Dragonwings Chapter 3 PDF

Chapter 3 The Dragon Man What do you think this chapter will be about? ________________________________________________  CHAPTER III The Dragon Man (April, 1903) As Father led me up the stairs, I forgot ab...

Chapter 3 The Dragon Man What do you think this chapter will be about? ________________________________________________  CHAPTER III The Dragon Man (April, 1903) As Father led me up the stairs, I forgot about the demons, for I began to wonder again about his name, Windrider. Every Tang man can have several names. He has a family name and a personal name given to him at birth. He can have another name given to him when he comes of age, a nickname from his friends, and if he is a poet, he can have a pen name. We are not like the demons, who lock a child into one name from birth—with maybe a nickname if he is lucky. We feel that a man should be able to change his name as he changes, the way a hermit crab can throw away his shell when it’s too small and find another one. When Father stopped before our door, I asked him, “Why do they call you Windrider?” “Wait,” he said. “You’ll see. It’s really a name I had before I was born in this life.” He pushed open the door. He waited almost shyly by the doorway as I went inside. The room was only about ten feet wide. By one wall were two mats and a trunk. A large, long table filled the opposite wall, while shelves covered the other two walls. There were piles of the strange, thick, cloth-like paper of the demons on one corner of the table. (I was used to the much thinner rice paper of the Tang people.) Every other inch of space in the room was crowded with small, strangely constructed machines whose purpose I could not guess. I did not dare touch a thing. I thought that each machine was like a magical bottle or box, with demons waiting inside to burst out. But then Father became as excited as a small boy. He showed me each item, handling the strange machines as if he had tamed whatever demons were trapped inside. (Though, even so, if I had been left alone in that room, I would have bolted.)  Father motioned to a demon machine whose guts lay scattered around a board. There were lumps of crystal connected by wires and other things. It looked like some strange, magical pattern of great power. There was a wire band with a circular disc at either end. On the board was painted the word for sharing. I found out pointed to the band and discs. "Those are earphones.” He touched the board. "This is a crystal set. Through this we can talk through walls and across the city. They’ve already talked across the ocean.” "Across the ocean?” "Yes." "Can you talk to the Middle Kingdom?” Fathers face softened. "No, boy. It was the demons’ other ocean.”  Then Father showed me a device which he called an electric light. It consisted of a stand in which was set a globe of clear glass. Inside, filaments, of burnt bamboo perched like a black insect. The guts of the light—they were really wires—led from the globe across the table, vanishing into the jumble of machines. Father dimmed the gaslight. “Watch this,” he said eagerly. He examined the table, gave a grunt when he found what he wanted, and turned a switch. I heard a click. Suddenly the insect within the globe shone with a light that was so bright and intense that it hurt my eyes, and I cried out. Father turned off the switch. "What’s wrong?” I didn’t say anything, but Father realized I was scared from the way I was shaking. He put his arm around me and I felt his reassuring bulk. He waved his free arm around at the room. "All of these things are only toys. They’re harmless." “Because you learned the demons’ magic to protect you? Father smiled and laughed softly. “No. No. What’s here belongs neither to us nor to the demons. It’s only a form of a much greater and purer magic. It can do harm in the hands of a wrong man and lash back on him; but the superior man need not be afraid.” But he could see from my face that I was not too sure about the devices in the room. He sighed and scratched the back of his head as if puzzled. “Won’t you take my word for it, boy?” "It’s hard to order someone to believe.” I added, "Sir.” We both felt stiff and awkward. Father spread his hands. “Oh, hell, boy. I don’t know much about being a father.” “I guess I don’t know much about being your son,” I said slowly. "Yes, well.” He nodded 点点头 to me. "I guess we’ll have to learn together then.” He sat down on the mat. “But I can see I’ll have to tell you about my name. Then you’ll understand why you should not be afraid.” He patted a place beside him. I sat down there. He nodded his head name. The story was told to me by the Dragon King himself. Of course, not all dragons are evil, as I later discovered