Though the answer to this question may at first seem to border on the absurd, reflection will show that there is a good deal more in it than meets the eye.
Zhen Shi-yin makes the Stone’s acquaintance in a dream
And Jia Yu-cun finds that poverty is not incompatible with romantic feelings
GENTLE READER, What, you may ask, was the origin of this book? Though the answer to this question may at first seem to border on the absurd, reflection will show that there is a good deal more in it than meets the eye. Long ago, when the goddess Nǚ-wa was repairing the sky, she melted down a great quantity of rock and, on the Incredible Crags of the Great Fable Mountains, moulded the amalgam into thirty-six thousand, five hundred and one large building blocks, each measuring seventy-two feet by a hundred and forty-four feet square. She used thirty-six thousand five hundred of these blocks in the course of her building operations, leaving a single odd block unused, which lay, all on its own, at the foot of Greensickness Peak in the aforementioned mountains. Now this block of stone, having undergone the melting and moulding of a goddess, possessed magic powers. It could move about at will and could grow or shrink to any size it wanted. Observing that all the other blocks had been used for celestial repairs and that it was the only one to have been rejected as unworthy, it became filled with shame and resentment and passed its days in sorrow and lamentation. One day, in the midst of its lamentings, it saw a monk and a Taoist approaching from a great distance, each of them re- markable for certain eccentricities of manner and appearance. When they arrived at the foot of Greensickness Peak, they sat down on the ground and began to talk. The monk, catching sight of a lustrous, translucent stone—it was in fact the rejected
The Story of the Stone
Produced by Kolistan – 2 –
building block which had now shrunk itself to the size of a fan-pendant and looked very attractive in its new shape—took it up on the palm of his hand and addressed it with a smile: ‘Ha, I see you have magical properties! But nothing to recommend you. I shall have to cut a few words on you so that anyone seeing you will know at once that you are something special. After that I shall take you to a certain brilliant successful poetical cultivated aristocratic elegant delectable luxurious opulent locality on a little trip.’ The stone was delighted. ‘What words will you cut? Where is this place you will take me to? I beg to be enlightened.’ ‘Do not ask,’ replied the monk with a laugh. ‘You will know soon enough when the time comes.’ And with that he slipped the stone into his sleeve and set off at a great pace with the Taoist. But where they both went to I have no idea.
* Countless aeons went by and a certain Taoist called Vanitas in quest of the secret of immortality chanced to be passing below that same Greensickness Peak in the Incredible Crags of the Great Fable Mountains when he caught sight of a large stone standing there, on which the characters of a long inscription were clearly discernible.
Vanitas read the inscription through from beginning to end and learned that this was a once lifeless stone block which had been found unworthy to repair the sky, but which had magically transformed its shape and been taken down by the Buddhist mahasattva Impervioso and the Taoist illuminate Mysterioso into the world of mortals, where it had lived out the life of a man before finally attaining nirvana and returning to
