The Middle Kingdom (97 page)

Li Shai Tung
looked across at Tolonen. The Marshal, like Nocenzi and young Ebert,
had knelt, so as not to be above the T'ang.

The T'ang's eyes
were filled with puzzlement. "But this is a
wei chi
board,
Knut. And a good one too. Why should Li Yuan not have this or know of
it?"

In answer
Tolonen reached out and took the lids from the two wooden pots that
held the stones.

"But that's
wrong. . . ." the T'ang began. Then he fell silent.

Wei chi
was
played with black and white stones: one hundred and eighty-one black
stones and one hundred and eighty white. Enough to fill the
nineteen-by-nineteen board completely. But this set was different.

Li Shai Tung
dipped his hands into each of the bowls and scattered the stones
across the board. They were all white. Every last one. He lifted the
bowls and upended them, letting the stones spill out onto the board,
filling it.

"They feel
odd," he said, rubbing one of the stones between thumb and
forefinger, then met Tolonen's eyes again. "They're not glass."

"No,
Chieh
Hsia.
They're bone. Human bone."

The T'ang
nodded, then got up slowly, clearly shaken. His fingers pulled at his
plaited beard distractedly.

"You were
right, Knut. This is not something I would wish Yuan to know of."

He turned,
hearing a noise behind him. It was Klaus Ebert. The old man bowed
low. "Forgive me for intruding,
Chieh Hsia,
but I felt
you would want to know at once. It seems we have unearthed part of
the mystery."

Li Shai Tung
frowned. "Go on."

Ebert glanced
up, his eyes taking in the sight of the
wei chi
board and the
scattered stones. "The search of the Palace Marshal Tolonen
ordered has borne fruit. We have discovered who placed the present on
the table."

"And is he
dead.or alive?"

"Dead, I'm
afraid,
Chieh Hsia.
He was found in one of the small scullery
cupboards in the kitchens. Poisoned, it seems. By his own hand."

The T'ang
glanced at Tolonen, his eyes suddenly black with fury. "Who was
it? Who would
dare
bring such a thing into my household?"

"One of
your bond servants,
Chieh Hsia
." Ebert answered. "The
one you knew as Chung Hsin."

Li Shai Tung's
eyes widened, then he shook his head in disbelief. "Chung Hsin.
. . ."It was inconceivable. Why, Li Shai Tung had raised him
from a three-year-old in this household. Had named him for his
strongest quality.

Yes, Chung Hsin
he'd named him.
Loyalty.

"Why?"
he groaned. "In the gods' names, why?"

Ebert was
staring at the board now, frowning, not understanding. He looked
across at Tolonen. "Is that what he delivered?"

Tolonen nodded
tersely, more concerned for the state of his T'ang than in answering
his old friend.

"Then why
did he kill himself?"

It was the T'ang
who answered Ebert's question. "Because of the message he
delivered."

"Message?"
Old Man Ebert looked back at his T'ang, bewildered.

Li Shai Tung
pointed down at the board, the scattered stones.

"The board
. . . that is Chung Kuo. And the white stones"— he
shuddered and wet his lips before continuing—"they
represent death. It is a message, you see. From our friend DeVore. It
says he means to kill us all. To fill Chung Kuo with the dead."

Tolonen looked
up sharply at mention of DeVore. So the T'ang understood that too. Of
course.

Ebert was
staring at the board now, horrified. "But I thought stones were
symbols of longevity."

"Yes."
The T'ang's laughter was bitter. "But Knut has had them tested.
These stones are made of human bone. They will outlast you and I,
certainly, but they symbolize nothing but themselves. Nothing but
death."

"And yet it
might have been worse, surely? It could have been a bomb."

Li Shai Tung
studied his Councillor a moment, then slowly shook his head. "No.
No bomb could have been quite as eloquent as this." He sighed,
then turned to Nocenzi. "Take it away and destroy it, General.
And, Klaus"—he turned back—"say nothing of this
to anyone. Understand me? If Li Yuan should get to hear of this..."

Ebert bowed his
head. "As you wish,
Chieh Hsia
."

LI YUAN had been
watching for his father. He had seen the guards come and go with the
mystery package; had seen both Old Man Ebert and the Marshal emerge
from the cellar, grim faced and silent, and knew, without being told,
that something dreadful had happened.

