On the Mountain of Infinite Longevity a Great Immortal Entertains an Old Friend
In the Wuzhuang Temple Monkey Steals Manfruit
The three of them went into the wood and saw the idiot tied up under a tree, yelling and howling in unbearable pain. Monkey went over to him and said with a laugh, “What a son-in-law! So late, and you still haven’t got up to thank your mother-in-law or come to tell the good news to the master. Why are you still playing around here? Where’s your mother-in-law? Where’s your wife? You make a fine, strapped-up, well-beaten son-in-law!”
The blockhead, burning with humiliation at being thus mocked, gritted his teeth to stop himself howling in his agony. Friar Sand was overcome with pity when he saw him, and putting down the luggage he went over and untied him. The idiot kowtowed to him in gratitude. He was suffering terrible remorse. There is a poem to the tune The Moon in the West River to prove it:
Sex is a sword that wounds the body;
Whoever lusts for it will suffer.
A pretty girl of sixteen
Is far more dangerous than a yaksha demon.
There is only one Origin,
And there are no extra profits to staff in the sack.
Better store all your capital away,
Guard it well, and don’t squander it.
Pig used a pinch of earth to represent burning incense and bowed in worship to Heaven.
“Did you recognize the Bodhisattva?” Monkey asked.
“I was lying here in a faint and my eyes were seeing stars, so I couldn’t tell who it was.” Monkey handed him the piece of paper, and when he saw the divine message, Pig was more ashamed than ever.
“You’re very lucky,” said Friar Sand with a laugh, “you’ve got four Bodhisattvas as your relations now.”
“Please don’t talk about it,” said Pig. “I really don’t deserve to be human. I’ll never misbehave again in future, and I even if the effort breaks my bones, I’ll rub my shoulder and carry our master’s luggage to the West.”
“That’s more like it,” said Sanzang.
Monkey then led his master along the main road. After they had been going for a long time, walking and resting, they saw a high mountain blocking their way. “Disciples,” said Sanzang as he reined in the horse and stopped giving it the whip, “we must be very careful on that mountain. I’m afraid there may be fiends and demons on it who will attack us.”
“With us three followers,” said Monkey, “you needn’t fear demons.” Sanzang, his worries ended, pressed forward. The mountain was certainly a fine one:
The mountain was very high
And craggy was its majesty.
Its roots joined the Kunlun range,
Its summit touched the Milky Way.
White crane came to perch in its locust and cypress trees,
Dark apes hung upside-down from its creepers.
When the sun shone bright on its forests,
It was enveloped in red haze;
When winds sprang from dark valleys,
Coloured clouds scudded across the sky.
Hidden birds called in the green bamboo,
Pheasants fought among the wild flowers.
Thousand-year peaks,
Five-blessing peaks,
Lotus peaks,
Majestically reflecting a delicate light;
Ten thousand year rocks,
Tiger-tooth rocks,
Three Heavens rocks,
Wreathed in subtle and auspicious vapours.
Luxuriant grass in front of the cliff,
The scent of plum blossom on the ridge.
Dense grew the jungle of thorns,
Pure and pale were the orchids.
Deep in the woods the birds gathered round the phoenix;
In an ancient cave a unicorn was chief of the animals.
A delightful stream in a gully
Twisted and turned as it wandered around;
Endless peaks
Coiled about in layer upon layer.
Then there were the green locust trees,
Mottled bamboo,
And bluish pines,
That had been competing in splendour for a thousand years.
White plum blossom,
Red peach,
And emerald willows
Were brilliant as they vied in beauty during spring.
Dragons called and tigers roared,
Cranes danced and apes howled.
Deer emerged from the flowers,
Pheasants sang to the sun.
This was a land of blessing, an Immortals’ mountain,
Just like Penglai or Langyuan.
Flowers opened and withered on the mountain top,
Clouds came and went above the peaks along the ridge.
“Disciples,” said Sanzang with delight as he sat on his horse, “I’ve crossed many mountains on my journey West, and they were all steep and rocky, but none of them could be compared to the extraordinarily beautiful scenery here. If this isn’t far from the Thunder Monastery, we had better put ourselves in a solemn and reverent mood to meet the Buddha.”
“It’s early days yet,” said Monkey with a laugh. “That’s not an easy place to get to.”
“How far are we from Thunder Monastery, elder brother?” asked Friar Sand.
