The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

by Barry Hughart

  “Where is he now?”

  “He’s having a steam bath and a massage, while two waiters from the restaurant stand ready with a stomach pump.”

  “Splendid,” Master Li said happily. “Come along, Ox. We have to find the most unscrupulous alchemist in town and procure a jar of the Elixir of Eighty Evil Essences, and then we have to buy a coffin.”

  When the merchant waddled back from the massage parlors a truly pathetic sight met his eyes. I was draped over a coffin, sobbing my heart out, while Li Kao wailed and tore his hair.

  “Woe!” I howled.

  “The bride of my beloved great-grandson is dead!” howled Master Li.

  “Speak to me, my beloved!” I screamed, pounding the coffin lid.

  “Ten million maledictions upon the chef who persuaded me to serve porcupine at my great-grandson’s wedding feast!” shrieked Master Li.

  The merchant was at his side in an instant.

  “Porcupine? Did you say porcupine?”

  “Porcupine,” Master Li sobbed.

  “But Venerable Sir, were you not aware that porcupine can be fatal unless properly prepared?”

  Li Kao drew himself up affronted. “Do you take me for a fool?” he snapped. “I myself supervised the preparations, and every step was taken according to the instructions of Li Tsening.”

  “Surely not!” the merchant gasped. “Why, the great Li Tsening wrote The Book of Porcupine Cookery!”

  “Why do you think I followed his instructions, you idiot?” Master Li shouted.

  The merchant’s eyes were glazed, and saliva flowed in streams. “Was it young, fresh porcupine?” he whispered.

  “Barely one year old, and trapped the day before,” Master Li sniffled.

  A mighty spasm shook the merchant’s vast belly. “From Yushan?” he whispered.

  “Straight from the river,” sobbed Master Li.

  That was too much for the merchant. He tottered over to his guards, opened a large sack, extracted a pickled carp, devoured it noisily, and tottered back.

  “The paste!” he gasped. “The paste was made one year before?”

  “One year precisely,” said Master Li. “Only the purest yellow beans were used.”

  “You are positive that all black and brown beans were removed? The slightest trace of such imperfection can be fatal!”

  All black and brown beans as well as those with purple markings were removed by hand,” Master Li said huffily. “The remainder was sifted fifteen times, and carefully scrutinized. I was perfectly aware of the danger!”

  “Venerable Sir, I am not accusing you,” the merchant said contritely, “but I need scarcely point out that some error must have been made, since your great-grandson’s poor bride…ah…. Is it possible that rice flour was used?”

  “Don’t be an ass, young man!” Master Li said angrily. “Rice flour would have assassinated every single guest at the banquet! Only the pure Hua wheat flour was used, mixed with a little salt and exposed precisely six hours to the sun.”

  “With a veil to keep out the dust! Dust can be fatal!”

  “With a veil to keep out the dust. Then the flour and beans were mixed into the paste and placed into a jar which was in turn covered by an earthenware basin and sealed with lime, and I need not mention that only pure river water was used, since the slightest trace of well water would have been fatal.”

  “I cannot understand it,” the merchant whispered. “Everything done properly, yet…. Wait! What month was it?”

  “Are you a raving lunatic? To prepare porcupine paste in any month but June is to commit suicide!” Master Li yelled.

  The merchant had turned very pale. It was dawning on him that unless a flaw could be found, he himself could never safely enjoy the delicacy of all delicacies.

  “Extraordinary,” he whispered. “Everything done according to the instructions of the great Li Tsening, yet the porcupine proved fatal after all. We must find the error! Venerable Sir, I beg you to describe the precise method by which your chef cooked the porcupine.”

  It occurred to me that I had become too interested in porcupine cookery to mourn my departed bride properly. “Woe!” I shrieked. “Woe! Woe! Woe!”

  Li Kao patted my shoulder. “To think that such tragedy should strike the only one of the great-grandsons who is neither mentally deficient nor morally degenerate,” he sniffled. “But you are right; the error must be found. My chef began by removing the eyes, stomach, internal organs, and embryos, if any were present. While he cut the meat into pieces, my poor great-grandson cleaned every clot of blood from each piece with his own noble hands. Then the chef boiled the meat in pure river water—”

  “With the skin still attached?”

