‘Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.’
– Siegfried Sassoon
‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.’
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
‘Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.’
– Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Late in the afternoon, Judge Dee returned to his room in the temple, weariness weighing him down like a heavy blackboard which bore the characters of a person’s name written on it and then crossed out. Such a blackboard would be hung around the neck of a criminal and exhibited conspicuously at the execution ground. It signified that the person with the name written and crossed out on the board was going to be beheaded soon.
Pulling his swollen feet out of his heavy boots, Judge Dee changed into a pair of straw slippers provided by the temple and heaved a sigh of relief. After making himself a cup of Dragon Well tea, he pushed the armchair closer to the wide-opening window and sat down, inhaling the light fragrance from the dainty cup.
In the distance, a gray wild goose was flying over a discolored pavilion, its wings flapping against the increasingly oppressive sky. Resting his elbow on the arm of the chair, and his chin on his fist, Judge Dee stared at the desolate scene gloomily, trying to sort through what he had learned earlier in the day.
With both Yang’s information and his put together, he’d still failed to produce anything close to a scenario to account for the fire – not even something plausible enough to explain it to himself.
Nor had his examination of the fire scene in the company of Disillusion yielded anything substantial. The only new evidence he’d found was a scrap of paper, which he’d torn violently from the tight, rigid fist of a nameless body, lying charred beyond recognition near the back garden of the temple.
The scorched scrap was also a puzzle, but the bewildered judge wondered whether he could make anything of this potential clue. He could only make out two or three characters written on it – blurred, barely readable, but totally meaningless out of context.
More likely than not, it was just something like a fragment of a cherished letter from home, sent to the deceased beggar in better times.
Judge Dee turned to the table beside his chair and started grinding his mountain-pine-smoke inkstick slowly on a Duan ink-stone, circle by circle. Sometimes, grinding the inkstick rhythmically could somehow help to sooth his brain. Subconsciously, perhaps.
Moistening the starched point of a new brush pen on the tip of his tongue, he dipped it into the black ink, and wrote down a list of puzzling questions on another piece of paper.
After gazing at the list for a long time, he twirled the pen. He wanted to draw lines between them, find tentative connections, but he failed again in his endeavor.
‘Confucius says, “Knowing the task facing you is impossible, you still have to try your best to do it, as long as it is the right and proper thing for you to do so,”’ Judge Dee murmured to himself, his voice subdued, like a bookworm in Little Swallow’s description. Judge Dee did not consider himself such a bookworm, nor was Luo Binwang, but the two of them did share some common characteristics.
In the meantime, Yang too had left the temple on his errand. After a short while, he returned to Judge Dee’s room, carrying a large cloth bundle of herbs. The devoted servant was planning to boil them in accordance with the instructions from the herbal medicine store.
Having borrowed a small stove from the temple, Yang put an earthen pot of water on to boil. When the water was starting to heat, he dropped in some of the herbs, and then, after ten minutes or so, he threw in the remaining pieces. All the while, he checked and rechecked the instructions from the herbal store, fanning the stove clumsily. His forehead was deeply furrowed, as if the lines had been somehow etched in.
While Yang was anxious to prepare the medicine correctly, he was more worried about something else.
Judge Dee did not have much faith in herbs, as Yang well knew. So why would his master put on such a dramatic show of interest in them all of a sudden?
Yang thought it was out of the question that Judge Dee had learned so much from Dr Hua – after just one talk lasting for a couple of hours, with most of the time spent discussing Luo Binwang – that he was now able to make an effective herbal prescription for himself.
The steaming hot water in the pot soon started bubbling. Yang turned down the fire to the minimum and waited patiently by the stove like an old monk. The herbal liquid could boil over at any moment.
Yang believed wholeheartedly in Judge Dee. It was an unwavering principle for him: whatever circuitous route Judge Dee might take on an investigation, whether stealthily or not, things would never go wrong for Yang if he followed his master every step of the way.
An acceptable herbal smell was permeating the room when a knock was heard on the door. The abbot of the temple, a white-haired and white-bearded old man in his seventies, Buddhist-named Vanity, had come to call on Judge Dee. Following the abbot was the young reception monk Disillusion, carrying a large, vermilion-painted, three-tiered rattan food container.