“Thirty-six thousand miles,” Monkey replied, “and we haven’t covered a tenth of it.”
“How many years will it take us to get there?” Pig asked.
“You two younger brothers of mine could manage it in ten days or so, and I could go there fifty times over in a single day and still be back before sunset. But for our master it doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“Tell me, Monkey! how long will it take?” asked Sanzang.
“If you went from childhood to old age,” said Monkey, “and from old age back to childhood again, and you did it a thousand times over, you’d still find it hard to get there. But if you see your true nature, are determined to be sincere, and always remember to turn your head back to enlightenment, then you will have reached
Vulture Peak.”
“Even if this isn’t the Thunder Monastery,” said Friar Sand, “good people must live amid such fine scenery as this.”
“Quite right,” said Monkey, “there couldn’t be any evil creatures here. This must be the home of holy monks or Immortals. Let’s look around here and take our time over it.”
This mountain was called the Mountain of Infinite Longevity, and there was a Taoist temple on it called the Wuzhuang Temple. In this temple lived an Immortal whose Taoist name was Zhen Yuan Zi. He was also known as Conjoint Lord of the Age. The temple had a rare treasure, a miraculous tree that had been formed when primeval chaos was first being divided, before the separation of Heaven and Earth. In the four great continents of the world, only the Western Continent of Cattle-gift’s Wuzhuang Temple had this treasure that was known as “Grass-returning Cinnabar” or “manfruit.” It took three thousand years to blossom, three thousand years to form the fruit, and another three thousand years for the fruit to ripen, so that very nearly ten thousand years had to pass before the fruit could be eaten. Only thirty fruit were formed each ten thousand years, and they were shaped just like a newborn baby, complete with limbs and sense organs. Anyone whose destiny permitted him to smell one would live for three hundred and sixty years, and if you ate one you would live for forty-seven thousand years.
That day the Great Immortal Zhen Yuan had received an invitation from the Original Celestial Jade Pure One inviting him to the Miluo Palace in the Heaven of Supreme Purity to hear a lecture on the Product of Undifferentiated Unity. The Immortals who had studied under this great Immortal were too numerous to count, and he now had forty-eight disciples who had all attained to the full truth of the Way. That day, the Great Immortal took forty-six of them with him to hear the lecture in the upper world, leaving the two youngest, Pure Wind and Bright Moon, to look after the temple. Pure Wind was 1,320 years old, and Bright Moon had just turned 1,200.
The Great Immortal gave his instructions to the two boys: “As I must obey the summons of the Original Celestial Jade Pure One and go to the Miluo Palace to hear a lecture, you two will have to look after the temple carefully. An old friend of mine will be coming this way before long, and you must entertain him very well indeed. You can pick two manfruits for him as a token of our old friendship.”
“Who is this old friend of yours, master?” the boys asked. “Please tell us who he is so that we can entertain him properly.”
“He is a priest sent by the Tang Emperor in the East,” the Great Immortal replied, “and he is known as Sanzang. He is the monk going to worship the Buddha and ask for the scriptures in the Western Heaven.”
“Confucius said, ‘Don’t have anything to do with people of a different way,’” replied the boys with smiles. “Ours is the esoteric sect of the Great Monad, so why ever are you friends with that Buddhist monk?”
“You are not aware,” the Great Immortal replied, “that he is a reincarnation of the Golden Cicada, the second disciple of the Tathagata Buddha, that ancient sage of the West. I made his acquaintance at an Ullambana assembly where he gave me tea with his own hands. As this disciple of the Buddha paid me such an honour, I regard him as an old friend.”
When the two Immortal boys heard this, they accepted their master’s orders. Just as he was on the point of setting out, the Great Immortal gave them some more instructions: “There are a limited number of those manfruits. You must only give two, and not one more.”
“When the garden was opened we all shared two,” said the boys, “and there are twenty-eight now left on the tree. We won’t use more than two.”
“Although the Tang Priest is an old friend of mine,” said the Great Immortal, “you must be on your guard against his ruffian followers, and you mustn’t let them know about the manfruit.” The Great Immortal then flew up to Heaven with the rest of his disciples.
The Tang Priest and his three followers, meanwhile, were enjoying themselves strolling on the mountain when they noticed some tall buildings rising above a bamboo grove. “What do you think that is?” Sanzang asked Monkey, who replied, “It’s either a Taoist temple or a Buddhist one. Let’s go over and find out.” It did not take them long to reach the gate, and they saw
A cool pine-covered slope,
A tranquil path through the bamboo.
