Shooting the Tiger

Time came round to late August. Over the next few days, the tiger hunt went with an unbelievable smoothness... Of course, that was Liu Cheng's view of it. In Liu Cheng's eyes, the equipment was ready, the people organized, the tiger's trail had been found, several pit traps were dug, and the patrols never stopped sweeping — so the next step, naturally, was to sit tight and let the traps do their work, or else run straight into the tiger. What else could anyone do? If that wasn't smooth going, what was? If the tiger dropped into a pit, or they stumbled onto it, that was called luck; if it never fell in and couldn't be found, that was called "the sky wanting to rain" — and who can curse the sky for raining? But the very same events, in Liu Huzi's eyes, spelled total stagnation! He went out at dawn and came home after dark each day, leading twenty or thirty able-bodied men armed with long spears, stiff bows, hemp rope, fishing nets, and clubs, circling back and forth among the pit traps for fear of missing his chance — and every time he returned he was sunk in gloom, a fever blister even coming up at the corner of his mouth... In his own words, he dreaded that the very next day Gao Jian would send someone over, and the day after that he would have to go before the Grand Commander — and the tiger hunt he had spent so long preparing would all be for nothing. Then there was one Liu Jili who went about with the same bitter frown, plainly worrying over the same lack of progress. At which Liu Cheng — winter clothes now in hand — only wanted to laugh, and couldn't be bothered to join in. But to tell the truth, for all his laughing at others, Liu Cheng's own proper work was limping. These days he had been ranging the neighborhood looking for new markets, trying to widen his sales channels, and search as he might, he found nothing suitable. To begin with, most markets nearby were private markets like Master Du's of the Celestial Masters. A fortified manor like that lived by keeping its economy in a closed loop, self-sufficient in every particular, and it simply would not let you inside. Second, official markets — that is, government markets — were not lacking, and were even flourishing; but all of them collected goods in lieu of tax. As a rule, whatever the merchandise, one part in ten went at the gate, so unless you could be sure of sales or had a shop inside, the toll cost more than it brought in — and besides, such markets tended to be rather far off... And truly, if it came to being pressed into an official market, why not just go all the way to Jiankang and enjoy it properly? As for the wild markets at the crossroads, the trouble was not distance alone but the limits of how far such a market could grow. These gatherings existed only along the great arteries of Jingkou Road and Jurong Road; and given where the Pengcheng Liu clan's refugee camp now sat, and what it could haul, they could only work outward from the existing wild markets to either side of the roads — at which point the people coming and going would be, for the most part, the same folk passing again, and the effect would be slight indeed. And so Liu Cheng's grand strategy of "making the sandals-and-mats business bigger and stronger" had run squarely into difficulty. And with the weather now visibly colder, the old straw sandals were steadily losing their market; he came within a hair of sending Old Man Wang out to the crossroads wild markets shouting, "Straw sandals unsold — please help the Northern Chu refugees!" There were efforts in other directions, to be sure. The sandal-weaving team, for one, had begun attempting a turnaround, using hemp vine — retted, then sun-dried — to try making hemp sandals of higher value and longer production cycle: lined with reed catkins and straw, these were the commonest winter outdoor shoes of ordinary households. But no amount of striving by Liu Cheng, no amount of fretting by Liu Huzi, made any difference to everyone else. That's right: nobody in the camp cared one bit about the employment anxieties of its few young men. Because Liu Ren Gong had said so with his own mouth: the government's resettlement relief was coming... Refugees were like that — with confidence and without were two different creatures altogether. So these days everyone was busy shoring up the camp and laying in stores for winter, and before your very eyes the whole camp was thriving. Firewood was piled everywhere; trenches, fences, and paths had linked up without anyone quite meaning it; the huts had grown visibly sturdier and roomier. Hemp vine, reed catkins, even certain common medicinal herbs — the moment this band of refugees found a resource spot, they stripped it bare and hoarded every scrap on the spot. Liu Cheng had even seen a pile of duck feathers, washed and sun-dried over and over! No telling where they'd come from, but their purpose was plain at a glance even across more than a thousand years: they meant to get into the down trade... So long as it kept you warm, what did a little stink matter? It wasn't that there were no discordant notes. News of the Celestial Masters' fortified manor had indeed drawn many a bachelor — but these bachelors, exactly like the water slaves, truly had no five pecks of rice; they belonged at Liu Huzi's table, fretting for nothing. It was in just this atmosphere that, on the twenty-fifth of the eighth month, Gao Jian sent his nephew Gao Heng — still a youth — galloping over in person bearing the former's message, and for Liu Zhi he spelled out the situation in detail: Some ten days earlier, Chen Kui — General of the West, defender