“But were they bandits always? Would they have been bandits in the years to come?”
“Sure, once a bandit, always a bandit. They take an oath or something. Besides, you didn’t kill them.”
“But I didn’t save them, and I blinded that bowman. That wasn’t right.”
“You were angry.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“What do you mean, that’s no excuse? You’re God’s Son. God wiped out everyone on earth with a flood because he was angry.”
“I’m not sure that’s right.”
“’Scuse me?”
“We have to go to Kabul. I need to restore that man’s sight if I can.”
“Joshua, this bed is the most comfortable place I’ve ever been. Can we wait to go to Kabul?”
“I suppose.”
Joshua was quiet for a long time and I thought that he might have fallen asleep. I didn’t want to sleep, but I didn’t want to talk about dead bandits either.
“Hey Josh?”
“What?”
“What do you think is in that room with the iron door, what did he call it?”
“Xiong zai,” said Josh.
“Yeah, Xiong zai. What do you think that is?”
“I don’t know, Biff. Maybe you should ask your tutor.”
Xiong zai means house of doom, in the parlance of feng shui,” said Tiny Feet of the Divine Dance of Joyous Orgasm. She knelt before a low stone table that held an earthenware teapot and cups. She wore a red silk robe trimmed with golden dragons and tied with a black sash. Her hair was black and straight and so long that she had tied it in a knot to keep it from dragging on the floor as she served the tea. Her face was heart-shaped, her skin as smooth as polished alabaster, and if she’d ever been in the sun, the evidence had long since faded. She wore wooden sandals held fast by silk ribbons and her feet, as you might guess from her name, were tiny. It had taken me three days of lessons to get the courage up to ask her about the room.
She poured the tea daintily, but without ceremony, as she had each of the previous three days before my lessons. But this time, before she handed it to me, she added to my cup a drop of a potion from a tiny porcelain bottle that hung from a chain around her neck.
“What’s in the bottle, Joy?” I called her Joy. Her full name was too ungainly for conversation, and when I’d tried other diminutives (Tiny Feet, Divine Dance, and Orgasm), she hadn’t responded positively.
“Poison,” Joy said with a smile. The lips of her smile were shy and girlish, but the eyes smiled a thousand years sly.
“Ah,” I said, and I tasted the tea. It was rich and fragrant, just as it had been before, but this time there was a hint of bitterness.
“Biff, can you guess what your lesson is today?” Joy asked.
“I thought you would tell me what’s in that house of doom room.”
“No, that is not the lesson today. Balthasar does not wish you to know what is in that room. Guess again.”
My fingers and toes had begun to tingle and I suddenly realized that my scalp had gone numb. “You’re going to teach me how to make the fire-powder that Balthasar used the day we arrived?”
“No, silly.” Joy’s laugh had the musical sound of a clear stream running over rocks. She pushed me lightly on the chest and I fell over backward, unable to move. “Today’s lesson is—are you ready?”
I grunted. It was all I could do. My mouth was paralyzed.
“Today’s lesson is, if someone puts poison in your tea, don’t drink it.”
“Uh-huh,” I sort of slurred.
“So,” Balthasar said, “I see that Tiny Feet of the Divine Dance of Joyous Orgasm has revealed what she keeps in the little bottle around her neck.” The magus laughed heartily and leaned back on some cushions.
“Is he dead?” asked Joshua.
The girls laid my paralyzed body on some pillows next to Joshua, then propped me up so I could look at Balthasar. Beautiful Gate of Heavenly Moisture Number Six, who I had only just met and didn’t have a nickname for yet, put some drops on my eyes to keep them moist, as I seemed to have lost the ability to blink.
“No,” said Balthasar, “he’s not dead. He’s just relaxed.”
Joshua poked me in the ribs and, of course, I didn’t respond. “Really relaxed,” he said.
Beautiful Gate of Heavenly Moisture Number Six handed Joshua the little vial of eye drops and excused herself. She and the other girls left the room. “Can he see and hear us?” Joshua asked.
“Oh yes, he’s completely alert.”
“Hey Biff, I’m learning about Chi,” Joshua shouted into my ear. “It flows all around us. You can’t see it, or hear it, or smell it, but it’s there.”
“You don’t need to shout,” said Balthasar. Which is what I would have said, if I could have said anything.
Joshua put some drops in my eyes. “Sorry.” Then to Balthasar, “This poison, where did it come from?”
“I studied under a sage in China who had been the emperor’s royal poisoner. He taught me this, and many other of the magics of the five elements.”
“Why would an emperor need a poisoner?”
“A question that only a peasant would ask.”
“An answer that only an ass would give,” said Joshua.
Balthasar laughed. “So be it, child of the star. A question asked in earnest deserves an earnest answer. An emperor has many enemies to dispatch, but more important, he has many enemies who would dispatch him. The sage spent most of his time concocting antidotes.”
“So there’s an antidote to this poison,” Joshua said, poking me in the ribs again.
“In good time. In good time. Have some more wine, Joshua. I wish to discuss with you the three jewels of the Tao. The three jewels of the Tao are compassion, moderation, and humility…”
An hour later, four Chinese girls came and picked me up, wiped the floor where I had drooled, and carried me to our quarters. As they passed the great ironclad door I could hear scraping and a voice in my head that said, “Hey kid, open the door,” but the girls made no notice of it. Back in my room, the girls bathed me and poured some rich broth into me, then put me to bed and closed my eyes.
I could hear Joshua enter the room and shuffle around preparing for bed. “Balthasar says he will have Joy give you the antidote to the poison soon, but first you have a lesson to learn. He says that this is the Chinese way of teaching. Strange, don’t you think?”
Had I been able to make a sound, I would have agreed, yes, indeed it was strange.
So you know:
Balthasar’s concubines were eight in number and their names were:
Tiny Feet of the Divine Dance of Joyous Orgasm,
Beautiful Gate of Heavenly Moisture Number Six,
Temptress of the Golden Light of the Harvest Moon,
Delicate Personage of Two Fu Dogs Wrestling Under a Blanket,
Feminine Keeper of the Three Tunnels of Excessive Friendliness,
Silken Pillows of the Heavenly Softness of Clouds,
Pea Pods in Duck Sauce with Crispy Noodle,
and Sue.
And I found myself wondering, as a man does, about origins and motivations and such—as each of the concubines was more beautiful than the last, regardless of what order you put them in, which was weird—so after several weeks passed, and I could no longer stand the curiosity scratching at my brain like a cat in a basket, I waited until one of the rare occasions when I was alone with Balthasar, and I asked.
“Why Sue?”
“Short for Susanna,” Balthasar said.
So there you go.
Their full names were somewhat ungainly, and to try to pronounce them in Chinese produced a sound akin to throwing a bag of silverware down a flight of steps (ting, tong, yang, wing, etc.) so Joshua and I called the girls as follows:
Joy,
Number Six,
Two Fu Dogs,
Moon,
Tunnels,
Pillows,
Pea Pods,
and, of course,
Sue,
which we couldn’t figure out how to shorten.
Except for a group of men who brought supplies from Kabul every two weeks, and while there would do any heavy moving, the eight young women did everything around the fortress. Despite the remoteness and the obvious wealth that the fortress housed, there were no guards. I found that curious.