White cranes brought floating clouds,
Monkeys and apes offered fruit.
Before the gate was a wide pool, and the shadows of the trees were long;
In the cracks of the rocks grew moss.
Many a purple hall was massed together;
A red aura enveloped the lofty towers.
It certainly was a blessed place,
A cloud cave on Penglai.
In its pure emptiness little happened;
Its stillness gave birth to thoughts of the Way.
Green birds often brought letters from the Queen Mother;
Purple pheasants carried the classics of Lord Lao Zi.
There was a majestic air of the Way and its Power—
It was indeed a divine Immortal’s home.
Sanzang dismounted and saw that there was a stone tablet outside the gate on which was inscribed in large letters:
BLESSED LAND OF THE MOUNTAIN OF INFINITE LONGEVITY
CAVE HEAVEN OF THE WUZHUANG TEMPLE
“You were right,” said Sanzang, “it is a Taoist temple.”
“Good people must live in this temple,” said Friar Sand, “set as it is in such fresh, light scenery. Let’s go in and have a look round. When we go back to the East at the end of our journey, this will be one of the finest sights we’ll have seen.”
“Well spoken,” said Monkey, and they all went in. On the next gate was pasted the couplet:
“Residence of Divine Immortals Who Never Grow Old;
Home of Taoists as Ancient as Heaven.”
“This Taoist tries to intimidate people by talking big,” said Monkey with a laugh. “When I wrecked the Heavenly Palace five hundred years ago I never saw anything like that over the gate of the Supreme Lord Lao Zi.”
“Never mind him,” said Pig. “Let’s go in. This Taoist may well be quite a decent bloke.”
As they went through the second gate they saw two boys come scurrying out. This is what they looked like:
Pure bones, lively spirits, pretty faces,
And hair tied in childish tufts.
Their Taoist robes naturally wreathed in mist,
The sleeves of their feather clothes were floating in the wind.
Their jade belts were tied with dragon-head knots,
Their grass sandals lightly fastened with silk.
In their elegance they were unlike common mortals—
The Taoist boys Pure Wind and Bright Moon.
The two boys bowed and came out to greet them. “We are sorry we did not welcome you properly, venerable master,” they said. “Please sit down.” Sanzang was delighted, and he accompanied the two boys up to the main hall of the temple, which faced South. There was a patterned lattice window that let through the light on top of the door that the boys pushed open. They asked the Tang Priest to come in, and he saw two huge words executed in many colours hanging on the wall—Heaven and Earth. There was an incense table of red carved lacquer on which stood a pair of golden censers and a supply of incense.
Sanzang went over to the table and put a pinch of incense in the censers with his left hand while performing triple reverences. Then he turned round to the boys and said, “This temple is a home of Immortals in the Western Continent, so why don’t you worship the Three Pure Ones, the Four Emperors, and all the ministers of Heaven? Why do you burn incense to the two words ‘Heaven’ and ‘Earth?’”
“To be frank with you, venerable teacher,” the boys replied with smiles, “it’s quite right to worship the top word, ‘Heaven,’ but the bottom one, ‘Earth,’ gets no incense from us. Our teacher only put them up to ingratiate himself.”
“How does he ingratiate himself?” Sanzang asked.
“The Three Pure Ones and the Four Emperors are our teacher’s friends,” the boys replied, “the Nine Bright Shiners are his juniors, and the Constellations are his underlings.”
When Monkey heard this he collapsed with laughter, and Pig asked him, “What are you laughing at?”
“They say that I get up to no good, but these Taoist boys really tell whoppers.”
“Where is your teacher?” Sanzang asked them.
“He had an invitation from the Original Celestial Jade Pure One and has gone to the Palace in the Heaven of Supreme Purity to hear a lecture on the Product of Undifferentiated Unity, so he’s not at home.”
At this Monkey could not help roaring, “Stinking Taoist boys, you don’t know who you’re talking to. You play your dirty tricks in front of our faces and pretend to be oh-so-innocent. What Heavenly Immortal of the Great Monad lives in the Miluo Palace? Who invited your cow’s hoof of a master to a lecture?”