Yang rose at the sight of the two monks and bowed to them respectfully, before turning to Judge Dee, leaning over and saying in a low voice, ‘I’ve reduced the fire beneath the stove to its lowest level, Master. The herbs have to be boiled for at least a couple of hours. So you will have to keep an eye on it.’
As if on cue, the short-billed earthen pot began purring repeatedly like a spoiled cat, with pieces of brownish herbs rising and ebbing in the boiling water.
Once Yang had left the room, the white-haired-and-browed Abbot Vanity made another respectful bow to Judge Dee, counting the beads of a sandalwood ring around his hand as he did so, then started speaking to him. ‘So sorry about this morning, Your Honor,’ the abbot said, pressing his palms together. ‘We had such a disastrous fire, you know. Merciful Buddha blesses all the dead.’
‘There’s nothing for you to say sorry about, Abbot Vanity. On the contrary, I’m so grateful to you for providing me with much-needed shelter to recover from my sickness and my long, arduous trip.’
‘Let me introduce Disillusion to you. He is a student of mine. He’s young, but very capable in his way. If you require any help during your stay in the temple, just tell him what you need.’ The abbot smiled a shrewd smile. His face, shrunk like an aged, wrinkled walnut, was somehow reminiscent of an ancient white owl, flying out of ancient history, hooting eerily deep in the black, impenetrable night woods.
‘Oh I’ve met Disillusion,’ Judge Dee said with a smile. ‘In fact, he has just accompanied me to the back garden, where the fire began. He’s a very capable young man indeed, as you have just put it, and he has been very helpful to me so far.’
‘You surely could have chosen a much more comfortable hostel, Your Honor. So what an honor it is for you to choose us! You are such a well-known, high-ranking minister of integrity and incorruptibility. Not to mention the fact that you are highly trusted by the empress of our great Tang Empire!’
Judge Dee thought he could sense a deeper layer of meaning underneath the clichés the old abbot was speaking, but he chose not to dwell on it for the moment.
‘The Dingguo Temple is so well known, Abbot Vanity,’ he said in return. ‘A large number of famous people have come to stay here.’
‘You are truly flattering us, Your Honor.’
‘To be honest with you, my abbot, one of the reasons that I’ve chosen to stay in your temple is simple. I have heard that some of the Tang Empire’s most renowned poets have visited and written lines of poetry on the temple’s back garden walls. I just wanted to admire the wonderful poems written there. I’ve heard such a lot about them.
‘That’s why I insisted on Disillusion taking me to the back garden. The opportunity was essential for the sake of my continuous self-cultivation. Not to mention, of course, that it’s so serene and peaceful in the temple, with the ancient bell evoking memories from the depths of our history that inspired the lines.’
‘Yes, some of our Tang dynasty poets have indeed chosen to stay in our humble place, including Wang Bo, Luo Binwang, Lu Zhaoling, among many others. Alas, as you will know, many of the lines they wrote on our wall were damaged in the temple fire.’
The abbot seemed to be highly alert, despite his age. The moment Judge Dee touched on the topic of the poems left on the wall of the back garden, Abbot Vanity had taken the initiative to bring up Luo Binwang’s name. It was, Judge Dee concluded, probably done on purpose. In the Go chess game – which is sometimes known as ‘hand talk’, or a conversation between hands – each move tests the opponent’s response. If the old abbot was aware that Empress Wu had asked Judge Dee to investigate Luo Binwang’s disappearance, the abbot could have prepared or rehearsed his response beforehand. The abbot’s opening move probably aimed to show that he was not at all worried about questions regarding Luo.
‘What a shame!’ Judge Dee said, deciding not to swallow the bait in one quick bite.
So, their talk was to be conducted like a round of shadow boxing between two tai chi masters. In a shadow-boxing match, the two participants would strike a succession of poses, without physically touching each other. Such a display of skill was generally considered in traditional Chinese martial arts to be a sign of the highest level of achievement.
The abbot had shared, without being prompted, that some of the poetry on the burnt wall had been written by Luo Binwang and other poets. Judge Dee decided to consider the subtle implications of his words before he made a counter move.
