Journey to the West (vol. 1)

by Wu Cheng-En

  Taking all this for the truth, Sanzang told Pig to undo the ropes and bring the boy down. The idiot, not realizing who he was, was just about to start doing it. This was more than Monkey could bear.

  “Damned beast,” he shouted, “there's someone here who can see what you are. Cut out all that nonsense, and stop trying to fool us. If all your family's goods have been stolen, your father has been murdered and your mother kidnapped, then who are we going to hand you to after we rescue you? What sort of reward will you give us? It doesn't hang together. It's a pack of lies.”

  This frightened the evil spirit, who realized now that Monkey was an able opponent and was keeping an eye on him. So he trembled and wept as he continued, “Although I've lost both my parents and all my family's goods I've still got all our land and my other relations.”

  “What relations?” Monkey asked.

  “My other grandfather lives to the South of the mountain,” the evil spirit replied, “and my aunt's home is North of the ridge. Li the Fourth from the head of the ravine is married to my aunt, and Hong the Third in the woods is a distant uncle. I've also got cousins living around the village. If the venerable master will save me and take me back to the village and my relations I'll tell them all about the venerable master's kindness in rescuing me. I'll mortgage or sell some land, and reward you richly.”

  At this Pig blocked Monkey's way and said, “Brother, you can't interrogate a little boy like that. He told you that the bandits only took his moveable goods-how could they have possibly taken his houses and land? If he tells his relations all about it the most we'll eat will be an acre and a half's worth, no matter how big our appetites are. Let's save him.” All the idiot could think about was his stomach. He did not care at all whether he was acting wisely as he cut through the ropes with his monk's knife and let the demon down from the tree. The demon then kept kowtowing and weeping copiously in front of the Tang Priest's horse. The tenderhearted priest said, “Come up on the horse, boy, and I'll carry you with me.”

  “Master,” said the boy, “my hands and feet are numb after hanging by them for so long, and my back is hurting too. Besides, we villagers don't know how to ride.” The Tang Priest then told Pig to carry the evil spirit, who stole a quick look at Pig and said, “Master, my skin is so tender after being frozen that I couldn't bear to have this gentleman carrying me. His long snout, big ears and the bristles on the back of his head would stick into me something terrible.”

  “Friar Sand,” said the Tang Priest, “you carry him.”

  The boy then took a glance at Friar Sand and said, “Master, when the bandits raided our house they gave me a terrible fright. They were all made up like actors, wore false beards, and carried sticks and swords. The sight of that evil-looking reverend gentleman scares the wits out of me. I wouldn't dare let him carry me.” The Tang Priest then told Monkey to carry the boy, to which Monkey agreed with a chuckle. The monster concealed his delight as he docilely let Monkey carry him. Monkey pulled him over to the side of the path and tried him for weight.

  The boy was only about three pounds ten ounces heavy. “Damn you, you demon,” said Monkey, “you die today. How dare you try your tricks on me! I know that you're one of those.”

  “I'm the son of a good family who's had the bad luck to meet with disaster,” protested the demon. “What do you mean by calling me 'one of those?'”

  “If you're the son of a good family,” said Monkey, “then why are your bones so light?”

  “I have very small bones,” said the demon.

  “How old are you?” Monkey asked.

  “Six this year,” the demon replied.

  “You still ought to put on at least a pound a year,” said Monkey with a smile. “You should weigh at least six pounds: how come you're less than four?”

  “I wasn't breastfed as a baby,” said the demon.

  “Very well then,” said Monkey, “I'll carry you. But mind you warn me if you need to piss or shit.” Sanzang then pressed ahead with Pig and Friar Sand while Monkey brought up the rear with the demon on his back. They carried on towards the West, as this poem proves:

  High fiendish dangers face high virtue;

  The stillness of meditation gives rise to evil spirits.

  When the Heart Lord is upright and takes the middle way,

  Wood's mother foolishly treads the wrong path.

