Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 3

by Pu Songling

  Even more surprised, Dou asked, “Who is your king?”

  “You’ll find out shortly,” the servant replied. Before long, two female officials appeared, each holding a pair of banners, to guide Dou to the king. After passing through a number of gates, Dou saw the king sitting in a great hall, and when the sovereign observed Dou entering, he came down the steps there to welcome him, taking the hand of his guest and treating him with great courtesy.

  Once the civilities were finished, the king treated him to a banquet, and a sumptuous feast was laid out. As Dou looked above him in the hall, he noticed an inscribed plaque that read, “The Osmanthus Palace.” Dou was so nervous and shy that he couldn’t speak. “I am honored to be your neighbor,” the king declared, “for it means our fates have been closely aligned. For now, let’s drink to our hearts’ content, without suspicions or fear.” Dou eagerly agreed.

  While the wine made several rounds, they heard the music of a sheng playing from below, and since there weren’t any gongs and drums playing, the sound of its delicate music could be heard despite it coming from some distance away. After a bit, the king, on the spur of the moment, looked around at the officials surrounding him and said, “I’ll provide the first line of a couplet, and I’ll trouble you to come up with the second: ‘A talented man climbs up to the Osmanthus Palace.’”

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  The Osmanthus Palace: Localities and noble titles in the supernatural world of Pu’s stories are often associated with flowers and plants, linking the natural with the supernatural, just as in the title of this story. Osmanthus flowers are popularly used in China to make fragrant teas and soups.

  Sheng: A reeded pipe wind instrument.

  While the people present sat thinking of possibilities, Dou responded, “‘The gentleman loves the lotus flower.’”

  The king was greatly pleased, and cried, “How strange! Lotus is my daughter’s birth name—how did you manage to come up with that? Has this long been fated to happen? The princess must be told to come and meet you face-to-face.”

  In moments, the sound of jingling jewelry approached, accompanied by a powerfully fragrant perfume, as the princess arrived. She was sixteen or seventeen years old, and matchlessly beautiful. The king directed her to kowtow to Dou, and told him, “This is my daughter, Lotus.” When she finished paying her respects to Dou, she left.

  Totally engrossed, he sat there numbly, watching her, completely infatuated. The king raised his wine cup to persuade Dou to drink some more, but the scholar didn’t even look his way. The king then scrutinized him, realized what was going on, and said, “My daughter would make a suitable match for you, but I’m afraid that we’re not the same kind of creatures, so what can be done about it?” Dou was still quite entranced, and seemed not to have heard the king.

  One of the officials walked over and sat next to Dou, nudging him with one foot while informing him, “The king is toasting you, but you haven’t noticed. He’s also talking to you—why aren’t you listening?”

  Looking like he’d just lost something, Dou expressed regret that he’d been so inattentive, and feeling extremely embarrassed, took his leave, saying, “I’ve abused your great generosity by unwittingly becoming drunk, so the only polite thing to do is to leave, and I hope you’ll pardon me. I’m sure you’re very busy, so I should be on my way.”

  “It’s truly been a pleasure getting to know you,” said the king, “so why be in such a hurry to talk about leaving? My ministers have already been unable to convince you to stay, and I dare not force you to remain. But if I could prevail on you to consider the idea, I’d certainly like to invite you to do so.” He then directed one of the officials to assist Dou in finding his way back.

  Once they were out in the road, the official asked him, “When the king said that you would be a good match for his daughter, and he seemed to want to marry her to you, why were you so silent, instead of speaking up?” Dou stamped his feet in frustration and felt sorry about his unresponsiveness, angry with himself every step of the way till he finally returned home.

  Suddenly he woke up, and he could tell by the light outside that it was almost sundown. In the growing darkness he sat there, going over the details of what had happened, clearly recalling everything he’d seen. Later, in his study, as he extinguished the light, he hoped he could return and experience the old dream again, but it was too difficult to recover the images, and with a sigh of regret, he gave up.

  One night, Dou was sharing his bed with a friend when suddenly he witnessed the arrival of the official from the Osmanthus Palace who’d previously seen him off, now carrying out the king’s order to summon him for a meeting. Dou was overjoyed, and left with the official.

  When he saw the king, he kneeled to pay his respects. The king pulled him up, invited Dou to sit with him, and told him, “Since you left, I know you’ve been troubling yourself with thoughts about my daughter. I mean to offer her to you in marriage, if you don’t mind.” Dou then formally thanked him.

  The king called on his court scholars and high officials to join them for a banquet. While they were drinking wine to their hearts’ content, an official reported to them, “The princess is ready now.” Presently they observed several dozen palace maids surrounding the princess as she made her entrance. She was wearing red brocade over her head, walking gracefully with tiny steps, and was led to the ceremonial carpeting, where she exchanged vows with Dou to complete the marriages rites.

  When these had been concluded, she accompanied Dou to a guesthouse. The nuptial chamber was warm and cozy, scented quite fragrantly, and intimate. “As I look at you,” said Dou, “truly I am the happiest of men, and even death holds no worries for me. But now that today has arrived, I’m afraid that it’ll prove to be nothing more than a dream.”

