Bridge Of Birds (8 page)

One thing he was sure of. It was a ginseng folk or fairy tale, and it was one of the
oldest known to man.

Ho Wen had no money of his own. In my innocence I assumed that the distinction of his
scholar's rank was worth more than money, but I soon learned otherwise. I suspect that the
rich are the same in every country in that money is their sole standard of value, and was
Ho Wen referred to as Master Ho? Venerable Scholar Ho? Second-Most-Learned-of-Mortals Ho?
Not exactly. He was referred to as Henpecked Ho, and he lived in mortal terror of the
Ancestress, his wife, her seven fat sisters, and his daughter. In a great house a poor
scholar's status is just slightly higher than that of the boy who carries away the night
soil.

There was no resemblance whatsoever between Henpecked Ho and his daughter. My bride-to-be
was a startlingly pretty girl whose name was Fainting Maid. I assumed that the unusual
name came from a line of poetry, but I learned better on our first stroll through the
gardens when we were chaperoned by Li Kao and her father.

“Hark!” cried Fainting Maid, pausing on the path and pointing dramatically. “A cuckoo!”

Well, I am a country boy.

“Nay, my beloved,” I chuckled. “It is a magpie.”

She stamped a pretty foot. “It is a cuckoo!”

“Precious one, the magpie is imitating a cuckoo,” I said, pointing to the magpie that was
imitating a cuckoo.

“It is a
cuckoo!
”

“Light of my life,” I sighed, “it is a magpie.”

Fainting Maid turned red, turned white, reeled, clutched her heart, and screeched, “Oh,
thou hast slain me!” Then she staggered backward, lurched to the left, and gracefully
swooned.

“Two feet back, six to the left,” her father sighed.

“Does she ever vary it?” Li Kao asked with scientific interest.

“Not so much as an inch. Precisely two feet back and six feet to the left. And now, dear
boy, you are required to kneel and bathe her delicate temples and beg her forgiveness for
your intolerable rudeness. My daughter,” said Henpecked Ho, “is never wrong, and I might
add that never in her life has she been denied anything that she wanted.”

Is it possible that among my illustrious readers there may be one or two who are
contemplating marriage for money? I have a very clear memory of a golden afternoon when
the butler was instructing me in the etiquette of a great house, Henpecked Ho's beloved
wife and her seven fat sisters were sipping tea in the Garden of Forty Felicitous
Fragrances, Fainting Maid was insulting the intelligence of her ladies-in-waiting in the
Gallery of Precious Peacocks, and the Ancestress was chiding a servant who had dropped a
cup on the Terrace of Sixty Serenities.

“The cook hands the guest a ladle with an engraved handle and a stand which is placed west
of the tripods,” said the butler. “The guest takes the handle of the ladle with his right
hand, palm inward, and lays the ladle alongside the stand.”

“Off with his head!”
roared the Ancestress.

“Then,” continued the butler, “he faces east, at the west of the tripods, to receive the
food that is his due and that is determined by his attire, beginning with the state
umbrella that is displayed by his servants.”

“Gabble-gabble-gabble-gabble-gabble!”
squawked Henpecked Ho's wife and her seven fat sisters.

“The umbrella of First and Second Rank officials have yellowish-black gauze covers, red
raw silk linings, three tiers, and silver spires, and the umbrellas of the Third and
Fourth Rank officials are the same, except that the spires are red.”

“Forgive me, My Lady! Of course
The Gentlewoman's Guide to Needlepoint
was written by Confucius!”
wailed a lady-in-waiting.

“The umbrellas of the Fifth Rank,” said the butler, “have blue gauze coverings, red raw
silk linings, two tiers, and silver spires, and those of the Sixth through Ninth Rank have
blue oiled, raw silk coverings, red raw silk linings, one tier, and silver spires.”

“Deposit the corpse in the pigsty!”
roared the Ancestress.

Enough.

One night Li Kao and I stopped by Henpecked Ho's workshop and found him in tears, holding
a cheap silver comb in his hands while he wailed. When he had recovered enough to speak he
asked us to hear his story, because he had no one else with whom to share joys or sorrows.
Li Kao made him drink some wine, and then we sat down to listen.

