The tale goes that Pilgrim Sun roused his divine might, gripped his iron rod, trod upon an auspicious light and rose into the empty air, where he shouted full in the creature’s face: “From what quarter come you, foul fiend? And whither would you go to work your riot?”
The monster cried out in a harsh voice: “We are no common sort. I am vanguard to His Lordship the Great King Sai Taisui, of the Xiezhi Cave on Qilin Mountain. Today, at the Great King’s command, I am come to fetch away two palace maidens, that they may wait upon the Golden Sage Queen. And who are you, that you make so bold as to question me?”
“I am Sun Wukong,” said Pilgrim, “the Great Sage Equal to Heaven. Because I am guarding the Tang Monk of the Eastern Land on his way to worship Buddha in the West, we passed through this kingdom; and learning that you pack of fiends had bullied its sovereign, I have put forth my full powers on purpose, to set the state in order and purge it of evil. I was at a loss where to seek you out, and here you come to deliver up your life.”
The monster, hearing this, knew nothing of good or ill. He levelled his long spear and thrust at Pilgrim, and Pilgrim raised his iron rod and met him face on. There in the middle air, what a fine battle this was:
The rod was a treasure that stilled the sea in the Dragon Palace;
the spear was iron of the mortal world, smelted and smelted again.
How should a common weapon match itself against an immortal one?
At the least touch its divine force leaks away.
The Great Sage was from of old an immortal of the Grand Monad;
the fiend was born an offshoot of the crooked and the wrong.
How should the goblin and the sprite come near the upright man?
Let the upright stand but a moment and the crooked is snuffed out.
That one raised the wind and flung the dust and terrified the sovereign lord;
this one trod the mist and mounted the cloud and blotted out the sun and moon.
They threw their guards wide open and staked all on winning or losing —
where there is no ability, who dares call himself a hero?
It was the Great Sage Equal to Heaven who had the mastery:
a clang, one blow of the rod, and the spear snapped first.
One blow of Pilgrim’s iron rod took the shaft of the monster’s spear and broke it in two, and in his fright he thought of nothing but his life: he wheeled his wind about and fled away westward, beaten.
Pilgrim did not pursue him for the present, but pressed his cloud-head down and came to the mouth of the pit outside the demon shelter, where he called: “Master, be pleased to come out, and bring His Majesty with you. The creature has been driven off.” Only then did the Tang Monk help the sovereign up, and together they came out of the pit. They saw the whole sky bright and clear, with not a breath of fiendish vapour left in it.
The emperor went straight to the banquet table, took up flask and cup with his own hands, filled a golden goblet to the brim and presented it to Pilgrim, saying: “Divine monk — my poor thanks, my poor thanks.” Pilgrim had taken the cup in his hand and had not yet made his reply when an officer was heard reporting outside the court gate: “Fire has broken out at the West Gate.”
Hearing this, Pilgrim took the golden goblet, wine and all, and flung it up into the empty air; there was a ringing clang, and the goblet came down on the ground.
The sovereign was thrown into a fluster and bent from the waist in apology: “Divine monk, pardon the fault, pardon the fault. The wrong is mine. By rights I should have asked you up into the hall and given you thanks there with due ceremony. It was only because this wine stood ready to hand that I offered it where we were. And now the divine monk has flung the cup away. Is that not a sign that offence has been taken?”
Pilgrim laughed and said: “It is nothing of the sort, nothing of the sort.”
After a little while another officer came to report: “What a rain! The fire had no sooner started at the West Gate than a great downpour came and put it out. The water is running the length of the streets, and the whole of it smells of wine.”
Pilgrim laughed again: “Your Majesty saw me fling the cup and suspected that offence had been taken. It was not so. That fiend fled westward beaten, and because I did not go after him he set the fire going. That one cup of wine is how I put out the fiend-fire and saved the households inside the western wall and out. What other meaning could there be in it?”
The king was more delighted than ever, and more reverent with it. He asked Tripitaka and the other three up into the treasure hall at once, and had it in mind to step down and hand over the kingdom to them.
Pilgrim laughed and said: “Your Majesty, that fiend just now gave himself out as vanguard under Sai Taisui, come here to fetch palace maidens. He has gone back beaten, and he is sure to report it to that creature, and that creature is sure to come and have it out with me. I am afraid that if he raises an army and leads out his host, the common people will be alarmed and hurt a second time and Your Majesty frightened. I would sooner go and meet him halfway, take him up there in the middle air, and fetch the sage queen back. Only I do not know which quarter to make for. How far is it from here to that mountain cave of his?”
