Caption

A strapping fellow with a goshawk perched on his left shoulder.

34.

THE PAINTED SKIN.

A certain gentleman by the name of Wang, from the city of Taiyuan, was out walking early one morning when a young woman passed him carrying a bundle, hurrying along on her own, though with considerable difficulty. He caught up with her, and saw at once that she was a girl of about sixteen, and very beautiful.

'What are you doing out here all alone at this early hour?' he asked, instantly smitten.

'Why do you bother to ask, since you are only a passer-by and can do nothing to ease my troubles?' was her reply.

'Tell me, what has caused this sorrow of yours? I will do anything I can to help you.'

'My parents were greedy for money,' she replied sadly, 'and sold me as a concubine into a rich man's household. The master's wife was jealous of me, and she was always screaming at me and beating me, until in the end I could bear it no longer and decided to run away.'

'Where are you going?'

'I am a fugitive. I have no place to go.'

'My own humble abode is not far from here,' said Wang. 'I should be honoured if you were to accompany me there.'

She seemed only too pleased at this suggestion and followed him home, Wang carrying her bundle for her. When they arrived, she observed that the house was empty.

'Do you have no family of your own?' she asked.

'This is my private study,' he replied.

'It seems an excellent place to me,' she said. 'But I must ask you to keep my presence here a secret and not to breathe a word of it to anyone. My very life depends on it.'

He swore to this.

That night they slept together, and for several days he kept her hidden in his study without anyone knowing that she was there. Then he decided to confide in his wife, the lady Chen. She feared the consequences if the girl should turn out to have escaped from some influential family, and advised him to send her away. But he paid no heed to her advice.

A few days later, in the marketplace, Wang ran into a Taoist priest, who studied his face with grave concern. 'What strange thing have you encountered?'

'Why, nothing!' replied Wang.

'Nothing? Your whole being is wrapped in an evil aura,' insisted the Taoist. 'I tell you, you are bewitched!'

Wang protested vehemently that he was speaking the truth.

'Bewitched!' muttered the Taoist, as he went on his way. 'Poor fool! Some men blind themselves to the truth even when death is staring them in the face!'

Something in the Taoist's strange words set Wang wondering, and he began to have serious misgivings about the young woman he had taken in. But he could not bring himself to believe that such a pretty young thing could have cast an evil spell on him. Instead he persuaded himself that the Taoist was making it all up, trying to put the wind up him in the hope of being retained for a costly rite of exorcism. And so he put the matter out of his mind and returned home.

He reached his study to find the outer door barred. He was unable to enter his own home. His suspicions now genuinely aroused, he clambered into the courtyard through a hole in the wall, only to find that the inner door was also closed. Creeping stealthily up to a window, he peeped through and saw the most hideous sight, a green-faced monster, a ghoul with great jagged teeth like a saw, leaning over a human pelt, the skin of an entire human body, spread on the bed on his bed. The monster had a paintbrush in its hand and was in the process of touching up the skin in lifelike colour. When the painting was done, it threw down the brush, lifted up the skin, shook it out like a cloak and wrapped itself in it whereupon it was instantly transformed into his pretty young 'fugitive' friend.

Caption

He peeped through and saw the most hideous sight.

Wang was absolutely terrified by what he had seen, and crept away on all fours. He went at once in search of the Taoist, but did not know where to find him. He looked for him everywhere and eventually found him out in the fields. Falling on his knees, he begged the priest to save him.

'I can drive her away for you,' said the Taoist. 'But I cannot bring myself to take her life. The poor creature must have suffered greatly and is clearly close to finding a substitute and thus ending her torment.'

He gave Wang a fly-whisk and told him to hang it outside his bedroom door, instructing him to come and find him again in the Temple of the Green Emperor.

Wang returned home. This time he did not dare to go into his study, but slept with his wife, hanging the fly-whisk outside their bedroom. Late that night he heard a faint sound at the door, and not having the courage to look himself, he asked his wife to go. It was the 'girl'. She had come, but had halted on seeing the fly-whisk and was standing there grinding her teeth. Eventually she went away, only to return after a little while.

'That priest thought to scare me!' she cried. 'I'll never give up! Not now, not when I am so close! Does he think I'm going to spit it out, when I'm so near to swallowing it!'

She tore down the fly-whisk and ripped it to pieces, then broke down the door and burst into the bedroom. Climbing straight up on to the bed, she tore open Wang's chest, plucked out his heart and made off with it into the night. Wang's wife began screaming, and a maid came hurrying with a lamp, to find her master lying dead on the bed, his chest a bloody pulp, and her mistress sobbing in silent horror beside him, incapable of uttering a word.

The next morning, they sent Wang's younger brother off at once to find the Taoist.

'To think that I took pity on her!' cried the priest angrily. 'Clearly that fiend will stop at nothing!'

He followed Wang's brother back to the house. By now, of course, there was no trace of the 'girl'. The Taoist gazed around him. 'Fortunately she is still close at hand.'

He went on to ask, 'Who lives in the house to the south?'

'That is my family compound,' replied Wang's brother.

