Bridge Of Birds (13 page)

“Splendid,” Master Li said happily. “Come along, Ox. We have to find the most unscrupulous
alchemist in town and procure a jar of the Elixir of Eighty Evil Essences, and then we
have to buy a coffin.”

When the merchant waddled back from the massage parlor a truly pathetic sight met his
eyes. I was draped over a coffin, sobbing my heart out, while Li Kao wailed and tore his
hair.

“Woe!” I howled.

“The bride of my beloved great-grandson is dead!” howled Master Li.

“Speak to me, my beloved!” I screamed, pounding the coffin lid.

“Ten million maledictions upon the chef who persuaded me to serve porcupine at my
great-grandson's wedding feast!” shrieked Master Li.

The merchant was at his side in an instant.

“Porcupine? Did you say porcupine?”

“Porcupine,” Master Li sobbed.

“But, Venerable Sir, were you not aware that porcupine can be fatal unless properly
prepared?”

Li Kao drew himself up affronted. “Do you take me for a fool?” he snapped. “I myself
supervised the preparations, and every step was taken according to the instructions of Li
Tsen-ing.”

“Surely not!” the merchant gasped. “Why, the great Li Tsening wrote
The Book of Porcupine Cookery!
”

“Why do you think I followed his instructions, you idiot?” Master Li shouted.

The merchant's eyes were glazed, and saliva flowed in streams. “Was it young, fresh
porcupine?” he whispered.

“Barely one year old, and trapped the day before,” Master Li sniffled.

A mighty spasm shook the merchant's vast belly. “From Yushan?” he whispered.

“Straight from the river,” sobbed Master Li.

That was too much for the merchant. He tottered over to his guards, opened a large sack,
extracted a pickled carp, devoured it noisily, and tottered back.

“The paste!” he gasped. “The paste was made one year before?”

“One year precisely,” said Master Li. “Only the purest yellow beans were used.”

“You are positive that all black and brown beans were removed? The slightest trace of such
imperfection can be fatal!”

“All black and brown beans as well as those with purple markings were removed by hand,”
Master Li said huffily. “The remainder was sifted fifteen times, and carefully
scrutinized. I was perfectly aware of the danger!”

“Venerable Sir, I am not accusing you,” the merchant said contritely. “But I need scarcely
point out that some error must have been made, since your great-grandson's poor bride...
ah... Is it possible that rice flour was used?”

“Don't be an ass, young man!” Master Li said angrily. “Rice flour would have assassinated
every single guest at the banquet! Only the purest Hua wheat flour was used, mixed with a
little salt and exposed precisely six hours to the sun.”

“With a veil to keep out the dust? Dust can be fatal!”

“With a veil to keep out the dust. Then the flour and beans were mixed into the paste and
placed into a jar, which was in turn covered by an earthenware basin and sealed with lime,
and I need not mention that only pure river water was used, since the slightest trace of
well water would have been fatal.”

“I cannot understand it,” the merchant whispered. “Everything done properly, yet... Wait!
What month was it?”

“Are you a raving lunatic? To prepare porcupine paste in any month but June is to commit
suicide!” Master Li yelled.

The merchant had turned very pale. It was dawning on him that unless a flaw could be
found, he himself could never safely enjoy the delicacy of all delicacies.

“Extraordinary,” he whispered. “Everything done according to the instructions of the great
Li Tsening, yet the porcupine proved fatal after all. We must find the error! Venerable
Sir, I beg you to describe the precise method by which your chef cooked the porcupine.”

It occurred to me that I had become too interested in porcupine cookery to mourn my
departed bride properly. “Woe!” I shrieked. “Woe! Woe! Woe!”

Li Kao patted my shoulder. “To think that such tragedy should strike the only one of the
great-grandsons who is neither mentally deficient nor morally degenerate,” he sniffled.
“But you are right; the error must be found. My chef began by removing the eyes, stomach,
internal organs, and embryos, if any were present. While he cut the meat into pieces, my
poor great-grandson cleaned every clot of blood from each piece with his own noble hands.
Then the chef boiled the meat in pure river water -”

“With the skin still attached?”

“With the skin still attached. He then removed the meat from the pot and placed it upon a
cutting board -”

“A wooden cutting board?”

