Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts

by Zhongshu Qian

  That night, man and woman were startled awake by the terrific sound of a faraway roar. Until now, humans had been the only meat eaters. Other beasts, such as cows, goats, and pigs were strict vegetarians. Put on the correct path by God, they maintained the lofty spirit of “I’d rather be eaten, but stick to eating grass.”23 Now, besides humans, there existed other meat eaters, who not only ate human flesh but also had a particular taste for it. Little did these creatures know that the meat of humans is as unpalatable as that of cats, dogs, and other meat-eating land animals. The reason the Tang monk Tripitaka’s flesh made wild monsters drool with greed was undoubtedly because he had not broken his vegetarian fast for ten incarnations.24 The sound that man and woman had heard was the roar of an impatient lion in search of food. They shivered instinctively, detecting the menace in that roar. The domesticated animals cowering around them suddenly straightened up, perked up their ears, and held their breath, as if on alert. This only increased the pair’s uneasiness. The roaring soon stopped, and the night it had torn asunder gathered together again. After a certain interval of time, the domesticated animals seemed to realize that the danger had passed for the time being and relaxed with a sigh of relief. Man reached out and stroked the goat lying on its back beside him and discovered that its wool was wet and hot, as if it had just been sweating. Woman shuddered and said in a low voice, “God must be creating trouble for us. We’d better find a cave to sleep in. I’m afraid to sleep outside.” They got up and herded the animals into a mountain valley, and then hid in a nearby cave, where they bedded down. Their bodies and minds gradually thawed, opened up, and sunk down. Just as the animals were about to disappear into slumber, they suddenly snapped to attention, and the humans were immediately wide awake. Cold waves of terror spread from their hearts to their limbs, freezing their bodies and throats. The cause of this terror seemed to be lying in wait for them in the dark, sizing them up. They dared not move or breathe, as cold waves of sweat coursed down their bodies. Time stopped, as if frozen in terror. Suddenly, the terror vanished, and a burden seemed to lift from the atmosphere. Dawn’s rays crept into the mouth of the cave. Just then, a pig somewhere near the cave entrance gave a wild squeal, which stopped midway and was replaced with complete silence, as if it had been cleanly hacked off with a cleaver. The pig’s squeal completely deflated the tension within the cave. Man put his arm around woman so that she could sleep in his embrace. Never since they had been together had they needed each other so much without sexual desire. When the sun had risen, each went out separately. Man counted the animals and discovered that they were short one pig. The cows, goats, and other animals also seem to have suffered a shock and were listless. As he was pondering the reason, woman rushed back from fetching water, panting for breath and crying. When she passed through the forest she had seen a large, coiled python taking a digestive siesta after having swallowed a pig. On the beach by the river lay a crocodile, its large mouth gaping at the sky. Luckily, she had run back quickly and it hadn’t seen her. Danger seemed to lurk in every corner. No longer could they live as free from cares as in the past. “How could so many fearsome creatures have appeared in a single night?” they conferred. “The guy we’ve been revering as God must have created them to harm us. He’s not God. He’s the Devil—the despicable Devil. We’ve been blind to have let him dupe us for so long. Well and good! We’ve seen through him now!” Invisibly, these words resolved an age-old dilemma: “If this world was made by an omnipotent and supremely benevolent God, how could there be evil people running amok?” As it turns out, God is none other than the Devil when he is in a benevolent mood and willing to feed us, while the Devil is simply God when he is in a bad mood and trying to feed us to something else. Rather than being polar opposites, they are in fact two sides of the same coin or two names for the same thing—just as a “madman” is also called a “genius,” a “thief” a “gallant,” and a “lover” an “irreconcilable foe.”

