Bridge Of Birds

For Ann and Pete

Caveat Oriens

prolepsis

1. Rhet.

the anticipation of possible objections in order to answer them in advance.

2.

the assigning of a person, event, etc., to a period earlier than the actual one.

The Random House Dictionary of the English Language

Caveat Occidens

Chen.

To stand still. To gallop at full speed.

Wan.

A small mouth. Some say a large mouth.

Ch'he.

Devoid of intelligence, deficiency of wit, silly, idiotic. Also used for borrowing and
returning books.

Pee.

A dog under the table.

A dog with short legs.

A short-headed dog.

Maou Tsaou.

A scholar not succeeding and giving himself over to liquor.

- The Chinese Unicorn, edited, from Chinese-English

dictionaries, by Thomas Rowe; printed for Robert

Gilkey (private circulation).

I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.

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.
My family is quite undistinguished, and since I am the tenth of my father's sons and
rather strong I am usually referred to as Number Ten Ox. My father died when I was eight.
A year later my mother followed him to the Yellow Springs Beneath the Earth, and since
then I have lived with Uncle Nung and Auntie Hua in the village of Ku-fu in the valley of
Cho. We take great pride in our landmarks. Until recently we also took great pride in two
gentlemen who were such perfect specimens that people used to come from miles around just
to stare at them, so perhaps I should begin a description of my village with a couple of
classics.

When Pawnbroker Fang approached Ma the Grub with the idea of joining forces he opened
negotiations by presenting Ma's wife with the picture of a small fish drawn upon a piece
of cheap paper. Ma's wife accepted the magnificent gift, and in return she extended her
right hand and made a circle with the thumb and forefinger. At that point the door crashed
open and Ma the Grub charged inside and screamed: “Woman, would you ruin me?
Half
of a pie would have been enough!”

That may not be literally true, but the abbot of our monastery always said that fable has
strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.

Pawnbroker Fang's ability to guess the lowest possible amount that a person would accept
for a pawned item was so unerring that I had concluded that it was supernatural, but then
the abbot took me aside and explained that Fang wasn't guessing at all. There was always
some smooth shiny object lying on top of his desk in the front room of Ma the Grub's
warehouse, and it was used as a mirror that would reflect the eyes of the victim.

“Cheap, very cheap,” Fang would sneer, turning the object in his hands. “No more than two
hundred cash.”

His eyes would drop to the shiny object, and if the pupils of the reflected eyes
constricted too sharply he would try again.

“Well, the workmanship isn't too bad, in a crude peasant fashion. Make it two-fifty.”

The reflected pupils would dilate, but perhaps not quite far enough.

“It is the anniversary of my poor wife's untimely demise, the thought of which always
destroys my business judgment,” Fang would whimper, in a voice clotted with tears. “Three
hundred cash, but not one penny more!”

Actually no money would change hands because ours is a barter economy. The victim would
take a credit slip through the door to the warehouse, and Ma the Grub would stare at it in
disbelief and scream out to Fang: “Madman! Your lunatic generosity will drive us into
bankruptcy! Who will feed your starving brats when we are reduced to tattered cloaks and
begging bowls?” Then he would honor the credit slip with goods that had been marked up by
600 percent.

Pawnbroker Fang was a widower with two children, a pretty little daughter we called Fang's
Fawn and a younger son that we called Fang's Flea. Ma the Grub was childless, and when his
wife ran off with a rug peddler his household expenses were cut in half and his happiness
was doubled. The happiest time of all for the team of Ma and Fang was our annual silk
harvest, because silkworm eggs could only be purchased with money and they had all the
money. Ma the Grub would buy the eggs and hand them out to each family in exchange for
lOUs that were to be redeemed with silk, and since Pawnbroker Fang was the only qualified
appraiser of silk for miles around they were able to take two-thirds of our crop to Peking
and return with bulging bags of coins, which they buried in their gardens on moonless
midnights.

The abbot used to say that the emotional health of a village depended upon having a man
whom everyone loved to hate, and Heaven had blessed us with two of them.

