The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Going to the phone, she spoke briefly. After a pause which was not as long as Carver had expected, she spoke again, very slowly. Whatever she said, it seemed to be a repetition of what she’d first told Kwan. Then, new words, softly spoken; a pause, and a phrase of leave-taking.

  Lan Yin turned to Carver: “It would be more polite if you did not have further words with Kwan Tai Ching.”

  “Thank you.” He regarded his wife-to-be, and tried to understand her serenity. “He’ll be speaking to me, and I’ll have to answer. Now I’ll meet my niece, and have a talk with the old scholar, Sam Chan. The contract has to be just right, with no loopholes.”

  “Whether we marry by Chinese custom or American, you have my promise.” Then, deliberately, “If I’m not truly liberated, I’ll need your help more than ever.”

  Sang Chung Li had been pacing about the shrine room. Irresolute, he turned toward the door, stopped short, then advanced anew.

  “There’s more to this than you realize, Chung Li. Now that he knows, never let her out of sight or beyond your reach.”

  CHAPTER VII

  One sweeping glance, and Carver saw Sally Wong and her companion at a corner table of the Pot Sticker’s crowded dining room. Pint-size Sally waved: “Uncle Tao Fa!”

  To tourists and other standard Americans, she was just another moderately good looking Chinese girl in her middle-twenties, distinguished mainly by an impish quirk of features, and an eye glint to match. To natives of the Chinese city, there was something less obvious about the eyes, about her facial structure, and then, her wavy hair: altogether, one glance, and the judgment was, “Hawaiian blood—”

  Her companion, whether nasty or not, was at least ninety, though he didn’t look a day past seventy. His third family was in its early thirties—Sam Chan, scholar, dedicated drinker, notary public, and during his spare time, enough of a grocery man to make a living. “Uncle Tao Fa, are you really marrying the girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you couldn’t tell me till the last minute?”

  “I phoned you, first thing I knew about it all.”

  From his three-family experiences, Sam Chan could well wag his bald head and say, patronizingly, “Better late than never.”

  Carver said to the waiter who glided to the table, “We’ll have hot-sour soup—pot stickers—a tea-smoked duck—and a rock cod, deep fried—mmm, yes, brown spicy sauce. And a bottle of shao hsing.”

  “Tell us all about it!” Sally demanded.

  “She’s a bit younger than you, and almost as beautiful.”

  “Bet she’s beautifuller. What’s the story?”

  “Girl watcher gets hooked! These dangerous Oriental women!” Then, “Dr. Chan—”

  “Doctor, no. Literate, moderately so.”

  “So I’d judge from what I hear of your translations. And your calligraphy is famous.”

  “And I’ve heard of you—”

  “Couldn’t avoid it, not with Sally telling you—”

  “For a fact, it wasn’t Sally—Foreign Devil apprentice tao shih is famous no matter how he stays hid out. Otherwise, I’d not be here. I’m just pretending I am not curious about all this—”

  “What I need,” Carver began, “is a Chinese marriage contract. Old Custom. The words—very formal, Tang Dynasty, if you can.”

  “I brought brushes and stuff.” He hefted a briefcase. “Sally told me you could do the writing yourself.”

  “Maybe, but there’d not be so many questions if you did it. There are some odd things about it all. Such as, this is strictly confidential. News about this could be dangerous. To others.”

  “Not to you?”

  Carver shrugged. “If it got to me, I’d take care of it. But my wife-to-be is in a peculiar situation.”

  The waiter served the soup. Carver tasted, added three drops of peppery oil to his bowl, and two dashes of rice vinegar.

  “Uncle Tao Fa! How do you stay so deliberate?”

  “Suspense buildup is part of this project.”

  “For you?” Sam Chan cocked an eyelid. “For the bride? Anyway, a fresh attitude.”

  “We have an enemy. If he’s impatient enough, marriage chances will be better.”

  A tea-smoked duck with dumplings arrived, followed by a rock cod well over a foot long. Chop stick drill took nearly two hours. “You’re a sadist, keeping her waiting this way!”

  “She has good company.”

  “Mother?” Sam Chan asked. “Older sister?”