Sanzang was worried that now he had lost his temper the boys would answer back and spark off a disastrous fight, so he said, “Don’t quarrel with them, Wukong. We’ll be going in a minute, so we obviously need have nothing to do with them. Besides, as the saying goes, ‘egrets don’t eat egret flesh’. Their master isn’t here anyway, so there would be no point in wrecking the place. Go and graze the horse outside the gate. Friar Sand, you look after the luggage, and tell Pig to take some rice from our bundles and use their kitchen to make our meal. When we go we shall give them a few coppers for the firewood. All do as I’ve told you and leave me here to rest. When we have eaten we shall be on our way again.” The three of them went off to do their jobs.
Bright Moon and Pure Wind were meanwhile quietly praising Sanzang to each other: “What a splendid monk. He is indeed the beloved sage of the West in mortal form, and his true nature is not at all befuddled. The master told us to entertain him and give him some manfruit as a token of their old friendship, and he also warned us to be on our guard against those hooligans of his. They have murderous-looking faces and coarse natures. Thank goodness he sent them away, because if they were still with him, we wouldn’t be able to give him the manfruit.”
“We don’t yet know whether this monk is our master’s old friend or not,” said Pure Wind. “We’d better ask him to make sure.” The two of them then went over to Sanzang and said, “May we ask you, venerable master, whether you are the Sanzang of the Great Tang who is going to the Western Heaven to fetch the scriptures?”
“Yes, I am,” said Sanzang, returning their bows. “How did you know who I was?”
“Our master told us before he went,” they replied, “to go out to meet you long before you got here, but as you came faster than we expected we failed to do so. Please sit down, teacher, while we fetch you some tea.”
“I am honoured,” said Sanzang. Bright Moon hurried out and came back with a cup of fragrant tea for him.
When Sanzang had drunk the tea, Pure Wind said to Bright Moon, “We must do as our teacher told us and fetch the fruit.”
The two boys left Sanzang and went to their room, where one of them picked up a golden rod and the other a red dish, on which he put many a silk handkerchief as cushioning. They went into the manfruit orchard, where Pure Wind climbed the tree and tapped the fruit with the golden rod while Bright Moon waited below to catch them in the dish.
They only took a few moments to knock down and catch a couple, which they took to the front hall to offer to Sanzang with the words, “This temple of ours is on a remote and desolate mountain, master Sanzang, and there is no local delicacy we can offer you except these two pieces of fruit. We hope they will quench your thirst.”
At the sight of the manfruit the monk recoiled some three feet, shaking with horror. “Goodness me!” he exclaimed. “How could you be so reduced to starvation in this year of plenty as to eat human flesh? And how could I possibly quench my thirst with a newborn baby?”
“This monk has developed eyes of flesh and a mortal body in the battlefield of mouths and tongues and the sea of disputation,” thought Pure Wind, “and he can’t recognize the treasures of this home of Immortals.”
“Venerable master,” said Bright Moon, “this is what is called ‘manfruit,’ and there is no reason why you should not eat one.”
“Nonsense, nonsense,” said Sanzang. “They were conceived by their fathers and mothers and had to go through no end of suffering before they were born. How can you treat them as fruit when they haven’t been alive for three days yet?”
“They really and truly grew on a tree,” said Pure Wind.
“Stuff and rubbish,” Sanzang replied. “Babies don’t grow on trees. Take them away, you inhuman beasts.”
As he refused absolutely to eat them, the two boys had to take the dish away and go back to their room. This fruit was rather difficult to handle, and did not keep for long without becoming hard and inedible, so the boys sat on their beds and ate one each.
Oh dear! What a thing to happen! There was only a wall separating their room from the kitchen, where their whispering could be clearly heard. Pig was in there cooking the rice when he heard them talk as they fetched the golden rod and the red dish. Later he heard them saying that the Tang Priest had not recognized the manfruit, which was why they took them back to their room to eat.
“I’d love to try one, but I don’t know how,” thought Pig, unable to prevent his mouth from watering. Too stupid to do anything about it himself, he had to wait until he could talk it over with Brother Monkey. He had now lost all interest in stoking the stove as he stood in front of it, constantly poking his head outside the kitchen to look for Monkey. Before long Monkey appeared leading the horse, which he tethered to a locust tree. As he came round to the back, the blockhead waved frantically to him and said, “Come here, come here.”
Monkey turned round, came to the kitchen door, and said, “What are you yelling for, idiot? Not enough food for you? Let the old monk eat his fill, then we two can go to the next big house that lies ahead and beg for some more.”