When Li Shai
Tung finally came from the cellar, Yuan went across to him, stopping
three paces from him to kneel, his head bowed.

"Is there
anything I can do, Father?"

His father
seemed immensely tired. "Thank you, my son, but there is nothing
to be done. It was all a mistake, that's all."

"And Chung
Hsin. . . ?"

His father was
quiet a moment, then he sighed. "That was unfortunate. I grieve
for him. He must have been very unhappy."

"Ah. . . ."
Yuan lowered his head again, wondering whether he should ask directly
what had been beneath the white silk. But he sensed his father would
not answer him. And to ask a question that could not be answered
would merely anger him, so he held his tongue.

He searched for
a way to lighten the mood of things, and as he did so his fingers
closed upon the eight tiny pieces in the pocket of his ceremonial
jacket.

He looked up,
smiling. "Can I show you something, Father?"

Li Shai Tung
smiled bleakly back at him. "Yes. . . . But get off your knees,
Yuan. Please . . . this is your day. We are here to honor you."

Yuan bowed his
head, then stood and moved closer to his father. "Hold out your
hand, Father. They're small, so it's best if you look at them
closely. They're what the Marshal's daughter gave us for a betrothal
gift. Aren't they beautiful?" .

Li Shai Tung
stared at the tiny figures in his hand. And then he laughed. A loud,
ringing laughter of delight.

"Knut!"
he said, looking past his son at the old Marshal. "Why didn't
you say? Why didn't you tell me what your daughter had brought?"

Tolonen glanced
at his daughter, then stepped forward, puzzled.

"What is
it,
Chieh
H«a?"

"You mean
you do not know?"

Tolonen shook
his head.

"Then look.
They are the eight heroes. The eight honorable men."

Tolonen stared
at the tiny sculpted pieces that rested in the T'ang's palm, then
laughed, delighted. "It's an omen," he said, meeting the
T'ang's eyes. "What else can it be?"

The T'ang nodded
and then began to laugh again, his laughter picked up by those
nearest until it filled the Hall.

He looked down
at the tiny figures in his palm. How many times had he seen them on
the stage, their faces blacked to represent their honor? And now here
they were, sculpted from eight black stones! It was as Knut said; it
was an omen. A sign from the gods. These eight to set against the
vast colorless armies of the dead.

Yuan was
standing nearby, his mouth open in astonishment. "What is it?"
he asked. "What have I missed?"

In answer the
T'ang placed the pieces back in his son's palm and closed his fingers
tightly over them.

"Guard
these well, Yuan. Keep them with you at all times. Let them be your
talismen."

His son stared
back at him, wide eyed; then, with the vaguest shake of the head, he
bowed low. "As my father wishes. . . ."

But Li Shai Tung
had let his head fall back again, a great gust of laughter rippling
out from him, like a huge stone dropped into the center of a pond.

Let him hear of
this, he thought. Let DeVore’s spy report to him how the T`ang
laughed in his face defiantly. And let him learn, too, of the second
gift of stones—of the eight dark heroes; the eight men of
honor.

Let him hear.
For I will place the last stone on
his
grave.

THE
TRANSCRIPTION of standard Mandarin into an European alphabetical form
was first achieved in the 16th century by the Italian Matteo Ricci,
who founded and ran the first Jesuit Mission in China from 1583 until
his death in 1610. Since then several dozen attempts have been made
to reduce the original Chinese sounds, represented by some tens of
thousands of separate picto-grams, into readily understandable
phonetics for Western use. For a long time, however, three systems
dominated—those used by the three major western powers vying
for influence in the corrupt and crumbling Chinese Empire of the igth
century: Great Britain, France, and Germany. These systems were the
Wade-Giles (Great Britain and America—sometimes known as the
Wade System), the Ecole Franchise de PExtreme Orient (France) and the
Lessing (Germany).