of Shouchun, sprung from the Yingchuan Chen clan — taking the Grand Commander Chu Pou's southward return to Guangling as his reason, had burned Shouchun city's grain, fodder, and baggage-train and withdrawn south himself, memorializing the court to explain. The court had at last pronounced this Northern Expedition a failure, and the Grand Commander Chu Pou, having submitted his memorial of self-reproach, was back in Jingkou. Gao Jian had thereupon followed up with an official letter, and the Grand Commander's headquarters had consented: on the first, second, and third of the ninth month, in succession, it would receive the refugee leaders who had come south in his train, to console and reassure them. Gao Jian had already worked Liu Zhi's name onto that list. Liu Zhi should be ready before the ninth month began, and on the last day of the eighth month proceed, as circumstances suggested, to Iron-Urn City or Jincheng to await the summons. When the day came, Gao Heng would come again with notice, and accompany Liu Ren Gong, helping him get word to acquaintances inside the Grand Commander's headquarters. Everything was said in fine detail, arranged to a nicety, leaving not an inch of room for a word in edgewise... For this, the whole camp, top to bottom, Liu Cheng included, had nothing but gratitude for Garrison Commander Gao and the Grand Commander. At most, Liu Cheng thought one layer deeper: Chen Qun's descendants, still rich and honored to this day? So this was what great clans, what aristocratic houses, truly were. The only one who felt the sky had fallen was — remarkably — Liu Huzi, and Liu Huzi alone. Yet the fellow seemed to keep a streak of luck after all. On the second-to-last day of the eighth month, under a high sky and thin clouds, with the whole camp faintly restless, Liu Huzi had in fact already given up on the tiger hunt. That day he not only did not go out; when he crossed paths with Liu Cheng in the morning he even said that once the audience with the Grand Commander was settled in a few days, Liu Cheng could lead people to return the equipment — he himself would not go, to spare everyone the awkwardness. Clearly, he had truly quit. But at noon that very day, while the fellow was being bawled at by his father and putting his clothes to rights with several of his brothers, Liu Jili came pounding up on a thin horse, drenched in sweat. Without dismounting at all, he reined in one-handed and shouted from far off: "Brother Hu! The pit trap on the mountain to the north has blood in it — it must be that big tiger of North Mountain: it fell in and fought its way out wounded!" He hadn't even finished when the short, thickset Liu Huzi leapt straight off the ground: "Is it true?!" Liu Jili answered nothing. He simply opened the other hand, the one he had kept clenched all the while — and bloodstained tiger fur scattered on the autumn wind, one wisp drifting right across Liu Huzi's face. At the sight, A-Hu stood stunned for a heartbeat; then, heedless of everything, he stripped on the spot, bared his arms, darted into a tent at one side, and emerged a moment later in coarse short jacket and trousers with a kudzu-cloth garment over them, a leather armor vest atop that, took up that stiff bow in his hand, and was shouting one call after another, mustering his tiger-hunting party and marching out — as if answering some summons. The whole thing happened so fast that his two elder brothers, trying on their own clothes nearby, could only gape — far too late to stop him. Of course, it may simply be that Liu Sheng and Liu Pei knew all along they could not stop this brother of theirs — or were not minded to. By the time word reached Liu Ren Gong and he came hurrying over, distracted, in his beam crown and hugging a pair of half-woven hemp-grass sandals, his youngest son had vanished clean away, and he went white with fury on the spot. Among those who had hurried after, Liu San A-Gong seemed about to say something, but Liu Cheng cut in ahead of him: "Ren Gong, Ren Gong — you know Brother Hu's temper better than anyone... With you not there, who could have held him back?" Liu Zhi's face was still white. His eyes passed over his two elder sons, helpless: "If he'd found that tiger two days earlier, I'd have counted it fair. But this very afternoon he's to go to Iron-Urn City with young Gao. If he hunts the tiger now — succeed or fail, what good is it? And nine times in ten it's nothing but suffering for nothing?" Neither son said a word. Seeing this, Liu Zhi said no more either; he only turned to the youth at his side: "In that case, take the trouble of one more errand, A-Cheng. Take some more people over there and act as backup!" "Me?" Liu Cheng gaped, pointing at his own face. "Ren Gong, what use would I be? I don't know the first thing about tiger hunting — and they have a good dozen long spears and stiff bows between them! Since when do they lack a boy who couldn't truss a chicken?" Liu Zhi sighed, and spoke in earnest: "A-Cheng, A-Cheng... It's not whether his hunt succeeds that worries me. If the tiger truly slaps him dead with one blow of its paw, then that is the fate of us father and sons. What I want is your eyes on him — if the hunt succeeds, that nothing goes amiss in the hurried delivery down Beigu Mountain; or if it fails, that when they go chasing the tiger into someone else's estate, they don't cook up a calamity. That is all... So no, when did I ever ask you to hunt a tiger? What I plainly mean to borrow is your judgment and your way with people! For judgment: you dared to kill a man with your own hands aboard that boat. For knowing the ways of