“Come in,” said Pig, “it’s not that. Do you know that there’s a treasure in this temple?”
“What treasure?” Monkey asked.
“I can’t describe it because you’ve never seen it,” said Pig, “and if I gave it to you, you wouldn’t know what it was.”
“Don’t try to make a fool of me, idiot,” said Monkey. “When I studied the Way of Immortality five hundred years ago I traveled on my cloud to the comers of the ocean and the edge of the sky. I’ve seen everything.”
“Have you seen manfruit then?” Pig asked.
“No, I haven’t,” said Monkey with astonishment. “But I’ve heard that manfruit is Grass-returning Cinnabar, and that anyone who eats it lives to a great old age. Where can we get some?”
“Here,” said Pig. “Those boys gave two to our master, but that old monk didn’t know what they were and thought they were newborn babies. He wouldn’t eat them. Those boys are disgraceful—instead of giving them to us as they should have done they sneaked off into their room and had one each, gobble, gobble, gobble—I was drooling. I wish I knew how I could try one. Surely you’ve got some dodge for getting into the orchard and pinching a few for us to taste. You have, haven’t you?”
“Easy,” said Monkey. “I’ll go in and pick some.”
As he rushed out Pig grabbed him and said, “I heard them saying in their room that they needed a golden rod to knock them down with. You must do this very carefully—nobody must know about it.”
“I know, I know,” replied Monkey.
The Great Sage made himself invisible and slipped into the boys’ room, only to find that after eating the fruit they had gone to the front hall, where they were talking to Sanzang. Monkey looked all around the room for the golden rod until he saw a two-foot length of gold hanging from the window lattice. It was about as thick as a finger. At the bottom was a lump like a bulb of garlic, and at the top was a hole through which was fastened a green silk tassel. “So this must be what they call the golden rod,” he thought as he took it down. He left the room and pushed open a pair of gates at the back. Goodness! He saw a garden
With red, jeweled balconies
And a twisting artificial hill.
Rare flowers try to outshine the sun,
The bamboo attempts to be bluer than the sky.
Outside the Floating Cup Pavilion
A curve of willows hangs like mist;
Before the Platform to Admire the Moon
Clumps of lofty pines make splashes of indigo.
Bright, bright red,
The pomegranate thicket;
Deep, deep green,
The cushions of grass.
Richly blue
Were the jade-coloured orchids;
Rushing and powerful
The water in the stream.
Crimson cassia blazed beside golden wells and wutong trees.
Brocade-rich locust trees flanked red balconies and steps.
There was peach blossom in pink and white,
Yellow and fragrant chrysanthemums that have seen nine autumns.
Trellises of raspberries
Flourish by the peony pavilion;
Banks of hibiscus
Lead to beds of tree-peonies.
There is no end of noble bamboos that have held out against frost.
Or lordly pines that defy the snows.
Then there are nests of cranes and houses for deer,
Square ponds and round pools,
Spring water like fragments of jade,
Golden heaps of flowers.
The North wind bursts the white plum blossom open.
When spring comes, it touches the crab-apple with red.
It can be rightly called the most splendid view on Earth,
The finest garden in the West.
Before Monkey had time to take all of this in he saw another gate. When he pushed it open he saw
Vegetables for each of the four seasons—
Spinach, celery, beetroot, ginger, and kelp,
Bamboo shoots, sweet potato, melons, oblong gourd and wild rice stem,
Onions, garlic, coriander, scallion and shallots,
Lettuce, artemisia, and bitter alisma,
Gourds and aubergines that must be planted,
Rutabaga, turnips, docks,
Red amaranth, green cabbage, and purple mustard-plant.
“So they’re Taoists who grow their own food,” thought Monkey, smiling to himself. When he had crossed the vegetable garden he saw yet another gate, and when he opened it there was a huge tree in front of him with fragrant branches and shade-giving green leaves shaped rather like those of plantains. The tree was about a thousand feet high, and its trunk was some seventy or eighty feet round. Monkey leant against it and looked up, and on a branch that was pointing South he saw a manfruit, which really did look just like a newborn child. The stem came from its bottom, and as it hung from the branch its hands and feet waved wildly around and it shook its head. Monkey was thoroughly delighted, and he thought in admiration, “What a splendid thing—a real rarity, a real rarity.” And with that thought he went shooting up the tree.