“I once sent out scouting horse to listen for word of them there,” said the king. “The going and the returning took above fifty days. It lies to the south, something over three thousand li.”
Hearing this, Pilgrim called out: “Bajie, Sha Monk — keep guard here. Old Sun is off and back.”
The king caught hold of him. “Divine monk, take a day at your ease. Let us have some dry rations parched for you, give you silver for the road and pick out a fast horse — and then you may go.”
Pilgrim laughed. “Your Majesty is talking the way one talks of clambering over hills and rounding ridges on foot. I will not deceive you: a road of three thousand li like this one — pour the wine in the cup, and before it goes cold I shall have been and come back.”
“Divine monk,” said the king, “do not take it amiss that I say so, but that honoured face of yours is very like a monkey’s. How is it you have powers of this kind, and can travel so?”
And Pilgrim said:
My body is indeed of the monkey sort,
but from my youth I broke open the road of life and death.
I sought out enlightened masters far and wide to have the Way handed down,
and before the mountain I refined myself with neither morning nor evening.
Heaven leaned upon for a lid and earth taken for a furnace;
two medicines rolled the crow and the hare into one.
I gathered yin and yang and crossed the water with the fire,
and in one moment came suddenly to see through the mysterious pass.
All by the working of the Heavenly Ladle to convey it,
and by the Dipper’s handle to shift my footing.
Drawing the furnace back and driving the fire forward keeps strictly to the hour;
drawing off lead and adding quicksilver, the two have regard to each other.
Cluster the five phases and creation is born;
blend the four images and the seasons are measured out.
The two vapours come home within the yellow path;
the three families meet on the road of the golden elixir.
Once the law is understood right through, it goes into the four limbs,
and the somersault comes as though a god were lending a hand.
One bound bounds me clear of the Taihang range;
one stroke strikes me across the Lingyun Ford.
Why should I fear steep ranges a few thousand deep?
I do not dread the Long River, a hundred of them or ten.
Only because my transformations have nothing to bar them,
one stroke and a hundred and eight thousand of road is behind me.
The king, hearing it, was startled and delighted together, and with a smile all over his face raised a cup of imperial wine in both hands and passed it to Pilgrim: “Divine monk, it is a long labour. Take this cup to carry my meaning.” But the Great Sage’s whole mind was set on going to subdue the fiend — where would he have had any mind for wine? He only said: “Set it down. Wait till I have gone and come back, and I will drink it then.”
Fine Pilgrim! He said the word go, gave one whistle, and was gone without a sound. The sovereign and the ministers of that whole kingdom were left astonished, and of that we say no more.
The tale goes that Pilgrim gave his body a single bound, and had already sighted a high mountain standing in his way and cutting off the reach of the mist. He pressed his cloud down at once, stood on the topmost peak and looked closely — a fine mountain:
It thrusts to heaven and grips the ground;
it blocks the sun and breeds the cloud.
Where it thrusts to heaven, sharp summits stand up one behind another;
where it grips the ground, far ridges run away and away.
What blocks the sun are the pines along the ridge, dark and crowding;
what breeds the cloud are the rocks below the cliff, glinting and jagged.
The pines, dark and crowding, are green through the four seasons and the eight festivals;
the rocks, glinting and jagged, are unaltered in ten thousand years and a thousand more.
In the wood one hears night apes crying every time;
in the ravine one often hears a monstrous python pass.
The mountain birds call with a choked and sobbing sound;
the mountain beasts roar with a whoo and a whoo.
Mountain roe and mountain deer go two by two and pair by pair, thick upon one another;
mountain crows and mountain magpies fall into ranks and gather in flocks, close-packed in flight.
Mountain grasses and mountain flowers, more than the eye can take in;
mountain peaches and mountain fruits, bright and fresh in their season.
Steep as it leans, and not to be walked,
it is for all that a place where fiend immortals live retired.
The Great Sage looked and looked and did not tire of it, and was on the point of going to find the cave mouth, when out of a fold of that mountain a roaring firelight came flying. In a moment red flame was beating at the sky, and out of the red flame there rose a stream of foul smoke, more poisonous than the fire. What smoke! Look at it:
The firelight bursts into ten thousand points of golden lamps;
the flame flies up in a thousand strands of red rainbow.
That smoke is no chimney smoke, and no smoke of grass and wood:
this smoke has five colours in it — green, red, white, black and yellow.
It reaches up to smoke the pillars outside the Southern Gate of Heaven;
it reaches to scorch the beams above the Hall of the Numinous Empyrean.