Could the fire have been set on purpose simply to destroy the walls, and the two deaths here were simply yet more collateral damage?
It made sense, he reflected, that the empress would not want to have any traces of Luo’s writing left on the temple walls. The poems could prove to be a continuous reminder of Luo’s denouncement of her in his ‘Call to Arms’. The rebellion may have failed, but writing lasts for thousands of autumns, as a Tang poet-sage had once argued. People could come pouring into the temple’s back garden to copy Luo’s works – generation after generation.
But was this motive strong enough for the empress to go to the effort of arranging the fire – scheming, commanding from hundreds of miles away in the capital of Chang’an? Judge Dee could not help wondering.
‘What a shame!’ he repeated. ‘How could the fire have started, all of a sudden, in the temple?’
‘I’m still puzzled,’ the abbot said. ‘As in an old saying, a too-tall monk is unable to touch his head for enlightenment, Your Honor. The temple kitchen was not cooking anything at the time.’
‘That’s so weird. Could it—’
Judge Dee’s train of thought was derailed by Disillusion, who now took the steaming hot dishes out of the vermilion bamboo container in a flurry, placing them deftly on to the table. As he did so, the young monk introduced each of the delicacies to Judge Dee, with unmistakable pride in his voice.
‘The Dingguo Temple is quite well known for the special vegetarian meals we serve to our distinguished guests. For today’s meal, we have “braised pork in special red sauce”, “super fried crispy rice paddy eels”, “bear paws in lobster sauce”, “unbelievably spicy and tender beef tendon”, “Yangzhou-style steamed lion head”—’
‘What an intriguing paradox!’ Judge Dee commented, raising his chopsticks in an appreciative gesture. ‘The special vegetarian dishes on the table appear to be named in connection to meat and fish. In other words, all of them are derived from the non-vegetable.’
‘Well, for ordinary people, who are barely able to keep the pot boiling, it’s a matter of course that they consider meat and fish to be the most desirable delicacies, whether consciously or subconsciously,’ the abbot said with a frown. ‘So the names of these dishes lend themselves to the culinary imagination. For the wealthy patrons of the temple, these vegetarian delicacies may serve just as an occasional change, and the meaty, impressive names on the menu may make the banquet sound more enticing.’
‘That’s a profound lecture on the naming of vegetarian delicacies! Indeed, what is in a name? But how is today’s so-called “steamed lion head” actually made?’
‘Dry tofu and bamboo shoots are minced, mixed with corn starch and rice wine, shaped into the shape of a lion head and then steamed,’ the abbot said with a chuckle. ‘The chef then gives a finishing touch by adding a couple of goji berries for decoration.’
‘It’s in imitation of a famous special in the Yangzhou cuisine,’ Disillusion explained further. ‘In the original dish, the chef cuts rather than minces the pork, cut after cut, to keep the meat juicy. He shapes the meat into large balls and then steams them in a special steamer.’ Disillusion gestured with his hands as he spoke, in imitation of the preparation. ‘Finally, you just need to add green onion and red pepper slices on top when the tasty dish is served on the table.’
‘The lion head is just an appearance,’ the abbot commented again, also raising his black chopsticks in a gesture of invitation. ‘In our world of red dust, there’s nothing but appearance, to which people give one name or another. Consider the name of the young man with us: Disillusion. Illusion is appearance, and so is disillusion. Buddha is in your own heart, so why bother about illusion or disillusion, this or that name?’
‘So masterfully said,’ Disillusion said with sincere admiration in his voice. ‘And that’s why our learned abbot gave me this Buddhist name. Name is nothing, and nameless is also nothing. That’s what disillusion is really about.’
Seemingly enlightened by Abbot Vanity’s Zen-spirited lecture, Disillusion kept nodding energetically. He remained standing by the table in respectful attendance, helping with whatever was needed, like an experienced private-room waiter.
‘You know what?’ Judge Dee changed the subject subtly. It was time for his counter move in the shadow-boxing match. ‘As people sometimes say, once an investigator, always an investigator. I might be a layman right now, but here I am, remaining helplessly stuck with the appearance of an investigator. For instance, I cannot help wondering how the fire started in the temple. It’s the rainy season now. The fire should not have spread so fast, so uncontrollably.’
