Weird Tales/Volume 36/Issue 6/For Tomorrow We Die
For Tomorrow We Die
By Frank Owen
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A drug shop that has blossomed for a thousand years
must naturally have solved many of
Nature's mysteries. . . .
Now when the meal was over, Dr. Shen Fu leaned back in his chair and sighed contentedly.
"Death," he mused, "the supreme adventure in life is seldom appreciated because man usually encounters it when he is in such bad health that he cannot enjoy it." His guests, Ah Chow, the porcelain monarch and Wong See Lo who had raised a few silk worms into a mighty industry, looked at him blandly and nodded their heads.
They were both somewhat sleepy. The meal had been a veritable poem in many verses, beginning with fragile cups of fragrant tea, candied walnuts, hemp seeds, small oranges, apricot kernels preserved in oil and dried, apples that melted like snow upon the tongue. Then the rhythm became more stalwart. Sea-slugs and sharks' fins, deer sinews and bamboo shoots. Birds' nest soup blending into a following rice soup. And so the poem continued until fifty verses had flowed with measured cadence into waiting stomachs.
Finally came warm wine to charm the senses and release the tongue.
Ah Chow and Wong See Lo prided themselves on their amiable expressions. Not the quivering of an eyelid betrayed their true thoughts. But they had no control whatever over their appetites. They wallowed in food, making snorting noises like pigs grunting contentedly. It pleased them that Dr. Shen Fu whom they had swindled many times and whom they imagined was their eternal enemy, should make this noble gesture in their honor. A feast in a house-boat, floating on West Lake, the jewel of Hangchow.
The day was pleasant. Occasionally a gentle breeze invaded the calm, cool and fresh and laden with the fragrance of peach blossoms.
Dr. Shen Fu lifted a cup of warm wine to his lips and sipped languidly. "Truly," he reflected, "the gods have given you a perfect day to set out on that gentle road that will end with your becoming immortals."
Ah Chow roused from his lethargy. "What are you saying?"
"That soon you will be an ancestor. You have unwittingly joined me in a death feast," Dr. Shen Fu explained softly.
"What could be more enjoyable than a premeditated death, a death that has been cleverly appointed? My friends, we are dying in grandeur. Our appetites are appeased. We are at peace with life. Now for a moment we are resting, waiting for the doors to open to admit us into the vast hall of eternal mystery where our elders await us. Would you like more wine?"
Ah Chow whispered, "I do not like the name of death."
But Wong See Lo, despite his growing nervousness, laughed shortly.
"You are very droll," he declared. "I am not dying."
"One is never nearer death than when apparently enjoying abundant life." Dr. Shen Fu poured more tea into a cup as fragile as a rose petal. "My friends, you have entered into your last week on earth. I trust you will enjoy it well. A single week into which you must pack all that remains to you of living. Alas, that you both should have accumulated so much gold only to choke upon it in your final hour."
As Dr. Shen Fu finished speaking, he struck his hands together. Instantly two girls appeared from behind silken curtains in the stern of the boat. They were slender and graceful. One carried a lute. She sat down on a yellow silken pillow, playing softly, notes so sweet the lute seemed to be singing. And as she played, the other danced, soundlessly, rhythmically and there was music mingled with her form. Water-lilies crowded around the boat to listen.
The interval of dancing was but fleeting for soon the girls withdrew to appear no more. A servant brought long-stemmed pipes and tobacco.
"Come," said Dr. Shen Fu, "let us enjoy the fragrance of tobacco before we hang up our hats forever. Interesting, is it not, that as we recline in the bowl of life, we are so soon to peer over its mysterious edge? Perhaps we will be happier afterward for are we not always curious about what lies on the other side of our neighbor's walls or on the back of the mirror moon of which no one has ever seen aught but the face it turns toward us?"
"I am disinterested in the quality of death," Ah Chow said hesitantly. "All my attention is focused on the color and the taste of life."
"Alas, that so little of the repast remains. Soon the mountains of the moon will spew forth their secret, if in eternity man may visualize all that encompasses the universe. You have been my-guests at a feast. I am gratified that the viands were so well prepared, otherwise you would not have partaken of them so lavishly. But without your knowledge there was a condiment mixed with the food, which though tasteless, gave it a certain piquancy. That condiment was a subtle poison. Be not disturbed, however, even as it was tasteless, its effects will be without pain. As a final course at my table, I give you death."
Wong See Lo made an effort to speak but no sound came from his dry lips. His yellow face blanched into a greenish ashen tinge.
"Be not disturbed, my friend," Dr. Shen Fu repeated. "You will be able to endure death far more easily than you have endured life. In death there will be no necessity for treachery. There will be no advantage to starve the throngs who work in your factories, for you will have no factories."