It burns the running beasts in their dens till hide and all is rotted away;
the flying birds in the wood are left with their feathers stripped bare.
Only look how vicious this smoke is —
how is anyone to go into the deep mountain and put down the monster king?
The Great Sage Sun was still in his alarm when he saw a spout of sand come bursting out of that mountain. Fine sand it was, and truly it screened the sky and shut out the sun. Look:
Scattering and swirling out to the sky’s edge;
murky and thick, it covered the whole earth over.
Fine dust wherever it went confounded men’s eyes;
coarse ash filled the valleys, rolling like sesame seed.
Immortals’ boys out gathering simples lost their companions;
woodcutters at their firewood had no way of finding home.
Though a man held a bright pearl in his hand and it shone,
in a moment he would be so scoured that his eyes swam.
Pilgrim was intent on looking and enjoying himself, and before he knew it the sand and ash had blown up his nose. It tickled and itched, and he sneezed twice. He turned round at once, put a hand under the rock, felt out two goose-egg pebbles and plugged his nostrils with them. Then with a shake of his body he changed into a fire-braving sparrowhawk and flew straight into the smoke and flame, darting this way and that a few times; and the sand and ash were gone, and the smoke and fire died too.
He resumed his own form in haste and came down, and looking about him again he heard nothing but the ding-ding dong-dong of a brass gong sounding. “I have taken the wrong road,” he said. “This is no fiend’s dwelling. That gong sounds like a post courier’s gong. I take it this is a high road running through to the capital, and there is a courier out delivering despatches. Let Old Sun go and put him a question.”
As he went he suddenly caught sight of what seemed to be a little fiend, a yellow flag over his shoulder, a packet of despatches on his back and a gong that he beat as he came, hurrying along as fast as flying. Pilgrim laughed: “So it is this fellow who has been beating the gong. What letter can he be carrying, I wonder? Let me give him a listen.”
Fine Great Sage! With a shake of his body he changed into a stinging fly and settled lightly on the fellow’s despatch bag. He heard the fiend beating his gong and rattling on to himself, reciting and muttering:
“Our Great King is a deal too cruel-hearted. Three years ago he went to the Vermilion-Purple Kingdom and carried off the Golden Sage Empress by force; and he has had no luck with her in all that time and has never once been able to lay a hand on her, so that it is only the palace women fetched in for it who have suffered in her place. Two were brought and were done to death; four were brought and they were done to death as well. The year before last they were demanded, last year demanded again, this year again, and now he wants more.
“But now a match for him has turned up. That vanguard who went for the palace women was beaten by some Sun Pilgrim or other, and the women were not handed over. So our Great King has flown into a rage and means to have it out with their kingdom, and has sent me off with some declaration of war or other. On this errand, if that king will not fight, well and good; but if he fights it must go badly for him. When our Great King looses his smoke and fire and flying sand, that king and his ministers and his commons — not one of them may hope to come out alive. Then we shall have taken his walls and moats, and the Great King will style himself emperor and we shall style ourselves his ministers. There will be ranks and offices for us, high and low, no doubt — only Heaven’s own principle will never allow it.”
Pilgrim listened, and said to himself with quiet pleasure: “So even fiends may keep a good heart in them. Take those last two sentences of his, where he says Heaven’s principle will never allow it — is that not a good one? Only what he said about the Golden Sage Empress — no luck all this while, and never a hand laid on her — that I cannot make out the sense of. Let me put him a question.”
With a buzz he beat his wings and flew clear of the fiend, went on down the road ahead a good ten li and more, and with a shake of his body changed again, into a Daoist novice:
Hair caught up in a pair of twin tufts;
a robe of a hundred patches on his body.
In his hand the fish-drum and the clappers;
in his mouth a lay of the Way.
He came round the hill slope, met the little fiend face to face and raised his hands in salute: “Officer, where are you bound? What despatch is it you are carrying?”
The creature behaved for all the world as though he knew him, stopped his gong-stick, returned the salute with a broad grin and said: “Our Great King has sent me to the Vermilion-Purple Kingdom to deliver a declaration of war.”
Pilgrim took him up at once: “That business at the Vermilion-Purple Kingdom — has she ever been joined with the Great King yet?”
“Since she was carried off the year before last,” said the little fiend, “at the time an immortal came and made the Golden Sage Palace Lady a present of a robe of five colours, for her bridal dress. From the moment she put that robe on, needles and spines grew all over her from head to foot, and our Great King dares not so much as lay a finger on her. If he so much as takes hold of a little of it, his palm hurts him, and nobody knows the reason why. From the beginning until now he has still never touched her.