  “With the skin still attached. He then removed the meat from the pot and placed it upon a cutting board—”

  “A wooden cutting board?”

  “Merciful Buddha, I am perfectly aware of the fact that a metal or ceramic cutting board can be fatal!” Master Li snarled. “My chef picked out every bristle and quill with fine pincers, cut the flesh into smaller pieces—and I assure you that they were square pieces—and sautéed them in pork fat. Then and only then did he mix in the bean paste and fry the mixture in hot oil. He took infinite care to keep dust from the pot, and when he judged the meat to be done, he dipped a paper roll into the sauce and held it to the flame of a candle. Not until the paper caught fire easily did he remove the porcupine from the pot and serve it to the guests.”

  Not a flaw. Not one single error. The merchant’s gluttonous world was crashing around him, and he buried his face in his hands—oddly enough he reminded me of Bright Star when she thought that the Sword Dance had been defiled. His passion was not so noble, but it was equally sincere. Li Kao took the opportunity to lift me to my feet and I wept upon his shoulder while he patted my back.

  “How many died?” the merchant whispered.

  “Only my bride!” I howled. “Woe! Woe! Woe!”

  “She alone among two hundred,” Master Li sobbed. “And I myself selected the porcupines! I myself made the bean paste! I myself supervised the preparation of the meat! My beloved great-grandson removed the clots of blood with his own hands! It was he who selected the choicest piece to present to his bride! It was I who—”

  “Wait!” cried the merchant. He grabbed my shoulders. “My dear tragic boy,” he whispered, “when you cleaned the blood from the meat, what kind of pin did you use?”

  I was really quite touched. Li Kao had done all the work to bring the whale alongside, and now he was letting me use the harpoon.

  “What kind of…why, I don’t remember!” I said.

  “You must remember!” the merchant howled. “Was it or was it not a silver pin?”

  “Yes, it was,” I said thoughtfully. “Now I remember clearly. It was a pin of the purest silver, although it fell to the ground as I came to the final piece of meat, so of course I had to use another one.”

  “Silver?” he asked breathlessly.

  I let the tension mount while I wrinkled my brow in thought. “Gold,” I finally said.

  The abbot has always warned me against judging by appearances, and the merchant was a classic example. His hoggish appearance suggested self-indulgence at the expense of all else, yet he did not rejoice because his gluttonous world had been saved. Tears streamed down his cheeks and his belly shook with sobs.

  “Oh my boy, my poor tragic boy, the slightest contact between porcupine and gold is fatal,” he wept. “By the evil curse of some malign spirit, you used gold for that one last piece, and then with loving hands you placed it upon the plate—”

  “Of the woman I loved!” I shrieked. “My stupidity has slain my beautiful bride!”

  I fell over the coffin in a faint, which allowed me to open the jar of the Elixir of Eighty Evil Essences that was concealed on the other side.

  “To think that my beloved great-grandson could have been responsible for such a ghastly death!” Master Li gasped.


  “I have often heard of porcupine poisoning, but I confess that I have never seen it,” the merchant said in a tiny voice. “Is it very terrible?”

  The guards and customs officials had been edging closer, with quivering ears, and they glanced nervously at the coffin.

  “She began by breaking out in red spots, which spread until every inch of her skin was covered,” Master Li whispered. “Then the red began to turn green.”

  The Elixir of Eighty Evil Essences was performing splendidly, and an unbelievable stench was lifting from the coffin.

  “Gllgghhl” gagged the Chief of Customs.

  “Then the ghastly glaring green began to turn black,” Master Li whispered.

  “Black?” the merchant said, waving fumes from his face.

  “Well, to be pedantically accurate, it was a greenish-purplish-yellowish black that tended to run at the edges,” Master Li said thoughtfully. “Then the smell began.”

  “Smell?” said the Chief of Customs, gagging through the noxious cloud.

  “I cannot describe that loathsome smell!” Master Li wept. “Guests began to run for their lives, and my beloved great-grandson reached out to touch his bride—oh, how can I describe the horror of that moment? His fingers actually entered her body, for her smooth and supple skin had become soft jelly from which green and yellow corruption oozed. And the smell, the smell, the hideous toxic stench that caused dogs to collapse in spasms and birds to topple lifelessly from trees….”