Our landmarks are our lake and our wall, and both of them are the result of the
superstition and mythology of ancient times. When our ancestors arrived in the valley of
Cho they examined the terrain with the greatest of care, and we honestly believe that no
village in the world has been better planned than the village of Ku-fu. Our ancestors laid
it out so that it would be sheltered from the Black Tortoise, a beast of the very worst
character, whose direction is north and whose element is water and whose season is winter.
It is open to the Red Bird of the south, and the element of fire and the season of summer.
And the eastern hills where the Blue Dragon lives, with the element of wood and the
hopeful season of spring, are stronger than the hills to the west, which is the home of
the White Tiger, metal, and the melancholy season of autumn.

Considerable thought was given to the shape of the village, on the grounds that a man who
built a village like a fish while a neighboring village was built like a hook was begging
for disaster. The finished shape was the outline of a unicorn, a gentle and law-abiding
creature with no natural enemies whatsoever. But it appeared that something had gone wrong
because one day there was a low snorting sort of a noise and the earth heaved, and several
cottages collapsed and a great crack appeared in the soil. Our ancestors examined their
village from every possible angle, and the flaw was discovered when one of them climbed to
the top of the tallest tree on the eastern hills and gazed down. By a foolish oversight
the last five rice paddies had been arranged so that they formed the wings and body of a
huge hungry horsefly that had settled upon the tender flank of the unicorn, so of course
the unicorn had kicked up its heels. The paddies were altered into the shape of a bandage,
and Ku-fu was never again disturbed by upheavals.

They made sure that there would be no straight roads or rivers that might draw good
influences away, and as a further precaution they dammed up the end of a narrow little
valley and channeled rivulets down the sides of the hills, and thus produced a small lake
that would capture and hold good influences that might otherwise trickle away to other
villages. They had no aesthetic intent whatsoever. The beauty of our lake was an accident
of superstition, but the result was such that when the great poet Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju passed
through on a walking trip five hundred years ago he paused at the little lake and was
inspired to write to a friend:

The waters are loud with fish and turtles,

A multitude of living things;

Wild geese and swans, graylags, bustards,

Cranes and mallards,

Loons and spoonbills,

Flock and settle on the waters,

Drifting lightly over the surface,

Buffeted by the wind,

Bobbing and dipping with the waves,

Sporting among the weedy banks,

Gobbling the reeds and duckweed,

Pecking at water chestnuts and lotuses.

It is like that today, and Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju was not there in the season to see the masses
of wildflowers, or the tiny dappled deer that come to drink and then vanish like puffs of
smoke.

Our wall landmark is far more famous. It is only fair to point out that there are many
different stories concerning the origin of Dragon's Pillow, but we in Ku-fu like to think
that our version is the only correct one.

Many centuries ago there was a general who was ordered to build one of the defensive walls
that were to be linked into the Great Wall, and one night he dreamed that he had been
summoned to Heaven to present his plan for the wall to the August Personage of Jade. At
his subsequent trial for treason he gave a vivid account of the trip.

He had dreamed that he had been inside a giant lotus, and the leaves had slowly opened to
form a doorway, and he had stepped out upon the emerald grass of Heaven. The sky was
sapphire, and a path made from pearls lay near his feet. A willow tree lifted a branch and
pointed it like a finger, and the general followed the path to the River of Flowers, which
was cascading down the Cliff of the Great Awakening. The concubines of the Emperor of
Heaven were bathing in the Pool of Blissful Fragrances, laughing and splashing in a
rainbow of rose petals, and they were so beautiful that the general found it hard to tear
himself away. But duty called, so he followed the path as it climbed seven terraces where
the leaves on the trees were made from precious stones, which rang musically when the
breeze touched them, and where birds of bright plumage sang with divine voices of the Five
Virtues and Excellent Doctrines. The path continued around the lush orchards where the
Queen Mother Wang grew the Peaches of Immortality, and when the general made the last turn
around the orchards he found himself directly in front of the palace of the Emperor of
Heaven.

Flunkies were waiting for him. They ushered him into the audience chamber, and after the
three obeisances and nine kowtows he was allowed to rise and approach the throne. The
August Personage of Jade was seated with his hands crossed upon the Imperial Book of
Etiquette, which lay upon his lap. He wore a flat hat rather like a board, from which
dangled thirteen pendants of colored pearls upon red strings, and his black silk robe
rippled with red and yellow dragons. The general bowed and humbly presented his plan for
the wall.