“Merciful Buddha, I am perfectly aware of the fact that a metal or ceramic cutting board
can be fatal!” Master Li snarled. “My chef picked out every bristle and quill with fine
pincers, cut the flesh into smaller pieces - and I assure you that they were square pieces
- and sauteed them in pork fat. Then and only then did he mix in the bean paste and fry
the mixture in hot oil. He took infinite care to keep dust from the pot, and when he
judged the meat to be done, he dipped a paper roll into the sauce and held it to the flame
of a candle. Not until the paper caught fire easily did he remove the porcupine from the
pot and serve it to the guests.”

Not a flaw. Not one single error. The merchant's gluttonous world was crashing around him,
and he buried his face in his hands - oddly enough he reminded me of Bright Star when she
thought that the Sword Dance had been defiled. His passion was not so noble, but it was
equally sincere. Li Kao took the opportunity to lift me to my feet, and I wept upon his
shoulder while he patted my back.

“How many died?” the merchant whispered.

“Only my bride!” I howled. “Woe! Woe! Woe!”

“She alone among two hundred,” Master Li sobbed. “And I myself selected the porcupines! I
myself made the bean paste! I myself supervised the preparation of the meat! My beloved
great-grandson removed the clots of blood with his own hands! It was he who selected the
choicest piece to present to his bride! It was I who -”

“Wait!” cried the merchant. He grabbed my shoulders. “My dear tragic boy,” he whispered,
“when you cleaned the blood from the meat, what kind of pin did you use?”

I was really quite touched. Li Kao had done all the work to bring the whale alongside, and
now he was letting me use the harpoon.

“What kind of... why, I don't remember!” I said.

“You must remember!” the merchant howled. “Was it or was it not a silver pin?”

“Yes, it was,” I said thoughtfully. “Now I remember clearly. It was a pin of the purest
silver, although it fell to the ground as I came to the final piece of meat, so of course
I had to use another one.”

“Silver?” he asked breathlessly.

I let the tension mount while I wrinkled my brow in thought. “Gold,” I finally said.

The abbot had always warned me against judging by appearances, and that merchant was a
classic example. His hoggish appearance suggested self-indulgence at the expense of all
else, yet he did not rejoice because his gluttonous world had been saved. Tears streamed
down his cheeks and his belly shook with sobs.

“Oh my boy, my poor tragic boy, the slightest contact between porcupine and gold is
fatal,” he wept. “By the evil curse of some malign spirit, you used gold for that one last
piece, and then with loving hands you placed it upon the plate -”

“Of the woman I loved!” I shrieked. “My stupidity has slain my beautiful bride!”

I fell over the coffin in a faint, which allowed me to open the jar of the Elixir of
Eighty Evil Essences that was concealed on the other side.

“To think that my beloved great-grandson could have been responsible for such a ghastly
death!” Master Li gasped.

“I have often heard of porcupine poisoning, but I confess that I have never seen it,” the
merchant said in a tiny voice. “Is it very terrible?”

The guards and customs officials had been edging closer, with quivering ears, and they
glanced nervously at the coffin.

“She began by breaking out in red spots, which spread until every inch of her skin was
covered,” Master Li whispered. “Then the red began to turn green.”

The Elixir of Eighty Evil Essences was performing splendidly, and an unbelievable stench
was lifting from the coffin.

“Gllgghh!” gagged the Chief of Customs.

“Then the ghastly glaring green began to turn black,” Master Li whispered.

“Black?” the merchant said, waving fumes from his face.

“Well, to be pedantically accurate, it was a greenish-purplish-yellowish black that tended
to run at the edges,” Master Li said thoughtfully. “Then the smell began.”

“Smell?” said the Chief of Customs, gagging through the noxious cloud.

“I cannot describe that loathsome smell!” Master Li wept. “Guests began to run for their
lives, and my beloved great-grandson reached out to touch his bride - oh, how can I
describe the horror of that moment?
His fingers actually entered her body, for her smooth and supple skin had become soft
jelly from which green and yellow corruption oozed. And the smell, the smell, the hideous
toxic stench that caused dogs to collapse in spasms and birds to topple lifelessly from
trees...
”

For some reason we appeared to be alone.

