The Beggar Immortal

Beneath the locust tree before the City-God’s temple sat a beggar the people called “Old Zhuo.” He was about seventy, white beard and hair, yet his face was ruddy; he wore a ragged padded jacket mended a hundred times, a length of grass-rope tied at his waist, and in his hands a chipped coarse earthen bowl, still bearing the stain of some leftover gruel at its bottom. In winter he stuffed reed-catkins into the jacket for warmth, and from afar you caught a smell of sun-dried grass; in summer he left the jacket open to show his spare rib-cage and waved a broken palm-fan at the flies.

Old Zhuo was no nuisance, neither quarrelsome nor grasping. On temple-fair days, if someone gave him half a cake he took it and chewed slowly, chewing very fine, as if tasting some rare delicacy; if no one minded him he bore no grudge, only dozed in the sun on the temple-eave’s stone step, eyes squinted shut, drool running down his chin onto his collar, and never wiped it. The townsfolk took him for an ordinary poor man—pitied, they gave a mouthful; not pitied, they let him be; the children, though, loved to gather round him and listen to his tuneless little hums.

But a few matters gradually made folk find him a little strange.

Liu the blacksmith of East Lane broke his cart’s axle and stuck halfway, the cart still loaded with a plough he had forged for a patron; he broke into a sweat of anxiety, stranded between village and nowhere. Old Zhuo happened to be nearby; without a word he undid the grass-rope at his waist and wound it round and round, and somehow bound the axle fast enough that Liu, doubtful, pushed the cart home. A grass-rope should not bear a loaded cart and must snap—yet he used it over a month without breaking; when Liu later replaced the axle, the rope was still sound, and he could not bear to throw it away.

Widow Chen of the south market had a child in high fever and could not afford a physician; the child raved in delirium, and the widow wept holding him. Old Zhuo passed by, pressed lightly on the child’s brow, then scraped a little ointment of unknown stuff from the bowl’s bottom and smeared it on the wrist-pulse, only saying: “Sleep, and you’ll be well.” Next day the child’s fever broke and he bounced about. Widow Chen went to thank him, but he had long since moved on, dozing in the sun at the far end of the street, as if the matter had nothing to do with him.

Strangest was after autumn, when the rich Zhang household lost a grey mule worth no small sum and sought it three days with no sign; Zhang, anxious, posted a notice. Old Zhuo dozed before the temple, woke, and pointed to the northern gully: “In the ruined kiln, a stone caught its leg, it cannot pull free.” They sent men; so it was—the mule thinned a round but unharmed. Zhang offered him silver; he took but half a string and pushed the rest back: “The mule came home itself; nothing to do with me.” Zhang suspected he had guessed by chance; Old Zhuo did not argue.

The xiucai Lu Wenqing was fond of probing matters; he watched Old Zhuo half a year and grew ever more suspicious. The old man’s bearing was uncommon: though his clothes were in rags, his movements had a measured order, and his back was always straight in rising and sitting; in the winter’s reed-catkin jacket he never so much as shivered, his breath even; the stone step where he sat was damp the year round, dark moss creeping, yet his whole person stayed dry, not a damp mark on his hem. One day Lu could not help asking: “Old sir—surely you are not… of this mortal kind?” Old Zhuo opened his eyes, smiled a smile, and still answered not, only set his broken bowl on the step and said: “Cold weather—each warms himself.” Then he closed his eyes and slept again.

That year on Laba Festival the snow fell heavy, the whole street white. Lu went early to the temple front; beneath the locust the place was empty—Old Zhuo was gone, and the chipped bowl with him. On the stone step remained only a handful of reed-catkins, loose and fluffy, yet warm to the touch, as if someone had just sat there. After that no one saw Old Zhuo again. The townsfolk thought the poor man had not outlasted the winter and frozen to death; they sighed a few days, then let it fade, and none would sit on that stone step anymore. Only Lu kept that handful of catkins in his book-box—he knew it was not death, but a going; in his going he had taken even the bowl, leaving only a handful of warmth for whoever would look down.

The Chronicler remarks

That an immortal hides among beggars is an old tale enough. Yet the world values the immortal’s display, while Old Zhuo kept to the reality of hiding. He helped men in small things, left no name; a handful of reed-catkins was the warmth he left at his going. Men in trouble now hope for a noble man to descend from heaven—little knowing the noble man often crouches beneath the temple eave, holding a chipped bowl, waiting for you to look down. Pity that most pass with head held high and never know him.