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Chinese Fables. Lak-Khee Tay-Audouard
Читать онлайн.Название Chinese Fables
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781462911721
Автор произведения Lak-Khee Tay-Audouard
Жанр Учебная литература
Издательство Ingram
The Wrong Audience
Kung-Ming I was an accomplished musician on the ch’in, the seven-string zither, the Chinese scholar’s instrument. Excellent though he was, he had one great failing: he didn’t care a snapped string about his audience and paid no attention to the response of the audience who came to hear him play.
Kung-Ming had studied the instrument in the old-school belief that it is the way to purity and harmony with the universe. To Kung-Ming playing the ch’in was meditation: he withdrew into himself, thought only lofty thoughts, and cared nothing about the effects of his music on his listeners. To enhance his purity, he often played the ch’in in a secluded pavilion or on the banks of an icy mountain stream. He best liked playing alone under a full moon on a hillside overlooking the town.
One day Kung-Ming came upon a meadow bright with sunshine and wildflowers and a brown cow grazing on clover. The scene was so sunny and peaceful that Kung-Ming was moved to bring out his ch’in, to celebrate the meadow, the sun, the brown cow. He plucked from the strings a run of sound so joyous it made his own heart sing.
The sun shone on, the meadow bloomed, the cow grazed on and did not even lift his head.
Slightly annoyed, Kung-Ming produced a series of trills and ripples like the warbling of songbirds and the burbling of brooks, sounds so beautiful he felt himself almost melt away to become one with the meadow, the hillside, the brook, the brown cow.
The sun shone on, the brook burbled on, and the brown cow continued grazing, though she twitched an ear and flicked her tail at the flies on her back.
Thoroughly annoyed, Kung-Ming struck two loud, discordant notes—Twannnggg!! Zzzinnnggg!!
“Mooooo!” lowed the cow, lifting her head to look mournfully at Kung-Ming before going back to munching grass.
“Verily I have the wrong audience,” said Kung-Ming to himself. He left the meadow a wiser musician, with an awakened appreciation of those who came to hear his music.
Stealing the Bell
When finally the city fell to its besiegers,the great House of Fan was vacated and left to looters. Master and servants packed what they could carry, buried the gold and fled.
Then the mobs came. Ordinarily law-abiding, the townsmen turned into rampaging hordes that emptied the abandoned mansion of everything: carved tables and chairs, inlaid screens and chests, rich carpets and tapestries, priceless garments, porcelains and ivories, every wok and kettle in the kitchens.
An outburst of plunder and looting seized the city until a proclamation from the new authorities halted the frenzy. Infractions, however minor, would be punishable by death. Quiet settled on the city.
Among the servants of the House of Fan was one Ch’in, a poor man always at the bottom of the domestic scale. He did not flee the city with his master but sneaked away to join the pillaging mobs. He saw a chance to start his fortune.
When Ch’in returned to the House of Fan, he saw the front gate fallen, the doors pried open, the house emptied. Nothing of value remained. But in a disused storeroom behind the empty tool house, Ch’in found to his joy a large bronze bell. It was so big his arms could barely encircle it, and it was too heavy for him to carry.
Poor Ch’in was torn with indecision. Here was the only thing of value left in the great House of Fan. Should he abandon it? Of course not_he had found it! Should he ask his wife’s brothers to help him? But they were a greedy lot, sure to demand more than their fair share. Should he borrow a cart? But this would mean traveling the streets, and discovery would mean death.
A brilliant thought slowly lit up his eyes. He would break up the bell into several pieces that could be secretly carried away piece by piece. Its value as a bell would be lost, but there would be the value of the metal. Of course!
Ch’in returned to the House late that afternoon with a sledgehammer he had taken from one of his wife’s brothers, and a bundle of rags for wrapping the pieces of bronze. Eagerly he set about his task of breaking up the bell.
BBBOOONNNGGGGG!!!!!
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