  For some reason we appeared to be alone.

  A few minutes later we staggered from the customs shed and joined the others, who were heaving their guts out over the rails of the pier. Allow me to inform you that the Elixir of Eighty Evil Essences can make a stone vomit. The merchant, the guards, and the customs officials held a conference and voted to toss us, along with the coffin, into the sea before corruption killed them all, but Li Kao appealed to their patriotism by pointing out that if my bride landed in the sea, she would destroy the Chinese fishing industry for at least three thousand years. A compromise was reached, and they provided us with a wheelbarrow for the coffin, a couple of shovels, and a terrified bonze who led the way to the lepers’ cemetery, banging upon a gong and bellowing “Unclean! Unclean!” The bonze took to his heels, and we watched the sails of the merchant’s ship appear in the mist as he sped away with his four wooden cases, one of which was a coffin from which the funeral decorations had been removed.

  We ripped the funeral decorations from the merchant’s case and I pried the lid open. Inside I found a small bag lying upon a canvas cover, and I dumped the contents into my hand and stared in disbelief.

  “Pins? Master Li, why would that merchant hire an army of guards to protect some cheap iron pins?”

  “Great Buddha, that fellow couldn’t possibly have been working alone. He must be the representative for a consortium of the richest companies in China!” Master Li gasped.

  I didn’t know what he was talking about. Li Kao jerked the canvas cover aside and scooped up a strange object from a pile—we later discovered that there were 270 of them—and began attaching pins to it. The iron practically jumped to the surface, and the next pin stuck to the end of the first one.

  “Ten pins,” he prayed. “If it will hold ten pins! Seven…eight…nine…ten…eleven…twelve…thirteen…fourteen…fifteen…sixteen…seventeen….”

  The eighteenth pin fell to the ground, and Li Kao turned to me with wonder in his eyes.

  “Number Ten Ox, barbarian merchants and navies will sell their very souls for Chinese magnetic compasses that are pure enough to hold ten inch-long pins attached end to end, and we have hundreds that are pure enough to hold seventeen! My boy, I have made some hauls in my day, but this is ridiculous,” he said gravely. “You and I have just become the two wealthiest men in all China.”

  Lotus Cloud

  The first order of business was to establish our credentials as gentlemen of vast wealth and generosity, and I have a blurred memory of flowers and gongs and incense and silver bells, boat races and dice games and cricket fights, brawls and banquet and tangles of luscious bare limbs. We sailed upon brightly painted brothel barges that floated over azure lakes—and docked at artificial emerald islands where pallid priests with flabby faces and twitching hands sold the strangest things in peculiar pagodas—and we rode through the streets in a palanquin so huge that it was carried by sixty swearing servants. Naked dancing girls were draped around us, and we scooped handfuls of silver coins from a brass-bound chest and hurled them to the adoring mobs that followed our every step.

  “Buy clean clothes!” we yelled. “Sweeten your foul breaths with decent wine! Get rid of your loathsome lice! Bathe!”

  “Long Live Lord Li of Kao!” the mobs howled. “Long Live Lord Lu of Yu!”

  I have probably given the impression that I had forgotten the importance of our quest. Such was not the case. Every night I dreamed of the children of Ku-fu, and I began to be tortured by guilt, and it was with immense relief that I heard Master Li say that our status was well enough established and it was time to make our move. He decided that the fastest way to get to the Key Rabbit would be to burn our palace to the ground, since it was rented from the Duke of Ch’in at a ruinous rate, and I was roasting a goose over the embers when the little fellow pattered up.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” he wailed. “Regulation 226, paragraph D, subsection B: palaces, rented, accidental destruction thereof—”

  “Willful. I found the view boring,” Master Li yawned.

  “Subsection G: palaces, rented, willful destruction thereof. Full value plus fifty percent, plus firefighting costs, plus wreckage-removal costs, plus triple the normal fine for disturbing the peace, plus fifty percent of the total for defaming the view provided by the dukes, plus—”

  “Stop babbling, you idiot, and give me the grand total!” Master Li roared.