  “Neither. The man she wanted to marry deserves a little time to get used to her change of plans. I told you this wedding shouldn’t make any Chinatown paper.”

  “It ought to make all six of them!”

  With choice leftovers of fish, including the rock cod’s head, in one carton, and the surplus smoked duck in another, Carver led the way to the temple.

  Serene as though she married a Foreign Devil every other Friday, Lan Yin welcomed the visitors, and poured hot wine.

  In the study room, Sam Chan opened his brief case, from which he took an ink slab, a stick of ink, and five chops, massive ones, each cut from a stalk of special stone an inch and a half square. There was one stamp for each of his names. He selected a brush. After putting water into the hollow of the slab, he set to work grinding ink.

  Then Carver remembered. “Did the phone ring?”

  Lan Yin answered, “Long, long rings, twice in the past hour.”

  Carver’s glance shifted to Chung Li. “I think it’s working.”

  Sally said, “Whoever it is, you’ve got him hooked.”

  Lan Yin leaned close and whispered to Carver, “No blackout so far. We’re winning!”

  “Not so fast, tai-tai! When he calms down enough to concentrate, we’ll run into trouble.”

  Finally the viscosity of the ink was to Sam Chan’s taste. The trial strokes on scrap paper ranged from hair lines to triangular patches, formal ideograms as precise as though done with instruments.

  “The Tang Dynasty style,” he announced, “What do I write?”

  Carver answered, “Liang Lan Yin appoints my niece, Wong Mei Ling, to be her proxy and act in her stead in this matter.”

  Sally—Wong Mei Ling—went saucer-eyed.

  Carver continued, “Just so, Mr. Chan—if Liang Lan Yin happens to be a long way from me, she and I can marry if Wong Mei Ling takes her place at the ceremony.” Sally licked her lips and made as if to speak. Carver patted her hand. “No problem, doll. Once the ceremony’s over, there’s nothing else the proxy has to do to make it legal.”

  “Oh.” Sally shrugged. “Life’s one letdown after another!”

  Carver addressed the scribe: “And then the contract—Simon Carver, also known as Tao Fa, and Liang Lan Yin, also known as Adeline Marie Liang, each agrees to marry the other. Shovel on the stately phrases, Tang Dynasty style. And now we’re getting out of your hair—give us a shout when the brush work’s done.”

  Chan stroked his head. “Former hairs! But before leaving me undisturbed, please leave a small jar of shao hsing.”

  The phone rang and rang and rang…

  “Chung Li, where’s your car parked?”

  “Contract stall, Portsmouth Square.”

  Carver answered the unvoiced query: “Kwan knows where you keep it. Better move it. Better for Lan Yin if he believes you are out of town.”

  Presently, Mr. Chan announced that the paper work was done. Lan Yin signed the proxy in Chinese and in English. After affixing chop and notarial seal, Mr. Chan said, “The contract is ready.”

  As Lan Yin stepped up to the table, Carver said, “One thing should be clear. Signing this doesn’t marry me and her?”

  “No. It’s an agreement to marry. Once she signs, she is stuck with the deal. If she marries someone else, you can sue her. If you marry someone else—”


  “I’d be crazy!”

  “—But she’s not your wife, not until—”

  “I know the business—bowing to the Immortals, to Heaven and Earth and to each other. She pours a cup of wine and each takes half.”

  “And,” Mr. Chan added, “she shears her bangs to show she’s a matron.”

  “Where do I come in?” Sally demanded. “As proxy, do I have to have bangs to be cut off?”

  Chan interposed, gestured, and the contracting parties signed.

  “Now you’re stuck with it. Neither can marry someone else, not unless the other okays it.” As he sealed and chopped, he added, “No, you don’t owe me anything, but you may send me a present.”

  Carver beckoned to Sally: “I don’t want my line to give a busy signal. Call from the booth down the block for a cab to get you and Mr. Chan home.”