the demons think they are, for they can be good to you as well as bad. In fact, most dragons are good creatures who bring rain to the farmers when they soar up from the water and fly through the sky. Dragons can be kindly and wise, and quite unlike the fire- breathing, malicious, greedy creatures the white demons seem to think dragons are. There are some dragons that delight in harming other creatures, even their own kin. But the Dragon King himself is by and large a good creature who rules over all reptiles 爬行动物 and the animals who live in the sea, and some say he is the head of all the other animals. The Dragon King is one creature you stay friends with, since he can cause earthquakes as well as floods and droughts. To have him personally tell you a story is quite an honor. “You never wrote to us about the Dragon King,” I said. “It’s hard to put such things into a letter, especially when the letter is read to your family by another person.” I nodded, understanding. Father settled back against the wall. He put his hands behind his head so that his arms were bent and looked like wings. His face took on a strange 表情 expression—one I was to see only a few more times in the years to come. It was as if he were in another world and describing it to me—as if he were actually there seeing and hearing and feeling what was going on. “That first night,” Father said, "that I had come to this land, there had been a feast 盛宴 for the group of us that had just arrived on the boat. Because of the late hours telling stories and the drinking, the others slept deeply, so no one could tell me the next day if I had really left.” Fathers story went like this: I had gone to sleep with the others, but I woke up to find myself on a strange beach. I scooped up some of the sand and saw that it was really tiny sapphires that made noises like laughter when I rubbed some of them between my palms. Behind me rose steep sided mountains of amber, on which had been carved words of great power to try to bind the creatures who lived within. The giant animals moved about inside the mountains dimly, like shadows, huge, terrible shadows. Not the slightest surge of surf, 海洋的冲浪 and no wind stirred its surface. It was a strange, deep, troubling shade of green, as if it held the sunlight rather than reflected it. Then I looked around the beach and saw, drawn up in ranks, regiment after regiment of strange, silent, scaled soldiers, but I paid little attention to them. For there, lying in the middle of the beach, was a great dragon, perhaps five hundred yards long. His great head lay pillowed against a sand dune and a dozen or more soldiers waved their wicker shields, trying to fan cool air upon him. His head was long and shaped like that of a horse or a camel骆驼 ,with the great nostrils鼻孔 widened as he tried to breathe. His horns were like those of a deer, but they looked as if they had been carved of ivory 象牙. There were streamers of the red flesh of some luckless opponent still clinging to some of the points, though other soldiers were trying to clean them off. His ears were forked and twitched like those of a rabbit. His body was as long and powerful as that of a snake, but he had four heavy, squat legs. The pad of each foot, though, was leather hard. Because this dragon had five gold-tipped claws, I knew him for the Imperial Dragon, for only royal family have five claws. All the other dragons are born with only four. In the middle of his forehead was a great pearl, 他的额头上有一 颗大珍珠 which gleamed like the moon on a cold, crisp autumn 秋天 night; but its luster was fading. His vast chest heaved up and down and his wings were folded onto his sides. The fine golden whiskers 胡须 of his beard were still flecked with blood and his own sweat. He was also growing bald for a dragon: He was so old that the scales 龙鳞 at the top of his head had begun to flake off and expose the soft, golden skin beneath. The Dragon King opened his great eyes, eyes perhaps ten feet in diameter. Old they were, and sad and wise, and yet gentle at the same time. But they looked like two deep wells of golden light—deep enough to swallow 吞 the whole world, it seemed. No one could look long into the eyes of the Dragon King. I knelt and pressed my face against the sand. “Humph,” he grunted, “rather a miserable, soft- skinned body they’ve given you, Windrider.” The Dragon King’s voice boomed inside his vast body, the words echoing and vibrating like a gong in a large hall. “You committed a great crime 犯罪 , but you at least deserved to be born as a worm or a lizard. I mean, really, it’s a bit drastic to be born as a softskin, (软皮 的意思和人类一样)don’t you think?” "I don’t know,” I said, still not daring to look up.  