Golden Bells are also said to induce pure thoughts, and the toad looked like he could use some. I politely picked up and moved a couple of codgers so Master Li and I could sit down flanking the toad.
“Goo-goo-goo?” said the codgers.
“Goo-goo-goo,” I replied.
The toad's pale bulging eyes slowly moved toward Master Li.
“I didn't do it,” he said.
“Ten witnesses,” said Master Li.
“Liars. You can't prove a thing.”
The toad turned back to his dangling fish hook. His mouth was set stubbornly, and I doubted that even Master Li could get another word out of him.
“Hsiang, I envy you,” Master Li said rather sadly. “Such is your seraphic vision of the life hereafter that you can turn your back on this one, and forgo such worldly pleasures as watching your family flourish. Your nephew, for example. What's his name? Cheng? Chou Cheng of Chao-ch'ing, and what a promising lad he is. I hear he's risen right to the top of the ling-chih trade, and has practically cornered the market on Devil's Umbrellas and Thunderballs.”
The toad continued to stare straight ahead.
“I also hear he's put up part of the profits to buy a full seat on the Purple Flower council. Such precocity!” Master Li said admiringly. “I predict the lad will go far, not least because he knows what to do with his assets. Last night, for example, I met a delightful fellow who had a full tube of Devil's Umbrella, and it just occurred to me that the odd stains on his fingers might come from the coiner's trade, and that I had seen him slipping in and out of Meng's Money Exchange. A fellow like that might know all sorts of valuable secrets—what's in the basement, for example—and do you know what we saw on our way here? The Purple Flower Gang, opening up Meng's Money Exchange, and I rather suspect they don't intend to steal anything. They intend to draw the attention of the magistrates to some rather peculiar paraphernalia.”
The fishing pole was beginning to tremble.
“Everybody knows that Meng's Money Exchange is merely a front for the counterfeiting business,” Master Li said thoughtfully. “It is said that the ringleader is the Second Deputy Minister of Finance, and can you guess what we saw at One-Eyed Wong's? Some bright young man who had access to every kind of ling-chih presented a few choice Thunderballs to Lady Hou, and then he whispered something into her lovely ears, and—well, you know Lady Hou. Guess who she approached with her little dagger? Right! The Second Deputy Minister of Finance, that's who, and I rather suspect that his position as king of counterfeiters is temporary. I wouldn't be at all surprised if your precocious nephew and his friends take over, unless somebody decapitates them first.”
The toad dropped his pole into the water. “Li Kao, you wouldn't do that, would you?” he said pleadingly. “He's only a boy.”
“And a delightful one, so I'm told,” Master Li said warmly.
“A trifle wild, perhaps, but that's the way of the young,” the toad said. “You have to allow for a little excess in boyish ambition.”
“Youth will be served,” Master Li said sententiously. “Sometimes after having been stuffed with truffles and basted in bean curd sauce,” he added.
“Li Kao, if you're working for the Secret Service, I can give you a few tips,” the toad said hopefully.
“No need,” Master Li said. “All I want is an expert opinion, and no evasions.” He pulled out the manuscript fragment and passed it over. “Do you know anyone capable of doing this?”
The toad looked at the fragment for no more than five seconds before his eyes bulged even farther and his jaw dropped.
“Great Buddha!” he gasped. “Do I know somebody who could do this? Nobody but the gods could do this!”
He held it up to the light, oblivious to anything else, and Master Li took the opportunity to continue my education.
“Ox, there are no more than ten great men in history whose calligraphy was so prized that kings would go to war to get a sample,” he said. “Such calligraphy is unmistakable, and no connoisseur could look at that fragment without crying, „Ssu-ma Ch'ien!“ Surely you studied some of his texts in school?”
Surely I had, and surely I was not going to give Master Li a frank opinion. I used to love history class. I can still quote whole passages by heart: “When the emperor entered the Hall of Balming Virtue, a violent wind came from a dark corner, and out of it slithered a giant serpent that coiled around the throne. The emperor fainted, and that night earthquakes struck Loyang, and waves swept the shores, and cranes shrieked in the marshes. One the fifth day of the sixth moon a long trail of black mist floated into the Hall of Concubines, and hot and cold became confused, and a hen turned into a rooster, and a woman turned into a man, and flesh fell from the skies.” Now, that is grand stuff, just the thing to give to growing boys, and then we were old enough to read the greatest of all historians. This is what Ssu-ma Ch'ien had to say about the exact same subject: “The Chou Dynasty was nearing collapse.” Bah.
“Nothing is harder to forge than calligraphy, and the calligraphy of greatness is nearly impossible,” Master Li explained. “The writer's personality is expressed through every sweep of the brush, and the forger must become the man who's hand he's faking. Somebody has done the impossible by perfectly forging Ssu-ma Ch'ien, and the baffling thing is that he made the forgery pathetically obvious.”
“Sir?” I said.
“Would you write down your father's name unless you were directly referring to him?”
“Of course not!” I was appalled at the idea. “It would be grossly disrespectful, and it might even open his spirit to attack by demons.”
“Precisely, yet in a fragment supposedly written by Ssu-ma Ch'ien, he refers to a minor government official named T'an no less than three times. T'an was his father's name.”
That stopped me. I couldn't for the life of me imagine why a forger would produce a masterpiece that would be unmasked in an instant. Neither could the toad.
“This is both unbelievable and incomprehensible,” he muttered. “Have you seen the entire manuscript?”
“No,” said Master Li. “I understand it's quite brief, and was perhaps intended to be attached as a footnote to one of the histories.”
The toad scratched his chin. “The parchment is genuine,” he said thoughtfully. “When one thinks of forgery, one thinks of modern works, but what if the forger was a contemporary? Li Kao, we know that Ssu-ma was castrated by Emperor Wu-ti, but are we sure we know why? The official reason has never seemed very persuasive to me, and this forgery is so superb that Ssu-ma would have a hell of a time proving he didn't write it. One can imagine sly courtiers pointing out to the emperor that the Grand Master Astronomer Historian was so impious he would write down his own father's name, and if the text also contained slighting references to the throne—”
At that point his voice was drowned out. One of the reprobates looked at Master Li's venerable wrinkles and decided that somebody might be challenging for the title of Saintliest of Them All, and he took three or four deep breaths and raised his gaping mouth toward the Great River of Stars.
“Hear me, O Heaven, as I pray to the six hundred named gods!” he bellowed. “I pray to the gods of the ten directions, and the secondary officials of the ten directions, and the stars of the five directions, and the secondary stars of the five directions, and the fairy warriors and sages, and the ten extreme god kings, and the gods of the sun and the moon and the nine principal stars!”
The venders perked up. “Worms for sale!” they cried.