Testicle crushers are easily manufactured by…
Severed heads may be preserved for display by…
I slid down and pulled the covers over my head, and I did not emerge until I heard the door open and a familiar voice said, “What a stroke of luck! Your engagement is a godsend—incidentally, how did you like the winsome damsel who recently ruled China?”
I jumped up and embraced him. “Master Li,” I sobbed, “if my fiancée resembles her grandmother in any way, I can never go through with this!” A happy thought suddenly occurred to me. “But if we're engaged, I won't see her until the wedding.”
“Normally that would be the case, but an exception has been made because you've already seen almost all of her,” he said. “She was the one in the carriage with the pretty jade pendant between the pretty breasts. Don't worry about it. All you have to do is to take an occasional stroll with her in the gardens, while I figure out whom we have to kill in order to get the Root of Power.”
“But the Ancestress…” I quavered.
“Has not recognized me,” said Master Li. “Her natural distaste for fortune-hunting criminals has been reinforced by my unfortunate habit of rolling my eyes, drooling saliva, giggling at inopportune moments, and popping my cheek with an unwashed finger. I doubt that she will seek out your company, and all you'll have to worry about will be your fiancée, her father, and the butler.”
My future father-in-law turned out to be the sweetest and gentlest of men, and as a scholar he bowed only to Li Kao. Ho Wen had earned second place in the chin-shih examinations, and I would have had to enter Hanlin Academy to find two such minds under one roof. The contrast between them was fascinating.
Li Kao would toss an idea into the air and watch it sparkle, and then he would toss a second one, and then he would send handfuls of associated ideas spinning into space, and when they returned to earth they would be neatly linked into a necklace that fit perfectly around the throat of the subject. Ho Wen, on the other hand, was a plodding one-step-at-a-time scholar who never made a mistake, and whose memory was so prodigious that not even Li Kao could match it. I once asked him the name of a distant mountain, and this is the answer that I received.
“The sacred mountains are five in number: Hengshan, Changshan, Huashan, Taishan, and Sungshan, with Taishan leading in rank and Sungshan in the center. Mountains not sacred but very distinguished include Wuyi, Wutang, Tienmu, Tienchu, Tienmuh, Niushi, Omei, Shiunherh, Chichu, Chihua, Kungtung, Chunyu, Yentang, Tientai, Lungmen, Kueiku, Chiuyi, Shiherh, Pakung, Huchiu, Wolung, Niuchu, Paotu, Peiyo, Huangshan, Pichi, Chinshu, Liangfu, Shuanglang, Maku, Tulu, Peiku, Chinshan, Chiaoshan, and Chungnan. Since the mountain to which you refer is none of these—”
“Ho,” I moaned.
“— it might not be too rash to conclude that it is Kuangfu, although I would not like to be quoted in the presence of the Ancestress because the slightest mistake can mean instant decapitation.”
Li Kao immediately grasped the potential of Ho's memory. He told him to drop our titles when we were alone and address us as Li Kao and Number Ten Ox, and at the first opportunity he turned the subject to ginseng. Ho's eyes lit up, but before he could begin a discourse that might last several weeks Li Kao asked him if he had ever heard of a Great Root of Power. Even Ho Wen had to stop and think about that, and then he said, slowly and hesitantly,
“I was four years old, visiting a cousin at the Blessings of Heaven Library in Loyang.” He paused for more thought. “Third basement, fifth row on the left, second rack from the top. Behind Chou-pi Mathematics I found Chang Chi's Typhoid Fever and Other Diseases, behind which I found the sixteen volumes in fifty-two rolls of Li Shih-chen's Outline of Herb Medicine, behind which I found a mouse's nest. I was chasing the mouse at the time. In the nest was a scrap of parchment with a pretty picture that was labeled ‘Great Root of Power,’ but the parchment had been so badly chewed that I could not make out what species the root belonged to.”
He squinted and pursed his lips as he tried to visualize the picture.
“It was a very strange root,” he said. “There were two tiny tendrils that were the Legs of Power, two more that were the Arms of Power, and a fifth tendril that was the Head of Power. The central mass of the root was the Heart of Power, which was labeled ‘The Ultimate.’ Unfortunately the mice had devoured everything else, so I do not know what the word ‘ultimate’ referred to. I very much doubt that the root was ginseng, because I have never heard of ginseng that resembled it.”
His interest in ginseng had a specific origin. One day a grave was being dug in the family cemetery and a shovel had pitched out some fragments of clay tablets. Ho Wen had instantly recognized ideographs of immense antiquity. He had persuaded the workmen to gather every fragment that there was, and then he had settled down to an impossible task. The fragments were almost illegible, but he was determined to decipher the text or die in the attempt. His face was flushed with pride when he took us to his workshop and showed us the tiny clay fragments, and the theories of mathematical probability that he had devised to suggest the sequence of characters in the ancient script. He had been working on it for sixteen years, and already he had deciphered ten whole sentences, and if he lasted another sixteen years he hoped to have four whole paragraphs.
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.