“This morning he sent the vanguard to demand palace women to wait on her, and the man was beaten in battle by some Sun Pilgrim or other. The Great King is in a fury, and so he has sent me off with the declaration of war; tomorrow he gives them battle.”
“And how does the Great King come to be so vexed?” said Pilgrim.
“He is over there being vexed this minute,” said the little fiend. “You go along and sing him a lay of the Way — it will take his mind off it.”
Fine Pilgrim! He put his hands together, drew himself back and walked away, and the fiend went on beating his gong and walking ahead as before. Then Pilgrim turned savage. He whipped out his rod, swung round and brought it down on the back of the little fiend’s head — pity of it — so that the skull was crushed and the blood ran and the brains burst out, the skin split, the neck broke and the life was spilled. He put up his rod, and then reproached himself: “A shade too hasty — I never asked him what his name was. Well, it is done.”
He went and took down the declaration of war, and hid it away in his sleeve. The yellow flag and the brass gong he hid in the grass at the roadside. Then, as he took the body by the feet meaning to fling it down into the ravine, he heard a clink, and an ivory tablet with a gold mounting showed at the waist. There was writing on it, and it read: “Trusted junior officer, one. Name: There-and-Back. Short in all five parts; a rough, pitted face; no beard. To be worn at all times. Without the tablet, an impostor.”
Pilgrim laughed: “This fellow’s name is There-and-Back — and one stroke of my rod has made it There-and-No-Back!”
He unbuckled the ivory tablet and hung it at his own waist. He was on the point of flinging the corpse down, and then he thought again of the venom of that smoke and fire. So he did not dare go looking for the cave after all. He raised his rod, struck the little fiend square in the chest with it, lifted the body aloft on it and went straight back to the kingdom — it would serve at least as a first head to report. Look at him, turning it over to himself as he went — one whistle, and he was at the kingdom’s border.
Bajie was standing guard over the king and their master in front of the Hall of the Golden Bells when he happened to turn his head and see Pilgrim up in the middle air with a fiend carried along on the end of his rod. He grumbled: “Bah! No great piece of business, that. Had I known, Old Hog would have gone and fetched him, and would that not have counted me a merit?”
Before he had finished speaking, Pilgrim brought his cloud down and flung the fiend onto the steps. Bajie ran up and drove his rake into it at once. “This is Old Hog’s doing,” he said.
“What doing of yours is it?” said Pilgrim.
“Don’t cheat me of it. I have my proof — look, one blow of the rake and there are nine holes in him.”
“Take a look,” said Pilgrim, “and see whether it has a head or has none.”
Bajie laughed. “Why, it has no head at all! I did wonder why it never so much as stirred when I raked it.”
“Where is Master?” said Pilgrim.
“Inside the hall, talking with the king.”
“Go and ask him to come out.”
Bajie hurried up into the hall and gave a nod. Tripitaka rose at once, came down out of the hall and went to meet Pilgrim, and Pilgrim tucked the sealed declaration of war into Tripitaka’s sleeve and said: “Keep this by you, Master, and do not let the king see it yet.”
Before the words were well out, the king came down from the hall too and went to meet Pilgrim: “Divine monk, elder, are you back? How went the business of taking the fiend?”
Pilgrim pointed with his hand. “Is that not a fiend, there at the foot of the steps? Old Sun beat him to death.”
The king looked and said: “A fiend’s corpse it certainly is, but it is not Sai Taisui. Sai Taisui I have seen twice with my own eyes: eight zhàng in height, and five sections across the shoulders; a face like golden light, a voice like a thunderclap. How should he be a stunted little thing of this sort?”
Pilgrim laughed. “Your Majesty knows him, and indeed it is not he. This is a little fiend carrying a despatch. He ran into Old Sun, so I killed him first and brought him back on my rod to report the merit.”
The king was greatly pleased. “Good, good, good — that should count as the first merit. Here at home I have kept sending men out to spy, and never once got anything certain. The divine monk goes out once and comes straight back with one taken. That is divine power indeed.” And he called out: “See that warm wine is brought, to congratulate the elder on his merit.”
“The wine is a small matter,” said Pilgrim. “I have a question for Your Majesty. When the Golden Sage Palace Lady was parted from you, did she leave any token behind? Let me have a little of it.”
When the king heard those two words, a token, it was as though a blade had gouged his heart. He could not hold it back; his voice broke and the tears came down, and he said:
That year at the festival, when we were keeping the summer feast,
the Taisui fiend raised his shout.
