Barry Hughart - The Story of the Stone

We sat there feeling like fools. Master Li polished off a few more grasshoppers and took a swig of wine from his flask.

“That bit of folklore has fascinated scholars for centuries,” he said. “Part of it is based upon a real emperor, Huang Ti, who actually did attempt to block out reality with a jeweled veil and earflaps, but does the rest of it refer to an ancient invasion of the south by the north? A long-forgotten plague? There are some scholars who insist that it's a racial memory of a very rare phenomenon: a sudden shift in the ch'i, the life force, in various climatic areas. As for the suddenness, in theory there is no reason why the appearance of an overpowering concentration of ch'i couldn't draw less powerful life forces to it, destroying anything in its path, whether the intention behind it was as good as Li Ling-chi thought he was or as bad as the Laughing Prince knew he was.”

He tossed the last of his grasshoppers to some fish in a pond and picked up the stolen scroll.

“Believe it or not, there's a point to this, but be patient,” he said. “Am I correct in assuming that every one of you gave up on Dream of the Red Chamber after the first two paragraphs?”

Grief of Dawn and Moon Boy and I turned red. The problem with “the crown jewel of Chinese literature” is that it has two thousand pages and an equal number of characters, and the hero is an effeminate ass who should have either been spanked or decapitated, both ends being equally objectionable.

“No matter,” Master Li said. The book has been revised countless times, by Kao Ngoh and lesser talents, and the later versions bear little resemblance to the original. This happens to be the original, and it contains a rather peculiar story. Listen carefully.”

He opened the scroll and searched for the place and began to read one of the strangest and most unsatisfactorily incomplete fairy tales I have ever heard.

” ‘Of the 36,501 stones selected by the goddess Nu Kua for the Wall of Heaven, there was one she was forced to reject because of a serious flaw. The flaw was an evil one. Contact with the goddess had enabled the stone to acquire a soul, but its soul was evil. The stone had also learned to move around at will, and it wandered through Heaven causing much malicious harm, and at last the emperor was forced to intervene.

” ‘The ways of the August Personage of Jade are subtle indeed. In Heaven there was also a flower named Purple Pearl, and Purple Pearl was even more flawed and evil than the stone. The emperor planted the flower in a barren spot beside the River of Spirits, and there it was discovered by the wandering stone. Evil attracts evil, and the stone began to bring moisture to nourish the flower. Purple Pearl bloomed and became beautiful, and her evil was exorcised by the dew and raindrops of Heaven, and she fell in love with the stone. She vowed that if ever she were reborn upon earth she would shun the Sphere of Banished Sufferings and seek the Source of Drenching Grief, and tears would build up inside her, and if the opportunity arose, she would repay her debt to the stone by shedding every tear in her body.

” ‘The strange vow of a flower is of the utmost importance. The stone has been returned to earth, where it passed into the hands of Lao Tzu, who cried, “Evil!” and hurled it away. It passed to Chuang Tzu, who also cried “Evil!” and hurled it away. The stone now lurks in darkness, waiting for the hand that will not hurl it away, and he who possesses the stone will be himself possessed. The stone is the Stone of Evil, and its malignancy will spread unchecked unless drowned in the tears of Purple Pearl.

” ‘Let no man interfere with the destiny of the flower, for the outcome is awaited by both the goddess Nu Kua and the August Personage of Jade.’ ”

Master Li tossed the scroll on the grass. I choked on a grasshopper. “That's all?” I said incredulously.

“Not according to Ssu-ma Ch'ien,” said Master Li. He picked up Brother Squint-Eyes’ copy and began rapidly decoding the complete hidden text.

” ‘Red Chamber story correct about stone, tablet from Cave of Yu… Confirmation of reactions of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu… Have traced stone to Prince Liu Sheng… Consumed by evil, has become Laughing Prince… Secret hiding place… Down stairs… Cold room… Tunnel to construction site… Stone in sacristy… Plain appearance… Flat smooth area rising to round concave bowl shape… Found axe… Blow broke flat area from bowl area… Second blow broke off small chip… Soldiers seized, could not destroy… Imprisoned… Terrible sentence… Scholars, seek Stone of Evil!… Destroy it!… Evil that consumes men can consume world.’ ”

Master Li placed the copy beside the scroll.

“Ssu-ma Ch'ien was a very brave man,” he said. “The question is whether or not he was correct about the mysterious stone, and he suggests that Tsao Hsueh Chin, the author of Red Chamber, may have taken the stone story from a tablet from the Cave of Yu. Do you know what that means?”

We shook our heads negatively.

“The legendary Emperor Yu is said to have received certain tablets from Heaven, which he concealed in a cave,” Master Li explained. “They're called ‘Annals of Heaven and Earth’ because they supposedly deal with matter affecting men and gods alike. Now and then somebody produces an old clay tablet said to have come from the Cave of Yu. Usually the message involves something lucrative for the discoverer but one or two of the tablets have contained prophecies that proved to be astonishingly correct.”

He picked up the soil and plant report and waved it in my direction. The expression on his face made me very uneasy.

“Number Ten Ox, according to this, there isn't one damn thing wrong with Princes’ Path, just as there wasn't one damn thing wrong with the green growing things in the south until Emperor Li Ling-chi waved his hand,” Master Li growled. “If one allows for tale-telling embellishment, there's nothing impossible about the tangerine story. A tremendous concentration of ch'i would draw lesser life forces to it like iron filings to a magnet.” The old man's eyes bored toward my brain. “Just after a section of Princes’ Path was destroyed, you had a dream. In it you sensed an extraordinary ch'i, a pulsing life force, coming from a small round piece of clay that was colored orange. Was your sleeping mind guiding you to the story of the emperor and the tangerines?”

My mind was as blank and opaque as a pool of mud. I automatically swallowed my plum juice with vinegar.

“A stone touched by Heaven?” Master Li wondered out loud. “A stone worshipped by the Laughing Prince? All we know for sure is that something destroyed sections of Princes’ Path, and a strange sound seems to be associated with it.”

Moon Boy gulped. His eyes were wide and wondering. “I think I can tell you what the sound is,” he said in a small hushed voice.

Confucian temples have no priests or formal worship, but they have a regular congregation of makers of bells. That's because of the pien-chung, a row of sixteen stone bells hanging in a wooden rack. The bells have no clappers and are struck by wooden beams swinging on ropes, and to most people the sound is dull and uninteresting, but bell makers view them differently. On the wooden frame is the inscription “When the bell speaks, the stone answers,” because a perfectly tuned metal bell will produce a matching echo from a similar stone bell, and it's the most accurate tuning device known.

A Confucian temple wasn't far away. Moon Boy ran his hands lovingly over the stone bells. He was in his professional element, and he was all business.

“The ancients separated musical instruments into categories corresponding to the trigrams of Fu Hsi,” he said, and for a mad moment I thought I was going to hear another lecture on the Wen-Wu lute. “Each instrument is defined by four qualities: the material it's made from, the cardinal point of its greatest strength, the season it suggests, and the related sound phenomenon.”