Monkey (40 page)

‘It didn’t hurt at all,’ said Monkey, ‘and I found it rather fun.’

‘Brother,’ said Pigsy, ‘I suppose you’ve put something on the scar.’

‘Feel my neck,’ said Monkey, ‘and see whether there’s a scar.’

That fool Pigsy put out his hand and felt. To his astonishment he found that there was not the faintest scar or mark. The new he?d had simply taken the place of the old.

‘Here are your passports,’ said the king, ‘and I advise you
to start immediately.’

‘Thanks for the passports,’ said Monkey. ‘But before we start, the Immortal must try the same experiment.’

‘This was to be a competition,’ said the king to the Immortals, ‘and you must not let me down by allowing these priests to go away victorious.’

Exactly the same proceeding was accordingly gone through with the Tiger Strength Immortal; but when he cried ‘Head, come back!’ Monkey at once plucked a hair, blew on it with magic breath, and cried ‘Change!’ It changed into a brown dog which ran at the head, took it up in its mouth, and carrying it away to the royal moat dropped it in. Three times the Immortal cried ‘Head, come back!’; but the head did not appear. He had not Monkey’s art of growing a new head. Alas! blood spouted from the trunk, the Immortal tottered, and presently fell prostrate in the dust. The officer in charge rushed to the spot, and on returning to the king reported, ‘Your Majesty, where the Immortal fell, all that is now to be
seen is a headless brown-coated tiger.’ The king turned deadly pale, while he fixed his gaze upon the two remaining Immortals. ‘My brother is undoubtedly no more,’ said the Deer Strength Immortal. ‘But I cannot admit that this brown tiger has any connexion with him. That is merely an illusion created by these ruffians. They must not be allowed to depart, till I have competed with them in the ordeal of belly-ripping.’

‘That would suit me very well,’ said Monkey. ‘Generally speaking I do not eat cooked food; but a few days ago a kind patron induced me to try some pastries, and since then I have had a pain inside. I think the pastries have gone bad, and I was just on the point of asking if I might borrow your Majesty’s knife, so that I might rip open my belly, take out my guts and give them a good cleaning. I don’t want to have any trouble on the journey.’

‘Take him along!’ cried the king.

‘You need not drag me,’ said Monkey, when the executioner’s men seized him. ‘I am perfectly ready to go. All I ask is that my hands shall be left free. I shall need them for cleaning my entrails.’

‘Don’t bind his hands,’ ordered the king.

When they had tied him to a stake and ripped open his belly, Monkey calmly took out his guts and after manipulating them for some time put them back inside him, coil for coil exactly in the right place. Then he blew on his belly with magic breath and the hole closed up.

‘Here are your passports,’ said the king. ‘I won’t delay your journey any further.’

‘It does not matter so much about the passports,’ said Monkey. ‘The next thing is for the Second Immortal to have his belly ripped open.’

“This has nothing to do with me,’ said the king to the Deer Strength Immortal. ‘But it was you who challenged them to this contest, and I must ask you to go and submit yourself to the ordeal.’

‘That’s quite all right,’ said the Immortal. ‘I am quite confident of success.’

The Immortal was just beginning to manipulate his guts as he had seen Monkey do, when Monkey plucked a hair, blew
on it with magic breath, cried ‘Change!’, and it changed into a ravening hawk which spread its claws and snatching the Immortal’s guts flew off with them to devour them at leisure far away out of sight. After a short while the Immortal collapsed against the stake. The executioners rushed up, and what should they find but the body of a lifeless white deer!

‘It seems that my poor brother has succumbed,’ said the Third Immortal. ‘But that this should be his corpse is impossible. A foul trick has been played upon us by these ruffians, and I must have my revenge.’

‘In what ordeal do you hope to get the better of them?’ asked the king.

‘I wager that he cannot bathe in boiling oil,’ said the Immortal. A large cauldron was accordingly filled with oil.

“Thank you for this kind attention’ said Monkey. ‘It’s a long time since I had a bath, and my skin was beginning to feel rather irritable. This will do me good.’ Faggots were laid under the cauldron and when the oil was well boiling, Monkey was invited to get in. ‘Is it to be a civil bath or a military bath ?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know the difference,’ said the king.