  Man and woman’s whispered deliberations went unheard by God. He still imagined himself to be their one and only, not knowing that, to man and woman, he had long since been “one” [written “—”] only in the spirit of the dividing “one” that Chinese physicians of antiquity marked below the name of the medicine on a prescription to indicate “two equal parts.” Omniscient and omnipotent though he was, God was, after all, an upper-class personage who disdained to bother with what went on under the covers or listen to what was being said behind closed doors. At the moment, he was rubbing his hands in anticipation of a good show. Sure enough, though the two of them were dispirited and unable to come up with a plan, they did not come to God for instruction either. After a while, the python had digested the pig, and the lion and the tiger began roaring nearby. Man grabbed woman and sprinted in alarm back to the cave, where they stacked stones by the entrance. The unfortunate domesticated animals that remained outside ran about in a panic and hid themselves in crevices in the mountainside. “Superb!” God thought. “Once you see your animals eaten by wild beasts, you’ll come begging to me, and when that happens . . . ha!” Who could have known that just as not all affairs under Heaven go as man intends, the affairs of mankind do not always proceed as Heaven wills. This strategy of depreciation failed to make humans accept defeat. Wild beasts, being wild beasts, meanwhile, lacked the moral cultivation that civilization instills. The python, for one, lacked an education and was unfamiliar with the ancient and enduring saying that one may “fail to taste lamb and end up reeking of mutton in the process,”25 so having eaten the pig it wanted to try a new flavor and swallowed an entire goat.26 The goat’s two pointy horns pierced its throat, so that even though it did succeed in tasting goat, it paid for it with its life. Lion and tiger were also the picture of low-class coarseness: lacking table manners, they brawled over the cow they were having for dinner. The tiger died as a result and the wounded lion went to the river for a drink. The river crocodile was an illiterate who had never read Han Changli’s famous piece “Offering to a Crocodile,” so instead of eating seafood it instead wanted to try lion meat.27 To the lion, it was bad enough that he had been denied eating someone else’s meat—how could he bear to part with his own?—so he engaged the crocodile in a vicious struggle. Victor and vanquished were difficult to distinguish, and their fight to the death saw the death of both. The horrific sounds coming from outside the cave scared man and woman half to death. When things quieted down outside they peeked out from the crack between the rocks at the cave’s entrance and saw that the domesticated animals had already been grazing for some time in groups of two or three. Relieved, they went outside and discovered that the horrid predators had all perished and that few of their own animals had been lost. Elated, they skinned the lion. Thenceforth, their cave had a rug, woman a leather overcoat, and man a few days of fresh meat. Woman had yet to be dazzled by American-made fake shark skin and was thus content with the leather from the skinned crocodile. The sole pity was that the giant snake hadn’t slithered its way out of ancient Chinese books, so there were no pearls between its joints for the taking.28 Fortunately, however, the vicious land animals weren’t from ancient Chinese books either, otherwise the lion’s heart and tiger testes that woman ate would have made her look fierce as well as bewitching,29 and man’s days would have been a trial!

  As it was, they didn’t end up enjoying many happy days. God saw that they had turned misfortune into good fortune and was as angry as he was disappointed. He realized that in order to make them suffer, he would need to create something that had no skin to flay and no meat to eat. Thus, the fur on the rug, the leather overcoat, and the domesticated animals suddenly had lice. At night, the entire sky was filled with disease-carrying mosquitoes. When the two of them ate, flies descended like large drops of black rain. Besides these, the humans were infiltrated with defense-resistant no-see-ums. As God anticipated, both of them fell sick, and a short while later, both breathed their last, realizing the vow that all lovers share to “die on the same day of the same
month of the same year.”30 The flies continued to go busily about their work, and after a little while, the pair’s corpses swarmed with fat, white maggots. Humans, who had consumed the flesh of cow, goat, pig, and even lion were reduced to bare skeletons by these tiny things. God, who when creating the insect world had gone out of his way to make them meticulous and efficient workers, was delighted. As he watched, he got carried away and forgot that he hadn’t wanted man and woman to die—he had just wanted to make them suffer until they conceded defeat to him. He still wanted to keep them. Once the maggots and bugs had eaten through skin and flesh and had begun to drill through bone for the marrow, he finally came around, but by then it was too late. Whether because no-see-ums work too fast or because man and woman were too slow to catch on to the situation, God never saw them express defeat or contrition. He had created things—including humans, vicious beasts, and no-see-ums—to realize his own plan. Why did nothing go as he wished? God was filled with regret. . . .