'That is where she is now,' said the priest.

Wang's brother was appalled at the idea and could not bring himself to believe it.

'Has a stranger come to your house today?' asked the priest.

'How would I know?' replied the brother. 'I went out first thing to the Temple of the Green Emperor to fetch you. I shall have to go home and ask.'

Presently he returned to report that there had indeed been an old lady. 'She called first thing this morning, saying she wanted to work for us. My wife kept her on, and she is still there.'

'That's the very person we're looking for!' cried the Taoist. He strode next door immediately with the brother, and took up a stance in the middle of the courtyard, brandishing his wooden sword.

'Come out, evil one!' he cried. 'Give me back my fly-whisk!'

The old woman came hurtling out of the building, her face deathly pale, and made a frantic attempt to escape, but the Taoist pursued her and struck her down. As she fell to the ground the human pelt slipped from her, to reveal her as the vile fiend she really was, grovelling on the ground and grunting like a pig. The Taoist swung his wooden sword again and chopped off the monster's head, whereupon its body was transformed into a thick cloud of smoke hovering above the ground. The Taoist now took out a bottle-gourd, removed the stopper and placed it in the midst of the smoke. With a whooshing sound the smoke was sucked into the gourd, leaving no trace in the courtyard. He replaced the stopper and slipped the gourd back into his bag.

When they examined the pelt, it was complete in every human detail the eyes, the hands and feet. The Taoist proceeded to roll it up like a scroll (it even made the same sound), placed it in his bag and set off. Wang's wife, who was waiting for him at the entrance, beseeched him to bring her husband back to life, and when the Taoist protested that he had already reached the limits of his powers, she became more and more hysterical and inconsolable, throwing herself on the ground and absolutely refusing to get up. The Taoist seemed to ponder the matter deeply.

'Truly, I cannot raise the dead,' he said eventually. 'But I can tell you of one who may be able to do so. Go to him, ask him, and I dare say he will be able to help you.'

Wang's wife asked him whom he was referring to.

'He is a madman who frequents the marketplace and sleeps on a dunghill. You must go down on your knees and beg him to help you. If he insults you, madam, you must on no account go against him or be angry with him.'

Wang's brother knew of this beggar. He took his leave of the Taoist, and accompanied his sister-in-law to the marketplace, where they found the man begging by the roadside, singing a crazy song. A good three inches of mucus trailed from his nose, and he was so foul it was unthinkable to go near him. But Wang's wife approached him on her knees.

'Do you love me, my pretty?' leered the mad beggar.

She told him her tale, and he laughed loudly.

'There's plenty of fine men in this world for you to marry! Why bother bringing him back to life?'

She pleaded with him.

'You're a strange one!' he said. 'You want me to raise the dead? Who do you take me for the King of Hell?'

He struck her with his stick and she bore it without a murmur. By now quite a crowd had gathered around them. The beggar spat a great gob of phlegm into the palm of his hand and held it up to her mouth.

'Eat!'

She flushed deeply and could not bring herself to obey his order. Then she remembered what the Taoist had commanded and steeled herself to swallow the congealed phlegm. As it went down her throat it felt hard like a lump of cotton wadding, and even when, after several gulps, she managed to swallow it down, she could still feel it lodged in her chest. The madman guffawed.

'You really do love me then, don't you, my darling?'

And with those words, off he went. The meeting was clearly over, and he paid her no further attention. She followed him into the temple, determined to plead with him again, but though she searched every corner of the temple, she could find no trace of him. So she returned home, greatly downcast, filled with grief at her husband's appalling death, and overcome with shame and self-disgust at the treatment she had tolerated from the mad beggar. She wailed pathetically and for a time contemplated taking her own life.

When eventually she went to wash the blood from her husband's corpse and prepare it for the coffin, her women stood to one side watching, none of them having the stomach to approach their dead master's corpse. She lifted him up in her arms and started carefully replacing his internal organs, sobbing so fiercely that she began to choke and feel nauseous. Then she felt the lump of phlegm rising in her gullet and brought it up, so suddenly that she had no time to turn away, but spat it directly into the gaping wound in her husband's chest. She stared aghast: the phlegm had become a human heart and lay there throbbing, hot and steaming. In disbelief, she brought the sides of the wound together with both her hands, pressing with all her strength. If she relaxed her grip for an instant, she saw hot steam leaking from the wound. She tore a strip of silk from her dress and bound the wound tightly. In a little while, when she touched her husband's corpse, she felt the warmth returning. She drew the bedcovers fully over it. In the middle of the night when she lifted the covers, he was already breathing through his nose. By the next morning, he was fully alive.

'I was drifting,' he said. 'Everything was confused. It was like a dream. But all the time I felt this pain deep in my heart.'

The wound formed a scar the size of a coin, which disappeared with time.

35.

THE MERCHANT'S SON.

In the southern region of China known anciently as Chu, there lived a merchant who was often away from home on business, leaving his wife much on her own. During one of his absences she awoke from a dream of a sexual encounter, and feeling around her sure enough discovered a little man in her bed. There was something strange about him that betrayed him at once as a fox-spirit. After a little while, he climbed down from the bed and disappeared from sight, without even needing to open the door.