  When Sally and the scribe left, Carver said, “Chung Li, let me take your keys and move your car to St. Mary’s garage.” He took a folded paper from his coat pocket, and handed it to Lan Yin. “Whatever happens, don’t get further than arm’s length apart.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  Carver and Kwan Tai Ching faced each other in the temple study room. Between them was a table, and on it, Sam Chan’s calligraphy, now mounted on a strip of silk damask. The encounter had not been as strained as either had anticipated. The worst was over—

  But it’s not started, not yet, Carver was thinking, as he said, “I wonder if I look as tired as you do.”

  “This hasn’t been easy,” Kwan admitted.

  “Tai Ching, this isn’t a declaration of war, and it’s not a peace treaty, either. We’re picking it up where we left off, for a better understanding. For each other, and for them.”

  Kwan exhaled a long breath. “You make this no easier, Uncle Tao Fa.”

  Carver turned the scroll about. Kwan said, “I know. Yes. There she signed. There’s the notary’s seal. I’m here to beg you not to marry her.”

  “Same spirit I had when you and I talked to the breaking point? Let’s not start over. Carry on, Tai Ching.”

  “She signed that contract to escape—her only way out—exactly what you told me. Three days, and I couldn’t think past that. I wore the phone out, couldn’t get you.”

  Carver sighed. “I had a lot on my mind.”

  “I’m begging you not to hold her to that contract. I’ve been afraid—hour after hour—it would be too late—”

  “She and I could have gone to Reno. No waiting time, no three-day delay. But we didn’t do that.”

  “That’s why I’m here! I’d not have waited three minutes. Neither would Chung Li! That you have waited—it left me one small hope—that you’d hear me out—”

  Carver was neither a fisherman nor a bull-fighter: but he’d seen a large trout worn to a finish, fighting a hair-thin line on a three-and-a-half-ounce rod. And the bull had to wear himself out before any man could kill him.

  “I mean no offense—she’s marrying you to get out of an impossible position—she’s using you as a means to an end—”

  “No offense, Tai Ching. I know she’s not turning from Chung Li because she wants to. But I’ve got to tell you something—remember, I spied on you, I saw her in your apartment—where she could not possibly have been, not at that time! What I saw was her shadow, her astral form, whatever it is that can leave the body when the body is asleep, or in a trance—I saw that—I told you—and you and I took that for granted, a matter of course.

  “Now—how could I see the invisible?”

  Tai Ching caught his breath, jerked back.

  Carver followed through: “You were so wrapped up in your own power that you didn’t realize that I had—well—extra sensory perception—haggle words all you want! But—I saw what you saw and what most people could not see.”

  “That—that never occurred to me.”

  “You’ve heard only the start of it. Now I’ll give you the rest!” He leaned forward, fierce-eyed. “She and I went into time and space together, through the Mirror of Ko Hung—we saw the funeral that came before the wedding—whatever happened to her and me, Lan Yin and I were closer than ever we could have been if we’d gone to Reno, or to Carson City for a quickie ceremony in the Silver Queen and then three days in bed! We’d still be strangers who had to get used to each other—

  “But diving through time and space together—breaking away from her isn’t as easy as you imagine!” Then, very slowly, very softly, “Do you begin to realize what you are asking me to do?”

  Kwan had no answer.

  “It’s not what I want to or do not want to,” Carver continued. “I’m looking at what can and what can not be done. Separating her and me is pretty much like cutting Siamese twins apart, except that here, it is psychic surgery.”

  Carver grabbed the contract by its jade-knobbed roller rod. “The contract you showed us pretended to bind two teenagers after they had died. This one binds me to a living woman, speaking for herself, and before witnesses. As long as she lives with me, you can not dominate her. I’m a barbarian—I don’t have your five thousand years of tradition—I’m not sensitive in the way of so many Asiatics. You dominated Lan Yin because Chung Li was dominated along with her. Your power would fall apart if you tried the same trick against me and her.”

  “If you knew that I had let go, totally let go, would you release her?”

  “I’m awfully fond of Lan Yin. So much so that if I knew you’d quit baiting her out of her body, quit lousing up her life, I’d kiss her goodbye and wish her luck, and mean it!”

