Barry Hughart - The Story of the Stone

“And is it possible that the younger brother caused Ssu-ma's fall and sentence of castration?” Master Li wondered. “The abbot tells me that among the many uses for the monastery was that of a prison back in the jovial days of the Laughing Prince, and might that explain why the manuscript was found there?”

“You mean the forgery?” the prince said, scratching his head.

“An acquaintance of mine, an exceptionally saintly soul at the Eye of Tranquility, has offered an interesting hypothesis,” Master Li explained. The forgery might have been intended to frame Ssu-ma with the charge of filial impiety. I was almost convinced of it, but now, thanks to you, I'm even more convinced of something totally different.”

Master Li pointed back inside the studio at the prince's glorious paintings. “The hand. Trust only the hand!” he cried. “That very idea has been gnawing at the back of my mind for days. When I looked at the fragment and saw references to Ssu-ma's father, I said, “Fraud!” but when I looked only at the calligraphy, I said, “Ssu-ma!” You did the same thing. The hand is unmistakable, and I am now going to conclude that this isn't the world's greatest forgery for the simple reason that it isn't a forgery at all. Ssu-ma Ch'ien set down his father's name in order to cry out to scholars, “Look! Look closely! Something is wrong!” Meaning that he had concealed his real message in some kind of code, and you and I are going to entertain ourselves by seeing who can be the first to break it.”

Not Number Ten Ox, who couldn't decipher a single character of ancient scholarly shorthand. I got up and inwardly sneered at the fragments of dialogue that drifted to my ears. They were like children playing games, and we had serious matters to think about.

“Never seen so many errors of fact in a few brief paragraphs.”

“Deliberate, perhaps?”

“Errors as starting points?” “Interesting how many errors deal with numbers.” “Indeed yes. Here he writes, ‘one hundred and forty-six scales of a dragon.’ ”

Even I knew that a dragon has 36 evil scales and 117 good ones, which used to add up to 153 when I was in school. I sniffed contemptuously, and wandered around looking at flowers.

“Better break it down. One, four, and six.”

“Each error probably has a direct relationship to each mention of T'an, his father's name.”

“He was really straining here, wasn't he? Comparing the marks on a stone to the ‘two hundred fifty-three points of acupuncture.’ ”

Didn't they realize we had two murdered monks on our hands, and that a strange sound was driving people out of their minds while Princes’ Path was being destroyed? I decapitated a few dandelions.

“One… two… three. Got it!” Master Li said happily. “Ox, stop pouting and come over here.”

Pouting? Me? I walked back with dignity and peered down over Master Li's shoulder. His finger danced across the fragment.

“Coded sections begin with mentions of Ssu-ma's father's name and run to the next error in fact. The numbers give the spacing between important words, and here is what we have: ‘Down stairs… Cold room… Tunnel to construction site… Stone in sacristy…’ ” He leaned back happily. I stared.

“That's all?” I said incredulously.

“It's all we need, and all thieves would need, for that matter,” Master Li said complacently. “Unless anyone knows of another place where a stone was kept in a sacristy, Ssu-ma Ch'ien was referring to this estate. He either went or was advising someone to go down the stairs to the cold room, and somewhere there would be a tunnel that led to a construction site and the sacristy of the stone. A cold room is as far beneath the earth as one can put it, and what could be the purpose of a construction site deep under the earth?”

Master Li reached into his tunic and took out a piece of cloth. I recognized it with something of a shock as being a piece of the wrapping around the mummy of the Laughing Prince.

“Prince, this has faded, but one can still see that the color was imperial yellow, as it should be for the brother of an emperor,” Master Li said. “However, I seem to recall that Tou Wan preceded him in death by a few months. Wouldn't your ancestor still have been in mourning for his wife?”

The prince stared, and turned purple as the implications struck him. They took a good deal longer to strike me.

“Of course. It should be white. You mean I just crushed the skeleton of a total stranger?”

“Tsao Tsao built seventy-two decoy tombs,” Master Li said mildly.

“I'm damned if I'll go through that experience seventy-two times!” the prince yelled.

“I doubt that will be necessary,” said Master Li. He looked up at me. “Wake up, Ox. The Laughing Prince amassed an incredible fortune, which has never been found, and people have been buying fake treasure maps and digging holes in the Valley of Sorrows ever since. Now we have the words of Ssu-ma Ch'ien. Words that thieves would go to any lengths to get their hands on, because what could the Laughing Prince have been secretly constructing deep in the bowels of the earth? Dear boy, we're probably sitting on top of a tomb that contains enough loot to buy half the empire.”

“These abandoned wings were paradise for a boy,” the prince said nostalgically. “Think of the hiding places. I once counted a hundred and six rooms filled with things that nobody considered to be valuable. Not valuable to a boy? Chests filled with ancient costumes for masquerades, for example, and love letters bound together with challenges to duels, and portraits of beautiful concubines and sinister distant cousins.”

We followed him as he confidently stepped around rotting sections of wooden floors and ducked under sagging beams He stepped into an alcove and began prying boards from a window. Sunlight burst inside and glowed upon a portrait upon the wall.

“Liu Sheng, better known as the Laughing Prince.” The silk was still intact, although faded with age, and the color was very good. The man who gazed from the portrait was quite handsome. I judged him to be in his early thirties. His forehead was high and broad and serene, and his thin nose had a proud hook to it, and his mouth was firm and well formed. His eyes were quite strange in that they appeared to be clear but somehow they didn't focus. It was as though the Laughing Prince was not gazing out at the viewer but at something in front of the viewer—a ghost, perhaps, or some strange vision that only he could see. His hands were small and so gracefully formed that they were almost feminine. I could see no trace of madness, yet something in the assurance of the pose suggested an inner arrogance that was capable of almost anything. His dress was clearly symbolic of something, but I didn't know what. Master Li did.

“Great Buddha, if his imperial brother saw him dressed like this, the yellow scarf would have been on its way inside of an hour,” Master Li said. The son of a sow thought he ranked above the emperor. In fact, he thought he ranked above most of the gods.”

He explained the ornaments to me.

“Upper garment: sun, moon, stars, mountain, dragon, and the flowery fowl. Lower garment: temple cup, aquatic grass, flames, rice, hatchet, and symbol of distinction. Only the emperor of China is allowed to wear all twelve ornaments, and the Laughing Prince added a thirteenth: the peacock eye, which symbolizes the Second Lord of Heaven. One assumes he was preparing to place his throne beside the August Personage of Jade.”

Now the strange unfocused eyes took on a different aspect, and I decided I was looking at a man who had found the world not to his liking and stepped outside it—like Pea-Head Chou in my village, who joined the roosters every morning and commanded the sun to rise.