  The princess shyly covered her mouth with her hand, and said, “I’m obviously here with you, so how can it be just a dream?”

  The next morning, when they got up, Dou playfully assisted her with her make-up; shortly afterwards, he took a sash and wrapped it around her, using the cloth to measure both her waist and her feet. The princess giggled and asked him, “Are you crazy?”

  Dou replied, “I’ve repeatedly worried that this is all a dream, and that I’ll have only the faintest memories of it when I wake up. Just in case it’s still just a dream this time, I’m taking the measurements so I’ll have something to recall.”

  They continued teasing each other until a palace maid ran in and cried, “A demon has entered the palace gates, and the king has fled to one of the palace side halls, so disaster is approaching!” Dou was horrified, and rushed off to see the king.

  The sovereign was tearfully holding his head as he told Dou, “Don’t abandon the princess, and always love her. How could I have expected such evil to fall from the skies, causing the upheaval of our kingdom’s happiness— and what can I possibly do about it!” Shaken, Dou asked him to explain exactly what had happened. The king took a document from the table, and instructed Dou to open it up and read it.

  It was a memorial that read, “From Fragrant Hall’s great academician and minister, Heiyi: an extraordinary monster has appeared, so I implore Your Majesty to relocate the capital, to ensure our country’s survival, for it has occupied the palace gates. According to reports: on the sixth day of the fifth month, a giant python, a thousand zhang in length, appeared and forced its way in from outside the palace, meanwhile devouring more than 13,800 of your subjects; everywhere it passes, the palace becomes a wasteland, and we await your reply. Mustering their courage, your officials have made spy sorties, and have seen the demon python for themselves: it has a head like a mountain peak, eyes like red seas; when it raises its head it can swallow up entire halls and pavilions, and when it extends its body, it utterly demolishes buildings and walls. Truly, never before has such a ferocious monster been seen, and none of the previous ages in history have suffered such a calamity! The country and the royal shrine of your ancestors
are all in immediate danger! I beg Your Majesty to leave the palace at once with your family, and quickly move to a place of safety” and so on.

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  A memorial: That is, a petition, a formal request for action; traditionally directed to the emperor.

  Fragrant Hall’s . . . Heiyi: The name, Heiyi, literally means “Black Wings.” Though the gates have been breached by the “monster,” it could still be a considerable distance from the king’s quarters, separated by additional courtyards, gates, and large halls—like Fragrant Hall, which is part of the royal compound but not a connected, or even necessarily a contiguous, building.

  When Dou finished reading, his face was as pale as dust. Just then one of the palace maids ran in to report, “The monster is here!” Throughout the palace, people were wailing and shouting, lamenting their pending doom.

  In his storehouse, the king was so frightened that he didn’t know what to do, so in tears, he looked to Dou and said, “You must protect my daughter.”

  Dou breathlessly rushed back to the princess. She was surrounded by her attendants, who were holding their heads and wailing, and when she saw Dou enter, she grabbed his coat and demanded, “Where are you going to take me?”

  Dou, who felt so sorry for her suffering that he wanted to die, caught hold of her wrist and pensively replied, “My family is poor and humble, and I’m ashamed that I don’t have A house of gold for you. I have a three-roomed thatched cottage, so for the time being we can flee and hide there—will that suit you?”

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  Zhang: A distance equal to 3.33 meters.

  The princess held back her tears as she replied, “Right now, I have no choice, so take me with you quickly, I beg you.” Dou then took her by the hand and they left.

  Before long, they arrived at his cottage. “This place is both very safe and huge,” the princess declared, “much more so than the palace at home. Now that I’ve come here with you, what can be done for my parents? Please build another small house, and then we can invite the entire country to come with them.” Dou told her this wouldn’t be possible.

  Crying loudly, the princess complained, “If a husband can’t help his wife, what use is he!” Dou tried to console her a bit, and when he finished, she went into another room. While the princess lay down on the bed there, weeping pitifully, Dou was unable to comfort her.

  Deeply worried, but with no strategy in mind, he suddenly woke up, just then realizing that it had all been a dream. And yet the sound of weeping continued unabated beside his ear. Listening carefully, it didn’t seem to be a human sound—and then he discovered two or three bees by his head, buzzing on his pillow. With a startled shout, he thought it all a very strange occurrence.

  His friend asked him what was wrong, and so he told him about the dream. He, too, was surprised at how strange it was. They both got up to take a look at the bees, which now refused to let loose of Dou’s clothing, and though he tried to shake them off, they wouldn’t fly away.

  His friend suggested that he should build them a nest. Dou then followed up on this, supervising its construction by some workmen. As soon as a few of its sides had been erected, a swarm of bees arrived from the other side of Dou’s wall, in a rope-like single file formation. Before the clay top was even set in place, more than a dou of the flying insects had already collected inside.

  Tracing them while they were still arriving, Dou found that they were coming from the long-established garden belonging to his neighbor, an old man. There was a bee hive in the garden that had been there for thirty years, and Dou knew its population had grown quite large. Dou told the old man about what had happened.

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  Dou: A measure of volume equal to one decaliter.