‘It’s an ancient temple,’ Abbot Vanity responded guardedly, ‘so our monks always keep large urns of water in the back garden, whatever the season. Believe it or not, that’s where the fire first started. Your question beats me. As an experienced, resourceful investigator, Your Honor, you alone may be able to shed light on the mystery for a senile and slow-witted monk like me.’
Judge Dee dodged the counter attack. ‘I’m totally in the dark too. And I have to admit that I’m still feeling too weak to do any investigation in earnest. At least, not for the present moment,’ he went on deliberately, tapping his fingers lightly against the hard wood tea-stand. ‘However, let me ask you a couple of possibly related questions first, Abbot Vanity. Has anything suspicious happened in the temple, or around the temple, during the last few months?’
‘No, nothing that I’m aware of. I’m too old, you know, so I let younger monks take care of most of the day-to-day business in the temple.’
‘Let me rephrase the question. Has anything unusual, or out of the way, happened relating to the temple?’
‘Let me think,’ the aged abbot said, scratching his shaven head. The sun was setting in the west outside the window, and only a dim light managed to stumble into the room. ‘If anything, perhaps far more visitors than usual have come pouring into our humble temple of late.’
Judge Dee nodded, without making an immediate comment. It wasn’t too surprising for visitors to come crowding into the temple. Perhaps some of them had visited for the sake of reading and copying the poems left behind by Luo. Those lines could have disappeared overnight at any point since his disappearance. And sure enough, they had now disappeared – or, to be more exact, the wall they were written on had practically disappeared.
In today’s Tang dynasty, with the high expense of woodblock carving and printing, few people could afford to buy books. They simply copied out texts they wanted to keep in readable handwriting.
For relatively short texts like poems, a special technique had been invented for the purpose. Temples or gardens would display stone tablets of various sizes with the texts chiseled on them, and men of letters would press papers hard on the stone surfaces to make their copies. These tablets served well for the purpose of attracting more fee-paying visitors, and a fairly lucrative niche market had come into being. The disappearance of the poetry wall spelled a big loss for the temple.
Earlier, during his examination of the scene of the fire, in the company of Disillusion, Judge Dee thought he had noticed a grove of black stone tablets there. The wall might have been destroyed, but perhaps some of Luo’s poems had escaped.
‘Well, something else happened which appeared a bit unusual. Not too long before the fire broke out, a food hygiene inspection team made an unannounced visit to our temple kitchen,’ Abbot Vanity went on, frowning in thought. ‘The officials said it was nothing but a routine check, but they did not look into the kitchen alone. They searched each and every room – and each and every corner – of our temple, turning everything upside down and inside out. I have to say, I commend them for their thoroughness,’ he added blandly.
Perhaps the old abbot too had guessed there was something sinister behind the so-called food hygiene inspection, but he refrained from saying anything too explicit about his suspicions to Judge Dee. After all, the abbot knew Judge Dee was highly trusted by the empress, and he’d never met or talked to him before.
‘Yes, what a fastidious hygiene inspection team,’ Judge Dee commented, seemingly undisturbed.
‘Please help yourself to slices of fried rice paddy eel, Your Honor,’ Disillusion cut in hurriedly, as if aware of something dangerous in the talk between the judge and the abbot. ‘Our kitchen alone is capable of producing this special dish.’
Judge Dee allowed him to change the subject. ‘Another secret recipe?’
‘Well, guess what the eel is made of? Eggplant! It takes a lot of steps to make this special dish. We steam it, dry it, fry it, add the fish-flavored sauce and then refry it so it comes out crispy and tasty.’
‘So crispy and tasty indeed. Actually, it no longer tastes like eggplant at all, Abbot Vanity,’ Judge Dee exclaimed after chopsticking one slice into his mouth, chewing with great gusto, enjoyment written on his face. ‘Different texture, different flavor.’
The judge then hesitated a little, chewing another slice of ‘the fried rice paddy eel’ before broaching a seemingly new subject, the eel slice still rolling on his tongue.
