Swooping left and right, he deftly caught the scraps of meat sailors flung up; soon his stomach was fuller than he could recall it ever having been in his life, and he flew back to the woods beside the temple and perched on the branch of a tree. As he sharpened his beak on the branch, he gazed at the late afternoon sunlight glittering like gold on the surface of Lake Tung-t’ing. The sight moved him to recite a poem in the manner of the ancient sages:
Like a thousand golden petals:
Wavelets scattered
By the autumn wind.
“Am I to take it, sir,” said an alluring feminine voice, “that you are pleased?”
Yu Jung turned to see a female crow perched next to him on the branch. He bowed politely to her.
“‘Pleased’ is scarcely the word, miss. Never have I known such lightness, such a sense of being free of the dust and dirt of the world.” After saying this, he reflexively added: “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
“I understand,” said the other in a calm and soothing tone. “I’m told you’ve had a very difficult life. I know how you must feel. But you’ll be fine now. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“Oh? Forgive me, but... May I ask whom I have the honor of addressing?”
“Why, I’m to be your companion. Whatever you desire, you have only to ask. I’m here to serve your every need. Or... do I displease you?”
“Displease me? Certainly not, but...” Rattled, Yu Jung cast about for the proper words. “I have a wife of my own, you see. The superior man must abstain from lascivious conduct. I won’t be led into temptation,” he declared, trying to look the part of a crow of the highest morality.
“I beg your pardon, sir! Do you imagine that some base and frivolous passion has inspired me to approach you like this? You do me an injustice. I am here at the bidding of His Majesty, the benevolent Wu. It is he who has commanded me to offer you solace and comfort. Understand that you are no longer a human being, and that the wife you had in your other life is no longer a consideration. She may be a gentle and loving soul, but I assure you that I will prove in no way inferior. I shall devote myself wholeheartedly to serving you, and you will find that avian fidelity is based upon an even higher and purer truth than that of humans. Unworthy though I may seem to you now, I beg you to allow me to stay by your side. My name is Blue Bamboo.”
Yu Jung was deeply moved.
“Thank you. I have suffered much at the hands of human society. Forgive me if I seem overly suspicious. I am unaccustomed to such kindness, you see, and scarcely know how to accept it gracefully. Do forgive me.”
“My! You needn’t speak so formally. It sounds odd. Don’t you see? I’m to be your wife. Would you fancy an after-dinner stroll, my lord?”
Yu Jung nodded in as lordly a manner as he could manage, and said: “Lead the way, Blue Bamboo.”
“Come, then,” she said, and took to the sky.
Calling back and forth, now one in the lead and now the other, with the autumn wind soft beneath their wings, the hazy waters of Lake Tung-t’ing far below them, the tiled roofs of distant Yueh Yang Pagoda glistening in the fiery glow of the setting sun, and the reflection of the surrounding mountains embossed on the shimmering surface of the Hsiang River, the black-robed newlyweds flew wherever their hearts inclined, strangers to anxiety, delusion, or fear, and when they tired they rested their wings atop the mast of a homeward bound ship and looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. When night fell at last they winged leisurely back toward the woods, admiring the sight of Lake Tung-t’ing bathed in the brilliant light of the autumn moon, and when they reached their roost they nestled together and slept. The following morning they splashed about in the waters of the lake, bathing their feathers and rinsing their throats, then darted off toward an approaching ship and breakfasted on the sailors’ morning offering. Blue Bamboo, the demure and innocent bride of our failed examinee, was ever at his side, sticking as close to him as a shadow and gently looking after his every need. Yu Jung felt as if all the misery of his life had been swept away without a trace.