The Dragon King sighed. “You made terrible puns, cheated at dice, and criticized the meter of my excellent poems, but you were once a phenomenal healer.” “But, my Lord,” I quavered, “I am only an ignorant man who knows nothing of the art of healing.” I felt a great shower of sapphire sand as his head rose up. The Dragon King laughed, and it sounded like someone pounding on a brass door. “Aha. Aha. Aha. My dear fellow, right now you may be as miserable a specimen of a softskin as it has ever been my misfortune to see; but in a former life, you were once the greatest physician 犯罪 of all the dragons, and—I must tell you—something of a show-off when it came to flying. That’s how you got your name. Then, in one of your playful moods, you grew as large as the world and tried to blow out the fires in the sun by fan- ning your wings. For that great crime, your head was cut off and you were reborn among the softskins. And among them you must remain until you prove yourself worthy once again of being a dragon.” “But I remember nothing.”  The Dragon King sighed patiently. “Before a soul is reborn 投胎 into a new body in a new life, he drinks a broth 肉汤 which makes him forget everything. But though your mind might not remember, your hands do. My spies tell me you still retain some of your old skills.” “But I know nothing of healing, my Lord. I only tinker with machines.” “I am never wrong.” I felt the Dragon King wag a claw above my head. “Surely you remember that the magic of our kingdom takes different forms in the mortal 凡人 lands? Once, as a dragon, you could cut small shapes of butterflies and birds out of paper and make them come to life. Now as a soft-skin you can only make the things called kites— that skill is only a remnant of your old powers.” I heard him lower his head again onto the sand. He let out another sigh and the sand blew about me. “Now heal me, for I grow weary 厌倦 of our talk.” “I will try my best, Lord.” “Trust to your hands and do not think about what you are doing.” The Dragon King added, “And do not fear. No harm will come to you if you fail. I called you here as my old friend.” All this time I had kept my face to the ‘sand, but I took courage from his words. When I felt a great shadow 阴影 pass over me, I looked up. The Dragon King had spread his left wing outward to reveal the wound 受伤 in his side. The bony ribs of the wing stood out as high as a hill, and the arteries and veins gleamed like wires of fine-spun ruby and turquoise pressed into a thin sheet of jade. But then I looked as saw a gash that was about twice as long as me. It had been covered with an ugly black scab. He told me later he had received the wound during a border skirmish 小冲突 with the outlaw dragons who lived in the hills of the seashore. "I cannot work on you when you are this big, Lord. You must reduce yourself to...oh... about twelve feet.” The Lord dwindled in size until he was only about twice my length. Without thinking, it seemed, my hands knew what to do, as if there were some residue 残留物 of my old memories still left in my hands, if not in my mind. The soldiers brought a medicine chest 医药箱. I mixed a liquid and said the proper prayers and washed my hands. Suddenly my hands were as transparent as the finest glass. It was only by holding my hands at a certain angle in the sunlight that I could even see them. The flesh of the Lord suddenly became as nothing. By touch alone I fitted bones together and fused them. Then I knitted the bone back to the sinew 腱子 and the sinew back to the tissue. Finally I pressed a poultice of certain herbs over the whole wound, using a trowel-like instrument to plaster it on. When I washed my hands in the sea, my hands became solid again. Then I removed the poultice 膏药 The flesh of his chest was as smooth as the rest of his skin. There was not even a scar. "Ah,” sighed the Dragon King. In his exuberance, he swelled up to his former gigantic size. “How can I ever reward you?” I knelt humbly before him. “Make me a dragon again, Lord, as you say I once was.” “Windrider, I would do it with all my heart, but that I cannot do,” said the Dragon King. “You must wait until you have lived out your allotted span as a mortal. And you may not become a dragon again-much as you or I would wish it-unless you prove yourself worthy to be a dragon once more, and you can only do that by passing a series of tests that will be given to you as a softskin. Behave as a true dragon and you will pass them all, and by so doing, you will be given your true form. But it will be no easy task, for you may not know you have been tested until after it is over.” The Lord tapped his claws on the ground. It was only a thoughtless little tapping for him, but the ground rumbled underneath the rest of us. “Ah. But I can show you about our dragon kingdom so you’ll want to return. It will also be a fine excuse to keep you here for a little while. I don’t think my family would forgive me if I sent you away before they had a chance to drink to your health.” And he smiled a twenty-yard-long smile. 