The next evening, when she went to bed, she asked her old cook to keep her company. She also asked her ten-year-old son, who usually slept in a separate bed, to come and sleep next to her. Late that night, when both cook and boy were fast asleep, the fox came again, and the merchant's wife mumbled something, as if she were talking in her sleep. This woke the cook, who called out to her mistress, whereupon the fox went away.

All the following day, the wife seemed somehow distracted, not her normal self at all. When night fell, she left her lamp alight and told her son to try not to sleep too soundly. Nonetheless, in the small hours, both cook and boy dozed off for a spell with their faces turned to the wall, and when they awoke the lady was nowhere to be seen. They imagined she must have gone out to relieve herself, but when they had waited a long while and there was still no sign of her, they began to have misgivings. The cook was too scared to go out and look, so the boy took the lamp and went searching everywhere for his mother. Eventually he found her lying stark naked on the floor in one of the other rooms of the house. When he went to help her up, she seemed not in the least ashamed of her nakedness.

From that day on, she became quite unhinged in her mind and took to singing, wailing, cursing and howling at all hours of the day and night. She now refused to have anyone with her at night. She insisted on sleeping apart from her son and sent the cook away as well. If her son heard laughter or voices coming from his mother's room, he would rise from his bed immediately and go in with a light. All he ever received for this was an angry scolding, which he accepted without a murmur. The members of the household thought him a plucky boy.

Then he started playing at being a builder, constructing piles of bricks and stones on the window-sills of his mother's room, which everyone thought was exceedingly naughty and strange. His elders tried to stop him, but he paid them no heed, and if anyone tried to take away one of his stones, he would hurl himself on the ground and scream like a baby so they were reluctant to cross him.

After a few days of this, both his mother's windows were completely bricked up, and not a ray of sunlight could find its way into her bedroom. Next he plastered over the slightest chink in the walls with mud, working at it flat out all day. And when that job was finished, he busied himself sharpening the kitchen choppers, rubbing the blades noisily backwards and forwards, exasperating everyone in the process.

One night, the boy hid one of the choppers in his shirt and shaded his bedroom lamp with a gourd. He lay awake waiting for his mother's strange nocturnal mutterings to begin, and when they did, rushed in with his lamp uncovered, blocking the doorway and yelling at the top of his voice. A few minutes went by and nothing happened. Then just as he stepped away from the door and loudly announced his intention of searching the room, suddenly out rushed a creature resembling a fox and made straight for the open door. The boy struck it smartly with the chopper, and removed about two inches of its tail. He could see the blood dripping on to the floor. When he lifted his lamp to look around him more closely, his mother began abusing him, but he took no notice. He finally went back to his bed and fell asleep, his only regret being that he had not been able to hit the creature fair and square. But he reflected that, although he had failed to kill it, he had probably deterred it from coming again in a hurry.

The next morning, he followed the trail of blood, which led over the wall and into the garden of the neighbouring Ho family. That night, although to his great joy the fox did not reappear in his mother's room, his mother herself lay there prostrate, delirious and seemingly at death's door.

Shortly after this, her husband the merchant returned. Concerned at the terrible state his wife was in, he sat by her bedside asking questions, but she merely reviled him and treated him like some mortal enemy. The boy told his father everything that had happened during his absence, and the merchant, greatly alarmed, sent at once for a doctor to treat his wife. But she only threw the medicines prescribed by the doctor on the ground, and continued to assail her husband with abuse. He secretly included some of the prescribed herbs in her daily soups and tisanes, and at last she began to show signs of recovery, much to the relief of father and son. Then one night they woke up in the middle of the night to find her gone. They looked for her everywhere, and finally found her again in another room of the house. As the days went by she became more and more deranged, absolutely refusing to be in the same room as her husband, and in the evenings going off on her own to her separate room. If they tried to prevent her, she became abusive. Her husband tried locking the room, but she made her way there nonetheless and the door opened for her of its own accord. The merchant was deeply disturbed by all of this, and arranged for more than one rite of exorcism to be performed, to no avail.

One evening, the son went to the Ho garden next door and hid in the long grass, hoping to discover something about the trouble-making fox's whereabouts. As the moon rose, he heard the sound of voices and, pushing aside the grass, saw two men sitting there drinking, waited on by a servant with a long beard. The servant wore old clothes of a brownish hue. All three men spoke in hushed tones, and the boy could not make out much of what they said. He did, however, hear one of the two men say to the servant after a while, 'Tomorrow, be sure to bring us a jar of white liquor.' Shortly afterwards they both went away, Caption

He saw two men sitting there drinking.

and only the long-bearded servant was left. He took off his robe and lay down to sleep on a rock, where the merchant's son was able to examine him carefully. He was like a man, but had an unmistakable tail. The boy would have gone home, but decided he had better spend the night in his hiding place for fear of being seen by the fox-servant. Just before dawn, he saw the two men return, one after the other, and disappear into the bushes.