Bridge of Birds Barry Hughart

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.“Five thousand copper cash?” he whispered.“Boy, my master charges fifty pieces of silver to find a lost dog!”The door slammed in my face, and when I tried the next house I exited through the air, pitched by six husky footmen while a bejeweled lackey shook his fist and screamed, “You dare to offer five thousand copper cash to the former chief investigator for the Son of Heaven himself? Back to your mud hovel, you insolent peasant!”In house after house the result was the same, except that I exited in a more dignified manner — my fists were clenched and there was a glint in my eyes, and I am not exactly small — and I decided that I was going to have to hit a wise man over the head, stuff him in a bag, and carry him back to Ku-fu whether he liked it or not.Then I received a sign from Heaven.I had reached the end of the avenue and was starting to go back up the other side, and suddenly a shaft of brilliant sunlight shot through the clouds and darted like an arrow into a narrow winding alley.It sparkled upon the sign of an eye, but this eye was not wide open.It was half-shut.“Part of the truth revealed,” the eye seemed to be saying.“Some things I see, but some I don’t.”If that was the message it was the first sensible thing that I had seen in Peking, and I turned and started down the alley.3.A Sage with a Slight Flaw in His CharacterThe sign was old and shabby, and it hung above the open door of a sagging bamboo shack.When I timidly stepped inside I saw smashed furniture and a mass of shattered crockery, and the reek of sour wine made my head reel.The sole inhabitant was snoring upon a filthy mattress.He was old almost beyond belief.He could not have weighed more than ninety pounds, and his frail bones would have been more suitable for a large bird.Drunken flies were staggering through pools of spilled wine, and crawling giddily up the ancient gentleman’s bald skull, and tumbling down the wrinkled seams of a face that might have been a relief map of all China, and becoming entangled in a wispy white beard.Small bubbles formed and burst upon the old man’s lips, and his breath was foul.I sighed and turned to go, and then I stopped dead in my tracks and caught my breath.Once an eminent visitor to our monastery had displayed the gold diploma that was awarded to the scholar who had won third place in the imperial chin-shih examination, and in school-books I had seen illustrations of the silver diploma that was awarded to second place, but never did I dream that I would be privileged to see the flower.The real thing, not a picture of it.There it was, casually tacked to a post not two feet from my eyes, and I reverently blew away the dust to read that seventy-eight years ago a certain Li Kao had been awarded first place among all the scholars in China, and had received an appointment as a full research fellow in the Forest of Culture Academy.I turned from the picture of the rose and gazed with wide eyes at the ancient gentleman upon the mattress.Could this be the great Li Kao, whose brain had caused the empire to bow at his feet? Who had been elevated to the highest rank of mandarin, and whose mighty head was now being used as a pillow for drunken flies? I stood there, rooted in wonder, while the wrinkles began to heave like the waves of a gray and storm-tossed sea.Two red-rimmed eyes appeared, and a long spotted tongue slid out and painfully licked parched lips.“Wine!” he wheezed.I searched for an unbroken jar, but there wasn’t one.“Venerable Sir, I fear that all the wine is gone,” I said politely.His eyes creaked toward a shabby purse that lay in a puddle.“Money!” he wheezed.I picked up the purse and opened it.“Venerable Sir, I fear that the money is gone too,” I said.His eyeballs rolled up toward the top of his head, and I decided to change the subject.“Have I the honor of addressing the great Li Kao, foremost among the scholars of China? I have a problem to place before such a man, but all that I can afford to pay is five thousand copper cash,” I said sadly.A hand like a claw slid from the sleeve of his robe.“Give!” he wheezed.I placed the string of coins in his hand, and his fingers closed around it, taking possession.Then the fingers opened.“Take this five thousand copper cash,” he said, enunciating with a painful effort, “and return as soon as possible with all the wine that you can buy.”“At once, Venerable Sir,” I sighed.Having performed similar chores for Uncle Nung more times than I cared to count I judged it wiser to buy some food as well, and when I returned I had two small jars of wine, two small bowls of congee, and a valuable lesson in the buying power of copper coins.I propped the old man’s head up and poured wine down his throat until he had revived enough to grab the jar and finish the rest of it at a gulp, and long practice enabled me to slip a bowl of congee into his fingers and get it to his lips before he realized that it wasn’t wine.Two spots of color had appeared in his cheeks when he finished it, and after the second jar of wine he willingly attacked the second bowl of congee.“Who you?” he said between slurps.“My surname is Lu and my personal name is Yu, but I am not to be confused with the eminent author of The Classic of Tea.Everyone calls me Number Ten Ox,” I said.“My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight flaw in my character,” he said matter-of-factly.“You got a problem?”I told him the whole story, and I was weeping at the end.He listened with interest, and had me go over it again, and then he pitched the empty bowl over his shoulder so that it smashed upon the rest of the crockery.When he hopped up from his mattress I was astonished to see that he was as spry as a goat.“Number Ten Ox, eh? Muscles are highly overrated, but yours may come in handy,” he said.“We will have to hurry, and for a variety of reasons you may be required to twist somebody’s head off.”I could scarcely believe my ears.“Master Li, do you mean that you will come to my village and find out how a plague can learn to count?” I cried.“I already know how your plague learned to count,” he said calmly.“Bend over.”I was so stunned that I bent over backward until he advised me to try it the other way around.Master Li hopped nimbly upon my back and wrapped his arms around my neck and stuck his tiny feet into the pockets of my tunic.He was as light as a feather.“Number Ten Ox, I am no longer as fast on my feet as I used to be, and I suspect that time may be crucial.I would suggest that you take aim at your village and start running like hell,” said the ancient sage.My head was spinning, but my heart was wild with hope.I took off like a deer.Li Kao ducked as I bolted through the door and my head struck something, and when I skidded from the alley and glanced back I saw that my head had struck the bottom of an old shabby sign, and that a half-closed eye was spinning around and around as though it was peering at mysteries in every corner of the empire.I have no idea whether or not it was premonition, but the image remained with me throughout our journey back to Ku-fu.Auntie Hua looked somewhat askance at the sage I had brought back to our village, but not for long.That antiquated gentleman stank of wine, and his robe was as filthy as his beard, but such was his air of authority that even the abbot accepted his leadership without question, and Li Kao walked from bed to bed, peeling back the children’s eyelids and grunting with satisfaction when he saw that the pupils of their eyes were not fixed and dilated.“Good!” he grunted [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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