“And if I don’t accept, that’s all you’ll have: bodies. Fifty-fifty, or no deal.”
“What do you think I am, made of money?”
“It will be dangerous.” Without the correct authorizations, doing anything with corpses constituted a serious crime, and this was all about examining corpses.
“For me as well.”
Cí got up to leave, but Xu grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back to his seat. He produced a flask, poured liquor into two gourds, and drank both himself. Then he burped.
“Fine. Twenty percent.”
Cí looked him in the eyes. “Thanks for the food,” he said, getting to his feet again.
“Damn you. Sit for a moment, would you? This business has to benefit us both, and you must see I’m the one risking more. If anyone catches wind of me making money out of corpses, I’m out of a job.”
“And I’ll be thrown to the dogs!”
Xu frowned and poured more of the liquor, this time offering one of the gourds to Cí, then drinking and again refilling his own.
“You think it all depends on your special telling powers, but things don’t work that way. The families will need convincing before we can even look at the corpses. When I talk to them I’ll be getting as much information as I can. That way we can work out what they really want. The art of fortune-telling is one part truth, ten parts lies, and the rest pure illusion. We’ll want to pick families with money and get to them during the wake, but we must be very discreet about everything. One-third: That’s my final offer. That’s fair to us both.”
Cí stood again and, placing his fists together, bowed.
“When do we start?” he asked.
For the rest of the morning, Cí helped Xu with his tasks at the cemetery: straightening gravestones, digging graves, cleaning out vaults. While they were working, Xu mentioned he occasionally helped at Buddhist cremations—a practice reviled by Confucians, but one that was becoming more popular with Buddhism’s increasing appeal and because conventional burial rites were so expensive. Cí said he’d be interested in going with him sometime.
Xu asked him where he’d learned about corpses, and Cí told him it ran in the family.
“The same with not feeling pain?”
“The same,” he lied.
Cí spent the afternoon cleaning the Eternal Mausoleum. The room in which Xu kept his tools was an utter pigsty, and Cí imagined Xu’s home was probably a mess, too. So when Xu proposed the idea of Cí and Third moving in with him, Cí wasn’t exactly enthusiastic.
“But if we’re going to work together, it’s the least I can do, right?” Xu asked. Then he frowned. “Obviously, I’d have to charge you, but it would solve the issue of your sister.”
“Charge me? What do I pay you with?”
“We’d take it out of your share of the profit. Ten percent, say.”
“Ten percent!”
“Absolutely.” Xu shrugged. “And don’t forget, your sister would have to help at home, with the fishing and some chores.”
It seemed exorbitant to Cí, but that Third would be looked after was appealing. Xu told him about his two wives, both of whom were in the house. He’d had three daughters but managed to marry them off. All Cí was worried about was Third’s health, but Xu reassured him that it wouldn’t be heavy work. This made Cí feel better. Everything seemed to be fitting into place.
Next they began to discuss how to organize their work. Xu told Cí that he’d try to go for the deaths that offered the best potential profit—accidents or even outright murders. But he had another idea as welclass="underline" he wanted Cí to tell the surviving family members what was wrong with them.
“When it comes down to it, you know about illnesses, bodily problems. I bet you could take one look at someone, dead or alive, and know if something’s wrong with their stomach, their intestines, their guts—”
“Guts and intestines are the same,” Cí pointed out.
“Hey! Don’t get smart with me! People always turn up in some kind of pain, including pangs of conscience. You know how it goes: something they said wrong to the deceased, some small betrayal, something they stole…Now, if we can establish a relationship between that and the deceased’s tormented soul, they’ll want to get rid of the curse immediately—and that’s where we make some real money.”
Cí rejected the idea. It was one thing to apply his knowledge to discern a cause of death, quite another to take advantage of living people in need of real advice.
But Xu wasn’t giving up. “Fine. All you have to do is identify the ailment. Leave the rest to me.”
That afternoon they attended six burials. Cí wanted to examine one corpse whose inflamed eyelids seemed to suggest a violent death, but the family wouldn’t allow it. When the same thing happened several more times, Xu began worrying aloud that this had been a bad idea. He told Cí he’d have to figure out a way to make his part work or the deal was off.
It was nearly nightfall, and the cemetery would be closing soon. Cí watched another cortege coming up the hillside. A beautifully carved coffin and a troupe of musicians playing funeral music indicated the family was wealthy. He scanned them to see who might be most susceptible and decided on a youth in full mourning garb with red-rimmed eyes. Cí was ashamed about what he was about to do, but he had to do it. Third’s food, board, and medicine wouldn’t pay for themselves. He walked up to the youth and asked if he could join him. Then he offered him an incense stick that he said had special powers. As he described all the wondrous properties of the incense, he searched the youth’s face for a clue to any ailment—and there it was: a yellow tinge to the eyes that he knew was related to a liver condition.
“You know, of course,” said Cí, “that it’s normal for the response to the death of a family member to lead to vomiting and nausea. But if you don’t do anything to cure it, the pain in your right side will eventually kill you.”
Hearing this, the youth began trembling. He asked Cí if he was a seer.
“Yes,” said Xu, appearing next to them, smiling. “And he’s one of the best.”
And Xu took over. Bowing spectacularly low, he took the youth by the arm and led him away from the cortege. Cí couldn’t hear their conversation, but judging by the money he had afterward, it seemed his partnership with Xu was beginning to be profitable.
That night Cí was introduced to Xu’s houseboat. A long way from being seaworthy, it was permanently moored, and the hemp ropes between it and the jetty were all that kept it from sinking. It creaked with every step and stank of rotten fish. In Cí’s eyes it was everything but a place to lay your head, but Xu was proud of it. Cí pulled aside the sailcloth that served as a door drape and came face-to-face with a woman. She screamed and looked as if she were about to push Cí and Third over the side, but Xu intervened.
“This is my wife, Apple,” Xu said with a laugh. Another woman appeared, bowing when she saw the visitors. “And this is my other wife, Light.”
The women whispered all the way through dinner, clearly unhappy about the idea of taking in two people when there was barely space for them. But when Xu showed them the money they’d earned that day and gave Cí credit, the women stopped complaining and started smiling.
“I’ll pay you your percentage soon,” Xu whispered, taking Cí by the shoulder.
They went to sleep squashed together like canned sardines. Cí’s face ended up right next to Xu’s feet; it might have been better, he thought, to find some rotting fish to snuggle up with. Cí’s inability to feel pain seemed to be counterbalanced by an overly acute sense of smell. Suddenly he remembered the bitter, intense smell after his house had burned…that smell…