A few minutes later we staggered from the customs shed and joined the others, who were
heaving their guts out over the rails of the pier. Allow me to inform you that the Elixir
of Eighty Evil Essences can make a stone vomit. The merchant, the guards, and the customs
officials held a conference and voted to toss us, along with the coffin, into the sea
before corruption killed them all, but Li Kao appealed to their patriotism by pointing out
that if my bride landed in the sea, she would destroy the Chinese fishing industry for at
least three thousand years. A compromise was reached, and they provided us with a
wheelbarrow for the coffin, a couple of shovels, and a terrified bonze who led the way to
the lepers' cemetery, banging upon a gong and bellowing “Unclean! Unclean!” The bonze took
to his heels, and we watched the sails of the merchant's ship disappear in the mist as he
sped away with his four wooden cases, one of which was a coffin from which the funeral
decorations had been removed.

We ripped the funeral decorations from the merchant's case and I pried the lid open.
Inside I found a small bag lying upon a canvas cover, and I dumped the contents into my
hand and stared in disbelief.

“Pins? Master Li, why would that merchant hire an army of guards to protect some cheap
iron pins?”

“Great Buddha, that fellow couldn't possibly have been working alone. He must be the
representative for a consortium of the richest companies in China!” Master Li gasped.

I didn't know what he was talking about. Li Kao jerked the canvas cover aside and scooped
up a strange object from a pile - we later discovered that there were 270 of them - and
began attaching pins to it. The iron practically jumped to the surface, and the next pin
stuck to the end of the first one.

“Ten pins,” he prayed. “If it will hold ten pins! Seven... eight... nine... ten...
eleven... twelve... thirteen... fourteen... fifteen... sixteen... seventeen...”

The eighteenth pin fell to the ground, and Li Kao turned to me with wonder in his eyes.

“Number Ten Ox, barbarian merchants and navies will sell their very souls for Chinese
magnetic compasses that are pure enough to hold ten inch-long pins attached end to end,
and we have hundreds that are pure enough to hold seventeen! My boy, I have made some
hauls in my day, but this is ridiculous,” he said gravely. “You and I have just become the
two wealthiest men in all China.”

The first order of business was to establish our credentials as gentlemen of vast wealth
and generosity, and I have a blurred memory of flowers and gongs and incense and silver
bells, boat races and dice games and cricket fights, brawls and banquets and tangles of
luscious bare limbs. We sailed upon brightly painted brothel barges that floated over
azure lakes - and docked at artificial emerald islands where pallid priests with flabby
faces and twitching hands sold the strangest things in peculiar pagodas - and we rode
through the streets in a palanquin so huge that it was carried by sixty swearing servants.
Naked dancing girls were draped around us, and we scooped handfuls of silver coins from a
brass-bound chest and hurled them to the adoring mobs that followed our every step.

“Buy clean clothes!” we yelled. “Sweeten your foul breaths with decent wine! Get rid of
your loathsome lice! Bathe!”

“Long Live Lord Li of Kao!”
the mobs howled.
“Long live Lord Lu of Yu!”

I have probably given the impression that I had forgotten the importance of our quest.
Such was not the case. Every night I dreamed of the children of Ku-fu, and I began to be
tortured by guilt, and it was with immense relief that I heard Master Li say that our
status was well enough established and it was time to make our move. He decided that the
fastest way to get to the Key Rabbit would be to burn our palace to the ground, since it
was rented from the Duke of Ch'in at a ruinous rate, and I was roasting a goose over the
embers when the little fellow pattered up.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” he wailed. “Regulation 226, paragraph D, subsection B:
palaces, rented, accidental destruction thereof -”

“Willful. I found the view boring,” Master Li yawned.

“Subsection C: palaces, rented, willful destruction thereof. Full value plus fifty
percent, plus firefighting costs, plus wreckage-removal costs, plus triple the normal fine
for disturbing the peace, plus fifty percent of the total for defaming the view provided
by the duke, plus -”

“Stop babbling, you idiot, and give me the grand total!” Master Li roared.

I thought that the little fellow was going to die. He rolled his pink-rimmed eyes toward
Heaven and screamed: “Nineteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-two pieces of gold!”