  I thought that the little fellow was going to die. He rolled his pink-rimmed eyes toward heaven and screamed: “Nineteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-two pieces of gold!”

  Li Kao shrugged and pointed toward a long row of chests. “Take one of the blue ones,” he said indifferently. “Actually the blue ones each contain twenty thousand pieces of gold, but Lord Li of Kao and Lord Lu of Yu can scarcely be bothered with change.”

  The Key Rabbit toppled over backward. It took a few minutes to revive him, but he grasped the possibilities instantly.

  “Alas!” he panted. “Lord Li of Kao and Lord Lu of Yu have no place in which to spend the night, and while my humble abode is scarcely suitable…. You see, I will probably have to stay in the castle all night counting the duke’s money, and my dear wife will be all alone and unprotected. Women require protection, among other things.”

  He fell to his knees and began kissing the tips of our sandals. “Such as pearls,” he wailed. “Jade!” he howled.

  “May we offer you some roast goose?” Master Li said not unkindly. “It is Lord Lu of Yu’s own recipe, marinated twenty-four hours in the lees of fine wine, with honey and crushed apricots. Lord Lu of Yu, incidentally, is a disciple of Chang Chou, who said that he preferred his own cooking, but other people’s wives.”

  “Joy!” shrieked the Key Rabbit.

  That night I prepared to meet the most expensive woman in the world. The moon was playing tag with fingers of clouds, and the breeze was warm and fragrant with flowers, and crickets chirped in the shadows of the Key Rabbit’s garden. The path of pearls and jade that I had strewn upon the grass sparkled like a reflection of the Great River of Stars, and I found it difficult to breathe as I watched a young woman trot toward me, exclaiming with wonder as she picked up each glittering bauble. Then she got close enough so I could see her clearly.

  “Number Ten Ox,” I said to myself, “you have been robbed!”

  She wasn’t even pretty. Lotus Cloud was pure peasant, with big feet, short thick legs, large square hands, and a plain flat face. She stopped short and examined me with her h
ead cocked at an angle, and she looked for all the world like a country girl who was trying to decide whether or not to buy a pet at a fair. I could almost hear her think, Yes, I’ll take this cute thing home with me. And then she grinned.

  I cannot describe that grin. It was as though all the hope and joy and love and laughter that there was in the whole world had gathered into a fist that reached out and belted me in the heart, and the next thing I knew I was on my knees with my arms wrapped around her legs and my head pressed against her thighs.

  “My surname is Lu and my personal name is Yu, but I am not to be confused with the eminent author of The Classic of Tea, and everyone calls me Number Ten Ox,” I moaned.

  She laughed softly, and her fingers played with my hair.

  “I shall call you Boopsie,” she said.

  The measure of my enchantment may be judged from the fact that I enjoyed being called Boopsie. In fact, I felt like wagging my tail whenever Lotus Cloud came into view.

  “Key Rabbit,” I said a couple of days later, “your beloved wife is not witty, and she is not wise, and she cannot read or write, and she has no social graces whatsoever, and she isn’t even pretty, and I worship the very ground that she walks on.”

  “That,” sighed the Key Rabbit, “is what all her protectors say.”

  “Master Li, have I lost my mind?” I asked.

  “Well, beauty is a ridiculously overrated commodity,” he said. “Over the past eighty or ninety years I have known a great many beautiful women, and they’ve all been the same. A beauty is forced to lie late in her bed in the morning in order to gather strength for another mighty battle with nature. Then, after being bathed and toweled by her maids, she loosens her hair in the Cascade of Teasing Willows style, paints her eyebrows in the Distant Mountain Range style, anoints herself with Nine Bends of the River Diving-Water Perfume, applies rouge, mascara, and eye shadow, covers the whole works with two inches of the Powder of the Nonchalant Approach, squeezes into a plum-blossom-patterned tunic with matching skirt and stockings, adds four or five pounds of jewelry, looks into the mirror for any visible sign of humanity and is relieved to find none, checks to make sure that her makeup has hardened into an immovable mask, sprinkles herself with the Hundred Ingredients Perfume of the Heavenly Spirits who Descended in the Rain Shower, and minces with tiny steps toward the new day, which, like any other day, consists of gossip and giggles.”