By the afternoon of that day, he was completely at home in his new role and had mastered the art of flitting about above the masts of passing ships, and when a vessel laden with soldiers came along he ignored his companions, who fled, squawking of danger, and paid no heed to Blue Bamboo’s cries of warning, too full of himself and the freedom of flight to resist the temptation to circle proudly in the air above it. He did not notice until too late that one of the soldiers had drawn a bow and was taking aim, and in the next moment an arrow pierced his breast. He fell from the sky like a stone. Blue Bamboo raced to him with lightning speed, caught him under one wing, and carried him back to the balcony of the King Wu Shrine, where she laid him down and clung to him, shedding a flood of tears as she tried to tend to his wound. The damage was too severe, however, and Blue Bamboo, seeing that her husband was beyond hope, let out a keening, mournful cry to summon the rest of the flock. Learning what had just occurred, the flock took to the air with a great flapping of wings to surround the soldiers’ ship and fan the water, roiling the surface with tremendous waves that in no time at all caused the vessel to capsize and sink. Thus avenged, the great flock of crows lifted their voices in a triumphant song that resounded across the entire lake. Blue Bamboo hurried back to Yu Jung’s side and gently pressed her cheek against his.
“Do you hear that?” she whispered plaintively. “Do you hear the victory song of your comrades?”
The pain in Yu Jung’s breast was insufferable. He opened his unseeing eyes and with his dying breath murmured:
“Blue Bamboo...”
And with that he awoke to find that he was once again a man, the same impoverished scholar as before, lying on the balcony of the King Wu Shrine. The setting sun burned brightly on the maple trees in the woods before him, where hundreds of crows were innocently hopping from twig to twig, playing and laughing.
“Finally woke up, did you?”
An old man dressed in peasant clothing smiled down at him.
“Who... Who are you?” said Yu Jung.
“Me? I’m just a farmer from down the road. I passed by here yesterday evening and found you lying there, dead to the world. I called out to you as loud as I could, but you wouldn’t wake up. Shook you by the shoulders and everything—you just snored away, smiling to yourself every now and then. I was worried even after I got home, so I kept coming back to check on you. You’re pale as a ghost, you know that? You sick or something?”
“No. No, I’m not sick.” Nor, oddly enough, was he hungry now. “Sorry,” he said, apologizing as usual, then sat up on his knees and bowed politely to the farmer. “This is very embarrassing,” he began, and proceeded to explain how he’d come to be lying there asleep on the balcony, finishing with a final, “I’m terribly sorry.”
The farmer gazed at Yu Jung with compassionate eyes, then took out his purse and handed him a small sum of money.
“Inscrutable are the ways of heaven,” he said. “Bestir yourself and leap back into the fray. In our seventy years of life, no one knows what might occur. Every ebb has its flow. The heart of man is as changeable as the storm-tossed waves of Lake Tung-t’ing.”
After offering this unexpectedly eloquent advice, the farmer turned and walked off. Yu Jung felt as if he were still dreaming. He stood and gazed vacantly after the old man, then turned to peer up at the crows assembled on the branches of the maple trees.
“Blue Bamboo!” he shouted. Startled, the crows all sprang as one from their roosts with a great cacophony of cries. They briefly circled the sky over Yu Jung’s head, then sped out toward the lake and were gone.
So it was just a dream, Yu Jung thought sadly. He shook his head, breathed a deep sigh, and dejectedly set out for home.
No one there seemed to have missed him much. His cold-hearted wife lost no time in setting him to work, ordering him to haul some boulders to his uncle’s garden. Dripping with sweat, Yu Jung pushed, rolled, and carried
any number of enormous rocks from the riverbed, mournfully recalling what Confucius had said: To be poor without resentment is difficult indeed. “Willingly would I die in the evening,” he muttered repeatedly to himself, nostalgic for the happy life he’d experienced in his dream, “could I but hear the voice of Blue Bamboo in the morning.”
Po-i and Shu-ch’i did not keep the former wickedness of men in mind, Confucius tells us, and hence the resentments directed toward them were few. Our Yu Jung too, possessing as he did the lofty-mindedness of one who aspires to the way of the superior man, made at first every effort to refrain from despising his heartless relatives or speaking out against the uneducated hag who was his wife, preferring to bury himself in the classics, cultivating refinement and purity of taste. In time, however, the contempt to which he was relentlessly subjected became more than he could bear, and during the spring of the third year since his return he delivered another blow to his wife’s head. “Just watch me. I’m going to be somebody,” he said, and marched off, bursting with noble ambitions, to sit once again for the government exam.