  The Thought-horse silently nurses desires,

  The Yellow Wife wordlessly worries and grieves.

  When the stranger prospers he rejoices in vain;

  From just this place must one vanish.

  As the Great Sage Monkey carried the evil spirit he felt very resentful of the Tang Priest for not realizing how hard the going was for him. “It would be bad enough to cross these high mountains empty-handed, but he has to make me carry someone else too. Even if this wretch is a good boy and not an evil spirit, he's lost his parents and I don't know who I should take him to. Best thing would be to dash him to the ground and finish him off.”

  The demon knew what Monkey was thinking, so he drew in four deep breaths from all around then blew them out again on Monkey's back, which made Monkey feel he weighed a thousand pounds.

  “You're using extra-weight magic to weigh me down, my lad,” laughed Monkey. This made the monster afraid that Monkey was going to kill him, so he got his spirit out of his body and sprang up into the ninth layer of cloud. Now that Monkey was finding the load on his back even heavier he grabbed the boy and smashed him so hard against a rock by the path that the boy's body looked like minced pork. Then, just to make sure that the boy would give no more trouble, Monkey tore off all four of his limbs and ripped them into little pieces that he scattered on both sides of the path.

  At this the demon, who was watching from mid-air, could hold back his fiery temper no longer. “This ape of a monk is thoroughly vicious,” he said. “Evil spirit wanting to kill your master I may be, but I've not yet laid my hands on him. How could you butcher me so atrociously? If I hadn't anticipated and got my spirit out you'd have slaughtered me in cold blood. I'm going to catch the Tang Priest here and now. If I delay any longer, he will become too clever.”

  The splendid evil spirit then conjured up a whirlwind in mid-air. It was a terrible one that sent stones and dust flying. What a splendid wind:

  The bowling whirlwind carried a stench over clouds and water;

  The sun and moon were blacked out by its pall.

  The trees along the ridge were soon uprooted;

  The flowering plums were flattened, trunks and all.

  Sand-blinded travelers could barely walk along;

  The paths were blocked by many a crashing rock.

  Its swirling mass made all the earth seem dark;

  The mountain creatures screamed and howled from shock.

  It blew so hard that Sanzang could barely stay on his horse, Pig could not look straight ahead, and Friar Sand had to bend and cover his face. Realizing that this was a devil's wind, the Great Sage rushed forward to catch them up, but the demon had already scooped the Tang Priest up in his wind. Sanzang had disappeared without a trace. Nobody could tell where he had been taken or where to start looking for him.

  Before long the wind fell and the sun was shining again. Monkey went up and saw that the white dragon horse was trembling and neighing. The luggage had been thrown into the path, Pig was hiding under a crag and whimpering, and Friar Sand was squatting howling on the mountainside.

  “Pig!” shouted Monkey, and recognizing his voice the idiot looked up to see that the storm was over.

  He climbed to his feet, grabbed hold of Monkey, and said, “What a wind.”

  Friar Sand came forward too and said, “That was a twister, brother. But where's the master?”

  “The wind blew so hard,” said Pig, “that we all had to hide our heads, close our eyes and take cover. The master lay down on the horse's back.”

  “But where's he gone now?” Monkey asked.

  “He must have been
blown away by the wind as if he were made of rushes,” replied Friar Sand.

  “Well, brothers, we might as well split up here and now,” said Monkey.

  “Yes,” said Pig, “the sooner the better. It would be a very good idea if we all went our separate ways. This journey to the Western Heaven is endless. We'll never get there.” Hearing them saying this made Friar Sand shudder and turn numb.

  “Brothers, what terrible things to say,” he said. “We all committed crimes in our earlier lives and were converted by the Bodhisattva Guanyin who administered the vows to us and gave us our Buddhist names. We all adopted the Buddhist faith and volunteered to protect the Tang Priest on his journey to the West to worship the Buddha and fetch the scriptures. This is how we are going to atone for our crimes. If we give up here and talk about going our separate ways we'll fail to do the good deeds the Bodhisattva asked of us and we'll disgrace ourselves. People will jeer at us and say that we've got no staying power.”