men: when the Celestial Masters people taunted us, you could walk the equipment out under their noses with a face as smooth as if nothing were happening. In a pass like this, if I can't lean on you, on whom would I lean?" Liu Cheng was a trifle dazed. Killing a man on the boat — that much he would own to. But what was this about the Celestial Masters people mocking them while he stayed perfectly unruffled? Of course, with Liu Ren Gong having put it that way, there was no dodging it. When Liu Cheng came back to himself he could only nod, then went straight off to fetch his crossbow... By the time he brought it out, Liu Ren Gong had already called up a dozen-odd able-bodied men — not so formidable as the tiger-hunting party, but carrying clubs and soft bows as best they could. Liu Cheng did not rush to set out. First he committed his most treasured personal possession into the hands of a few able-bodied men and asked their help in stringing it... Not the stringing where one draws the string back and hooks it onto the trigger mechanism — the youth had come to know this crossbow well these past days: drawing the string by hand and hooking it onto the trigger mechanism was beyond him, though with hands and feet together he could just barely haul it open, and he had test-fired it several times... But before any of that, he had needed someone of ample strength to help him fasten the string onto the crossbow's body — which was in effect a recurve bow — and for that strength he came up short. In truth, such work normally takes several people, and usually calls for padding of oxhide or the like to protect against it. String set, packet of crossbow bolts tucked away, rations along, only then did Liu Cheng take up the crossbow and lead the men out of the valley camp, bound for the mountains to the north. Before long they reached that pit trap — and, not exactly to their surprise, found no trace of Liu Huzi and Liu Jili's tiger-hunting party there. Fortunately the party was a numerous one, and its traces through the mountain forest were plain. Liu Cheng simply ordered everyone to take the greatest care, and they followed the trail. At a mountain stream they sighted the group far off, and at last he breathed easier. A-Hu, seeing people arrive, hurried to wave them over, holding up a bloodstained arrow: "A-Cheng, just in time! The big tiger skewered its paw in the pit trap, and then it took an arrow of mine right here — it's only this minute scraped the shaft off against the rocks. It's been bleeding the whole way; it can't have gone far. We cross the stream after it and close the ring on it up the north mountain!" With that, heedless of everything, he went straight over by way of a tree already felled across the stream, and Liu Jili and the rest followed. Liu Cheng could only bring the men behind across the stream with care. Once across, he immediately braced and drew the crossbow with his foot, and then, by Liu Jili's assignments, the company split into small bands, spreading out somewhat, and pressed the chase up the sunny face of the mountain before them. In moments someone raised a cry, and then came the hiss of bows and crossbows through the air. After another two or three hundred paces of closing in up the mountain, Liu Cheng could see it clearly too: a tiger — a good three meters long counting the tail, though in truth much smaller than he had imagined — burst into view. There was nothing to be done about that: the great tigers of later ages' art and letters were all Siberian and Bengal tigers, whereas this was a typical South China tiger — and judged as a South China tiger, this one amply deserved the name of big tiger. The big tiger was plainly wounded, and frightened; it came limping along, took a scare from Liu Cheng's crowd, and swerved at once for the summit. Only then, looking up from behind, did Liu Cheng understand why a tiger is called the Great Worm: this tiger's back was covered in yellow-and-black stripes, and its whole body, tail included, was one long slithering strip threading through a hillside dense with chrysanthemums — seen from afar, wasn't it precisely like some enormous bug? "A-Cheng, shoot it!" While his thoughts ran wild, Liu Huzi's voice floated up from far off. "You've got the position — shoot its butt!" At the command of the professional, Liu Cheng dared not dawdle. Up came the crossbow he had readied long before; aiming through the sighting scale, he took sight on the rear of the Great Worm ahead, gave the trigger mechanism a light squeeze — and the bolt went hissing through the air. Where the bolt struck, none could tell; they only saw the big tiger's tail snap bolt upright, followed by an earth-shaking roar of fury. Then, heedless of its hurt foot, it flew straight for the summit. Liu Huzi was overjoyed past all hoping, shouting again and again: "We've got it! We've got it! The shaggy devil has nowhere left to run! After it! After it!" Everyone around rejoiced too — that roar and that flight could be no act. Who would have thought that after half a month of fussing, the tiger hunt might actually come off?! Meanwhile, on this day of gentle wind and bright sun, at the summit of Huashan — thanks to a silk letter from their uncle Xie An — the Xie clan children of Wuyi Lane had turned out in a body, taking tea and gazing out over the River. And because eldest sister Xie Daoyun had insisted, and because Xie Quan — this Xie generation's effective eldest brother — was too soft to refuse, and because the clan had only just come out of its mourning, this outing had not only all the young men of the generation but all the girls as well... That