He seized the royal consort by force, to be his lady of the stronghold;
I gave her up for the sake of the common people.
There was no word of meeting between us and none of parting —
where was there any long pavilion, or short?
Of token or scent-purse there is not a shadow left,
and to this day she has flung me down here, wretched and alone.
“Your Majesty is close at hand,” said Pilgrim. “What use is there in grieving? If the lady left no token, then was there anything in the palace she held dear? One such thing given me would serve.”
“What do you want it for?” said the king.
“That fiend king has real powers. I have seen him loose smoke, loose fire and loose sand, and he will be hard to take indeed. And even if I do take him, I am afraid the lady will find my face strange and will not be willing to come home to the kingdom with me. I must have some one thing she used to hold dear before she will trust me, and then I can bring her back. That is why I want to take it with me.”
“In the Zhaoyang Palace,” said the king, “up in the dressing chamber, there is a pair of golden bracelets. The Golden Sage Palace Lady used to wear them on her wrists. It was only that on the Double Fifth of that day she was to bind on the five-coloured threads, and so she slipped them off, and never put them on again. These are the things she held dear, and they are put away now in the cosmetic case. Seeing what a parting she has come to, I cannot bear the sight of them; one look and it is as though I saw her jade face, and the sickness goes a few degrees the heavier.”
“Let that talk be for now,” said Pilgrim, “and have the golden bracelets fetched. If you can bear to part with them, let me take both; if you cannot, I shall take one only.”
The king thereupon ordered the Jade Sage Palace Lady to fetch them out. She fetched them out and handed them straight to the king; the king looked at them and cried out several times, “My lady, who knew my aches and felt my fevers!” — and then handed them to Pilgrim, and Pilgrim took them and slipped them onto his own arm.
Fine Great Sage! He did not stay to drink the wine of his merit, but mounted his somersault cloud, gave a single whistle, and was on Qilin Mountain again. He had no mind for the view, and went straight off to look for the cave. As he went he heard a clamour of voices, and he stopped where he stood and fixed his eyes to look. It turned out that the officers, great and small, who kept the mouth of the Xiezhi Cave — some five hundred of them — were there:
Ranked in dense array; packed close in file.
Ranked in dense array, they held shield and spear, and the sunlight came off them bright;
packed close in file, they spread their banners, and the wind took them flapping and flashing.
Tiger generals and bear commanders that could work transformations;
leopard-headed captains and tiger-cub marshals showing their mettle.
The grey wolves were fierce enough; the otters and elephants braver still.
Cunning hares and knowing roebuck swung sword and halberd;
long serpents and great pythons carried sabre and bow.
The gorillas understood the speech of men,
and could lead a rank, pitch a camp and read the signal wind.
When Pilgrim saw them he did not dare go forward, but drew back and turned straight down the road he had come by. You ask why he drew back? It was not that he was afraid of them. He went back to the place where he had killed the little fiend, dug out the yellow flag and the brass gong, made the sign into the wind, worked his shifting and turning, and with a shake of his body changed into the very likeness of There-and-Back. Beating the gong with a clang and a clatter, he came striding straight on and walked right up to the Xiezhi Cave.
He was about to take a look at the cave when he heard a gorilla speak up: “There-and-Back! Are you back?” Pilgrim had no choice but to answer: “I am back.”
“Get along,” said the gorilla. “His Lordship the Great King is up in the Flaying Pavilion waiting to hear your report.”
Pilgrim, hearing this, stretched his stride, beat his gong and walked straight in at the front gate to look about him. It proved to be sheer cliffs and shaven walls, houses of stone and empty halls, with rare flowers and jade-coloured grasses to left and right, and ancient cypress and tall pine before and behind. Before he knew it he was inside the second gate, and looking up he saw a pavilion bright with eight windows, and in the middle of it a gilt-inlaid folding chair, and on the chair, sitting bolt upright, a fiend king of truly hideous aspect. But see him:
A dazzle of rosy light rose off the crown of his head;
a killing air came bursting from his breast.
Outside his mouth the tusks stood ranked like keen blades;
at his temples the scorched hair let off a red smoke.
The whiskers on his lip were like arrows stuck in;
the bristles over his body like felt laid on in layers.
His eyes bulged like brass bells and would have cowed a Taisui;
the iron pestle in his hand looked fit to rub the sky.
When Pilgrim saw him he was openly insolent to the fiend and would not keep a particle of ceremony: he turned his face round, faced outward, and went on beating his gong and nothing else.
