Barry Hughart - The Story of the Stone

“Buddha, that's wonderful stuff! Haining Mountain Dew?”

“The best,” Master Li said. “You were an avid botanist in those days, and I seem to remember that after we left the girl in the sampan we set out cross-country. We passed a temple or a convent, and when we climbed into the hills, you discovered—”

“The Bombay thorn apple!” the fellow cried. “How could I forget it? The find of a lifetime, and I always planned to go back, but somehow the world closed in on me and I never did.”

“Could you find it now?” Master Li asked.

The fellow looked up with sudden intelligence in his eyes. “So that's it. You need a Bombay thorn apple, do you? Dangerous stuff, Li Kao. You always did get involved in the damnedest things, and how you manage to keep alive is one of the great mysteries of the empire.”

Master Li leaned down with the flask again.

“What a pair we are,” the fellow said when he stopped coughing. “I'm damned and you're demented. I may be a sinner, but at least I know it isn't nice to deprive children or lunatics of their toys, and if I wanted the only Bombay thorn apple I've ever seen in China I'd go about two miles past the White Cloud Convent to the point where the hills are closest to the road. I'd turn east and start climbing. Shale followed by granite followed by some kind of black rock, and past the black rock I'd come to a clearing in front of a cliff. Tunnel through the brush, and right against the cliff is another tiny clearing, and in the center is a Bombay thorn apple—unless somebody's cut it down for firewood and massacred his family and neighbors in the process.”

His eyes moved to Moon Boy and me. “Something to do with Beauty and the Beast, eh? Take care, Li Kao. This is the soft area of hell. Later on you'll need a better passport than a state umbrella.”

Master Li bowed and turned to go. “You know, the Yama Kings are stern but just,” he said. “Good intentions can at least partially mitigate bad results, and the Great Wheel waits patiently. Who knows? After a couple of insect and animal incarnations, you might find yourself poling down the Yangtze in a crimson sampan.”

The fellow looked up with desperate hope in his eyes. “You couldn't possibly have sneaked a look at the Register of Souls,” he whispered.

Master Li winked. We started off down the path, and the last I saw of the fellow he was weeping with joy at the thought of being reborn as a sampan singsong girl, and the last I heard of him he was practicing ‘Autumn Nights.'

The torments of the Third and Fourth Hells are also relatively light, and are designed for such sinners as bad bureaucrats, backbiters, forgers, coiners, misers, dishonest tradesmen, and blasphemers. Serious torment begins in the Fifth Hell, where murderers, unbelievers, and the lustful are punished. I will make no attempt to describe the caldrons of boiling oil, the pits of molten lead, the beams of hollow iron, the Hill of Knives, and the Sawmill. Master Li told me that such things are utilized by most cultures with the exception of the Tibetan, and that the Yama Kings had no intention of instituting the unspeakable atrocities of the Tibetan World of Darkness.

According to the Register of Souls, Tou Wan had been damned not for murder and torture but for wanton carnality, and the Fifth Hell provides such sinners with beds in which to cool down. We marched down rows of beds formed from sheets of ice to which sinners were held by frozen iron chains, and naked bodies shuddered unceasingly and the air was loud with the sound of cracking joints. We came to the wife of the Laughing Prince in the fiftieth row.

I was not prepared for her youth and beauty. Like the others, she shuddered and jerked in her chains, but she made not a whimper and her eyes were open instead of being fastened shut by eyelids thick with frozen tears. Master Li bowed deeply.

“Princess, I hope you will forgive the intrusion,” he said. “We had hoped to interview your noble husband, but he appears to be unavailable.”

Her lips parted with the sound of cracking ice. “Unavailable?”

“Somehow he managed to dodge the bailiffs. Do you have any idea how he managed it?”

She managed an ironic laugh, and I decided she was the toughest person I had ever met. “They should have searched for his soul inside the stone,” she said.

“The stone!” Master Li exclaimed. “Wherever we go, we keep running into references to that stone. Would you be kind enough to enlighten me on the subject?”

Tou Wan's voice was as cold as the ice she lay on. “Guess, if you like. If you guess right, I may answer one or two questions.”

“I shall guess that the stone was broken into three pieces, and the largest piece was placed in a sacristy, and the second largest was used by your husband as an amulet, and the last sliver became the tip of your hairpin,” said Master Li.

“You guess well, old man,” the princess said. “Ssu-ma Ch'ien broke it, the meddling fool, and he wasn't even half-right about it. He called it the Stone of Evil, and his mistake cost him his balls. What would you call the stone, old man?”

Master Li looked thoughtfully at her. “I would not call it evil, and I would not call it good,” he said slowly. “I would call it a concentrated life force that in the hands of a saint could heal all wounds, but in the hands of your husband could wound all heals, if you will forgive the sophistry.”

“Better and better, old man,” Tou Wan said. Her eyes closed. Ice began to form over her lips. I thought she had ended the interview, but then her body shuddered and jerked, and the ice over her mouth cracked.

“It was not his, it was never his, it was mine… A lover gave it to me… Lovers always gave things to me… I was ten when I let a boy think he had seduced me; he gave me his mother's rings… A pretty boy, so easy to train, like a dog… Lie down! Sit up!… His father came for the rings and I trained him too… Roll over! Beg!… I led him around on a leash that only women could see; how they hated me, the sluts… He made me his number seven wife, and I persuaded him and his pretty son to go to a war where they were sure to be killed… Hsu was the lawyer and Kung-sun was the magistrate… Lie down! Sit up! Roll over! Beg!… I threw the other wives out into the street, and then Yi Shou the merchant with his jewels and carriages, Governor Kuo with his houses and land, wriggling like good little dogs begging to be petted… I could not train Prince Liu Sheng, but he gave me a crown… It was his steward who gave me the stone… The stone… Holding it against my skin, feeling the pulse… My husband stole it from me and it drove him mad, madder than I believed possible… The Little Tour, the Big Tour, one thousand seconds, the Embryonic Pearl, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!… Ssu-ma broke the stone, and all I had was the sliver for my hairpin… That maid, always looking at it, always wanting it, trying to steal it… I stabbed her, but she ran away with my stone… My maid and that concubine with the ring of Upuaut my husband gave her… The soldiers killed them, but they could not find the stone… It was mine, all of it was mine… My husband refused to give me a second piece… He laughed and showed me a tender poem for my coffin, and then he made me drink poison… Mad monks in motley dancing and laughing around my bed… Cold… Colder… Mist, sounds of water, bailiffs pulling me into a gray world, Yama Kings, freezing, freezing, freezing…”

Tou Wan's eyes opened. She looked at me. “Peasant boy, you would have made a good little dog.” Her eyes were deep and wondering as they moved to Moon Boy. “You I would have worshipped.” Her eyes moved to Master Li.

“You I could neither have worshipped nor broken and trained,” said the princess. “Old man, I fear you. Go away.”