  His eyes opened and saw only the afternoon sun drooping lazily toward the mountaintops. It had all been a dream. As Lord of all, his will was law, but dreams enjoy extraterritoriality and were not subject to his governance. How infuriating! Then again, how could he know that this dream was not an omen? Creating a human for company would indeed be worthy of careful consideration. He was immortal. How lonely it would be to pass the endless years by himself! God stretched and let out a long, weary yawn at the sun, which was setting with a deathly pall, and at the world, which was gasping for life. His gaping mouth seemed ready to swallow whole that stretch of time, which was inexhaustible and would be hard to while away.

  CAT

  “‘Don’t beat a dog without considering his master’s face,’ they say,” Yigu muttered. “In that case, I shouldn’t beat the cat until I see her mistress’s face.”

  Trying to suppress his rising anger was like combing a tangle of matted hair. The mistress, indeed, had yet to show her face, and that damned cat was off hiding who knows where, so he couldn’t beat it anyway. It was his usual rotten luck—two and a half days of work wasted! Mr. Li was napping and, to judge by his routine, wouldn’t come to the study until nearly three o’clock. But all this simmering resentment would have cooled off by then, and Yigu felt he had to let it out while it was still hot. Fortunately, at that moment Old Whitey brought in the tea. Pointing at the tattered manuscript on the table, its words and lines scattered like city dwellers after a heavy bombing, Yigu exclaimed, “Just look! I went home for lunch and came back to find this mess! Before I left, I gave the final draft to Mr. Li to read. Who’d have thought that after he finished with it he’d leave it on my table instead of putting it in the drawer? Now it’ll have to be copied again!”

  Having nodded along as he listened to Yigu, Old Whitey now shook his head and heaved a sigh. “What a disaster! This must be Taoqi’s doing. Taoqi’s so taoqi— so naughty! The mistress spoils her so nobody dares touch a single hair of hers. Mr. Qi, please ask the master not to let Taoqi into the study anymore.” With that, he shuffled out slowly with his back hunched.

  The Taoqi in question was the black cat who had made this mess. Back when she lived in a poor home east of the Forbidden City,1 she was called “Blackie,” but Mrs. Li found this name too vulgar. She laughed. “Wouldn’t that make for a perfect match with our doorkeeper, Old Whitey? He’d have a fit if he heard that.”

  The day the cat was sent to the Lis’ house, on Nanchang Street, Mrs. Li was having friends over for tea, and all the guests wanted to come up with a good name for it. A poet who admired Mrs. Li said, “During the Western Renaissance, a dark complexion was the ideal of beauty. When we read sonnets by Shakespeare or the French Pleiades poets,2 we see that the women they fell for were all dark beauties. I personally find black more mysterious than white, too—more suggestive and enticing. The Chinese have always favored women with white skin, but that’s an immature aesthetic view, like children who only like to drink milk because they’re not old enough to drink coffee. This cat is beautiful and dark, so why don’t we borrow a ready-made name from Shakespeare’s poetry and call her ‘Dark Lady’?3 Nothing could be more refined.”

  Hearing this, two guests grimaced at each other, because the poet was obviously alluding to the lady of the house. Mrs. Li, naturally, was delighted, but she found the name “Dark Lady” too long. Having received an American-style education, she was in the habit of calling everyone by his nickname to show her familiarity. Had she run into Shakespeare himself, she would have called him “Bill,” so nicknaming the cat was just the thing to do. She took the poet’s suggestion but settled for a shorter version: “Darkie.”

  Everyone applauded, “Miao!—Wonderful!”

  The sound baffled the cat, who thought that people were imitating her own mewing and chimed in, “Meow! Meow!”

  Nobody realized that the new nickname meant not “Dark Beauty” but “Blackie”—precisely the name that Mrs. Li found so vulgar. One eminent elderly man didn’t say a word at the time, but after returning home stayed up half the night digging through books. First thing the next morning he called upon Mrs. Li and bad-mouthed the poet: “What does he know? I didn’t want to argue with him at the time, so I kept my peace, but the Chinese, too, have always liked dark, beautiful women. For instance, in classical Chinese, Daji’s4 name was written with characters that meant that she was dark and beautiful. Daji is a perfect transliteration of ‘Darkie,’ and it’s faithful to the meaning besides. Ha-ha! What a coincidence! What a coincidence!”

