Barry Hughart - Bridge of Birds

The poison was said to have been imported from Tibet. Li Kao was the only scholar who was qualified to interpret the ancient Tibetan texts such as Chalog Job Jad, and he said that the abbot's copy of Zaraga Dib Jad was so rare that there might not be another one in existence. The rustle of the old parchment was punctuated by Master Li's soft curses. The Tibetan physicians had been magnificent at describing treatments but terrible at describing symptoms, and apparently it had been taboo to mention by name any agent whose sole purpose was murder—possibly, he pointed out, because the alchemists who invented such things belonged to the same monkish orders as the physicians. Another problem was the antiquity of the texts, which were faded and spotted to the point of illegibility. The sun had set and was rising again when Master Li bent close to a page in Jud Chi, The Eight Branches of the Four Principles of Special Therapy.

“I can make out the ancient ideograph for ‘star,’ and next to it is a badly spotted character that could mean many things, but among them is the ideograph for ‘wine vessel,’ ” he muttered. “What would you get if you combined the ideographs of star and wine vessel?”

“You would get the logograph ‘to awake from a drunken stupor,’ ” said the abbot.

“Precisely, and ‘drunken stupor,’ if used figuratively, is such a maddeningly vague description of symptoms that it could mean almost anything. The interesting thing is that the preceding text suggests seizures and clawing of air,” said Master Li. “Can we say that the children are now lying in stupors?”

He bent close to the text and read aloud.

“To awake from a drunken stupor, only one treatment is effective, and this will succeed only if the physician has access to the rarest and mightiest of all healing agents….” He paused and scratched his head. “The ancient ideograph for ‘ginseng’ is accompanied by an exceptionally elaborate construction that I would translate as ‘Great Root of Power.’ Has anyone ever heard of a ginseng Great Root of Power?”

Nobody had. Li Kao went back to the text.

“The Great Root must be distilled to the essence, and three drops must be applied to the tongue of the patient. The treatment must be repeated three times, and if it is truly the Great Root, the patient will recover almost immediately. Without such a root no cure is possible….” Master Li paused for emphasis. “And while the patient may remain in his stupor for months, he cannot be awakened, and death is inevitable.”

“Ku poison!” the abbot exclaimed.

Now the bonzes checked every reference to ginseng, which meant almost every page because at one time or another the plant had been prescribed for almost every ailment known to man, but nowhere was there a reference to a Great Root of Power. We had reached a dead end.

Li Kao suddenly smacked the table and jumped to his feet.

“Back to Pawnbroker Fang's office at the warehouse!” he commanded, and he started up the stairs at a trot, with the rest of us at his heels. “The Guild of Pawnbrokers represents the world's second-oldest profession, and their records are older than the oracle bones of An-yang. The Guild publishes lists of extremely rare and valuable items that might escape the untutored eye, and a Great Root of Power, if such a thing exists, will probably be worth ten times its weight in diamonds and will look like a dog turd,” he explained. “A fellow like Fang would undoubtedly subscribe to the entire list, in hopes of swindling an heir who does not know the value of his inheritance.”

He trotted rapidly down the path and through the door of the warehouse, and then he trotted right over the spot where two bodies should have been lying.

“Those fellows?” he said in answer to our stunned expressions. “Oh, they got up and took to their heels a long time ago.”

I grabbed the abbot and held him, but Big Hong and a number of others were closing in on the ancient sage in a menacing manner.

“Do you mean that you knew all along that those murderers were faking their suicides?” the abbot roared.

“Of course, but one should be careful about charging them with murder. So far as I know, they haven't killed anyone yet, and they certainly never intended to,” Master Li said calmly. “Reverend Sir, have you considered the plight of Pawnbroker Fang's children? His daughter will probably die, but even if she recovers, what sort of a life could she look forward to when she discovered that her father had been torn to pieces by the people of her own village? Her little brother would be condemned to a life of shame at the age of five, which seems a trifle unfair. Surely there is a family that will care for innocent children, and explain that their father was only trying to improve the silk, but that he made a mistake and ran away, and all is forgiven.”

I released the abbot, who bowed to the sage, and Big Hong cleared his throat.

“My wife and I will take Fang's Flea,” he said huskily. “Fawn, too, if she lives. They will have a loving home.”

“Good man,” said Master Li. “As for Pawnbroker Fang and Ma the Grub, why not let them punish themselves? Greed such as theirs gnaws at the vitals like packs of rats, day and night, never ceasing, and when they arrive in Hell they will have already experienced whatever torments the Yama Kings may decree. Now let's get to work.”

Fang's files were so extensive that they filled two large cabinets and a trunk, and the abbot found the first reference to a Root of Power. We had no idea whether it was the same as a Great Root of Power. The bonzes found three other references, but only one of them was contemporary.

“Thirty years ago, at a price of three hundred talents, which I cannot possibly believe, a Root of Power was sold to the Ancestress,” said the abbot, looking up from his lists. “There is no further mention of it, and I assume that it is still in the dear lady's possession.”

Li Kao looked as though he had bitten into a green persimmon.

“If that woman laid eyes on me, she'd have my head in two seconds,” he said sourly. Then he had second thoughts. “Come to think of it, it would be a miracle if she recognized me. She couldn't have been more than sixteen when I was summoned to the emperor's palace, and that was a good fifty years ago.”

“Master Li, you were summoned by an emperor?” I asked with wide eyes.

“Several, but this particular one was old Wen,” he said. “In the carefree days of my youth I once sold him some shares in a mustard mine.”

We stared at him.

“A mustard mine?” the abbot said weakly.

“I was trying to win a bet concerning the intelligence of emperors,” he explained. “When I was summoned to court I assumed that I was going to be rewarded with the Death of Ten Thousand Cuts, but Emperor Wen had something else in mind. Oddly enough, it was sericulture. Some barbarians were trying to learn the secret of silk, and the emperor thought that they might be getting close to the truth. ‘Li Kao,’ he commanded, ‘sell these dogs a mustard mine!’ It was one of the most ghastly experiences of my life.”

Li Kao turned and trotted back out the door, and we followed like sheep as he started back toward the monastery. I was learning that there were many sides to Master Li, and I listened with fascination.

“I had to turn their brains to butter with strong wine, and every morning I pried my eyelids open and glared at red-bearded barbarians who were snoring in puddles of vomit,” he said. “They had the constitutions of billy goats, and it was a month and a half before I was able to persuade them that silk is extracted from the semen of snow-white dragons that breed only in caverns concealed in the mysterious Mongolian glaciers. Before sailing away with the sad news, their leader came to see me. He was an oaf named Procopius, and the wine had not improved his appearance. ‘O great and mighty Master Li, pray impart to me the Secret of Wisdom!’ he bawled. A silly smile was sliding down the side of his face like a dripping watercolor, and his eyeballs resembled a pair of pink pigeon eggs that were gently bouncing in saucers of yellow wonton soup. To my great credit I never batted an eyelash. ‘Take a large bowl,’ I said. ‘Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy. Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow kan pei—which means “dry cup”—and drink to the dregs.’ Procopius stared at me. ‘And I will be wise?’ he asked. ‘Better,’ I said. ‘You will be Chinese.’ ”