“A few years ago I managed to please the Ancestress in some way,” said Henpecked Ho. "She
graciously allowed me to take a concubine, but I had no money of my own. I could not
aspire to a lady of quality, or even the maid of a lady of quality, so I chose a dancing
girl from Hangchow. Her name was Bright Star, and she was very beautiful and very brave,
and I loved her with all my heart. She did not love me, of course, because I am old and
ugly and something of a worm, but I never forced myself on her and I think that she was
reasonably happy. I gave her this comb as a token of my love. As you can see, it is not a
very good comb, but it was all that I could afford, and she wore it in her hair to please
me. I had never been in love before, and in my foolishness I thought that my joy would
last forever.

"One night the Ancestress entertained some officers from the fort, and among them was a
young captain whose family was so distinguished that it was common knowledge that the
Ancestress would choose him to wed Fainting Maid. For some reason the name of Bright Star
was mentioned, and suddenly the captain was all attention. She was no common dancing girl,
he said excitedly. Bright Star had become a living legend in Hangchow through her skill
and courage at the Sword Dance, and the young captain, who was a very famous swordsman
himself, said that he would give anything to meet such an opponent. Since no distinctions
of rank are allowed in the Sword Dance, the Ancestress ordered Bright Star to perform.
When she opened an old wicker case and took out two swords I could see that she kept her
heart in those glittering blades. She allowed me to oil her body, and I marveled at the
pride and happiness in her eyes, and my beautiful dancing girl walked out the door like a
queen.

"Sword Dancers wear only loincloths, of course, and I could not bear to see Bright Star
displayed like a piece of meat for the soldiers to leer at. I did not attend the dance,
but I did not have to. The wind drifted down from the mansion and with it came a clash of
steel blades that grew louder and louder and faster and faster. I heard cheering, and then
I heard the audience roaring at the tops of their lungs. The drums pounded like thunder,
and when the sand clock ran out the audience continued to cheer in delight and wonder for
nearly ten minutes. The judges refused to declare a winner. Only gods, they said, had the
right to choose between gods, and the palm was cut in two and half was given to each
contestant.

"That night I lay in my bed and listened to the sobs of a dancing girl. She had fallen in
love with the young captain, but what was she to do? Her social status was so low that it
would be quite impossible for a gentleman of his rank to take her as a secondary wife, and
she would be forced to see him as the husband of my daughter but never could she reach out
and touch him. All night long she wept, and in the morning I made my way to the fort and
had a long talk with a young captain who had not slept a wink, because whenever he closed
his eyes he saw the face of Bright Star. When I returned that evening I clasped a gold
chain around the throat of a dancing girl, and on the end of it was a beautiful jade
pendant that was the token of the captain's love.

“Am I not a worm?” said Henpecked Ho. "I had so little pride that I would even play
panderer for the woman I loved. All that mattered was her happiness, and I went about it
quite methodically. I discovered that there were two brief periods when the corridor
between the walls was unguarded. At sunset, when the guards went off duty, the men in the
kennels waited for a few minutes to make sure that everyone was out before they released
the dogs, and at sunrise the guards waited for a few minutes before entering the corridor,
to make sure the dogs were safely locked up. There was a small door in the inner wall at
the north end of the estate, and I stole the key and gave it to Bright Star. That evening
at sunset I gave the signal that the corridor was clear, and the young captain scaled the
outer wall and raced across, and Bright Star opened the door. At sunrise he was able to
return to the fort in the same way.

“For nearly a month she lived in Heaven. I lived in Hell, of course, but that was scarcely
important on the relative scale of things,” said Henpecked Ho. "Then one evening I heard a
terrible scream. I raced to the wall and found Bright Star frantically tugging at the
door. She had just opened it, but somebody had approached and she had been forced to hide,
and when she came back she discovered that the door had been closed and locked and that
the key had been taken. I raced to the kennels to try to stop the men from releasing the
dogs, but I was too late. The terrible baying pack raced down the corridor, and the young
captain was able to kill a great many of them but he could not kill them all. As Bright
Star desperately tugged at the door, she was forced to listen to the death of her captain.
She could not stand it. When I ran back, I discovered that my beautiful dancing girl had
thrown herself into an old well beside the wall.