夸张 At the Lord’s command, a squad of soldiers brought a set of shimmering wings, shaped like a dragonfly’s, of some thin, transparent stuff stretched over a framework of gold wire. 透明的东西伸展在金线框 架上。 "These are wings, if you have the courage to use them,” the Lord said. I looked dubiously at the wings. They seemed fragile things. But I was ashamed to let the Lord see me frightened after all the things he had said about the former me. I took off my shirt as I was told and knelt in the sand. From a jar a soldier took a sweet smelling paste and smeared it on my back along the shoulder blades. Immediately my back began to itch. "Do not scratch,” the Lord warned me sternly.  Then a pair of soldiers brought the wings. I felt a prodding刺激 at my back as if someone were pushing two sticks against it. Then I felt a tugging sensation. I turned around to see the soldiers pulling at the wings on my back as if they wanted to make sure they were securely fastened. Then the soldiers backed away. I stared in amazement. “Stand up, Windrider.” I did, or at least I tried to; but I nearly fell on my back because of the weight of the wings. They weren’t heavy, mind you; but it was the change in my balance. I found later that by leaning forward I would be all right when I got up. I tested the wings timidly at first. There was only that thin, bone-like rib around either wing to give it structure. The ribs felt as if they were as hollow as the quill of a feather. The wings themselves were finer than the finest rice paper, and yet they were strong. Once during my trip, a flock of birds came out of a cloud bank. I managed to dodge most of them, but some of them hit my wings. Poor things—they broke their necks against my wings. But that happened later. Right then I spread my wings and saw the glory of them! They had been gold at first, but now I saw how they shone iridescently 虹彩地—like the rainbow colors you see on a soap bubble if you look at it from the right angle. The colored light shimmered and shone on the wings’ surface and I flexed them joyfully, delighted with how the colors spread and played upon their surfaces. “Now,” the Lord said proudly, “use them.” I tried waving them lightly and felt myself spring into the air, to hover above the Lord’s head. "Easy,” the Lord cautioned me. “You don’t want to tire yourself out.” I did a loop. I did a long, slow glide. It was a heady feeling. The world spun out below. I flew so high that the beach looked just like a strip of blue paper set down beside looked up and there was nothing between myself and the gods in heaven but sky — lovely, blue sky. I flew around in great, lazy circles, delighted with my freedom. "Is it good to be back in the sky, Windrider?” he shouted up to me. "Yes,” I shouted back. And then the Lord rose from the beach. There is no more awesome sight than a dragon first taking flight. He tilted up his head and tensed his legs. Then with one great beat of his wings, he sprang into the air. You have to picture what it was like to see that great mountain of flesh suddenly uncurl and rise into the sky. A giant column 柱子 of muscle and flesh suddenly leaped upward—ton after ton of flesh suddenly pouring itself skyward in defiance of gravity. He shot by me and I got caught in his tail stream as he went past. I tumbled head over heels, but I soon righted myself in time to see the greatest aerial 天线 display a man will ever see. Though I do not think he would have admitted it, I do believe he wanted to show off, too. The Lord flew effortlessly, 毫不费力地 twisting his body in curls and spirals the way a skilled dancer can take a twenty-foot ribbon and make it form graceful designs behind her. The Lord seemed to be signing his name in the sky with all the right lines and swelling strokes. And then he came up beside me. "Now, Windrider, we will fly through my kingdom to your real home.” He was old, that dragon, but his heart was young. On the way to his kingdom, we had races—short ones, out of consideration for me. After all, I only had puny softskin muscles now to power my wings, while he had the muscles of a dragon’s body. Some times we raced so low that our feet broke the surface of the water and we plowed great white wakes behind us, and we would end the race by tracing designs in the sea.  