Unfortunately, he failed it this time too. It seems our hero simply wasn’t much good at taking tests. On his way back home, he stopped again at the King Wu Shrine on the banks of his now-beloved Lake Tung-t’ing. Everything his eyes beheld brought back delightful memories, but these only served to increase his sorrow a thousandfold, and standing there before the shrine he began to weep and lament at the top of his voice. When the sobs finally subsided, he took what little money he had in his pocket and purchased some scraps of mutton, and these he scattered in the courtyard as an offering to the sacred crows. He watched them swoop down from the trees to peck at the meat and wondered if Blue Bamboo was among them. But the ebony-feathered birds all looked so alike that he was unable even to tell male from female.
“Which one of you is Blue Bamboo?” he said, but not a single crow so much as looked up at him; the scraps of mutton enjoyed their undivided attention. Yu Jung wasn’t ready to admit defeat, however. “If Blue Bamboo is among you, let her remain last,” he announced, his voice choked with immeasurable longing.
Soon the mutton was gone. Two of the crows flew back to the woods, then a group of five, and so on, until only three remained searching the ground for meat. Seeing this, Yu Jung felt his heartbeat quicken and his palms begin to perspire, but once these last three had ascertained that not a scrap was left, they too flew off without so much as a backward glance. So great was Yu Jung’s disappointment that he grew dizzy and nearly fainted, but still he found it impossible to tear himself away. He sat down on the balcony and let out sigh after sigh, as he watched the mists of spring crawling over the surface of the lake.
“Now that I’ve failed the examination twice in a row, how am I to return home with any dignity whatsoever? My life is not worth living. I’m told that long ago, during the epoch of the Warring States, valiant Ch’u Yuan, the father of poetry, threw himself into these very waters and drowned, shouting: ‘The world is drunk; I alone perceive the truth!’ If I were to drown myself in Lake Tungt’ing, this sea of sweet memories, who knows but that Blue Bamboo might be watching somewhere and weep for me? Blue Bamboo is the only one who has ever loved me. All the others in my life are nothing but dreadful, self-seeking ogres. ‘Every ebb has its flow’—so that old man said to encourage me three years ago, but it was a lie. People born to misery are destined to remain forever in misery. Is this what it means to know the illustrious decrees of Heaven? Ha, ha! Let me die now, then! If Blue Bamboo weeps for me, that’s all I ask. I have nothing else left to hope for.”
Thus our Yu Jung, though supposedly steeped in the Way of the ancient sages, gave in to the depths of his despair and resolved to end his life in the waters of Lake Tung-t’ing. When night fell, a hazy full moon floated up in the sky; the border between the lake and the heavens was lost in a white, misty blur; the wide, flat shore shone as bright as day; the willows along the bank hung heavy with dew; the countless blossoms of a distant plum grove glistened like so many precious gems; and from time to time a faint breeze, like a sigh from heaven, whispered over the sand. A perfectly lovely evening in spring—knowing that this was to be the last he would see of this world, Yu Jung wet his sleeves with tears, and when the melancholy cry of a wild monkey echoed through the night, his sorrow reached the point no man can bear. He was about to plunge into the water when he heard a flutter of wings behind him, and then a melodious voice:
“Long time no see.”
Yu Jung turned to see a beautiful woman of twenty or so, with pearl-like teeth and eyes that glistened in the moonlight.
“Who are you?” he said. “Forgive me,” he added. “I’m sorry.”
“Naughty boy,” said the woman, slapping him lightly on the arm. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your Blue Bamboo?”
“Blue Bamboo!”
Yu Jung leaped in astonishment. He hesitated for a moment but then abandoned all reserve and threw his arms around her.
“Let go! I can’t breathe!” she said, laughing and slipping deftly out of his embrace. “I’m not going anywhere. From now on I’ll be at your side forever.”
“Yes! Tell me it’s true! I looked for you and couldn’t find you, and I was just about to jump in the lake and end it all. Where have you been?”
“Far from here, in Han-yang. After we lost you I left this place, and now I’m a sacred crow of the Han River. An old friend of mine from the shrine came to me this evening to tell me she’d seen you, and I flew here as fast as my wings would carry me. Blue Bamboo is with you now, my love. You mustn’t think any more about dying—I simply won’t have it. But look at you. You’ve lost weight.”