Since
1058, however, the Chinese themselves have sought to create one
single phonetic form, based on the German system, which they termed
the
hanyu pinyin fang'an
("Scheme for a Chinese Phonetic
Alphabet"), known more commonly as
pin-yin,
and in all
foreign language books published in China since January ist 1979
pinyin
has been used, as well as being taught now in schools
alongside the standard Chinese characters. For this work, however, I
have chosen to use the older, and to my mind, far rr/ore elegant
transcription system, the Wade-Giles (in modified form). For those
now used to the harder forms of pinyin the following may serve as a
basic conversion guide, the Wade-Giles first, the
pinyin
after.

p
for b

ch'
for q

ts'
for c

j
for r

ch'
for ch

t'
for t

t
for d

hs
for x

k
for g

ts
for z

ch
for j

ch
for zh

The
effect is, I hope, to render the softer, more poetic side of the
original Mandarin, ill-served, I feel, by modern
pinyin.

The
version of the I Ching, or BOOK OF CHANGES, quoted from throughout is
the Richard Wilhelm translation, rendered into English by Gary F.
Baynes and published by Routledge & Keegan Paul, London, 1951.

The
translation of Ch'u Yuan's
T'ien Wen,
or "Heavenly
Questions" is by David Hawkes from THE SONGS OF THE SOUTH, AN
ANTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT CHINESE POEMS, published by Penguin Books,
London, 1985.

The
translation of Meng Chiao's "The Stones Where the Haft Rotted"
and Li Shang-Yin's "Exile" are by A. C. Graham from POEMS
OF THE LATE T'ANG, published by Penguin Books, London, 1965.

The
translation of Miu Hsi's "Bearer's Song" (from HAN BURIAL
SONGS) is by Arthur Waley, from CHINESE POEMS, published by George
Allen & Unwin, London, 1946.

The
translation of Chiang Yen's "Lady Pan's 'Poem on the Fan,' "
from the Yu
T'ai Hsin
Yung, is by Anne Birrell, from her
annotated version of NEW SONGS FROM A JADE TERRACE, published by
George Allen & Unwin, London, 1982.

The
quotation from Rainer Maria Rilke's DUINO ELEGIES is from the Hogarth
Press fourth edition of 1968, translated by J. B. Leishman and
Stephen Spender. Thanks to the estate of Rilke, St. John's College,
Oxford, for permission.

The
lines from THE HEART OF THE DRAGON by the late Alasdair Clayre are
reprinted with the permission of Dragon-book Aps (1984) and Houghton
Mifflin Company.

The
game of
Wei Chi
mentioned throughout this volume is,
incidentally, more commonly known by its Japanese name of Go, and is
not merely the world's oldest game but its most elegant. As far as
this author knows it has no connection to the trigram of the same
name in the I Ching—the sixty fourth, "Before Completion,"
but a playful similarity of the kind beloved of the Han might
possibly be noted.

Finally,
THE GAME OF WEI CHI by D. Pecorini and T. Shu (with a Foreword by
Professor H. A. Giles) is a real book and was published by Longmans,
Green & Co. in 1929. It is, alas, long out of print, and I have
Brian Aldiss to thank for my much-treasured copy. It's my fond hope
that its use herein might some day lead to the re-publication of this
slender classic.

DAVID
WINGROVE,
December
1989

IT
IS NOT intended to belabor the reader with a whole mass of arcane Han
expressions here. Most, it will be -found, are explained in context.
However, as a few Mandarin terms are used naturally in the text, I've
thought it best to provide a brief explanation of those terms here.

catty
—the
colloquial term for a unit of measure formally called a
jin.
One
catty—as used here—equals roughly i. i pounds
(avoirdupois), or (exactly) 500 gm. Before 1949 and the
standardization of Chinese measures to a metric standard, this
measure varied district by district, but was generally regarded as
equalling about 1.33 pounds (avoirdupois).

chang
—ten
ch'i, thus about 12 feet (Western).

ch'i
—a
Chinese foot; approximately 14.4 inches.

chi'an
—a
general term for money.

chieh
hsia
—term meaning "Your Majesty," derived from
the expression "Below the Steps." It was the formal way of
addressing the Emperor, through his Ministers, who stood "below
the steps."

ch'un
tzu
—an ancient Chinese term from the Warring States period,
describing a certain class of noblemen, controlled by a code of
chivalry and morality known as the li, or rites. Here the term is
roughly, and sometimes ironically, translated as "gentlemen."
The ch'un
tzu
is as much an ideal state of behavior—as
specified by Confucius in the
Analects
—as an actual
class in Chung Kuo, though a degree of financial independence and a
high standard of education are assumed a prerequisite.