Messiah Clears the Disc
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The louder they cried the more fun the gatekeepers were getting. They snorted and yelped, wiping tears with their sleeves, they fell exhausted and knocked a staccato at the ground with their heels. Their laughter literally "shook Heaven and Earth". The gate still stood open and Baby Snake Cai was already preparing to turn off and go away. At least, such was the expression written on his face with high cheek-bones for anybody who'd wish to read it. At last he bit his lower lip, tore off the false paper, put the flat cake under his bowl for a bottom and resolutely directed his steps towards the cauldron. Just to find that he was not the only clever man in the company: for he had to take the fifth place in the line, that is the last one.
While they were eating hastily, smacking their lips and scalding their fingers, and then chewing thoroughly the flat cakes that became soft, soaked with hot broth, the two victims of the paper bottoms sat not far from them whimpering under their breath.
At last one of them stood up and went stumbling to the gate.
– It is not just, – the other too-hasty candidate began whispering but gradually his voice grew louder, – it is unjust... unjust!..
He seemed to become obsessed by the idea of justice, repeating the words more and more times, unable to stop and go away.
One of the monks lifted him by his collar like a mischievous kitten and dragged him towards exit. After expelling the unhappy soup eater he shouted:
– Hi, you! Yes, I mean exactly you! Come back, my precious!
The first swift soup eater who decided to leave without calling for justice, stopped and turned round; then he hesitated a little, shrugged his shoulders and went back. He passed by the gatekeeper cautiously (still fearing some practical jokes of his), came to the cauldron and taking a half of a softened cake proposed to him by Cai the Baby Snake began to chew it automatically.
– It is not just! – cried the expelled candidate from behind the gate, doubling his vocal efforts. – It is unjust!
– It is, of course! – the guard agreed and closed the gate.
And the other guard began to bawl for everybody to hear that all these idlers and loafers who gathered here may go now wherever they like, but if even the entrance to the monastery is somewhere in one of these directions he doesn't know anything about it, but if indeed he knows something he wouldn't say anything, and if by chance he'll say something it would be better for those sons of wood-louse and grass-snake not to hear his words!
– They say that Buddha was very kind, – Baby Snake Cai sighed and started his way to the rocks towering above the gate. Behind his back he heard the answer:
– Buddha's not like others...
No one of the six competitors saw how the monk guards looked significantly at one another; then one of them ran in an unhurried trot along the wall and to the left, where water was rumbling softly falling on the stones.
It took Cai the Baby Snake more than twenty four hours to overcome those damned rocks. He even had to spend the night on a narrow ledge with nothing for supper besides eggs stolen from a wild dove nest, and his sleep was every now and then interrupted by a splash of instinctive dread: any unconscious movement could send him headlong to the abyss not less than twenty zhang [14] deep!
14
Zhang is a measure of length about 3,2 meters.
The candidates have parted with each other at the first gate because each was convinced: it's he who knows the way to the monastery entrance absolutely exactly, and all others are but a mob of dolts and ignoramuses. This opinion was probably not so far from truth, for Baby Snake twice heard desperate cries and the rumble of landslides rolling down.
He was lucky enough: only once he took a wrong direction and had to return almost to the gate. However, the return was much more difficult because it is always a more dangerous and tiresome task to descend than to ascend. Especially when you try at each step to drive off the evident thought that the following track you'd chose can lead you to an impasse as well as the previous one!
Nevertheless, the wise men have some reason saying that the efforts of the valiant are to be crowned by success, sooner or later. ("Oh, the sooner the better ", – Cai the Baby Snake was thinking wiping his brow wet with sweat.)
Next day, about noon, he discerned the white monastery wall through a tangle of stems of another bamboo grove in front of him. From his place he could already see old willows and thick-set ash-trees surrounding it, and even the pointed blue tops of the monastery conical roofs, and a tower adorned with golden hieroglyphs reflecting sunshine. It marked most probably the main gate.
With a sigh of relief Baby Snake continued his way straight through the thicket; but hardly had he made fifty steps when his attention was drawn by distant moaning.
The young man stopped and listened.
No, it was not a delusion – somebody moaned again although the sound was weak resembling rather the murmuring of a streamlet erring among the stones.
The young candidate turned to the east, dodged a bit between knotty stems and soon noticed a bright spot of a saffron cassock clearly contrasting with the surrounding green.
It appeared to be the same heshan who had been admitted the first to enter the gate showing to the guards the permission of his patriarch. Now he lay hunched on the ground, as a baby in his mother's womb, his left foot bandaged hastily with a bit of a blood-stained rag.
– Be careful! – croaked the wounded monk when Baby Snake rushed directly towards him. – Look where you go!
Fortunately, Baby Snake had enough common sense to follow his advice in time, otherwise he too would have stepped over a bamboo stump cut close to the ground and purposedly sharpened. As a result his foot would have been surely pierced like the unlucky heshan's one and there would be two men lying helplessly in the thicket and unable to reach the monastery entrance.
Still, in such a case they would have had the possibility to console themselves talking on such an actual topic as the true essence of the human soul enlightening.
Only now the dumbfounded Baby Snake felt that his own arms and legs are cut in many places by the sharp edges of bamboo leaves and bleeding, as if spears and knives were planted in this malicious thicket instead of usual peaceful trees!
– How can I help, reverend father? – murmured Baby Snake coming at last to the monk (it took him much more time than he had thought at first).