  Kwan came to his feet, and of a sudden, he was majestic, powerful. “I’ll burn those thousand-year-old writings—”

  “No, take the writings, give them to her. She’ll know then that you won’t ever want to take command again. Give her the writings, so she can burn or keep them.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I’ll drive you to her door.” Carver deftly rolled the damask scroll on its jade-tipped rod and thrust it into his coat pocket. “I’ll hand her this contract. A release from you, a release from me.”

  For a long moment they regarded each other. Kwan said, “Neither has lost, neither has won, neither is beaten.”

  Carver bowed deeply. “You lose more than I know. And I lose more than you know.”

  Kwan thrust out his hand. Carver accepted it.

  “Lan Yin,” Carver told him, “is in a lodge near the mouth of the Russian River, where it comes out of the pine trees and meets the sea. She is with your sworn brother, Chung Li.”

  Kwan gulped twice, swallowed air each time.

  Carver showed him the proxy. “Right now, if Wong Mei Ling came to the temple, and we bowed to the Immortals, to the four directions, and all the rest, and she and I shared a cup of wine, Chung Li would have no wife. Not by Chinese reckoning.”

  Kwan, Taoist magician, needed more than a moment to digest that one. Carver allowed him no time. “I gave your brother a proxy, and I chopped it. If he’s in bed with my fiancée, he’s acting for me.”

  Kwan’s blinking slowly expanded into a harvest moon glow. “That is Chinese thinking. We are brothers in grief and in loss. Surely you love that girl. Let’s drive—it’s not too late—”

  They set out; and they stopped at Kwan’s apartment to pick up the family documents—and a bottle of shao hsing.

  When Carver and Tai Ching had the Golden Gate Bridge behind them, they followed the road which snaked along, high above the ocean. Swirling mist veiled sun-reddened cliffs until, presently, it blotted out the sunset. By the time they cleared Bodega Bay, the drizzle became a rain which kept the wipers busy. Storm driven spray flooded the road. Finally, after a dozen miles of battling wind, Carver crossed the mouth of the river, to drive upstream.

  “We’re not looking for a village,” he said. “Just a scattering of lodges and c
abins. A place that belongs to one of Chung Li’s friends. She phoned me—told me all about it—electricity for lights, bottled gas for the kitchen, fallen timber for the fireplace.”

  “Perfect, perfect! Dramatic weather. River rising—foam about rocks in channel—this light, almost failed—tremendous—”

  “Be a damn sight more tremendous by daylight,” Carver grumbled. “For me it’s just another bitchy drive and getting worse every mile. If you Oriental nature-lovers spent more time behind the wheel, you’d get the facts of life!”

  The car wove and sloshed about. Sheeting rain kicked headlight glare back into his eyes. They were well away from the river before Carver realized that this was a major change of direction, not a minor quirk of the road.

  “Overshot our mark. See any lights, back there?”

  “Yes, one, two, near river. One among trees, other side of road, up the slope.”

  “Good! Let’s watch for a turn-around. If we get on the road shoulder, we’re buggered through our oilskins.”

  “Colorful idiom,” Tai Ching remarked. “No oilskins, no coats.” None like the Chinese to see a bright spot! Kwan seemed unable to realize that things were getting sticky. He recited in Chinese, and at times rendered the words into English. Carver got many a bit as he cursed, twitched the wheel, waggled and wangled and battled.

  “A wind brings willow-cotton, sweetens the shop,

  A girl from Wu pours wine, urging me to share it

  With comrades come to see me off…”

  Carver couldn’t, he didn’t want to ignore the mood which their meeting had evoked. He cut in. “…Go ask the river if it can travel further than a friend’s love—”

  “Ah—you do know it!” Tai Ching exclaimed, happily. “Li Po—”

  “Only minutes to go, and you and Chung Li will be together again, same old friends—”

  “Yes, also no. Parting at a Wine Shop in Nan-King—I thought of Li Po—I have a fine prospect in Taiwan. I was persuading Lan Yin to go with me—now, I go at once, and alone.”

  Now Li Po’s lines had more meaning than ever. Carver, moved by the sadness behind it all, repeated a fragment, “…I say to him in parting—Goddamn it! Now I’ve gone and done it!”