“Are you back?” asked the fiend king. Pilgrim did not reply. He asked again: “There-and-Back, are you back?” Neither did he answer that. Then the fiend king came forward and caught hold of him. “How is it that you get home and go on banging your gong, and when you are asked a question you do not answer? What is the meaning of it?”
Pilgrim flung the gong down on the ground. “What do you mean, what is the meaning of it, what is the meaning of it? I told you I would not go, and you made me go. I got as far as their side and there were men and horses beyond counting drawn up in battle order, and when they saw me they all set up a cry: ‘Take the fiend! Take the fiend!’ They shoved me and pulled me, dragged me and hauled me, and got me into the city. I was brought before their king, and the king said at once: ‘Behead him.’ By good luck the two ranks of counsellors said: ‘When two houses are at war, one does not behead the envoy.’ So they let me off. They took the declaration of war, marched me out of the city again, gave me thirty strokes across the legs in front of the troops, and sent me back to report. And they mean to come here before long and give you battle.”
“By this account you have had the worst of it,” said the fiend king. “No wonder you would not speak when you were asked.”
“What else would it be? It was only that I was nursing the pain, and so I did not answer.”
“How many men and horses have they there?”
“I was frightened out of my wits, and beaten till I was afraid — how should I have managed to count their men and horses? I only saw their weapons ranked out there thick as a wood:
Bows, arrows, sabres, spears, armour and coats;
shield and halberd, sword and trident, with tasselled standards.
Light javelins, moon-shovels, helmets and mail;
great axes, round bucklers, iron caltrops.
Long cudgels, short bludgeons, steel forks, blunderbusses, planes and headpieces.
And for dress: leather-shafted boots, head-guards and padded jackets;
tablet-whips, sling-pellets, and maces of bronze.”
The king listened and laughed. “It is nothing much, nothing much. Weapons of that kind — one fire and they are all gone. Go now and let the Golden Sage Queen know of it, and tell her not to fret. This morning she heard me swear I would go and fight, and her eyes have been wet ever since and have not dried. So go and tell her their men and horses are fierce and bold and are certain to beat me, and set her mind at ease for a while.”
Pilgrim heard him out and was delighted. “That falls in exactly with Old Sun’s own intention.” And look at him — nobody knew the way better. He turned through the corner gate and crossed the hall. In there it was all high halls and great mansions, quite unlike the look of things further out. Going straight on to the palace at the back he saw from a distance a painted gate, grand and fine, which was where the Golden Sage Queen was lodged.
Going right inside to look, he found two ranks of fiend foxes and fiend deer, every one of them got up in the shape of a beautiful woman, waiting to left and right. In the very middle sat the queen herself, her hand propping her scented cheek, and the tears dropping from both her eyes. And truly:
A jade face, delicate and young; a lovely shape, and lovely with it.
Too listless to dress her hair — the loose locks heaped like a crow’s wing;
too unwilling to make herself up — pin and ring left off.
No powder on her face — the rouge gone cold and faint;
no oil on her hair — the cloud-coils loose and tangled.
Her cherry lip thrust out — the silver teeth set hard on it;
her moth brows drawn — the starry eyes drowned in tears.
Her whole heart remembering only the lord of the Vermilion-Purple;
and every hour of it wishing herself out of the net of heaven and the snare of earth.
And truly it is so: from of old, a red face has often an ill fate —
and she sat listless and wordless, facing into the east wind.
Pilgrim stepped forward and made his salutation: “My respects.”
“This coarse brute of a fiend is beyond all bearing,” said the queen. “When I think how I was in the Vermilion-Purple Kingdom, sharing the state and splendour with the king — the Grand Preceptor and the ministers, when they saw me, would go face down in the dust and dared not look up. And this wild creature calls out ‘My respects’ at me? Where does a boor like this come from?”
The waiting-women came forward. “Do not be angry, madam. He is a trusted junior officer of His Lordship the Great King, and his name is There-and-Back. It was he who was sent with the declaration of war this morning.”
The queen heard this, held down her anger and asked: “You took the declaration of war — did you ever get as far as the borders of the Vermilion-Purple Kingdom?”
“I carried the letter right into the city,” said Pilgrim, “came to the Hall of the Golden Bells, saw the sovereign face to face, and have already got an answer to bring back.”
“You saw the king,” said the queen. “What did the king say?”
“As to what the king said about giving battle, and the disposition of his troops, I have just now told it to the Great King. Only, that sovereign has something of a longing for your ladyship, and there is a word from his heart that I am come up on purpose to report. But with so many people to left and right, this is no place to say it.”