“It was no accident. They knew at the fort that the captain was slipping away at night,
and everyone who had attended the Sword Dance had seen the light in his eyes. From the joy
in the eyes of Bright Star it was obvious that the captain had found a way to cross the
corridor, but who could have been so cruel as to lock the door and take the key? It was
the murder of two innocent young people.”

Henpecked Ho began to weep again, and it was nearly a minute before he could continue.

“Bright Star may have wanted to die, but her fate was far worse,” he sobbed. “So great had
been her desire to reach the young captain that even in death she must continue to try to
get through the door in time, but of course she cannot do it. The following night I
returned to the well that had claimed her life, and I discovered that my beautiful dancing
girl had been trapped in a ghost dance. Now I fear that she must suffer the agonies of the
damned throughout eternity.”

Li Kao jumped to his feet and clapped his hands sharply together.

“Nonsense!” he said. “There has never been a ghost dance that couldn't be broken, and
there never will be. Ho, take us to the scene of the tragedy and you and I and Number Ten
Ox will take care of the problem immediately.”

It was almost the third watch, the hour of ghosts, when we walked through the garden in
the moonlight. The breeze sighed sadly through the leaves, and a lonely dog barked in the
distance, and an owl drifted down like a falling leaf across the face of the moon. When we
reached the wall I saw that the door had been removed and the hole had been bricked up.
The old well was covered over, and the path was overgrown by weeds.

Li Kao turned to me. “Ox, have you been taught how to see ghosts?” he asked quietly.

I blushed bright red. “Master Li,” I said humbly, “in my village young people are not
introduced to the world of the dead until they have become civilized enough to respect the
living. The abbot thought that I might possibly be ready for instruction after the fall
harvest.”

“Don't worry about it,” he said reassuringly. “The world of the dead is immensely
complicated, but seeing ghosts is simplicity itself. Take a look at the wall where the
door used to be. Take a very close look, and keep looking until you see something strange.”

I stared until my eyeballs hurt.

“Master Li, I see something that puzzles me,” I said finally. “That faint shadow above the
rose bush cannot possibly be caused by branches, or by clouds passing the face of the
moon. Where does it come from?”

“Excellent,” he said. “You are looking at a ghost shadow. Ox, listen carefully because
what I am about to say will sound silly, but it is not. Whenever you see a ghost shadow,
you must realize that the dead are trying to show you something, and you must think of the
shadow as being a soft comfortable blanket that you would like to pull over you. It is
quite easy. Calm your heartbeat, and clear your mind of everything except a comfortable
blanket. Now reach out with your mind and pull it toward you, and then up over your head.
Gently... gently... gently.... No. You are trying much too hard. It requires no effort at
all. Think of the comfort and warmth. Gently... gently... gently.... Good. Now tell me
what you see.”

“Master Li, the patch in the wall is gone and the door is back in place!” I whispered. “It
is standing open, and the well is uncovered, and the path is clear of weeds!”

And so it was, although it was like a picture with a hazy frame around it that flickered
at the periphery of my vision. Faint in the distance I heard the watchman rap three times
with his wooden knocker, and the three of us sat upon the grass beside the path. Henpecked
Ho reached out and squeezed my shoulder.

“Dear boy, you are about to see something very beautiful, and you will learn that there is
beauty that can break the heart,” he said quietly.

The Great River of Stars was sparkling above us, like a diamond necklace clasped around
the black velvet throat of the sky. The cassia trees sparkled with dew, and the high brick
wall appeared to be painted with silver, and bamboos lifted like long fingers that waved
in a soft breeze as they pointed toward the moon. A flute began to play, but it was like
no flute that I had ever heard before. The same few notes were repeated over and over,
softly and sadly, but with subtle variations in pitch and tone that caused each note to
flutter in the air like the petal of a flower. A strange flickering light moved slowly
through the trees.