11
Master Li’s eyes were incredulous as I peered down into the urn. “You’re alive?”
“Sir,” I said, “does any deity owe us a favor? If not, we’ll have to go into bankruptcy buying incense for the pantheon.”
I got him out without smashing the urn and he was able to hobble around quite well after I massaged his legs. He looked at the body of the Snake and shook his head wonderingly when I told what had happened, and then he pointed out a nasty aspect I hadn’t got around to considering.
“There’s no way this wound in the back can be made to look like an accident,” he said. “We’re faced with unpleasant complications no matter what, but the first step is a necessity. We have to make the corpse disappear.”
I opened my mouth one or two times to make suggestions and then closed it again. The grand warden was going to pull apart the castle stone by stone, if need be, dig up every inch of dirt, drain the moat, and send divers down the wells, and when Master Li said we had to make the Snake disappear he meant disappear.
“Step one is to get him out of this revolting love nest, and that, at least, is easy,” the old man said decisively.
I made two trips back down the stairs and then down the outer wall to the garden, one carrying Master Li and the other carrying the Snake. The corpse fit into a large wheelbarrow (an invention I have explained to barbarians in a previous memoir) and some burlap from manure sacks covered it. Then Master Li sprawled comfortably on top and I wheeled him out and past the guards while he hiccuped and waved his wine flask and sang bawdy songs, and the captain of the guards did no more than bow. After a battle like the one the old shaman had put on to save the grand warden’s wife he was supposed to get stinking drunk, and nobody dreamed of interfering. I wheeled him to the puppeteer’s wagon and left the wheelbarrow outside with the covered corpse still in it, certain that nobody was going to get close to the old man’s conveyance. Nothing is more dangerous than a drunken shaman. Yen Shih greeted us inside, which had very little space despite the size of the wagon because every inch was filled with puppeteering gear.
“We have a problem,” said Master Li.
Yen Shih raised an eyebrow.
“There’s a corpse in that wheelbarrow,” said Master Li.
Yen Shih raised the other eyebrow.
“The corpse is that of the snakelike creature who damn near killed Ox, and we have to assume the grand warden will search every drop of water and mote of dust until he finds the son of a serpent,” said Master Li.
Yen Shih nodded.
“I have precisely two ideas at the moment,” Master Li said. “The first is to disguise the corpse as one of your larger mannequins.”
Yen Shih pointed out at the moon and made revolving motions, indicating time passing, and then held his nose, indicating a bad smell.
“The second is to find some way to explain how a tiger managed to get past the moat and walls and eat the bastard,” said Master Li.
Yen Shih shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands apart—how?
“We shall think,” Master Li said, and his wrinkles contracted while Yen Shih gazed up at the canvas roof and hummed. Then he stopped humming.
“Tomorrow,” the puppeteer said slowly, “the Grand Warden of Goose Gate has scheduled a great feast in honor of his wife’s recovery.”
“At which a tiger will eat the Snake?” said Master Li.
“At which the Grand Warden of Goose Gate will eat the Snake,” said Yen Shih.
I thought that was weak humor, but Master Li didn’t. In fact, he was regarding the puppeteer with vast admiration.
“My friend, you’re a genius!” he cried.
“But he isn’t being serious,” I said. Then I looked at Yen Shih, and back to Master Li, and back to Yen Shih. “Are you?” I asked weakly.
I don’t want to describe what happened next but I have no choice if I am to provide honest accounts of the cases of Master Li, so I will include a detail that will make me look even more foolish than usual. Throughout the next horrible hours my mind insisted upon clinging to a totally irrelevant image. An image I had acquired in the very first scene with which I began this narrative, and I haven’t the slightest idea why it popped back up to lodge like a barnacle on my brain, but there it was. I kept seeing a despicable barbarian with a face of stone and eyes like icicles, squatting in squalor and scratching for lice in a place called the Sabine Hills, dipping his brush in viper venom to send his idiotic criticism all the way to China.
“All right, Flaccus,” I said silently as I wheeled a huge load of fresh vegetables to the castle kitchens, “what would you have me do? Pretend there isn’t a corpse beneath the turnips, because corpses are excessively melodramatic? Bah, friend Flaccus! Bah! Bah! Bah!”
A great castle always has a small separate kitchen for the preparation of ceremonial dishes to be offered to ghosts or gods, and it was to be expected that a shaman would wish to offer to the gods who had aided him and invite his esteemed host to share the feast. Master Li had no difficulty commandeering the place, and in a few minutes he and Yen Shih had the corpse stretched out on the kitchen table and were cutting the clothes away. To tell the truth, I still didn’t truly believe this was happening.
“Ox, would you see if they have any pigs’ feet jelly?” the puppeteer asked. He turned to Master Li. “It seems to me that the thighs might best be marinated in a broth of pigs’ feet mixed with honey and the lees of wine, and then baked inside a crust formed of the marinade thickened with peanut paste.”
“A connoisseur!” said Master Li.
“Gllgghh!” I said.
“Ox, while you’re at it, see if they have any pickled jellyfish skins!” Master Li called after me as I lurched into the larder. “I’ve discovered they go marvelously with bears’ paws,” he continued to Yen Shih. “Bears’ paws taste to me like sixty percent glue, so jellyfish skins might be a good accompaniment to glutinous parts, like the soles of this bastard’s feet, and perhaps the spermatic cords.”
“Gllgghh!” I said.
One of the shelves yielded the pigs’ feet, and in a cabinet I found a jar of jellyfish skins. When I started back toward the table Master Li was preparing to remove the top of the corpse’s head with a saw, and Yen Shih was measuring fibula and tibia for ax strokes.
“You see, Flaccus, there is more to this world than the uncivilized can possibly imagine,” I silently said. “For example—”
Whack! Whack! Whack!
“Gllgghh!”
“Yen Shih, shall we do the brains in a traditional turnip sauce, or would you prefer oyster broth?” Master Li shouted over the sound of the puppeteer’s ax.
“You know, I rather favor poaching brains in coconut milk, if Ox can find any,” Yen Shih said thoughtfully.
“Brilliant!” Master Li said admiringly. “Ox, see if they have any coconuts, and do you know why our erudite friend made the suggestion? Once upon a time, so the story goes, the great king of Nam Viet was stabbed by assassins, and he realized he was dying, so he pulled off his head and stuck it on a tree as his final gift to the people. The head turned into the coconut, and because the king was drunk at the time the fluid inside it is the most easily fermentable stuff on earth.”
Riiiiip! Riiiiip!
“Gllgghh!” I said.
“I shall again seek your invaluable advice before possibly ruining something,” said Master Li. “Shall we keep the tongue whole, possibly baked inside a crust of walnut paste, or should we slice and saute it with butter and garlic?”