The queen heard him and shouted the two ranks of foxes and deer away. Pilgrim pushed the palace door to, wiped a hand across his face, showed his own shape, and said to her: “Do not be afraid of me. I am a monk sent from the Great Tang in the Eastern Land to the Thunderclap Monastery in India, in the Great Western Heaven, to see Buddha and seek the scriptures. My master is the Tang emperor’s sworn younger brother, Tang Sanzang. I am his eldest disciple, Sun Wukong.
“Passing through your kingdom to have our travel papers stamped, I saw that your sovereign and his ministers had put out a notice calling for a physician. I brought out the skill of the thrice-broken arm and cured him of his sickness of longing, and he laid on a banquet to thank me. Over the wine he let it out, that you had been carried off by a fiend. I can subdue dragons and put down tigers, so he asked me expressly to come and take the monster and bring you home to the kingdom. The one who beat the vanguard was I, and the one who killed the little fiend was I too. I saw how fierce and wild they were outside the gate, so I turned myself into the likeness of There-and-Back, risked my skin to get in here, and brought you word.”
The queen heard him out and pondered without a word. Then Pilgrim brought out the bracelets and presented them in both hands: “If you do not believe me, look at this. Where else would it have come from?”
At one sight of them the queen’s tears came down. She came down from her seat and bowed her thanks: “Elder, if you can truly save me and bring me back to court, I shall not forget so great a kindness while I have teeth in my head.”
“Let me put you a question,” said Pilgrim. “That thing of his that looses fire and looses smoke and looses sand — what sort of treasure is it?”
“What treasure is it! It is three golden bells. He takes the first of them and gives it a shake, and there are three hundred zhàng of firelight to burn men; a shake of the second, and three hundred zhàng of smoke to smother them; a shake of the third, and three hundred zhàng of yellow sand to blind them. The smoke and the fire are not so much; it is the yellow sand that is deadliest — let it bore into a man’s nostrils and it takes his life.”
“Fearful, fearful,” said Pilgrim. “I have been caught by it before, and sneezed twice for it. But I do not know where he keeps those bells of his.”
“How would he ever put them down? He wears them at his waist, and walking, standing, sitting or lying he never has them off his body.”
“If you have any mind for the Vermilion-Purple Kingdom,” said Pilgrim, “and mean to meet your king again, then put by all that grief and worry of yours for a while, show him a face of ease and gladness, talk with him as a wife talks with a husband, and get him to give the bells into your keeping. Then when I find my chance I will steal them and put this fiend down, and at that time I can take you home, and the pair of you shall be matched again like simurgh and phoenix and have quiet together.”
The queen agreed to it.
Pilgrim changed himself back into the trusted junior officer, opened the palace door and called the waiting-women in again. Then the queen called: “There-and-Back! Go quickly to the front pavilion and ask your Great King to come. I have something to say to him.”
Fine Pilgrim! He answered with a word, went straight to the Flaying Pavilion and said to the fiend: “Great King, the Sage Palace Queen invites you.”
The fiend king was delighted. “The queen does nothing but abuse me, as a rule. How comes it she invites me today?”
“The queen was asking about the king of the Vermilion-Purple Kingdom,” said Pilgrim, “and I told her: he does not want you any more; they have set up another queen in his country. When the queen heard that she gave up all thought of it, and only then did she order me to come and invite you.”
The fiend king was overjoyed. “You are a useful fellow after all. When I have wiped out that country of his, I shall make you a Grand Steward in attendance at court.”
Pilgrim thanked him for the favour as the words came, and went quickly with the fiend king to the door of the inner palace. The queen met him with a pleased face and put out her hands to take his arm, but the fiend king backed away with a deferential noise. “I dare not, I dare not. I am much obliged for your ladyship’s kindness, but I am afraid of my hand hurting and dare not come close.”
“Sit down, Great King,” said the queen. “I have something to say to you.”
“Say whatever you have to say. It does not matter.”
“I have had the Great King’s condescending affection for three years now,” she said, “and we have never yet shared a pillow or a quilt. It is a bond from a former life that has made this match of ours. But who would have thought the Great King held me at arm’s length and would not treat me as a wife? I remember that when I was queen in the Vermilion-Purple Kingdom, whenever a treasure came in tribute from abroad, the sovereign looked it over and then always gave it to the queen to keep. Here you have no treasures at all: what one wears is sable, what one eats is raw flesh. When did I ever see damask or brocade, gold or pearls? Nothing but hides spread out and felts laid over.