  “You're right, brother,” said Monkey. “But why wouldn't the master do as he was told? My fiery eyes and golden pupils can tell good from evil. The whirlwind just now was caused by the boy who was hanging in the tree. I could see he was an evil spirit, but neither of you nor the master could. He thought the boy was the son of a good family and made me carry him. Just when I'd decided to get rid of him he used his magic to make himself heavier and weigh me right down, so I smashed him to bits. I reckon he must have used his powers to escape from his body, call up the whirlwind and carry the master off. If only the master hadn't always ignored my advice. That's why I was so discouraged and said that we ought to split up. I accept your sincere advice, brother, but I don't know what to do. What do you suggest, Pig?”

  “What I said just now was nonsense,” said Pig. “I was talking off the top of my head. Of course we shouldn't split up. Brother, we'll just have to do as Friar Sand says, find the monster and save our master.”

  “Yes, brother,” said Monkey cheerfully, his anger now gone, “let's all pull together. Get the baggage and the horse ready, and we'll go up the mountain to find the demon and save our master.”

  The three of them pulled themselves up the mountainside and across ravines with the help of creepers, covering about twenty miles without finding any trace of the demon. The mountain was completely without birds and beasts, but there was many a tall pine. By now Monkey was really anxious, so he sprang up on a craggy peak, shouted, “Change!” and gave himself three heads and six arms, so that he looked just as he had when he made havoc in Heaven. Then he shook his gold-banded cudgel so that there were three of that too. With much whacking and thwacking he lashed out wildly to the East and to the West, clearing paths both ways.

  “This is terrible, brother,” said Pig to Friar Sand. “Monkey'll never find the master this way-he's just in a furious temper.”

  Monkey's lashing about flushed out a whole crowd of poverty-stricken local gods dressed in rags and tatters, with no seats to their breeches or legs to their trousers. They all knelt on the mountain slope and said, “Great Sage, we mountain gods and local deities pay our respects.”

  “Why are there so many of you?” Monkey asked.

  “Great Sage,” they replied, kowtowing, “this mountain is known as Mount Hao. It measures two hundred miles around. As there is a mountain god and a local deity every three miles or so that makes thirty mountain gods and thirty local deities. We heard yesterday that you were coming, Great Sage, but we have been late greeting you because we could not all assemble quickly enough. That is why the Great Sage has been so angry. We beg him to forgive us.”

  “I'll let you off this time,” said Monkey, “but I've got something to ask you: how many evil spirits are there on this mountain?”

  “Just one, lord and master,” they replied, “but he's really beggared us. We get hardly any incense or paper offerings burnt for us now, and no food or blood at all. We have to go hungry and naked. How many evil spirits could we possibly support?”

  “Which side of the mountain does he live on?” Monkey asked.

  “Neither,” they said. “In the middle of the mountain there's a ravine called the Withered Pine Ravine, and beside it there's a cave called the Fire-cloud Cave. In the cave lives a demon king who has tremendous magic powers. He's always capturing us mountain gods and local deities to tend his kitchen fire and watch his door, or to make us carry bells and shout to clear the way for him at night. And the little devils expect us to make regular payments to them too.”

  “You are all gods from the spirit world, so where can you get money from?” Monkey asked.

  “We haven't any,” the gods replied, “we have to muster all of us spirits morning and evening to catch a few deer, and if we haven't anything to offer, they'll come to tear down our shrines and take off our own clothes. He's made life impossible for us. We beg and beseech you to rid us of this monster and save all the spirits of these mountains.”

  “As he controls you and you are always going to his cave you must know where he's from and what he's called,” said Brother Monkey.

