The Year of Rice and Salt

But then it made a sound like a dog whimpering, and Shih jumped back and shouted a warning. The others rushed forward, Kang Tongbi at their fore, and by torchlight they saw a man in ragged robes, dirty, hunched over, staring up at them, his frightened eyes big in the torchlight.

'Thief!' someone shouted.

'No,' he said in a hoarse voice. 'I am Bao Ssu. I'm a Buddhist monk from Soochow. I'm just trying to get water from the river. I can hear it.' He gestured, then tried to limp away towards the river sound.

'A beggar,' someone else said.

But sorcerers had been reported west of Hangzhou, and now Widow Kang held her lantern so close to his face that he had to squint.

'Are you a real monk, or just one of the hairy ones that hide in their temples!'

'A true monk, I swear. I had a certificate, but it was taken from me by the magistrate. I studied with Master Yu of the Purple Bamboo Temple.' And he began to recite the Diamond Sutra, a favourite of women past a certain age.

Kang inspected his face carefully in the lamplight. She shuddered palpably, stepped back. 'Do I know you?' she said to herself. Then to him: 'I know you!'

The monk bowed his head. 'I don't know how, lady. I come from Soochow. Perhaps you've visited there?'

She shook her head, still disturbed, peering intently into his eyes. 'I know you,' she whispered.

Then to the servants she said, 'Let him sleep by the back gate. Guard him, and we'll find out more in the morning. It's too dark now to see a man's nature.'

In the morning the man had been joined by a boy just a few years younger than Shih. Both were filthy, and were busy sifting the compost for the freshest scraps of food, which they wolfed down. They regarded the members of the household at the gate as warily as foxes. But they could not run away; the man's ankles were both swollen and bruised.

'What were you questioned for?' Kang asked sharply.

The man hesitated, looking down at the boy. 'My son and I were travelling through on our way back to the Temple of the Purple Bamboo Grove, and apparently some young boy had his queue clipped about that time.'

Kang hissed, and the man looked her in the eye, one hand up. 'We're no sorcerers. That's why they let us go. But my name is Bao Ssu, fourth son of Bao Ju, and a beggar they had in hand for cursing a village headmaster was questioned, and he named a sorcerer he said he had met, called Bao Ssu ju. They thought I might be that man. But I'm no soulstealer. Just a poor monk and his son. In the end they brought the beggar back in, and he confessed he had made it all up, to stop his questioning. So they let us go.

Kang regarded them with undiminished suspicion. It was a cardinal rule to stay out of trouble with the magistrates; so they were guilty of that, at the least.

'Did they torture you too?' Shih asked the boy.

'They were going to,' the boy replied, 'but they gave me a pear instead, and I told them Father's name was Bao Ssu ju. I thought it was right.'

Bao kept watching the widow. 'You don't mind if we get water from the river?'

'No. Of course not. Go.' And she watched him while the man limped down the path to the river.

'We can't let them inside, she decided. 'And Shih, don't you go near them. But they can keep the gate shrine. Until winter comes that will be better than the road for them, I suppose.'

This did not surprise Shih. His mother was always adopting stray cats and castaway concubines; she helped to maintain the town orphanage, and stretched their finances by supporting the Buddhist nuns. She often spoke of becoming one herself. She wrote poetry: 'These flowers I walk on hurt my heart,' she would recite from one of her day poems. 'When my days of rice and salt are over,' she would say, 'I'll copy out the sutras and pray all day. But until then we had all better get to the day's work!'

So, after that the monk Bao and his boy became fixtures at the gate, and around that part of the river, in the bamboo groves and the shrine hidden in the thinning forest there. Bao never regained a normal walk, but he was not quite as hobbled as on the night of Guanyin's enlightenment day, and what he could not do his son Xinwu, who was strong for his size, did for both of them. On the next New Year's Day they joined the festivities, and Bao had managed to obtain a few eggs and colour them red, so that he could give them out to Kang and Shih and other members of the household.

Bao presented the eggs with great seriousness: 'Ge Hong related that the Buddha said the cosmos is egg shaped, and the Earth like Giving red eggs: this was a south China custom, called 'sending happiness for the new year'.

Possibly the author means to suggest the monk Bao had lied about his place of origin.

As he gave one to Shih he said, 'Here, put it longways in your hand, and try to crush it.'

Shih looked startled, and Kang objected: 'It's too pretty.'

'Don't worry, it's strong. Go ahead, try to crush it. I'll clean it up if you can.'