Shen Jiu's Waking Block
Shen Jiu told stories at the Listening-Rain Teahouse for forty years; his voice wakes the dead and weeps the living. He keeps three refusals: no flattery, no halls for the powerful, never a true event as a tale. He turns away both a silver-bearing manager who wants praise and a widow who wants her dead husband's wrong told. He then tells a haunted-laborer tale read as truth; the manager's shame spreads down the lane. Shen Jiu voiced a thousand wrongs; his own, a jailed scholar's, stays silent.
At the mouth of Locust Lane stands the Listening-Rain Teahouse, a small doorfront that fills every afternoon. The townsfolk come for the tea only by accident; mostly they come to hear Shen Jiu tell stories.
Shen Jiu is sixty-two and has told tales for forty years. He carries no great paraphernalia, only a wooden block, a folding fan, and his mouth. One slap of the block, a sharp crack, and the whole room stills: the melon-seed cracklers, the pipe smokers, the grandmothers dozing with their grandchildren all fall quiet at once. His voice is wide; he can imitate a woman's weeping, an old man's cough, a horse's neigh, wind and snow against the window. A flick of the fan and another figure steps onto the stage. They say Shen Jiu's mouth can wake the dead and weep the living.
But the mouth keeps rules. Shen Jiu holds to three refusals. First, no flattery for the living: when a rich household asks for a lucky tale to gild itself, he shakes his head. Second, no hired halls for the powerful: when the yamen or the grain-pawn shop sends an invitation, he claims a weak constitution. The third is the hardest, never dress a true event as a story. People often pull at him: "Master Shen, my family's grievance, spin it into a tale, give us some justice." He always answers, "A tale is a tale, a life is a life. Truth is too heavy; a tale cannot bear it."
To others this sounds like an excuse. It is, in fact, Shen Jiu's own scale. He believes a tale is a mirror held to a man, not a cloth to wipe his face clean; to praise whoever pays is to sell the mouth, not tell a story.
On ordinary days he tells of the Three Kingdoms, the Outlaws of the Marsh, the Strange Tales. At Wu Song the whole room clenches its fists; at Du Shiniang the young wife in back dabs her eyes. A session costs a few copper coins, yet the listeners leave as if they had lived another life.
As the New Year drew near, the grain-pawn manager stepped through the snow into the teahouse, all smiles. "Master Shen, the old madam turns seventy; our master names you to tell a tale at the feast, for joy." He passed over a red slip: "The God of Wealth Sending Sons, to honor the Qian house and its thriving line." Shen Jiu glanced, slid the slip back untouched. "This tale I do not know. Find another." The manager's face darkened. "You refuse a gift." Shen Jiu only smiled, struck his block, and opened Lin Chong's Snowy Night at the Mountain Spirit Temple. The manager left in a huff.
That same day, Widow Zhou came from the lane's end, her eyes swollen. Her husband had been a hired hand at the grain-pawn shop and fell from a cliff days before; the body was never whole, and the house sent off the family with two strings of cash. She dropped to her knees. "Master Shen, in your tale, say one fair word for my man." Shen Jiu bent to raise her, sighed. "Truth does not mount this stage. Your wrong I cannot make into a tale." Widow Zhou covered her face and wept away.
For several nights Shen Jiu opened a newly patched story, The Wicked Squire and the Laborer's Ghost: a heartless squire drives a hired man up the cliff at night to haul grain; the man falls, and the squire hides even the corpse. The laborer's wronged ghost returns each night to count copper coins at the squire's gate until dawn. The room first took it for a ghost story; but when they heard "grain-pawn shop," "two strings of cash," "no body beneath the cliff," they fell silent, and after the show the little tale ran halfway down Locust Lane. The manager came to protest again; Shen Jiu lifted his tea bowl. "This is an old Song-dynasty piece. What is it to me?"
That night his apprentice A-Mu was putting away the block and could not help asking, "Master, you said truth never mounts the stage. But this time..."
Shen Jiu ran a hand over the oil-smooth wood and spoke only after a long while. He had once been a failed scholar in a neighboring county; young, he wrote petitions for others and was framed and jailed for it. After his release he swore never again to write the truth with a brush, only to tell it with his mouth. At last he said, "Truth is too heavy; a tale can bear it. The listeners all carry their own scales. I need not point it out."
In his life he voiced a thousand wrongs. Only his own, the jailed scholar's, stayed silent under the slap of his block.