is: the males not yet in office, from seventeen-year-old Xie Quan — A-Wei — down to seven-year-old Xie Xuan — A-E — made fifteen; the daughters not yet married, from twelve-year-old Xie Daoyun, given her courtesy name only this year, down to Xie Zhan'er, Xie Wan's youngest, four this year and not yet bearing her formal name, made seven. Twenty-two in all. Every one of them on the summit of Huashan. For fear of prying eyes among lowborn upstarts, and for fear the young masters might take a chill, the bondservants had pitched an enormous canopy early on, breaking the wind and screening them from view, leaving open only the stretch facing the River for the sake of the view. Most bore it well — pent up for so long and finally out of doors, they could amuse themselves regardless. Only Xie Daoyun was bitterly displeased. In her words: canopy filling the eye on every side, never a blossom to be seen — what was there to look at? Since the two elder sisters had married out, the cousins had been helpless before this eldest sister still at home, and Xie Quan was being run ragged: now one little brother wanted to recite verses, now another little sister wanted tea, and all the while he had to fret over who might catch a draft, dreading that anything should go wrong on this hill-climbing outing and leave him no way to answer to his father and uncles. And now his eldest sister was at her carping again — this brother could only spread his hands. The meaning was plain: talk all you like today, I'll listen and do nothing; but if I truly let you have your way and make a muddle of it, my name is not Xie A-Wei. At that, even Xie Daoyun could only choke on her fury. Gathering Xie Zhan'er in her arms she marched out of the canopy, drawing seven or eight maids and bondservants hurrying after, straining to block the wind with their own bodies lest the little mistress take cold. And just as the Xie children amused themselves, giving full display to the bearing of a rising, exemplary, top-drawer aristocratic clan, from the sunlit slope behind them there seemed to come a muffled beast's roar. The volume was ample beyond question: of the twenty-two children of the Chen Commandery Xie, no historical record proves any one of them deaf, so in theory all of them heard it. But the great majority had no idea what the sound was. Thunder? But on a clear afternoon, blazing sun and free-running wind — whence thunder? A very few dimly thought of a wild beast — but was it a horse neighing? Had anyone led horses up the mountain? Among the hundred-odd bondservants and maids in attendance, however, a few plainly sensed something. One old woman, picking flowers for the young masters, hesitated a moment and then, none too confidently, asked the provisions steward beside her, who was equally at sea: "Steward Qian — could that be a tiger roaring?" A "dianji" — steward — is a title extended from the official nomenclature of a former dynasty: the senior servant in charge of daily outlays of money and goods, in later ages simply the butler. He had half-guessed already; hearing his guess borne out, he shuddered clean out of nothing, spun about, and ran into the canopy — manners thrown to the wind — clutched Xie Quan's arm, and whispered, trembling: "Third Young Master — there seems to be a tiger roaring behind the mountain!" Xie Quan, grasping nothing, raised his voice right back: "What talk is this, Steward Qian? How could there be a tiger?" Through this exchange the Xie children round about remained blank, not understanding what it meant — but the rest of the bondservants inside the canopy had been jittery for some time; at these words, men and women alike, every pair of thighs shook. As if that were not enough, someone outside the canopy suddenly seemed to be shouting something; then came running and yelling hard by the canopy. For a moment it was a jumble; then everyone heard it plain as day: "A tiger is coming!" Steward Qian could bear no more and gave a sharp order: "Quick — shield the young masters!" Even having taken in the words, the bondservants around him didn't know what to do: protect them where they stood, or escort them out of the canopy? And in the thick of the confusion and hesitation, suddenly — under a broad bright sky — a ferocious reek of blood came from behind the canopy along with heavy, rasping breaths. Then came the sight that this whole generation of Chen Commandery Xie children would carry engraved in their bones for life: a terrifyingly huge tiger with upturned eyes and a white forehead came hurtling over the canopy, caught its foot, and — of all things — took a cropper right in the center of the enclosure, rolling clean over. Righting itself, it happened to plump down square on its haunches there — for all the world a king of the mountain, terrible in its majesty. Yet it had barely sat a moment when, for reasons unknown, as though it had suffered the most monstrous wrong in the world, the great tiger, paws planted on the canopy, fixed the gaping Xie children on every side and let out a roar with every scrap of strength in its body. That roar was a true tiger's thunder through the mountain woods, a wind sweeping flat the flowering thickets; with its stench of blood and beast it quaked outward like something solid — and high and low, near and far, men and women, old and young, broke and scattered with a crash. The loyal bondservants flung caution away — some taking the young masters on their backs, some dragging them by the hand, some hoisting them bodily — and staked their lives on getting them beyond the canopy to safety. This scene was exactly like that moment, back then.