“I don’t wonder. I failed the examination again. There’s no telling how they’ll treat me at home if I go back now. I’m just so fed up with this life!”
“You suffer because you think the only life you can have is in the place you were born. ‘Green hills are where you find them’—isn’t that a line from a poem you scholars are always quoting? Come see my house in Han-yang. I’ll show you how wonderful it is to be alive.”
“But Han-yang is such a long way,” said Yu Jung. At some point they had left the balcony of the temple and begun to stroll along the moonlit shore together. “Confucius says: While his parents are alive, a good son does not wander far afield.” Ever willing to display some fragment of his virtuous learning, Yu Jung delivered these words with a grave and scholarly look on his face.
“What are you talking about, silly? You’re an orphan.”
“Oops. You knew that, did you? Still, though, I do have a lot of relatives back home who are the same as parents to me. What I wouldn’t give to show them a Yu Jung who’s made a great success of himself! They’ve always treated me as if I were an absolute fool. I know! Rather than going to Han-yang, I’ll take you back home with me. Imagine their surprise when they see that beautiful face of yours! That’s it, that’s what we should do. Come with me. Just once in my life I’d like to stand tall in front of those relatives of mine. To be respected by those back home is the greatest happiness, and the ultimate victory, for any man.”
“Why are you so concerned about what the people back home think? ‘Fame-seekers’—isn’t that what they call those who strive to be respected in their native districts? Your village fame-seekers are the thieves of virtue—that’s in the Analects too, you know.”
So crushed was Yu Jung by this stunning rebuttal that he could only bow his head in surrender. “So be it: take me to Han-yang,” he said, then tried to hide his embarrassment by reciting a poem. “Those who have passed beyond,” he intoned, even as he realized the quote’s irrelevance, “take refuge in neither day nor night.”
`You’ll go?” cried Blue Bamboo. “Oh, I’m so glad! I’ve already asked my servants to prepare the house for you. Close your eyes for a moment.”
Yu Jung obediently let his eyelids droop shut. He heard the flutter of wings again, felt a thin garment fall over his should
ers, and instantly had the sensation of being light and buoyant. When he opened his eyes, both he and Blue Bamboo were crows. Their jet-black feathers gleamed in the moonlight as they hopped along the shore and then spread their wings and left the ground, crying out as if with a single voice.
For hours they flew, swerving and swooping erratically as they followed the winding Yangtze River on its great northeasterly journey, three thousand leagues by the pale light of the moon. When night at last faded to dawn, the tile roofs of the silent, sleeping houses of Han-yang, the city of canals, appeared ahead, shining in morning mist, and now they could see the trees of that fair city, the fragrant, lush green grasses of Parrot Isle, and Yellow Crane Tower and Ch’ing-ch’uan Pagoda murmuring together of days gone by from opposite banks of the brightening stream, where white-sailed boats busily plied the current. Soon they were directly above the lofty peak of Ta-pieh Mountain, at the foot of which lay the vast waters of Moon Lake and beyond which the Han River meandered off to the northern horizon. Confronted with this panoramic view of the Venice of the Orient, Yu Jung remembered Ts’ui Hao’s famous poem—“The paths that lead to home, where can they be? These misty waters bring only grief”—and as he dreamily muttered the lines to himself, Blue Bamboo began to circle serenely over a small island in the Han.
“We’re home,” she called over her shoulder, and he fell in behind her, describing a leisurely circle over the island and looking down to see, amid the luxuriant green river willows bedewed as if with wisps of smoke, a lovely little palace, like a doll’s house, from which at that very moment five or six doll-like maidservants came running out, looking up to the sky and waving. Blue Bamboo signaled to Yu Jung with her eyes, furled her wings, and dove headfirst toward the palace, and he followed right behind her. The moment they alighted on the island’s green grass they were once again a noble young gentleman and his lovely lady. Surrounded by the maidservants who’d come out to greet them, they smiled at each other, joined hands, and walked to the front door of the charming little palace.