快救我一救 Wukong You Have Come
那長老認得,滴淚道:「悟空,你來了?快救我一救。悟空,悟空。」行者道:「師父莫只管叫名字:面前有人,怕走了風汛。你既有命,我可救得你。那长老认得,滴泪道:「悟空,你来了?快救我一救。悟空,悟空。」行者道:「师父莫只管叫名字:面前有人,怕走了风汛。你既有命,我可救得你。
逐句解 Line by line
The elder knew him, and said through his tears, "Wukong, you have come?
In 認得, 得 is dé. Thirteen characters, and the master's first words are a question with no doubt in it — he is not asking, he is registering.
Come and save me, save me. Wukong, Wukong."
救我一救 doubles the verb around a numeral, which makes it urgent and informal — give me a bit of saving. Then the name twice, which is all he can manage. Nine characters of a man who has been tied to a tree for a day and a night.
Pilgrim said, "Master, do not keep calling out my name. There are people about and I am afraid of letting the news blow away.
走了風汛 is to let word get out, literally to let the wind-tidings escape — the ancestor of the modern phrase for a leak. Wukong has been in the cave four passages and has not been seen once, and his teacher is shouting his name in the garden.
Since you are alive, I can save you.
救得你 takes 得 as de, the hinge marking whether the saving can be managed with the object inside it. Nine characters, and the condition is stated first: being alive is what makes rescue possible, and it is the fact Wukong has spent half a chapter failing to establish.
Tripitaka's contribution to his own rescue is to shout his rescuer's name repeatedly in an enemy garden. He does it out of relief, and it is the sort of thing that gets people killed, and the novel is fond enough of him to let it stand without comment.
The exchange has a real asymmetry in it. The master weeps and calls; the disciple gives operational instructions. That has been the shape of their relationship for sixty chapters, and the chapter title's alchemical names for the disciples — Wood Mother, Metal Lord — are one way the book has of insisting they are more than servants.