Barry Hughart - The Story of the Stone

The Pavilion of the Blessings of Heaven is the greatest library in the world, and in addition to its collection of original manuscripts, it maintains a collection of forgeries. Both can be instructive to scholars, and some woefully inept forgeries are kept for pure entertainment value. Master Li made his way to the office of Liu Hsiang, the head librarian.

“Greetings, Hsiang,” he said cheerfully.

“Lock up the manuscripts! Lock up the silver and incense burners! Lock up your wives and check your rings and purses!” the librarian screamed. “Hello, Kao, What brings you back to civilization?” he continued in a normal tone of voice.

“Shopping trip. My study lacks something, and I've decided I need a fake to hang on the wall.”

“You know very well that our collection is not for sale,” the librarian said primly.

“Who said anything about selling? I'm talking about trading,” Master Li said, and he took out the rubbings and tossed them on the desk.

“Think of the labor that went into that thing,” he said with a chuckle.

“Who bothers to fake rubbings?” the librarian said skeptically. He glanced at them and then looked more closely, and after a few moments he began making small-strangled sounds. I realized he was laughing. The librarian staggered to his feet and embraced Master Li, and the two old men clung together whooping and gasping with mirth. Moon Boy and Grief of Dawn and I pounded them on the back until they calmed down.

“Hilarious, isn't it?” Master Li said, wiping his eyes. “Think of the months it took the idiot to do this.”

“Months? Say he did ten characters a day… That's seven years!” the librarian chortled.

Master Li waved us over to the desk. “My children, do you see the joke?” he asked.

We scratched our heads. “They look like genuine rubbings of the Confucian Stones to me,” I said.

“Look at this character here—and here and here. Do you know what it means?”

“Yes, sir,” Moon Boy said.

The librarian broke in. “Ah, but in the days of Confucius it wasn't written like that!” he exclaimed happily. “See the flat lines on top? In the old days it wasn't a flat line but a peak, like a rooftop—he swiftly, sketched—“so the idiotic forger was saying that Confucius—”

Moon Boy's face lit up. “Confucius couldn't—”

Grief of Dawn's face lit up. “Confucius couldn't even—”

“Confucius couldn't even write ‘ancestor'!” I howled.

The three of us clung together, whooping and hollering, and the librarian and Master Li very kindly pounded our backs until we regained control.

“Kao, this is truly a treasure of incompetence, and if you have something reasonable in mind, we might make a deal,” the librarian said.

Master Li scratched the tip of his nose. “Well, I'm rather in the mood for mangled history. Anything new?”

“Not on this level. It isn't every day that—wait! How about a truly pathetic Ssu-ma Ch'ien?”

“Sounds promising,” Master Li said casually.

The librarian rang a bell for his assistant. “Not long ago an idiotic monk showed up with the most inept Ssu-ma I've seen in years, and a tracing at that.”

“Do tell,” said Master Li.

It was as simple as that. A few minutes later we walked out of the Blessings of Heaven Pavilion, and Master Li had Brother Squint-Eyes’ traced copy in his hands.

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!”