Behind the throne stood T'ien-kou, the Celestial Dog, whose teeth had chewed mountains in
half, and beside the Celestial Dog stood Ehr-lang, who is unquestionably the greatest of
all warriors because he had been able to battle the stupendous Stone Monkey to a
standstill. (The Monkey symbolizes intellect.) The two bodyguards appeared to be glaring
at the general. He hastily lowered his eyes, and he saw that the symbol of the emperor's
predecessor, the Heavenly Master of the First Origin, was stamped upon the left arm of the
throne, and on the right arm was the symbol of the emperor's eventual successor, the
Heavenly Master of the Dawn of Jade of the Golden Door. The general was so overcome by a
dizzying sense of timelessness in which there was no means of measurement and comparison
that he felt quite sick to his stomach. He was afraid that he was going to disgrace
himself by throwing up, but in the nick of time he saw that his plan, neatly rolled back
into a scroll and retied, was extended before his lowered eyes. He took it and dropped to
his knees and awaited divine censure or praise, but none was forthcoming. The August
Personage of Jade silently signaled the end of the interview. The general crawled
backward, banging his head against the floor, and at the doorway he was seized by the
flunkies, who marched him outside and across a couple of miles of meadow. Then they picked
him up and dumped him into the Great River of Stars.

Oddly enough, the general testified, he had not been frightened at all. It was the rainy
season in Heaven, and billions of brilliant stars were bouncing over raging waves that
roared like a trillion tigers, but the general sank quite peacefully into the water. He
drifted down farther and farther, and then he fell right through the bottom, and the
glittering light of the Great River receded rapidly in the distance as he plunged head
over heels toward earth. He landed smack in the middle of his bed, just as his servant
entered to wake him for breakfast.

It was some time before he could gather enough courage to open his plan, and when he did
he discovered that the Emperor of Heaven - or somebody - had moved the wall 122 miles to
the south, which placed it in the middle of the valley of Cho, where it could serve no
useful purpose whatsoever.

What was he to do? He could not possibly defy the mandate of Heaven, so he ordered his men
to build a wall that led nowhere and connected to nothing, and that was why the general
was arrested and brought before the Emperor of China on the charge of treason. When he
told his tale the charge of treason was tossed out of court. Instead the general was
sentenced to death for being drunk on duty, and desperation produced one of the loveliest
excuses in history. That wall, the general said firmly, had been perfectly placed, but one
night a dragon leaned against it and fell asleep, and in the morning it was discovered
that the bulk of the beast had shoved the wall into its current ludicrous position.

Word of Dragon's Pillow swept through the delighted court, where the general had clever
and unscrupulous friends. They began their campaign to save his neck by bribing the
emperor's favorite soothsayer.

“O Son of Heaven,” the fellow screeched, “I have consulted the Trigrams, and for reasons
known only to the August Personage of Jade that strange stretch of wall is the most
important of all fortifications! So important is it that it cannot be guarded by mortal
men, but only by the spirits of ten thousand soldiers who must be buried alive in the
foundations!”

The emperor was quite humane, as emperors go, and he begged the soothsayer to try again
and see if there might not have been some mistake. After pocketing another bribe the
soothsayer came up with a different interpretation.

“O Son of Heaven, the Trigrams clearly state that
wan
must be buried alive in the foundations, but while
wan
can mean ten thousand, it is also a common family name!” he bellowed. “The solution is
obvious, for what is the life of one insignificant soldier compared to the most important
wall in China?”

The Emperor still didn't like it, but he didn't appear to have much of a choice, so he
ordered his guards to go out and lay hands on the first common soldier named Wan. All
accounts agree that Wan behaved with great dignity. His family was provided with a
pension, and he was told that Heaven had honored him above all others, and he was given a
trumpet with which to sound the alarm should China be threatened, and then a hole was cut
in the base of the wall and Wan marched dutifully inside. The hole was bricked up again,
and a watchtower - the Eye of the Dragon - was placed upon the highest point of Dragon's
Pillow where Wan's ghost could maintain its lonely vigil.