Now there is nothing that monkeys are better at than climbing trees to steal fruit, and one blow from the golden rod sent the manfruit tumbling down. He jumped down to fetch it, but it was nowhere to be seen. He searched the grass all around, but could find not a trace of it. “That’s odd,” he thought, “very odd indeed. It must be able to use its feet—but even then it won’t be able to get past the wall. No, I’ve got it. The local deity of this garden has hidden it away to stop me stealing it.”
He made some finger magic and uttered the sacred sound “Om,” which forced the garden deity to come forward, bow and say, “You summoned me, Great Sage. What are your orders?”
“Surely you know,” Monkey said, “that I am the most famous criminal on earth. When I stole the sacred peaches, the imperial wine, and the elixir of immortality some years ago, nobody dared to try and take a cut. How comes it that when I take some fruit today you pinch my very first one? This fruit grows on a tree, and the birds of the air must have their share of it, so what harm will be done if I eat one? Why did you snatch it the moment it fell down?”
“Great Sage,” the deity replied, “don’t be angry with me. These treasures belong to the Immortals of the Earth, and I am a ghost Immortal, so I would never dare take one. I’ve never even had the good fortune to smell one.”
“If you didn’t take it, why did it disappear the moment I knocked it down from the tree?” Monkey asked.
“You may know that these treasures give eternal life, Great Sage,” the deity replied, “but you don’t know about their origin.”
“Where do they come from, then?” Monkey asked.
“These treasures,” the deity replied, “take three thousand years to blossom, another three thousand to form, and three thousand more to ripen. In almost ten thousand years only thirty grow. Anyone lucky enough to smell one will live for three hundred and sixty years, and if you eat one you will live to be forty-seven thousand. These fruit fear only the Five Elements.”
“What do you mean, ‘fear only the Five Elements?’” Monkey asked.
“If they meet metal,” the deity said, “they fall; if they meet wood they rot; if they meet water they dissolve; if they meet fire they are burnt; and if they meet earth they go into it. If you tap them you have to use a golden rod, otherwise they won’t drop; and when you knock them down you must catch them in a bowl padded with silk handkerchiefs. If they come in contact with wooden utensils they rot, and even if you eat one it won’t make you live any longer. When you eat them you must do so off porcelain, and they should be cooked in clear water. If they come in contact with fire they become charred and useless, and they go into any earth they touch. When you knocked one to the ground just now it went straight in, and as the earth here will now live for forty-seven thousand years you wouldn’t be able to make any impression on it even with a steel drill: it’s much harder than wrought iron. But if a man eats one he wins long life. Try hitting the ground if you don’t believe me.” Monkey raised his gold-ringed cudgel and brought it down on the ground. There was a loud noise as the cudgel sprang back. The ground was unmarked.
“So you’re right,” said Monkey, “you’re right. This cudgel of mine can smash rocks to powder and even leave its mark on wrought iron, but this time it did no damage at all. This means that I was wrong to blame you. You may go back now.” At this the local deity went back to his shrine.
The Great Sage now had a plan. He climbed the tree and then held the rod in one hand while he undid the lapel of his cloth tunic and made it into a kind of pouch. He pushed the leaves and branches aside and knocked down three manfruits, which he caught in his tunic. He jumped out of the tree and went straight to the kitchen, where a smiling Pig asked him if he had got any. “This is the stuff, isn’t it?” said Monkey. “I was able to get some. We mustn’t leave Friar Sand in the dark, so give him a shout.”
“Come here, Friar Sand,” Pig called, waving his hand. Friar Sand put the luggage down, hurried into the kitchen, and asked, “Why did you call me?”
“Do you know what these are?” Monkey asked, opening his tunic. “Manfruits,” said Friar Sand as soon as he saw them. “Good,” said Monkey, “you know what they are. Where have you eaten them?”
“I’ve never eaten them,” Friar Sand replied, “but when I was the Curtain-lifting General in the old days I used to escort the imperial carriage to the Peach Banquets, and I saw some that Immortals from over the seas brought as birthday presents for the Queen Mother. I’ve certainly seen them, but I’ve never tasted one. Please give me a bit to try.”
“No need to ask,” said Monkey. “We’re having one each.”