"But I do not want to die," Wong See Lo declared firmly. "Death may have all the attraction you claim for it, but I am in no hurry. I am content to jog slowly along the road of life without any unnecessary impulse."
Said Ah Chow, "I shun death with the same fervor I would shun a morbid disease."
"You are guilty of wrong thinking," Shen Fu told him. "Being a doctor of medicine I can assure you it is life that is the disease; death is the cure."
Sudden panic seized Ah Chow. "My fingers are growing cold!"
"The fruit of distorted imagination," commented Dr. Shen Fu.
"My feet are numb!" broke in Wong See Lo.
Dr. Shen Fu sighed. "Why not attempt to live your last hours gracefully?"
"Is there nothing we can do?" Ah Chow pleaded. "Must we sit here and do nothing?"
"Nothing?" reflected Dr. Shen Fu. "Nothing? Truly a strange term to use when you are dying. How, then, could you be more gainfully employed?"
Dr. Shen Fu gazed at his guests through half-closed eyes, as though they were beetles in some weird experiment. It was interesting to watch their reactions. Now perhaps the feast was salted with regret. Too late they realized that they were unwise when they perpetrated frauds on the eminent doctor.
"Death is the only exalted place we attain without effort," he mused. "It is man's supreme destiny. Why toil?"
"Would that I were a begger," said Ah Chow. "Then this would not have happened to me."
"Wisdom flows from your lips; truly no begger ever partakes of such a feast."
"Hunger is a blessing," sighed Ah Chow. "How I wish I could enjoy it at this moment."
"When the stomach is full," observed Dr. Shen Fu, "it is easy to be a philosopher."
2.
Although Wong See Lo did not want to die, he fretted over the weary hours that he must endure ere death caught up with him. In the late evening, after daylight had expired, he put on a long blue silken gown, embroidered with jade and coral beads, and felt-soled shoes that he had never before worn. Then out into the garden he walked. The night was tremulous with stars. The trees murmured gently. A yellow moon hung low. He breathed deeply of the cool fragrant air. He had already ordered a bamboo chair to be placed in the garden for his comfort. Now he took the chair and carried it to a pear tree. He climbed upon the chair. From his sleeve he drew a heavy red-silk cord. He fastened it around his neck, then he tied the ends of it to a strong branch. His hands did not tremble. No longer was he afraid. Without hesitation, he kicked the bamboo chair from beneath his feet. And there he dangled from the pear tree, while the moon glowed yellow and the trees murmured songs to the cool night wind. There was peace in the garden, peace and music, while Wong See Lo, the silk merchant, quietly danced in the air.
3.
But Ah Chow was made of firmer stuff. Not so easily would he submit to the amazing dictates of Dr. Shen Fu. In business he had always been known as a shrewd trader. If he must eventually forfeit his life, he must secure full value for it.
He would not join his ancestors in the knowledge that he had been bested in his last trade on earth. So instead of weeping and beating his breast, he returned on the morrow to the drug shop of Dr. Shen Fu. Ever since the golden days of the T'ang Dynasty it had been in the family of Shen and so it was known as "The Drug Shop of a Thousand Years."
The venerable Doctor greeted Ab Chow graciously. Nothing in his manner reflected his innermost thoughts—that a living specimen was returning to tire laboratory for further experimentation.
His words were humble, "My shop is honored by your presence." Not by as much as the flickering of an eyelid did he acknowledge that he was surprised at the visit.
"I have come to you," Ah Chow said, "to discuss various means of prolonging life. In all China, no sage is more profound, no doctor more deeply versed in alchemy."
There was honey in the words of Ah Chow, the porcelain monarch, but in his eyes were sharp swords. Dr. Shen Fu smiled but he was in no way deceived by the words that the eyes contradicted.
"You mean 'The Golden Pill of Immortality?'"
"You are acquainted with it?" Ah Chow fought a losing battle to suppress his eagerness.
"A drug shop that has blossomed for a thousand years must naturally have solved many of nature's mysteries. Still it is a question whether Immortality for man would be a blessing or a curse. How then could one join one's ancestors and thereby take his true place in the spiritual universe?"
"I am in no hurry to acquire so great an honor. Besides, I am very rich. I can pay well for any service you are able to render me."
"I have already been of service to you," mused Dr. Shen Fu. "You are dying gently and without pain."
Ah Chow decided that he had adopted the wrong course of procedure. It is only by a circuitous route that man attains fulfillment of his wishes.
He decided that he would wait for Dr. Shen Fu to unravel the skein of conversation.