  Taking a look, the old man noticed that his hive seemed completely silent. When he lifted a wall of it, he discovered there was a snake inside it that was more than a zhang in length. He then captured and killed it. That’s when Dou realized that the giant python had been this same snake.

  Once the bees entered Dou’s hive, they multiplied and flourished, and nothing strange happened after that.

  196. The Girl in Green

  Scholar Yu Jing, whose courtesy name was Xiaosong, lived in Yidu. He happened to be studying at the Sweet Spring Temple. One night while he was leafing through a book and reading aloud, suddenly a girl outside his window commended him by saying, “Master Yu is always reading!” This made him think: So deep in the mountains, where could this young woman have come from?

  While he was pondering skeptically, the girl had already pushed open the door and entered with a smile, exclaiming, “Always reading!” Startled, Yu stood up and looked at her dressed in a long green skirt, agreeable and beautiful beyond compare. Realizing that she wasn’t human, Yu insistently asked her where she lived. “You can see I’m not going to eat you, so why do you keep on asking?”

  Yu felt attracted to her, and took her to bed with him. As she was taking off her skirt, he saw that her waist was so slender that he could almost reach around it with just his two hands. As night turned to daybreak, the girl lightly took her leave. Thereafter, not a night went by without her return.

  One night as they were sharing a drink and conversing together, Yu discovered that she was quite skilled musically. “Your voice is lovely and delicate,” Yu said, “and if you were to sing a song, my spirit would be utterly transported.”

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  Yidu: A county located in Shandong province.

  The girl laughed and replied, “Then I don’t dare sing anything—I’d be afraid of driving away your spirit.” Yu kept pressing his request. She told him, “I’m not just being stingy about it, I’m afraid of having others hear me. You genuinely want to hear me, so I’ll do as you wish and reveal my feeble skill; but I’ll sing in an extremely soft voice.”

  Then agilely tucking her tiny feet under her, she sang,

  A blackbird singing in a tree

  Takes my place as I leave at midnight.

  But I’m not complaining because my slippers are now damp,

  I’m just afraid that my gentleman is alone.

  Her voice was as delicate as a fly’s, judging by the parts of the song Yu could actually understand. But as he listened quietly, it was as if the song was twisting and buzzing with energy, moving and agitating him.

  When the song was over, she opened the door and peered out, saying, “I suspected that someone was outside your window.” She circled the house, looking all around it, then came back inside.

  “Why are you so deeply afraid?” asked Yu.

  With a smile, she answered, “As the proverb says, ‘A spirit who’s just trying to survive is always afraid of men.’ I must be what it’s talking about.”

  Just after they’d gone to bed, still fearful and worrying, she said, “Could it be that our time together is almost over?” Yu urgently asked her what she meant. The girl explained, “My racing heartbeat suggests that I may die soon.”

  Yu tried to comfort her by saying, “Racing heartbeats and twitching eyelids happen all the time, so why let them upset you like this?” The girl felt a bit better, so they made love together once again.

  When daylight was approaching, she stood at the foot of the bed and put on her clothing. Then just as she was about to open the door, she began pacing nervously and returned to the bed, telling Yu, “I don’t know why, but I’m very frightened. Please walk with me as I leave.” Yu consequently got up and accompanied her outside.

  The girl implored him, “Stand there until I’m quite a distance away; once I’ve gone past the wall, then you can go back inside.”

  “Okay, I promise,” replied Yu. He watched the girl pass the veranda of the house, waiting until he couldn’t see her any longer.

  Right when he was deciding to go back inside to sleep, he heard the girl frantically scream for help. Yu ran towards the sound, but as he looked around,
there weren’t any footprints, though her voice seemed to be coming from the beams of the house. He looked up and checked carefully, spotting a big spider, the size of a ball, that had just fought to capture whatever it was that was crying to him for help.

  Yu wrecked the web, pulling out the insect trapped in it, and when he unwrapped the webbing from around it, he discovered a little green bee that the spider would have killed. Yu took it inside the house with him, and placed it on a tabletop. After it had been there for a time, it revived and began to move, until finally it could take a few steps.

  Slowly it climbed up onto his inkstone, then flung its body into the pool of ink there, and when it came out it bent down on the table, dragging itself around to spell out the character meaning “thank you.” Afterwards it quickly spread its wings, slipped through the window, and flew off. From then on, the girl in green never returned.

  197. The Li Clan

  In Longmen, there was a worthless fellow named Xie Zhongtiao, who was completely immoral. When he was more than thirty years old, his wife died, leaving Xie with their two sons and a daughter, who kept wailing continually from dawn to sunset, wearying and bitterly vexing him. He made plans to get a new wife, looked high and low for one, but didn’t find anyone who suited him. Meanwhile, he hired an old woman as a servant to take care of his children.

  One day, as he was hiking lazily along a mountain path, a woman suddenly appeared from behind him. He paused to gawk at her, noticing that she was lovely and about twenty years old. Finding her attractive, he teased her by saying, “A woman out all alone—aren’t you afraid something might happen to you?” The woman kept on walking like she hadn’t noticed him.

  “With those delicate steps of yours,” Xie added, “climbing the mountain path must be particularly difficult.” The woman still ignored him.