‘I have one more question for you, Abbot Vanity. You mentioned that Luo Binwang himself once stayed in the Dingguo Temple. When did he make the visit?’
‘It was several years ago – seven or eight years, I think. Luo was very poor, in spite of being a fairly well-known poet at the time. We gave him board and food free, in exchange for him leaving his poems on the back garden wall. It’s sort of a tourist attraction for the temple, you know.’
‘So you two talked a lot?’
‘Not that much, no. Luo’s a man immersed in the world of red dust, whereas I, a Buddhist monk, am trying to step out of it. Nevertheless, he seemed to be a man of wide learning, touching on a variety of subjects. I’m interested in Zen. And believe it or not, he was quite well versed in Zen too. He even wrote a Zen poem on the wall.’
‘I understand. I’ve talked with Han Shan, another great Zen poet whose work is full of deep images and sudden enlightenments. I’ve benefited a lot from my discussions with him,’ Judge Dee said, putting down his cup, still brimming over with sweet rice wine. ‘Now what did you think of Luo Binwang – as a poet and as a man?’
‘I don’t know him well enough to judge, but Luo is a man who’s had many frustrations and setbacks in his life. He may have been filled with too much negative energy, and is therefore not in a position to see through the appearances of the mundane world. Success or failure, all the things and all the people under the sun are gone with the wind, insubstantially like a puff of smoke—’
‘Your talk is imbued with profound enlightenment, Abbot Vanity,’ Judge Dee interrupted, feeling obliged to prevent the abbot from digressing into another Buddhist lecture. ‘But has Luo Binwang ever visited the temple again?’
‘No, Luo Binwang has not revisited our temple.’
Judge Dee saw little point going on with the shadow-boxing performance, though. He suspected that the abbot sitting opposite him had been well prepared for this talk, perhaps for a long time. On the crucial questions, Abbot Vanity had made a point of responding cooperatively, yet had provided no concrete information. Nothing wrong about that, of course. But it also meant there was nothing for the judge to move on.
Why was such a deliberate performance being staged by the Buddhist abbot? What did the old monk have to hide?
‘By the way,’ Judge Dee said slowly, ‘have you any clues pointing to the cause of the recent fire in the temple?’
‘No, I have not. Did you notice anything suspicious at the fire scene, Your Honor?’
‘Nothing,’ Judge Dee responded. ‘Nothing but a small burnt scrap of paper I pulled out of the fist of a nameless dead body. I put the scrap in my pocket, but when I got back in my room for a closer look, the scrap was already reduced to crumbs like dust.’
‘Yes, it was small, and badly scorched,’ Disillusion cut in, ‘with only one or two characters remaining faintly readable, but totally meaningless out of context.’
‘From dust to dust,’ Abbot Vanity said reverently, ‘oh Merciful Buddha!’
After the abbot and his disciple had left his room, Judge Dee stood up and looked out of the paper window, yellowed by time.
The long-haired, exotic-looking white cat was chasing its own shadow in the deserted courtyard, as if debating philosophically about the difference between being a cat and being a shadow. Turning to rub its back against the wall, it licked its tiny tongue in a gesture of satisfaction with life, slipped by the terrace and curled up on a wooden bench. As if aware of another eventless eventide approaching fleet-footedly, the white cat purred itself gradually to sleep once again.
There was no point disturbing Yang at this moment, Judge Dee reflected. There were so many new theories somersaulting chaotically into the back of his mind that he’d hardly had time to digest any of them. And he was still debating with himself about what could prove to be the ‘right and proper’ thing for him to do about it all. He heaved another long sigh.
It began to rain. Taking a small sip of green tea, Judge Dee listened to the raindrops pattering against the temple eaves. In the world of red dust, people are lost in appearances, as Abbot Vanity had just described to him – whether meeting in joy or parting in grief, believing only in the current place, the current moment.
But in this present moment, nothing appeared real, substantial to Dee, except for the tiny bells tinkling on the glazed eaves of the temple, which were ringing faintly in harmony with the rain dripping down to the temple courtyard, drop after drop in unchanging rhythm …
And Judge Dee felt the unmistakable wave of a real, terrible headache assailing him.