望空就起 He Went Straight Up
眾官員只道孫行者說的是笑話。行者道：「列位大人，略陪我師父坐坐。八戒、沙僧，好生保護。等我去了就來。」好大聖，跳出門，望空就起。只見那遍地彩霞籠住宅，一天瑞氣護元神。眾等方才認得是個騰雲駕霧之仙，起死回生之聖，這裡一一焚香禮拜不題。众官员只道孙行者说的是笑话。行者道：「列位大人，略陪我师父坐坐。八戒、沙僧，好生保护。等我去了就来。」好大圣，跳出门，望空就起。只见那遍地彩霞笼住宅，一天瑞气护元神。众等方才认得是个腾云驾雾之仙，起死回生之圣，这里一一焚香礼拜不题。
逐句解 Line by line
The officers all took what Sun Wukong said for a joke. Monkey said, "Your worships, keep my master company a while and sit down."
只道 — took it for, assumed it to be. Ten characters, and they are the whole gap between Monkey and everybody else in the room. He has said exactly what he means to do, twice now, in plain words, and both times it has been heard as a figure of speech. The one occasion in this chapter when he is being completely straightforward is the one nobody credits. 略陪我師父坐坐 — keep my master company a while and sit down. Monkey is arranging the room before he leaves it: Tripitaka is to be seated and attended by the officers who imprisoned him two days ago.
"Bajie, Sha Monk — look after him well. I shall be back as soon as I have gone."
好生保護 — look after him well. He is leaving his master in a house full of people who had him gaoled, and the instruction is one line. 等我去了就來 — I shall be back as soon as I have gone. It is cheerfully impossible as English and exactly right as speech: I'll go and be straight back.
Fine Great Sage — he sprang out of the door and shot straight up into the sky. And there was seen: coloured cloud covering the whole house, and a sky of auspicious vapour guarding the primal spirit.
望空就起 — shot straight up into the sky. In front of everybody. After a whole night of gnats and borrowed voices, he leaves in the most conspicuous way available. 元神 — the primal spirit, the innermost self. The chapter's own title promises 救本原, the saving of the original nature, and this is the same idea under another name. The couplet has been waiting six thousand characters for this line. The two clauses are set out as a matched pair, seven characters each, though the edition prints them as prose.
Only then did the company recognise him for an immortal who rides the clouds and drives the mist, a sage who raises the dead and brings them back to life; and here they burned incense and did him reverence, one after another — but of that no more.
起死回生 — raises the dead and brings them back to life. A four-character phrase, still current, and the officials are applying it to him a little over eighty characters after laughing at him for saying he would do exactly that. 認得 — recognised. The verb and the character after it have fused into one word for knowing by sight, so the second half keeps its full weight — the ruling that corrected an earlier error of mine in this chapter. 一一焚香禮拜 — burned incense one after another. The doubled numeral for the last time in the chapter, five in all. And 不題 — of that no more — is the storyteller closing a thread to go somewhere else.
Monkey tells them plainly what he is going to do, they laugh, and then he flies out of the door in front of them and the sky fills with coloured cloud. Ninety characters separate the joke from the incense.
The word the narrator uses for what the cloud is guarding — the primal spirit — is the chapter's title arriving at last. The couplet at the head promised the saving of the original nature, and six thousand characters of robbery, perjury, arrest and paperwork have gone by without a word of it. It turns up here, in one clause, as Monkey leaves for the underworld.
And the officials at last see what they have been dealing with. They spent yesterday convicting him of robbery and this morning apologising to him, and only now, watching him go up, do they work out that the small monk they gaoled rides clouds and raises the dead. The book gives their realisation four characters and then closes the thread.