  Secure in her mistress’s affection, the cat seemed to take great delight in causing trouble. Within a week, people were slurring her foreign name, transforming it into a homophone of “Darkie”—Taoqi. And so, like a fashionable student from a missionary school, this rascal had both a Chinese name and a Western name. In addition, it had acquired a posthumous, hybrid name while still alive.5

  The cat had been living at the Li home for less than two years. During those two years, the Japanese occupied three eastern provinces; Beiping’s government was reshuffled once; Africa lost a nation and gained an imperialist state; and the League of Nations revealed itself to be a League of Dreams or a League of the Blind.6 Yet Mrs. Li did not change her husband, and Taoqi still enjoyed her mistress’s affections and her own naughtiness. In this world of never-ending calamities, how many people are as steadfast in their “isms” and beliefs?

  This was the third day in Qi Yigu’s probationary period as Li Jianhou’s private secretary, but he had yet to have the good fortune to glimpse the famous Mrs. Li. When speaking of this Mrs. Li, we can use only what Chinese grammarians term “superlatives.” Of all famous wives, her appearance was the most beautiful, her manners the most admirable and forthright. Her living room was the most tastefully decorated, she entertained the most frequently, the dishes and hors d’oeuvres served at her parties were the most exquisite and sumptuous, and she had the largest circle of friends. What’s more, her husband was the tamest and never got in her way. If, in addition to according her all these virtues, we were to announce that she lived in prewar Beiping, you would immediately arrive at your conclusion: she was the most refined and elegant wife in the country with the world’s most ancient civilization. This is because Beiping—the same northern capital that had been reviled by such Ming and Qing dynasty celebrities as Tang Ruoshi and Xie Zaihang7 as the most vulgar and filthiest of cities—had, in the recent prewar years, suddenly come to be renowned as the most refined and beautiful city in the land. Even Beiping’s dust, which lies three feet thick on any windless day, now seemed to have the very hue and aroma of antiquity. History museums from newly founded small European and American countries sent scholars to bottle it up for display, as though it contained the plundered remnants of the three imperial dynasties of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing.8

  Ever since the capital had moved to the south, Beiping had lost its usual political function.9 At the same time, like every useless and obsolete thing, it became a display item of h
istorical value. Like a shoddy secondhand goods stall rebranded as an illustrious antiques shop, the reality remained unchanged but the psychological impact on the customer was enormous. Think how embarrassing it is to buy cheap things at a secondhand goods stall! To patronize an antiques shop, however, you must have money, an addiction to ancient things, and discriminating tastes. As such, those with no intention of accumulating secondhand junk begin buying antiques, and those who can afford to shop only at secondhand stalls have their status elevated to refined antique collectors. Should you happen to have lived in Beiping at that time, you could pass yourself off as worldly and brag to your friends in Nanjing or Shanghai, as if to live in Beiping conferred title and status. To claim that Shanghai or Nanjing could produce art and culture would be as ridiculous as to assert that the hand, foot, waist, or stomach could think as well as the head.

  The discovery of the remains of “Beijing man” at Zhoukoudian further demonstrated the superiority of the Beiping resident. Beijing man was the most developed of the apes, just as the Beiping resident was the most civilized of the Chinese.10 Therefore, at that time, when intellectuals were advancing the idea of a “Beijing [or Capital] school” in the newspapers, they traced their origins back to Beijing man. As such, even though Beijing had changed its name to Beiping, they did not call themselves the “Beiping school.”11 The “Beijing school” was composed almost entirely of southerners, who were as proud of residing in Beiping as the Jews were of their adopted countries, and Beiping never left their lips. Since moving to Beiping, Mrs. Li’s foot fungus infection had not recurred—an unexpected bonus of living in the cultural center.