves as well, simply by pausing to cough during a performance and then wiping his lips with a handkerchief daubed with blood-red rouge, and when the other members of the orchestra can bear it no more they toss away their instruments and set upon the bastard with fists, feet, and fangs.)

The cavern became known as the Yu, first in popular reference and then officially, because Yu is a legendary emperor who is said to have invented all the musical instruments Fu-hsi didn’t. It continued to sound the solstices with incredible accuracy, but since nobody knew the point of it the phenomenon had long ago settled into the peculiar atmosphere of Peking, like sweet-sour wells and red brick dust and blowing yellow sand and the Mandarin dialect, and that was how things stood when I tied at a dock in the shadow of the crag that held the famous cavern, looming above us like a giant hand lifting from the water. Master Li led the way up a path that wound through thick shrubbery toward the entrance tunnel. He stopped and pulled reeds aside, and I jumped backward with a sharp yelp.

“Striking, isn’t it?” he said.

“I think the word is ghastly,” I said when I stopped gulping.

It was only an old stone statue, but it had seemed alive when the light first struck it. It depicted a creature that was half man and half lizard, crouched and hissing, with a jagged edge at the open mouth where a long stone tongue had broken off. The face was contorted with rage, and hatred exuded from it as naturally as the odor of fermented fish sauce exuded from me. The old man kept uncovering more of the grotesque statues as we climbed, ten in all, and even the most human of them was ugly beyond belief.

“Oddly enough, Ox, there are art lovers who consider these to be very beautiful,” Master Li said. “Whether those who created them thought they were beautiful or ugly cannot be determined, but the terms really aren’t relevant. These are carvings of minor gods, demon-deities, and unless we and the Celestial Master have been taken in by extraordinary illusions we’ve seen creatures that may be of the same breed.”

I thought of the one-legged chimes player and the ape-faced burglar and the Celestial Master’s little man hurling fire, not to mention a lowly monster like a vampire ghoul. “Sir, can such creatures really be beautiful?” I asked.

“Beautiful and terrible,” he said. “Our distant forefathers swept across this land exterminating a people and a culture, seizing and reshaping whatever interested them. Theologians will tell you that simultaneously an invasion was taking place in Heaven, with old gods being ruthlessly overthrown and new gods taking their place, while the most dangerous and powerful of the old deities were placated by titles and duties and honors and absorption into the pantheon.”

I had nowhere near enough knowledge or experience to feel the same excitement that was making Master Li look forty years younger, but something of his intensity was being transmitted to me.

“Ox, here on Hortensia Island and in a few other scattered places the last of the great artists of an expiring race took up their chisels one more time. One assumes they were starving, since famine was the principal weapon our ancestors used,” Master Li said sadly. “One assumes they were half mad, and they honored their gods by carving deities in death agonies. You’re looking at an unparalleled psychological self-portrait of an exhausted race, teetering upon the edge of extinction, but don’t you see the wonder of our recent experiences? Some of the old gods were sure to survive. They’re stirring, my boy! They’re awakening from their long sleep, yawning and stretching, and you and I are right in the middle of it! Damn it, Ox, I feel like a boy whose been bemoaning the fact that he was born too late for the age of giants, and then one day he hears a snore that rocks the sky, and it’s accompanied by an earthquake that knocks down his house, and he discovers that the valley his village is sitting in bears a very strong resemblance to an immense navel.”

There was power mixed with the twisted pain of these stone idols, I had to admit it—still, my conservative peasant taste has definite limits. I pointed ahead through a gap in the bushes.

“Venerable Sir, look at that,” I said.

A hideous head was just visible, rising above leaves. It was as though a sculptor had molded a man’s face in soft clay, and then reached out and cruelly dug his fingers into the surface, poking and twisting.

“Isn’t it possible that the artists carved at least a few evil creatures along with the gods?” I asked. “I can’t for the life of me see how anyone could find beauty in that.”

The hideous head gazed back at me. Then the mouth opened, and a resonant baritone voice said, “Be it known, boy, that legions of lovely ladies have praised these features.”

“Yik!” I said, or something like that as I leaped backward into a tangle of rose thorns.

“Ha!” said Master Li, who seemed to be enjoying this.

Unless I was going crazy there was a twinkle of amusement in the eyes of the grotesque face, and bushes parted and a middle-aged strongly built man stepped to the path. He made a superbly graceful gesture that was like an exaggerated shrug, and added, “Of course, that was before the God of Beauty went quite mad with jealousy, so I shall forgive your impertinence.”

For the first time I saw a smile I was to see often, as warm and brilliant as the sun rising, and it was accompanied by a bow so superb that no opera star could have matched it.

“This humble one is called Yen Shih, and his insignificant occupation is to manipulate mannequins upon a stage, and he is honored to recognize and greet the legendary Master Li, foremost among truth-seekers of China.”

He turned to me.

“You would be Number Ten Ox, and you really shouldn’t feel as uncomfortable as you look at the moment.” The extraordinary man offered a wink that absolved me of guilt once and for all. “I told my daughter just the other day that when I die she can spare the expense of a funeral by propping my corpse beside these statues, since nobody will notice the difference.”

The God of Beauty had been jealous indeed. What I had taken to be an artist’s depiction of torment was in reality the ravages of smallpox, and rarely have I seen such destruction to a human face. It was a miracle that his eyesight remained, and as for his craft—who hadn’t heard of Yen Shih, greatest of puppeteers?

Master Li’s bow wasn’t quite so graceful, but it was very good.

“The honor is mine, for Yen Shih is said to be puppeteer to the gods on temporary vacation from Heaven, and Yen Shih’s daughter has also earned the jealousy of mere mortals.” Master Li dropped the artificial air and accent of formal speech and switched to the people’s vernacular. “I’ve seen you perform three or four times. If you got any better you’d be accused of witchcraft, speaking of which I’ve heard your daughter is absolutely the best.”

Master Li turned to me. “No, she isn’t a witch,” he said with a laugh. “She’s a female shaman, a shamanka, who specializes in the old rituals, and nothing but good is said about her.” He turned back to the puppeteer. “Ox has never seen the Yu, so I’m taking him inside for a look,” he added casually.

That was a subtle way of inviting information without demanding it. Yen Shih might be famous and respected, but as a puppeteer his social rank was precisely at the bottom. He had absolutely no right to set foot upon aristocratic premises like Hortensia Island—even less right than I would have if I hadn’t been with Master Li—but on the other hand he wasn’t being pressed to explain his presence. He decided to do so voluntarily.