Body

The Bell Ghost

At the foot of West Mountain stood a ruined temple, the Temple of Gathered Blessings, its incense dead over a hundred years; only three leaning halls remained, their beams thick with sparrows' nests, the steps before them waist-deep in weeds. Before the hall hung a great bell, over a zhang tall, six feet at the mouth, its cast iron black, its body covered with scripture now rusted beyond reading. This bell would often sound of itself at midnight — a long, muffled "oooom," heard three li off. The villagers called it the "bell ghost" and dared not pass the temple by night; even the herdboys gave it a wide berth.

Cai Er made a point of walking the temple wall every night. He said ghosts fear a fierce man, and he had slept among bones in his day, and would not be bested by an iron bell. Yet the first time he heard that "oooom," the hair rose on his neck — not from fear, but because the sound was too like a living thing, muffled in the iron belly, held till it made a man's heart fret, like hearing someone swallow his words and yet unable to keep them down.

There was a watchman, Cai Er, bold and unbelieving. He had carried his clapper half his life and knew every stone at the mountain's foot. One night he patrolled the temple with his lantern; at the second watch the bell indeed sounded. Summoning his nerve he drew near with a torch; the bell swayed with no wind, yet the sound was not struck by wind — the striking beam had long rotted away, and inside it something seemed to hum, muffled. He pressed his ear to it and caught a very faint, very heavy word: "...un...finished..." like a sigh, or a man holding his breath within the bell's hollow, each word tasting of iron rust.

Cai Er went home and asked the old folk. A blind crone of ninety-three, telling her beads, said the bell was cast in the Jiajing reign by a caster surnamed Ou, a lone artisan of no recorded name who wandered the land casting bells. Master Ou cast this bell and thrice it cracked; the authorities pressed him, giving seven days to finish or face prison. The fourth time, he threw his own iron poker into the furnace and would have died with it — he did not quite die, only the poker melted into the bell, and a breath of his stuck un-swallowed; from then he was half-witted, and on the day the bell was done he leaned on its base and smiled, and that night passed without illness.

The crone said: "Master Ou was a stubborn man; the work unfinished, he would not close his eyes in death. Inside that bell is trapped half a breath he never let out; on wet nights, at the hour of the rat, it struggles free to hum once, to remind men: the bell is not yet whole."

Cai Er half doubted. The next day he found an old rubbing of the bell's inscription and had the village scholar read it; the last small line indeed ran: "Caster Ou, who failed this bell thrice and finished it the fourth; may those after mend its lack." The writing was hasty, as if cut in haste, the final stroke dragged long like a sigh.

Another rainy night, Cai Er came again before the temple. At the rat-hour the bell sounded. This time he was not afraid; he bowed toward it and said: "Master Ou, the bell has long been whole — rest now, old sir." No sooner spoken than the bell's note changed, from muffled to clear, an "oooom" with a long, easy tail, like a breath let go. After that the temple bell rang more rarely, silent on fair nights, and only on lone, rainy midnights did it now and then sound — one old caster's long sigh, or a laying-down.

After that, on the first and fifteenth of each month, Cai Er brought half a flask of coarse wine to the temple and circled the bell with a pour, as if drinking with Master Ou. Once, drunk, he patted the bell and said: "Old brother, that poker of yours is still inside? Count me in, next time you cast a bell." The bell gave no sound, but the wind swept the hall's eave and the sparrows started — as if it had answered.

The Chronicler remarks: Men seek completeness and seldom attain it. Master Ou gave his own life for a single bell; the bell done, his breath unsated, he sounded nightly — the artisan's fixation unspent. Yet the fixation is to be honored: craftsmen now do slipshod work and call it done; who would, for one vessel, hold a breath unspent a hundred years? The bell ghost is no ghost; what is strange is that unwillingness to settle for less.