  “When we tell you we're sure you will have heard of him, Great Sage,” they replied. “He's the son of the Bull Demon King by Raksasi. He cultivated his conduct for three hundred years in the Fiery Mountains and developed True Samadhi Fire. His powers are tremendous. The Bull Demon King sent him here to hold this mountain. His name is Red Boy, and his title is Boy Sage King.”

  This was good news for Monkey, who dismissed the local deities and mountain gods, resumed his original form, and jumped down from the peak. “Relax, brothers,” he said to Pig and Friar Sand, “no need to worry any more. The master won't possibly be killed. The evil spirit is a relation of mine.”

  “Stop lying, brother,” said Pig. “This is the Western Continent of Cattle-gift, and you come from the Eastern Continent of Superior Body. They're a very long way apart, with thousands of mountains and rivers between them, to say nothing of a couple of oceans. So how could he possibly be a relation of yours?”

  “The crowd that turned up just now were the local deities and mountain gods from round here. When I asked them for some background on the demon they told me he is Red Boy, the son of the Bull Demon King by Raksasi, and he's also known as the Boy Sage King. When I made havoc in Heaven five hundred years ago I visited all the famous mountains and people of distinction in the world. The Bull Demon King took me as his seventh sworn younger brother. There were six demon kings altogether, and the only reason why I was prepared to call the Bull Demon King my elder brother was because I was a bit smaller than him. So as this devil is the Bull Demon King's son and I know his father, I'm his uncle. That means he couldn't possibly harm my master. I must be off straight away.”

  “But, brother,” said Pig with a laugh, “three years without paying a visit and relations are no longer relations, as the saying goes. You haven't seen him for five or six hundred years. You haven't even had a drink together or invited him over on holidays. There's no way he'll still treat you as a relation.”

  “What a way to judge people,” said Brother Monkey. “As another saying goes,

  Every piece of duckweed floats down to the sea;

  People will always meet each other somewhere.

  Even if he doesn't regard me as a relation any more, at any rate he won't harm the master. I don't expect him to treat me to a slap-up meal, but he's bound to give me the Tang Priest back in one piece.” The three brother-disciples, their minds once more turned to pious thoughts, led the white horse loaded with the luggage along the path.

  Without caring whether it was day or night they had covered some forty miles when they saw a pine woods through which a stream flowed in a twisting ravine. The water was green and pure, and at the head of the ravine was a stone bridge leading to a cave. “Brother,” said Monkey, “I'm sure the evil spirit must live in that rock-face over there. Let's have a council of war to decide who looks after the luggage and the horse and who comes with me to subdue the demon.”
/>   “Brother,” said Pig, “I'm no good at hanging around. I'll come with you.”

  “Fine,” said Monkey, continuing, “Friar Sand, hide the horse and the luggage deep in the woods and guard them carefully while we two go there to look for the master.” Friar Sand did as he was told, while Monkey and Pig went fully armed to the cave. Indeed:

  The vicious fire of a raw child won;

  Mind-ape and Mother of Wood both helped.

  If you don't know whether things turned out for good or for ill, listen to the explanation in the next installment.

  Chapter 41

  The Mind-Ape Is Defeated by Fire

  The Mother of Wood Is Captured by a Demon

  Good and evil are quickly forgotten,

  Flowering and fading are of no concern.

  When perception is half-revealed it may sink or swim;

  Follow fate and take your food and drink when they come.

  Divine peace is still and solitary;

  Stupidity is open to devilish attack.

  The Five Elements smash the woods of contemplation;

  When the wind blows it is bound to be cold.

  The story tells how the Great Sage Monkey took his leave of Friar Sand and led Pig with him as he sprang across the Withered Pine Creek and headed straight for the demon's crag. There was indeed a cave in it, and it was no ordinary sight.

  When returning along one's old route in mysterious silence,

  The call of the crane is heard in the wind and moonlight.

  White clouds bathe the river in brightness;

  The waters under the bridge make one think of immortals.