Barry Hughart - The Story of the Stone

Children were playing in front of the waterwheel. One little girl was jumping up and down. Her long black hair lifted up into the air and hovered for a moment before settling down to her shoulders.

In front of the children were butterflies fluttering among some reeds. One was black, and it swooped up, paused, hovered, and then fluttered back down.

The black flag, black hair, and black butterfly formed a nearly straight line that pointed toward my feet. I looked down and saw a small round orange-colored piece of clay. My hand reached out and closed around it, and something told me to keep watching the pattern: up, pause, down… up, pause, down…

My fingers tingled. The piece of clay had a heartbeat, and it was the rhythm of the pattern, and an ache filled my heart and tears filled my eyes. Up, pause, down: kung, shang, chueh. I was not hearing the wonderful sound but feeling it in the pulse of a piece of clay, and then I was in my old classroom in the monastery and a bunch of boys were looking at me with eyes like owls and I was desperately trying to explain something very important.

“Don't you understand?” I said. “The life force of a round piece of orange-colored clay is like a flag and a butterfly and a little girl's hair. Up, pause, down; up, pause, down. The important thing to remember is the pause. Can't you understand that?”

The boys stared at me solemnly.

“It's the pause!” I yelled. “It isn't like the heartbeat of a person, and you'll never hear the wonderful sound it makes unless you understand the pause!”

The old abbot was shuffling toward me. Then he came closer and he wasn't the abbot at all. He was Master Li, and he grabbed my shoulders and shook me and screamed furiously, “Number Ten Ox, you couldn't teach a banana to turn black!”

Then I woke up.

“Sir, that's all I can tell you about the dream,” I said. “Something in this scene reminded me of it, and the pattern it took. That tall dead tree, then a space, then lower dead trees, then a space, then bushes…”

I shrugged and sketched in the air. “And you draw ancient scholar's ideographs for love, strength, and Heaven,” Master Li said thoughtfully. “Are you quite positive that the round piece of clay was colored orange?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He scratched his nose and chewed thoughtfully on the tip of his mangy beard. “That may bear looking into when we have the time,” he said. “The symbolism is obvious, but it leads to a swamp I'd rather stay away from.”

Master Li started looking for traces of mysterious monks in motley, and I started gathering more plant and soil samples, and just then the drums began. Sheepskin drums, hundreds of them, pounding softly but methodically from all over the Valley of Sorrows. The prince looked at Master Li with raised eyebrows, but Master Li jerked his head in my direction. “When it comes to the ways of peasants, ask the expert,” he said.

I flushed again. “Your Highness, they're going to blackmail you,” I said meekly.

“Eh?”

“Blackmail isn't quite right, but I don't know the proper word,” I said. “They're going to start a work song. It's older than time, and it's used by peasants when they want the lord of the valley to do something.”

“What lord of what valley?” the prince said angrily.

Master Li kindly stepped in to help me. “The peasants think your ancestor is behind this, and so far as they're concerned, you're lord of the valley whether you like it or not. The headmen are preparing the chant that details the peasants’ duties to the lord, and thus implies the lord's duties to the peasants. Ox, how many verses are there?”

“Over four hundred,” I said. “When they get to the end, they'll start all over again, and they can keep it up for a year if need be.”

I didn't add that in their place I'd do the same thing myself. Confucius thought so highly of the blackmail song that he put part of it in the Book of Odes, and it's really very effective when the drums go boom, boom, boom.

The chanting is without emotion except for the last line of every third verse, and after a few months of it the subject begins to cringe when each third verse starts. It's hard for a lord to justify chopping off insolent heads; it's just a work song.

Boom, boom, boom:

“How can they do this to me?” the prince said plaintively. They know very well that my family hasn't collected a copper coin or grain of rice for centuries.”

Boom, boom, boom:

“They'll keep that up for a year?” the prince said. “I think I know what they want, but I'd prefer to have it explained to me.”

“You and you alone have the right to dispose of your ancestor in the old way,” Master Li said gently. “By the old way they mean pre-Confucian.”

“Which is punishable by torment in the Eighth Hell!” the prince said angrily.

“Yes, according to our Neo-Confucian overlords, who also impose upon rivals the sacred duty of retiring from public life for three years upon the death of a father, and then they poison the father,” Master Li said sardonically.

Prince Liu Pao was made from tough stuff. He turned without another word and began marching up Dragon's Left Horn toward his estate. He turned off the path and took a shortcut to the grotto. The horror of the Medical Research Center seemed even worse with the muffled sounds of drums and chanting in the distance. The prince opened the door to the tomb and marched inside to the sarcophagus of his ancestor.

“Ox, can you get the lid all the way down?”

I spat on my hands. The lid was so heavy I couldn't stop it after it slid down to the mummy's feet, and it crashed to the floor. Prince Liu Pao stood looking down at the remains of his ancestor, and Master Li beckoned for me to open the other sarcophagus.

“While we're at it, I want to look for something,” he said.

The lid was easier to move, and the mummy of Tou Wan, the Laughing Prince's wife, was intact. Master Li reached inside and came up with some jewelry, which he examined closely.

“Good stuff, but not the best,” he said thoughtfully. “Tou Wan was said to have been a spendthrift of epic proportions, and I doubt that this would have met her standards. One wonders whether their highnesses might not have been buried by a light-fingered steward.”