‘For a civil bath one does not undress,’ said Monkey, ‘but simply folds one’s hands like this and bobs in rapidly. One must not dirty one’s clothes. If there is a single speck of oil on them, it counts as a defeat. For a military bath, a clothes-stand is necessary, and a towel. One must completely undress, jump right in and play about in the bath, turning somersaults and splashing about at one’s ease!’

‘Which do you prefer?’ said the king to the Ram Strength Immortal.

‘If I choose a civil bath,’ said he, ‘I know this wretch would put some stuff on his clothes to keep off the oil. Let it be a military bath.’

‘Forgive my forwardness if I again claim the first turn,’ said Monkey. Look at him! He leaps straight into the cauldron, plunging about in the burning oil for all the world like a dolphin in the seawaves. Pigsy seeing him bit his finger-tip and whispered to Sandy, ‘We have really never taken this ape seriously enough. We should have taken a very different tone
about him if we had known he was capable of such a performance as this!* Seeing them whispering together, Monkey thought that they were making fun of him. ‘After all,’ he said to himself, ‘it’s I who have all the work to do, while the incompetents sit round and enjoy results. It wouldn’t be a bad plan to give them a bit of a fright.’ He made a tremendous splash and then suddenly sank to the bottom and changed himself into a tin-tack. In this form he lay at the bottom of the cauldron, and the officer in charge presently reported, ‘Your Majesty, the boiling oil has done its work. The little priest is dead.’ Much relieved, the king ordered the executioner to fish up the corpse. He began to fish about in the cauldron with an iron skimmer, but the holes in the skimmer were large, and Monkey in his present form was very small. Each time he was scooped up he slipped back again through a hole.

‘He was very delicately built,’ reported the executioner, ‘and seems to have evaporated, bone and all.’

‘Seize the other Buddhists 1’ said the king. Officers of the Guard rushed upon Pigsy from each side, threw him down and bound him.

‘Your Majesty,’ cried Tripitaka in great perturbation, ‘grant me a few moments’ grace. This disciple of mine, since he embraced the Faith, has performed many deeds of prowess. Now that he has met his match in this Third Immortal and perished in the cauldron of burning oil, I do not care what becomes of us. You are a king, and all who come under your sway must bow to your will. Command that I am to die, and I will gladly die. But this much I ask – give me half a bowl of cold rice gruel and three paper horses, and let me offer them to the soul of the departed. Then I will accept my fate.’

‘It is just as I have always heard,’ said the king. ‘These Qiinese are great sticklers for ceremony. Let him have what he asks.’ Beckoning to Sandy to come with him, Tripitaka went to the side of the cauldron, and some officers of the Guard caught hold of Pigsy by the ear and dragged him along too. ‘Disciple,’ said Tripitaka, addressing Monkey’s soul, ‘ever since you joined our Order you have faithfully protected me on my journey to the west. Little did I think that today you would go down to Darkness. Alive, you set your heart
on the quest of scriptures; dead, you still carry the name of Buddha in your heart, and who knows but that I shall find your ghost waiting for me in the Temple of the Thunder-Clap?’

‘Master,’ said Pigsy, ‘that’s not the way to talk to him. Sandy, give me a little of that rice-broth, and let me address his soul.’ Then lying bound with ropes upon the ground, that fool grunted out the following invocation: ‘Cursed ape, senseless groom, you looked for trouble and have found it. That cauldron has settled your account for good and all. We’re well rid of you, Monkey 1 We’ve seen the last of you, insensate groom!’

Hearing the fool’s gibes, Monkey could not restrain himself, and resuming his proper form, he stood up in the cauldron. ‘You worthless lout,’ he screamed, ‘whom are you insulting!’

‘Dear disciple,’ said Tripitaka, ‘you nearly frightened me to death.’

‘Was anything cleverer ever seen,’ said Sandy, ‘than the way our brother pretended to be dead ?’

In consternation all the officials, military and civil, rushed to the king and reported, ‘The priest is not dead after all. He is standing up in the cauldron of boiling oil.’

‘Not at all,’ said the officer in charge, ‘he is dead right enough. But it happens to be an unlucky day and this is his ghost appearing.’

At this Monkey jumped right out of the cauldron, wiped off the oil, dressed, and seizing his cudgel rushed at the officer and pounding his head with it cried, ‘So I’m a ghost, am I!’ Terrified out of their wits the other officers let go of Pigsy, and kneeling before Monkey cried, ‘Forgive us, forgive us!’