"A thousand years ago," began the Doctor meditatively, "when one of my honored ancestors first opened this drug shop, there came to it frequently a learned man named Lu-yien who was a scholar, a magistrate and an alchemist whose fame has survived in the voluminous manuscripts he has given unto the world. For myself, I would not be worthy of the term drug-merchant had I not committed his works to memory. His grass characters are the very life-blood of alchemy. Thus does he write: 'Would you seek the golden elixir, it is not easy to obtain. The three powers, sun, moon, and stars, must seven times repeat their footsteps; and the four seasons nine times complete their circuit. You must wash it white and burn it red; when one draught will give you ten thousand ages, and you will be wafted beyond the sphere of sublunary things. Everybody seeks long life, but the secret is not easy to find. If you covet the precious things of heaven, you must reject the treasures of earth.'"
Dr. Shen Fu stopped quoting abruptly. "Shall we have some tea?" he asked.
"Tea? Tea?" cried Ah Chow angrily. "This is no time for tea!"
"There is always time for a cup of liquid jade."
"But the elixir! The elixir!"
"It is not for those who gloat over the treasures of earth."
"But I will renounce wealth!"
"It would be more seeming for you to renounce life. Be tranquil. Think of the precepts of the Old Philosopher, 'Life follows upon death. Death is the beginning of life. If, then, life and death are but consecutive states, what need have you to complain?'"
"I am rich," burst out Ah Chow. "I have jades and pearls that an Emperor might cherish, and all will be yours for a Golden Pill of Immortality!"
"When a man owns the sky it is easy to give away stars."
"I fail to understand your meaning."
"Nothing is more involved than simplicity. However, this is no time to indulge in intricately embroidered sentences. When a man knows he is to die it is amazing how much he can accomplish in a short time. He is frugal even with words. Lao Tzu has written indelibly on the minds of our people, 'Govern a country as you would cook a small fish.' Alas, I am not an Emperor, so I cannot govern a country, but I can teach you much about cooking a small fish."
"Fish!" cried Ah Chow in anguish. "What care I for fish when I am dying?"
"They are very nutritious," said Dr. Shen Fu blandly, "but more important to you, is the fact that I shall use a few small fish in an experiment with the Immortal Elixir."
"You would waste that which is a thousand times more precious than jade upon fish!" "For the advancement of alchemy. I would have you view their reactions under intense heat. Let us go into the garden."
4.
In the garden of the drug shop, a fire had already been lighted under a wrought bronze pot, a pot so huge that it might have contained rice for all the poor of the province. But it was not food that was cooked in its enormous interior but broths to alleviate pain. In one corner of the spacious grounds a herd of deer was fenced off, for the deer supplies many remedies for the pharmacopeia of China. Its skin, horns, bones, hoof and viscera are used.
Dr. Shen Fu led the way to the bronze pot. A fire had already been kindled under it. They mounted a few steps to a platform from which they could get a good view of the interior.
"It is filled with boiling oil," said the Doctor, "to be used in our experiment." A servant came forward carrying a porcelain bowl containing six small fishes.
From his sleeve, Dr. Shen Fu drew a cinnabar snuff box. Carefully he extracted a minute pill which he placed in the mouth of one of the fishes. Immediately thereafter he tossed it into the bubbling, scalding oil. He did the same with a second and a third fish but the remaining three fishes, he threw into the sputtering fat without imbueing them with the golden elixir.
"Now look at the result," he ordered.
Ah Chow peered eagerly into the seething cauldron. The three fishes that had been given "The Golden Pills of Immortality" were swimming about as though they were in cold water, but the other three were cooked to a crisp and might have been tasty morsels to eat.
"The Taoist, Kan-shi," said the Doctor, "was the first to perfect this experiment. He lived many cycles ago and his exploits have all been metriculously recorded by the renowned grassist, Kohung. He experimented with silk-worms in like manner. After ten months they were still alive and may be still alive for all I know. It was given to chickens and small dogs and they stopped growing. A white dog on taking it turned black, proving that many things of heaven and earth are beyond understanding."
Ah Chow had been paying no attention to the Doctor's words but he was thinking quickly. A great anger flamed up in his heart and spread through his body with the speed of a flash of lightning. Dr. Shen Fu had wasted the elixir on fish when he was willing to pay a fortune for it.
"Look! Look!" he cried suddenly, "I think the other fishes are burning to a crisp."
As Dr. Shen Fu leaned forward eagerly, Ah Chow pushed him with a cornered tiger's strength and toppled him into the fat.
The Doctor made no cry as he fell, but he threw out his hand and caught the edge of the wrought-bronze pot. Immediately their was a hissing, sputtering sound, clouds of blue smoke rose from the pot. When it cleared, there was no sign of the doctor, neither was there the slightest vestige of his clothes. But the hand still grasped the edge of the pot, a dismembered hand that was all the evidence that a murder had been committed. Quickly Ah Chow released the grip of the fingers, though it required considerable effort, and because he did not know what to do with the tell-tale hand he hid it in his sleeve. Even though to escape from that horror garden, he had to pass through the drug shop where numerous clerks were measuring out fantastic medicines such as powdered toad skins for dropsy, infant's brain salve for skin diseases and dried water buffalo hide for carbuncle, they were so absorbed in their work none of them paid the slightest attention to him.