“Or perhaps you do have some treasure, and because you keep me outside you neither let me see it nor give it me to keep. Take this: I hear you have three bells, and I take it they are some sort of treasure. How is it you have them on you walking and have them on you sitting? You might well hand them to me to keep, and take them out when you have need of them. There would be nothing wrong in that. This is what being husband and wife comes to, after all — that there should be something entrusted between hearts. If there is no such entrusting, what is it but keeping me outside?”
The fiend king laughed aloud and made his apology. “You are right to blame me, madam, quite right. The treasure is here, and today I shall hand it over for you to keep.” And he lifted his clothes at once to get the treasure out.
Pilgrim stood by without taking his eyes off him, and watched the creature lift two or three layers of clothing: he wore three bells against his skin. He untied them, stopped their mouths with a little cotton wool, made a bundle of a piece of leopard skin and wrapped them in it, and handed them to the queen: “They are poor mean things, but you must put them away with care. On no account shake them.”
The queen took them into her hands. “I understand. I shall set them here on the dressing table, where nobody will move them.” And she called: “You little ones, set out wine. The Great King and I will make merry together and drink a few cups.”
The waiting-women heard her and laid out fruit and greens at once, set on flesh of roe and of wild pig, of deer and of hare, and poured out the coconut wine to offer him; and the queen put on her enchanting airs and coaxed the creature along.
Sun Pilgrim, standing by and watching for his chance, edged and felt his way along, came up to the dressing table, lifted the three golden bells away very softly, moved his feet slowly, slipped out at the palace door and left the cave outright. When he reached an empty spot in front of the Flaying Pavilion he opened out the leopard-skin cloth to look: the middle one was the size of a teacup, and the two at either end the size of fists.
He did not know how dangerous they were, and pulled the cotton wool out. There was one ringing clang, and out came smoke and fire and yellow sand in a gushing rush; he could not check it in time, and the whole pavilion went up roaring in flame. The gate-keeping fiends were so frightened that they crowded in a body into the inner palace and roused the fiend king, who cried out in a panic: “Go and put the fire out! Put the fire out!”
When they came out to look, it turned out that There-and-Back had taken the golden bells. The fiend king came forward and shouted: “You vile slave! How is it you have stolen my golden bells, my treasure, and are meddling with them here?” And he called: “Take him! Take him!” Then the tiger generals and bear commanders at the gate, the leopard-heads and tiger-cub marshals, the otters and elephants, the grey wolves and knowing roebuck, the cunning hares, the long serpents, the great pythons and the gorillas led out the host of fiends and closed in all together.
Pilgrim lost hands and feet together, dropped the golden bells, showed his own shape, whipped out the gold-banded As-You-Will rod, opened out his whole repertoire of strokes and laid about him towards the front. The fiend king gathered up his treasure, gave out the word of command and had it cried: “Shut the front gate!” The host of fiends heard it, and those for shutting the gate shut it and those for fighting fought. Pilgrim, finding it hard to get clear, put up his rod, gave his body a shake, turned into a dull little fly and fixed himself on a piece of the stone wall the fire had not reached.
The fiends looked and could not find him, and reported: “Great King, the thief has got away! The thief has got away!”
“Did he ever get out through the gate?” asked the fiend king.
“The front gate is fast locked and firmly barred here,” they all said. “He has not got out.”
The fiend king only said: “Search carefully.” Some fetched water and threw it on the fire, and some searched carefully, and there was not a trace of him.
“What sort of thief is this?” said the fiend king in a rage. “What boldness — to change into the likeness of There-and-Back, come in and give me his report, keep at my elbow, and take his chance to steal my treasure. It is well he never got it out of doors. If it had been carried past the mountaintop and met the wind of heaven, what would have become of us?”
A tiger general stepped forward: “The Great King’s vast good fortune is level with heaven and our allotted span is not run out, and that is why it was found in time.”
A bear commander stepped forward: “Great King, this thief is nobody else. It must be that Sun Wukong who beat the vanguard. He must have fallen in with There-and-Back on the road, taken his life, seized the yellow flag, the brass gong and the ivory tablet, changed into his likeness, and come here to deceive the Great King.”
“Just so, just so,” said the fiend king. “That is reasonably seen.” And he called: “You little ones, search and guard with care. On no account open the gate and let him out.”
And this is what it comes to:
Playing clever turned to playing the fool;
the sport turned out to be earnest.
There is no telling yet how Sun Pilgrim was to get clear of the fiends’ gate; listen to the next chapter, and it will be explained.