The king sprang from his throne and was rushing away, when Monkey stopped him, saying, ‘Your Majesty, don’t leave us. The Third Immortal has still to take his bath.’

‘Immortal,’ said the king, trembling from head to foot, ‘I must trouble you to get into the cauldron at once, or this priest will cudgel me to death.’ The Ram Strength Immortal went to the cauldron and undressing just as Monkey had done got into it and began to bathe himself. Seeing him looking
quite comfortable Monkey called to the stokers to put on more fuel. Presently he went up to the cauldron and put his finger in. To his astonishment he found that the oil was quite cold.’ It was hot enough when I was in,’ thought Monkey to himself. ‘What can have happened? I have itl There must be some chilly dragon hiding there.’ And jumping into the air he uttered a sonorous
Om,
by which he summoned the Dragon King of the Northern Ocean. ‘Now then, you horrid earthworm, you scaly loach, how dare you help this Taoist by allowing a chilly dragon to hide in the cauldron? Do you want to make a hero of him and see me defeated?’

‘Great Sage, you do not understand,’ said the Dragon King. “This creature by practising considerable austerities was able to escape from his original shape; but the only magic powers that he acquired were the Five Thunder Methods. Apart from that he only learnt a few paltry tricks that have nothing to do with true Taoism. By acquiring this chilly dragon as a familiar spirit he has been able to play all kinds of tricks upon the world at large. But you, Great Sage, should not have been deceived. I will at once call back this chilly dragon, and I will guarantee that the Immortal will be boiled, bones, skin, and all.’

‘Call it in quickly,’ said Monkey, ‘or you’ll get a good hiding.’

The Dragon King, in the form of a magic whirlwind, rushed to the cauldron and seizing the chilly dragon carried it away to the Northern Ocean.

Returning from the air, Monkey joined Tripitaka, Pigsy, and Sandy, and they soon saw the Immortal struggling and squirming. He made frantic efforts to get out, but all in vain, and in a little while it was all over with him. ‘Your Majesty,’ announced the officer in charge, ‘the Third Immortal has succumbed.’ The king, in utter despair, wept copiously and beat upon the table with his fists.

If you do not know how Tripitaka and the others set things right, listen to what is told in the next chapter.

T
HE
king’s tears gushed like a fountain all the time till darkness fell. ‘How can you be so deluded?’ said Monkey, coming up to him. ‘Have you not seen that the first Immortal’s corpse showed him to have been merely a tiger? The second has turned out to be a common deer. And if you have the bones of the third fished out of the cauldron, you will find that he was nothing but a ram, the bones of which could never be mistaken for those of any human being. All of them were bewitched wild animals who came here plotting your destruction; but seeing that your ascendancy was still strong, they did not dare lay hands upon you. In a year or two, when your ascendancy will be on the wane, they would have taken your life and stolen all your streams and hills. Luckily for you we came in time to save you from these monsters. Why then should you weep ? Make haste to give us our passports and send us on our way.’

The king, on hearing this, began to come to his senses, and soon afterwards his officers approached him. ‘Your Majesty,’ they said. ‘It is indeed the fact that a ram’s bones have been found at the bottom of the cauldron. This holy Buddhist’s words must be accepted as truth.’

‘I must confess,’ said the king, ‘that I am grateful to him. But it is late. You, my chief Minister, must invite these priests to spend the night in the Temple of the Pool of Knowledge. Early tomorrow, make ready the eastern tower of the palace and tell my stewards to prepare a meatless banquet, that may repay them for their great achievement.’

Next day at his morning Court the king ordered a decree to be promulgated, summoning all Buddhists to the city, and it was displayed at all four gates and in every street. Then Tripitaka ?nd the rest were summoned to the eastern tower and were entertained at a great feast.

When the fugitive Buddhists heard that a decree had been
displayed, summoning them back to their homes, they came in high delight, looking everywhere for Monkey. For they wished to thank him, and hand back the hairs that he had given them for their protection. When the feast was over and the passports had been put in order, the king and queen, with all the ladies of the Court and officials military and civil, escorted Tripitaka and the rest to the gates of the palace. What should they find there but a crowd of priests kneeling at the side of the street crying, ‘Great Sage, our Father, we are the priests who were in durance at the sandy cliff. Hearing that you had destroyed the fiends and worked our deliverance, also that our king had issued a mandate calling back all Buddhists, we have come to give you back your hairs and express our thanks.’