Outside the shop, he breathed more easily. He hired a rickshaw so that the short trip to his own elaborate home might be made more quickly. It may only have been the result of his overwrought nerves but he had the ghastly feeling that the severed hand was clutching him so that it would not fall from his sleeve. What a fool he had been to give way to anger! A merchant who succumbs to anger is like unto a man who would rob his own house. Better had he followed the example of Wong See Lo and dangled on the end of a red cord from a pear tree. Still there was some little satisfaction in knowing that the great Dr. Shen Fu had preceded him to the Yang. He wished the hand would not grip him so tightly and why was it still warm? What force kept heat in those fingers that should have been cold in death?
Ah Chow shuddered. A chill was upon him as though it were four-coat weather.
It was a relief to him when he was once more within the guarded confines of his own home. There were plenty of servants, strong northern hillsmen who would have wrestled dragons at his command. They were stalwart and fearless, men to whom a good fight was a tonic. That they were lazy as well, did not detract from their efficiency as bodyguards. They were above doing menial things which they left for lesser men. Nevertheless, Ah Chow felt repaid when occasionally they ejected a too ardent visitor from the tranquil gardens.
Ah Chow had accumulated vast wealth, nor cared he about the price he had to pay for it. He had a generous supply of enemies. But now one of them, Dr. Shen Fu, was dead—all but his hand. The living hand was a nuisance. He couldn't bury it in his garden and defile the earth. Besides, the hand was not dead. This was not, however, the real reason he decided to keep it, to hide it away in a teakwood chest in his sleeping room. There was a force that directed his mind, a force greater than curiosity, though that was considerable.
He wondered how long it would take for the hand to die. He tried to banish from his mind the knowledge that to dispose of that hand was an impossible thing. He could still feel the steel-trap grip of those fingers biting into the flesh of his arm as he had carried it home in his sleeve.
5.
That night as he sat alone at his evening meal, he had no appetite. The tea had a bitter taste. His mouth balked at accepting food even though his stomach growled for sustenance. Like a fool he had plunged into peril that he might have avoided. How now could he enjoy the last few days that remained to him of life? He fretted because the poison was not acting quickly enough. He who had been afraid to die was now afraid to live even though it was but for a few more days.
He retired early. For hours he lay and tossed on his kong, sleeping in snatches. Every once in a while he listened as though to the echo of words gently spoken. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead. What if it were the voice of Dr. Shen Fu? Ridiculous. The Doctor was dead, all but his hand and a hand cannot talk. He rose and walked to the window. In the moonlight the garden was a lovesome place. The sky was so clear the stars gazed down like startled eyes. The air was sweetened by the breath of countless flowers. Lovely was the night. The breeze was cool, the trees murmured eloquently. There was enchantment in that garden but nothing of fear. A child might have lain in the perfumed darkness wooed to sleep by the lullaby of trees. He was a fool, Ah Chow whom all called the porcelain monarch! Hundreds of workers toiled in his shops. All looked up to him. And now he was afraid.
He returned resolutely to his kong. This time reason reasserted itself. He was able to sleep. How long he slept he did not know, but suddenly he awakened. He tried to cry out but no sound came from his lips other than that which might have been attributed to a green frog sobbing. Had the moon exploded? Was there no air to breathe? He gasped for breath, something was choking him. The fingers of a hand were about his throat. The fingers bit into his flesh like hungry mouths. And then it was that he knew, knew that the hand of Dr. Shen Fu was clutching at his life. The blood in his veins congealed, his body became rigid, cold. No longer was his face a healthy yellow. It took on a tinge of blue that blended into green as the yellow moonbeams fell upon it. All power had left him, he couldn't struggle, he couldn't cry out, he couldn't breathe but his bulging eyes had doubly-acute sight. And then it was that he made out the features of Dr. Shen Fu smiling down upon him.
"I have come back for my hand," he said gently, "but I cannot release it from your throat. Therefore I shall walk about the marble paths of your garden and enjoy the wonder of the night until I can reclaim it without effort. What a pity that you could not have met the supreme adventure gracefully?"
So saying, Dr. Shen Fu walked slowly out into the garden. With measured footsteps he walked to the music of the trees under a sky tremulous with stars. He knew that it would not be long before his hand had completed its task.
"Ah Chow," he reflected, "was a shrewd trader, but not shrewd enough. He had neglected to reason that it would be hard, very hard to kill an alchemist who was able to successfully manufacture 'The Golden Pill of Immortality.'"