So each of them had one manfruit to eat. Pig had both an enormous appetite and an enormous mouth, and had, moreover, been suffering pangs of hunger ever since hearing the Taoist boys eating. So the moment he saw the fruit he grabbed one, opened his mouth, and gulped it down whole; then he put on an innocent expression and shamelessly asked the other two what they were eating. “Manfruit,” Friar Sand replied.
“What does it taste like?” Pig asked.
“Ignore him, Friar Sand,” said Monkey. “He’s already eaten his, and he’s no business to ask you.”
“Brother,” said Pig, “I ate mine too fast. I didn’t nibble it delicately and taste the flavour like you two. I don’t even know if it had a stone or not as I gulped it straight down. You should finish what you’ve started: you’ve whetted my appetite, so you ought to get me another to eat slowly.”
“You’re never satisfied,” Monkey replied. “These things aren’t like rice or flour—you can’t go stuffing yourself full of them. Only thirty grow in every ten thousand years, so we can think ourselves very lucky indeed to have a whole one each. Come off it, Pig, you’ve had enough.” He got up, slipped into the Taoist boys’ room with the golden rod, and put it back without letting himself be seen through the window. He paid no more attention to Pig, who went on grumbling.
Before long the Taoist boys were back in their room, and they heard Pig moaning, “I didn’t enjoy my manfruit; I wish I could have another.” Pure Wind’s suspicion were aroused, and he said to Bright Moon, “Did you hear that long-snouted monk saying he wished he could have another manfruit? Our master told us when he went that we were to be careful of those gangsters and not let them steal our treasures.”
“This is terrible, terrible,” said Bright Moon. “What’s the golden rod doing on the floor? We’d better go into the garden and take a look around.” The two of them hurried out and found the garden gates open.
“We shut this gate,” said Pure Wind, “so why is it open?” They rushed round the flower garden, found the vegetable garden gate open too, and tore into the manfruit garden. They leant on the tree and looked up into it to count the fruit, but however often they added the number up, it always came to twenty-two.
“Can you do arithmetic?” Bright Moon asked, and Pure Wind replied, “Yes. Tell me the figures.”
“There were originally thirty manfruits,” said Bright Moon. “When our master opened the garden two were divided up and eaten, which left twenty-eight. Just now we knocked two down to give the Tang Priest, which left twenty-six. But there are only twenty-two now, which means that we’re four short. It goes without saying that those bad men must have stolen them. Let’s go and tell that Tang Priest what we think of him.”
The two of them went from the garden to the front hall, where they pointed at Sanzang and poured the most filthy and stinking abuse on him, calling him “baldy” this and “baldy” that. It was more than Sanzang could stand, so he said, “What are you making all this fuss about, Immortal boys? Please stop. I wouldn’t mind you being a bit offhand with me, but you can’t talk in this outrageous way.”
“Are you deaf?” Pure Wind asked. “We’re not talking a foreign language, and you can understand us perfectly well. You’ve stolen our manfruit, and you’ve no right to forbid us to mention it.”
“What does manfruit look like?” Sanzang asked.
“It’s what we offered you just now and you said looked like babies.”
“Amitabha Buddha!” Sanzang exclaimed. “I shook with terror at the very sight of them—I couldn’t possibly steal one. Even if I were being racked by the most terrible greed, I could never commit the crime of eating one of those. What do you mean by making so unjust an accusation?”
“Although you didn’t eat any,” said Pure Wind, “those underlings of yours stole and ate some.”
“Even if they did, you shouldn’t shout like that. Wait till I’ve questioned them. If they stole some, I’ll see that they make it up to you.”
“Make it up?” said Bright Moon. “They are things that money can’t buy.”
“Well then,” said Sanzang, “if money won’t buy them, ‘decent behavior is worth a thousand pieces of gold,’ as the saying goes. I’ll make them apologize to you, and that will be that. Besides, we still don’t know whether they did it.”
“Of course they did,” retorted Bright Moon. “They’re still quarrelling in there because they were divided unfairly.”
“Come here, disciples,” called Sanzang.
“We’ve had it,” said Friar Sand when he heard Sanzang calling. “The game’s up. Our master is calling us and the young Taoists are swearing and cursing. The cat must be out of the bag.”
“How disgraceful,” said Monkey, “all that fuss about some food. But if we confess it, they’ll say it was stealing food; the best thing is not to admit it at all.”
“Quite right, quite right, we’ll cover it up,” said Pig, and three of them went from the kitchen to the hall.
If you don’t know how they denied it, listen to the explanation in the next installment.