Barry Hughart - Eight Skilled Gentlemen

“In Singapore the Merchants’ Guild offers the remarkably named ‘stone-nine dukes,’ meaning baby groupers,” the clotted gurgling voice of Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu said into my left ear. “It must be recorded that the groupers are steamed in a stew with parrot fish, yellow croakers, and pig-oil butter-cake fish, although certain authorities claim that eating too many stone-nine dukes will cause falling hair, blindness, and bone decay. That, I believe, is a misconception caused by the fact that the written character for the fish is very similar to that for ‘apricot,’ and apricots, of course, will do all those things if eaten to excess.”

Master Li was able to breathe again, and with breath came the ability to free his knife, and he plunged it into the Celestial Master’s chest and ripped a great slash. Then he withdrew the blade and repeated the blow, slashing diagonally across the first wound. There was no blood. Not a drop. Then as I gaped in horror I saw two small greenish paws reach out from the cavity and spread ribs apart, and a monkey’s head thrust out from the saint’s chest. Eyes of hate glared at us. It chattered and spat at Master Li, and then it climbed from the empty shell that was the Celestial Master and splashed through the water to the cliff, and in an instant it was gone, swinging up and away before I’d fully realized where I’d seen it before: a charming little gift monkey bowing to the Celestial Master and being led into the house by an enchanted old servant.

The sage was kneeling in the pool, cradling the body of his old friend and teacher, weeping. I looked up to see Li the Cat staring from the platform, and then the eunuch turned to beckon soldiers. I dove and grabbed the cage from Master Li and jerked the brush from the hole in the top.

“Goat, goat,” I panted, “climb the wall… grab some grass to give your mother… if she’s not in field or stall… give it to your hungry brothers… one… two… three… four… five… six… seven… eight!”

I blinked in the flash and hastened to make the propitiating gesture, and above me Li the Cat and the soldiers screamed in terror and dove for safety. My eyes cleared and I was gazing at the terrible but somehow touching Wei Serpent, with its two human heads and its silly hats and its little purple jacket. It was huge, though, and fangs protruded from the mouths of the heads, and great coils slithered and glistened. A panting sound behind me was followed by the body of Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu, who painfully shoved himself toward the demon-deity with his arms outstretched. The hosteler’s eyes were glazed in ecstasy, and his voice rang with reverence.

“O fabled Savory Serpent of Serendip, ye shall be bathed in wine and honey warmed by babies’ breath! Ye shall be poached in the truffled milk of nursing sea serpents! Ye shall be basted in broth of pearls dissolved in unicorn tears! Ye shall be worshipped! Ye shall be adored!”

Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu spread his arms as wide as possible and wrapped them around the snake in a loving embrace, and the Wei Serpent’s coils closed around the hosteler, and for a moment the two of them were still and rapt. Then a flash blinded me, and when my vision cleared a great white crane was skirting a whirlwind, flying away across the bloated surface of the blood-red sun. [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.

“Ox!”

I tore my eyes from a flying crane to see Master Li scrambling for another cage. I dropped the cage I was still clutching, squawked like a goose, dove back on top of it, and reached inside and pulled out the little two-pronged pitchfork. Then I leaped for another cage and found myself battling the last two mandarins and Li the Cat. The problem was they had three or four soldiers with them, and I was pinned between two overturned throne-like chairs as I tried to fend them off with a pike I grabbed from a dead soldier.

The toadlike demon-deity was still spitting acid but it took care not to scorch friends, meaning those who made the proper gesture, so at least I had no problem there. As I tried to keep somebody’s spear from becoming my second backbone I heard “…four… five… six… seven… eight!” This time I closed my eyes before the flash did, and I opened them to make the propitiating gesture and see the only female sibling, Nu Pa, who seemed to be a low cloud no more than two feet tall. Then endless arms of fog reached out, and out, and out, and immense hands made of swirling marsh mist opened and fingers touched howling soldiers and screeching eunuchs, and horrible black blisters spread over their faces and bodies and they ran around clawing at the spots, and then they fell and went into convulsions and died.

A black blistered eunuch had rolled screaming between the feet of the men surrounding me. That allowed me to snatch the brush from the last of the cages. “Goat, goat, jump the wall, grab some grass to give your mother, if she’s not in field or stall, give it to your hungry brothers: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!” I closed my eyes tightly, gestured, and opened them to see the end of Li the Cat.

Ch’i is one of the strangest of the demon-deities. Its odor is musty, its color is the grayish white of mourning, its sound is a faint sighing moan, and its form is the winding cloth of a corpse. The limp cloth slid over the platform like a snake and reached a pair of legs and began wrapping around them. Li the Cat stopped shrieking at me and looked down. He hacked with his sword and succeeded only in slicing his left thigh. He yelled and dropped the blade and grabbed with both hands. The cloth was unresisting. It fell away if pulled properly, but it began winding once more as soon as it was released. Now the other end was sliding up the eunuch’s back, and a curl of gray-white, musty, moaning burial cloth wrapped around his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. The eunuch was screaming, one shriek after another, and his eyes were bulging in horror. The ends were wrapping faster now, climbing his knees, waist, chest, shoulders, and then they wound around Li the Cat’s neck and up over his chin. The crystal vial containing the parts he’d had severed to advance his position in life was shoved up in front of his face, and the cloth wound around and around, and his screams stopped and his horrified eyes disappeared. Only his forehead, glistening with Protocol Soap, and the top of his head remained, and then they too vanished beneath burial cloth. A gray-white cocoon toppled over and wriggled on the platform, and the last I saw of the eunuch he was still wriggling, but slower.

I grabbed the last little pitchfork. Master Li had a running start and he landed high on my back and shouted in my ear, “The well! Get to the well!” I jumped down to the courtyard and vaulted over writhing bodies and jumped back up to the stone platform around the well, and Master Li slid from my back. Acid and marsh pestilence were still seeking victims, and the shrieks were so loud he had to lean close and yell.

“Ox, look down inside the well at the walls and tell me what you see!”

I dropped to my stomach and craned over the edge as far as I could, and my eyes spread even wider than they were already. I got back up and shouted, “The frogs! There’s a pattern of frogs around the inside, just like in my dream!”