He reclaimed the Fire Pearl and the ear.
“Excellent,” he said. “I saw traces of the substance caught in the monster’s claws when we examined its body beside the chopping block, and the discovery of the victim’s head confirmed my suspicion. The slick stuff is an incredibly expensive compound made principally from rendered goose fat. It’s called Protocol Soap, and it has the peculiar property of causing human skin to acquire a soft glow. The stuff is used almost exclusively by eunuchs and ministers in daily attendance upon the emperor, the idea being to suggest a reflection of the radiance that emanates from the Son of Heaven.”
It took a moment for that to sink in, and then my eyes widened.
“Sir, do you mean that one of the ministers of state has been killed and eaten by a vampire ghoul?” I said in a shocked voice.
“So it would appear,” Master Li said mildly. “Even more extraordinary is the fact that no hint of anything amiss has escaped the pink walls. There isn’t a place on earth more addicted to gossip and rumor than the Forbidden City, but I checked every source I could think of last night and all I could learn was that something is going on and it’s top secret. My boy, it isn’t possible that a state minister can vanish without causing an uproar, and keep in mind the fact that we found not one trace of the victim’s bones or body. Do his colleagues have it? If so, what could cause mandarins to cover up the crime of the century?”
What indeed? A scandal on a scale to shake the empire seemed not impossible, and as we passed into the Imperial City and started up toward the Altar of Earth and Grain a line began running through my brain: “…monsters, mandarins, and murder… monsters, mandarins, and murder…” The priests at the altar bowed in reverence to the dead as our palanquin passed, as did their counterparts at the Supreme Temple of Ancestors (“…monsters, mandarins, and murder… monsters, mandarins, and murder…”), and dignified Confucian clerks touched their caps respectfully. The Imperial City is the walled enclave of bureaucratic basilicas and aristocratic residences surrounding the Forbidden City of the emperor, but those who assume our funerary progress through such rarefied surroundings was solemn and sedate have never rented palanquins in Peking. I think I may have given a misleading impression, so I will correct it.
“Sheee-ut!” screamed Rat-Scurry-down-the-Street from his front left bearer’s pole. “Why don’t the big heavy kid sit in the middle with the scrawny old bird on his lap? This thing’s as unbalanced as a raft rowed by a rat and a rhinoceros!”
Viper-in-the-Grass had the matching position on the right bearer’s pole.
“Stop squawking, gong-head! You ain’t got the brains to talk and carry at the same time, and when you open your goddamn mouth your shoulders start shaking like tits at a wet nurse convention!”
Chamber Pot Chong and the Worm, at the rear bearer poles, did not approve.
“Eat vinegar, you turds! You think we like having our faces sprayed with spit from a pair of polecats with hoof-and-mouth disease!”
“Ox, from here on we should travel with decorum,” Master Li said.
I stopped the palanquin and jumped out and picked up the front bearers’ pole along with the bearers still attached to it, and slammed them back to earth in a manner designed to loosen teeth.
“Listen to me, ming’t’e mao tsei!” (A very useful phrase for visitors to Peking. It means: “You mulberry caterpillar grain-eating grub thieves!”) “One more squawk and I’ll feed your combined remains to a gnat.”
I climbed back into the palanquin and we proceeded in seemly silence between the Phoenix Towers and across the moat. Master Li has been out of official favor for years, but he still has the rank and proper credentials and the guards had no orders to stop him, and we passed without difficulty through the Meridian Gate and the Forbidden City opened in front of us.
“Now I need your sharp young eyes,” Master Li said. “If I’m right, one of the senior mandarins made a meal for a vampire ghoul, and for whatever reason his colleagues are doing everything in their power to hush it up. They have to give the fellow a funeral, however, and under the circumstances they can’t possibly deny him a pole.”
I saw what he meant, but I’m not sure it will be clear to uncivilized readers, so I will briefly explain.
All people have two souls. The higher hun soul resides in the liver, and when a person dies a hole is bored in the coffin just above the liver to allow the higher soul to fly in and out when it wishes. The lower po soul resides in the lungs, and under no circumstances must it be allowed out. It is the seat of man’s animal instincts and behavior, and it can easily go bad and wander the earth as an evil spirit. The hun soul must journey back and forth between the liver and the law court of the God of Walls and Ditches in Hell during the forty-nine days in which it is being judged, but when it is away from its familar body it can easily become disoriented, and it is a great tragedy for a higher soul to get lost. It can panic and settle into a totally inappropriate body and become perverted, and when a higher soul goes bad it really goes bad. That is how creatures like vampire ghouls are formed, and that is why a beacon is erected to help traveling souls find their way home. It’s a tall pole with a bright red flag at the top, placed outside a house where a death has occurred: left of the door for a man, right for a woman. Master Li’s point was that the mandarins couldn’t possibly take the chance that their colleague’s hun soul might get lost and turn into the very kind of monster that had slain him, so they had no choice but to erect a beacon pole.
I kept a lookout for a red pole, and in a way it was a pity. This was my first trip to the Forbidden City and I would have liked to look around and ask Master Li about it, but all I learned that day was that it might better be called the Forbidden Garden. Once we left the central avenue we were in mazes of trees and shrubs and flowers artistically designed to open to delightful or surprising vistas, such as great dragons and phoenixes in ivory bas-relief upon coral walls or exotic birds that appeared to be posing for artists as they settled upon quaint rocks beside turquoise pools. It was one of those bright birds that drew my eyes away from pole searching, and it took a moment to realize that not all the brightness came from feathers.
“There!” I exclaimed.
A tall slim line lifted behind a row of pomegranates, and at the top was a crimson flag. Master Li had the bearers turn at the Golden River and pass through the Gate of United Harmony toward the complex where he had spent twenty wasted years—at least he called them wasted—and we passed the Hall of Literary Glory, the Hall of Proclaimed Intellect, the Hall of Reverence for the Master (which is the second-greatest library in the world, the first being in Ch’ang-an), and there in the great courtyard of the Hall of Literary Profundity stood the soul pole, left of the entrance, and beneath the red banner flew the flag of a senior scholar who was entitled to display all fourteen symbols of academic distinction: wishing pearls, musical stone, good-luck clouds, rhombus, rhinoceros-horn cup, books, pictures, maple, yarrow, banana leaf, tripod, herb of immortality, money, and the silver shoe.
“That flag narrows the list of possible victims considerably,” Master Li said happily. “Has there been any word that one of the foremost scholars in the empire has breathed his last? No, there has not, and now I’m beginning to think that my suspicion of conspiracy and cover-up is a certainty.”
When we turned through the outer gates we saw a courtyard crammed with palanquins and carriages and sedan chairs like ours, swathed in mourning cloths. A mob of junior mandarins bowed deeply to Master Li’s cap and badges, for he was wearing the whole works, including symbols of imperial office he hadn’t held in sixty years, and the effect was very impressive. He marched up the steps as though he owned the place, and we entered a reception hall that was huge to the point of being grotesque. Several forests had been depopulated of wild animals to provide furs to cover the walls, along with immense tapestries and various hangings. A carpet that seemed to be made of white ermine stretched across an acre of floor to a marble dais, and upon the dais rested a huge coffin.