It would take me all night to describe the dragons’ kingdom and all the great creatures that live there. And what can I say of the jeweled dragon palaces or of the undersea gardens? They had fountains, not of water but of air, among other wonders. I could go on for days and days about everything I saw in his palace, but the meanest rooms there, which were assigned to the scrub dragons, were worthy of human emperors. But the thing I remember most was the Dragon Kings throne. It must have stretched for several acres, and to support all of his bulk there were a hundred golden legs, each carved like some creature of the sea. The throne itself was of pure, unalloyed gold, and since pure, unalloyed gold is almost as malleable as clay, a crew of dragon goldsmiths was kept busy all the time repairing the throne where the Lord might have dented it. He settled himself on his throne, laying himself down in coil after careful coil. The arms and back of his throne were encrusted with all kinds of gems, each as big as my fist. Among all those precious jewels on the back of his chair there was a plain black stone above his head. The Lord showed it to me. On it was the word for sharing, and when it was set into a certain design— with one long nail, the Lord delicately traced the design on his throne—it would let you speak to whomever you named. It helped the Lord to keep track of his vast realm. He spoke into the stone, calling all of his nine sons and daughters and his twenty-seven grandchildren and his eighty-one great grandchildren to meet Windrider again that night at a feast. When he was finished, he let out a sigh. “I tell you, Windrider, with each year, it gets harder to remember all the names.” "Yes,” I said absently. I looked up wistfully 渴望地 at the chair. The Lord finally understood. “Whom would you like to hear, Windrider?" he asked gently. "My wife,” I said. I spoke her name into it, and all of a sudden I heard your mother singing a lullaby 催眠 曲 to you as you gradually stopped crying. You must have just been born, for I as yet had had no news of your birth. "You could speak to them,” the Lord said. “No,” I said. I’m afraid that I began to cry. “I don’t want her to feel what I feel, listening to her but not being able to touch her. Better that she shouldn’t know.” "As you wish,” the Lord said, and quickly distracted me by challenging me to a game of dominoes. I won— he grudgingly admitted that I had won by skill and not by cheating. He told me he would hold my winnings for when I was reborn again as a dragon. But finally it was time for me to return to my mortal  world. It was reluctantly that the Lord said good-bye to me and added, “We will save a place at the banquet table 宴会桌 for you. You will be eating with us soon, though, if you just remember to watch for the tests and hold to the dragonness within that softskin body. Now fare you well.” Father sat in silence for some time. “The others say it was a dream. The only proof I had was my sore back and ribs the next day. And that is no proof Uncle said I must have gotten up and fallen sometime in my sleep.” "I believe you were there, Father.” I touched his arm shyly. "Something as beautiful as that has to be true.” Father smiled in our newfound understanding. "Then we must both be as true as dragons can be and must not try to put out the sun.” Looking at his smile, I felt as if here at last in the city of the demons, I had found my true father, and more—a friend and a guide. Later that evening, as I lay on my mat, I heard a sound like a great bear shuffling down the hall. There was a tap at the door. I opened it to see Uncle. He looked down at me. "Thought you’d be up,” he pretended to grumble. “This is just a little knickknack 小摆设 I made in my spare time. If you don’t want it, just throw it away.” He tossed something over onto my mat and left. I went over to my blankets and held the object up in my hands toward the dim light coming in from the gas lamp in the hall. It was a wooden carving of Monkey, the creature born of a stone egg who became king of all the monkeys and who almost conquered Heaven with them. No one else knew who had carved it. I never explained to anyone how I got it, not even to Father when he asked. I thought Uncle would want it that way. I figured out later that he must have carved it late at night when the others had gone to sleep. I can’t say exactly why, except maybe Uncle was afraid of being laughed at by the others. The object that he had treated so casually was beautifully meticulous. It was a work of art. In a better time and place, Uncle might have been a sculptor 雕塑家. It was only later that I saw how rheumatic 风湿病的 Uncle s hands were, when he could sometimes barely grip his chop sticks. I realized then just how much effort it must have taken for him to hold a knife and wield it so painstakingly. It was more than a work of art. It was a work of love. With that statue beside me, I fell asleep